Over the last week, there were three major victories for gay activists: The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled that there were no constitutional grounds to ban same-sex marriage; the Vermont legislature passed a same-sex marriage bill and then overrode the governor’s veto; and Washington, D.C. indicated that it would begin to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. What does this mean for those who insist that “marriage” can only be defined as the formal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife?
As Orwellian as this might sound, the progression is clear and undeniable. First, gay activists came out of the closet and began to demand their rights (1969 was the landmark year). Then they demanded that conservatives (especially those with a Judeo-Christian moral foundation) recognize those rights. Their next goal was to take away the rights of conservatives – the rights of freedom of conscience and freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The final goal is to put conservatives in the closet, and it is happening right before our eyes. Simply stated, if homosexuality is legitimate in every respect, then any opposition to homosexuality is illegitimate.
Make no mistake about this: Where “gay marriage” becomes the law of the land, opposition to same-sex marriage will be prosecuted as unlawful. As a foretaste of what is to come, in New Mexico, Elaine Photography was found guilty of discrimination for refusing to shoot the commitment ceremony of a lesbian couple; in California a Christian doctor was found guilty of refusing to offer medical services to a lesbian woman who wanted to be artificially inseminated in order to have a baby with her partner; in Massachusetts, elementary school parents were told they did not have the right to keep their children home when homosexual issues were being discussed in class, since same-sex marriage is legal there (not to mention the fact that the courts found it more important to teach children “diversity” than to honor the wishes of the parents).
In England, an Anglican Vicar was fined and ordered to undergo equal opportunities training for refusing to hire a gay youth leader; a graduate student in the counseling program at Eastern Michigan University was expelled for refusing to affirm homosexual behavior in a private counseling session; and a Christian pastor in Canada was forbidden from speaking or writing or publishing anything that is critical of homosexual practice after writing a letter to the editor in a local newspaper.
With regard to same-sex marriage, even the gay publication The Washington Blade (May 30, 2008) raised the question of whether “the legalization of same-sex marriage in California” could potentially “prevent priests and ministers from preaching that homosexuality is biblically forbidden,” also asking if “churches in time [could] risk their tax- exempt status by refusing to marry gays.” At the least, the Blade expected a flurry of court cases. And the Georgetown University, lesbian law professor Chai Feldblum acknowledged that when push comes to shove, when there is a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”
Is my thesis really so Orwellian after all?
