What do you think of Supreme Court Justice Scalia recently saying religious clergy could be forced to try to perform gay marriages?

I think that has been the goal all along. When that was said a few years ago, when my state was getting read to vote on gay marriage, everyone acted like that was a ridiculous suggestion. That it couldn't possibly happen...but it could and very well may happen.

Couples who want to be married in the Church may have to get married civilly separately.

It isn't about being free to exclude someone from being married in the Church. It is about being issued state authority to marry couples and then denying someone that civil marriage. When a priest marries a couple, he is doing it both by the authority of God and the authority of the state. How can he act as an authority of the state and deny someone a marriage that the state (whom he represents) recognizes?

Muslims marriage are religious marriages and so they would not seek a Catholic wedding. Gay marriages are not religious, they are civil. If a priest holds a state issued license to civilly marry people (which is what is issued to him), how can that same person deny them because they are same sex? The state license to marry people has nothing to do with religion.

Justice Scalia is fantasizing, and that fantasy seems to be based on his personal contempt for religious liberty. Maybe HE is so much against religious liberty that he would force ministers to perform marriages against their own beliefs, but I doubt that a majority of the Supreme Court would ever concur with him.

Any possible interpretation of the "free exercise" clause prohibits Congress, at least, from any such interference. And I don't see any basis for court involvement, either.

There ARE cases in which officials can be directed to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies, but they don't involve government imposing such requirements on ministers. They involve government requirements for "justices of the peace" (whose job, after all, is to provide an official alternative if churches refuse to solemnize them) and church denominations' requirements for their own ministers.

Any change that allowed the government to require ministers to officiate would involve one of two things:

(1) Abolishment of the First Amendment religious freedoms (which is unlikely to happen unless a Constitutional Convention is called, in which case all bets are off); and

(2) Courts at some level essentially enacting laws, which courts really do try very hard to avoid doing.

I do not believe that clergy members should be forced to perform gay marriages in the same way I do not believe clergy members should be forced to perform interracial marriages.

However, if they are engaged in a business outside of their church and that business performs marriages then that business has to cater to all. If that means these clergy members need to hire outside ministers to perform those weddings then oh well. Your wedding chapel example would be a situation like that. It is not a church. It is a wedding business. That business cannot discriminate.

Oh look, Scalia's being disingenuous and wrong about the Constitution again. Must be a day ending in Y.

Scalia has always been a psychotic, lying sack of sh*t who will say anything in support of his anti-American, inhuman views.

Edit: It's it ALWAYS part of the change that no religious person be forced to perform weddings that go against their conscience. If you weren't a sub-human, lying sack of sh*t, you'd have known that.

????? Dangerous? No. For one thing, not ALL Christians are hate-mongering sub-human scum. Many are HUMAN -- something you will never understand.

For another, just because people you don't know marry, that doesn't KILL YOU. Where's the danger?

If you can't live in a civilized free society, but must live in a theocracy, then move to saudi Arabia, or go join your soulmates, ISIS.

That argument makes no sense. Christian churches are not required to perform Muslim marriages and vice versa. The same exemption would still apply for gay marriages. Gay marriages just need to be recognized by the state, not by any religious institution.

He's showing an appalling lack of knowledge of constitutional law regarding religious freedom. Churches in the U.S. are free to exclude whomever they wish from their services. The wedding chapel was a commercial venture and therefore liable to be sued for discrimination.

First of all our government can not dictate to the church nor can the church dictate to the government. If the government sanctions gay marriages then it is render unto Cesar that which is Cesar's and render unto our god which is your god's.

Scalia is an idiot who votes his ideology, not the Constitution.

I like what Thomas said, he said, 'how can we think we can know better than thousands of years of history.' . Pretty good.