Posted on 09/27/2011 2:45:40 PM PDT by NYer
.- Legalizing “gay marriage” is having major repercussions for religious freedom, according to observers of the latest developments.
Princeton law professor Robert P. George cited the words of American Jewish Committee lawyer Marc Stern, who in 2006 said the conflict between religious liberty and same-sex marriage would be “a train wreck.”
“That train wreck has now arrived in states that have redefined marriage or have created schemes of legal recognition for same-sex partnerships as the equivalent of marriage,” George told CNA.
He cited incidents of religious adoption and foster care agencies being pushed out of work, and small business owners being fined or sued for not accommodating same-sex couples. Education is another “critical area.”
“Once a state recognizes same-sex partnerships as marriages or the equivalent, then naturally the argument is made that in family life classes in schools this has to be taught to be a valid partnership.”
Religious parents who do not want their children to be “indoctrinated in beliefs contrary to their own” are “out of luck,” said George, who founded the Manhattan Declaration project to defend religious liberty.
Town clerks and other officials with objections to participating in same-sex union ceremonies or to the granting of same-sex marriage licenses are already being told to find another job, George said.
For Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Orthodox Jews or others who cannot in conscience participate in such ceremonies, he explained, “you are not eligible to be a town clerk, because that’s one of the things that town clerks are required to do” in states that recognize the unions.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who pushed through the state’s new “gay marriage” law in June, has said that those who cannot follow the new law should not hold the position of town clerk. A July 13 memo from the New York State Department of Health said it is a misdemeanor for a clerk to refuse to provide a marriage license to eligible applicants.
The major Manhattan law firm Proskauer Rose is presently seeking the resignation of Rose Marie Belforti, a Ledyard, New York town clerk, who cannot provide the licenses on account of her religious objections.
Maggie Gallagher, former chair of the National Organization for Marriage, said that the Nassau County district attorney has threatened clerks with criminal prosecution if they tried to refer a same-sex couple to another employee.
“Kudos to those who have refused to bow to Caesar’s demands. And even more kudos to those who've decided not to resign but to stay and fight for their own, and all our rights,” Gallagher said to CNA.
She characterized town clerks as “canaries in the coal mine” because they are among the first to be affected by the ideas embedded in the recognition of same-sex “marriage.”
“If we start speaking out, rising up together, this kind of persecution would not, cannot continue. Their hope is that we give up, give in, acknowledge their sovereignty over God’s,” she said.
“This we cannot do. We have to find the unshakeable 10 percent who will stand, who will speak truth in love to the new power, and make it clear we cannot be bribed or coerced into muting or disappearing.”
Gallagher said Gov. Cuomo should apologize to 65-year-old Ruth Sheldon, a Granby town clerk who resigned because she could not in good conscience sign same-sex marriage licenses.
“There is no cost to protecting religious liberty--failing to do so is simply mean-spirited and pointless.”
Assurances of religious freedom protections appear not to have helped Catholic Charities agencies in Illinois, where the state government is now refusing to renew its contracts for foster care and adoption services after the passage of a civil unions bill last December.
“They believe we’re in violation of the law and are refusing to contract with us because of our religious beliefs, that children are best raised in a home with a mother and a father,” Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, told CNA.
The conference believes the state is interpreting the law in an incorrect manner. Gilligan noted that the civil unions bill included religious freedom protection in its title and the Illinois Human Rights Act “clearly allows a religious adoption agency to discriminate.” An exchange on the Senate floor also established that it was not the intention of the bill to impede Catholic Charities’ or other faith-based organizations’ religious practice.
Nevertheless, Catholic child placement agencies may lose their funding and face closure.
“It’s really a tragedy if the state decides it can’t embrace different organizations of different faiths to perform social services and health care,” Gilligan said. He characterized the action as an impediment to religious liberties of both organizations and individuals.
“There are Catholic foster parents out there that only wish to perform foster care with Catholic Charities agencies,” he said.
Gilligan believes the actions in Illinois signal a major change in the place of Catholic institutions in the public square.
Scholars like Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown Law Center professor and lesbian activist who was appointed to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, foresaw many conflicts coming between gay rights and religious liberty.
“She had trouble thinking of any cases where she believed the rights of religious liberty should triumph over gay rights,” George said.
He insisted that “(p)eople are bound to follow their consciences, especially in matters of religion, and the state should, to the extent possible, accommodate the religious consciences of its citizens.”
But instead of allowing religious freedom, marriage laws and anti-discrimination laws are being used as “instruments to whip dissenters from the laws into line” in order to change people’s views and to advance an agenda, George charged.
The laws are being used to “brand and label as bigots and the equivalent of racists people who have the temerity to say that marriage is a union of a man and a woman and to say that sex belongs in marriage and not outside of it.”
“It’s a great way to change the culture, by depicting your opponents as bigots and haters, and imposing on them civil disabilities by using the weapons of anti-discrimination law.
“It’s a brilliant strategy. I have to applaud them for the brilliance of the strategy as much as I loathe its bad faith and consequences,” George said.
Gallagher encouraged those who object to the legal recognition of same-sex unions.
“I think Christians and other people from traditional faith communities are being called in a new way to courage,” she said. “Are we going to volunteer to live in a world where the idea that marriage is the union of husband and wife because children need their mom and dad can be treated as the moral equivalent of racism?”
Proponents of same-sex “marriage” cannot win “unless they get us to agree to our own inferiority. Otherwise we are too many to stigmatize.”
Ping!
DUH!
This is so true and insidious. Soon every Christian denomination will know what it feels like to be Mormon. We need to hang together or all hang separately.
It’s gotten to the point of more then serious. This issue will separate the wheat from the tares. Those of us who are true Christians cannot be silent on this. Every Congressman and Senator must here from us on this issue non stop. In every State that has legalized same sex marriage pressure needs to be put on all elected officials.
That is the take-away from this very astute article. Homosexuals are a tiny part of the general U.S. population and the leftists that support legalizing same-sex 'marriage' are also a small number - perhaps 25% of the population. If the rest of us just sit back in apathy, do nothing and say nothing, the minority will definitely win on this issue and the ramifications, especially to religious liberty, will be ugly. Stealth is the left's friend, citizen apathy it's second-best friend. Right now, the left is winning on same-sex 'marriage'. That has to stop. If not, it will be too late to protest it later when the laws start to impact your children's schooling and some employment situations as well as the insidious effect on religious liberty because every major religion is opposed to homosexual behavior. This 'same-sex marriage' movement by the homosexual 'community' should never have been allowed to grow into law. It will not end well.
"The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."
If in order to pay the mortgage or taxes on that hall you need to rent it out for weddings then you will either have to allow gay weddings to take place there or risk having your hall sued away from you by the first gay couple that comes along.
I believe this has already happened once. Similar things are happening to Boy Scout troops because of their requirement for members to believe in God.
That is bad enough. What is worse is that it will probably be discussed as much as true marriage, if not moreso just because lots of teachers will feel that it will be a good way to keep the interest of their students while discussing otherwise standard material. The message that will be sent is that gay marriage and true marriage are two equivalent choices from which to select.
What's even worse is that the curriculum will most likely be crafted by gay activists who will be certain to push gay marriage as the preferred option.
Our only hope is that the whole thing gets derailed by the 'queer theorists' who believe that all marriage is oppression and don't want anyone to spend any time discussing it.
Did anyone ever truly believe that the two could co-exist? The only question is which will be sacrificed? I’ll give you two guesses ...
Observers see gay homosexual agenda threatening religious freedom. Call it what it is . . . They're not gay.
Faggies rule!
(extreme sarc)
Clash of cultures, anyone? Ever hear the words “End Times”?
“As it was in the days of Noah....”
Hey Andy, those who cannot follow Church teaching should not call themselves Catholic.
I think it's more basic than that. I think the issue is right and wrong, and the individual's right to choose for himself what behavior he will accept and what he won't, for reasons entirely his own.
In one sense, it's about liberty; in another, it's about morality. Where one is threatened, so is the other.
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An extremely important article - I have to read it all tomorrow when I'm better. Something I realized for a long time is the homo-agenda has as one of its most important goals the elimination of our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech, religion and association. Also parental rights, private property rights and probably more. It's not over, they haven't finished, and the right side is not fighting them. Or not hard enough. The R party is silent and enabling.
Perverts uber alles.
You can be sure that they will target Knights of Columbus halls to start a test case. This is classic homo brown shirt tactics.
If everybody else can demonstrate in front of the state houses or city halls, what is so difficult about getting a whole Catholic, Protestant or Jewish congregation out in front of the state houses or city halls en mass? We have larger numbers than they do. The politicians have to decide, do they want 2% of the vote or 98% of the vote? It took large numbers of the “silent majority” joining the Tea Party and getting out in the streets by the thousands to shake up American politics. Now the RINOs are courting the Tea Party and the Democrats are trembling in fear of them.
People who want to brush aside social issues are fools and are not worthy of our vote!
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