On Church's being made to marry gay people

I don't care about others sexuality. It's none of my business. If gay people wish to be married I'm ok with it. Indeed I have a relative who is in the process of marrying her girlfriend. In spite all the hype about sexuality in the media and pressure groups no one is shocked, offended, angry, or bothered. Everyone I've met wishes nothing but the best for the couple.

It's the same as any decent person would wish anyone embarking on wedlock.

Marriage is so difficult and life too short to condemn anyone getting married.

However I'm not happy about the proposals to force churches to marry gay people.

Firstly I feel it is inherently anti-Christian as the law won't make Mosques marry gay people. The law doesn't even stop the more extreme Muslim preachers calling for gay people to be murdered.

But it's more than that. Freedom of religion is vital to a free and open society. As long as you don't call for people to be murdered or abuse people you should be free to believe anything you want. This fundamental freedom doesn't have to be agreeable or inoffensive to others. No one has the right not to be offended. This means that if for doctrinal reasons a Church, Mosque, Synagogue, Temple, or meeting place think it wrong to marry gay people then the state shouldn't make them.

It impinges on their right to belief.

A religious ceremony if a different thing to a civil one. By this I mean that it is the state which decides who is married and creates the system to support marriage through the tax system. A religious wedding is simply about religious ceremony and satisfying an urge for affirmation and acknowledgement within their religious community.

You don't need a priest or religious leader to marry you.

The force of law shouldn't be used to impose the will of our leaders on anyone.

More than that. There are many Church's, Synagogues, Temples, meeting places (though I don't know about Mosques), who accept homosexual and lesbian marriage and are happy to marry such committed couples. There is no need to force those who don't to comply to others will.

It is simply not the business of the state to overrule religious belief.

I worry about the precedent here. If the state can use the law to force us to comply about such marriages it will be used to attack other beliefs they ruling elite decides we shouldn't hold.

And that would be dangerous.