Coerced Endorsement of Gay Marriage

The views expressed by the participants here are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of this media-organization.

How often have we witnessed TV networks preface religious and other programs with disclaimers that while they enable the airing of the ensuing show, they in no way endorse its content? It is not as if reputational concern for guilt by association is alien to the non-religious. How many of those on the Left were condemned as communists by Joseph McCarthy, simply for flirting with and having attended a socialist/communist meeting decades prior.

In the recent kick-off of Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign at Liberty University, how many liberal media organizations, pundits and commentators decried the forced attendance by Liberty’s students, (on pain of civic-style fines), which gave pubic impression of tacit support and endorsement of Cruz’s candidacy? And their critiques would be right. Many conservative entities likewise declaimed the hypocrisy of speaking for liberty of conscience while in the very process violating it.

Therefore, the desire of theists and like-minded moralists, who do not wish to endorse or appear to endorse an idea or ethical principle, ought not to be beyond comprehension. One may not concur with the substance of their objection. But the yearning not to be associated is not alien. Therefore, the social denigration and legal penalties, inflicted upon those who find same-sex marriage a conceptual travesty and same-sex eros an ethical travesty, emits of a suffocating stench of rational inconsistency, sophistry and hypocrisy.

And the drumbeats of civic conflagration approach ever closer and louder.