Maggie Gallagher at Townhall.com:
...the Vermont same-sex marriage bill was a breakthrough in another way which has received zero attention in the press. For the very first time, a legislature has formally acknowledged that gay marriage poses a serious threat to the religious liberties of Vermonters who disagree with the government's new definition of marriage. And the gay marriage movement has permitted – if not exactly trumpeted – that legislature to enact some imperfect yet substantive religious liberty protections, instead of the fake religious liberty protections generally offered to deflect voters' attention from the real issues at stake.Same-sex marriage is quite different from bans on interracial marriage in one powerful respect: It asks religious Americans to surrender a core belief – no, not Leviticus (disapproval of gay sexual acts), but Genesis – the idea that God himself made man male and female and commanded men and women to come together in a special way to image the fruitfulness of God.....Take it seriously. On a religion and the law list-serve, the widely respected UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, who favors same-sex marriage, took time out to acknowledge that the religious liberty implications of same-sex marriage are not "scaremongering.""It seems to me plausible that judicial decisions banning opposite-sex-only marriage rules would likewise come to be extended – by legislatures or by courts – to go beyond their literal boundaries (a decision about government discrimination) and instead to justify bans on private discrimination," Volokh wrote. "It seems quite likely that they will spill over into diminishing any constitutional (or Religious Freedom Restoration Act-statutory) claims to engage in such discrimination by private entities, including Boy-Scout-like organizations, churches, religious universities and other institutions."
1 comment:
"Same-sex marriage is quite different from bans on interracial marriage in one powerful respect: It asks religious Americans to surrender a core belief"
Except that there were plenty of people for whom miscegnation was also an affront to their religion. There still are some, off on the fringes, but racism and racial separation were strong parts of significant religions back when interracial marriage was being thrashed out. The a racially-oriented version of the Curse of Ham was used as religious justification for the passage of many antimiscegnation laws, and even the initial ruling in the Loving case was grounded in the racial mixing being against the intent of Almighty God.
(It's also wrong to say that anyone is being asked to surrender their core belief. First off, same-sex marriage is not the legalization of homosexuality; that has already taken place. Secondly, no one is required to like the marriages. Goodness knows, plenty of us are disapproving of individual marriages already. For a practical example, the Catholic Church has long refused to recognize legal marriages that don't accord to its beliefs; it has not had to change its beliefs to match the legal status of civil marriage. Allowing SSM no more requires them to surrender their beliefs about men and women than allowing other religions to exist requires one to surrender one's core beliefs about God.)
Post a Comment