One of the more interesting aspects of the gay marriage debate that the arguments of the last two days have highlighted is how different the discussion of marriage is from the religious to the legal realm. Religion was not mentioned one time over the course of the two days and neither should it have been. The issues of the extension of civil marriage are not issues of theology or spirituality (and they still won’t be if same-sex marriage became legal nationwide tomorrow).

Excerpt:  A U.S. District Court judge in Honolulu has rejected arguments from two lesbians who said that Hawaii’s 1998 ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. According to court documents released Wednesday, Judge Alan Kay dismissed the lawsuit, Jackson v. Abercrombie, saying that a decision like this should be left to [...]

EXCERPT: Liberty Counsel announced today that it has filed a lawsuit in New York asking a state court to declare the state’s Marriage Equality Act void and to declare void any same-sex marriages that have taken place under the Act. The complain  in New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms v. New [...]

There is presently much debate about gay marriage in California, and the roots for the argument come from several directions. In 1967 the United States Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether marriage was a fundamental right. Granted it had to do with people of the opposite sex, but the arguments for the State of Virginia which forbade interracial marriage were primarily religious in nature.

When you think about it, 1967 was not very long ago. If you are older than 42, if your parents were from sixteen states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, or Florida, and were from different races their marriages would have been illegal. In California, interracial marriage was illegal until 1948.

John V. Stevens, Sr., an experienced religious liberty advocate, responds to Professor Crane’s article “A Judeo-Christian Argument for Privatizing Marriage” from his perspective as a Seventh-day Adventist.  He has provided his kind permission to reproduce it here.  I hope that this can be a springboard for discussion on this important [...]

Trying to walk the line between religious freedom and societal concerns has never been easy. Some scholars say the line is drawn at polygamy. This article explores that option, but is the line even better drawn at child abuse? What about “legitimate” serial marriages and divorces? This issue may gain [...]