By now you’ve likely heard that Representative Mike Johnson—the congressman Republicans finally elected as the new Speaker of the House after 22 days of chaos—played a significant role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election, a lowlight on his résumé that is obviously deeply concerning for the future of democracy. Also extremely worrisome? Johnson’s wildly bigoted remarks about homosexuality over the years, and the fact that he supported criminalizing gay sex between consenting adults.
CNN’s KFile reports that prior to his career in politics, Johnson wrote a series of deeply homophobic editorials in his role as an attorney for the socially conservative legal group now known as Alliance Defending Freedom.
I’ve always thought that the word “marriage” should be removed from all laws since that’s a religious term and constantly quibbled about. Replace it with “civil union” defined as a joining between two consenting adults and leave the definition of “marriage” to the churches.
I don’t think we should cede marriage to religion. Marriage predates all modern religions. It has always been about property, a civil matter. Religion can fuck right off laying claim to the institution.
I am partial to that viewpoint as well. I think it would be easier to explain to people that the legal institution of marriage and the religious institution of marriage are not the same thing.
I feel the same way. For the purposes of government business, all marriages are civil unions, since it’s the contractual part the government cares about. As far as marriage goes, that’s up to each religion to determine according to its own standards and definitions, including who is allowed to conduct the ceremony and who is allowed to participate in the ritual.
The government shouldn’t be able to dictate who I choose to share my assets and debts with, as long as they’re legally consenting adults who can sign the contract. And if someone wants to get married to a same sex partner in a church and that church won’t allow it, then they can find a church that better suits their values.
Everyone wins.
However, this is not what the theocrats want, which is why we have to deal with this shit. They want to be able to dictate what secular people do, and use the power of the state to force their religion on people regardless of church membership.
And just like that you’ve lost the republican party support.