That’s the claim a number religious leaders make in an open letter to Americans released this week:
Some posit that the principal threat to religious freedom posed by same-sex “marriage” is the possibility of government’s forcing religious ministers to preside over such “weddings,” on pain of civil or criminal liability. While we cannot rule out this possibility entirely, we believe that the First Amendment creates a very high bar to such attempts.
Instead, we believe the most urgent peril is this: forcing or pressuring both individuals and religious organizations—throughout their operations, well beyond religious ceremonies—to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct. There is no doubt that the many people and groups whose moral and religious convictions forbid same-sex sexual conduct will resist the compulsion of the law, and church-state conflicts will result….
So, for example, religious adoption services that place children exclusively with married couples would be required by law to place children with persons of the same sex who are civilly “married.” Religious marriage counselors would be denied their professional accreditation for refusing to provide counseling in support of same-sex “married” relationships. Religious employers who provide special health benefits to married employees would be required by law to extend those benefits to same-sex “spouses.” Religious employers would also face lawsuits for taking any adverse employment action—no matter how modest—against an employee for the public act of obtaining a civil “marriage” with a member of the same sex.
Well, yes. All that is possible (though the Supreme Court did clarify this week that antidiscrimination laws do not apply to ministers employed by religious employers). It’s also nothing new. Already churches and religious groups impose all kinds of stipulations as to who may or may not marry that are not recognized by the state. Some churches, for example, do not permit members to marry outside the faith. Others forbid divorced members from remarrying (on the ground, in the case of the Catholic Church, that divorced people actually remain married to their first spouses notwithstanding the state's grant of a divorce). Still others refuse to recognize the validity of a marriage unless the couple was married according to certain religious rites.
And yet – despite the dozens of distinctions that various religious groups already make between those are merely civilly married and those who are properly and validly married for religious purposes – American life goes on. Religion continues to thrive. And the sky has not fallen in. Why same-sex marriage should somehow be the straw that breaks the back of religious liberty, the religious leaders never say.
Of course, no one ever said creating a society that gives everyone both the right to marry and the right to exercise their religion freely would be easy. Or that church-state conflicts would never arise. Or that resolving these conflicts in a manner that completely satisfies everyone would always be possible. No, freedom is not easy.
But then again, neither is following Christ. If these religious leaders – most of whom are Christian – really believe God requires them to oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage (but not other forms of civil marriage that are equally invalid according to their teachings), to fire at whim any gay employee who marries his or her lover (even when the employee is, say, a hard-working janitor who is also a good and decent man), and to stop gay couples from adopting children whose parents have died or abandoned them (even though permitting an atheist or even a Satanist couple to adopt apparently is perfectly fine so long as one spouse has a penis and the other a vagina) – if these religious leaders really believe the Holy Spirit is leading them to do all these things, then there's not much else to say.
Except, perhaps, this: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist…” (1 John 4:1-4). Then, perhaps, these religious leaders could ask some of us who are both gay and Christian how we reconcile our faith in Christ with our sexuality. They might even want to visit some of our churches, where Jesus is worshipped as Lord and Savior and same-sex unions are blessed in His name.
And, finally, they might wish to reexamine their own hearts, “for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).
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