The (Other) Obvious Reason Churches Won’t Be Forced To Marry Anyone

(Credit: CNN, Twitter)

It’s been 5 days since the Supreme Court’s historic decision that struck down same-sex marriage bans across the country and panic levels in conservative Christian circles are still high.

On Monday, I joined the chorus of countless others trying to assuage the fears of my conservative neighbors by calling attention to the fact that in states like mine where same-sex marriage has been legal for years, churches haven’t been forced to marry anyone they didn’t want to marry and civilization itself has yet to crumble.

The chorus fell on deaf ears.

I understand that anecdotal information isn’t always that persuasive (and shouldn’t be), even when it’s riddled with things like indisputable facts and historical reality. So, in a perhaps vain hope of calming fears, I want to offer two other, admittedly obvious, reasons churches need not fear Uncle Sam showing up at their door to force them to marry folks they don’t want to.

First up, the First Amendment.

The fear-mongering rhetoric the flowed freely Friday (even from the dissenters on the Supreme Court) declared that the Court had completely ignored the Constitution, created a new law whole cloth, and would eventually ignore the First Amendment as well to start forcing churches to perform same-sex weddings.

It’s hard to know where to start with everything that’s wrong with the misinformation being spread in recent days, but this issue of ignoring the Constitution seems to be a consistent theme, so let’s start there.

No, the majority of the Supreme Court did not ignore the Constitution. In fact, their opinion was based explicitly and specifically on their interpretation of the Constitution, in particular the 14th Amendment. Obviously, not everyone agrees with their interpretation (thus the reason it’s called an opinion), but it’s nonsensical to claim they ignored the Constitution to create a new law when the complete opposite is true: they interpreted the Constitution to strike down laws that were unconstitutional.

Also, unconstitutional: telling people how to practice their faith.

The First Amendment has and continues to do a pretty stellar job of protecting churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc. from the government stepping in and telling them how to practice their faith. No Supreme Court decision that I can’t think of – including this one – has made any headway in the government’s supposed effort to infringe upon those freedoms.

It’s true the Supreme Court redefined marriage, but they redefined marriage for the State, not the Church. Unfortunately, since the days of the Moral Majority (though probably even further back), American Christianity has been deeply wedded to the State. So much so that it often forgets where one begins and the other ends. And so we’ve reached a point where it’s assumed that what is true for one, must be true for the other and vice versa.

Nothing could be further from the truth, both for the United States and for the Christian faith. In the United States, the Constitution separates church from state. In Christianity, Jesus is Lord, not Caesar.

But regardless of how we got here, it’s this ideological quagmire that sparks irrational panic that overlooks a simple, but important fact: the Supreme Court ruled on the actions of the state, not the theology of the Church. States issues marriage licenses. Churches perform marriage ceremonies. Neither actually needs the other, which is why the Court’s ruling on laws affecting state issued marriage licenses has no affect whatsoever on the marriage ceremonies performed by churches or any other religious institution.

Under the protection of the First Amendment, churches can continue to refuse to marry same-sex couples or anyone else they don’t want to marry because they’re not in the business of issuing marriage licenses, the state is. It’s no different than a church refusing to baptize someone or allow someone to participate in the Eucharist. Why a church would ever do either is beyond me, but like marriage, these things are rites of the Church, they’re part of practicing the faith which is protected by the First Amendment. Which means Churches can continue deciding who participates in the life of the Church and who doesn’t just like they always have.

Which leads us to the other obvious reason churches won’t be forced to marry anyone.

People generally don’t ask people who don’t like them to be involved in their wedding.

You see, there’s a certain arrogance in the panic of certain churches over the Supreme Court decision, namely the assumption that same-sex couples will inherently want to be married by theses simply by virtue of who they are. It’s kind of ridiculous when you think about it. If same-sex folks aren’t showing up at these churches already (because they’re clearly not welcome), it’s highly unlikely they’re going to suddenly appear out of thin air and demand that a pastor who neither knows them nor “approves of their lifestyle” will conduct a ceremony of such profound personal significance in their lives.

Weddings just don’t work that way, at least not usually.

When I got married, my wife and I were very intentional about who we asked to perform the ceremony. We asked two people to officiate together: our pastor at the time and my wife’s grandfather (who was/is a minister). Both men had/have played important roles in our lives and meant/mean a lot to us. It made perfect sense for to ask them to oversee such an important moment in our lives.

Likewise, when I had the honor of officiating a wedding just a few months ago, the bride asked me and everyone else in the ceremony to be involved in the wedding because of how much we all meant to her and vice versa. She was our Sunday School teacher growing up and as such it was an amazing and humbling opportunity to give back to someone who had given us so much.

That’s how weddings tend to work. The people getting married (regardless of gender) invite people they love and care about to be involved and if it’s a religious ceremony, they tend to ask pastors they love and care about who also love and care about them to conduct the ceremony.

A couple might hire an officiant they don’t know if they’re not particularly religious, but even in that case, couples don’t tend to seek out people who don’t like them, who treat them like second class citizens undeserving of equal rights, who damn them to hell for not loving the right people to perform their wedding.

It just doesn’t happen.

I know, I know. Even though you “disagree with their lifestyle” (Please stop staying that, by the way. It makes no sense.) you love them anyway. I’m sure you do, but denying them equal opportunities at church (to say nothing of equal rights), freaking out on Facebook about the downfall of civilization after the SCOTUS decision last Friday, and damning the LGBT community to hell because of who they are kinda, sorta sends a different message. Which means whatever sincerity there is in those claims of love gets lost in a whirlwind of rhetoric and actions that sends a very different message, one that makes most LGBT couples decidedly less interested in having your church officiate their wedding.

In other words, legal arguments aside, churches worried about being forced to marry same-sex couples need not fear.

They’ve already done a great job of making it crystal clear LGBT couples aren’t welcome at their church to begin with.

And people usually don’t like to get married where they’re not welcome.

 

[READ THIS BEFORE YOU LEAVE A COMMENT: “But I heard about this person being sued for refusing to perform a wedding!!” I’m sure you did. 3 things: 1)Anybody can try to sue anybody for anything in this country. That doesn’t mean the plaintiff will win or that the lawsuit will even be heard by the court and not tossed out immediately…2)For-profit officiants are not the same thing as pastors. The former is open to discrimination lawsuits because they are conducting business, not practicing their faith. If you can’t see the difference between the two, I can’t help you…3)If it happened in another country, it’s irrelevant to the discussion here for a litany of reasons.]