The staff of a county clerk’s office in Tennessee quit over the legalizing of gay marriage.
The Decatur County Clerk’s office decided that they are going to object to the SCOTUS ruling legalizing gay marriage by walking out of their jobs. The entire staff of three decided to quit instead of issuing same sex marriage licenses, writes the publication Raw Story.
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According to The Huffington Post, Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, a combat anesthesiologist who served in Afghanistan with the Navy, recently appeared with his partner in an ad made by the group Freedom To Marry.
An NBC-affiliated TV station in Tennessee, has declined to air the pro-gay marriage ad, writes The Huffington Post. WRCB president and general manager Tom Tolar said his station had no position on ads on same-sex marriage until this week when they reviewed the commercial. He said it chose not to run the ad because they felt it was too controversial.
According to the New York Times, the shift on same-sex marriage has captured the headlines, but the changes on views toward marriage are much broader than one issue.
The latest Gallup social issues survey shows changing social views since 2001. They show that not just support for same-sex marriage is changing.
Approval of unwed parenthood (45 percent in 2001, 61 percent now), divorce (59 percent then, 71 percent today), and premarital sex (53 percent then, 68 percent now) are on the rise.
Also, the acceptance of polygamy has more than doubled. Support for “plural matrimony” rose from 7 percent to 16 percent during the same period.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-the-prospects-for-polygamy.html?_r=0
Chief Justice John Roberts, who shocked conservatives nearly three years ago by providing a pivotal vote to uphold Obamacare, will again face a historic judicial decision, states CNN.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could decide whether gay and lesbian couples nationwide have the constitutional right to marry. The question at the core of the Obergefell v. Hodges case is very important, and is one that is already helping to shape the 2016 presidential race.
Goveror Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, in an op-ed Thursday in the New York Times writes why multiple corporations have expressed opposition to religious freedom laws that frighten gay-rights advocates.
Those corporations, Jindal says, are being manipulated by left-wing radicals.
“Liberals have decided that if they can’t win at the ballot box,” Jindal writes, “they will win in the boardroom.”
“His point is obvious,” writes nola.com. “These corporations wouldn’t be taking such a wild and crazy position if they were really controlled by conservatives. Ergo, Big Business must have been taken over by liberals.”
Not only is Jindal suggesting in his op-ed that the gay rights and conservatism are incompatible, and that liberals have taken over the country’s boardrooms, but he’s also revealing some peculiar ideas about the free market.
For example, don’t business leaders have the right to take whatever positions they think will advance their business? Won’t businesses be “punished” for making the “wrong” decisions on gay marriage?
Nola.com makes the point that Governor Jindal seems to be creating a “litmus test” for conservatives.
After criticizing those liberals who he says have taken over the country’s boardrooms and made them hostile to religion and overly zealous about gay rights, Jindal says that “it’s time for corporate America to make a decision.”
Will gay marriage (or “anti-gay marriage”) be a “litmus test” for the Republican party?
(Updated article)
CNN
In this CNN interview, Senator and presidential candidate Rand Paul talks about his approach to gay marriage – which seems to be: religious marriage for heterosexual couples, but legal, contractual marriage for homosexual couples.
Christian leaders have vowed they will not remain silent – as they did following the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision – on the topic of gay marriage, promising to take nonviolent direct action if the High Court votes to redefine marriage, states crossmap.com.
The Supreme Court is deciding two separate issues: Whether the 14th Amendment guarantees same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, and whether states must honor the same-sex marriage contracted in states that have voted to or allowed the redefinition of marriage.
“We believe that the majority of the Court will rule in favor of elevating what we have always taught to be a sinful lifestyle to the stature of a civil right – forcing us to choose between their ruling and our religious convictions that are based on Scripture,” said Rick Scarborough, a former Southern Baptist minister who now heads Vision America Action.
More:
Secular Talk
A local television station interviewed Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, which announced that they will turn down any gays entering their establishment looking for their wedding to be catered.
The interview was regarding Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act, RFRA,
The pizza place has received both support and backlash for its beliefs.
Nancy Armour was a sports writer for Associated Press prior to becoming a sports columnist for USA Today.
In a recent article, Armour states:
“The NCAA should be applauded for swiftly and strongly expressing its disapproval of Indiana’s new law that cloaks discrimination in ‘religious freedom.’
“But it can’t stop there.
“It is too late to pull this year’s Final Four from Indianapolis, given it is next weekend and there’s no other city that would have an arena and several thousand hotel rooms available. But the NCAA can – and should – tell Indiana lawmakers that their prejudice and mean-spiritedness has cost the state the privilege of hosting any other collegiate sporting event.”
The Oklahoma state House has passed a bill banning non-religious people from marrying. The bill also requires that all marriage licenses be approved by a member of the clergy.
“The discriminatory legislation essentially makes it harder for gay marriages to take place bringing into question whether this is an attack on atheism, or same-sex unions,” states The Lip TV.
“But while it might seem on the surface like an assault on atheism, critics are saying that it is same-sex unions that the bill is not-so-stealthily attacking. By making the clergy – not judges and court clerks – the sole marriage licence issuers, it will be more difficult for gay marriages to take place,” states Metro U.K.
OK, Fine. 