Reply #20: I agree, but

[Withywindle]

I think the whole scare tactic of trying to tell people that church policies will be affected is a straw man of epic proportions. NO ONE is calling for that.

Traditional Catholic churches still have the right to refuse to marry divorced people, although remarriage for divorced people is perfectly valid in the eyes of the state. Lots of denominations of lots of faiths won't do interfaith marriages, and that's their right. Again, the state still sanctions such marriages. Some churches won't perform marriages for anyone who's not a member of that congregation. They're allowed. But such marriages are still, again, perfectly legal. And all those people, even though they don't fit the requirements for marriage of some religion, somewhere, are still married.

On the flip side, my parents are atheists. They were married by a judge in a courthouse. There's no religion anywhere near their marriage, and yet, no one's ever questioned the fact that they're married.

I'm sure there's some religion somewhere that will look at the most traditional, old-fashioned High Church couple and say they're not truly married in the eyes of the Faith, because they didn't fast on only palm leaves for three weeks beforehand and they didn't sacrifice a white goat and they didn't display the virgin blood on the sheets and they didn't make a pilgrimage to the Holy Temple of Sofa King Sank-Tih-Monius in TwilaitZonistan as their ancient faith dictates they must to receive the sacriment--but fortunately, that has buggerall to do with US federal law. And US federal law has no business discriminating on the basis of gender, period.