I was just watching a special on PBS about the religious <i>kulturkampf</i> in America today; this, I must admit, is my favorite issue in American politics.

Lots of ground was covered, but I wanted to make a point about the gay marriage debate. Bryant Gumbel got Rev. Dr. Bob Wenz (VP of "National Ministries" for the National Association of Evangelicals) to debate Bishop Eugene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop confirmed by the Episcopalians. At the current moment I can't recall the exact words of Dr. Wenz, but he did say that he was fighting for the definition of marriage as the union of "<b>one man and one woman</b>," because that's what scripture prescribes. Later in the program, Wenz gets relatively animated and asks Robinson if gay marriage wouldn't lead to marriages between three people, or three people and their dog.

Immediately, that got me thinking about what the Bible actually says about marriage, because it certainly does not say "one man and <i>one</i> woman." Polygamy is an important part of the Bible. So why isn't Family Research Council up in arms about that? Here are the points Rev. James Dobson's organization raises against gay marriage:
<br><small><blockquote>
You can no more leave an entire sex out of marriage and call it "marriage" than you can leave chocolate out of a "chocolate brownie" recipe. It becomes something else. Giving non-marital relationships the same status as marriage does not expand the definition of marriage; it destroys it. For example, if you declare that, because it has similar properties, wine should be labeled identically to grape juice, you have destroyed the definitions of both "wine" and "grape juice." The consumer would not know what he is getting.
</blockquote></small>
Is anyone really afraid that the consumers of a redefined marriage (i.e., future brides and grooms) will be confused over whether they are having a heterosexual or a homosexual marriage?
<br><small><blockquote>
Comparing current laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman with the laws in some states that once limited inter-racial marriage is irrelevant and misleading. The very soul of marriage – the joining of the two sexes–was never at issue when the Supreme Court struck down laws against inter-racial marriage.
</blockquote></small>
What a curious canard! I know many of you may find it shocking that the question of gay marriage did not arise in Loving v. Virginia . What did arise was the question of whether the ability to marry is a civil right. As Robinson pointed out in the debate, the poll numbers overwhelmingly condemned interracial marriage at the time of the Supreme Court decision. (As I've noted before, the United States is about three-quarters white and three-quarters Christian.) Many of those who objected to interracial marriage did so on religious grounds. For example, the trial judge in Loving v. Virginia declared,
<br><small><blockquote>
<i>Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.</i>
</blockquote></small>
Let's return to the Family Research Council, for what I think is the most revealing of their arguments:
<br><small><blockquote>
Requiring citizens to sanction or subsidize homosexual relationships violates the freedom of conscience of millions of Christians, Jews, Muslims and other people who believe marriage is the union of the two sexes. Civil marriage is a public act. Homosexuals are free to have a "union" ceremony with each other privately, but they are not free to demand that such a relationship be solemnized and subsidized under the law.
</blockquote></small>
This is really the crux of the argument. If you're religiously dead-set against same-sex marriage, well, try not to marry anyone of the same sex. But if you want to use your religion as the basis of the law, you're going to have to argue that position in another legal system. Eating pork, coveting your neighbor's oxen or rejecting Jesus as your savior are legal as well. Why? Because 'freedom of conscience,' invoked by FRC above, is about freedom of <i>your own</i> conscience, not the freedom to violate other people's conscience. To suggest that other people violating your religion is somehow a violation of your "freedom of conscience" is a fundamental misunderstanding of the notion of civil rights.