Religious freedom & same-sex marriage

I READ with considerable interest Christine Flowers' article "The cross is in the crosshairs." I was particularly intrigued by the words "the current administration is not particularly sympathetic to claims of religious freedom." I have long been conscious that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, for intelligent people to agree on questions of policy when each takes as axiomatic fundamental criteria that are incompatible with those taken by the other. However, this was the first time that I became aware that two people might be unable to agree even if they both express their fundamental criteria in identical words.

I am not certain what you mean by "freedom of religion." My concept of the words is that no government should pass civil laws that either require or prohibit actions or conditions whose values cannot be judged without recourse to religious considerations.

I believe that a civil law against murder is not a violation of religious freedom because such a law can be passed in response to the desire of a majority of the citizens, regardless of their religious beliefs, to not be murdered. I believe that a civil law requiring a person to marry another person of the same sex would be a violation of freedom of religion because it requires some of the citizens to do something antithetical to the religious beliefs held by at least some of them. I believe that a civil law prohibiting the marriage of two people of the same sex would also be a violation of religious freedom because, aside from religious beliefs, there is no reason to object to such a marriage. Marriage performed by the state, rather than by a church, is simply the codifying of a contract between two people being married. I believe that such a law would be a violation of someone's religious freedom because it imposes the constraints of some religious beliefs on those who do not subscribe to one of the religions that does impose such a constraint.

In general, I believe that refusing to pass a law that imposes one's religious beliefs on everyone infringes on nobody's religious beliefs. Perhaps it is not generalizing too broadly to suggest that freedom of religion inherently requires freedom from other people's religion.

Horseheads, N.Y.

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Religious freedom & same-sex marriage