Personally, I do not feel that the church should feel
threatened by the legalization of gay marriage. I do, however, think the church
should not be required by the law to perform marriage ceremonies
indiscriminately to both heterosexual and homosexual couples. Discrimination,
while a taboo today, is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be, but not always.
Performing marriage ceremonies, in my view, is an act of service or charity
done by the church, and I don't believe the government should have any place in
determining which people receive charities from which people. I think if a
denomination decides that it is okay for its clergy to perform homosexual
unions, then it has the right to do that. But if another denomination believes
such a thing to be against the views and practices of their religion, then they
should not be required by law to do so. Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, after
all...
I think that discrimination is key in our lives. We should love all
people, but government cannot make us do it. It can pass civil liberties laws,
which are a good thing I might add, but it can't make us love our neighbor as
ourselves. We should have the legal right to withhold charity from whomever we
please... because its charity. The question is, should we withhold this charity
from gay couples who want to get married? And that certainly depends on the
situation - just like any marriage. The choice should be up to the
denominations, not the government. Seriously though, what gay couple in their
right minds would ask, say, a Southern Baptist pastor to marry them? Any such
move would be clearly political, and if they really wanted to get married, I
would hope that they would be sincere enough to look for someone willing to
perform such a ceremony. It would be wrong for anyone to insist that a pastor
or church do something that they believe to be immoral - for some pastors that
would be to perform a gay marriage, and for others it would be to deny a gay
couple a marriage ceremony. Any sort of blanket law fails to understand the
scope of the complexities of human existence.
