Why would anyone want to get married these days anyways? About half of marriages end in divorce, so that's already a 50% failure rate. What kind of holy union ends in disdain for 50% of those who enter it? Sounds pretty bad to me. Marriage is such a joke in my eyes that I don't even care about how this ends up.

Thats a ridiculous notion.  Churches and pastors are private entities that are free to do what they want.  A preacher does not have to marry someone in his church, regardless of his reasons.  A preacher in Arizona recently asked his congregation to pray that harm come to president Obama, and there is nothing legally wrong with that, he is within his rights.  A private church can allow the KKK to use their church as a meeting place and refuse to let a children's charity use their church, they are a private entity with such rights.

Equally ridiculous is that you are afraid that the rights of a pastor 'could' be violated while you care less that the rights of gays 'are' being violated.  Instead of acting like you care about the rights of individuals, you would do yourself a favor to realize that you dislike gays.

Actually I believe that the freedom for churches not to marry homosexual couples would be covered under freedom of religion would it not?

I'm not sure how many people are asking for all churches to be forced to perform homosexual marriages, certainly I'm only asking that churches are allowed to perform homosexual marriages.

The line between public and private is blurred a little more everyday.  I mean we own car companies now.  Aside from that there already exist laws that tell private entities what they must and must not do..even in areas that don't actually violate the rights of others but merely when others are inconvenienced.  Quite frankly, it is far more ridiculous not to see how someone could be concerned about this then it is to actually be concerned about it (Note: I personally don't care much about it, but I understand why some do).

As for the last bit, there is no right to be married that is violated (ie nothing explicit).  Meanwhile the free exercise of religion is an explicit constitutional right, and is literally the very first right given in the Bill of Rights. The order of it being first is absolutely no coincidence either.

I do agree however that the vast majority of gay couples have no desire to get married in a church they aren't wanted in...but there are some who will force the issue...simply to force the issue.

The entire debate is moot however if we simply adopt the civil union strategy we've pretty much all agreed is acceptable...which BTW halo said he was fine with so I'm not sure how that fits into your view of him as some gayhating bigot...but I get the impression that he dissaproves of the lifestyle for religious reasons and not because he dislikes the people.  The distinction can be made, and it is the same idea behind how a strict conservative and a strict liberal can get along and be friends...they agree to disagree and so long as nobody forces their views on someone else all is well.

Of course if I'm wrong halo can just say he wants to force his views on others...but i doubt it.....

@Sqrl. However if a church wishes to marry a gay couple and is forced not to, is that not also a violation of the freedom of religion?

I agree with where you're going in principle (and philosophically) but there is a seperate issue there stops this argument from winning in court.

As I understand it, the hangup with this legal argument is that marriage, as far as the governments involvement (ie the license and tax status), is not viewed as a religious issue.  It's just a license for the legal status of "married" - which to the government is no more religious than a status of "deceased".  So what you have is a specification of 'one man and one woman' in the marriage law that stops gays from getting the license that grants legal status and thus giving the religious cermony legal meaning.

Or to put it another way....you have two parts to marriage the legal and the religious.  You can go have the ceremony whenever you want (they do them in hollywood for movies all the time).  Meanwhile the other half, the legal aspect, was deliberately seperated from the religious aspect to skirt around the first amendment's very explicit statement of  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

Is it a cheap cop-out?  Probably so.  But it has held thus far in court and the original intention of the cop-out wasn't to deny gays, but to have a legal status for married couples and so nobody foresaw this problem with the way they did it at the time (not that they would have cared anyways).

Again though I think the entire point is moot if we just go to civil unions and finish seperating the legal and religious aspects away from each other once and for all.

Fair enough. Seems we're pretty much entirely in agreement over this issue then.