Even if you cannot imagine how. Excerpts:
...There was a moment during Sunday’s victory lap on the News shows for gay marriage and its media allies who support it that was very telling. Bob Schieffer the oldest and fairest (and that’s not saying much) of the Sunday Morning Hosts in the MSM had just finished speaking with Ted Olsen and brought on Tony Perkins of the Family Research Counsel to talk the Gay Marriage Issue.
TONY PERKINS: … We’re already seeing bakers and florists and photographers forced to participate in same-sex marriages under the threat of law and in some cases even jail. I can’t think of anything that’s more un-American than that. So I think as Americans see that there’s a lot more to same-sex marriage than simply two people who love each other that they’ll have time to reconsider this and– and– and decide whether or not we want to trade fundamental freedoms of speech and religion for the right of two people who love each other, which they can do now. They can live together, but can they redefine marriage in the rest of society with it?
Now to us in Massachusetts and who have been following the ride of the tolerance police, those sentences are nothing extraordinary but Bob Schieffer had no idea what Tony Perkins was talking about.
BOB SCHIEFFER: How is it that bakers and florists are being forced to participate in this? I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here.
Perkins then educates him.
TONY PERKINS: Well, we’re seeing in Washington State, Colorado, and some of the other states that have these anti– anti-discrimination statutes that are being imposed that when a same sex couple comes and says “I want you to take pictures of my wedding or I want you to bake a cake.” And they say, look, my religious convictions will not allow me participate in that, they’re literally being sued by the government, not the individuals, and they’ve even been adjudicated in such places as New Mexico. So we’re going to see a loss of religious freedom. There is no question about it. It’s already happening.
Schieffer seems to be totally caught off guard by this, as evidenced by his hesitation in the following question.
BOB SCHIEFFER: How many — how many lawsuits have been filed on that? Because I must say this is under my radar. I haven’t — I haven’t heard this...
Set aside for a moment the willingness of
some activists to
outright attack people. Let us consider what has actually been done to those who dissent from the notion that state-recognized gay marriage is even possible, let alone desirable.
From Elizabeth Scalia, on Justice Antonin Scalia (no relation, so far as I know) and his dissent. Excerpts:
It was easy to miss but on June 30 the New York Post carried brief editorial remarks by Michael Goodwin that read:
Count me among those cheering the Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage. At least I was cheering until I read the part of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion where he claims the law he struck down was motivated by hate . . .[that] the law inflicts an “injury and indignity” on gay Americans and reflected a “bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group.” By extension of that logic, those who still oppose same-sex marriage are bigots.
Yhy yes, that’s precisely why Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissent that is being called “intemperate,” “blistering,” “flaming,” and “dripping with contempt and sarcasm,” wrote:
In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. [It is to] “dis-parage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homo-sexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race...
Kennedy’s opinion makes it clear that the days of defending the freedom of others to think and speak outside of the ever-narrowing corridors of what is permissible are numbered; the line of delineation he sketches out is stark, bare, and singular: there will be one (correct) thought or there will be Bad People.
What an illiberal notion!
From Mark Steyn, in a piece written during the Supreme Court's public hearings on the matter. Excerpts:
...Very quickly, traditional religious teaching on homosexuality will be penned up within church sanctuaries, and “faith-based” ancillary institutions will be crowbarred into submission. What’s that? I’m “scaremongering”? Well, it’s now routine in Canada, where Catholic schools in Ontario are obligated by law to set up Gay-Straight Alliance groups, where a Knights of Columbus hall in British Columbia was forced to pay compensation for declining a lesbian wedding reception, and where the Reverend Stephen Boisson wrote to his local paper objecting to various aspects of “the homosexual agenda” and was given a lifetime speech ban by the Alberta “Human Rights” Tribunal ordering him never to utter anything “disparaging” about homosexuals ever again, even in private. Although his conviction was eventually overturned by the Court of Queen’s Bench after a mere seven-and-a-half years of costly legal battle, no Canadian newspaper would ever publish such a letter today. The words of Chief Justice Burger would now attract a hate-crime prosecution in Canada, as the Supreme Court in Ottawa confirmed only last month...
Was there any hint that the pro-gay marriage push may go in this direction?
Yes. Excerpts:
Southern Baptist Convention and Catholic belief statements on homosexuality and "gay marriage" were read Wednesday during the California Prop 8 trial as examples of prejudice and bias against homosexuals -- a courtroom moment conservative attorneys say underscores that religious liberty is at stake. The exchange on day three of the federal trial occurred when San Francisco attorney Therese Stewart asked Yale University Professor George Chauncey -- both of whom support "gay marriage" -- to read the respective religious denomination documents. She then asked him if they derived from stereotypical and prejudice views of homosexuals, and he replied "yes." At Stewart's prodding, Chauncey then said views on racial segregation also were built upon deeply held religious views. Alliance Defense Fund attorney Jordan Lorence, who was in the courtroom, called the exchange "chilling"...
Take a look at Jennifer Roback Morse's discussion of the legal consequences of putting same-sex marriage on par with monogamous heterosexual marriage.
No comments:
Post a Comment