Since the supreme court’s decision that marriage is a civil liberty there have been countless posts on Facebook about how the courts have unlawfully redefined marriage and that God’s definition of marriage needs to be defended. Today I’m not going to talk about the myriad problems encountered when trying to use a secular government to enforce religious laws, but something else, namely that marriage hasn’t been stolen from conservatives, the conservatives gave it away. It’s their own fault that marriage has been changed (again).

How is it their fault? Because they willingly accepted (and still accept) legal benefits associated with being married. As long as there are non religious benefits to marriage, there cannot be religious constraints put on it. I know some of you say “great, get the government out of marriage altogether!!” I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the many that like the legal benefits of marriage, don’t want to give them up, but still want to deny them to gays.

Our government is not a theocracy. We are a nation of (many) Christians, not a Christian nation. Our founding fathers specifically wanted the government to not fall under the power of religious tyranny. The government was specifically designed as a secular government both to keep the government from the corruption of religion and more importantly to protect the religious liberty of every individual by allowing no laws bound to any particular faith or creed or the prohibition of the free exercise thereof.

Because the government is not a theocracy and is therefore not bound to honor any particular religion’s definition of what is right and wrong, it CANNOT be biased against individuals whose beliefs run contrary to someone else’s no matter how many claim either side of the belief. For this reason, the government of the United States cannot both provide legal benefits to married individuals AND limit the definition of marriage based on religious preference.

It’s really as simple as that. If you want to take marriage “back”, you need to be willing to give up any and all benefits of marriage that are not strictly religious. I know some people try to claim there are purely secular reasons to deny gay marriage, but I have personally yet to hear a convincing or supported argument. It all comes down to “it’s icky” and/or “my God said so.”

Marriage wasn’t taken from religion and conservatives, religion and conservatives gave it up.