Excellent blog - Religious Freedom = gay marriage

[OKNancy]

http://qz.com/165430/the-case-for-gay-marriage-is-made-in-religious-freedom/

Please go to blog for complete story.

Excerpt:

Within the United States, ground zero in the battle for freedom of religion is in Utah, where US District Court Judge Richard Shelby Federal judge ruled on Dec. 20, 2013 that Utah could not prohibit gay marriage. Utah is appealing, in a move that could put the case on a fast-track to the Supreme Court.
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Gay marriage is a matter of religious freedom for two reasons: First, a substantial component of the opposition to legalizing gay marriage is religious in origin. This is particularly true in Utah, where the Mormon Church has taken a lead role in opposing gay marriage. Leave aside religious objections to gay marriage and what remains would be unlikely to garner much respect. As Judge Shelby reminded us in his opinion, “the regulation of constitutionally protected decisions, such as … whom [a person] shall marry, must be predicated on legitimate state concerns other than disagreement with the choice the individual has made.” It is easy to come up with religious concerns about gay marriage; not so easy to come up with “legitimate state concerns.”
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What’s not said as often is that gay marriage is itself an exercise of religious freedom. As many with good marriages know from experience, marriage is one of the most powerful paths toward spiritual growth. A good spouse helps one to see the aspects of oneself that one is too blind to see, and inspires efforts to be a better person. And when two human beings know each other so well, and interact so thickly, the family they create is something new and wonderful in the world, even when there are no children in the picture. And for those who do choose to have children, but cannot bear their own biologically, adoption is a tried and true path.
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To those who would dispute that the freedom to marry the one person you love above all others is a matter of religious freedom, let me argue that if I am wrong that this is a matter of religious freedom, that it is a freedom that should be treated in the same way. In his influential book A Theory of Justice (p. 220), John Rawls made this argument:

[jberryhill]

1. Words + math symbols = confusing

[gtar100]

2. Well stated. Especially about there not being "legitimate state concerns". It seems many in churches

still fail to accept the concept of separation of Church and State. They see our lack of willingness to accept their religion as us trying to force our views onto them when the reality is that is just a projection of what they do to us. It seems the epidamy of uncertainty and doubt when the foundation of your belief system demands that you have to convince others to believe the same thing you do. I personally think their greatest fear is not that we oppose them but that we find them irrelevant to our lives.