Wednesday, February 8, 2012
More on Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty in Washington State
Rick and I keep posting letters that our group of law professors has been writing, arguing to various state legislatures considering the recognition of same-sex marriage that they should also enact meaningful religious-liberty protections. It's not that we think readers want to see the details of each and every state's laws; we' re just keeping an archive of these letters. Here's the page compiling them all (it's also in the list of links at the bottom left of the blog). For some poor poli sci grad student slaving away on a dissertation in 2052....
So here is the latest, a followup to Washington legislators, who have expanded their proposed religious-liberty protection but left the protections incomplete and, frankly, wildly inconsistent between different sections.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/02/more-on-same-sex-marriage-and-religious-liberty-in-washington-state.html
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Prof. Berg,
Your letters, as I understand them, ask the Washington legislature to allow Catholic non-profits to refuse to "recognize" same-sex marriages. If a Catholic hospital may refuse to "recognize" a SSM, could that hospital refuse to recognize the right of a spouse in a SSM to visit a sick/injured spouse or child? To make medical decisions for a child or an incapacitated spouse? Would such non-recognition rights extend to individual Catholics in non-religious institutions?
Could a Catholic hospital (or doctor) similarly refuse to recognize any patient's heterosexual but non-canonically-valid marriage, such as a divorced and remarried couple? (Hat tip to David Nickol)
And, as "religious freedom" has to protect opposing religious viewpoints to be plausible as a neutral ideal in a pluralistic society, what meaningful protections for religious freedom do you think should be included in legislation that BANS same-sex marriage?