# How does the state recognizing gay marriage infringe on religious freedom?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 9, 2009, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560 "2009-04-09T20:40:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/21 "2009-04-09T22:54:13Z")
> [@Strinka](#):
>
> Would a synagogue lose its tax exempt status if it didn’t allow Christians to get married in it? Churches should be allowed to wed or not wed whoever they want, since the people wanting to get married can go to a courthouse.
Well the reference is to a church that lost its tax exempt status because it didn’t want to be rented out for a gay wedding. So legally no, a church doesn’t have the right to marry whoever they want. They have to marry anyone who wants to get married apparently.
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/22 "2009-04-09T22:54:31Z")
> [@Strinka](#):
>
> Would a synagogue lose its tax exempt status if it didn’t allow Christians to get married in it? Churches should be allowed to wed or not wed whoever they want, since the people wanting to get married can go to a courthouse.
This isn’t really at issue though. It sounds like even the woman being interviewed on the OP’s NPR show concedes that churches will never be forced to marry gay couples (and honestly, even if they were, I doubt there’s a lot of gay couples clamoring to be married in a ceremony performed by an unwilling clergy).
The issue is that churches will have to interact with gay spouses in places outside the confines of the religious sphere. Like Church run adoption agencies and parks mentioned in post #3.
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### Author:  [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/23 "2009-04-09T22:59:20Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#):
>
> Or some poor Christian clerk/civil registrar who has to choose between joining gay couples in civic matrimony and his civil service job.
Guess he can always comisserate with the poor Catholic clerk who already has to choose between joining divorcees in their second weddings and his civil service job.
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/24 "2009-04-09T23:00:07Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> Well the reference is to a church that lost its tax exempt status because it didn’t want to be rented out for a gay wedding. So legally no, a church doesn’t have the right to marry whoever they want. They have to marry anyone who wants to get married apparently.
Being married in a pavilion owned by a church is different then being “married by the church”. And the Churches tax-exempt status for being a church wasn’t being threatened, their tax exempt status for owning a piece of property that they opened to the public was being threatened, because they weren’t holding it open to the public.
Did you read the whole article?
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/25 "2009-04-09T23:00:30Z")
> [@kenner116](#):
>
> The two examples I can think of are the Catholic adoption agency in Massachusetts being required to extend adoption services to gay couples, which ending up ceasing operations instead of complying with the law, and a Jersey shore church’s boardwalk pavilion losing its tax-exempt status because of the refusal to allow same-sex civil unions on the property.
>
> [http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/11/catholic\_charities\_stuns\_state\_ends\_adoptions/](http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/11/catholic_charities_stuns_state_ends_adoptions/)
>
> [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/nyregion/03ocean.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/nyregion/03ocean.html)
To avoic repeating myself, [the background on Catholic Charities of Massachusetts’s adoption program](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11019324&postcount=245). Note that the parent agency, Catholic Charities of Massachusetts, is still in existence and still doing good, just no longer arranging adoptions.
As for the Jersey shore church, they were renting their seaside wedding pavilion to the general public, for weddings, family reunions, and such. It was not a ‘church’ facility in the sense that it was available only for church-sponsored or -sanctioned events; it was a money-making proposition for the church. And the various civil rights acts have made it clear that you cannot hold a service (renting a motel room, for example) open to the general public except for members of a ‘suspect class’, like black people. They would have been within their rights to rent it only to members of their church, but when they undertook to make money on it by renting it to the public, they lost the privilege of specifying who may and may not rent it, except for legally valid reasons.
**Simplicio** , I believe the group you’re referring to is the Sea Scouts, one of several groups under a BSA-sponsored program that used to be called the Explorers but has since been rebranded, to a name I don’t recall.
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### Author:  [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/26 "2009-04-09T23:04:46Z")
> [@Strinka](#):
>
> Would a synagogue lose its tax exempt status if it didn’t allow Christians to get married in it? Churches should be allowed to wed or not wed whoever they want, since the people wanting to get married can go to a courthouse.
Well, you’ll recall that big flap when the Roman Catholic Church lost its tax exempt status for refusing to marry divorcees.
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/27 "2009-04-09T23:10:03Z")
By the way, as a committed Christian, my comments:
1. Marriage is three distinct things: the commitment made by the two members of the marrying couple towards each other; a religious rite (sacrament in my belief system); and the legally codified social institution recognized by the state. It is possible to show instances of people being married by any one or two of these definitions but not by the other(s). France’s laws make that distinction very clear; ours tend to confute it. To abandon the perfectly good legal term ‘marriage’ to the churches is equivalent to allowing them to decide whether someone should be permitted to work on Sunday, or what the rights of a woman vis-a-vis a man should be.
2. Gay marriage does not infringe on the religious rights of anyone. Rather it infringes on the Religious Right – specifically, their self-assumed role as arbitrator of public morality.
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### Author:  [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/28 "2009-04-09T23:10:39Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> Well the reference is to a church that lost its tax exempt status because it didn’t want to be rented out for a gay wedding. So legally no, a church doesn’t have the right to marry whoever they want. They have to marry anyone who wants to get married apparently.
OK, I’ll stand up and say I don’t think a church should lose its tax-exempt status because it doesn’t want to host gay weddings.
Of course, that’s hardly rationale for maintaining a ban on gay marriage.
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### Author:  [@Algher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algher)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/29 "2009-04-09T23:11:36Z")
> [@Polycarp](#):
>
> **Simplicio** , I believe the group you’re referring to is the Sea Scouts, one of several groups under a BSA-sponsored program that used to be called the Explorers but has since been rebranded, to a name I don’t recall.
Sea Scouts are still out there - my son is looking into it after he earns his Eagle.
Sea Scouts have had some challenges, as they typically are allowed to lease a dock slip for $1 per year from the city to keep their boat. The smarter units have responded by opening up their boat to all comers to rent, but operating it as well for their Scouts.
The Newport Beach Seabase operates that way - any child can sign up for activities there. They also provide their materials to the Sea Scouts as well. So far this balance has kept them from losing their location.
The Methodists in New Jersey made the mistake of becoming a public accommodation - beyond the typical definition of a church. If they would have kept the pavilion for Methodist run events only, they might have been fine. They also would have needed to refuse any money from the state.
This is why I have argued against our congregation ever taking a penny from Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives. I don’t ever want to be told what to do.
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### Author:  [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/30 "2009-04-09T23:13:05Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> Well the reference is to a church that lost its tax exempt status because it didn’t want to be rented out for a gay wedding. So legally no, a church doesn’t have the right to marry whoever they want. They have to marry anyone who wants to get married apparently.
They didn’t lose their tax-exempt status for their church, they lost for their “public recreation and conservation” area.
From the article in post 3:
> [@](#):
>
> Since 1989, Ocean Grove’s beach, boardwalk and oceanfront road have received tax-exempt status under the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Green Acres Program, which was created to encourage use of privately owned space for public recreation and conservation. In its original application for the exemption — which saves the group about $500,000 a year and is up for renewal on Sept. 15, according to Bernard Haney, the Neptune Township tax assessor — the association noted that the properties were open to the public and that the pavilion had been used by outside groups.
>
> **Some see an inherent conflict between the association seeking tax-exempt status as a public open space with one state agency while suing another state agency for violating its rights as a private religious group.**
Bolding mine.
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### Author:  [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/31 "2009-04-09T23:23:52Z")
> [@Simplicio](#):
>
> The issue is that churches will have to interact with gay spouses in places outside the confines of the religious sphere. Like Church run adoption agencies and parks mentioned in post #3.
This is sad. People should be able to discriminate in a not-for-profit adoption agency, as long as the market is served otherwise. Like if I wanted to give up my child for adoption and ensure that it goes to a Catholic family, I am unserved. (I’m not Catholic, just sayin’)
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/32 "2009-04-09T23:48:35Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> This is sad. People should be able to discriminate in a not-for-profit adoption agency, as long as the market is served otherwise. Like if I wanted to give up my child for adoption and ensure that it goes to a Catholic family, I am unserved. (I’m not Catholic, just sayin’)
Maybe, but the article doesn’t address that kind of case. The question is whether or not the adoption agency should be able to discriminate against protected classes ability to adopt children, not the person looking to put their child up for adoption. For all I know,you _can_ drop your kid off at an adoption agency and say “make sure he goes to a straight couple” and they can try to oblige your request. The article doesn’t say.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [April 9, 2009, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/33 "2009-04-09T23:57:40Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> This is sad. People should be able to discriminate in a not-for-profit adoption agency, as long as the market is served otherwise. Like if I wanted to give up my child for adoption and ensure that it goes to a Catholic family, I am unserved. (I’m not Catholic, just sayin’)
My understanding is that an adoption agency is, in fact, allowed to do that. What they can’t do is refuse to adopt to say, Jewish people, even if they have children whose natural parents don’t care what religion the adoptive parents practice.
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### Author:  [@whorfin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whorfin)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2009, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/34 "2009-04-10T00:04:42Z")
> [@mswas](#):
>
> This is sad. People should be able to discriminate in a not-for-profit adoption agency, as long as the market is served otherwise. Like if I wanted to give up my child for adoption and ensure that it goes to a Catholic family, I am unserved. (I’m not Catholic, just sayin’)
Hang on a second.
Without any regard to the merit (or lack thereof) of any argument as to whether adoption agencies should be allowed to discriminate or not–
The closure of the MA catholic adoption agency had nothing to do with gay marriage. Every single news report I’ve found connects it to MA anti-discrimination laws–not to marriage.
Even Focus on the Family says so–and they would surely go after gay marriage if they could. [http://www.citizenlink.org/FOSI/bioethics/adoptionpolicy/A000007970.cfm](http://www.citizenlink.org/FOSI/bioethics/adoptionpolicy/A000007970.cfm)
> [@](#):
>
> Most notoriously, in 2006,\*\* Massachusetts’ anti-discrimination laws \*\*pushed Catholic Charities of Boston to leave the adoption business in order to uphold its religious convictions against same-sex adoption. Faced with the decision to either challenge Massachusetts’ statute by refusing to place children with homosexual couples or to violate Catholic teaching by allowing same-sex couples to adopt, Catholic Charities bowed out of the adoption arena.
Emphasis added by me.
Furthermore, the agency in question had placed children with gay couples for at least two decades (since well before gay marriage was legal in MA).
[http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/03/10/catholic\_charities\_to\_halt\_adoptions\_over\_issue\_involving\_gays/](http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/03/10/catholic_charities_to_halt_adoptions_over_issue_involving_gays/)
> [@](#):
>
> In the past two decades, Catholic Charities has placed 720 children in adoptive homes, including 13 with same-sex couples. The bulk of adoptive children in Massachusetts are placed by DSS, rather than outside agencies such as Catholic Charities, the agency said.
It’s a red herring. Stop using it to attack gay marriage.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2009, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/35 "2009-04-10T00:13:35Z")
> [@](#):
>
> The Methodists in New Jersey made the mistake of becoming a public accommodation - beyond the typical definition of a church. If they would have kept the pavilion for Methodist run events only, they might have been fine. They also would have needed to refuse any money from the state.
Am I the only one cynical enough to think that they _didn’t_ make a mistake? Thanks to their actions, the Religious Wrong now has a case that they can point to and very easily spin into “See? The evil liberals want to force churches to marry sodomites, against our right to religion!”. And even though it doesn’t hold together on close examination, it superficially looks like it holds together, which is all the Religious Wrong needs.
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### Author:  [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2009, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/36 "2009-04-10T00:24:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Am I the only one cynical enough to think that they _didn’t_ make a mistake? Thanks to their actions, the Religious Wrong now has a case that they can point to and very easily spin into “See? The evil liberals want to force churches to marry sodomites, against our right to religion!”. And even though it doesn’t hold together on close examination, it superficially looks like it holds together, which is all the Religious Wrong needs.
If it was that well planned, _everybody’d_ be doing it. Churches would be managing to get themselves (or, well, their satellite facilities) shut down left and right, and would be using that to whip the entire country into a frothing uproar.
But, and isolated incident that’s not all that well known? Sounds to me like they seriously wanted the rental money…and then got themselves booted out of the rental business. Whoops.
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2009, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/37 "2009-04-10T00:26:28Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Am I the only one cynical enough to think that they _didn’t_ make a mistake? .
The current tax free set-up was apparently agreed to in 1989 and saves the Methodists hundreds of thousands of dollars. I doubt that it was done so that in two decades they could spring a “gottcha” on couples trying to get gay-married.
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### Author:  [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2009, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/38 "2009-04-10T02:14:53Z")
> [@Simplicio](#):
>
> The current tax free set-up was apparently agreed to in 1989 and saves the Methodists hundreds of thousands of dollars. I doubt that it was done so that in two decades they could spring a “gottcha” on couples trying to get gay-married.
Those Methodists are pretty tricky though. There’s a reason Hedley Lamarr wanted them in with the rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperadoes, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, half-wits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers and shit kickers.
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### Author:  [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2009, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/39 "2009-04-10T03:55:15Z")
The long and short of it is that the National Organization for Marriage (aka NOM [nom nom]) are lying liars who lie. As seen in their ridiculous “there’s a storm gathering” commercial, they are happy and willing to conflate _any_ anti-discrimination laws or court rulings with same-sex marriage and spin them as affronts to religious freedom.
They also make mention of a “doctor in California who isn’t free to adhere to their faith” which was the [North Coast Women’s Care](http://writ.news.findlaw.com/grossman/20080902.html) case, in which a California fertility practice was found in violation of the state’s _anti-discrimination_ laws when it refused to provide _some_ but not all of the clinic’s various assisted reproductive therapies to Guadalupe Benitez, either because she was a lesbian, or because she was unmarried – because marriage was not available to her and her committed partner of many years. Either way, same sex marriage rights had nothing to do with why the court dinged the doctors and said “you can’t do that.”
No church is going to be sued for refusing to marry a gay couple any more than a church is going to be sued for refusing to marry a Hindu couple. It’s a complete red herring.
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2009, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-the-state-recognizing-gay-marriage-infringe-on-religious-freedom/492560/40 "2009-04-10T04:22:55Z")
> [@tumbleddown](#):
>
> The long and short of it is that the National Organization for Marriage (aka NOM [nom nom]) are lying liars who lie. As seen in their ridiculous “there’s a storm gathering” commercial, they are happy and willing to conflate _any_ anti-discrimination laws or court rulings with same-sex marriage and spin them as affronts to religious freedom.
For those not familiar with that commercial-[youtube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI261VU0AZA).
I love their use of “rainbow coalition” and the obviously queer paw-paw (white beard guy (at :12). And is that Eldin from the Cosby Show?
Near as I can figure from the commercial, Christian doctors from California are losing their licenses unless they enter into a gay marriage in New Jersey, or something. It’s vague “bad stuff’s gonna happen, man” crap that makes no comments on exactly what the bad stuff is exactly how it’s gonna happen. And the graphics scream “made by and for pedantic straight conservatives”. Everybody is well dressed of course so as to convey “we’re not rednecks, white supremacists, and undereducated Fundamentalists, we just rely heavily on their support” and it’s multicultural for the “Tituba look… I has non-white people t’inks like me do!” message to reach out.
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