A ringing endorsement, at 4% and holding

All decisions for who will be allowed to marry at all must apparently be determined by whom a clergyman must marry. Since they cannot make their own autonomous decisions about whom among the legally allowed they will perform a marriage ceremony for, we'll have to make it uniformly unobjectionable to them.

Clearly, because clergy could be forced to marry people outside of their own faith, we must by 4% pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit anyone of different faiths marrying. In fact, all intermarriage between specific congregations should probably be forbidden.

Furthermore, atheists and agnostics must be forbidden the right to marry at all, even civilly at the county registrar office, because we can't allow them to force religious leaders to marry them, either.

We might have to eliminate civil marriage ceremonies altogether, just to be sure they don't open the door to anything else problematic.

Who knew that a priest, preacher, minister, etc. has NEVER made the decision to deny ANY couple their services in marriage? Every 90's sitcom with a teenage couple getting assessed (and sometimes denied) by their religious advisor for marriage suitability was wrong, apparently. And when my best friend and her fiance (now husband) had to go through the same thing, the pastor must have just been pulling their legs, seeking to pretend (if only for a moment) that as a professional, he had the right to decide how to apply his services.

Maybe we should revisit that 1948 bit of activism by judges, too, and by 4% make a constitutional amendment to undo what they did when they legalized different-raced marriages, too. There are surely still religious leaders who are uncomfortable about being forced to do that, day in and day out. But how they have suffered in silence!

This is becoming complicated. Perhaps we ought to just install some kind of broader protection for them. A.. a kind of wall between religion and politics, a... a separation, if you will.....



Edit: In case you're wondering just which rights have been taken away, here, this is a good comparison of marriage and domestic partnerships. The rule: never get sick, injured, or moved over state lines. Maybe better just not to travel at all.