“...even if gays have the right to call themselves whatever they want, that does not imply that anyone else has any obligation to honor such declarations...”
If the issue about same-sex marriage were really about marriage, then you would be right, but sadly it is far more about forcing Christians to approve of homosexual relationships than it is about marriage. Otherwise, why would there be any problem when a Christian wedding photographer politely declines to throw his creative talents into recording a same sex wedding? Why grind a Christian baker into the ground and force him to close his business because he declined to sell a same-sex couple a wedding cake? Because gays demand something that people like me cannot give them, approval of their immoral acts and especially to grant them equal status as “married”.
If a State decides that two (or more) people can marry, if that is all that happened, I could live with that because I don’t have to approve, change my beliefs or what beliefs I pass on to my children.
Once gays and their supporters have sufficient influence with a State to redefine marriage, they don’t stop there. They use the State to forbid me from acting on my morality and beliefs. In fact, the State in some cases forces me to accommodation in their practices.
If I have children in public school, the State will insist on teaching them that gay marriage is just as normal as God’s definition of marriage. You will be sanctioned as a parent if you attempt to remove your children from such indoctrination. As long as they are enrolled in government-controlled schools, they will be graded on how well they accept the State’s idea of normal, or refuse to reject God’s idea of normal.
If you run a business that could provide services to the public, you will be sanctioned if you decline to treat gays as non-gays. For example, if you run a wedding photography business, you will be sanctioned if you decline to photograph a gay wedding. This has already happened in California and New Mexico [1].
You may lose control of your own property. [2]
You might have to go out of business to stay true to your principles, so as to avoid being fined or sued into bankruptcy. [3,4,6,7, 8, 9, 10]
From an article:
“Wedding vendors elsewhere who refused to accommodate same-sex couples have faced discrimination lawsuits — and lost. Legal experts said Discover Annapolis Tours sidesteps legal trouble by avoiding all weddings.
“If they’re providing services to the public, they can’t discriminate who they provide their services to,” said Glendora Hughes, general counsel for the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights. The commission enforces public accommodation laws that prohibit businesses from discriminating on the basis of race, sexual orientation and other characteristics.”
To advance the legal case that a marriage between two people of the same sex is no different than a marriage as God defines it, the US Justice Department will base their arguments before the Supreme Court that a child does not need, nor have a right to a mother. [5]
In short, gays will demand that non-gays accept them as moral equals, which they are not and cannot be. When the State says they are equal it is forbidden for a private citizen to dissent from that status. In doing so, they seek to force me to give them approval for something that I will never approve of. It is that last point that galls gays the most.
Curiously, when advocates of gay marriage are asked if their policy also would allow polygamy or polyandry, they recoil in horror and insist that it does not. However, logic demands that it does. I would ask how same-sex parents are going to react in the future when, for example, Utah public schools officials require that teachers instruct the children that LDS-related polygamy is just as “normal” as same-sex “marriage”. The fact that this will be an issue will show yet again that gay “marriage” is not about marriage at all it is about forcing the rest of us to approve of repugnant sexual immorality, something that LDS polygamists never demanded.
After same-sex marriage causes polygamy to be recognized polyandry won’t be far behind. Brave new world!
[1] Refusing To Shoot Gay Marriage Is Discrimination, Says New Mexico Appeals Court
http://tinyurl.com/covv9by
[2] Judge Rules Christian facility cannot ban same-sex civil union ceremony on its own premises
http://tinyurl.com/7gcpeh9
[3] Opposed to same-sex marriage, company ends wedding business
Trolley owner says move made to avoid potential lawsuit
http://tinyurl.com/bwp2bvj
[4] Baker refuses to make wedding cake for lesbian couple and ‘calls them abominations unto the Lord’
Aaron Klein, owner of Sweet Cakes in Gresham, Oregon is the subject of a state investigation after one of the brides-to-be filed a complaint
link:
http://tinyurl.com/a482bpf
[5] DOJ: Children Do Not Need—and Have No Right to—Mothers March 3, 2013 By Terence P. Jeffrey
http://tinyurl.com/blcyj9u
[6] [Washington State] AG sues florist who refused flowers to gay wedding
http://tinyurl.com/bv25bjw
[7] New Mexico Supreme Court rules against photographer in gay bias case
By Barry Massey, Associated Press.
http://bit.ly/19MTTGW
[8] Gresham bakery that denied same-sex wedding cake closes
http://bit.ly/131Lc6w
[9] NYT: Weighing Free Speech in Refusal to Photograph Lesbian Couple’s Ceremony
http://nyti.ms/1dP1q6d
[10] Judge orders baker to serve gay couples despite his religious beliefs
http://fxn.ws/1bmofKN