Obama and the Two Types of Marriage
At The Huffington Post, Melissa Rogers, director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest’s Divinity School, points out that there are two types of marriages in American society: the civil marriages recognized by the state and the religious marriages sanctioned by churches. In the wake of President Obama’s declaration that he supports the civil right of same-sex couples to marry, and Mitt Romney’s public opposition to state sponsorship of gay marriage, Americans must not only “decide whether they support or oppose recognition of same-sex marriage in our civil laws,” writes Rogers. “[T]hey also must determine how religious objectors will be treated where same-sex marriages are recognized and the spirit in which these debates will be conducted.”