This goes out to Justice Scalia and his remarks about his "Ruler" in his Obergefell dissent.
This goes out to all religious conservatives who are jawboning about how their rights and feelings and beliefs are being disregarded.
This goes out to Chief Justice Roberts and his statement that the Constitution had nothing to do with the decision today.
This goes out to all ministers who are loudly proclaiming they will never officiate at a same sex wedding and are predicting lawsuits and persecution for taking that stand.
Civil marriage is not a religious act.
Justice Scalia: your Ruler is the same today as yesterday, as is mine.
People whose fee-fees are hurt: your hurt feelings do not change the fact that the Constitutional right to "equal protection under the law" means you can't apply laws in a different way to gay folks just because you do not like them or your religious beliefs tell you to ostracize them.
This goes triple for Chief Justice Roberts. I can't wait for him (or ANYONE) to explain why gay couples do not deserve equal protection under the law without making a religious argument.
Conservative ministers: yesterday you had the right to refuse to perform any marriage you did not want to perform, and you still have the same right today.
Marriage has NEVER been defined as a purely religious act. If atheists can get civil marriiges without needing your religious approval, then gay couples can marry without your religious approval as well.
In this country we do not let religion be the final arbiter of who may and who may not enter into legal arrangements.
And we do not let religion be the final arbiter of who may and who many not enter into the legal status of marriage, because different religions have widely varying ideas of who should be allowed to marry.
If you or your denomination does not want gay people to marry, you and your denomination don't have to marry them. That was true yesterday and is true today. Just as Roman Catholic priests cannot be forced to marry divorced people, rabbis cannot be forced to marry non-Jews, and imams cannot be forced to marry non-Muslims, religious officials ALREADY have the right to refuse to marry couples according to their specific religious specifications. This is already the law everywhere and no one anywhere is proposing changing it.
But those same religious officials can't stop those couples from going to the state and getting a marriage license, and finding a more tolerant religious official who will give them a blessing if they want one.
People who get civil marriages are just as married as people who get religious ceremonies.
Getting a marriage blessed in a religious ceremony is a sacramental action that has nothing to do with the State.
But there are plenty of more liberal, more loving, more welcoming denominations who will bless these marriages if the couples want blessings! Yay Episcopalians! (Well, most of us anyway.)
If you have friends, family members or clergy who are still confused about this, send them to me. I am 100% serious. I am on a mission at this point to stop misinformation from religious conservatives from spreading any further than it already has.
First ask them to read this older diary on the subject: an irrefutable argument for gay marriage
If they have questions after that, tell them to write to me at truebluemajority@gmail.com.