Seeing as how some people's religious views support gay marriage, the logical and honest approach would be to allow it to be up to the individuals and churches to decide who they want to marry. It's idiotic that the religious right tries to claim the 1st amendment protects THEIR religious views on marriage, but no one elses. By using the government to ban people from expressing their pro gay religious behavior, they are ironically doing the exact opposite of respecting the constitution. It's no different than banning Muslim prayers because Christians find it a sin to pray to a different god. Allowing it is not endorsing it or forcing you to do it - it's protecting the religious expression of others. I don't know why pro gay lawyers aren't using freedom of religion against them. Thoughts?
Your first expression"seeing as how some peoples religious beliefs support gay marriage" is enough to tell me you equate the study of a divine guidance with a hobby.
When did Christians ban muslim prayer? - - - Updated - - - And are you equating homosexual marriage as a religious freedom? Homosexuality is a religion now?
How about we keep religion out of it completely? How about we simply accept that marriage is a social contract between consenting adults, and no one outside the people involved in the marriage should have any say in it.
Just to be consistant- the answer is no. I believe that gay marriage should be legal, but that has nothing to do with the First Amendment.
It was sort of alluded to in the oral arguments for either the DOMA or Prop 8 case - I don't recall which and I don't feel like parsing hundreds of pages again to try to find it. As for why it's not used as one of the primary arguments: The law doesn't prevent churches from blessing same-sex unions, only the recognition of them by government. So it's not an argument that would hold up in court.
I wouldn't be so fast to say that it has nothing to do with the First Amendment, since it is a religious practice within some churches, and the government shouldn't control which words people use to refer to their unions. We just don't have a situation that infringes on First Amendment rights in the law at the moment.
It's not rocket science. The rites blessing a marriage are a religious practice, and since some churches do bless same-sex unions, that practice would indeed be a religious freedom.
Marriage is actually considered a constitutional right the supreme court ruled that it was one of the fundamental rights that pre-date the founding of the United States. The constitution does not actually limit this to marriage between one man and one woman, and so polygamy and same sex marriage are both consitutional, but it does not forbid states from limiting marriage to that of one man and one woman either. So, what needs to happen is that we need to further amend the constitution to clearly state that the government does not have the authority to dictate whether consenting adults are allowed to marry, and that no law may be passed that limits the marriage rights of consenting adults in any way, as long as all involved in a given marriage are consenting adults.
Churches can do whatever they want. http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/a-secular-case-against-gay-marriage/ Gay marriage has nothing to do with religion and isn't protected by the 1st or the 14th or any amendment.
wtf are you talking about? When did I save they did? Is this your first time reading an analogy? Is going to church a religion? Is praying a religion? Is fasting a religion? Is any act or belief related to a religion itself a religion? lol That's fine, but the fact remains that gay marriage is a religious belief held by some, and if anti-gay people are going to argue this on the grounds of protecting THEIR religious beliefs, it just backfires.
I'm not sure what the point of this response is. Churches can marry gay people if they want. Like you said, they can do whatever they want - marry gays being one of those things. And I can post a thousand links to secular and religious arguments for gay marriage, but this is a discussion forum - not a post other people's arguments because we're lazy or incapable of writing out our own - forum. Straight marriage has nothing to do with religion either, then.
