Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Culture news: Marriage and religious freedom will stand or fall together

Matthew J. Franck has written a very perceptive piece in which he describes how the issues of marriage and religious freedom are intertwined.  He writes,

"After all, if redefining marriage to include same-sex couples accords with justice and moral truth, there is no good reason for the new legal order to make room for “conscientious” religious dissenters, for clearly their consciences are malformed and unworthy of respect. Thus the fate of religious freedom, for scores of millions of Americans, stands or falls with the fate of conjugal marriage itself."

He goes on to say near the end of his piece:

 "And after all, if the new meaning of marriage represents progress toward a more just society, why shouldn’t the coercive power of the state be deployed in all these ways? Religious freedom has its limits, it will be said. Correction: This is being said, in all the liberal-dominated legislatures where marriage has been redefined in recent years, which is why so little accommodation is being made for religious conscience, and why such tiny accommodations as have been made are almost certainly doomed to be evanescent, repealed in coming years as the vestiges of old compromises with backwardness that are no longer necessary."

Franck sets forth different areas of life where the redefinition of marriage will directly impact the Church and religious freedom.

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