The immediate difficulty comes when we as religious citizens have trouble with separating what is civilly permissible with what is a religious ideal.
Indeed. You, or any other religious group, can have whatever prohibitions you believe in your own lives, homes and churches. Different groups can have different prohibitions. However, they must therefore be kept separate and out of the public law and state, because that space can only accomodate one or zero religions. The US constitution specifies zero: no establishment of religion. This enforces a ceasefire between the doctrines that would otherwise fight to be the one doctrine that has control of the state, as Europe experienced during the Reformation and Islam is experiencing in the Sunni-Shia conflict.
For decades if not longer it was non-straight people who were deemed unworthy and not allowed freedom from persecution by the religious supermajority. There really isn't a desire to put the boot on the other foot - provided you don't condemn people.
Perhaps if the spiritual and temporal benefits of marriage were entirely separable this wouldn't be a problem. But the UK tried it with civil partnerships and it was so obviously a "separate but equal" (ie not equal) arrangement that full equal marriage was enacted.
Indeed. You, or any other religious group, can have whatever prohibitions you believe in your own lives, homes and churches. Different groups can have different prohibitions. However, they must therefore be kept separate and out of the public law and state, because that space can only accomodate one or zero religions. The US constitution specifies zero: no establishment of religion. This enforces a ceasefire between the doctrines that would otherwise fight to be the one doctrine that has control of the state, as Europe experienced during the Reformation and Islam is experiencing in the Sunni-Shia conflict.
For decades if not longer it was non-straight people who were deemed unworthy and not allowed freedom from persecution by the religious supermajority. There really isn't a desire to put the boot on the other foot - provided you don't condemn people.
Perhaps if the spiritual and temporal benefits of marriage were entirely separable this wouldn't be a problem. But the UK tried it with civil partnerships and it was so obviously a "separate but equal" (ie not equal) arrangement that full equal marriage was enacted.