The Ramifications of Prop 8

Someone sent me this in an email and I found it really interesting. I hadn't seen this perspective...think what you will.
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There is a LOT of talk in California right now about Proposition 8. Recently, four judges overturned a state law (Proposition 22 won by 62%) defining marriage as between a man and a woman. I was trying to figure out why everyone was getting so worked up over it. To me, gay people have all the same rights in California as married couples (visiting partners in the hospital, legal contracts, property, etc) so why did they care so much about calling it a marriage? And why do so many people CARE if they call it a marriage? Isn't it just semantics?

Well, I researched it, and in fact, it's NOT just semantics. There will be a legal ripple-effect, and if Gay marriage is the law, anyone whose moral code doesn't support that will be in violation of the law.

Barbara Hagerty of NPR wrote a very interesting article called 'When Gay Rights and Religious Liberties Clash.' It gives examples of situations where a religious organization is sued by gay rights activists, and Gay Rights win every time. Here are a couple very poignant examples:

Adoption services: Catholic Charities in Massachusetts refused to place children with same-sex couples as required by Massachusetts law. After a legislative struggle (during which the Senate president said he could not support a bill 'condoning discrimination.') Catholic Charities pulled out of the adoption business in 2006.

Housing: In New York City, Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a school under Orthodox Jewish auspices, banned same-sex couples from its married dormitory. New York does not recognize same-sex marriage, but in 2001, the state's highest court ruled Yeshiva violated New York Cit's ban on sexual orientation discrimination. Yeshiva now allows all couples in the dorm.

Parochial schools: California Lutheran High School, a Protestant school in Wildomar, holds that homosexuality is a sin. After the school suspended two girls who were allegedly in a lesbian relationship, the girls' parents sued, saying the school was violating the state's civil rights act protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination. The case is before a state judge.

Medical services: A Christian gynecologist at North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista, Calif., refused to give his patient in vitro fertilization treatment because she is in a lesbian relationship, and he claimed that doing so would violate his religious beliefs. (The doctor referred the patient to his partner, who agreed to do the treatment.) The woman sued under the state's civil rights act. The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in May 2008, and legal experts believe that the woman's right to medical treatment will trump the doctor's religious beliefs. One justice suggested that the doctors take up a different line of business.

Psychological services: A mental health counselor at North Mississippi Health Services refused therapy for a woman who wanted help in improving her lesbian relationship. The counselor said doing so would violate her religious beliefs. The counselor was fired. In March 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with the employer, ruling that the employee's religious beliefs could not be accommodated without causing undue hardship to the company.

Civil servants: A clerk in Vermont refused to perform a civil union ceremony after the state legalized them. In 2001, in a decision that side-stepped the religious liberties issue, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that he did not need to perform the ceremony because there were other civil servants who would. However, the court did indicate that religious beliefs do not allow employees to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Adoption services: A same-sex couple in California applied to Adoption Profiles, an Internet service in Arizona that matches adoptive parents with newborns. The couple's application was denied based on the religious beliefs of the company's owners. The couple sued in federal district court in San Francisco. The two sides settled after the adoption company said it will no longer do business in California.

The scary thing about this is not that loving homosexuals would be calling their unions 'marriages', it is the small percentage that will sue anyone who believes otherwise. Churches could lose their 'tax exempt' status. They would stop being allowed to do their charitable work. Pastors could lose the state authority to marry couples if they refuse to perform same-sex marriages.

The very fabric of our society is threatened. Our country was BUILT on religious freedom and a separation of church and state. And here we see the state stepping in and telling churches what they are allowed to believe. It's more than a little terrifying.

We all have gay friends and want them to be respected and have legal rights to share property and hospital visits, but the price of redefining traditional marriage is TOO HIGH. As we learned in the Vice Presidential debate, both Obama-Biden AND McCain-Palin agree on this.