The government has already gotten itself involved with legislating sexual morality just by being involved in the subject. Every law is an imposition of someone’s morality onto everyone else in that society. What we currently have is moral relativism being legislated and forced on everyone. So-called “gay marriage” becoming the law makes anyone who disagrees with it a law breaker and therefore subject to punishment under the law. This punishment under the law can start out with law suits and fines on the Christian believers, as we have already been seeing. And the government can begin to send people to jail for a so-called “hate crime” of not agreeing that homosexual behavior is normal or for refusing to send your child to Kindergarten class on the day when the school wants to teach the children that “gay marriage” is good. And the government would use this as justification for taking your children away. With the Roman persecution of the early Christians, refusal to offer incense to Caesar was merely frowned upon. Like today’s political correctness, the pagans were offended by the refusal. But then we know it gradually became a crime punishable by death.
One argument would be to ask why sexual matters should be exempt from government. The government legislates ethical morality, property morality, marriage morality, parenting morality, education, and all manner of other aspects of personal life. What is it about sex that makes it a matter or license?
ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO
Statement of Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. Regarding Supreme Court Decisions on Marriage
June 26, 2013
This morning, in the guise of technical legal language, the United States Supreme Court advanced the project of making marriage in the United States a genderless institution. Since women and men are not interchangeable, the Court's action is illogical and pretentious. The Court abuses its own authority when it permits civil law to alter the definition of marriage, which is a natural institution. What is truly at stake in these decisions is not the right of adults to love whom they please, but rather the right of children to have both a mother and a father.
Today's decisions also bring us one step closer to the day when those who continue to distinguish between genuine marital unions and same-sex arrangements will be regarded as "bigots." We have already seen the negative result of gender-free unions on Catholic social services here in Illinois and other states.
We can all be grateful that the Court did not create a new "right" to same-sex marriage, allowing Illinois and other states to continue to acknowledge in law what nature and nature's God already tell us: that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for the sake of family.When it takes place in a private room, it effects the two participants- and that’s all. Your conduct in public/with raising your children does not share this quality.
Sexual acts are done in the privacy of rooms, sure. Even then, some people push it way too far without regard to decency like here.
Marriage is always a public act. We aren’t talking about legislating private behavior but legislating a public institution.
Marriage, in the legislative sense, is an administrative act. No government can legalise a sacrament (except perhaps for the government of the Vatican City State).
If this were true, it would show that it shouldn’t pass laws forcing people to behave as if such unions are marriage. The two people themselves can pretend they’re married with or without legal backing, the laws do things like force businesses and charities that disagree to close.
Morality is in the eye of the beholder - that is clearly the case because different religions view behaviours that entail morals differently.
No, morality exists as an objective reality. You are only forced to see morality as something defined by the eye of the beholder if you first concede that everyone’s eyes are equally correct. Once you say that, all religions are equally valid. Of course people do disagree. And in a multi-religious society, we must allow them to disagree in the public square. But that does not mean that some of them aren’t wrong. It is important to keep in mind the distinction between what we are required to tolerate and what is right. Sometimes we have to tolerate what is not right. But we never have to call it right just because we have to tolerate it.
There is a misconception here when the denial of gay marriage is equated with a societal construct that is exclusionary to a specific portion of a population. The fuzzy thinking begins when you start using the word “marriage” to refer to that which gay people want. If you just keep your definitions clear you can see that the denial of gay “marriage” does not discriminate against anyone. Gay people are free to do the same thing that straight people are allowed to do - that is get married. A gay man is free to marry any woman that will have him, and a gay woman is free to marry any man that will have her. This is exactly the same as what straight people are allowed to do. The trouble is, gay people do not want to do that. They want to do something else - something similar to, but not the same as, marriage. By denying them that right, we are not denying them anything that is allowed for straight people. So let’s stop talking about discrimination in this area because it just isn’t happening, unless you first change your definition of the word “marriage”, which has always meant a union of a man and a woman.
But that is exactly what the legalization of gay marriage does. It forces caterers and florists to supply services to gay weddings under penalty of law. It forces public schools to teach the normalcy of same-sex parenting. It forces everyone to subsidize their choice of morality through tax breaks for married people. The implications go far beyond allowing two people to do whatever they want in private.
I just showed how it is a public moral above.
I just showed how it affects everybody.
OK, then let me be a florist who does not want to be obliged to go along with gay marriage, or a public school teacher who does not want to tell her class that a family with two mommies is normal. Or let me be a taxpayer who does not want his taxes going to subsidize tax breaks for gay couples. That kind of gay “marriage” I could tolerate.
It is a frightening development when government determines that expression of belief is criminal. Cases are most often made against an individual for denial of service under a public accommodation law (and the scope of what constitutes a public accommodation is wide enough to encompass nearly every public-serving entity), but I do think there’s merit in saying “You are a business. You serve the public. Serve the entire public.” What is problematic is how litigious we’ve become, and when a denial should result in a "I’m telling everyone I know … " but instead becomes a “You’ve denied my basic human rights by not making a wedding cake for my wedding!”
Because that’s how you get law-abiding people to become revolutionaries.
We’re talking marriage, not private conduct. Marriage has its own unique treatments in the law that pertain to employment, taxation, property ownership and a bevvy of other things. We could just fix the bevvy of other things (extend tax benefits to members of household, even if unrelated, provided there’s cohabitation for at least 6 months? sure. Allow patients to approve ahead of time visitation by anyone they like - spouse, friend, lover, baseball coach? Fine. Require folks to read and sign up a beneficiary instead of just defaulting benefits to ‘any surviving spouse’. It’d make us better users of insurance.) but the sloppy short-cut is to allow gay marriage. I actually wonder why unmarried domestic partners haven’t stepped up to ask for the same treatment. Is the mother of a natural child any less deserving of her child’s father’s employer-provided insurance than an unemployed man of his same-sex spouse’s? Not at all. And there are far more unmarried couples with children than gay couples. To me, gay marriage as a legal institution is an incomplete answer to a larger question of how we care for people.
Correct. The attempt has not yet been made to sue a priest for refusing to perform a marriage between two non-Christians. Someone insipidly stupid will try it, and be shot down, and it’ll make the news for about 4 seconds. But even were a totalitarian government attempt to try, they cannot compel God’s Hand to pronounce the marriage as they may hope to compel the priest to pronounce the words.