“Man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights,” asserts GOP’s guiding document

No Longer Free: New Mexico photographers Elaine and Jon Huguenin were fined more than $6,000 for politely refusing to shoot photos at a lesbian commitment ceremony, due to their Christian faith. The suit against them was filed under New Mexico’s “sexual orientation” law. The Huguenins appealed the decision but ultimately lost in the New Mexico Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to one day hear a case that will help decide whether “gay rights” supersedes Americans’ freedom of conscience on homosexual “marriage.” The next president could pick as many as four SCOTUS justices.
The following are extended excerpts of the newly minted 2016 Republican Party Platform, with a focus on the social issues and religious freedom (emphasis ours):
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We the People
We are the party of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration sets forth the fundamental precepts of American government: That God bestows certain inalienable rights on every individual, thus producing human equality; that government exists first and foremost to protect those inalienable rights; that man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights; and that if God-given, natural, inalienable rights come in conflict with government, court, or human-granted rights, God-given, natural, inalienable rights always prevail; that there is a moral law recognized as “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”; and that American government is to operate with the consent of the governed. We are also the party of the Constitution, the greatest political document ever written. It is the solemn compact built upon principles of the Declaration that enshrines our God-given individual rights and law, defines the purposes and limits of government, and is the blueprint for ordered liberty that makes the United States the world’s freest and most prosperous nation. …
In a free society, the primary role of government is to protect the God-given, inalienable rights of its citizens. These constitutional rights are not negotiable for any American. We affirm that all legislation, regulation, and official actions must conform to the Constitution’s original meaning as understood at the time the language was adopted.
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Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary
Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values. We condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was a “judicial Putsch” — full of “silly extravagances” — that reduced “the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie.” In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Court twisted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond recognition. To echo Scalia, we dissent. We, therefore, support the appointment of justices and judges who respect the constitutional limits on their power and respect the authority of the states to decide such fundamental social questions.
The First Amendment: Religious Liberty
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