ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Apr. 10 2008

Repressive reality belies "freedom-to-marry" rhetoric
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

In the land of the free, where we revel in our ability to live, work and
worship as we wish, few public policy arguments pack a greater punch than
appeals to individual liberty. That fact is not lost on gay-rights activists,
who increasingly frame their bid for greater legal rights for same-sex couples
in terms of sexual liberty and the "freedom to marry."

Lately, this public-relations ploy has hit a roadblock. High-profile clashes
among religious groups and gay-rights activists have highlighted the
uncomfortable fact that the expansion of sexual liberty for same-sex couples
tends to result in a loss of religious liberty for their critics.

One of those conflicts put the Methodist leaders of New Jersey's Ocean Grove
Camp Meeting Association on the defensive last year. A lesbian couple wanted to
use the association's pavilion for a civil-union commitment ceremony. The
association refused, citing the United Methodist Church's official prohibition
against same-sex unions on church property.

The couple filed a discrimination complaint with the state's Division on Civil
Rights and, after a federal lawsuit filed by the association in defense of its
First Amendment rights was thrown out, New Jersey officials stripped the
association's pavilion of its tax-exempt status.

Dozens of similar flaps have erupted in recent months. In New Mexico, Elaine
Huguenin, an evangelical Christian from Albuquerque, was brought before the
state's human rights commission to defend herself against a discrimination
complaint lodged by a lesbian couple whose commitment ceremony Huguenin refused
to photograph for religious reasons. In California, eHarmony, the
marriage-minded online dating service founded by evangelical Christian
psychologist Neil Clark Warren, was sued for failing to serve gays, lesbians
and bisexuals. And in Iowa, the YMCA of Greater Des Moines — which exists, its
mission statement says, "to put Christian principles into practice" — was
forced to change its definition of a family or lose federal funding after a
lesbian couple complained to the city's human rights commission because they
wanted a family membership, not an adult membership or a "member-plus" package
with the same benefits and cost.

In Canada, where same-sex marriage is legal nationwide, the recent addition of
"sexual orientation" to federal laws against "hate propaganda" effectively
rendered public criticism of homosexuality a crime. Despite a narrow exemption
for religious opinion, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has become
notorious for aggressively targeting conservative and Christian organizations,
writers and websites for censorship. Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based
Christian organization that promotes traditional values, recently disclosed
that its American broadcast content must be edited to clear Canadian speech
code hurdles.

Gay-rights proponents often say that dispensing with the age-old definition of
marriage as the union of a man and a woman will maximize liberty, not limit it.
They seek to reassure the majority of Americans who oppose gay marriage by
arguing that individual religious institutions and citizens still could refuse
to conduct or participate in same-sex weddings.

That may be true. But if same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land,
religious institutions that hold to the traditional definition of marriage
could be regarded in federal law as the equivalent of racist organizations. In
a recent commentary in The Washington Examiner, Roger Severino of the Becket
Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonpartisan, interfaith public interest law firm,
predicted that those religious institutions could be deluged with
discrimination lawsuits, "stripped of access to government programs, have their
tax exemption denied and even lose the ability to solemnize civil marriages."

Such scenarios should frighten freedom-loving citizens of any creed. That they
already are unfolding across America should persuade us to look past the
libertarian rationale for same-sex marriage to the troubling hints of religious
repression to come.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.