Answer to a homophobe who mourns 'Obamanation' of SCOTUS' SSM decision
Daily Kos
An Open Letter To The Person I Went To High School With
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However, some religions, including Christianity, have ideas that if put into practice would allow us to impinge on the freedom of others. For example, slavery is condoned in the Bible - explicitly in the old testament and tacitly in the New Testament. No one today would suggest that we should allow the buying and selling of slaves, but during the antebellum debate over slavery, many quoted the Bible to support their positions in favor of the buying and selling of human beings. When slavery finally ended in America, it was not because some new theological interpretation changed the meaning of these quotes, it was because the thirteenth amendment to the constitution made slavery illegal, regardless of what the Bible might say. When your expression of your religious belief that you can have a slave collides with someone else’s fundamental right to not be enslaved, your beliefs lose.
Just over forty-eight years ago, another case involving marriage reached the Supreme Court. Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested and charged with a felony by the Commonwealth of Virginia for simply living in the state after being married in Washington, DC. What made their marriage illegal? The fact that Richard was white and Mildred was black. Leon M. Bazile, the judge in their trial, cited a religious argument for anti-miscegenation laws:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
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... And in Loving, the court held that anti-miscegenation laws ran afoul of the fourteenth amendment, specifically the due process clause. The due process clause of the fourteenth amendment states:
“[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .”
“Liberty” is a fairly broadly defined concept, extending to the full range of conduct which individuals are free to pursue, and which cannot be restricted by the government without a legitimate purpose. This includes the right to marry. The court held that the right to marry is a fundamental right, which meant that the “strict scrutiny” test is applied to see if the government has a “compelling government interest” in regulating it. In this case, a unanimous court could not find a compelling government interest in limiting marriage to couples of the same race. The court’s decision in Obergefell uses similar logic. Certainly, the Bible (at the very least, the Old Testament) forbids same-sex marriage. But the Bible doesn’t carry the force of law in the United States. The court held that statutes and constitutional provisions banning same-sex marriage at the state level failed the strict scrutiny test.
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So the government can’t limit the institution of marriage to heterosexual couples. ...
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