Inset: Why same-sex ‘marriage’?

For a long time, many homosexual activists thought it was a mistake to even pursue same-sex “marriage” rights—that, on balance, doing so would actually harm the “gay rights” crusade. Just looking at the ostentatious behavior at the average “gay pride” parade—which includes nudity, simulated sex acts and brazen anti-religious bigotry—makes it clear that the edgy, rebellious, sexually risky lifestyle actively promoted within the homosexual community is strongly at odds with the conservative moral values associated with traditional marriage and family.

So why the loud clamor for the right to marry? Among many there is the simple desire for public legitimacy. Legal same-sex “marriage” helps normalize homosexuality.

But that is far from being the full picture.

Consider these statements from Anthony Picarello in 2006, when he served as president and general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a law firm that specializes in defending the free expression of all faiths. The Weekly Standard’s Maggie Gallagher asked him about the legal challenges to religious liberty that would arise from same-sex “marriage.” “The impact will be severe and pervasive,” he said. “This is going to affect every aspect of church-state relations.” He explained how “the church is surrounded on all sides by the state; that church and state butt up against each other. The boundaries are usually peaceful, so it’s easy sometimes to forget they are there. But because marriage affects just about every area of the law, gay marriage is going to create a point of conflict at every point around the perimeter” (May 15, 2006; emphasis added throughout).

This is exactly the fight that same-sex “marriage” advocates want. The advancement of their cause undermines individuals’ ability to treat homosexuality as sin. It erodes the power of churches and cows them into silence.

In December 2005, the Becket Fund asked 10 religious liberty scholars from across the political and moral spectrum to weigh in on this question. Gallagher said that reading through their papers, she noticed something interesting. “[T]he scholars who favor gay marriage found it relatively easy to foresee looming legal pressures on faith-based organizations opposed to gay marriage,” she said. Once homosexuals are granted legal marital status, they have a potent weapon to use against anyone who would oppose them. Laws the homosexual agenda could use against faith-based organizations include those related to tax exemption, commercial and professional licenses, school accreditation, business hiring, workplace environment, housing and education. Legalized homosexual “marriage” would broadly affect public and private businesses and organizations (not to mention individuals) that operate by religious standards, jeopardizing a host of exemptions that currently protect their freedom. Homosexual activists are eager to push such issues into the courts—and every legal victory they achieve affords them greater leverage to use against those who voice or act upon anti-homosexual religious beliefs.

As President Obama said at the White House Pride Month Reception in June 2012, “[W]e still have a long way to go ….”

“Same-sex marriage would … work a sea change in American law,” wrote “gay marriage” supporter Marc Stern in his Becket Fund paper. “That change will reverberate across the legal and religious landscape in some ways that are today unpredictable.” The issue of whether a self-supporting religious group might lose its tax-exempt status for opposing same-sex “marriage,” Stern called “the $18 trillion question.” Stern wrote that even speech against same-sex “marriage”—though it ought to be protected under the Second Amendment—could be targeted, “because sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace principles will likely migrate to suppress any expression of anti-same-sex-marriage views.”

It is remarkable how today’s twisted legal world has used “separation of church and state” as a means both of criminalizing expressions of faith and belief in the Bible, and of protecting, nurturing and spreading anti-biblical practices.

These facts expose the spiritual roots of this battle.