Amen brother! Mainstream protestant churches haven’t been helping this cause much either.
Big Chris

This is a huge issue. Have you seen Truemarriage.net for some further thoughts on this?

Aren’t churches going to be much safer in restricting marriage to male-female couples if the government doesn’t allow itself to deal in marriage to begin with? If that’s the argument, I just can’t see how it supports banning gay marriage rather than just not being in the business of telling churches what they can or can’t legally call marriage.

That’s a reasonably good argument, not for opposing state recognition of gay marriage, but for entirely divorcing marriage from the state. The state already controls marriage in ways that are inimical to religion. We just don’t notice, because in general the state definitions are aligned with those of our particular religion.
The current situation seems odd to me. By focusing on state control of marriage, those opposed to gay marriage have created a situation where gay couples can’t gain state recognition of their relationship, but they can be married in religious, even Christian, ceremonies. I’d rather see the secular benefits currently restricted to marriage extended to all citizens, not just married couples, while Christians concentrate more on reforming marriage within the church.

I suppose it was to be expected…whenever the fascist religious right sees its political poer threatened,they bring out either the tried and true “bash on gays” or the all time favorite “theyll burn our bibles!!!” propaganda. You wanna talk about freedom? how about the freedom to marry the PERSON you love without the constant interference by a bunch of demented cultists….why dont we talk about that freedom?

So far I’ve only seen two arguments on this blog that legalized gay marriage would create an infringement on religious liberty.
1. From Gordon: Churches that refuse to accept gay marriage would be attacked by speech codes that would label their rejection ‘hate speech’.
2. From Joe: Churches that entangle themselves in public businesses may be required to recognize gay marriages or lose special exemptions or other favors.
In both cases these arguments are red herrings. In #1 the problem is not legalized gay marriage but speech codes. One could just as easily imagine a hypothetical where those advocating gay marriages are charged with ‘hate speech’ against anti-gay churches. The answer is to reject speech codes, rejecting gay marriage does nothing to protect freedom of speech or religious liberty in a country that is considering embracing codes against ‘hate speech’.
In #2 such problems exist whether or not gay marriage is legal. The adoption agency ran afoul not of legalized gay marriage laws but laws against discrimination against gays. Here Joe isn’t arguing a principle but just arguing for special treatment for his little club. If we read tomorrow that Mass revoked the adoption license of a Nation of Islam organization because they were refusing to place children with qualified whites I don’t believe for a second he would claim that was an infringement of religious liberty.

Except George the religious right these days is less concerned about God than it is about controlling the state. In their minds control of the gov’t is just about the only thing worth thinking about so if the gov’t happens to ‘reject’ their view of marriage it isn’t a meaningless gesture to them.
Hence all this hypoventillating about how legalized gay marriage will destroy civilization by next tuesday!

Boonton, I don’t disagree that a lot of the religious right, and left, want to have political power. The same is true of the atheist right and left, and, in fact, any way you want to slice and dice the demographic. To observe the lust for power within mankind is to merely open one’s eyes and look.
In my opinion, civilization will either stand or fall on two major issues. (And, just to be sure we’re talking about the same thing, I am referring to the Judaeo-Christian version that reached its intellectual peak in the Enlightenment and whose most beautiful and flawless instantiation is the US Constitution.)
First, is civilization willing to defend itself from outside threat? I’m not sure it is. I think civilization is tired. Tired out by war and constant attack from those who would seek to destroy it. Shar’ia is a good example of this, where a deranged ecclesiocracy trumps the rights and dignity of men and women. A global ummah is a far greater civilizational threat than a tiny percentage of homosexuals.
Second, can it treat its own dis-ease? Its beneficiaries have been so incredibly blessed by God and the ingenuity of humankind that they have become bored, lazy, and nihilistic/solipsistic. We swim in an ocean of blessings and, like fish, never realize that the water of freedom and human dignity we live in is a fragile singularity in human history. We believe we can indulge our senses and our selfishness by wantonly killing the innocent, aged, and helpless, spend our days in the quest for attention, power, and simply more, elevate the status of language to reality, and demote reality to the status of an illusion, Truth to the status of superstition.
For those fellow Christians who might read this, let me tell you as a brother that my heart tells me we would be much better servants of Christ if we spent more time in ghettos, hospices, and prisons – and prayer – than peering in windows ferreting out other people’s sin. As Christians, we have absolutely nothing to fear. Nothing. The Holy Spirit has preserved the body of Christ in the catacombs of Caligula’s Rome and in the house churches of the People’s Republic of China. “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you,, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake” No, I’m not worried about the government.

George,
Thank you. Very eloquent and much to think about. Though I know it was not specifically addressed to me, I appreciate the words. As someone who is tired of the political scene, and tired of the struggle for power that you discuss, it is extremely good to hear a plea for a higher plane.

Raven,
This is a popular meme at Street Prophets also, but it is actually a non-starter politically. I for one (and I know Joe isn’t) – nor any evangelicals I know – are being led around the nose by “wedge issues” by the Republican leadership. Us here Christianists are smarter than that. Really.
The insult in this (by you) is obvious. The more the left implies we are so easily led – the more you insult folk – the less likely you are to put forward a positive platform I could support; and trust me, I do not love the Bush Administration either as a political or a religious conservative.
So, unless you want me to believe that John Kerry would have held conservative evangelicals in higher esteem than the Republican leadership – then come up with a plan that I can support.
Or make this clear insult the core of the next three weeks of organizing – although I think that will help the Republican Party retain a conservative Christian base I am not sure they deserve to retain.

So far I’ve only seen two arguments on this blog that legalized gay marriage would create an infringement on religious liberty.
1. From Gordon: Churches that refuse to accept gay marriage would be attacked by speech codes that would label their rejection ‘hate speech’.
2. From Joe: Churches that entangle themselves in public businesses may be required to recognize gay marriages or lose special exemptions or other favors.

At least 2 others come to mind:
1. Hiring, firing and benefits. Many churches hire (and occasionally fire) employees from janiters to organists and soloists to program directors. I can see churches in effect being forced to hire gay “married” people, and pay spousal benefits for their partners.
2. Pastorial assignments. By example, given what is going on in the Episcopal church I could see a bishop using the legalization of gay marriage and associated anti-discrimination laws (e.g., threat of suit) to force a congreagation to accept a parish to accept a pastor who’s views and practices are at odds with their own.
In my opinion neither of these situations are the church extending involvement beyond traditional church roles. Instead they are cases of the state extending it’s rules into church affairs.

Boons,
Just a reminder, these were your words…
“the religious right these days is less concerned about God than it is about controlling the state”
Prejudice: unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, esp. of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group.
From the dictionary. Plain enough. Unless of course you can support the statement that every person associated with the ‘religious right’ except for George cares more about controlling the state than concern for God.
This statement of yours is way more than some sort of ‘he doesn’t agree with me’ thing, it’s you defining in negative terms the mindset of a whole group of people; by and large people you do not know and have not had experience with..
Now, prove you’re an adult, and that you can judge adult behavior and admit the error of your ways…

Prejudice: unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, esp. of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group.
From the dictionary. Plain enough. Unless of course you can support the statement that every person associated with the ‘religious right’ except for George cares more about controlling the state than concern for God.
I think you should note your definition. First the ‘religious right’ is neither a racial or national group. It is also not a religious group but rather a political group. If you have ‘negative feelings’ about the group “Catholics for John Kerry for President” that is not prejudice against Catholics.
Likewise my statement was neither hostile nor expressing an unreasonable feeling, opinion or attitude. I feel the political group that is often called the ‘religious right’ does give higher priority to getting their way on issues of state policy than it does on God. If you want to quibble then I should have technically said this is an observation of their behavior as I cannot see into their minds to know their underlying motivations so I can only evaluate their public statements and behaviors.
Notice how this little victimization side track diverted attention from the real point that George raised? Namely that state recognition of gay marriage was irrelevant to the status of a marriage from a sacred perspective. We have been told the exact opposite by the religious right. That preventing this was vital not only to marriage but civilization itself. It’s clear that the religious right has made the exact opposite argument that George has made. That should not be lost in this attempt at a red herring.

Joe,

This may be a candidate for worse post ever. You don’t even try to motivate your claim that your religious freedom is threatened.

There is still time to protect our religious freedoms.

How would state sanction of gay marriage affect any church? You will be free to advocate and practice bigotry toward gays just like churches in Mass. can do now.

Religious freedom does not mean freedom from being called a bigot when you practice bigotry.

If it matters, I see some real validity to what George said on the issue; however, I think there are some serious pitfalls for the church. The church has to bow to the state in many, many respects, and the state’s decision on this issue has potential for causing the church to act in ways that would be in opposition to their moral stance..
On the contrary, the state bows to the Church in many ways…at least in the US. The only examples given here are highly hypothetical ones where none of us really has a good handle on the answer…(could a church insist on only hiring a janitor from among their members or must they give fair consideration to those who do not share its religion but are perfectly good janitors). The other example was a real life case not of gay marriage but of how a church can end up running afoul of antidiscrimination laws when it embarks on a business…even there though the Church wasn’t bowing to the state but only considering whether or not to change their policies to accept a goodie (tax exempt status) the state offered. Again I’d ask if the Nation of Islam was confronted by the state telling them their adoption services had to stop discriminating against whites or lose their tax exempt status would you consider it a case of the state infringing on religious liberty?

“Again I’d ask if the Nation of Islam was confronted by the state telling them their adoption services had to stop discriminating against whites or lose their tax exempt status would you consider it a case of the state infringing on religious liberty?”
I don’t know anything about the Nation of Islam’s adoption policies, and won’t pretend that I do. I do think that marriage is something that is much more intertwined between the state and the church in concept and in practice. But, I’ll reserve comment on the Nation of Islam. It would be ill informed. I know, that’s never stopped me before…at least I beat you to that one.

“the apparently horrible burden of having to tolerate people you don’t like”
It should be made clear that our culture has been promoting confusion between tolerance and acceptance. Those are two distinctly different ideas.
One can fully tolerate people they don’t agree with, without accepting the policies they wish to impose on the state and in some cases the church.

Jeremy Aren’t churches going to be much safer in restricting marriage to male-female couples if the government doesn’t allow itself to deal in marriage to begin with?
Initially, that was what I thought would be the worst-case scenario. Get government out of the “marriage business” and the problem goes away. But the problem is that the government can’t be extricated from marriage without removing itself from marriage-related issues such as property division in divorces, alimony, child support, family law, custody, “spousal abuse”, etc.
Colin … immediately removing the church (if it chose to be consistent) from participation in public life.
That is it exactly. We can still hold our views – we just can’t hold them in public.
The Raven You’ve been used, confused, and abused by this adminstration.
I’m confused, Raven. Does the Religious Right have so much power that we have to fear a theocracy or are we so impotent that we’re abused and dismissed by the administration? Which is it exactly because the claims seem to change to fit the latest storyline?
AndyS You will be free to advocate and practice bigotry toward gays just like churches in Mass. can do now.
This main concern isn’t with churches, but with individuals. Mitt Romney made some excellent points last night:

Of course, the principal burden of this court’s ruling doesn’t fall on adults; it falls on children. We’re asked to change the state birth certificate: to prevent heterocentricity, mother and father would become Parent A and Parent B. An elementary school teacher reads to a second grader from a book titled “The King and the King” about a prince who marries a prince, and a second grader’s father is denied the right to have his child taken out of that classroom while the book is being read. Our state’s most difficult-to-place adopted children may no longer placed by Catholic Charities because they favor homes where there’s a mother and a father. The price of same-sex marriage is paid by the children. Our fight for marriage, then, should focus on the needs of children, not the rights of adults.

Why don’t you just be honest, Andy? You would be more than happy if Christians who opposed the normalization of homosexuality were treated like racists, wouldn’t you?
Patrick The day you start believing Gallagher as a reliable source of information is same day you should also start believing in little grey aliens with anal probes.
If you disagree with the conclusions of the Beckett Fund (who I mainly quoted from in my post) then you are free to offer evidence to the contrary.
So Joe, did you actually have any specific actual example of a church being discriminated against on the basis of gay marriage?
So far the discrimination has mainly been on the individual level. The main problem—and same-sex marriage will only codify it into law is when homosexuality is treated as a protected class like race or gender. Once that is established, then Christians either have to stop speaking out about their beliefs or they have to suffer the consequences.
For example, the Republican Governor of Maryland dismissed a Metro transit authority board member because he publicly stated that his faith teaches that homosexuality is a “deviant” behavior. Robert Smith was fired from his government job even though his position has nothing to do with hiring or other matters that would infringe on “diversity.” And in Minnesota, a psychologist was suspended from the Minneapolis Police Department because he once served on the board of the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a group which, like FRC, advocates traditional family values.
The same-sex marriage agenda wants to make it so that Christians are treated like racists. Those who discriminate on the basis of race are rightly shunned and have their views excluded from civil society. You can’t, for example, be a teacher in this country if you are openly racist. The same will soon be true of people who believe that homosexuality is, as Robert Smith, said, “deviant behavior.”

Our “born-again” president causes the deaths of approximately 1/2 million people in a war of naked agression in Iraq and tortures detainees and the religious right speaks out about the so-called “homosexual agenda”?

I don’t understand why this isn’t an issue. Marriage is hardly the institution that it used to be. What is left to defend or gain? A license that says your married? Tax breaks? Hooray…
Seriously though, marriage is hardly necessary this day and age. It isn’t for political or socio-economic gain; it isn’t for survival; it isn’t to produce off-spring (the average american family produces 2.5 children year…); it barely qualifies as a convenience (divorce rates are around 50%, married couples have become a minority compared to couples co-habitating). Yet, for some reason people choose to line up for standard operable insults of the day, defending a position that, quite frankly, isn’t worth defending. Homosexuals will end up treating marriage the same way as the average American family does.

The same-sex marriage agenda wants to make it so that Christians are treated like racists. Those who discriminate on the basis of race are rightly shunned and have their views excluded from civil society. You can’t, for example, be a teacher in this country if you are openly racist. The same will soon be true of people who believe that homosexuality is, as Robert Smith, said, “deviant behavior.”

Nonsense, you can be a racist teacher as much as you want, provided you can find a school to hire you. And some do. Bob Jones University ring a bell?
You are confusing religion with race. Its an odd argument to make coming from a group that often thinks gay people can be fairly discriminated against because of their sexual “preference”, AKA choice.
Isn’t religion a “choice”? For that matter, isn’t political affiliation? You do know don’t you that while I can fire you for being a Republican I can’t fire you for being a Christian. Of course in many places I could actually fire you for being heterosexual. Although not in West Hollywood.
I’m sorry but you don’t get to have the right to express ideas, religious or otherwise, free from the burden of having to deal with other people who disagree with those ideas. America is not a “no-disagreement” zone. And I not only disagreeing with many of your ideas but I challenge them as being invalid.
You have freedom of speech Joe, but you what you don’t have, and what no one has EVER had, is complete and total freedom from all the consequences of that speech.
Welcome to the way it is for the rest of us Americans who don’t get to use religion as a shield for prejudice.

Everyone is treating this issue like Christians have to defend their vote. I can vote for anything on the ballot that I please and for any of the choices that I please. If 50.1% of the people agree with me, I win. Otherwise, I lose. That’s democracy – so what’s your whine about? Should I not vote? Should I vote against my beliefs to satisfy other people who seem to disagree with every other belief I hold? Or should I not be allowed a choice at the ballot either?
There are some people who offer good arguments. Unfortunately, many of the same people get wrapped up in their dislike of social conservatives and the message gets drowned out. I am open to persuasive arguments, and I’ve heard some that are reasonable. But I believe that defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman is good for individuals, families, children, society, and America as a whole. And any chance I get to vote on it, I will. I live in MN, so my side won’t win that vote, but I am still going to vote for what I believe is best.
If you don’t like that Christians vote for their beliefs, change the Constitution to eliminate democracy. If you want judges to determine all soical policies, change the Constitution so that all social issues are decided by a panel of judges (not sarcasm; Canada seems to have this system and they remain #2 on the places I’d want to live). If you want to change the mind of voters, don’t insult our churches, religious leaders, or the President while making your argument. And you have to accept that in the end we may make a different choice than you want us to.

I have taken a basic civics class (it was the national competition government course). Perhaps you would like to get out your credentials and continue to bully people you don’t agree with into not voting, all in the name of democracy!
Sarcasm aside, I didn’t ask you to “respect” my beliefs. But if you offer no respect for my opinion and call it prejudice instead of reason, why should I listen to you? And if people like me are the majority (and consider the track-record for defense of marriage initiatives at the ballot), why is it rational for you to continue to insult and berate the majority? Do you think that you will win supporters to your side through insults? You do your “side” a disservice to insult Christians when you should be considering how best to convert them to your way of thinking.
Of course, you can just accept that your fellow citizens are too ignorant/irrational/evil to be persuaded on SSM. Then I guess your only recourse will be to whine in forums.

Assuming anyone is interested in discussing rational solutions to the divide over SSM, here is an idea.
1. Gays and lesbians can already get unofficial church weddings, if they so desire. It is unrecognized by the state but no one is stopping anyone from getting a UCC blessing and some other denominations offer it as well.
2. State weddings conferring the status of “married” will not be accepted by the majority of people in a majority of states. Probably not a Consitutional majority but enough that SSM will be like abortion, with people highly resistant to judicial imposition of a national standard and likely to resist for generations.
3. Most folks are sympathetic to the argument that heartless bureaucracies in courts and health care systems necessitate some kind of standardized legal package that confers guardianship, power of attorney, and what not to a designated person. This isn’t my idea (it’s been floating for a while), but I think that it is the most likely to pass approval at the ballot box.
This certainly doesn’t give the SSM people much of what they want, but they’re the ones trying to rewrite our culture so I think the burden rests on them to compromise. They would get:
1. church blessings depending on the doctrine of the church
2. easy to complete form granting legal rights applicable to any group of people (not necessarily GLBT and extending to more than 2 people).
They don’t get:
3. use of the word “marriage”. There are probably some things not able to be covered in point 2, like taking the fifth for your spouse.
This is so far as I can see, the extent of what SSM can get at the ballot box. I certainly think that some states like MA could approve SSM at the ballot, but they seem to prefer their judges to do the heavy lifting for them. I know others will disagree, so my question to them is: “what more do you think you can get at the ballot, and how will you change people’s minds to achieve that goal?” An alternative is to say that some court will eventually rescind all state consitutional amendments on this issue and force everyone to accept SSM. If that’s your strategy, I’d like to hear that too.

I don’t know anything about the Nation of Islam’s adoption policies, and won’t pretend that I do. I do think that marriage is something that is much more intertwined between the state and the church in concept and in practice. But, I’ll reserve comment on the Nation of Islam. It would be ill informed. I know, that’s never stopped me before…at least I beat you to that one.
Doctrine wise the NOI believes whites are devils and blacks are racially superior and that blacks should not mix with whites. While I have no idea if they have now or ever tried to run an adoption agency it doesn’t seem that hard to guess what their policy would be regarding whites seeking to adopt black children. I respect that you won’t address a hypothetical but isn’t this entire thread predicated on a hypothetical?
Joe:
The same-sex marriage agenda wants to make it so that Christians are treated like racists. Those who discriminate on the basis of race are rightly shunned and have their views excluded from civil society. You can’t, for example, be a teacher in this country if you are openly racist. The same will soon be true of people who believe that homosexuality is, as Robert Smith, said, “deviant behavior.”
This has nothing to do with religious liberty. Racists like those at Bob Jones University are shunned by other Christians yet that doesn’t infringe on their liberty to be racists or claim racism is endorsed by God.
As you should know Joe, there’s a big difference between freedom from government oppression and freedom from society’s disapproval. If gay advocates convince a large portion of society that nothing is wrong with gays then yes indeed those who maintain the opposite will feel left out. So what? That’s how a free society works. What a long slide Christianity has taken if it has gone from being proud that they were being fed to the lions for their beliefs to whining that they aren’t invited to tea parties anymore.
Again this has nothing to do with gay marriage. Are Catholics looked down upon because they do not accept the marriages of people like Joe? No but even if they are is that an argument for outlawing Joe’s current marriage? Sorry Joe, you can’t marry because maybe someone would disrespect a Catholic if the state’s marriage laws didn’t conform to Catholic doctrine regarding divorce.

Raven-
What are you talking about? I’m all for challenging ideas; I do it to myself constantly. On what basis do you claim that I think “the proposition that any idea can be challenged is insulting?” I said that you shouldn’t insult when you try to persuade. You said:
>>”There should be no “safe zone” or firewall behind which people can hide when they espouse lunacy. I am not required to “respect” the opinion of someone who believes in angels and demons, for instance, simply because the matter falls beneath the rubric of religious belief. It’s ignorant, foolish rubbish then it can be so labeled.
Folk superstitions are not rational thought and deserve to be publically ridiculed when a proponent argues that they should be the basis of law and government. ”

Joe: “The same-sex marriage agenda wants to make it so that Christians are treated like racists.”
The “same sex marriage agenda,” to the extent that an “agenda” can be a purposive actor, seeks only equal treatment for homosexual as for heterosexual relationships with respect to rights, obligations, and priveleges conferred by the state.
For the state, “marriage” is little more than a contract that regulates joint property ownership and gives spouses priveleged legal positions with regard to other claimants of privelege, such as business partners or blood relatives. If it were about children, my own marriage contract would be unecessary.
Allowing homosexual couples to secure these protections from the state has nothing to do with your “religious liberty.” It will in no way affect your ability or your right to worship as you please, unless you believe that doing so requires forcing the state to privelege your group over others simply because you interpret the Bible in a certain way. Indeed, the fact that so much of American law seems to do so (abortion, cloning, gambling, prostitution, drug prohibition, alcohol sales regulation, marriage law, tax deference for some churches but not others, religious slogans on money, state protection of religious but not sexual choices, bans on sexual activity, pornography laws) indicates that whether or not the GOP regards evangelicals as nothing more than easy votes, we may already be living in a theocracy.
If the “religious liberty” you seek to protect is the “liberty” to discriminate and demonize those who do not share your interpretation of the Bible, then I for one support state infringement.

Alexander: “you seem to be saying that religious belief is “lunacy”, “ignorant,foolish rubbish”, “folk superstition”, “not rational thought”, and “deserving of public ridicule”.
Well, yes, I do say that religious belief is lunacy – but note the context! I’m not going make that statement nor will I publically ridicule anyone for their beliefs as long as they express themselves in a manner consistent with the nature of their philosophy. Perhaps an example will help. Consider two parents, Christian scientists, who refuse to allow their child needed medicine and avow that prayer alone will be efficacious. Should this become a legal matter, then in court they must assert a rationale for their decision. The fact that it is religious in nature should not be a factor in the court’s ruling.
Another: Religious propaganda has no place in our schools. If someone thinks the Bible should be taught as fact in History 101, I’m leading the charge to refute them. But that person has every right to go to church and discuss the Bible with fellow believers – no problem there. More! That individual is totally free to conduct Sunday School lessons based on the Bible to classes of youngsters. Again – no foul whatsoever. That’s freedom in action and completely permissible.
Do you see the difference here? It’s when the religious faith-claim of something or other, say, the assertion that we have something called a soul, is brought into the public arena and is forwarded as a point of fact, then I say it can be challenged just as can any other fact, and there is nothing protective about the fact that this particular item of dispute is a faith-claim.

Joe: “The same-sex marriage agenda wants to make it so that Christians are treated like racists.”
OHHH MY GOD!!!!! SOMEONE CALL RB!!! PREJUDICE PREJUDICE PREJUDICE!!!!
1. How does Joe presume to ‘know the mind’ of all same-sex marriage advocates? One of the most recognized of these is Andrew Sullivan who advocates abolishing all governmental discrimination but explicitly permitting private discrimination not only by Churches and such but even by private businesses.
2. Isn’t this “Prejudice: unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, esp. of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group.” Where’s RB to jump in here and defend us????

Is an “agenda” a group of people of the religious, racial, national sort? Perhaps it is in the manner Joe made his statement.
Joe used the phrase “the SSM agenda” which divorces it from actual people who advocate same sex marriage. This does have the effect of dehumanizing it. In reality there is no ‘agenda’ that thinks, talks and advocates but really people who each have their own unique set of arguments. While those with similar arguments can be grouped together (those who support SSM, those who oppose it etc.). Doing so gains us simplicity but costs us information. Does simplyfing those who support SSM as “the SSM agenda” allow us to gain enough clarity on the issue to make up for the loss of understanding? I don’t think so in this case but you can disagree.
Some here in this thread have certainly staked out that claim. What do you think, Boon, are we just like the racists? Maybe Joe will pull back on that, it does seem wrong.
I think some opposed are very much like racists in that they are animated more by hostility towards gays than anything else. Others I think are not. I think on both sides the comparison is misleading because there seems to be a myth here that racism is illegal hence equating bigotry against gays to racism would effectively make it illegal to have religious objections to homosexuality. The fact is racism is not illegal. Certain practices that may be motivated by racism are illegal but one is free to believe in racism if they wish.
What’s clear is that you seemed to get worked up about this, to the point you were waiting for any sentence to pounce on; sort of hilarious, really. And if you look at where I was going with this, it seems rather easy to consider people who disagree with you as prejudiced, bigoted, hypocrites, fill in the blank….
Do you find it at all ironic that while you have choosen to spend so much time declaring yourself a victim of prejudice on this list that Joe’s entire post here basically says if you don’t accept his desired policy you are discriminating against Christians? Seriously I keep throwing up the example of the Catholic Church’s stand on divorce because I don’t think you’d take very serious a Catholic saying legalized divorce is oppression against Catholics…that advocating divorce laws is equilivant to advocating oppression of Catholicism.
What we have here is almost a parady of left-wing political correctism. If you don’t accept opposition to SSM then you’re committing a hate crime against Christians! If some left wing professor was telling us opposing an affirmative action program was in itself racism you’d all have no trouble seeing through the logical fallacy.

I really want to know why…our “born-again” president causes the deaths of approximately 1/2 million people in a war of naked agression in Iraq and tortures detainees and the religious right speaks out about the so-called “homosexual agenda”?
Any comments on why gay marriage is the most pressing moral issue in the world today and the deaths and torture of innocent people done on our behalf by our christian president is not?
jwyatt1963@yahoo.com

I think Joe’s and Maggie’s argument ultimately depends on the way the issue is framed and thought of. Certainly if anti-gay animus is thought of as perfectly analogous to racism, they are right. However, one can both support gay marriage and NOT believe that religious convictions that homosexual acts are immoral are akin to racial bigotry.
That’s what I argue in this post. (And that’s what I personally believe.)

Some points to consider from the article:
“Reading through these and the other scholars’ papers, I noticed an odd feature. Generally speaking the scholars most opposed to gay marriage were somewhat less likely than others to foresee large conflicts ahead–perhaps because they tended to find it “inconceivable,” as Doug Kmiec of Pepperdine law school put it, that “a successful analogy will be drawn in the public mind between irrational, and morally repugnant, racial discrimination and the rational, and at least morally debatable, differentiation of traditional and same-sex marriage.” That’s a key consideration. For if orientation is like race, then people who oppose gay marriage will be treated under law like bigots who opposed interracial marriage. Sure, we don’t arrest people for being racists, but the law does intervene in powerful ways to punish and discourage racial discrimination, not only by government but also by private entities. Doug Laycock, a religious liberty expert at the University of Texas law school, similarly told me we are a “long way” from equating orientation with race in the law.”
I sincerely hope that last comment holds true.
Chai Feldblum gets down to the crux of the matter.
“Not because I was caught up in the panic,” she laughs. She’d been thinking through the moral implications of nondiscrimination rules in the law, a lonely undertaking for a gay rights advocate. “Gay rights supporters often try to present these laws as purely neutral and having no moral implications. But not all discrimination is bad,” Feldblum points out. In employment law, for instance, “we allow discrimination against people who sexually abuse children, and we don’t say ‘the only question is can they type’ even if they can type really quickly.”
To get to the point where the law prohibits discrimination, Feldblum says, “there have to be two things: one, a majority of the society believing the characteristic on which the person is being discriminated against is not morally problematic, and, two, enough of a sense of outrage to push past the normal American contract-based approach, where the government doesn’t tell you what you can do. There has to be enough outrage to bypass that basic default mode in America. Unlike some of my compatriots in the gay rights movement, I think we advance the cause of gay equality if we make clear there are moral assessments that underlie antidiscrimination laws.”
But there was a second reason Feldblum made time for this particular conference. She was raised an Orthodox Jew. She wanted to demonstrate respect for religious people and their concerns, to show that the gay community is not monolithic in this regard.
“It seemed to me the height of disingenuousness, absurdity, and indeed disrespect to tell someone it is okay to ‘be’ gay, but not necessarily okay to engage in gay sex. What do they think being gay means?” she writes in her Becket paper. “I have the same reaction to courts and legislatures that blithely assume a religious person can easily disengage her religious belief and self-identity from her religious practice and religious behavior. What do they think being religious means?
To Feldblum the emerging conflicts between free exercise of religion and sexual liberty are real: “When we pass a law that says you may not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, we are burdening those who have an alternative moral assessment of gay men and lesbians.” Most of the time, the need to protect the dignity of gay people will justify burdening religious belief, she argues. But that does not make it right to pretend these burdens do not exist in the first place, or that the religious people the law is burdening don’t matter.”
But IMO, she starts going in the wrong direction with these comments:
“You have to stop, think, and justify the burden each time,” says Feldblum. She pauses. “Respect doesn’t mean that the religious person should prevail in the right to discriminate–it just means demonstrating a respectful awareness of the religious position.”
Then, she sides with the “sexual liberty” gay activists here:
Feldblum believes this sincerely and with passion, and clearly (as she reminds me) against the vast majority of opinion of her own community. And yet when push comes to shove, when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, she admits, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”
Religious liberty, freedom of association, and freedom of speech all should trump “sexual liberty.” “Sexual liberty” may be an evolving matter in secular humanist circles, but I don’t think that the framers of our Constitution meant for such a concept to trump what is already written in our founding documents!
I think that if more evangelical Christians read that article, they will be awakened from the disingenuious mantra being espoused by the gay lobby and jolted from the slumber they are currently in regarding the morally relativistic thinking that “gay marriage can’t hurt them.”
We can vividly see that the legalization of “gay” marriage in Massachusetts has already resulted in several dire consequences against religious liberty in that state. One consequence (I’m sure there are dozens!) is that it has already caused Catholic Charities to stop their adoption efforts there because their religious freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom to conduct their work according to the Catholic church’s teachings has been eliminated from consideration based on the trumped up “rights” afforded to “sexual liberty” activists.
I’ve read through some of the comments here and noticed that there are those here who would most likely scoff at my concerns. They are the type that would tend to dismiss my concerns because, they are most likely on the side of “gay” issues to begin with.
Religious exemptions from “gay rights” laws are imperative (IMO)!! In the article, Stern says it well:
“Religious groups that take government funding will almost certainly be required to play by the nondiscrimination rules, but what about groups that, while receiving no government grants, are tax-exempt? Can a group–a church or religious charity, say–that opposes gay marriage keep its tax exemption if gay marriage becomes the law? “That,” says Stern, “is the 18 trillion dollar question.”
Twenty years ago it would have been inconceivable that a Christian or Jewish organization that opposed gay marriage might be treated as racist in the public square. Today? It’s just not clear.
“In Massachusetts I’d be very worried,” Stern says finally. The churches themselves might have a First Amendment defense if a state government or state courts tried to withdraw their exemption, he says, but “the parachurch institutions are very much at risk and may be put out of business because of the licensing issues, or for these other reasons–it’s very unclear. None of us nonprofits can function without [state] tax exemption. As a practical matter, any large charity needs that real estate tax exemption.”
He blames religious conservatives for adopting the wrong political strategy on gay issues. “Live and let live,” he tells me, is the only thing around the world that works. But I ask him point blank what he would say to people who dismiss the threat to free exercise of religion as evangelical hysteria. “It’s not hysteria, this is very real,” he tells me, “Boston Catholic Charities shows that.”

Boon,
Your points are well taken. However, if something is defined as ten different things in ten different spheres, then it becomes about as valuable as a dime bouncing around on the sidewalk. It’s meaning is diminished without consistency.
Your point about the Catholic church really seems to illustrate this. No one cares what they say, they’re edicts are laughed off, instead of their edicts being taken more seriously by everyone…

Actually, a large portion of Catholics don’t take the edicts very seriously either. I think that might be because it is so out of alignment with society and the state and other main line churches… they end up granting paper annulments to keep pace with state laws…thus it all seems more false. My perception, anyway.

True enough. But the state is not in the business of Lent–thus the state would not consider Friday meat sales laws (if that’s occured in the past, I’m unaware). Both the church and the state are in the business of marriage, linked together in the enterprise for centuries..
Given that marriage is steeped so deeply in theology, it seems better to me that unions between people outside the current lines of definition should be called something else..I guess that’s where I am at present.

Now you’ve really stumbled onto something serious. When I want a Porterhouse, there better be nobody, and I mean nobody, standing in my way..See, I told you the state is the big bully with the club, out to ruin someone’s barbecue, they are;-)