A state legislator in Utah is proposing a state constitutional amendment “that that would exempt religious institutions from performing same-sex marriages even if the state is required to issue marriage licenses to gay couples”. Now, your first reaction might be to roll your eyes, but the guy's rationale, to my mind, makes sense, and even though he's a Republican, it sounds like he's sincere:
“The truth is, the main reason I'm proposing this is that I just want people to relax,” Rep. Jacob Anderegg told the Tribune in an interview published Monday. “If they know they have their federal religious guarantees in writing, I hope they will just relax.”
I doubt that the amendment will do much good. Most of the strident opposition to gay marriage is, at bottom, about raising money off of gullible fools. They don't want to relax. But it certainly can't hurt, and who knows, despite my reservations, it might cause some relaxation. It is, of course, totally unnecessary. I can't imagine there's a lawyer on any side of the political spectrum that would argue that you can constitutionally force a religious institution to carry out any marriage to which it has some sort of bigoted objection. You couldn't, for instance, force the Pope to marry two Jews, whatever their gender might be. The whole idea is almost as ludicrous as imagining that it's consitutional for the government to spy on everyone's email all of the time. Oh…wait.
What's truly surprising about this is that it comes from the land of the Mormons, a state in which it is absolutely shocking that there is a single state legislator, not to mention a Republican state legislator, who wants people to relax about gay marriage. That in itself is huge progress.
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