Gay Marriage And Religious Freedom


This wasn't supposed to happen:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91486340

"Our law against discrimination does not allow [the group] to use
those personal preferences, no matter how deeply held, and no matter —
even if they're religiously based — as a grounds to discriminate,"
Lustberg says. "Religion shouldn't be about violating the law."

The Methodist organization responded that it was their property, and
the First Amendment protects their right to practice their faith
without government intrusion. But Lustberg countered that the pavilion
is open to everyone — and therefore the group could no more refuse to
accommodate the lesbians than a restaurant owner could refuse to serve
a black man. That argument carried the day. The state revoked the
organization's tax exemption for the pavilion area. Hoffman figures
they will lose $20,000."

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage16-2008may16,1,4027698.story

Although California marriage-equality leaders won’t say what impact
they expect the new decision to have on religious freedom, activists
in other states haven’t been so shy.

A representative of the largest Michigan gay-rights group, known as
the Triangle Foundation, and openly gay Washington State Sen. Ed
Murray both told me that any person who continues to conduct himself
as if what he thinks is God’s definition of marriage is correct,
instead of the gay community’s definition, should be fined, fired and
even jailed until he relents.

“If you are a public accommodation and you are open to anyone on Main
Street that means you must be open to everyone on Main Street. If they
don’t do it, that’s contempt and they will go to jail,” says the
Triangle Foundation’s Sean Kososky.

Sharon Malheiro, a lawyer and LGBT activist from Des Moines affiliated
with the state’s gay-marriage lobby, ONE-IOWA, told me that if a
teacher in a marriage-equality state taught that marriage is between a
man and a woman, “then it becomes a job performance issue” and the
school district should take appropriate action.

Michael Taylor-Judd, the president of the Legal Marriage Alliance of
Washington state, said if a newspaper writes that a given same-sex
marriage wasn’t really a marriage, “it is certainly in the realm of
possibility for someone to bring a [libel] suit, and quite possibly to
be successful.”

The Triangle Foundation’s Kososky agreed: “I would be sympathetic to
some damages.”

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...and yet we all knew it would happen. Gay rights activists in
Michigan campaigned against prop. 2 which would grant equality to all
regardless of race or sex. Those of us who support both gay rights
and religious freedom will sit back and watch these two groups attempt
to infringe on the other's freedoms.

-Tom Enright

.

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