government punishments and pressures reserved for racists” will be applied to
religious
communities if same-sex marriage becomes legal across the US, an openletter signed by leaders of some of the largest American religious
communities has said.
The letter, entitled
“Marriage and Religious Freedom: Fundamental Goods That Stand or Fall
Together,”, was issued to voice the shared concern of a range of religious
leaders for marriage and religious freedom.
It was published last
week. Signatories included the Catholic Archbishop of New
York, Timothy Dolan (pictured), Nathan J. Diament, Executive Director for Public
Policy Union of Orthodox Jewish
Congregations of America, Anglican Archbishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh and
Dr. Richard Land President of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious
Liberty Commission, as well as leaders from Evangelical, Lutheran, Mormon, and
Pentecostal communities in the United States.
The letter warned
that state sanctions against religious groups “will only grow more frequent and
more severe if civil ‘marriage’ is redefined in additional
jurisdictions.”
They continued: “For
then, government will compel special recognition of relationships that we the
undersigned religious leaders and the communities of faith that we represent
cannot, in conscience, affirm.
“Because law and
government not only coerce and incentivize but also teach, these sanctions would
lend greater moral legitimacy to private efforts to punish those who defend
marriage.”
The leaders also
disagreed with the suggestion that the principal threat to religious freedom is
the possibility of ministers being forced to officiate same-sex “weddings.” They
suggested that “the First Amendment (of the US Constitution) creates a very high
bar to such attempts”.
Instead, the leaders
wrote: “We believe the most urgent peril is this: forcing or pressuring both
individuals and religious organisations—throughout their operations, well beyond
religious ceremonies—to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of
marital sexual conduct.
“There is no doubt
that the many people and groups whose moral and religious convictions forbid
same-sex sexual conduct will resist the compulsion of the law, and church-state
conflicts will result.”
They added that
“these conflicts bear serious consequences.”
They wrote: “They
will arise in a broad range of legal contexts, because altering the civil
definition of ‘marriage’ does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands,
at once. By a single stroke, every law where rights depend on marital
status—such as employment discrimination, employment benefits, adoption,
education, healthcare, elder care, housing, property, and taxation—will change
so that same-sex sexual relationships must be treated as if they were marriage.
“That requirement, in
turn, will apply to religious people and groups in the ordinary course of their
many private or public occupations and ministries—including running schools,
hospitals, nursing homes and other housing facilities, providing adoption and
counseling services, and many others.”
The leaders warned
that redefining marriage has consequences for the religious freedom of all
Americans and urged civic leaders to defend marriage so as also to defend
religious liberty.
“We especially urge
those entrusted with the public good to support laws that uphold the
time-honored definition of marriage, and so avoid threatening the religious
freedom of countless institutions and citizens in this country,” the religious
leaders said. “Marriage and religious freedom are both deeply woven into the
fabric of this nation.”
