Box Turtle Bulletin

Focus: “N.J. Pastors Spared From Performing Civil Unions”

Did all the anti-gay extremists skip class on the day they were to learn about the First Amendment? It’s beginning to look that way.

We’ve seen Focus and other anti-gay special interest groups falsely claim that passing hate crime laws to protect gays and lesbians would infringe on their religious freedoms. This, of course, is utter nonsense. The proposed hate crime laws covers only violent crimes, not speech or beliefs. And for good reason — any attempts to curb speech would quickly run afoul of the First Amendment. Anyone who passed high school civics can understand that.

They have also opposed gay marriage while claiming that pastors would be “forced” to conduct wedding ceremonies for gay couples. This, too, is nonsense. There has never been an instance in all of American history in which the government compelled a minister to perform a religious service. That would strike at the very heart of the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment. But as ludicrous as that idea may be, anti-gay lobbyists continue to sound that drumbeat.

Now, in a move that advances that argument to the surreal, Focus on the Family has distributed a story in which Peter LaBarbera, of the terribly misnamed and fraudulently-classified “Americans for Truth” is joined by several other extremists to perpetuate the myth that New Jersey’s civil unions law (and gay marriage in general) might have forced ministers to perform civil unions against their will:

Gay couples in New Jersey will be allowed to apply for civil unions starting in February, but Attorney General Stuart Rabner has announced that clergy members are not required to perform such unions.

Len Deo, president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council, said the decision was a relief for ministers who feared being charged with hate crimes for refusing to perform the ceremonies. …

But Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth, said pastors are not yet in the clear.

“To me, what’s shaping up is, yes, they are not forced to by the law,” he said, “but we will see the other side start to demonize and ostracize pastors that do not bless homosexual unions.”

C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League, said the weight of the law will likely eventually come to bear.

“The whole tendency is once something is legalized, it moves from being simply a liberty or a right, so-called, to something that is required,” he said. “This is something that is very dangerous.”

This is preposterous. One reason states like Vermont and New Jersey opted for civil unions was to avoid the religious connotation of the word “marriage.” While every religious tradition recognizes marriage, there is no such thing as a “civil union” in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other religious tradition. The very word “civil” in civil union should be the clue here. There is no religious ceremony that corresponds to a civil union because a “religious” civil union would be an oxymoron. This whole argument is beyond ridiculous.

But what if New Jersey had followed Massachusetts’ lead and enacted marriage instead of civil unions? Again, pastors are in the clear. There is nothing in the Constitution that empowers a government to force churches to accept beliefs they don’t want to accept. That’s the whole reason the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment exists in the first place. And there is no hate crime law anywhere in the land that can force pastors to perform a wedding. Hate crimes address acts of violence, not thoughts, beliefs, speech or religious practices.

C.J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League should know this better than anyone. The Catholic Church defends its teachings against divorce by refusing to marry divorced persons whose previous marriage hasn’t been annulled by the Church. Any couple who shows up with a marriage license from the state won’t get very far with the parish priest if one of them were divorced and doesn’t have an annulment. As far as that priest is concerned, that civil marriage license is meaningless. In fact, that couple won’t get very far if they haven’t completed Pre-Cana counseling to the pastor’s satisfaction. Marriage license or no, a wedding ceremony won’t go forward unless that couple complies with the teachings of the Church to that pastor’s satisfaction. This has been common practice for practically forever, and the Church has the full backing of the First Amendment in doing so.

The very idea that the state of New Jersey — or anyone else — can require a minister to perform a religious ceremony is preposterous. But when it comes to scaring ordinary Americans, nothing is beyond the pale for LaBarbera, Focus, or anyone else in the anti-gay lobby.