By Brian Walsh, The Washington Times.
Millions of religious Americans—many in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage and many opposed to it—have been anxiously watching to see whether the federal courts would open the door for government to penalize them for living their lives according to their religious beliefs about marriage. They rightly believed that—regardless of what the federal courts decided about marriage—they should continue to fully affirm all Americans’ inherent rights to live their lives according to their faith.
Ugly periods of anti-religious discrimination against Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and Muslims have taught our nation that protecting people of all religions against discrimination is no less important than protecting gays and lesbians. People of faith thus had been hoping that if the U.S. Supreme Court created a right to same-sex marriage it would also fulfill its constitutional duty by roundly reaffirming the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Friday’s decision offers these Americans decidedly scant reassurance.
Indeed, emboldened by a conspicuous lack of reaffirmation of First Amendment principles in Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, opponents of religious freedom are already using the decision as a springboard for attacks on the tax-exempt status of any dissenting organization—including churches. Most calls are coming from the fringe. But some of these extremists are individuals such as Mark Oppenheimer, a New York Times columnist whose attack was quickly published by Time Magazine.
The Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision included little to diffuse the disingenuous and unprincipled hostility that has been building against religion. Vociferous attacks reached a crescendo in this April’s hysterical siege war against Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a law almost identical to the federal RFRA enacted by a nearly unanimous Congress and successfully used to protect Christians, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, and many others. In choosing to omit a meaningful defense of religious freedom, Friday’s Supreme Court decision has added fuel to the anti-religious fire.
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Not since the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and before that the American Revolution 1775-76, has there been such a determination to correct a wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court in its recent decision redefining “marriage” will test the will of the people to do just that. As far back as the beginning of time marriage has been between a man and a woman (cf. Genesis 2:21-24). But perhaps the court’s ruling did not necessarily redefined marriage. In the narrow 5-4 vote Justice Kennedy wrote: “The court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry.” Can that be interpreted as “marry” in the verb sense, and not having to call it a “marriage” in the noun sense? Saying, for example, married into “civil union” would not necessarily redefine marriage. Might the will of the people want to get behind and reinforce that thought? After all, it is very possible these past months leading up to the court decision the LGBT community may have moved too quickly, forcing too much onto the rest of us, to be able to maintain their position as they see it today.