American religion not under attack by 'teh gheys'

The recent NOM video that has been warning us about that storm a gatherin' is an excellent example of just how silly the religious campaign against same-sex marriage has become. It struck me as a simplistic, sophomoric attempt to galvanise people against something that they probably think they shouldn't care about very much. However, the message that the religious freedoms of Americans is at risk is laughable.

"Same-sex marriage," wrote Maggie Gallagher in National Review, "asks religious Americans," by which she means Christian Americans, "to surrender a core belief -- not only Leviticus (disapproval of gay sexual acts), but Genesis (the idea that God himself made man as male and female and commanded men and women to come together in a special way to image the fruitfulness of God)." But Christians are surrendering nothing. They remain free to disapprove of homosexuality just as they remain free to disapprove of their neighbor's alcoholism or adultery or bad taste in lawn ornaments. They also remain free to move to a country that enforces religious views (via New York Post).

The religious shouldn't expect anyone to think that religious injunctions about behaviour should be public policy. There might be religious injunctions about murder, perjury, and theft, but also the host of injunctions in Leviticus that Maggie Gallagher doesn't seem to worry aren't codified in US law. I am thinking here of things like the consumption of pork, eating a fellowship offering more than three days old, planting more then one kind of seed in a field, wearing clothing woven of more then one kind of cloth, cutting the hair on the sides of your head or clipping of the edges of your beard, tattoos, consulting or being a psychic or spiritualist. I could go on. As suggested above, everyone is free to express disapproval, but do not expect your personal superstitions to be instantiated in public policy.