Posted on 10/19/2014 4:13:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
And that is, unfortunately, the necessary response. The church will have to divorce the civil marriage from the religious and remove the basis for the legal complaint. The legally binding contract is what happens at the courthouse. The church only does religious ceremonies.
Then the reply can be: “Hey, don’t complain, you were “married” at the courthouse! Your civil “marriage” IS the marriage. What we do here has nothing to do with you!”
The relevant question is whether the couple are really ordained in a recognized denomination or if they got mail-order ordination into a sham church-in-name-only. Since the highly regarded Alliance Defending Freedom took their case, I'm betting they are actually ordained from a reputable organization.
Homoactivists tried this in Canada years ago, jailing pastors for preaching the Bible against homosexuality. Eventually, public outcry overturned their "human rights" statute. Same in Norway, where a preacher was jailed decades ago for the same "crime." It won't last long here, either. It's a bridge too far.
That’s probably what is going to end up happening, in my opinion, either as a protest to protect themselves and to demonstrate what the faith means by marriage is different than whatever the state happens to be calling it at the time, or as a punishment imposed by the state for not accepting it.
When certain faiths didn’t accept divorce and remarriage or really easy divorce and remarriage, there were no punishments. It was a less litigious time, and divorce and remarriage wasn’t looked at as a ‘civil right’ in any case. But ‘gay marriage’ is framed as a civil rights struggle. Even separating from the civil aspect might not be enough. It’s all wide open, nobody predicted 31 states having legal gay marriage by 2014 20 years ago. You probably would have had a hard time even explaining the concept to someone 50 years ago.
Freegards
.......I think this case in Idaho is one more illustration of why “Liberals” and “Liberalism” (read EPA, Green, Marxism, Socialism etc; etc;) vs Conservatism are THE ISSUE!
Unless someone has a better idea, and simply put as possible, I see NO WAY to reconcile our differences (non violently) other than geography. Meaning, historically blue states go their way and historically red states go their way.
Yes, that means break up of the existing U.S. into other than one (DC) jurisdiction on Social Policy. Foreign Policy and Defense can still be one and perhaps there is a flat tax for that component of government. But, the old idea of a General Fund for lobbyists and politicians, liberals, socialists and welfare queens and kings to live like Kings on has got to go!! Wars HAVE been fought over that issue!
Project Veritas needs to get on this.
So get a man and a woman, have them act very drunk, and walk into a chapel and try to get married. See what happens.
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