New Hampshire’s newly passed law on same-sex marriage is good public policy, and will be welcomed by many people, including both those who support, and those who oppose it. But it won’t end the fight over this divisive issue. Why? Because that fight is dominated, on both sides, by those who want not only their rights protected, but want all people to accept that they are right.
By making gay marriage legal, the new law assures that those gay couples who want to marry will now have that choice recognized by the state. But for many gay marriage activists, this fight has never been about that. Or at least it has not only been about that. It has been about their demand that society embrace their choices. And that is why for some, including a dear friend of mine, this law, which affords clergy the right to decline performing such marriages without risking a law suit or jail, is nothing less than the legalization of homophobia. But they could not be more wrong.

This law simply puts gay couples seeking a religious wedding on the same ground as all couples who turn to a particular spiritual community to sanctify their marriage. And in fact, were those communities not in fear of the backlash against those who decline to perform such marriages, the law would not have needed to protect those who do so.
That “with us or against us” culture, so prevalent in the gay activist community, is truly problematic, and it’s one which that community needs to better address. Of course, that kind of thinking is at least as common among those who invoke God and religion in their fight against gay marriage.

Jumping right past the issue of marriage, the religious opponents of gay marriage bombard us with arguments about this being the beginning of the end of civilization, a threat to all Americans, and the total subversion of an institution which has “always meant one man and one woman”.
The first two claims are baseless fear-mongering and last claim is simply wrong. Ironically in fact, our current practice of monogamous marriage is a relative newcomer on the family scene. Until about a thousand years ago, plural marriages were more than common, even among the Jewish and Christian ancestors of those folks who now invoke Judaism and Christianity to “prove” what defines a marriage.

Like it or not, the same tradition can be understood in different ways over time, and pretending otherwise is foolish. That doesn’t mean gay marriage is necessarily right from either a Jewish or a Christian perspective. It simply means that a measure of modesty too often missing from religious arguments against gay marriage needs to return to such arguments. And if it can not, then those arguing need to ask themselves why false claims and scare tactics need to be advanced for them to make what they deem a compelling argument.
Like their fiercest opponents (isn’t that how it often is in a conflict?), the issue for many religious folks who actively fight against the legal recognition of gay marriage is not marriage at all. Their issue is not securing their right to be free of gay marriage within their particular community, but demanding that everybody else affirm the conclusions of their community. I am not a constitutional lawyer, but I am quite confident that such demands cross the line between asserting one’s right to the free expression of religion to religious coercion.
The New Hampshire law respects the choice of those who want freedom from religion denying their equal access to a civil institution, which for the purposes of legal recognition is what it is. And, it protects the religious freedom of those who do not support that choice, from participating in something which their faith tells them is wrong. That’s the kind of lawmaking which benefits us all. The fact that those with the shrillest voices will decry it is all the proof the rest of us need.