2. When has this government ever forced someone to change their beliefs or scriptures. (they have forced some to change their practices)

3.Protection of religion is an entirely different issue. One that is protected by the first amendment not by the LGBT community.

4. No male-female couples up to this point in history have forced religions to perform their marriage so why would you think a male-male couple or female-female couple would try. If your religion does not believe that gay marriage is good in the sight of God why would they want that.

5. I am fine with the last point but how about we call them “legal marriage” and “religious marriage,” instead of a civil union and a marriage. Because spirituality has not been a requirement for marriage up to this point. Why should religion have a monopoly on the name. One would give you protection under the law and one protection under God.

To your first point: actually, the very meaning of “sincere” or “sincerely-held” religious beliefs is that they are not simply spiritual window dressing to hide an individual’s deep-seated hatred or bigotry for other people. If you do your legal research, you will find that the Supreme Court has long distinguished between professed religious beliefs and “sincerely-held” religious beliefs (http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/380/163/case.html). The phrase “sincerely-held religious beliefs” has real meaning in legal and policy terms, and by its very definition excludes the problem you raise of using your religion to prosecute irrational or bigoted discrimination.

To your second point: as I said in my post, the purpose of anti-discrimination laws is to protect specific groups of people from actions motivated by irrational or hateful prejudice – i.e. from “discrimination,” in the legal sense of the word. Therefore, by presuming actions taken because of an individual’s “sexual orientation” are discriminatory, the law and the courts that rule on such laws are by definition presuming that these actions are motivated by hatred or bigotry.

To your third point: that is a wonderful illusion that would make sense if it were not for the fact that, in reality, we enact anti-discrimination laws and courts apply such laws in order to give special protections and privileges to minorities (homosexuals), not majorities (heterosexuals). In this case, what the statute says in the abstract is not really important compared to what the statute means in the broader context of how such laws have been used and applied to real-life scenarios.

This last sentence can be applied to your final point as well. To say that “nothing about anti-discrimination laws…makes illegal the belief that homosexuality is wrong” misses and distracts from the point. Anti-discrimination laws – especially those that label “perceptions” as discriminatory, like those protecting “sexual orientation” do – tag beliefs that view homosexuality as morally wrong as “hateful” or “bigoted” (i.e. discriminatory), and by so doing marginalize by making them socially unacceptable and unworthy of reasonable consideration.

In fact, the KKK that you mention proves this point. Because we reasonably and rightly decided long ago as a society that prejudice against blacks was hateful and bigoted by enacting policies like racial anti-discrimination laws, the KKK and everything they say and stand for is automatically marginalized in society and presumed to be not worth serious consideration…and rightly so. To attempt to put people’s sincere religious beliefs into the same mold as the racial thinking of the KKK by enacting anti-discrimination laws that protect “sexual orientation” is repugnant as a political strategy, and even suggests (ironically) a deep-seated hatred for religious thinking from those in the “gay rights” movement.

1) There’s nothing that says “sincere religious beliefs” can’t ultimately be based on hatred or bigotry, the author has failed to make a case for why we should consider the two separate. After all, back in the era of the Civil Rights movement, many held “sincere religious beliefs” that blacks were inferior to whites and that any legislation that permitted any mixing of the races was a violation of God’s will.

2) Where in the Supreme Court ruling for Hastings Christian Fellowship v. Martinez et al. did it conclude that discrimination based on sexual orientation is “presumed to be motivated by hatred or bigotry”? I read pages 22-23 both of the Court’s opinion and that of the dissenting opinion and could find no such thing. Or is the author dishonestly putting words in the Justices’ mouths to help make his point?

3) Heterosexuality is also a sexual orientation and thus would be protected under any anti-discrimination statute that included sexual orientation under its definition. So if a heterosexual individual was discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, they would have claim under the law. All the statute is saying is that sexual orientation is not a valid criteria for consideration, just like race.

What the author is suggesting isn’t a society in which a person’s “religious liberty” is preserved. Nothing about anti-discrimination laws, or marriage equality as the author talks about at the end, makes illegal the belief that homosexuality is wrong. After all, the KKK and other similar groups still legally exist even with the civil rights legislation. Instead, he’s arguing for a society in which open discrimination is permissible and one need only claim “sincere religious beliefs” to justify it.