Visitors line up outside U.S. Supreme Court in Washington Oct. 6, 2014, to get a seat inside to watch oral arguments on the first day of the new term. (CNS/Jonathan Ernst, Reuters)
Posted on 02/19/2015 3:47:49 PM PST by NYer
The likelihood that the Supreme Court next June will announce its discovery of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage raises an obvious question for the Catholic Church: What do we do now?
Two steps come to mind. First, press for strong legal protections for individuals and institutions conscientiously unable to cooperate with a legal regime that requires sweeping concessions to the LGBT agenda. Second, give serious thought to the possibility that the Church should quit serving as the government’s agent in legitimating marriages.
That firm decisions at the top levels of the Church are urgently needed couldn’t be more obvious. Consider a Washington Post editorial trashing Alabama authorities for resisting a Supreme Court order on behalf of gay marriage in that state. The court told Alabama to get cracking even though the court itself remains months away from a constitutional ruling.
“The [gay rights] movement is on the verge of a historic victory,” the February 11 editorial declared. “But that doesn’t mean activists and allies have succeeded in transforming the culture that for so long denied gay men and lesbians equal treatment.”
Transforming culture? Of course. The Post editorial noted some steps to take.
“Marriage equality is just one of many goals. State legislatures and federal lawmakers need to be convinced to enhance civil rights protections for gay men and lesbians—prohibiting employment discrimination, for example, or discrimination in business transactions. In places like Alabama, that will take a lot more effort.”
One form it’s already taken can be seen not in conservative Alabama but libertarian Oregon. There the Christian owners of a bakery were found guilty of violating anti-discrimination law by declining—in 2013, before the state even recognized same-sex marriage—to supply a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. Bakery owners Aaron and Melissa Klein cited religious convictions as their reason.
According to the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, the Kleins face fines as high as $150,000. The actual amount will be decided in March. A hundred and fifty thousand for a wedding cake? Is this the Post’s “a lot more effort”? Iron-clad legal protection against state coercion to fall in line with gay marriage is desperately needed for individuals like the Kleins and institutions like the Catholic Church.
It won’t be easy. The Catholic News Agency (CNA) reports that the Ford and Arcus Foundations have given several million dollars to the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups to devise ways of blocking the religious freedom argument for not cooperating with same-sex marriage. If religious groups want First Amendment protections, they’ll have to fight.
Urgently needed, too, is consideration of whether the Church should stop registering marriages for the state. Increasingly, it becomes hard to see how the Church can continue as government’s collaborator in this matter once the Supreme Court makes it final that what the government means by marriage is opposed to what the Church means.
Confusion about the meaning of marriage is already widespread. It’s the underlying issue in the crisis of marriage that last fall’s Synod of Bishops on marriage should have confronted and didn’t. But the synod’s omission is no reason for the Church to persist in a relationship with government that deepens the confusion.
A two-step procedure—come by the courthouse for a civil ceremony that satisfies the state, then come to church for a sacramental marriage—may sound cumbersome, but it’s an opportunity for catechesis on what marriage means. As secular America heads down the same-sex path, the Church now must go another, better way.
Catholic ping!
What do you mean "if"?
Be prepared to have the sodomites banging(no pun intended) on the church doors. They’ll want to marry in the churches that don’t approve of it. And if the ministers of these churches refuse, it will be like the Christian Baker, Florist, Photographer etc.
Oh, God I wish this had ANY chance of being implemented by the church. As soon as the rulings come down, what should happen is all churches simply refuse to officiate government weddings at all, but I highly doubt this will happen.
So they determine that same sex marriage is okay...
It doesn’t matter what a secular entity “determines”...they are NOT married....
We have a same sex couple in our family who recently got “married” but regardless of what they say...
They are NOT married....
We love them but they ain’t married.....
It will tell us:
1) the probable sexual orientation of the judges or the majority thereof
2) the homosexuals are grossly over-represented if they comprise only 2 - 3 % of the population
3) we need new judges who represent the people of the United States not just the 2 - 3 % and their supporters (that haven’t had children yet), and/or
4) someone is working an agenda here; destroying the institution of marriage, population reduction, personal bias, etc...
Stop getting marriage licenses.
We all know he will be the one deciding this case. He's become a one-man Constitutional Convention.
Pass a no umbra/penumbra Constitutional Amendment? Try Roberts for treason?
People aren’t bothering to get married anyway, these days ... and it’s in larger and larger numbers.
Regarding activist justices possibly ignoring the 10th Amendment by giving the green like to constitutionally unprotected gay agenda issues like gay marriage, please consider the following.
When state lawmakers actually read the Constitution that they swear to protect and defend, they knew that they could effectively overturn unpopular Supreme Court case decisions by appropriately amending the Constitution. In fact, the 11th, 17th, 19th Amendments and others are examples of the states doing so.
Why would that change anything, and how many Catholics would want to be in non-legal marriages?
Not many, a quick example is Catholics in the military.
Besides most Catholics vote for and support gay marriage.
Most Catholics aren’t real Catholics. Look at Piglosi
Big difference between shacking up and being married by a church but refusing the license.
The Catholic Church will not comply.
I don’t understand how they can rule on this as marriage a religious matter, ordained by God. It’s a violation of the First Amendment.
Regarding activist justices possibly ignoring 10th Amendment-protected state powers by giving the green light to constitutionally unprotected gay marriage, please consider the following.
The states need to amend the Constitution to give 2/3 of the states the power to nullify Supreme Court case decisions and to also remove activist justices from the bench on a 2/3 vote of the states.
Marriage has been around a lot longer than big government. In even the most backward societies, marriage has been recognized as a union between two people of the opposite sex. It wasn’t until government decided it needed to find a way to tax the union that it became a requirement to register it. Even now, in more remote parts of Alaska - and I’m sure also in other similar places, clergy offers a purely religious wedding, with the understanding that it can be registered with the proper government agency when it becomes possible.
Any search of ones ancestry will inevitably require going through Church registries of births, deaths and weddings. Personally, I see little problem with cutting the government out of the picture again. I don’t think I would want to stand in line at a County Clerk’s office to get a marriage license if a gay couple were there for the same thing. Let them register with the state and leave me to deal with God.
No law can change my physiological response such that seeing some hairy-backed dude triggers sexual arousal.
But who knows? Maybe repealing the War on Drugs would turn everyone into drug addicts.
I just don't know how to live anymore, without someone telling me...
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