That would be surprising! Refreshing, too!
On an issue as sensitive as [gay marriagte], knowing that Americans hold a wide range of views based on deeply held beliefs, maintaining our nation’s commitment to religious freedom is also vital. How religious institutions define and consecrate marriage has always been up to those institutions. Nothing about this decision – which applies only to civil marriages – changes that.
This from the man who said, during his Commencement address to the University of Notre Dame: Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree…” and then (whoops!) allowed an HHS Mandate that said, essentially, “all your conscience are belong to us.” Same administration that went ahead with a suit against the Lutheran church that would have dictated to churches who they might call “minister.”
Yeah. I totally believe Obama will respect the churches on same sex marriage. Let’s see what this profoundly evolved man said at the beginning of his statement, shall we?
I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. This was discrimination enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people. The Supreme Court has righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it. We are a people who declared that we are all created equal — and the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.
So…yeahhhh…he’s not going to accuse the churches of discrimination, or of treating anyone like “lesser class” of citizens. That script isn’t going to be written at all.
Oops, except here is what someone said to me about a year ago: “it’s ridiculous to assume that churches will be forced to perform same sex marriages if they don’t want to. Churches will be free to be as hateful and bigoted as they want to be. No one is going to sue them over it.”
Yeahhhhh….just like no one was going to force them to either arrange gay adoptions or close up shop, allow contraception and abortion or stop working against human trafficking, pay for sterilizations, contraception, abortions or face really, ruinous fines.
And if you think people aren’t going to flee from “hateful, bigoted” churches into the safer, easier, more culturally acceptable one to come, think again. Church suppression will happen whether the gay community actually wants it to, or not. The church is just that charged, and the government is just that cynical.
Once again, the church is a “sign of contradiction’. We are in the middle of an American version of the English Reformation, where an issue of marriage and sexual license will be used to eventually dismantle and suppress one church while establishing another. We simply haven’t come across Thomas More, yet.
I wonder who will be the turbulent priest who needs getting rid of?
As Mark Shea says, We’ll see.
UPDATE:
Deacon Greg says Pay attention to what Obama is not saying
UPDATE II:
Someone reminded me of this: who was prescient, and what will come?
Related: Lori on Religious Liberty