As happy as I am about marriage equality moving forward in DC, and as thankful I am to the religious leaders here who stood up for marriage equality, this is the wrong move.
It's hard enough already to separate civil marriage from religion and church from state in dealing with matters homosexual. Fenty is as clumsy as he is courageous.
2 comments:
Maybe he's trying to frame it as a freedom of religion thing. If the Unitarians want to solemnize marriages of same-sex couples, what right do Catholics have to say that they cannot do so?
When those of us who are not religious try to draw a thick line between secular and religious, as much sense as that makes to us, it doesn't work for the majority of voters. They see it as an attack on their religion. What Fenty did was re-frame this debate as Catholics attacking other religions, like Unitarians, who want to have same-sex marriage but are prohibited by law from having them.
Even though I'm not religious, I do love it anytime the argument can be re-framed to make the Catholic Church look like the bad guys. Kudos to Fenty.
Hi Rob. Thanks for your comment. While the support of religious leaders were crucial in this fight, I don't think holding the bill signing ceremony was appropriate as it reinforced the notion of the state taking over religious decisions and further confused the notion of civil marriage vs. holy matrimony.
And as a libertarian, I'm surprised you would be okay with the state using its power to make one religion look like "the bad guys" vis-a-vis another religion.
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