{"id":12093,"date":"2009-05-09T11:01:20","date_gmt":"2009-05-09T18:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2009\/05\/09\/12093.html"},"modified":"2009-05-09T11:01:20","modified_gmt":"2009-05-09T18:01:20","slug":"freedom-of-religion-and-same-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2009\/05\/09\/freedom-of-religion-and-same-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom of religion and same-sex marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In recent discussion of same-sex marriage, I've been pleased to see a particular term rising to new prominence: \"civil marriage.\"<\/p>\n

I think use of that term neatly encapsulates and clarifies a distinction that some opponents of same-sex marriage have been working to muddy: the distinction between marriage sanctioned by the government and religious marriage.<\/p>\n

Nearly all discussions of same-sex marriage laws<\/em> are, of course, talking exclusively about civil marriage. But those who argue against those laws are most often talking about religious marriage. And it's only been recently that I've seen same-sex marriage advocates start to regularly use the term \"civil marriage\" to make that distinction explicit. (Though it's entirely possible that people have been using that term for ages and I just haven't noticed.)<\/p>\n

For example, Maine's LD 1020 (the same-sex marriage bill signed into law the other day) is titled \"An Act To End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom<\/a>.\"<\/p>\n

I was reminded to mention this by an opinion piece<\/a> from Bloomberg yesterday, which provides a useful analogy in passing: \"The state can't force an Orthodox rabbi to marry Jew to non-Jew.\"<\/p>\n

So maybe that's one way to reframe this argument:<\/p>\n

\n

Oh no! If non-Christian opposite-sex civil marriage were legal, then the state would force Christian churches to perform weddings of non-Christians! An atheist man and an atheist woman could force a church<\/em> to perform a marriage ceremony for them, with all the power of the state behind them! Ministers and priests would be required<\/em> by the government to perform marriage ceremonies that went against their consciences!<\/p>\n

. . . Wait, what's that you say? Opposite-sex marriage for non-Christians is<\/em> legal? And the state doesn't force Christian churches to perform any particular sort of weddings?<\/p>\n

Oh.<\/p>\n

Huh.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note: it's important to remember that plenty of religious people, including plenty of Christians, are actually in favor of same-sex marriage, of the civil and\/or religious varieties. My argument\/analogy above isn't intended to suggest otherwise; it's addressed only to religious people (of any faith) who are concerned that legalizing same-sex civil marriage would force those churches that oppose same-sex religious marriage to perform such weddings.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent discussion of same-sex marriage, I’ve been pleased to see a particular term rising to new prominence: “civil marriage.”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-samesex-marriage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}