How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
A Ricochet reader (but not participant -- we're working on getting him to join), asked me to post this question on the effect of the California gay marriage decision and its effects on religions:
We allow gay marriage, and then what?
If the courts create a constitutional right to gay marriage, discrimination of the protected class becomes illegal. Many churches, the Catholic Church for one, will refuse to perform gay weddings, not out of hatred or bigotry, but because of doctrine. For over two thousand the Catholic Church has celebrated marriage as one of its seven sacraments. The Church will not knowingly administer a sacrament when it goes against a fundamental doctrine. A huge crisis is inevitable because there is no middle ground. How will courts choose between the first amendment right to the free exercise of religion for some and the 14th amendment equal protection rights of the other?
My view is that the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion prohibits the state from forcing religious group to conduct ceremonies that they do not wish to. Should Judge Vaughn Walker's decision ultimately receive the approval of the Supreme Court, gay couples can get a marriage recognized under civil law. But I don't think that requires religious groups to provide or recognize the marriage, if that is part of their religious beliefs. To take divorce as an example, a couple can get a divorce, legally, very easily these days, but that doesn't force the Catholic Church will recognize the divorce or grant the couple an annulment.
But that raises a larger question. I am curious about other Ricochet-er views. Should gay marriage ultimately prevail, what are the possible effects on religion? One could say that it could lead to a decline in religious or moral values -- that seems to be the view of many conservatives. But it might also lead to a rebirth of religious sentiment. Is it possible that Roe v. Wade had that same effect?
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Jul '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
What would preclude a civil suit by a gay couple whose request for a church marriage was spurned? Wouldn't have to be a civil rights thing - maybe just some sort of tort action for pain and suffering.
I'm guessing gay marriage will prevail eventually. Most people realize that who gets to marry doesn't have much to do with their own lives and marriages.
I think a lot of the resistance to gay marriage was really more about the "In your face" tactics of gay activists than it was a principled defense of "traditional marriage". I know that's how I felt - that I was just sick of the whole gay pride/gay victimology thing and this was one step too darn far.
But as time goes by, I find that I just don't care, to be honest.
Maybe I've been convinced by gay activists' weepy meme that they aren't allowed into their dying loved one's hospital room. Hey, if they want to exercise their Constitutional right to empty bedpans, who am I to stand in their way?
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
John, I can't follow your argument. I don't mean I disagree with it. I mean I can't make sense of it. If the Supreme Court upholds Judge Walker's ruling, it will have participated in a straightforward constitutional travesty. Neither the Constitution nor the Fourteenth Amendment can possibly be read as requiring states to recognize homosexual marriages. How do we know? Because, as the slightest knowledge of the mores and beliefs of the times makes clear, neither those who drafted the body of the document nor those who drafted the relevant amendment could even have conceived of gay marriage. First Judge Walker, and then the Supreme Court, will simply have overturned any faithful reading of the Constitution to insert a view of marriage that a scant three decades ago was all but unthinkable. How can you possibly argue that, after such a ruling, "the First Amendment...[would still] prohibit the state from forcing religious groups to conduct ceremonies?" The Court would have ceased to abide by the Constitution. The only remaining protection for churches--really, for any institutions--would be not legal but political. Jeepers. Isn't that obvious?
Aug '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
Kenneth: What would preclude a civil suit by a gay couple whose request for a church marriage was spurned? Wouldn't have to be a civil rights thing - maybe just some sort of tort action for pain and suffering.
Good question. I wonder the same thing too.
My guess is that, supposing that churches will have real immunity against being penalized for not choosing to perform same-sex marriages, it won't have much of an effect either way.
If churches won't have real immunity -- if non-gay-marrying churches could be sued into bankruptcy, or if the Civil Rights Act got interpreted to get involved with gays and churches the way it's now involved with official minorities and employers -- we're in for a firestorm.
Supposing same-sex marriage prevails, I would hope that it would have a salutary effect on gay mores. But maybe there won't be that many takers for it.
I've also heard that many gay-marriage advocates want "open marriage" anyhow. For me "open marriage", whether homo- or heterosexual, doesn't square with what I would call marriage, even though I know some spouses already enter traditional marriage intending to cheat.
May '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
This comment is just food for thought since I haven't considered the post closely enough to offer anything more than off-the-cuff remarks, but I believe that Catholic Charities of Boston no longer performs adoptions for a very similar reason.
Jun '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
Marriage was not always a church sacrament. The church in its early centuries was backed into marriage as a registry of and for its parishioners’ births, marriages, and deaths. Given that the only educated persons in those early years were generally priests, the dearth of public institutions, and the vital requirement to track ancestry and progeny that resulted from the primacy of primogeniture this role fell to the church by default. This preamble is to suggest that the church adapted to society and not the other way round. Does this foreshadow big Catholic gay weddings, or for that matter even church blessings of civilly joined gay couples? Not likely, as the church is concerned with issue in that a man and woman are to become one flesh. This will always be the deal breaker for the church as far as gay marriage is concerned for the church has always seen a twofold purpose in marriage of which the lesser is the joining of the bride and groom alone.
May '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
Archbishop John J. Meyers:
In Canada and Sweden pastors were prosecuted for preaching from the Bible about homosexuality. In Massachusetts, Catholic Charities was forced to abandon its 100 year old program of helping to place children with adoptive parents. And this is just the beginning. As one legal scholar who advocates same-sex "marriage" bluntly put it, religious liberty and sexual freedom will clash, and religious liberty will usually have to lose. Among the places it will lose, of course, is in schools, where children will be indoctrinated into the ideology of same-sex "marriage" in open defiance of their parents' beliefs.
. · Aug 18 at 4:40pm
What happens when two gays get a civil union, move to a traditional marriage state, have a child, and then divorce?
I've read more than a few other stories about legal clashes between Christians and gay couples since civil unions took effect in various places, but I've lost the links.
Two vital points: (1) Judges, not Constitutions, decide law. (2) Gay rights organizations push for approval, not mere tolerance and recognition. Churches and priests will be sued.
Jul '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
Very erudite, thank you.
People often do not know how things we take for granted came to be. Priestly celibacy, for instance, had nothing to do with spirituality: it came about because the sons of wealthy families sought social status and power through careers with the Church. And the Church didn't want them bequeathing their fortunes to wives and families - they wanted that booty to go into Church coffers.
May '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
While it may be true that the church's role in civil marriage ceremonies was a function of the forces Cas mentions, it is certainly not true that the concept of marriage or the church's (or the synagogue's before it) role originated thus. Within Christianity Jesus taught about marriage and the Apostle Paul expanded on the theme. The reason that most Christians have a problem with the concept of gay marriage is that Paul makes it clear that marriage is to be a visual symbol of the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church.
Prior to Christianity Judaism placed a very high value on marriage both as an institution as well as a symbolic means of teaching. (For an excellent description see David Gelernter's 'Judaism, A Way of Being,' especially chapter 4, 'Perfect Asymmetry."
So from either perspective, gay marriage seriously muddles a major truth that God desires mankind to understand about His desires for relationship with them.
Jul '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
I'm not convinced the state needs to be involved. "Marriage" should a function of a church. (The state can perform civil unions). So if a church wants to allow same-sex marriage, why does the state get to impose its definition?
So, to answer your question John, if the state allows gay marriage, I actually believe a church that also condones and performs gay marriages would develop a stronger, more devoted congregation of people who share the same values. It could be the Catholic church's loss, but there's no reason why other churches would not benefit from reflecting the values of its congregation and recognizing that all its members have a right to marry.
Another upside, WorldNetDaily would stop spamming to those congregations.
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
I have no concern about churches being required to perform weddings for same-sex couples. That's pretty cut and dry. They won't be. However, religious freedom isn't just about performing weddings. As Obama's EEOC appointee Chai Feldblum said, when religious liberty conflicts with gay rights, she's "having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win."
So the points of conflict I'd look at would be any intersection of the state and church. Will religious schools be eligible for federal student loans? Will religious-affiliated sites lose their tax-exempt status? Will individuals be certified as professionals (in education, psychology, etc.) if they don't accept the new dogma?
These are the much more serious clashes between religious freedom and gay rights. There are other clashes, of course, about how public schools will handle the topic. But those will be pretty cut and dry. If the government decides that same-sex marriage is a right found in the constitution, how could schools do anything but champion it over and against the wishes of parents, etc., etc.
Aug '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
Cas Balicki: Marriage was not always a church sacrament. The church in its early centuries was backed into marriage as a registry of and for its parishioners’ births, marriages, and deaths.
If you mean by "not a church sacrament" that marriage wasn't always performed by the church, you are of course right: the church at first was an underground institution with no standing before the law, and as Christianity spread to Europe, there were already pre-Christian marriage customs and there wouldn't have been enough priests to go around anyhow.
But it seems to me that the sacrament of marriage was always recognized by the church. It wouldn't have been written about in the NT the way it was written about otherwise.
As importance as primogeniture was in feudal times, I wouldn't say the church simply "backed into" marriage as if it were some bureaucratic convenience.
From earliest church tradition, the marriage between man and woman was seen as an allegory for the joining of the body of the faithful to God. Christ was the Bridegroom. That is no bureaucratic convenience.
May '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
Begging your pardon all but the Catholic Church faces a far greater threat from the global pattern of child abuse and cover-up than it does from gay marriage. Ricochet members are happy to condemn practices by Islamist factions that are discriminatory toward women. This seems just the same to me. Never mind the court decision for a moment, what if a community legitimately votes for homosexual couple to have these rights, then what? At a practical level this is likely to be a minor problem. And I think the Catholic Church deciding who best to have babies is odious and I'm glad to have them out of that business if they would rather have a baby without parents than with loving parents of whom they disapprove. The Bible is a highly interpreted text and there are plenty of Christian denominations that see things differently. Religion will be just fine.
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
The key issue for me remains who gets to make these decisions, the people through their elected representatives or the judicial aristocracy? Does the Constitution mean what it meant when drafted and ratified, together with its Amendments, or not? If not, then we are no longer the self-governing people we once were.
A secondary issue is that the gay marriage crusade strikes me as another in a series of efforts to deconstruct the civil society. Some gays reject traditional heterosexual living arrangements and want to establish same-sex legally recognized unions. Fine. Done. I have no problem with this. However, certain activists remain unsatisfied and move on to demanding the mantle of "marriage." I suspect this is more to devalue the institution as traditionally defined -- substituting forced affirmation in place of tolerance -- than doing anything positive for advancing stable same-sex relationships.
Finally, anyone care to guess where the public school curricula will go with this precedent, once firmly established?
Jul '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
I'm not a Catholic, but I am really tired of hearing the Church bashed on this issue.
Pedophiles famously gravitate to careers that give them access to children. But it s no more fair to tar the professions of, say, youth sports-coaching or public-school teaching than it is to revile the church because it's senior leadership unknowingly allowed its seminaries to be infiltrated by homosexual pedophiles.
By all accounts, certain of the church's seminaries became dominated by homosexual cabals, whose tentacles spread into the parishes - and the cover-ups were largely orchestrated by senior members of those cabals.
Those who find religion incongenial to their political views and "lifestyles" revel in the opportunity to tar the Catholic Church for this scandal, while conveniently ignoring that it was their own compatriots who caused it.
Aug '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
Trace Urdan: And I think the Catholic Church deciding who best to have babies is odious and I'm glad to have them out of that business if they would rather have a baby without parents than with loving parents of whom they disapprove.
All adoption agencies have stringent criteria by which they approve or disapprove prospective parents. To require that the children your agency places for adoption go to a married man and woman doesn't seem that odd to me, nor is it forcing other adoption agencies to use these same criteria. Anyone else wishing to operate an adoption agency that places children with gay parents may do so.
It's also a fallacy to assume that a child not going to gay parents will remain unadopted. A more restrictive policy means that an agency will have to work harder to place children than an agency with a less restrictive policy, but that is hardly the same as denying children adoption.
Would you take similar offense at an adoption agency that refused to place children with smokers? This practice is already widespread.
May '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
Mollie, I'm not so sure your confidence is warranted. Haven't we seen instances already where individuals were successfully sued because they wouldn't provide their services for gay weddings already? I recall that a couple wedding photographers were successfully sued. If individuals don't have the religious freedom to act according to their consciences, then why would we expect a church to retain those rights?
May '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
If marriage as one man-one woman becomes bigotry under the law, then suddenly religious teachings about marriage (in Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are bigotry. Bigots are not tolerated in the public square in America, which is a great testament to our society. I think we are all very proud of that. What many people assume is that our understanding of man-woman marriage is a Christian or a religious one. Marriage pre-dates Christianity. It is a human social institution arising from the fact that sex between men and women makes babies, and societies want those babies to be raised by their mom and dad. That's it. Period.
Catholic Charities adoption agencies in Boston and Washington, DC have closed because Boston and DC do not give licenses to bigots.
Jul '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
Bigot is the new racist.
But it's even better, because you don't have to be black or brown to call me a bigot, so long as I disagree with your deviant lifestyle.
Do I think that you're disgusting when you sashay down 5th Avenue on Gay Pride day with your behind protruding from your leather chaps? Bigot.
Do I believe that children thrive better in homes with two heterosexual parents? Bigot.
Do I think that a lifestyle that results in a 2000% increase in venereal disease is unwise? Bigot.
Do I believe that a nation which does not control its borders is inviting disaster? Bigot.
Oh...and I think that tattoo on your neck wasn't the best career decision you could have made...
Bigot.
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
I'm not Catholic but I have analyzed the media coverage of the Catholic Church. One thing that hasn't been well covered during the years is that priests are no more likely than the general male population to be child abusers. In fact, they may be less likely.
The church should be criticized and held accountable for many of their errors in how they handled this, but you shouldn't let the media interest in Catholic abuse -- above and against all other perpetrators -- color your perception either.
May '10
Re: How Will Legalizing Gay Marriage Affect the Church?
That is the question before us - is marriage bigotry? Judge Walker says yes. In order to believe that marriage is bigotry, you have to believe that there is no legitimate reason for the law to recognize one-man-one-woman as a special institution. Judge Walker says there is none. If there is no legitimate reason, and marriage means any two adults, then the law becomes silent about whether children should be raised by their own mother and father whenever possible, and whether both a mother and a father matter for children. If you think there is no legitimate reason for one-man-one-woman as a special institution, then you are saying that you don't think both mothers and fathers matter for children. Or at least that you don't think the law should recognize that both mothers and fathers matter for children. That question is entirely independent of your religious tradition or lack thereof.