Thursday, June 27, 2013
A Freedom-of-Religion Question
An MOJ reader asks:
Assume that in a state that grants access to civil marriage to same-sex couples the law requires all employers (including private employers) who employ more than a specified number of persons to make health insurance benefits available not only to its employees but also to the the families of its employees--including, of course, spouses. Does it violate a Catholic employer's religious freedom to require the employer to make health insurance benefits available to the same-sex spouse of an employee?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2013/06/a-freedom-of-religion-question.html
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As far as I know, no Catholic organization or private employer refuses to provide insurance coverage to people who are divorced and remarried, who, in the eyes of the Church, are not in a second marriage at all but are living in adultery. In states that have legalized same-sex marriage, same-sex couples who enter into civil marriages are just as married as divorced and remarried couples. If Catholics want to take a principled stand that they will treat all "non-marriages" the same, and give insurance benefits only to those married couples who are married in the eyes of the Church, that would be one thing. But for the Church to discriminate against same-sex civil marriages, on the groups that people of the same gender cannot marry each other, but not against adulterous opposite-sex civil-marriages, which can't be "real" marriages in the eyes of the Church, then they are discriminating against same-sex couples.
It seems often to be the position of Catholics that same-sex marriage (or, as some are fond of saying, same-sex "marriage") is impossible, and the state can no more create same-sex marriage than it can declare by legislation that darkness is light and light is darkness. But as far as I can tell, this is merely a debating point, not a legal issue. It seems to go without saying in all the legal wrangling that I have seen that the state unquestionably *can* permit same-sex marriage.