Radical right, radical hypocrisy: Same-sex marriage masterstroke exposes extremist agenda

[DonViejo]

Radical right, radical hypocrisy: Same-sex marriage masterstroke exposes extremist agenda

Christian clergy who support gay marriage want their religious freedom defended. Guess who is being awfully silent!

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

Back in 2009 a group of Christian leaders from across the land banded together and issued a manifesto called the Manhattan Declaration. It was organized by former Nixon White House aide and convicted felon Charles Colson, and declared those signed to be unalterably opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion rights, along with a few ancillary issues in the same realm. There’s nothing surprising about that, of course. Social conservatism has been the organizing principle of the Christian right for many decades. But this time they had a different rationale than the stale old moral arguments: religious liberty.

That may also sound like old news. After all, religious freedom is enshrined in our Constitution, right there in the First Amendment. But now the religious right is using this concept to argue that the state cannot require people of faith to follow laws they assert are contrary to their religious beliefs. That’s not been a commonly held legal viewpoint up until now.

They did not make this goal explicit in their declaration. In fact, they framed the issue as a defensive one in which conservative Christians must take this position due to the constant encroachments on their freedoms by the secular state. They wrote:

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/04/29/radical_right_radical_hypocrisy_same_sex_marriage_masterstroke_exposes_extremist_agenda/