Gay marriage opponents' strategy uncertain in 2015

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The fearmongering from the Right on this issue is out of hand.

OF COURSE anti-gay pastors will never be forced to officiate gay weddings or locked out of performing straight ones. Pastors all over America routinely refuse to perform weddings based on people's religious beliefs, whether or not they've previously been married, or, unfortunately, for their skin color.

You may remember a case from Mississippi a few years ago where a Southern Baptist church refused to perform a wedding between 2 black people who were members of the church (I can't imagine why they were members, but they were). The government didn't step in and make the bigoted church have the wedding, nor did it revoke that church's right to marry white couples.

I got married in a restaurant. I asked a Catholic priest to officiate the ceremony, but he (politely) declined, because Catholic rules only allow weddings to be done in the church building. Even if I had sued him, no Court would have ever forced him to perform the ceremony anyway, nor prevented him from marrying future couples in a church.

If the government has never and will never force churches to perform weddings in a race-blind or religion-bland manner, nor revoked their rights to perform them for those who meet their criteria, it's not going randomly start doing it now for gays. Case closed.

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Normally if you have a ceremony officiated by a clergy a civil ceremony is not required.  What I am saying is that the state could make it so that clergy who oppose same sex marriage might have their civil authority removed by the state.  Under this they might still have the marriage ceremony, but they'd have to go to a judge and have it performed there as well.   Wouldn't be the end of the world from my perspective considering what we've seen already, but that's where I see this headed.

And again, I'm saying, no they obviously won't. If they won't strip that authority for pastors who refuse to marry certain races or religions, they're not going to do it over gays.

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Are we drawing a clear distinction here between baking a custom cake to be used 1) for a gay wedding that has a gay wedding theme design, 2) a cake with a generic wedding theme to be used at a gay wedding, 3) a generic cake with no wedding theme to be used at a gay wedding, and 4) a cake to be used for a birthday party for a gay? To me, there clearly is an excellent case for a religious conscience exception for having to cater a gay wedding at the wedding site, and I strongly suspect SCOTUS would agree. As to numbers 1 through 4 above, I tend to favor an exemption for number 1, 2 is a very close case but I tend to lean against a religious exemption, but could be persuaded otherwise potentially, and there is no real case for an exemption for numbers 3 and 4.

That link TJ gave seemed to be about Lesbians by  the way. As noted, even assuming the data isn't GIGO, the real question to ask are the outcomes between children of unmarried gays, and married gays.

How does this compare to your opinions on scenarios 1, 2, 3, and 4 if it were an interracial couple instead of a gay one? A marriage between people who had married before?  A Catholic baker and a marriage between Catholics outside the church?

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Like I said earlier in the thread, there is no strategy - because marriage will be radically redefined for us by black robed judges  - us peons have no recourse other than a Federal Marriage Amendment, which the Republicans have given up on

If it's that big of a deal to you, you can always move to Russia, which is a Republican's wet dream nowadays.

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Are we drawing a clear distinction here between baking a custom cake to be used 1) for a gay wedding that has a gay wedding theme design, 2) a cake with a generic wedding theme to be used at a gay wedding, 3) a generic cake with no wedding theme to be used at a gay wedding, and 4) a cake to be used for a birthday party for a gay? To me, there clearly is an excellent case for a religious conscience exception for having to cater a gay wedding at the wedding site, and I strongly suspect SCOTUS would agree. As to numbers 1 through 4 above, I tend to favor an exemption for number 1, 2 is a very close case but I tend to lean against a religious exemption, but could be persuaded otherwise potentially, and there is no real case for an exemption for numbers 3 and 4.

That link TJ gave seemed to be about Lesbians by  the way. As noted, even assuming the data isn't GIGO, the real question to ask are the outcomes between children of unmarried gays, and married gays.

How does this compare to your opinions on scenarios 1, 2, 3, and 4 if it were an interracial couple instead of a gay one? A marriage between people who had married before?  A Catholic baker and a marriage between Catholics outside the church?

I am unaware of any theology that is against interracial marriage, so I would consider such a claim to be ersatz. As to the other two examples, I would have the same attitudes.

Torie, PPP polls have shown that a plurality of Mississippi Republican voters think interracial marriage should be illegal. I don't know if they've asked other states, but I imagine it would be similar across the rural South.

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Why should polygamy be illegal though?

As long as all members are consenting (and actually consenting, not forced to by some borderline cult), it shouldn't be.

In fact, it really does need to be legal, because there have been cases in Utah where the husband was only legally married to wife #1, and the husband dies, and then, contrary to the husband's wishes, takes everything and leaves the other wives homeless on the streets because she's the only one with the legal rights. If plural marriages were recognized by the government, this wouldn't be possible.

You could still keep marriages at 2 people, just let people have multiple legal marriages at once, with a mandatory disclosure of any other marriages. That would actually better differentiate Mormon-style plural marriage where the husband is married to all of the wives, but the wives aren't married to each other, from polyamorous marriages where all of the partners in a relationship with each other.

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Why does the insufferable anti-gay crowd pretend their bigotry applies to ALL of Christianity?


No amount of hatred and vitriol will ever make this anything other than a Christian wedding.

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These are faithful Christians entering into the sacrament of marriage before God in His church, and no one can ever say otherwise.

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Because he believes that God says that's wrong, "and no one can ever say otherwise."  You just ended a sentence with "and no one can ever say otherwise" and you're asking how he can have a rigid, faith-based view?

Not up on your Update memes, I see?

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Wulfric,

Are you really going to deny that these are Christian ceremonies?
 

Are you really going to "go there" and say that these churches do not perform valid marriages in the eyes of God? As someone who was married (to an opposite-sex partner) in the Episcopal Church, I am personally offended if believe that marriages performed by my church aren't "real."

You can't have it both ways. Either the above couples aren't married, and neither am I, or we are all. Surely you wouldn't be so presumptive to think you can pick and choose which Episcopal marriages are real and which aren't. Surely...

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Wulfric,

Are you really going to deny that these are Christian ceremonies?

Are you really going to "go there" and say that these churches do not perform valid marriages in the eyes of God? As someone who was married (to an opposite-sex partner) in the Episcopal Church, I am personally offended if believe that marriages performed by my church aren't "real."

You can't have it both ways. Either the above couples aren't married, and neither am I, or we are all. Surely you wouldn't be so presumptive to think you can pick and choose which Episcopal marriages are real and which aren't. Surely...

You can call them whatever you like, but they're not valid marriages in the eyes of god.

And, you'd actually rather have no marriage at all rather than traditional marriage only? Seriously?

I don't know what this "rather" is. Either Episcopal Church performs valid marriages or it does not. Same goes for the Lutherans, Presbyterians, UCC, etc. You can't arbitrarily pick and choose to personally recognize some of these churches' holy marriages and not others.