Comments about ‘Gay marriage battle endangering religious voices, LDS leader says’

Since no American is forced to believe ANY religious doctrine, therefore no law based on religious doctrine can be used to restrict their civil rights.

What gives any Religion in America the legal right to impose their belief upon others who are not followers of their religion. America is NOT a Theocracy, Same sex marriage has no provable effects on any religion.

You never lose your religious voice, Lance. You are and always will have the right and the responsibility to speak your mind. Perhaps you will not be listened to, perhaps your ideas and beliefs are not accepted by others, but you will always have the right to your beliefs. However misguided they may be.

Ain't it a great country?

Wickman sounds like the southern white gentlemen in the '50s and '60s, many of whom hid behind religion to deny black people civil rights, too. It was wrong then and it's wrong now.

The voters spoke, legally and democratically. This lawsuit goes against what a majority of voters voted for. Democracy is at risk!

Religion has been used in the past to include practices such as polygamy (sound familiar), blood atonement (a practice that many Mormons met their demise from in the early Utah period of church history}, parents not seeking medical help in preference to faith healing, not serving in the military, etc. If we are going to err, I vote to err on the other side. Not all people subscribe to the tenets of any one religion.

Can you imagine that if our country, which was founded by deists who were grounded in the belief of laws based on reason rather than religious authority, actually went with those Founding Father's intentions of determining laws based on evidence and mutual respect of individual rights?

Oh imagine this country would suffer if it was reason rather than religious dogma that dictated public policy.

I'm sorry Elder, but your argument is ridiculous. Religious freedom is guaranteed by the 1st amendment, and the issue of gay marriage will not change that fact. This is simply a classic attempt to demonize a group of people as out to destroy the freedoms of their fellow Americans. Such fear based tactics demonstrate exactly what people can expect of the LDS faith.

There are only two possible solutions to LGBT couple and Straight couple inequality.
LGBT couples will be offered marriage equality as 5 states have done, or straight couples and LGBT couples will have civil unions. In the latter choice, churches can perform marriage ceremonies but they provide NO state benefits, it'd be like the religious ceremony of baptism, totally without state benefits. Straight couples would need a civil union license for any benefits. Gay's and lesbian's have open churches which will also have our weddings, but wwe'll need a civil union license too.

As usual the gay right people miss the mark on what is at stake here. It isn’t my religious convictions. It is democracy. The voice of the people voted and chose the definition of what marriage is in California. Now the minority who is angry because they didn’t get what they wanted are trying to change it using the courts. If they win it means that when someone’s candidate doesn’t win an election they can now go to the courts. Yes that maybe an extreme example. But it applies to any law or situation. It is the attempt of a few to destroy democracy because they are throwing a temper tantrum.
When we see the damage that allowing gay marriage in European countries has and is causing, I am dumbfounded that people are pursuing this.
The other thing you will notice in all of this is, those who really have no true argument to an issue resort to the same tactics of name calling, lying and vilifying.

Marriage reflects the natural moral and social law evidenced the world over. As the late British social anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin noted in his study of world civilizations, any society that devalued the nuclear family soon lost what he called "expansive energy," which might best be summarized as society's will to make things better for the next generation. In fact, no society that has loosened sexual morality outside of man-woman marriage has survived.
Analyzing studies of cultures spanning several thousands of years on several continents, Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin found that virtually all political revolutions that brought about societal collapse were preceded by a sexual revolution in which marriage and family were devalued by the culture’s acceptance of homosexuality.
When marriage loses its unique status, women and children most frequently are the direct victims. Giving same-sex relationships or out-of-wedlock heterosexual couples the same special status and benefits as the marital bond would not be the expansion of a right but the destruction of a principle. . If the one-man/one-woman definition of marriage is broken, there is no logical stopping point for continuing the assault on marriage.

We Latter-day Saints ought not to forget who put Prop 8 on the ballot. (Not to mention setting the stage with Prop 22 eight years earlier.) The (continuing) fallout was not altogether unforeseen. Further, when Prop 8 is overturned (as I suspect it will be within the next decade), it will probably take the form of language in the CA constitution *explicitly protecting gay marriage*. Thus, what the CA Supreme Court judged to be only an *implied* right will, because Prop 8 upped the ante, become an *explicit* right——like freedoms of religion and expression——complicating and compromising the possibility of the Church (and any other religion) to be involved in the political process. If there is indeed a battle looming, why did we choose to create a situation that increases the potential for the acquisition of civil rights to conflict with our religious rights? We have ensured that our battlefield is peppered with landmines, and when casualties begin to roll in we will have no one to blame but ourselves. If there is indeed "an arrow" pointing "directly at the heart ... of religion and religious views in the political" sphere, *we* strung the bow!

At the expense of *which* civil religious rights, specifically?

S-p-e-c-i-f-i-c-a-l-l-y.

Name them. What the heck, just name one. Just to keep it interesting. But please serve up something other than this constantly rehashed boilerplate.

Jack Kerwick wrote a very telling article on about.com regarding this very subject. It is entitled, "Proposition 8 & the Hypocrisy of the Left."

In a nutshell, Kerwick makes a compelling case why only those on the left can use religion to support their political agenda, and why the right can not.

There's no doubt in my mind, if certain people had their way, freedom of religion would only become a privilege for those who kiss the ring of the liberal establishment.

We are only 3 comments in and already criticism takes up 2 of them.
Levi is right however that no legislation can remove our right to our thoughts and beliefs. We are not trying to enforce nor impose our beliefs on anyone who doesn't want to listen. We believe in freedom as much as the next guy, perhaps more. What we DO believe is that the majority of the people still have a sense of what is right and that we agree on those rights, that the majority still agrees that drugs are evil so we join together to fight them; that same sex marriage is wrong and so we join together with all who also believe that, and encourage the silent majority to make some noise with us. We believe, RP, that there will be some serious and horrible effects on mankind the world over if we (all of us, the world over) do not pay strict attention to some of these things. No one can afford to be cavelier about things that are right and good and important. Washington and Jefferson and others said that America was founded under Gods direction. We should listen to Him.

Please point to where this right exists in the constitution. You have never had the right you claim you are losing. Consider yourself lucky that you have been allowed to manipulate Americans into your way of thinking for so long. My right to equal protection under the law trumps you religion.

Please - consider your religious views when voting.

But when you want to pass laws denying rights to others, you need a basis for that other then "my religion says no" - especially when whether or not the right is allowed has no effect on your religion.

Allowing gay marriage will not force the LDS church to perform or recognize them. It will have no effect on how you worship. There will be no impact on the LDS church from allowing gay marriage.

Your rights are not being infringed so why should you be allowed to infringe the rights of others?

If you were basing your opinions on your religious teachings and using those to influence people instead of resorting to lies (or supporting those who are using lies) you would have a lot more credibility.

This attempt by the progressive left is to ensure that there is no line between good and bad right or wrong moral or immoral, that what ever one does has no consequence on themselves or anyone else.
That being politically correct is the only law that should be followed. This is about as hollow as a society can become. Fences are not only to keep things in but also to keep things out. The Founders understood the need for separation of church and state. That one central church posed a threat to liberty, as in England were they mostly came from. That Religion and a belief in God were fundamental to a free society. That without morality the nation would fail. The progressive movement must fail, for the U.S. to achieve its destiny.

The list of civil rights grows, apparently. Today it's whom you can marry among humans. Tomorrow, the right to go faster than the speed limit. The day after that, the right to marry farm animals or flowering desert plants . . .

still scaring the people eh. Well, it is your job.