RE: Ministers Threatened with Jail/Fines For Refusing to Officiate at Gay Weddings
October 27, 2014 at 4:31 pm
(This post was last modified: October 27, 2014 at 4:36 pm by Mister Agenda.)
(October 23, 2014 at 8:29 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I'm with the theist on this one.
The service this chapel (even if it's legally registered as a for-profit business)provides is clearly not only about filling out paperwork: it is providing an EXPERIENCE or THEME-- the experience of being married in an environment compatible with the believers of a particular religion. You can't go to an amusement park which advertises the experience of riding roller coasters, and demand that they provide the experience of water slides; you don't get to say that they are discriminating against those looking for the experence of waterslides, because they never intended to build their business on that theme.
If you are talking about officially eliminating religion in the US, okay-- have that talk. But enforcing civil liberties by legislating the behavior of religious businesses surely has to be seen as self-contradictroy. Since there are plenty of non-religious institutions capable of performing a legal marriage, there's really no good reason to force religious institutions to perform that role for any particular couple.
They performed non-Christian weddings. They were fine with civil ceremonies. Suddenly they're singing a different tune. A church can refuse to marry a couple because they're mixed race. A Vegas quicky marriage chapel can't. Do you have an argument for this chapel not serving gay couples that couldn't also be used to allow them to refuse to serve blacks or mixed race couples or Jews?
Local character Maurice Bessinger tried the religious argument for not serving blacks and lost. Why should he have been forced to serve blacks if he could have refused to serve gays?
(October 25, 2014 at 10:58 am)Blackout Wrote: To be honest, I'm not sure if Christianity condemns interracial marriages or not so I cannot talk about the problem - But when exercising freedom of religion aggregated with religious institutions such as churches, an individual shouldn't be forced to marry gay people... But of course, if we're talking about civil marriage, Dura Lex Sed Lex.
No one's being forced to marry anybody. The most they might have to do is to allow a gay wedding to take place in their chapel and let someone else perform the ceremony.
(October 25, 2014 at 11:01 am)Jenny A Wrote: “However, if they do non-religious ceremonies as well, they would be violating the anti-discrimination ordinance,” Morales said. “It's the religious activity that's being protected."
And they were doing non-religious ceremonies until about a minute ago.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
