Gay Marriage Freedom of conscience and religious liberty would be threatened.
Image via WikipediaAnother important and immediate result of same-sex “marriage” would be serious damage to religious liberty.
Religious liberty means much more than liturgical rituals. It applies not only to formal houses of worship,
but to para-church ministries, religious educational and social service organizations, and individual
believers trying to live their lives in accordance with their faith not only at church, but at home, in their
neighborhoods, and in the workplace. These, more than your pastor or parish priest, are the entities
whose religious liberty is most threatened by samesex “marriage.” Some of these threats to religious liberty can arise from “nondiscrimination” laws based on sexual orientation, even without same-sex “marriage.” But when homosexual “marriage” becomes legal, then laws which once applied to homosexuals only as individuals
then apply to homosexual couples as well. So, for example, when Catholic Charities in Boston insisted that they would stay true to principle and refuse to place children for adoption with same-sex couples,
they were told by the state that they could no longer do adoptions at all. In other cases, a variety of benefits or opportunities that the state makes available to religious nonprofits could be withheld based on the organization’s refusal to treat same-sex couples and “marriages” the same as opposite-sex marriages. Organizations might be denied government grants or aid otherwise available to faith-based groups; they might be denied access to public facilities for events; and they might even have their tax-exempt status removed. That is what happened to the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association in New Jersey when they refused to rent facilities for a lesbian “civil union” ceremony. Religious educational institutions are particularly at risk, because in some cases they may allow students who are not believers to attend and even have staff who are not adherents of their religion, but still desire to maintain certain religiously-informed norms and standards of behavior. Yet a Lutheran school in California has been sued for expelling two girls who were in a lesbian relationship. Yeshiva University, a Jewish school in New York City, was forced to allow same-sex “domestic partners” in married-student housing. Religious clubs on secular campuses may be denied
Image via Wikipedia recognition if they oppose homosexual conduct—this happened to the Christian Legal Society at the University of California’s Hastings School of Law. Professionals would face lawsuits or even a denial of licensing if they refuse to treat homosexual relationships the same as heterosexual ones. A California fertility doctor was sued for declining to artificially inseminate a lesbian woman.15 And the online dating service eHarmony succumbed to the pressure of a lawsuit and agreed to provide services for same-sex couples as well. Individual believers who disapprove of homosexual relationships may be the most vulnerable of all, facing a choice at work between forfeiting their freedom of speech and being fired. Religious liberty is one of the deepest American values. We must not sacrifice it on the altar of political correctness that homosexual “marriage” 
