Americans United: Iowa Supreme Court RulingOnMarriageUpholdsReligious Liberty, Says Americans United

[Scarberry, Mark]

How do list members see the Bob Jones issue playing out? To the extent that gay rights issues are assimilated to issues involving racial discrimination, there seems to be a serious possibility that nonprofit institutions (including churches) that discriminate against gay relationships or against those involved in gay relationships could lose their tax exempt status. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic church and other religious institutions that restrict certain roles to men have not had their tax exempt status revoked because of these gender-based practices. So perhaps Bob Jones is best seen as limited to racial discrimination.
 
Ed suggests that there are churches that refuse to perform interracial marriages. I'm not aware of any, but that may not mean much. If Ed has specific information in this regard it would be good to hear it. For information about a recent volume of the Criswell Theological Review on interracial marriage, see criswell.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/editorialctrsp09formatted2.pdf and criswell.wordpress.com.
 
Mark Scarberry
Pepperdine

________________________________

From: religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu on behalf of Ed Brayton
Sent: Sat 4/4/2009 9:38 AM
To: 'Law & Religion issues for Law Academics'
Subject: RE: Americans United: Iowa Supreme Court RulingOn MarriageUpholdsReligious Liberty, Says Americans United



I think Brad's comparison to interracial marriage in the context of churches
being forced to perform gay marriages cuts against his argument. There are
certainly churches that do refuse to perform interracial marriages in this
country, probably a whole lot of them. Do you know of any case in which
anyone has even suggested, much less been successful in arguing, that they
be forced to do so? To say that it's "not a stretch to say that there are
those who would support saying a church can't refuse to perform marriages of
African-Americans" is a far cry from showing that there is even the most
remote chance of success if anyone actually tried to force them to do so.
There simply is no constituency with any influence that would push such an
idea, either with regard to interracial marriage or same-sex marriage. The
vast majority of people who support same-sex marriage (like me) reject the
idea of forcing churches to perform them and would strongly support the
inclusion of explicit exemptions in any law establishing such unions. It
seems to me that this is most obviously covered under the ministerial
exception and I find it almost inconceivable that any court would rule
otherwise. It has now been 42 years since Loving v Virginia and no one has
ever attempted to do what you use as evidence of the slippery slope here. I
think that tends to show just how unlikely your imagined future is.

Ed Brayton


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