National Catholic Register: "Marriage Is a Key Election Issue"

Tom McFeely writes in the June 1-7 issue of National Catholic Register:

WASHINGTON — Defenders of traditional marriage say last month’s California Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex “marriage” is both a crisis and an opportunity.

Even before the decision was announced, Catholics and other supporters of traditional marriage had succeeded in placing an initiative on the November ballot next fall that would overturn the May 15 decision by amending the state constitution to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

“When we win this in California, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, this will send shock waves throughout the country,” said Brian Brown, executive director of the New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage.

Opponents of same-sex “marriage” stress that they aren’t downplaying the significance of the California decision when they predict it will galvanize Americans to reject the concept decisively at the ballot box.

They say that it’s precisely because the decision is so potentially damaging — because it explicitly equates discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation with race-based discrimination — that it highlights to voters what’s really at stake in the national marriage debate.

Brown said the California decision has opened the door to challenges of churches’ hiring practices, tax-exempt status and other areas where they have policies based on their belief that homosexual conduct is immoral.

“In a nutshell, this decision opens up all sorts of fronts for undermining religious liberty,” Brown said. “There is no question that the decision has now made same-sex ‘marriage’ a major issue in the upcoming elections.”

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(emphasis added)