Over the next several months, you will likely be asked how same-sex “marriage” will affect you.
This question is asked because those trying to redefine marriage would like you to believe that it will have no impact on anyone whose names do not appear on the same-sex “marriage” license. They argue that this is a no lose situation because they will get marriage recognition and nothing changes for anyone else.
To the extent that you see the issue this way, you might be inclined to agree with them. But if you saw the issue this way, you would be wrong.
If we allow ourselves to see the forest from the trees, it is clear that the implications for those not listed on a hypothetical same-sex “marriage” license are tremendous.
The most recent example is from New York, where same-sex “marriage” was most recently enacted thanks to more than $1.25 million in campaign contributions given to state Senators who changed their vote. Part of the fallout of that decision involves a part-time county clerk in rural New York who lost her job because she said she would not be comfortable putting her name on a same-sex “marriage” license. Now that she has lost her job over this issue, same-sex “marriage” supporters have launched an effort to close down the cheese farm that she operates in an apparent effort to really drive their point home. (Read that article simply to see the comments that have been written in response to her situation.)
The debate over same-sex “marriage” should never be seen in isolation. In the same way that the right to visit a loved one in the hospital was not the ultimate goal, marriage is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to eradicate from public life any hint or suggestion of the idea that homosexual relationships are not in every way equivalent to heterosexual relationships.
That is why a sportscaster in Toronto was recently fired from his job for making a public statement, on his own time, that he believed marriage was a relationship between one-man and one-woman. That is why adoption services that would not place children with same-sex homes were forced out of the adoption business. That is why wedding photographers who preferred not to take pictures of a same-sex commitment ceremony were fined $6,600 by the human rights commission of New Mexico. That is why counselors have been fired for referring couples in same-sex relationships to other counselors and counseling students have been told they cannot graduate if they do not change their beliefs regarding homosexuality.
Redefining marriage simply gives more leverage to the effort to eradicate differences of opinion by putting the laws defining marriage in direct conflict with laws protecting rights of conscience and freedom of religion.
Of course not every gay person, or every same-sex “marriage” sympathizer wants such a drastic loss of individual freedom, or even realizes that it is happening. But the truth remains that many of the same forces working toward to redefine marriage are now trying to shut down a grandmother’s cheese business because she disagrees with them. Is that a movement we want to give momentum to, or are we ready to acknowledge that the quest for “equality” has mutated into something else entirely?
Winston Churchill once reflected that an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
If you have the decency to offer kindness and acceptance to those who are not just like you, do you have the courage to expect the same from them?
