Daly Dose of B.S.

By Jeremy Hooper
Good As You

In a new column on Newsweek/Washington Post's "On Faith" blog, Focus on the Family president Jim Daly admits something that we actually found shocking. He says:

"Focus on the Family realizes that couples can be married in church all day long, but if they don't stop at the County Courthouse, they ain't married, no matter how beautiful the church ceremony was."

Which, as regular G-A-Y readers well know, is an argument that we make all the time. The church component, no matter how oft utilized, is an option. It's an ancillary. In terms of civil marriage, which is the form for which gay activists are fighting, the religious element is an elective.

So in actuality, Daly's argument should stop right there. Logically, he would admit that his fellow church members will still have every right to oppose gay couples in the "eyes of God," even if the government grants full marriage equality. Rationally, he'd admit that his own personal views about what constitutes a legal marriage cannot be used in this church-state-separated society to deny others (be they gay, non-believer, or member of a faith with which Mr. Daly does not agree) of their civil freedoms. Reasonably, he'd take this opportunity to concede the civil debate and instead focus all of his faith-based "protect marriages" on the various denominations and sects who wants to keep "sacred."

But this is Focus on the Family we're talking about, so Mr. Daly instead goes on to cite two flawed examples. First, he cites 1965's Griswold v. Connecticut, making it sound as if that ruling spoke fully to the "sacred":

The U.S. Supreme Court uses that very term without the slightest concern for constitutionality. Describing marriage in its groundbreaking 1965 Griswold decision, the Court describes civil marriage as "a coming together for better or for worse...and intimate to the degree of being sacred" and recognized the "sacred precincts of marital bedrooms.

(Remainder.)