Watching the marriages of lesbians and gay men take place this past year ought to be warming the heart of anyone who values equality and fairness. Government recognition – with responsibilities and benefits tied to the official status of a relationship – so long denied
Picture this: The scene is Gresham, Oregon, January 17, 2013. A woman walks into Sweet Cakes Bakery and cheerfully exclaims to the owner, Aaron Klein, that she is about to marry and would like to order a wedding cake. This is a return order from
Recently, Sightings picked up on some lines written by the influential Evangelical-oriented author, Eric Metaxas. “Not so fast,” he wisely enough cautioned those who consider legalized, same-sex marriage to be inevitable. And yet, hours after he posted this alert, the United States Supreme Court issued
Introduction to a Cautionary Critique I am very encouraged by the Supreme Court’s ruling declaring DOMA (the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act”) unconstitutional according to the 5th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause, and now same-sex couples who legally marry in states that have such rights will
The familiar “Protestant-Catholic-Jew” mantra no longer defines American religion. Politicians, bloggers, statisticians, and demographers now conventionally add “Evangelical” to the classifying. When Will Herberg wrote the canonical book Protestant-Catholic-Jew in the mid-fifties, Evangelicals appeared to be marginal at best. In recent decades they make the
Appearing on Piers Morgan’s program on CNN, Thursday, March 28, 2013, Evangelical Christian minister, Franklin Graham, son of renowned minister Billy Graham, explained the reason behind his resolute opposition to marriage for same-sex couples: It’s what God says, Piers. God is the one who defined
Marriage Equality, those two words have become the center of the final battle for gay rights. How far we have come and how far we have yet to travel. I remember when I was much younger and first coming to understand my sexual attraction and
David Cole captures readers’ attention with the observation that “the gay rights movement has achieved more swiftly than any other individual rights movement in history, not merely the impossible but the unthinkable.” A few years ago, writes Cole, “those who fought for the right to
With the 2012 popular vote supporting marriage equality regardless of gender winning in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington, the struggle for marriage equality has turned a corner. It’s not the corner, but an important corner nevertheless. We can quibble all we want about whether human
Marriage equality for same-sex couples gained momentum recently as a federal district court ruled unconstitutional the anti-equality California Proposition 8 passed by voters in 2008, and the electorate in the states of Maine, Washington, and Maryland passed ballot measures legalizing marriage for same-sex couples. A