Canada Legalizes Gay Marriage
The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Charles McVety, a spokesman for Defend Marriage Canada and president of Canada Christian College, said he was ''very sad that the state has invaded the church, breached separation of church and state and redefined a religious word.''
When will these people finally get it through their thick skulls: marriage is not an inherently religious institution. If a religion chooses to incorporate marriage into their practices, that's fine and given the nature of marriage it makes a lot of sense. No one religion or group of religions, however, can control the definition of marriage for all of society.
Thus, it's not a "breach" of the separation of church and state for the government to treat marriage differently from religious groups. If it were, then the state wouldn't permit divorced people to remarry because some religious groups refuse to acknowledge such unions. The real breach of the separation of church and state occurs if religious definitions of marriage are codified into laws that are imposed upon all citizens, even those who aren't adherents of the religion in question.
Consider also these comments on LifeSite:
[M]embers of the lobbyist organization, EGALE, (Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere) have revealed their intention to make illegal the public practice of Christianity or teaching of Christian moral doctrine. ... The authors of the EGALE editorial, Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell, in an enraged attack on Henry, admitted that the purpose behind the move to approve Gay “marriage” is the suppression of traditional Christianity.
They wrote, “We predict that gay marriage will indeed result in the growth of acceptance of homosexuality now underway, as Henry fears. But marriage equality will also contribute to the abandonment of toxic religions, liberating society from the prejudice and hatred that has polluted culture for too long.”
Do you see how they distort what the editorial says? I’m surprised that they provided the original quotes, given how obviously different the original words are from what LifeSite is claiming. Members of EGALE hope that legalizing gay marriage will lead to people abandoning “toxic religions.” LifeSite (and people like Kathy Shaidle) misrepresent (intentionally? It's hard to imagine that they really can't comprehend English that well) this as saying that they hope gay marriage will lead to the suppression of “traditional Christianity” and the criminalization of publicly practicing and teaching “Christian moral doctrine.”
There is almost no similarity between what the original editorial says and the spin being promoted by LifeSite and Shaidle. That doesn't stop them from spreading their prejudice, though, which suggests that this prejudice plays a far greater role in their thinking than facts and reality ever could. They would be right to be upset if gay marriage were used as a reason to suppress Christianity or criminalize teaching Christianity, but that didn't happen when interracial marriage and divorce were legalized over the objections of Christian leaders, so what reason is there to think that it will happen now? None — and that might be why it's necessary to distort what is actually being said in order to harness fear, paranoia, and prejudice in their cause.
People like Charles McVety, Kathy Shaidle, and the administrators of LifeSite are disingenuous, to say the very least, and need to spend more time dealing with their own affairs in their own churches instead of trying bother everyone else.
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Comments
My wedding, which took place in Quebec in 1996, was in the church that my wife’s mother (in-law) went and goes to. We were clear with the minister that we were atheists, and did not want religious elements in our wedding.
And so it was. The minister wore his kilt, as I wore mine. We filled out the forms required by the Quebec government. But the fact that our wedding took place in a church, and was even MC’d by a religious pastor, does not mean that it has any religious meaning or status to either my wife or I.
My children will not even need to please a parent by holding their wedding in a church. Indeed, I hope they don’t. I hope they get married out doors, among the splendour of nature.
A wedding, like any other ceremony, contains whatever meaning its participants give it. I’m sure the religionists who attended our wedding gave it a religious meaning, though they may have noticed that we did not. A wedding in Canada requires that government rules and forms be followed; but there is absolutely NO requirement that it involve any form of religion.
I perform at weddings as a musician. Anecdotally, at least a quarter are held outside of churches, by civil JPs (Justices of the Peace). This is practical atheism, even if the participants don’t “label” it as such. Gay people doing what heterosexual people do is no big deal, and nor should it be treated as such.