U of M Law Prof on MN Gay Marriage: David FitzSimmons Is 'Hero' for Religious Freedom

Minnesota state Rep. David FitzSimmons (R-Albertville) "made himself a hero for the cause [of] religious freedom" with his "civil marriage" amendment to what is now the state's new law permitting same-sex marriages.

That's the opinion of University of Minnesota law professor Richard Painter, who explained his reasoning in a May 16, 2013 post at the Legal Ethics Forum website:

His amendment to Minnesota’s same sex marriage statute expressly states that the Minnesota statutes refer only to “civil marriage.”  The plain meaning of the language is clear—civil marriage is not religious marriage. A legal right to a civil marriage does not create a legal right to a marriage in any church or other religious institution. A civil marriage in Minnesota means that two people are legally married under the laws of the State of Minnesota; it has nothing to do with whether the couple is legally married under the canon law of the Catholic Church or in the eyes of any other religious organization. The parishioner who asks his priest to officiate at his wedding has no legal right to anything other than a civil marriage. And this means that the priest can tell him where to go to get his civil marriage (city hall). The priest can even tell the parishioner exactly where he will go ultimately if he makes this choice to enter into a relationship that the priest believes to be morally wrong. Civil marriage is the domain of the State of Minnesota; religious marriage is the domain in which the priest and his parishioners discern for themselves a definition of marriage that they believe conforms to the will of God.   

The FitzSimmons Amendment is welcome relief for Minnesotans of faith in an age when plaintiffs’ lawyers run rampant with frivolous lawsuits and government agencies sometimes run roughshod over our religious freedoms (the Obama Administration’s brazen attempt to force Catholic institutions to include birth control in employee health plans is the most recent example of infringement on religious freedom). Representative FitzSimmons had made himself a hero for the cause or religious freedom by confronting this long standing problem head on in Minnesota marriage laws, rather than taking the easy way out of requiring the State to withhold its recognition from some civil marriages because some churches do not recognize those same relationships as religious marriages.

Read Painter's full blog post at legalethicsforum.com (h/t Bluestem Prairie)