Southern Baptist pastors can refuse to marry anyone for any reason. Unbeliever’s, one believer one not, divorced, same sex..........
Southern Baptist pastors can refuse to marry anyone for any reason.
The more troubling question is this -— WILL CHRISTIAN ORGANIZATIONS ( e.g. Hospitals, Not-for-profits, etc ) be FORCED BY LAW to pay for the benefits of the “partners” of gays who are employed in their organizations ?
If there is coercion, then we are not a free country any longer.
The ramifications go beyond simply being “tolerant”.
Sorry, but while that may seem to be required by “free expression of religion,” you will wake up one day and see them forced to marry gay couples or pay a penalty, just as the innkeepers in Illinois recently or the photographer in New Mexico or the fertility physician in Los Angeles etc. were forced either to aid and abet sodomy or pay a fine or other penalty.
Gays are a protected class, which means refusing to do what they want is hateful, bigoted, discriminatory. They can and will pass laws that penalize such refusals. It will happen. Get out of fantasy-land and smell the coffee. It’s coming. They will first intimidate the fence-straddlers with minor measures,then bring out the big guns for those who continue to resist.
Yes, we can and will resist. They can’t force us. But they can and will make the price for resisting severe.