Examiner: Legalizing gay marriage will spark lawsuits against churches

And spark litigation against individuals who speak and write against this, especially bloggers and teachers. It is happening in Canada. You can read about it here:
http://college-ethics.blogspot.com/2008/04/bloggers-face-lawsuit.html

There is no question that this will eventually happen because the general public has been duped into believing it being a justice or civil rights matter. Sickening.

Beginning to see parallels to Christians under Roman authority during the first century?

Why is it that the people preaching tolerance are the least tolerant of all?

Alice mentions Canada, and you’ll want to know that it isn’t just for Canada any more. Imagine combining Severino’s possibilities with the reality that came down from the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission yesterday. I wrote about it here.

I agree with everyone so far above.  This is NOT far-fetched or alarmist rhetoric.  This is a “clear and present danger.”

Other scary precedents can be seen in Europe, in places like the Netherlands or Sweden, where religious liberty has also suffered.  I agree with Severino that such frightening results are unintended consequences of well-intentioned reforms.  But we all know the famous saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.  So it is here.

David Handy+

Here’s the logical extension: “Christian Photographer Hauled before Commission for Refusing Same-Sex Job”

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jan/08013004.html

As far as I know, clergy have the right (both from the Church and from a civil perspective) to refuse to officiate at any marriage ceremony for any reason, with no responsibility to give a reason for such a decision.

I’m a bit dubious about this, actually.  Church and state are pretty clearly separated in the U.S.  There may be a few nuisance suits, but they’ll probably be thrown out quickly.

The more serious court challenges will come in areas where the church/state divide is more blurred, ie private schools with religious affiliations thst refuse to hire gay teachers.  But legal charges for not marrying gays in church?  Not likely, in my view.

#9 Maybe, but a nuisance suit is not just a nuisance to the defendant.  It takes $$$ to defend against any suit no matter how ridiculous.  Take the case of the $57 Million lost pants case.  The drycleaner ended up with over $10,000 in legal costs.

AnglicanXn:  The “but clergy have a right to refuse to marry anyone they don’t want to marry” line is a very thin line of defence.  Point of comparison: in an “employment at will” state, the employer has the right to terminate anyone without any reason.  But, despite that, the employer does NOT have the right to terminate all African-American employees.

So, just as clergy have the right not to marry anyone they choose not to, they will NOT have the right to make a blanket decision not to marry homosexual couples without risking the charge of discrimination.

For those who are dubious, just look to the example in Canada.  Connect the dots:
1) Homosexuals are entitled to be married.
2) Clergy derive their right to marry from the state, and are state actors in solemnizing marriage.
3) Anti-discrimination laws prohobit discrimination based on “sexual orientation.”

Right there, you have clergy exposed to legal charges for refusing to marry homosexual couples.  But most governments will, for now, carve out a religious conscience clause (as was supposedly done in Canada).  Even the liberals did not dispute that, absent a conscience clause, clergy would be liable for not performing homosexual marriages.  But how long will that religious conscience clause last?

You know that the homosexual activists will work to eliminate the clause as soon as they think they will be able to do so.  Additionally, churches which accept homosexual marriage work to undermine the religious conscience clause, especially for clergy in that denomination.

Ask yourself this - if the Anglican Church of Canada officially endorses homosexual marriage, how can an individual Anglican priest in a hierarchical denomination, claim a religious conscientious objection to homosexual marriage?  You’ve got to know that the human rights tribunals (stacked with those of an intolerant liberal POV) will simply declare that there is no valid relgious objection and that the individual clergy is simply discriminatory.

This is a very real risk, and one that we need to pay very close attention to.

Re #8

At the moment, that’s true. Given the right kind of court decisions, that would cease to be the case.

Re #9

Ralph is quite correct. The tactics used by Richard Warman in Canada (where he’s made a tidy living off of being offended by conservatives, Christian and secular) will soon be imported here, and just as corporations are sometimes scared into actions they would otherwise not have taken because of the threat of a suit, individuals and churches (particularly mainline denominations) will be as well, just to avoid the cost of litigation. As far as it goes, the example you give is a good one. If a private school has religious affiliations, what right does the government have to tell them who they can and can’t hire? But you can bet that various advocacy groups will try to change that legislatively or judicially, as has already happened in the UK.

People don’t understand that in many states, including mine, the right of clergy to marry people is a privilege granted by the government.  That’s why they say, “by the power invested in me by the State of ______________, I hereby declare you man and wife.”  My state law says you can be stripped of your license to marry people if you don’t follow state law requirements.  So yes, very quickly it could be that if you don’t perform gay marriages, you can’t perform any marriages at all without breaking the law.

I would also mention the attempts in various areas to adopt an “ethical” requirement that would prohibit lawyers and judges from belonging to any organization that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.  Ultimately, that could mean lawyers who are Christians can be disbarred and Christian judges removed from the bench to be replaced by more compliant people.

This is a troubling prospective and like festivus alluded to, this may be the Pinch of incense for Caesar Moment for the faithful.  I too hope that a conscience clause is firmly cemented into any law overturning bioliocentric marriage.
All the more reason to be, like never before, the Salt and Light we’ve been called to be in this world.
Peace…

St. Anonymous talks about the safety in our church-state separation. That didn’t help here, U.S. Christian Camp Loses Tax-Exempt Status over Same-Sex Civil-Union Ceremony.

I heard about that camp issue, Robroy.  I believe that was one of the “blurry” cases, where it wasn’t quite clear how much of the property was public and how much was the church’s exclusively.  Not that I agree with what happened, obviously, but it’s still a long way from that to forcing a minister to perform a SSM inside his own church.

Here’s another one:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=72593
(Philadelphia Scouts face May 31 eviction from downtown office).

What must be kept in mind, is freedom of religion or belief is historically, a new right of man.  The opposite is more the norm to this very day. 

The state has always viewed religion as the way to bind the citizen to the state, to annoint state actions.  Believing in a higher moral authority beyond the state is looked upon as deviant, and must be crushed.  This is a lesson of history and it also applies here.

The state recognizes no god, but itself.  It is accountable to no one.  We all are on the doorstep of massive persecutions for what you believe and think.  The gates of the camps are looming.  It will happen here.

Basser