"Jesus would rather kill, not marry, gay people" - Franklin Graham

[robvalue]

I think there's two possibilities here.

1) He knows he can't come out and say what he really thinks, because it's unacceptable by today's standards (or at least on this forum); so he uses smokescreens, like you say. I wonder if he's more forthcoming when surrounded by like-minded Christians.

2) He has an inner battle between the religious part of him that's expected to oppose gay marriage, and the part of him that feels there's something unacceptable about doing so. Therefor his dissonance manifests as tying the issues up in knots and conflating all these different aspects, so he doesn't have to take ownership of the conclusion.

---

PS: There is a third possibility that he really doesn't understand how any of this works, but I find that hard to believe. I'm coming down more on the side of him being against a secular government as a whole.