Is religious freedom in trouble with the new legislative definition of the term "gay marriage"? The California Supreme Court asserts that one will have no effect on the other. I'm not so sure.
One of the most prevalent types of litigation involving homosexuals is in the family court. You understand. A heterosexual mate who is divorced by a now homosexual mate ("now" meaning "just out of the closet" because surely a heterosexual and a homosexual wouldn't marry if they knew that from the beginning) takes custody of the children. The homosexual mate sues for custody. It doesn't matter one bit what the religious views of the heterosexual parent are. He may consider it morally wrong to put his children in the custody of their lesbian mother, but his views will not be taken into consideration.
Okay, so that's a theoretical. What about reality? Well, we have the case of Elaine Huguenin? She declined to photograph a homosexual commitment ceremony because it violated her beliefs. She was sued and lost. A pastor in Canada was convicted of hate speech for stating that homosexual behavior was a sin. A doctor in San Diego refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian couple. The doctor said it violated his religious beliefs. (His religious beliefs required that he not perform the procedure on any unmarried woman.) He referred the couple to another doctor who would do it. And he's now being sued for discrimination. The lawyer for the plaintiff argued, "Religious liberty protects your right to believe as you wish, but not act in whatever manner a person might wish to based on those religious beliefs."
There is actually a long list and the list is building, but it's that last notion that should give you pause. You are free to believe what you want as long as you don't act on what you believe. Will this new legislation have an effect on religious freedom? If religion includes any sort of acting on what you believe, and what you believe does not align with the forward motion of the fight for gay rights, I think that it is unavoidable that you will be surrendering your religious freedoms. It's as if the gays have come out of one closet ... and the religious folks are being forced into another.
1 comment:
What is extremely sad is that no one sees how WRONG it is to deny a freedom protected by our Constitution while enshrining new legislated rights. There is a similiar legal battle going on in Washington, over pharmacists who refuse to fill Plan B contraceptive prescriptions. They refer the patient to a different pharmacy, and they are being sued for discrimination. It seems pretty clear what the Constitution says.
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