Gay Marriage At Scotus: One Wedding Ring Thread To Rule Them All...

[Damien the Leper]

Okay, but only if religious establishments no longer have to recognize state actions and officials. Have to keep things fair after all.

Then they should separate themselves completely from the state. Religion is not on equal footing with the government. It should never be. Government runs the state. Religion doesn't get to inform or tell government what to do.

[Damien the Leper]

Gay marriage is not marriage in any Christian sense of the word marriage.

Irrelevant as Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on what marriage is. Marriage is a state institution and not a religious one.

[Damien the Leper]

The state should recognize and benefit (give welfare to which is what this is partly about) those insitutions that are optimum for moving families forward to the benefit of society.  SSM isn't one of those as the state has correctly identified up until now.  By LGBT activist's logic, I should receive welfare benefits simple because I want to and some of people are and not because I meet standards set by the state.

Cute opinion. Really.

[Damien the Leper]

And I'll see your true colorsShining through...

I'm beginning to think like Edward Davies, Anne Romney's father. Organized religion seems like hogwash and is the instigator of civil ethical and moral decay. Edited June 30, 2015 by Valentinus

[Damien the Leper]

Why.  Should the state recognize a marriage that is performed in a park or at the beach?  If the answer is yes than why not a religious building?

Let me clarify. The state should recognize civil marriage. With that said, government is not obligated to recognize a marriage that is religious rather than civil and vice versa. It's a simple solution.

[maxrep12]

Love this!

 

From FR. James Martin:

 

No issue brings out so much hatred from so many Catholics as homosexuality. Even after over 25 years as a Jesuit, the level of hatred around homosexuality is nearly unbelievable to me, especially when I think of all of the wonderful LGBT friends I have.

The Catholic church must do a much better job of teaching what the Catechism says: that we should treat our LGBT brothers and sisters with "respect, sensitivity and compassion."

But God wants more. God wants us to love. And not a twisted, crabbed, narrow tolerance, which often comes in the guise of condemnations, instructions and admonitions that try to masquerade as love, but actual love.

Love means: getting to know LGBT men and women, spending time with them, listening to them, being challenged by them, hoping the best for them, and wanting them to be a part of your lives, every bit as much as straight friends are part of your lives.

Love first. Everything else later. In fact, everything else is meaningless without love.

[Daniel2]

“The nature of marriage is that,through its enduring bond, two persons together can findother freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.”, Majority Opinion

Scalia response: Really? Who ever thought that intimacy andspirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie. Expression, sure enough, is a freedom, but anyone in a long-lasting marriage will attest that that happy state constricts, rather than expands, what one canprudently say.)

I rolled my eyes when I read this portion of Scalia's dissent. Can he REALLY a be that obtuse?!

It is obvious to me that in the passage Scalia criticized, the majority opinion was speaking about the freedom of speech (expression), the freedom of privacy to engage in sexual intimacy (per Lawrence), and the freedom of religion (spirituality). Duh...

It seems clear that Scalia was simply TRYING not to understand what seemed obvious to me, there.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Daniel2

[carbon dioxide]

Irrelevant as Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on what marriage is. Marriage is a state institution and not a religious one.

Marriage can be both.  For me, I married my wife for religious purposes.  I will take all the government benefits if offered but they played no bearing on why I married my wife and they don't keep us together.  Marriage will outlive all governments as marriage existed long before governments came around. 

[Tacenda]

That was beautiful Maxrep12! I'd like to add this ted talk! I hope it will be listened to. People really are diverse and unique in every way. We need to quit putting everyone in a box.

http://www.ted.com/talks/io_tillett_wright_fifty_shades_of_gay

[Daniel2]

Gay marriage is not marriage in any Christian sense of the word marriage.

It may not be according to your beliefs on Christianity, but not all Christian denominations would agree with you (namely, those Christian Faiths that do marry gay couples).

Here's a great example of just one such evangelical Christian pastor: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7678856?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592&ref=yfp

Edited June 30, 2015 by Daniel2

[Daniel2]

It is gay marriage or SSM.

Strictly legally speaking, the court recognized, decided, and specified in their ruling that gays do not and are not and did not receive a "right to get gay married" nor the "right to same-sex marriage," but that gay couples simply sought (and were specifically granted the ability) to exercise the same Constitutional "right to (civilly) marry" as straight couples already were granted and exercising.

You may disagree with the court's reasoning, but that is now the legal reality, disagreement or not.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Daniel2

[california boy]

I don't need to read anybody's mind or have a seance to talk to the Founding Fathers. If the majority wanted to allay concerns of the devout that its ruling would not infringe upon free exercise, all it had to do was say, "Nothing in today's ruling is intended to disturb our previous precedents with respect to the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment." It didn't do that: instead, it magnanimously granted to religions and to their adherents a more narrow privilege of continuing to "believe" and to "teach" as they wish. You can deride my assessment all you want. There's a difference between those two things, and I'm sure that's not lost on those who will look to use the Court's language to punish faiths and their adherents for continuing to hold benighted religious opinions with respect to homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

There is nothing in the constitution that allows a person to break the law because of religious belief.

Other than that I could care less what religion does

Edited June 30, 2015 by california boy

[Daniel2]

There is nothing in the constitution that allows a person to break the law because of religious belief.

Very true, as echoed in this report regarding a few pockets of political hold-outs across the country:

How state fights against same-sex marriage may backfire

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/how-state-fights-against-same-sex-marriage-may-122814629126.html

By Caitlin ****son

June 29, 2015

Breaking News

The U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states Friday, kicking off an especially celebratory weekend of annual gay pride festivities in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and a number of other cities around the country. But by Monday, as the emotional high from the weekend wore off, a budding resistance had emerged from states unwilling to give up their gay marriage bans without a fight.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has deemed state employees exempt from granting same-sex couples with marriage licenses if it violates their religious beliefs. Conservative lawmakers in Tennessee have started drafting legislation that would protect religious leaders from being forced to preside over same-sex marriages. Utah and Mississippi are considering doing away with state-issued marriage licenses, while county clerks in Kentucky and Alabama have already taken it upon themselves to stop granting licenses altogether.

While such pushback looks poised to provoke legal action, constitutional law expert Greg Magarian, a professor of law at Washington University, said that most of these state efforts are “the political equivalent of temper tantrums,” attention-getting yet extremely difficult to implement.

Moves to stop issuing marriage licenses to anyone, for one thing, are highly problematic.

If a state continues to recognize religious marriages but doesn’t offer any legal opportunity for same-sex marriage, Magarian said, the state will inevitably end up handing out marriage-based benefits only to those who’ve participated in a religious ceremony, which is unconstitutional.

It would only be a matter of time, Magarian predicts, before someone who doesn’t want a religious ceremony sues the state for discriminating against their religion or lack thereof by preventing them from having a civil ceremony. “They’re going to win and the state will be ordered to start issuing civil marriage licenses again,” he said.

Married couples don’t only receive benefits from the state, but the federal government as well. So even if states managed to remove themselves from the marriage business entirely, ceasing to provide benefits in addition to marriage licenses, it’s not like the problem would just disappear. Similarly to the result of states refusing to set up health insurance exchanges in accordance with the Affordable Care Act, Magarian said, marriage would become the federal government’s responsibility.

“You can stand in the corner and hold your breath until you’re blue in the face, but people in your state will still be signing up for Obamacare, only now you’ve given the authority over it to the federal government,” Magarian said. From a political perspective, he said, daring the federal government to takeover a long-held state responsibility like marriage would be “a strategically stupid move.”

In the fight against gay marriage, opponents have long cited concerns that legalization would result in Catholic priests, Evangelical pastors and other religious clerics being forced—against their beliefs—to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples. Magarian dismissed this fear as well as legislation, like the one currently being drafted by a pair of Republican Tennessee state lawmakers, aimed at preventing it from becoming a reality.

“Leaving aside the fact that no gay couple is going to want someone who deeply opposes their union to consecrate their union, even if it came to that, no civil authority could force a religious institution to perform a ceremony that the institution opposes,” Magarian said, explaining that such a scenario would violate the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution—the part of the First Amendment that protects religious expression.

Less obvious is whether that same protection applies to state employees like judges, clerks, and justices of the peace who issue marriage licenses as part of their jobs. According to Texas and Paxton, it does.

Following the announcement of Friday’s 5-4 decision, Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent a somewhat vague memo to state agency heads, “despite the Supreme Court’s ruling calling for the ensured protection Texans’ religious freedom.” Over the weekend,Paxton issued a legal opinion on the Supreme Court ruling that was much more explicit. Public officials can refuse marriage licenses to same sex couples for religious reasons, Paxton stated, and the state government will provide access to “numerous lawyers” who will defend their right to do so.

“This newly minted federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage can and should peaceably co-exist with longstanding constitutional and statutory rights, including the rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech,” reads Paxton’s opinion.

But Magarian isn’t so sure that argument would hold up in court.

“Government employees have obligations to perform their job,” he said. “If you’re a rogue county clerk instructed to issue marriage licenses to any couple who asks for one, you should be fired for refusing to perform the duties of your job.”

In a situation like Texas, where the state government is the one going rogue, Magarian said “any couple who wants to have a fight will say, ‘this is state-sanctioned discrimination against me.’ The state will say they’re simply protecting the religious liberty of their employees, and the court will say you don’t get to elevate employees’ religious liberty” over other constitutional requirements of their job.

Supporters of the decision have compared its significance to the landmark 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, and Magarian noted that the current pushback by anti-gay marriage states is not unlike that sparked by the court’s mandate for desegregation. But while the time and effort involved in creating a whole new desegregated school system actually made it easier for states and cities to drag their feet in implementing the requirements following Brown, Magarian said the simplicity of legalizing same sex marriage makes it harder to resist.

See the administration of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, for example, which has acknowledged its state will have to recognize the high court’s decision and provide gay couples with marriage licenses, but refuses to do so before the full 25-day period for an appeal is complete.

“You’ve got the mechanism in place, now you just have to expand it,” Magarian said, referring to state structures for issuing marriage licenses. “You can’t be passive, you have to come out and say, ‘no, we’re not going to do this.’ And then you’re painting a target on your back.”

Magarian also suggested that there was much more personal motivation to fight desegregation than there is to protest gay marriage today.

“With schools, you had parents saying, ‘oh my goodness, my kid is going to have to go to school with black kids. That affects me directly,’” Magarian said. “The political will was much stronger.”

When it comes to same sex couples getting married, however, Magarian simply stated, “It doesn’t affect you.”

(Bold added)

Edited June 30, 2015 by Daniel2

[tagriffy]

Did you even bother to read the quotes? Do you understand the concept of cause an effect? Are you willfully ignoring the fact that the way this ruling was made will, without any doubt, result in pressure on churches to change their doctrines and practices to "conform" in violation of the First Amendment?

 

Taxing religious organizations would be a violation of the First Amendment, but there's going to be pressure to do so by removing tax exemptions for those who won't accept SSM. It's already been disturbing to see SSM supporters demand that churches be taxed, while their own non-profit activist organizations maintain tax-exempt status.

 

And you think there's no threat?

 

Yes, I did read the quotes. I was denying the validity of the argument being made. Freedom of religion does not mean freedom from the pressures, if any, that society puts on a religious group to change their doctrines and practices. Freedom of religion means being able to hold those doctrines and continue those practices regardless of society thinks. There are plenty of religious doctrines and practices out there I think are foolish, absurd, or even outright wrong. Even if I thought it was my place to pressure the groups in question to change (and I don't), my exercise of the freedom to speech does not violate their freedom of religion.

 

Taxing churches is not a violation of the First Amendment, and in fact it could be argued that granting such exemptions is a violation of the Establishment Clause because it subsidizes them. See Justice Douglas' dissent in Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York. Those arguments have been going on long before SSM appeared on the horizon. Tax exemptions when granted are a privilege conditioned upon meeting certain conditions. If religious organizations don't want to accept those conditions, then they are free to do so. They're just going to have to accept that they're going to have to give up their tax-exempt status. If they don't want to give up their tax-exempt status, then they're going to have to determine what they can live with. Either way, that's their problem, not mine.

[mfbukowski]

There is a powerful answer coming from the church to be read in wards on this Sunday or next, as a local option.  It will not be read in sacrament meeting, but in other meetings.

 

It goes  a long way to clarify these issues.  My suggestion is to wait until you have heard the statement.  It leans heavily on the Proclamation, but there is new material as well.

[tagriffy]

Why are you harping on the word agenda?

 

I have addressed this in my post #750 (look in page-38).   Are you a harpy?  

 

Because you are saying what is happening (and for now I'm bracketing the truth of those claims) is the result of certain actions. Either those results were intended, in which case the results are part of their agenda; or they were not. The former implies malfeasance, and that makes a big difference.

 

So now you decide, are the effects intended or not?

[tagriffy]

It's remarkable, Tagriffy, to see you continually questioning this, when you yourself upvoted Valentinus' outburst wherein he ranted that "Religious morality must be expelled from government completely."

You clearly know what we are talking about, and you even approve of it.

Even as you try to lull us all into a false sense of security about it.

 

Not that it is actually relevant, but an upvote doesn't necessarily mean I agree with every statement therein, or that I agree with the post at all. I've been known to upvote a post I considered thoughtful and well-written--and then proceeded to eviscerate the argument in my own post. Sometimes I'll upvote a post because I have nothing to say in response but don't want to leave the post unacknowledged. Long story short, you can't assume anything about me based on my upvotes.

 

Now, stay on target Luke and answer the question. How does legalizing SSM threaten our religious freedoms?

[Damien the Leper]

Not that it is actually relevant, but an upvote doesn't necessarily mean I agree with every statement therein, or that I agree with the post at all. I've been known to upvote a post I considered thoughtful and well-written--and then proceeded to eviscerate the argument in my own post. Sometimes I'll upvote a post because I have nothing to say in response but don't want to leave the post unacknowledged. Long story short, you can't assume anything about me based on my upvotes.

 

Now, stay on target Luke and answer the question. How does legalizing SSM threaten our religious freedoms?

Umm...it doesn't.

[Russell C McGregor]

Not that it is actually relevant, but an upvote doesn't necessarily mean I agree with every statement therein, or that I agree with the post at all. I've been known to upvote a post I considered thoughtful and well-written--and then proceeded to eviscerate the argument in my own post. Sometimes I'll upvote a post because I have nothing to say in response but don't want to leave the post unacknowledged. Long story short, you can't assume anything about me based on my upvotes.

 

Now, stay on target Luke and answer the question. How does legalizing SSM threaten our religious freedoms?

Short answer: It gives people who have demonstrated that they have no consciences and who care only about themselves, a big heavy club with which to bludgeon religious believers into submission, or out of their jobs.

It enables them to use the force of law to coerce religious believers into actively supporting and participating in a "same sex marriage" event.

People can conscientiously object to serving in the military, even in time of war. They (including medical practitioners) can conscientiously object to being involved in an abortion. But you just watch: if the "Gay entitlements" lobby gets its way, absolutely nobody will be able to conscientiously object to supporting a same sex "marriage," and not just those involved in the wedding industry. Even now, the "gay entitlements" advocates are insisting that same sex "marriages" will have absolutly no impact upon anyone else -- and in the very same breath confidently predicting that the newly minted "rights" will ensure that nobody will be able to "discriminate" against them ever again; meaning, say no to anything they might demand.

And they are already planning the "next steps" that were, just last week, derided as "slippery slope" arguments.

Actually, they've planned them for a long time; it's only just now that they are willing to admit it.

[Russell C McGregor]

Umm...it doesn't.

Really?

There is nothing in the constitution that allows a person to break the law because of religious belief.

How do we reconcile these two statements?

Very easily: in true Orwellian style, we narrowly define "religious freedom" to include only those things the law permits. Are people no longer free to not associate themselves with deviant sexual practices? Very well; such disassociation is defined -- by non-believers, of course -- as being no part of anyone's religion.

What the immoralists want is for religious freedom to be restricted to being free to quietly pray however we like in our holy places, and silently believe whatever we please -- and that's it.

For now.

Demanding that all churches (and LDS temples) be forced to open their doors to same sex "marriage" is not on the list.

At least, not on that part of the list that they are prepared to announce just yet.

But it will be.

[Kenngo1969]

... responsible adoption agencies have always put adoptive parent candidates under all sorts of scrutiny, because the primary consideration in adoption is not the "rights" of any wannabe parents, but the best interests of the child. ...

 

Alas, as I have pointed out elsewhere, too often in U.S. family law (and this is even more true of many other jurisdictions), "the best interests of the child" are only paramount insofar as they do not conflict with some supposed "right" of an adult (be that adult gay or straight).

 

https://greatgourdini.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/family-values/

Edited June 30, 2015 by Kenngo1969

[Kenngo1969]

Then they should separate themselves completely from the state. Religion is not on equal footing with the government. It should never be. Government runs the state. Religion doesn't get to inform or tell government what to do.

Let's be clear here about what you're demanding, Val: You don't want religions, or those whose worldview is informed in any way by religion, to even have seats at the table or voices in the debate, do you?

[Kenngo1969]

I'm beginning to think like Edward Davies, Anne Romney's father. Organized religion seems like hogwash and is the instigator of civil ethical and moral decay.

On the contrary.  John Adams was right when he said:

 

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

 

And it's still true today, notwithstanding the increasing trends toward religious pluralism, irreligiousness, immorality, and amorality in our society.

[Kenngo1969]

Marriage can be both.  For me, I married my wife for religious purposes.  I will take all the government benefits if offered but they played no bearing on why I married my wife and they don't keep us together.  Marriage will outlive all governments as marriage existed long before governments came around.  [Emphasis added by Kenngo1969.]

Ding, ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!  "Tell him what he's won, Bob!"

 

P.S.: I just posted this link on another thread, and it seems relevant here (it takes awhile to load; it's a whole dang newspaper).  My piddly little insignificant contribution is on page A4, toward the middle of the page, on the right: http://tooeleonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/4-21-15-Transcript-Bulletin.pdf

Edited June 30, 2015 by Kenngo1969

[Kenngo1969]

There is nothing in the constitution that allows a person to break the law because of religious belief.

Other than that I could care less what religion does

See, this is where you and I differ irreconcilably (dang!  Gay marriage was just legalized in all fifty states, and here I am talking about irreconcilable differences already! )  The Constitution wasn't written to grant power to the people; the powers the people possess are inherent and inalienable, independent of the Constitution: it was written to deny power to the government.

Edited June 30, 2015 by Kenngo1969