Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, speaks at the March for Marriage near the Capitol in Washington, D.C., last June. CNS photo
Posted on 04/09/2015 2:32:15 PM PDT by NYer
Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, speaks at the March for Marriage near the Capitol in Washington, D.C., last June. CNS photo
Same-sex marriage currently is legal in 36 states — or 37, depending on the outcome of a dispute between state and federal courts in Alabama. But in only 11 of those states was it legalized by referendums or legislation. In the others, it was imposed by courts.
It is generally expected, though not certain, that the Supreme Court soon will follow this pattern and impose same-sex marriage nationwide. The court on April 28 will devote two and a half hours to oral arguments in four cases raising the issue and will hand down its decision in early summer.
If and when the court rules in favor of same-sex marriage, the battle will move to a new stage.
The emphasis then will be on state and possibly federal legislative efforts to provide specific legal protection, over and above the Constitution’s guarantee of religious liberty, to institutions and individuals with conscientious objections to cooperating with marriages between persons of the same sex.
Proposed new laws for this purpose are pending now in at least nine states, and the number seems likely to rise if the Supreme Court gives its blessing to same-sex marriage.
But the recent controversy over a religious freedom law in Indiana (see Page 8) suggests that crafting such measures is not necessarily simple.
There already have been cases in which providers of wedding-related services like florists and bakers have faced potentially crippling fines for violating anti-discrimination laws by refusing on conscience grounds to provide flowers or wedding cakes for same-sex couples.
A poll commissioned by the Family Research Council and a coalition of pro-family groups found that 81 percent of Americans think government should let people “follow their beliefs about marriage” in work and business settings. The poll also found that 61 percent support allowing states to uphold traditional marriage and 53 percent agree that marriage should be defined only as the union of a man and a woman.
| March for Marriage |
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Just days before the Supreme Court is to hear oral arguments in the four cases involving same-sex marriage, thousands will gather in Washington in support of traditional marriage during the third annual March for Marriage on April 25.
On the website promoting the march organizers state, “For months, activist federal judges across the country have issued illegitimate rulings redefining marriage against the will of 50 million state voters and legislators who voted to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Please join us on April 25 for this critical March for Marriage to tell the U.S. Supreme Court to reaffirm the legitimacy of state marriage laws.”
For a detailed schedule of march events and other information, visit marriagemarch.org.
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The Catholic Church, which does not recognize same-sex unions as marriages, has an obvious stake in the effort to strengthen legal protections. Besides its concern for the rights of conscience in general, the Church faces the prospect that specifically Church-related institutions or individuals will come under legal pressure to cooperate with legalized same-sex marriage or else go out of business.
Examples of what might lie ahead include lawsuits in which a Catholic high school teacher marries his same-sex partner and the principal declines to renew his contract; a Knights of Columbus council that rents out its hall for nonchurch social events refuses to rent to a same-sex wedding reception; a dissident priest performs a same-sex ceremony and the bishop suspends him.
In the minds of some observers, court-ordered legalization of same-sex marriage also raises the question of whether the Church should continue to serve as the agent of the state in registering marriages.
Besides the risk of increasing the Church’s vulnerability to legal pressure, the practice also implies that the Church and the state mean the same thing by “marriage.” But this is demonstrably not so once the state accepts same-sex unions as marriages. People who favor ending this particular church-state relationship say it adds to the confusion at a time when many Catholics already are confused about the meaning of marriage.
The present legal situation is the offshoot of a 2013 Supreme Court decision in a case called U.S. v. Windsor which overturned the key provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act denying benefits of federal programs to same-sex couples.
At the time, the court said its action in Windsor shouldn’t be understood as calling into question the legitimacy of state bans on same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, a string of lower court decisions since then has taken the DOMA ruling as precedent for doing exactly that. Last October, the Supreme Court itself appeared to encourage that interpretation by refusing to accept several of these cases for review and thereby allowing the lower court decisions in favor of same-sex marriage to stand.
In November, however, a divided three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals held that this issue should be decided by voters and legislators, not by courts. The ruling applied to same-sex marriage bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.
The Supreme Court agreed in January to consider four cases from these states. The Ohio case was listed first on the court’s order, and its name, Obergefell v. Hodges, is used collectively to cover all of them.
In accepting the cases, the court instructed the lawyers who would argue them to address two specific questions: first, whether state bans on same-sex marriage are constitutional or the Constitution instead guarantees same-sex couples a right to marry; second, whether a state can refuse to recognize same-sex marriages that took place in another state in which they are legal.
As expected, a large number of amicus curiae briefs have been submitted on both sides of the dispute, including one by the Obama administration arguing the case for same-sex marriage. During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama said he opposed legal recognition, but since then he has become an advocate of legalization.
When the Supreme Court accepted the Obergefell case and its companions in January, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement by Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco urging prayers that the court would uphold the right of states to “respect the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”
Archbishop Cordileone, chairman of the bishops’ subcommittee for promotion and defense of marriage, called it “hard to imagine” how the traditional recognition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman could be declared illegal. Marriage understood this way is “a unique and beautiful reality which a society respects to its benefit or ignores to its peril,” he said.
In March, Archbishop Cordileone and two other USCCB chairmen wrote Congress endorsing pending legislation that would ensure the right of child welfare agencies acting for religious or moral reasons to place children for adoption or foster care only with married heterosexual couples. Such agencies have been excluded from making placements in Massachusetts, Illinois, California and the District of Columbia.
“Our first and most cherished freedom, religious liberty, is to be enjoyed by all Americans, including child welfare providers who serve the needs of children,” said Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami, chairman of the bishops’ domestic justice and human development committee, and Archbishop William E. Lori, chairman of the religious liberty committee.
The three archbishops supported the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2015. Their letter was addressed to the bill’s congressional sponsors, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming).
I have tried to point out some of the blatantly obvious signs to my acquaintance friend, and I swear I can hear an audible click when his brain slams shut. His reply is always something like: "it's just a phase; the US will recover [referring to the incomprehensibly massive federal debt] and life will return back to normal as it always does. You need to stop getting your news off the internet."
And if I try to use scripture to point out the signs, (he says he is a believer but he has never read any scripture, only knows what his priest tells him to know) his eyes glaze over.
I'm just stunned at the willful ignorance when the signs around us are so numerous and growing rapidly.
Hello.
Some problems with your proposal, and a suggestion.
-if you specify that ONLY gay marriages would be dealt with this way, that would be seen as discrimination.
-the language in that sign would be used as evidence of animus and intent to discriminate.
However, what you could do is state that 10% (for example) of ALL purchases would go to those organizations, that would be entirely legal and would probably serve the same purpose.
Personally, I think that would be the reasonable way to go without opening yourself to any lawsuits.
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