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Missouri wants to restrict marriages to churches

by Tim Gibson (mygwork)

The GOP in the US state of Missouri has introduced a bill to redefine marriage as exclusively to those officiated in churches. The bill, HB 1434, would in effect force all other marriages (gay and straight) to be reclassified as “domestic unions”. Proponents of the bill say this is an effort to stop “gay encroachment” on the church and on Christian businesses.

 

This extreme new legislation comes from recent controversies involving religious exemption cases – most commonly bakers refusing to make LGBT wedding cakes. The state – which, still, unconstitutionally refuses to recognise same sex marriages – recently empowered these cases by passing HB 1523, a broad law that allows people and business the “religious freedom” to deny LGBT+ people employment, housing, adoption rights, and marriage licenses.

 

The US Supreme Court refused to take this case up, allowing the law to pass. This has alarmed many LGBT+ activists including the President and CEO of GLAAD, Sarah Kate Ellis, who said in a statement: “While freedom of religion is a fundamental right, it should never give people the right to impose their beliefs on others and openly discriminate against others in the name of religious exemptions.”

 

This new bill risks further damage to the LGBT+ cause, erasing the hard-won triumphs of equal marriage.

 

 

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