Gov. Shutdown?

[Jonathan Whatley]

The Golden Rule can only go so far in regards to morality. During the fight for gay marriage last year everyone kept saying that if you love each other, why shouldn’t you be able to get married? That seemed hard to refute without bringing up religion.

Many, major churches, synagogues, etc. support same-sex marriage; for years they petitioned the government to be able to perform them. Take the church near me, for instance, with a rainbow flag on a sign about welcoming all, which rents space in its basement to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. It's an American Baptist church founded in 1844. Old Cambridge Baptist Church.

I don't like the government stepping down on a single winning side in the religious disagreements between these on the one hand and the churches, synagogues, etc. – also many and major – who oppose same-sex marriage on the other. There are also honest dissidents from their congregations' positions within congregations on each side.

I think the good answer consistent with basic rights is for government to stand out of religion's way and allow congregations whose faiths guide them to perform same-sex marriages to perform them, while guaranteeing that congregations whose faiths guide them not to perform same-sex marriages will never be made to. Civil marriage officiants like city clerks shouldn't require any religious-based test.

Are there small religious groups who would perform marriages clearly objectionable to obvious ethical rules and to most people in our culture, you and I included, such as child marriages? Yes. This isn't an argument against same-sex marriage. It isn't about same-sex marriage. It's a subject-changer to something else.

More like this: Equal Marriage (me and others on degreediscussion.com, thread started November 16, 2008)