Alan is factually right about his perception.
The polls have consistently shown that if you phrase a question about gay
marriage with a religious liberty guarantee protecting churches the pro-gay
marriage cohort jumps by 14% (from 29-43% of those polled). Most come from the
33% of "support civi
As a hypothetical question, I think there is an extraordinarily slight
possibility that churches or clergy will ever be required to host or officiate
the marriages of same sex couples. But this issue isn't being raised as a
hypothetical question. It is being argued as a basis for denying same-se
I can't even recall any situation where a church refusing to perform an
interracial marriage has even become an issue. But this is almost certainly
not because no church would refuse to perform such a marriage. Surely those
churches identified with the Christian Identity movement would refuse to
pe
One way to think about this is doctrine v. realism. The gay rights movement
(and most of the civil rights movement) say that all civil rights are of equal
status and discrimination against gays is indistinguishable from discrimination
against blacks. Bob Jones says charities that discriminat
How do list members see the Bob Jones issue playing out? To the extent that gay
rights issues are assimilated to issues involving racial discrimination, there
seems to be a serious possibility that nonprofit institutions (including
churches) that discriminate against gay relationships or against
I think Brad's fears are unfounded because they are based on implausible
speculation. I would note one point, though. For such fears to come true,
it would seem that courts and the rest of society would need to lose sight
of the critical distinctions between religious marriage and civil marriage
I think Brad's comparison to interracial marriage in the context of churches
being forced to perform gay marriages cuts against his argument. There are
certainly churches that do refuse to perform interracial marriages in this
country, probably a whole lot of them. Do you know of any case in which
I take your point Brad, but where is any evidence, other than perhaps
Loving, that any such thing has been or is being attempted? And where
is the argument being made other than by you and a few from that anti-
gay rights perspective that this is even a remote possibility? Even
if there ar
