Marriage: The Secular Institution

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

New York 2011.06.24

Washington 2012.02.08

Both Republican. I salute the Republicans who are starting to come around to recognizing the same-sex marriage debate for what it is: a debate over the right of the state to deny marriage licenses to couples based on the gender make-up of the couple.

Religions would not be required to perform services, just as right now they have the right to deny services to anybody, be they mixed-denomination or even mixed-race couples, and that was the only legally defensible objection they could possibly have for denying this right. The right of marriage does not derive from any religion in the United States, but purely from the legal authority of the states themselves.

A wedding of an opposite-sex couple presided over by a county clerk is every bit as legally valid and binding as one presided over by a clergyman, and to claim that marriage is a sacred institution or that religion has any special claim to it is an indefensible and grotesque argument that violates the separation of church and state that has been so carefully and clearly codified into the Constitution and which has worked to the benefit of the American republic for so long.

Comments

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

Yep, to his party's and the nation's (and, hell, the world's) detriment. We can still hope that rank and file Republicans start waking up to the problem.