I live in Maine. We are the only New England state to not have a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Our state legislature passed such a law, and, once again, it has been "taken to the people" with a referendum driven by your typical religious fundies.
Lately I've been seeing the signs that they're posting to try to get people to vote against the anti-discrimination laws. They read "Protect Marriage...Protect Maine".
This got me to thinkin'.
(below the fold)
First, this law has NOTHING to do with marriage whatsoever. In fact, Maine already (somehow) has a law on the books that defines marriage as the "union between a man and a woman" - or something like that. So clearly these signs are meant to instill some sort of "fear", mis-leading people to the polls to vote to repeal the state's anti-discrimination laws. We can only hope (and vote) that they won't succeed this time around.
Regarding same-sex marriage, though...
Don't we have a constitutional amendment that prohibits laws from being established that prohibit the free exercise of religion? Well...why doesn't someone establish a religion that expressly permits the marriage of same-sex partners? Wouldn't that prevent anyone from enacting legislation to prevent same-sex marriages?
Clearly there's some problem with this tack - I mean, if someone creates a religion that directs people to become serial killers then clearly laws would be able to penalize them, even if they were exercising their religious beliefs.
Or would they?
Note that I'm not drawing any comparison between same-sex marriage and serial killing.
I do think that same-sex marriage should be legal.
I don't think that serial killing should be legal.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
