“Tolerance” and D. C. Same Sex Marriage

The IRD has posted a succinct piece which sums up well what I’ve been saying here, that most of those who push same-sex marriage and the like are using “tolerance” as an Orwellian cover to stamp out tolerance. The article uses the District of Columbia same-sex marriage ordinance likely to pass today as a case in point.

The D. C. city council could have protected religious conscience in their ordinance . . . could have.

Council member Yvette Alexander proposed an amendment that would have granted individuals and institutions the right to distinguish between same-sex relationships and man-woman marriage, based on religious convictions. The amendment was rejected.

And just in case you think that omission is a bug and not a feature . . .

Churches and clergy would not be forced to conduct same-sex weddings. But in every other respect religious persons and institutions would be pressed to act as if there were nothing special about the lifelong, one-flesh union of the two complementary sexes. Those most vulnerable to such pressure would be persons and institutions financially beholden to the D.C. government.

Foremost among those are Catholic Charities of D.C., the largest city-contracted provider of social services. Its roughly $20 million in annual city contracts provide services such as homeless shelters, medical clinics, and tutoring programs to 68,000 city residents. When the Catholic archdiocese warned that it might lose those contracts if it could not comply with a same-sex marriage mandate, council members reacted harshly-against the archdiocese.

Council member Mary Cheh called the archdiocese "somewhat childish." Catania suggested that Catholic Charities were not "an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure." He complained, "It's a shame they don't extend the same efforts to issues that really matter, like health care and homelessness."

It is odd that Catania, having devoted so much effort to redefining marriage, should now classify it as an issue that did not really matter. And that he should presume to instruct a religious body about which issues should really matter to it.

All this rage suggests that perhaps forcing private individuals and institutions to approve same-sex relationships is not an unintended side effect of the same-sex marriage movement. Perhaps such coercion is the whole point.

I disagree with the article on one point there. It is not “perhaps.”

But I suspect the writer comes to that conclusion as well.

Same-sex marriage laws, in abolishing all distinctions between same-sex relationships and man-woman matrimony, turn supporters of such distinctions into enemies of state policy. Because "marriage equality" is claimed as a "civil right," akin to racial equality, those who would deny it become the equivalent of racist bigots in the eyes of the law. And they would be treated as racist bigots have been (properly) treated: shamed and shunned, targeted for lawsuits and driven out of public life.

Exactly. And all in the name of “tolerance”, of course.