USATODAY.com – New York clergy charged for marrying gay couples
My first thought: This is going to fan the so-called wildfire.
My second thought: Charges will be dropped within 24 hours.
It points out a too-often neglected angle in the public sector, though — that the civil rights sought by gays who wish to marry are interwoven with their freedom of religious expression.
Conservatives who support ex-gay options as the only valid choice for folks with same-sex attractions are right about one thing: Choice is an essential part of the picture.
I don’t particularly care for analogies, given that it’s easy for them to distract instead of focus our attention, and so many are done so sloppily. Sometimes they’re necessary, though.
Some folks have noted parallels between developing gay rights issues and civil rights milestones sparked by the likes of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. Some African American leaders object to that comparison. Others, including Coretta Scott King and Congressman John Lewis, disagree.
(The Washington Post has published a piece about the complexities of the interplay between black and gay issues.)
Analogies between race and orientation do fall short, if you ask me.
Better to explore the parallels between orientation and religion.
We choose our beliefs. For many of us, those choices are rooted in long-standing family and cultural traditions. Some of us have explored every possible faith, considering each option to be as valid as the next. Those of us who are more fundamentalist, on the other hand, are more likely to perceive that our faith options are limited by absolute truths.
Choosing our beliefs requires us to interpret factors beyond our control (family, culture, perceived truth) to determine how to express ourselves and how we will self-identify.
Orientation issues draw us through a similar process. We must interpret factors beyond our control (baseline attractions, faith and cultural traditions) to determine how we will express and identify ourselves. Gay-affirming and ex-gay-affirming interpretations come in as many flavors as there are unique people on the planet.
If our constitution says that the government has no business promoting or marginalizing any particular belief-based expression or identity, how is it possible that expressing or identifying with a gay-affirming worldview should mark some folks and families as separate, not quite equal?
The charges brought against these clergypersons brings this into focus: Instead of using some religious traditions as a battering ram, as many ex-gays and their supporters prefer, the sensible approach is to insist that government not act as the agent or promoter of any religion. Government which promotes a religion must also enforce that religion, as the district attorney in this case demonstrates.
Addendum, Mar. 17: In New York, more than 80 ordained clergy have joined the arrestees in pledging to perform same-sex religious ceremonies, at the risk of arrest.
The Southern Baptist Convention is pleased to see liberal churches’ civil liberties violated by “secular” authorities:
“We have an obligation to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,” Land said. “If these ministers feel this is an unjust law, then I’ll look forward to reading their letter from the Ulster County Jail.”
Here’s more irony: The Rev. Richard Land is the SBC’s “ethics and religious liberty” czar.
There is no such thing as sexual “orientation.” It was created by gay activists because they hated the term sexual “preference” or “choice” which is the truest identifier of homosexual behavior stemming from desires and actions.
Youre right, there is no comparison between a sex act and the color of one’s skin. just like there is no comparison between a horse with red hair and a fish with blue eyes.
Tell me ‘infomaniac’, if there’s no such thing as sexual orientation, then how do ‘ex-gays’ have a ‘preference’ or ‘choice’ over their attractions to the same-sex?
You seem to mix your apples and oranges between sexual orienation which has an innate foundation and sexual behaviour which is a choice. Afterall, do you choose to find the opposite sex attractive or even the odor of decaying garbage to be a wonderful fragrant?
‘Infomaniac’ misreads me. I said that civil rights for gays and lesbians boil down to a right to express and identify themselves without triggering interference or marginalization, and stronger parallels exist between that and religious expression and identification than race.
The parallels between orientation and race are still easy to identify, though.
Physical features like skin color have been blatant triggers of discrimination, but often the discrimination has been predicated on false race-based assumptions about intelligence, discomfort with alternate speech, or stereotypes about sexual behavior.
On the other side of the coin, no one is proposing that light-skinned mixed-race folks who were labeled “colored” in the 1950s were any less deserving of civil rights protections just because they were sometimes able to blend in with whites.
“Choice” — most social psychological studies of homosexuals indicate that sexual orientation is not experienced as a “choice”. I would go with that.
The cause is not that important as the experience.
However, if it it were a choice in some way does not mean that one would not have the right to make such a “choice” in regard to such a central aspect of one’s identity, just as one as the right of choice in regard to one’s religion, or one’s thoughts.
Finally, the most important issue brought up by the arrest of the two Unitarian ministers is the separation of Church and State and the role of the state in regulating marriage by the use of clergy. Boy, who would have thought that we glbt people would be the one’s arguing for our religious rights as well as the right to marry.
This really turns the issue on its head.
I say thank God for American religious pluralism and for the First Amendment.
I have to worry that the passage of any anti-gay marriage amendment would only lead to more such prosecutions – not to mention attempts to block even the celebration of “commitment ceremonies” in certain areas by anti-gay extremists.
Worse than that… an ammendment prohibiting “the legal apurtenances therof” could be used to abrogate ANY formal or written agreement between non-marrieds (not just gays)that approximates a benefit of marriage. Talk about unconstitutionally vague and over-broad.
I think I have to agree with DW. Who would think we would ever wind up in a freedom of religion argument. It is kinda interesting. The trouble with comparing gay rights to freedom of religion is that freedom of religion in this country is tied to the separation of church and state. So long as the state does not promote a religion or persecute someone on the simply on the bias of religion, then freedom of religion is maintained. Here we are asking for the state to grant a right, the right to marry. Which is a bit different than the just leave us alone in peace that freedom of religion usually requires. We are asking for more than just leave us alone. We are asking for our relationships to be respected and treated the same as a heterosexual one.
I agree 100% Jason. Its called special rights, not equal rights which gays already have.
Oh, yeah, the old “special rights” argument – give me a break! Jason, the government already recognizes the religious equivalent of straight marriages – it explicitly supports and encourages, through the tax system, people to enter into straight marriage, religious or civil at their discretion. The government refuses to grant ANY legal recognition to gay marriages (which are true marriages of the heart, the soul, the people involved – God knows a true marriage when He sees it), even when their religions recognize such marriages. So when a Unitarian minister marries a straight couple, the government recognizes that – when that same minister marries a gay couple, not only does the government not recognize it – they arrest her! That is religious persecution, pure and simple.
If the government must stay out of religion, it cannot a) use religious arguments on which to base laws, as the laws against gay marriage are based, and b) cannot persecute for private spiritual matters.
Infomaniac is not discussing on-topic issues, but rather hitting-and-running. That’s disruptive behavior, and if it continues, I’ll ban Maniac.
Infomaniac
Considering you wont provide a valid e-mail address “infomaniac” and you’re woefully inept at the concept of Censorship (which by definition is government imposed), I would suggest moving along.
This is a privately run blog which means that the owner of it can enforce any particular rules he or she wants.
You are free to start you own blog if you’d like and if I ever post there, feel free to ban me.
This situation is almost exactly analogous to a situation in Colonial America. There preachers could be flogged for preaching without a license. The result of a person witnessing such an event was Patrick Henry’s famous speech before the House of Burgesses, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”.
Preachers should be free to marry or refuse to marry as their consciences see fit. Whether the government recognizes such marriages is a different issue. But, here we have the government sticking themselves into the religious solemnization of marriage. Simply put, it is none of their business. This should be something we all can agree on, regardless of whether we believe same-sex marriage is appropriate or not.