2nd Posting

Reverend Russell,

Wrote.
" The First Amendment protects your right as an American to the free exercise of your religion. It does not protect your right to use your religion as an excuse to discriminate against other Americans.

As a priest and pastor, I am protected from being forced to marry anybody. Period. Roman Catholic priests cannot be forced to marry divorced couples. Orthodox Rabbis cannot be forced to marry interfaith couples. NOBODY can be compelled -- against their religion -- to marry anybody. Period.

That protection does NOT extend to carrying out your duties as an agent of the state as a county clerk to issue marriage licenses, drivers licenses or fishing licenses.

What if I'm a Muslim and my understanding of my religion is that women shouldn't drive. Can I refuse to issue drivers' licenses to women? Or if I'm a Hindu and a vegetarian -- can I refuse to issue fishing licenses because killing/eating fish is against my religion?

One More Time:
It's Freedom OF Religion -- as in believe whatever you choose or choose not to believe.
It is not Freedom TO IMPOSE Religion -- as in confuse your theology with our democracy.
Honest to Ethel, people -- Get a grip! "

In response Reverend Russell censored this rebuttal: Why?

The thread of your thinking in regards to religious liberty is simplistic and overly facile even in regard to available options at the level of an individual's response to conscience, which in point of fact is where the crux of moral action takes place. Even so in that all societies have some moral basis, religious values cannot be dismissed from the public square any more than the vast array of other positive secular values can be. What you assume is neutral is really a vacuum where competing ideas religious or secular struggle to fill. In a pluralistic society toleration of religious points of view and expression is paramount to the success of the democratic experiment, yet even in elastic societies tolerant of mutually repellant ideas at some point are not able to tolerate the intolerable. Efforts to do so ignore the deeply embedded religious antecedents that give shape to the common heritage and identity of peoples. Jurgen Habermas, wrote that among the modern societies of today “only those that are able to introduce into the secular domain the essential contents of their religious traditions which point beyond the merely human realm will also be able to rescue the substance of the human.”

Thus to argue for same sex marriage purely from the perspective of individualistic freedom and desire is an ultimately barren proposition and to tolerate it in continual opposition to the common heritage must needs to tolerate those who oppose you and in effect be in continual opposition similar to the political situation of abortion. Far better to argue that the impulse and logic of the common heritage assumes the legitimacy and moral basis of same sex marriage as is serves a societal purpose which instead of leading to polarization, would have led to its embrace.