Obama: I won’t force churches to hold gay ‘weddings,’ so there’s no religious liberty threat
Barack Obama is attempting to reassure the nation that today's Supreme Court ruling paving the way for same-sex “marriage” in California poses no threat to religious liberty, because the government has not forced churches to conduct gay “wedding” ceremonies.
“On an issue as sensitive as this, knowing that Americans hold a wide range of views based on deeply held beliefs, maintaining our nation’s commitment to religious freedom is also vital,” President Obama said in a statement today. “How religious institutions define and consecrate marriage has always been up to those institutions. Nothing about this decision – which applies only to civil marriages – changes that.”
President Obama congratulates Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court DOMA case, from Air Force One.
Following today's decisions striking down a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and overturning the voters' will by throwing out California's Proposition 8, Christians see their religious freedom under attack.
They found little comfort in a presidential vow not to violate the First Amendment inside the sanctuary.
“In 2008, as a presidential candidate, he said that he couldn’t support legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Now he fully supports it, describes opposition (that is, his own former position) as 'discrimination enshrined in law,' and welcomes a Supreme Court decision that 'righted that wrong,'” Phil Lawler wrote at CatholicCulture.org.
The president also said DOMA “treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people.”
“So again, how long do you expect Obama to wait before applying pressure to the churches?” asked Lawler. “Which way is the wind blowing?”
The president would not necessarily have to instigate a crackdown to pressure individuals who hold traditional values to participate in same-sex nuptials.
“Our litigious society guarantees that someone will sue to force churches into gay marriage, and our activist judiciary guarantees that they will get the outcome they desire somewhere. It’s going to happen,” noted Bryan Preston at Pajamas Media. “And Obama and/or his allies will be supporting the lawsuits when they come, tweeting that they’re accomplishing 'something special.'”
Bloggers at Weasel Zippers said the reassurance and affirmation of religious liberty rang hollow coming from “the man trying to force the Catholic church to cover birth control and abortifacients.”
In fact, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius used similar language to defend the ObamaCare contraceptive/abortifacient mandate, writing that it did not “affect an individual woman's freedom to decide not to use birth control.”
On the other hand Obama administration Science Czar John Holdren wrote in the 1977 bookEcoscience that “compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing constitution.”
