Dropping most state marriage paperwork is a good thing for sketchy reasons.
Alabama is ending state marriage licenses and ceremony requirements. File an affidavit and you're hitched. Apparently a way to keep some judges from getting pissy about having to issue same-sex marriage licenses, but whatever. https://t.co/fa7mfaiVwY
Alabama is ending state marriage licenses and ceremony requirements. File an affidavit and you’re hitched. Apparently a way to keep some judges from getting pissy about having to issue same-sex marriage licenses, but whatever.
https://t.co/fa7mfaiVwY
So this is kind of interesting. Alabama has been still struggling with government workers — probate judges in particular — refusing to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples, even though it’s been established as completely legal. Somehow they feel they are going to get sodomy cooties or something by “participating” in a marriage between two people of the same gender, even though there’s no sign that they do any similar vetting of all the other marriages they are willing to sign off on.
(Judicial signing of a marriage license indicates that it is a lawful marriage, not necessarily a moral one or praiseworthy one or attractive one or one that meets one’s interpretation of God’s approval. If the latter were the case, I would expect a whole lot fewer marriages, and a lot less patience for judges.)
Current Alabama law only says that a judge may sign licenses, so county probate judges who object to gay folk getting married have been refusing to sign any licenses, meaning people are sometimes forced to drive to another county to get their paperwork done, regardless of their sexual orientation.
Ew! Gay wedding cake cooties!
Rather than telling people to do their job or get fired for it, Alabama is pulling an end run: they’re getting rid of marriage licenses and compulsory marriage ceremonies altogether. Now nobody has to “sign off” on a marriage except the participants.
That’s actually not a bad thing, even if it’s for, um, dubious reasons. Couples wanting to marry will now need only sign an affidavit that they are legal to do so. Zip-zoom, you may kiss your partner. No judges required to sign on the license. No officiant “solemnizing” and signing off that they witnessed the ceremony as an official witness. Like any other legal contract (which, from the perspective of the state, marriage is), the participants sign on the dotted line and it’s done.
It’s expected most folk will still want a wedding ceremony of some sort — gloom and doom predictions about the death of the marriage industry in Alabama seem wildly exaggerated to me. And now those probate judges who don’t want to sully their fingers dealing with Those People and Their Unholy Alliances (at least until there are wills to be probated) can remain ritually pure and pretend to virtue.
Parents are claiming that explaining what #LGBTQ people are is too difficult, that their kids will be "confused." That seems to be their excuse, at least. https://t.co/J0dgFDLaFy
Parents are claiming that explaining what #LGBTQ people are is too difficult, that their kids will be “confused.” That seems to be their excuse, at least. https://t.co/J0dgFDLaFy
A California school district has found that a substantial number of parents don’t like the idea of their kids learning about “the accomplishments of LGBTQ Americans”.
But it’s not that they’re biased against gay and trans people! Perish the thought! It’s just that … well … having to answer questions from their third grade kids about what “LGBTQ” means is … um … tough.
Because clearly their first instinct is to have to talk about gay sex, and that’s clearly inappropriate. But if they tone it down to say it’s “boys who get married to other boys” or “girls who get married to other girls,” etc., well, that’s, um, kind of making it sound like something normal. Acceptable. Allowed.
Another day, another Colorado businessman who decides that providing professional services to a wedding he doesn’t approve of should let him ignore state anti-discrimination law. In this case, it’s a photographer / videographer deciding not to take pictures at a legal wedding between two women.
“He asked, ‘What’s your fiancée’s name?’ And I said, ‘Amanda.’ And I could tell he kind of paused on the phone, but I thought he was maybe jotting down notes,” said Suhyda. “Then I l got to work and looked at my email.”
The email from Media Mansion stated, “Unfortunately, at this time, we are not serving the LGBTQ community!”
“With an exclamation point,” said Suhyda. “Kind of like a punch in the gut.”
First off, class act turning them down by email. With an odd “Unfortunately” (why “unfortunately” when it’s your decision?), and phrasing it as some sort of tribal group thing (they weren’t asking him to serve their “community,” but them as individuals).
To make matters worse, on Media Mansion’s Facebook page, the owner posted a letter stating the company would by happy to work with the LGBTQ community on business videos, but not film “gay ceremonies or engagements,” citing “personal religious beliefs.”
I guess it’s okay to help them make money to support their sinful lifestyle, just not to take pictures of their wedding.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Hostetter, the owner of Media Mansion, said he is not discriminating against anyone, but has turned down more than one gay couple.
Um … isn’t that sort of the definition of “discriminating”?
“It really like just kind of exploded, and everyone just kind of assumed that we hate gay people, which is sad,” said Hostetter.
Yeah, I mean, what could possibly make them think you hate them?
“I have friends who are gay, and if they want to hang out and me to do a video for them, it’s totally cool. But specifically doing a project that would be against my beliefs in anything regardless of what the specifics of it is not something I want to engage in.”
They aren’t asking you to get married to a same-sex individual, Benjamin. They aren’t even asking you to officiate. They’re asking you to take pictures.
Identifying himself as Christian, he said he is not judging anyone, …
Uh, yeah, you kind of are.
… but he is writing a book about “family, covenant, sex and marriage” and has strong beliefs about the covenant of marriage. “I believe it has to do with family and producing healthy families,” said Hostetter. “I don’t think there’s a lot of good evidence out there that two men or two women can come together and have a really amazing effective family that is good and is everlasting.”
So, first off, yes, that sounds exactly like both “judging” and “discriminating.”
Second, one has to wonder how much you grill the opposite-sex couples who come to you to get married. Do you have a checklist of things you go over with them to make sure that they are treating the “covenant of marriage” as seriously as you are? Are you a pre-marriage counselor to them? Do you talk with their pastors? How are you confirming that when Bob and Sue come in that there is any evidence that they will have “a really amazing effective family that is good and is everlasting” so that you can feel religiously okay about taking pictures at their wedding?
And who else should be allowed to make that judgment? If someone believes that, say, black marriages are more transitory because of [fill in stereotypes about black men and black women here], and so doesn’t believe that a marriage between two black people is likely to be “good and everlasting” and properly “covenential” — do they get to discriminate against black customers, too?
I don’t doubt your religious sincerity, Benjamin — but I’m really not sure how you draw a line here that lets you say that your particular religious beliefs get to trump the law, but any other zany beliefs from the bad old days of legal racial discrimination, religious discrimination, gender discrimination, age discrimination, etc., don’t get to do so as well.
Let’s hope the state board that reviews these violations of the anti-discrimination law does a bit better job this time of providing a non-hostile atmosphere in doing so, since that was the primary objection in the SCOTUS ruling in the Masterpiece Bakery. I wish them luck, because it’s difficult for me to hear these kind of arguments without feeling sort of hostile about it myself.
This ruling is being crowed (from the right) or denounced (from the left) as something quite a bit larger than I think it will turn out to be in the long run. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the baker in the Masterpiece bake shop case. The baker had refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, despite Colorado law saying that businesses could not discriminate based on sexual orientation.
But this isn’t a massive “religious freedom / bigotry trumps all else” ruling, as was being sought by the plaintiff’s deep-pocket supporters. The actual ruling is being described as “narrow” because it’s very dependent on the facts in this case, rather than being a new principle of law being established.
The court found that
Yes, states can and should protect the civil rights of gay people, and can do so under the Constitution.
The plaintiff’s religious beliefs do need to be taken into account, but were dismissed with hostility by the state commission that originally ruled against him.
The plaintiff had a basis in 2012 — prior to Obergefell and the state okaying gay marriage — to believe that he was on defensible legal grounds in how he acted.
The commission had ruled very differently in the case of bakers refusing to produce anti-gay cake decorations, declining to use some of the same rationales they made in those decisions in this one.
The court sort of leaves it open as to how to balanced sincere religious beliefs with Constitutionally permissible protection of individuals who might be discriminated against through those beliefs. That means we will likely see a lot more litigation around this matter. One thing the ruling points out is that showing hostility toward religious and philosophical beliefs (as commission members were shown to have done) makes it easier to stake a claim that religious freedom under the First Amendment is being violated. The court was able to find that the law was not being applied in a religiously neutral fashion, neither favoring nor disfavoring religious beliefs; the problem was not that the law itself was discriminatory, but the way the state commission went about applying it.
But the ruling also makes it clear that the current facts on the ground (esp. Obergefell) have changed things since this matter first came up (i.e., the questionable legality of same-sex marriage is not something a future business person can use as a defense). It also strongly affirmed that “the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights.”
That’s not necessarily all a bad thing, even if the headlines around the case are disheartening.
One of the points I’ve heard made about the current SCOTUS wedding cake controversy was that this was no ordinary cake that was being requested, just something “off the shelf,” but a Personal Creative Effort, something that represented some highly individual personal crafting that, if forced to be created, would be a compulsion counter to “Freedom of Speech,” and if vested in a personal religious sentiment, represents a profound violation of “Freedom of Religion.”
But, as this article notes, that’s a disingenuous argument. Any trade can be vested with special, personal effort. The food that restaurant cooks is a personal effort. The decor of that hotel was hand-picked. Heck, even just baking a cake that’s going to get “normal” non-artistic decor can be said to be a labor of love. Any trade, any craft, any job can be said to be a personal, creative expression, a calling to labor well before the Lord (or whomever). “And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” (Ps. 90:17)
This is not to question whether such protestations of creativity and vocational fervor are legitimate, but only to suggest that using them as a basis for overriding public-accommodations protections under civil rights laws is an instant slippery slope — not just for LGBT folk, but for racial minorities, for woman, for religious minorities, for military veterans, for the handicapped, for anyone currently protected by civil rights laws.
If you open your doors of your business to the public, then it is to the public. The religious expression, if any, is in the making, not in how the product is used by the customer. The creativity is in the crafting, not the virtue (known or unknown) of the person purchasing it. The blacksmith who crafted the nails used in the crucifixion was not condemned for it. Any other basis for legality returns us to the darkness of legal discrimination, under the guise of “religious liberty.”
The case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission will be heard before the Supreme Court.
When Phillips designs and creates a custom wedding cake for a specific couple and a specific wedding, he plays an active role in enabling that ritual, and he associates himself with the celebratory message conveyed,” Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall wrote in the brief.
Wall added, “Forcing Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First Amendment rights.
With all due respect, Mr. Wall, dragging Phillips in front of the church and forcing him to shout hosannas over the marriage would be forcing him to violate his “sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Saying that he has to treat a gay couple the same as any other customers who wander into his shop (and who, one assumes, are not grilled as to the righteousness of their lives) is not.
“I never thought the government would try to take away my freedoms and force me to create something that goes against my morals,” Phillips told Fox News on Thursday.
Mr Phillips, get over yourself. Baking a wedding cake for a gay couple (or a black couple, or a mixed race couple, or a Muslim couple, or …) is not a test of your morality. It’s part and parcel of being a baker.
Carson's continued harping on marriage between same-sex couples is useful largely because he keeps saying such silly things. For example, from this interview:
"If you change the definition of marriage for one group, what defense do you have for the next group that comes along and wants it changed. Can you say, ‘no we’re just changing it this one time and it will this way for forever.’ Well, how is that fair? I mean, it doesn’t make any sense."
No, what you do is figure out what is the principle that you are establishing marriage for. Marriage equality hasn't triumphed socially or legally because it was "Feel sorry for the gays who are lobbying for it." It was because a consensus was reached that the fundamental concept of marriage was that of a consenting union between individuals to form a family, and the gender of the individuals involved didn't seem particularly germane …
… any more than the races of the participants were germane. Even though at one time many, many people, ostensibly good Christians, too, thought that God's plan for marriage involved keeping the races separate, and that to rule otherwise was to somehow willy-nilly change "the definition of marriage."
When Metaxes said allowing same-sex marriage would open up debate on the idea that marriage has to between two people, Carson said, “That’s the natural next question and on it goes from there.”
That is a worthwhile observation, and it's worth asking (a) does that seem to adhere to the principles involved, (b) does it raise other problems that plural marriage does not, and (c) why is that causing you to treat the prospect as the Disaster of the Ages (given the number of plural marriages in the Bible, not to mention concubinage)?
I don't think plural marriage is going to be a slam-dunk, because I think the complexities of the numbers involved don't make for as stable a situation (which flies in the face of why society has marriage in the first place). But I'm certainly willing to hear the arguments for it.
Carson said allowing same-sex marriage would mean the “word of God” would be changed on other things besides marriage too.
You say that, Ben, like (a) everyone agrees with you on what "the word of God" is on this, or any other, subject; (b) civil law must conform to the "word of God"; and (c) the "word of God" is fully reflected in our current laws (or in fact should be). Jesus spoke out strongly against divorce; should we amend our laws to eliminate that threat to marriage, too, based on the "word of God"?
"I would like them to answer just one question for me: What position can a person like me take," Carson posited, "who believes in the traditional, biblical definition of marriage, that is acceptable to them?"
How about, "If you don't believe that God allows people of the same gender to marry each other, then don't marry someone of the same gender"? If your church doesn't think that's right, then it shouldn't (and won't be made to) marry gay couples.
But there are a lot of marriages that take places that some folk consider to be immoral. Inter-faith marriages, for example. Or, heck, marriages celebrated under a different religious faith might be considered "invalid" by some lights. As noted, inter-racial marriages are still controversial, religiously, in some circles.
So what position does one take on such things? Most people simply tsk-tsk, shake their heads, and go about their business. Maybe you should give that a try, Ben.
An Alabama judge thinks that since the federal government is the one mandating same-sex marriage, they should be the one licensing and performing such marriages, not state and county officials.
Judge Enslen appears to have skipped class when "separate but equal" treatment of groups during the civil rights era was put to rest. But, then, maybe they don't teach that in Alabama judge school.
He also seems to have skipped the part of Constitutional Law about how the 14th Amendment requires equal protection under the law in the _states, not just the federal government.
"No governmental institution or program will ever be able to successfully replace the role of the divinely ordained family in civilized society," Judge Enslen maintains. Which is beside the point, even if it's a point one can rationally debate. The point is that you can't just say "We like _those people better than these people because our church says so, so we're going to limit government service to just those people we like" and have that be the way your government works. At least not under the US (and, I suspect, even the Alabama) constitution.
I'm hoping the return of Kim Davis to her job and her sad, sad proclamation that she won't stand in the way of her deputies issuing marriage licenses marks the end (or at least the beginning of the end) to Ms Davis being anything more than a future trivia question or "where are they now?" newspaper filler, and that people will be able to get marriage licenses without going through someone's religious approval process.
'She said that having her name on the marriage certificate, whether she signs it or not, "authorizes marriage that conflicts with God's definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman [and] violates my deeply-held religious convictions and conscience. For me, this would be an act of disobedience to my God. "Whether I personally issue the license or whether one of my deputies issues it, the result is the same. The license is issued under the authority of Kim Davis, County Clerk of Rowan County."'
Ms Davis, the law (and the court orders) are not asking you to morally approve of any given marriage as a holy and righteous act before God. They are asking you to confirm a given marriage as legal under the laws of Kentucky and your county, to say that the individuals involved have the license — the freedom — to marry under the civil code. That's all.
Taking God's authority upon yourself, and insisting that issuing such licenses can only be graciously granted if you are acting on God's behalf in condoning and blessing such unions … is unseemly to say the least.
Davis has said she will not interfere with her deputy clerks issuing licenses.
'"I want the whole world to know … If any [deputy clerk] feels that they must issue an unauthorized license to avoid being thrown in jail, I understand their tough choice, and I will take no action against them."'
That's very gracious of you, Ms Davis. Also part of the terms of your remaining out of jail. And from what I've seen, there seem to be plenty of deputy clerks who don't think this is a "tough choice."
'"However, any unauthorized license that they issue will not have my name, my title or my authority on it. Instead, the license will state that they are issued pursuant to a federal court order. […] Effective immediately and until an accommodation is provided by those with the authority to provide it, any marriage license issued by my office will not be issued or authorized by me."'
I suspect, Ms Davis, that the happy spouses-to-be won't mind.
Kentucky's Rowan County Clerk, Kim Davis, has issued a statement via Liberty Counsel (http://www.lc.org/index.cfm?PID=14102&AlertID=1965) about her jailing for defying a federal court order to issue (legal) marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
I have worked in the Rowan County Clerk’s office for 27 years as a Deputy Clerk and was honored to be elected as the Clerk in November 2014, and took office in January 2015. I love my job and the people of Rowan County. I have never lived any place other than Rowan County.
I have not heard anyone questioning the job Ms Davis has done up to this time. Nor is that presently relevant. "I never stole anything before" is not a defense against a burglary charge.
Some people have said I should resign, but I have done my job well.
Except to county residents of the same gender who wish to lawfully obtain a marriage license.
This year we are on track to generate a surplus for the county of 1.5 million dollars.
And Nixon went to China and was re-elected to office. That doesn't change the grounds under which he was going to be impeached before he resigned. Ms. Davis' revenue generation for the county has nothing to do with this particular case.
In addition to my desire to serve the people of Rowan County, I owe my life to Jesus Christ who loves me and gave His life for me. Following the death of my godly mother-in-law over four years ago, I went to church to fulfill her dying wish. There I heard a message of grace and forgiveness and surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. I am not perfect. No one is. But I am forgiven and I love my Lord and must be obedient to Him and to the Word of God.
I respect Ms. Davis' faith. That doesn't mean she gets to place her religious beliefs above the legal requirements of the position she was elected to.
(I will confess that I find the construction, "I'm not perfect but I am forgiven" to be appallingly self-serving as a bumper sticker, let alone from a theological standpoint.)
I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage.
I am tempted to debate whether opposition to same-sex marriage, or homosexuality in general, is a "central teaching of Scripture," but that's regardless. Ms. Davis' oath of office, and clearly defined job responsibilities, is to uphold the law of Rowan County, Kentucky, and the United States — not to uphold Scripture.
To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience.
That seems kind of extreme, since you don't seem to cavil at issuing signed marriage licenses to divorcees or adulterers. Regardless, if such licenses are legal for the county, state, and nation, your conscience and our oath of office should lead you to resign, not refused to execute your position's duties.
It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision. For me it is a decision of obedience.
I can respect a decision to obey the moral dictates of your religious beliefs. I cannot respect an implementation of that decision which means that the citizens of your county cannot exercise their legal rights.
I have no animosity toward anyone and harbor no ill will. To me this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God’s Word.
Even if I take you at your word (which I am inclined to), clearly your beliefs about marriage and God's Word directly affect gays and lesbians. Pretending that it's not about animus toward them is beside the point — same-sex couples are not able to obtain lawful marriage licenses at your county office. That's the bottom line, as far as your job goes.
It is a matter of religious liberty, which is protected under the First Amendment, the Kentucky Constitution, and in the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Your religious liberty to act ends at the tip of my nose, Ms. Davis. You are not required to violate your religious conscience, but you are also not allowed to deny me, or any other citizen, the services that they are legally and rightfully entitled to.
Our history is filled with accommodations for people’s religious freedom and conscience. I want to continue to perform my duties, but I also am requesting what our Founders envisioned – that conscience and religious freedom would be protected.
I will be blunt, Ms. Davis. If James Madison — or the other Founders — were asked if a devout Episcopalian should be allowed to deny a government service, such as a marriage license, to a Baptist couple because of objections to their religious beliefs, they would have answered with a resounding no. The very meaning of the First Amendment — and, I presume, Kentucky's constitution — is to protect against governmental action against a citizen's rights. In this cae, you are acting as the government. The threat to religious discrimination is not about you, but about the couples you are refusing to serve based on your own religious predilections.
That is all I am asking. I never sought to be in this position, and I would much rather not have been placed in this position.
I am sure of that.
I have received death threats from people who do not know me. I harbor nothing against them.
I profoundly condemn anyone who has threatened Ms. Davis' life. That is inappropriate and wrong for a wide array of reasons.
I was elected by the people to serve as the County Clerk. I intend to continue to serve the people of Rowan County, but I cannot violate my conscience.
Then you are only intending to serve some of the people of Rowan County in some ways. That cannot stand by your very oath of office (so help you, God). If you cannot violate your conscience to allow your office to act as required by law, then you must step down, and find some other fashion to serve others as you deem appropriate.
For those who are couching the Kim Davis debate as one of religious freedom (I'm raising an eyebrow at you, Messrs. Cruz and Huckabee), two questions:
1. Should a Kentucky county clerk have been allowed to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, before Obergefell made it legal, using the excuse of "God's authority" and his personal religious beliefs (assuming his church, for example, recognizes marriage by same-sex couples)? if so, should he have been protected from firing and/or jail for contempt of court because he did so?
2. Should a Muslim DMV manager be able to refuse to issue driver's licenses to women because of "God's authority," without fear of being fired or being jailed if a court orders him to issue such licenses?
If your answers were no, then your concern is not over religious freedom in principle, but solely over religious freedom for the One True Religion® as you and Ms Davis define it. You can exit the constitutional debate out the side door, please.
If your answers were yes for all these cases, then congratulations on being consistent in your application of religious freedom as trumping all other law, and welcome to the breakdown of any sort of law and order in the United States.
I've also heard some folk comparing Ms Davis to Rosa Parks. To which I must ask, how did Parks' actions violate the legal and constitutional rights of others? Is the implication that white had a right to sit at the front of the bus that Ms Parks was violating in order to claim "special privileges"? Beyond that, did Ms Parks swear an oath of office (so help her, God) to sit at the back of the bus?
Civil disobedience for a cause is an admirable thing in and of itself, but being civilly disobedient at the cost of the rights of others is a lot more problematic. Similarly, religious martyrdom can be a great and noble personal act, but it does not demonstrate that the cause you're being martyred for is a great and noble one. Suicide bombers consider themselves religious martyrs as well; Ms Davis' actions are not nearly as reprehensible as killing for the sake of one's religion, but that doesn't mean her justification is any more valid.
The video is worth watching, if only to see the huge cognitive divide here ("Wow!"), but +George Wiman's specific comments are just as important: folk who look toward a greater mingling of church and state in our own nation always seem to do so with the assumption that the church side will be the dominant partner. In historical reality, that's very rarely ever been the case. And even when it has, it's been a particular church, which meant that anyone on the outside of that specific denomination was literally on the outs with the government.
So all the debates and disputes and discussions we have around religion and morality and "culture wars" today that get heated but largely rhetorical? Now imagine one particular group in that debate having the power of the police and the legislature in its pocket. We've had that, de facto, at various times in our history (ask the Mormons), but the tyranny of the majority is always weaker than the tyranny of the once-established majority.
Better yet, take a look at the English history that drove the writers of the Constitution to put in the First Amendment banning established churches.
But, then again, the folk who so blithely assume that the church will control the state also seem to blithely assume that it will be their particular church that is calling the shots.
This poor guy was especially freaked out that in Denmark, the government requires the church to perform same-sex weddings. "Wow," he says. That's exactly what the gay-haters are afraid of in this country! But Denmark has something the US does not have: a state church. The Evangelical Lutheran Church there is state property. Churches in the US needn't worry about such interference, precisely because we have separation of church and state – the thing our evangelicals are keen to get rid of. They ought to be thankful for that wall of separation that we have in this country. When a secularist campaigns to remove religion from government, they're securing religious freedom – even for this guy. When religion gets into government, government gets into religion.
If there was one person, Bryan, whom I could count on to approach the issue of religious liberty in a diverse society in a calm, insightful, and level-headed fashion, I knew it … well, it probably wouldn’t be you. Your screed at OneNewsNow exemplifies the best of compassionate, contemplative, and Christ-like attitude that has prevailed in this debate thus far.
Christians are the new Dred Scott
Or not.
Frankly, Bryan, I don’t see the resemblance.
So, tell us, Bryan, how are Christians — a majority population in this country, mind you — suddenly in the position of Dred Scott, victim of a pernicious Supreme Court ruling leading up to the Civil War, which stripped him and his family and, in fact, all African-Americans, from a claim to citizenship in the US, and declaring slavery as a constitutional right that could not be regulated by the federal government? Do tell!
Religious liberty is being squashed in America at a frightening pace. The Supreme Court decision tyrannically and unconstitutionally imposing sodomy-based marriage on the entire country against the will of its citizens has only accelerated the trend to warp speed.
Whoa, a lot to unpack there, Bryan. Let’s see …
Well, we’ll assume the “squashing” of religious liberty will be spelled out further on.
The 14th Amendment … you may have heard of it, Bryan.
Whence the Supreme Court’s tyranny, though, or its unconstitutional actions? It found that, under the clear language of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (established, ironically, to protect former slaves like Dred Scott and his family), that all Americans are entitled to equal protection under the law: that neither the federal nor the state governments can treat people differently without a compelling reason for doing so.
Both the argument and the power of the SCOTUS to make such a ruling is Constitutional Law 101, Bryan. Railing against it as “tyrannical” or “unconstitutional” is about as coherent as, say, threatening to hold your breath until you turn blue.
Your labeling of same-sex marriage as “sodomy-based marriage” is a charming nuance, but a bit goofy. It’s like calling traditional heterosexual marriage “vaginal intercourse-based marriage”. If that’s the primary foundation of your particular marriage, Bryan, my condolences to Mrs. Fischer.
Not quite tyrannizing over the entire nation
Your analysis of “imposing … on the entire country against the will of its citizens” is also interesting, Bryan, from both truthiness and a propriety perspectives. First, it’s clearly not an imposition on the entire country; there were already states that had chosen to support marriage equality, and others that accepted the rulings of federal and state courts in the matters without pitching a hissy-fit. There’s also been plenty of indication, from public opinion polls that, despite the rush of anti-gay marriage laws several years back, a majority of the nation (slim, but there) actually now favors marriage equality.
Are there particular states and regions that aren’t gung-ho on the prospect? Sure. But that brings up an important consideration, Bryan: the Supreme Court (any court, for that matter) is not out to do what is popular and widely supported. Indeed, when it comes to civil rights, that’s when they are least needed. Instead, they are to rule based on the law. If the courts worked on popularity … well, then we wouldn’t really need them, as we already have legislatures.
The problem of the shrinkage of religious liberty was bad enough before the Supreme Court meddled in it, and now religious liberty is on pace to vanish any place outside the four walls of a church building or a home. And it may not even be safe there.
Yes, clearly you are being oppressed in your ability to speak out and worship as you choose, Bryan. QED.
Liberal pundit Sally Kohn, after attacking me, Todd Starnes, and Rod Dreher by name in a piece in the Daily Beast, expresses her fervent wishes for our complete marginalization: “Will anti-gay Christians be politically and socially ostracized? I sure hope so.”
Social ostracism is one thing. This means not being invited to parties and social clubs and being snubbed by neighbors.
But political ostracism is another thing entirely. Political ostracism means being excluded from the political sphere. It means being excluded from participatory democracy. As I wrote last week, it means in time that Christians will be forbidden to hold public office, or serve in any public capacity, including fire chief (ask Kelvin Cochran of Atlanta all about that) or even school teacher.
You know that whole “personal responsibility” thing that conservatives are so hep about …?
Ostracism is generally a social thing. It’s people deciding, “Y’know, Joe-Bob over there is an outspoken racist. I’m not going to invite him to my party. I’m also not going to vote for him for city council.” That’s not a law thing, Bryan, with Joe-Bob being shot by police when he tries to vote. Instead, that’s how democracy works.
Fifty years ago, an openly gay man would have been socially and politically ostracized. Heck, fifty years, an openly Catholic man faced political ostracization because of his religion. You’ve certainly suggested that gays, and Muslims, to name two populations, should be ostracized. Heck, you’ve gone further and suggested that Muslims should be required to renounce their religion or be denied civil rights (including freedom of religion, which you’ve asserted in the past doesn’t apply to Muslims anyway). Before you start accusing others of having motes in their eyes, you might consider that beam in our own.
Um … no, not it’s not.
As for Mr Cochran, when you are a manager over personnel, you are required not to create a hostile environment for your employees. You can’t hang Penthouse centerfolds on the brak room wall. You can’t use racial epithets in the locker room. You can’t make jokes about Jews at the water cooler. And, surprise-surprise, you can’t hand out your self-written book talking about how homosexuals are naughty and evil and abominations before the Lord to your employees, and proclaim the goal of your department to establish God’s Kingdom on Earth.
Subscribing to pro-homosexual orthodoxy will become the new criterion for participating in society at large.
Just like subscribing to pro-Japanese-are-humans-too orthodoxy is (in most civilized places in the America) a criterion for participation in society at large. Egads.
Readers are by now familiar with Aaron and Melissa Klein, who were fined $135,000 by a bureaucrat (no trial by jury, no judge, no right to confront accusers in open court, etc.) for politely declining to violate their own Christian conscience in the conduct of their business.
Ah, the “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” case. I might suggest this as a bit less jaundiced rendition of the case and a discussion of the “politely declining.”
Sweet Cakes
No, the fines were not in a court of law. They were, like quite a bit of law, based on administrative law and regulations. A company that get fined for refusing to hire women? Yeah, that’s administrative. A company that gets fined for dumping toxic liquids down the drain? That’s administrative, too.
As to the size of the fine — well, that same agency recently gave an even larger award to a Christian woman whose boss was harassing her into going to a Scientology conference. I didn’t hear you criticizing that “bureaucrat” for not holding a trial by jury, judge, or open court, Bryan.
To add constitutional insult to constitutional injury, this bureaucrat slapped a gag order on the Kleins so they are not allowed even to talk to anybody about this travesty. Their right to the free exercise of religion, gone. Their right to free speech, gone. Their right to free association, gone.
In other words, this bureaucrat just issued a binding decree that the First Amendment applies to everybody in America except Christians. Christians, according to this man, have no First Amendment rights of any kind.
For what it’s worth, Bryan, Oregon would have fined and “gagged” these people, too.
Yes, that would indeed be an outrage, Bryan — if true. In fact, the judge ordered “Sweet Cakes” to not advertise that they would not serve gays; that’s part of Oregon law, and it’s the same thing that keeps a racist from putting a “Whites Only” sign on the restaurant window. There is nothing stopping the Kleins from talking to whomever they want about the legal case, their Christian beliefs, etc.
A baker in Colorado, Jack Phillips, is going to court today for similarly declining to use his expressive gifts to bake a cake which included a message of support for same-sex marriage. For his effrontery, having the nerve to actually believe the First Amendment applied to him, he too has been fined, ordered to bake cakes that violate his conscience, sent to re-education camp, and ordered to provide quarterly “compliance reports” to show that he is sufficiently servile to the lords of political correctness.
Yes. He violated the law, the same as if he decided God told him not to bake cakes for Women, or Baptists, or the elderly, or Chinese. Claiming it’s a religious belief doesn’t trump every other consideration, any more than if he decided that Jesus wanted him to kill all the Muslims.
So, yes, he’s been told if he’s baking cakes for straight couples, he has to bake cakes for gay couples. He needs to train his employees about public accommodation law. And he has to demonstrate that he’s complying with the law he has to provide reports on the people he turned away and on what basis.
I have said from the very beginning of the debate about special rights based on sexual deviancy that it is a zero sum game. Every advance of the homosexual agenda has to come at the expense of religious liberty. Every time the homosexual cause advances, religious liberty is forced into retreat.
Remarkably enough, Bryan, life and liberty aren’t quite as clear-cut as this.
Y’know, Bryan, there is, remarkably enough, a nugget of truth there. To the extent that someone has religious beliefs in opposition to gays, rights and protections recognized for gays restricts how those religious beliefs can be expressed.
But that’s true for anyone. The First Amendment pushed forward the “Baptist agenda,” meaning you couldn’t run Baptists out of town on a rail or throw them in jail for not paying a preaching fee. It infringed on the “religious liberty” of the previously established churches and their members. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 imposed on the religious liberties of people opposed to the “black agenda” and the “Jew agenda” by preventing discrimination in employment and public accommodation.
The more we see ourselves as a society, the more we value freedom and liberty for all, the “liberty” of the majority to keep people out of society is diminished. That seems to me, by and large, to be a good thing. In the end, it’s not a zero sum game because we all, win, both from the benefits of diversity and because, in one way or another, we are all minorities.
Religious liberty will only at last find refuge inside the four walls of church buildings, if it is even allowed there. Tax-exempt status may soon be stripped from every church that will not toe the line, churches may be forced to host gay weddings, and pastors may be forced to conduct them.
Pastors that teach a biblical view of homosexuality from the pulpit may soon be brought up on hate speech and hate crimes charges. While you may think this is an exaggerated fear, it most certainly is not. It’s already happened in Sweden and has happened to street preachers in the UK. It’s only a matter of time before it happens here.
Because if there are re-education camps to be opened, Bryan, you know who they’ll be opened by.
Yes, Bryan, we know, and next come the re-education camps and the mandatory gay marriages. Let me know when it does happen here (as opposed to, say, after the Loving decision, which similarly and controversially said that states could not prevent interracial marriage, even though many citizens opposed such a decision, and many people spoke out about how it violated their religious beliefs to mix the races). Pastors have never been forced to perform a sanctified wedding (or any other sacrament) by law. Nor have they been silenced for refusal to do so. (Yes, yes, I read the Sweden case above, and disagree with it — but until Sweden takes us over, I’m not worried.)
Jazz Shaw, a sodomy-based marriage supporter who writes for the supposedly conservative website Hot Air, is stunned at the rapidity with which religious liberty is vanishing in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. He did not see it coming, and now it’s too late.
“I don’t regret my long held position that the government shouldn’t be involved in marriage, but I admit yet again that I didn’t foresee how wide the litigants would push the door in the other direction if they prevailed in proving that it was…
“When two ‘rights’ conflict in the eyes of the court, one of those sets of rights will have to give way. And the courts have shown repeatedly that they are generally willing to be a reflection of political winds of change rather than adherence to founding principles. The way the breeze is blowing today, if it comes down to a choice between that crusty old freedom of religion and the newly discovered right to marriage, the new broom sweeps clean. It’s a very ugly thing to watch unfolding before our eyes.”
Well, Mr. Shaw, we did see it coming. This is what we warned you about from the beginning of this controversy.
If by this you mean that the freedom to be a bigot in employment, service, or any other endeavor, whether regarding gays or women or other faiths or races, using religion as the excuse, is likely to give way, then, yeah, I think that’s probably accurate. And the only ugliness I see, Bryan, is from the folk who think Jesus gives them the authority to snub others.
The abominable new reality is that Christians have been stripped of every meaningful constitutional right under the First Amendment.
Yes, Bryan, an enslaved minority man stripped of his citizenship and freedom is precisely the same as members of the majority religion being restrained from discrimination in public accommodation.
Let me know when you are arrested for your column, Bryan. I’ll pitch in for your defense fund.
Bottom line: the Christian man has no rights which the liberal man is bound to respect. We are the new Dred Scott.
I have to say, Bryan, the “we are Dred Scott” theme is a bit fresher than the “the other side are Nazis” shtick you’ve used for years, but no less offensive.
And, though I know you’d hate to agree to it, “liberal” is not the antonym for “Christian.” You no more speak for every Christian than I do.
Again, be sure and let me know when that knock on the door in the middle of the night comes, Bryan. You’ll be in my prayers.
It's not just a matter of so-called political correctness, but of conveying, accurately, what one means. As a cause, I prefer the term "marriage equality," as that captures what is at the heart of the matter. When talking about the event, however, or the how to refer to the married state, where the genders of the people is considered germane, I tend to go with "same-sex marriage" vs "gay marriage" (since the marriage is same-sex, not gay), though that makes it sound different from marriage (which, the point is, it is not), so when it doesn't seem too awkward, I'll refer to "marriage between a same-sex couple" or "marriage of a gay couple."
"Same-gender marriage" might work, too, but that starts getting into sensitivities and debate over gender meanings, so it probably clouds the issue.
Ultimately, as noted, I think it will be (and should be) just "marriage". But since marriage between two people of the same sex is currently under separate discussion, choosing distinctive (but accurate) terminology is important.
Gay Marriage? Same-Sex Marriage? How Should We Talk About Marriage Equality?
As the Supreme Court prepares to hand down a decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, how should we refer to the matrimonial institution they are poised to accept or deny? The front-runner terms are “gay marriage” and “same-sex marriage,” often used interchangeably. The question has real stakes—in politics, every word counts….
I mean, yeah, it's nice when civil right recognition happens organically, and people recognize the value of human beings of various types and protect their "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
But people can be balky. Significant portions of the populace can be reluctant to recognize rights that make them uncomfortable, or angry, or that aren't the way they were taught growing up. As with the past issue of interracial marriage, or the modern issue of same-sex marriage, waiting for everyone to have their epiphany and join in a big circle singing "Kumbaya" only allows injustice to continue. When fundamental constitutional issues are at stake, the popular sentiment — whether by vote or by representative government — must give way to the law of the land.
Alabama Shows Why Civil Rights Shouldn’t Be Put to a Popular Vote
Consider for a moment what would have followed if the Supreme Court had left laws that prohibited interracial marriage “up to the states.” This is a perfect time for such reflection, as June 12, 2015, marks the 48th anniversary of the court’s historic ruling in Loving v. Virginia, a unanimous decision that…
This article looks at some mass social changes and their timeline of acceptance (based on state laws then federal laws/rulings), including women's suffrage, abortion, prohibition, interracial marriage, and now same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization.
This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind
As the Supreme Court considers extending same-sex marriage rights to all Americans, we look at the patterns of social change that have tranformed the nation.
Or he's been reading too many Conservative Christian fear mags.
As Justice Kagan noted, Jewish rabbis who choose not to marry mixed-religion couples are still licensed by the state to officiate at marriages. Catholic priests are not required to marry non-Catholics, or divorcees. And there are still churches (few and far between, but still existing) that won't marry what they considered mixed-race couples. All of this in the face of Equal Protection Under the Law precedents regarding religious and racial equality.
There is no reason, aside from fear-mongering, to think that applying the 14th Amendment to gay couples seeking to wed is going to trump 1st Amendment protections regarding priests, rabbis, and ministers of various sorts.
Scalia is either incoherently paranoid, or disingenuously exploring other reasons to rule against marriage equality.
