Abstract
The 2012 election cycle marked the first time that any state had approved a measure to permit same-sex marriages by popular ballot, with measures endorsed by voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington reflecting a steady increase in public opinion favorable to gay marriage over the past ten years or so. President Obama announced his personal endorsement for giving gays and lesbians the right to marry one another during an interview with ABC News in May 2012, and, several months later, the Democratic Party became the first major party in American history to endorse gay marriage in a political platform.
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Notes
Even Msgr. Ryan, the theologian famous for his endorsement of Franklin D. Roosevelt as a Democratic Presidential candidate, argued that in a “Catholic State,” the government “could not permit” non-Catholic groups to actively spread their beliefs in public. Although he admitted that this doctrine contributed to profound suspicion of Catholics in public life, “we cannot,” he argued, “yield up the principles of eternal and unchangeable truth in order to avoid the enmity of … unreasonable persons.” See John. A. Ryan and Moorhouse F. X. Millar, The State and the Church (New York: MacMillan, 1922), pp. 38–39.
David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity … And Why it Matters (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), pp. 33–34.
John Courtney Murray, “The Problem of Religious Freedom,” in Religious Liberty: Catholic Struggles with Pluralism, ed. J. Leon Hooper (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 145.
John Courtney Murray, “Memo to Cardinal Cushing on Contraception Legislation,” in Bridging the Sacred and the Secular: Selected Writings of John Courtney Murray, SJ, ed. J. Leon Hooper (Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press, 1994), p. 85.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan (Washington, D.C: USCCB Communications, 2010), p. 23.
Jonathan Rauch, Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt and Co., 2004), p. 7.
Kathleen E. Hull, “The Cultural Power of Law and the Cultural Enactment of Legality: The Case of Same-Sex Marriage,” Law and Social Inquiry, Summer 2003, Volume 28, Number 3, pp. 655–656.
Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), p. 137.
John Courtney Murray, “The Bad Arguments Intelligent Men Made,” in Bridging the Sacred and the Secular: Selected Writings of John Courtney Murray, SJ, ed., J. Leon Hooper (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994), p. 76.
AA Symposium, “Rights & Wrongs: Morality in the Gay Marriage Debate,” Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, Summer 2008, Volume 9, Number 2, pp. 340–341.
J. Leon Hooper, The Ethics of Discourse: The Social Philosophy of John Courtney Murray (Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press, 1986), p. 5.
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© 2014 R. Ward Holder and Peter B. Josephson
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Taylor, A. (2014). The Liberal State and the Gay Marriage Debate: Lessons from American Catholic Thought. In: Holder, R.W., Josephson, P.B. (eds) The American Election 2012. Elections, Voting, Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137389220_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137389220_21
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