There are a lot of things it’s going to affect

About church sanction of marriage–well, I can see a day coming when the church separates sealing from legal marriage per se, so that people get married at the county clerks office and get sealed in the temple, as I think is already the case in parts of Europe. As you point out, that is pretty much what happened with polygamy, since it was not legal in the U.S. But I think it is good for legal and religious marriage to coincide because marriage law is deeply entwined with so many aspects of life–tax code, inheritance and the like. But you are right that we have had to part company with civil law on this issue in places where marriage has been redefined. I don’t think, however, that government is going to leave us in peace to practice our religion as we please.

Yes, same-sex marriage is now legal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a lot of same-sex couples are going to make babies. And even if they did, it would not necessarily be as dire as you predict.

“As some of the major consequences of religious freedom attacks, the law group notes that “good employees are being unlawfully fired,” while businesses are being “recklessly harmed.” It also warns that public servants are being driven from their fields, while ministries and churches are being threatened or restricted “from fulfilling their spiritual callings.””

http://m.christianpost.com/news/religious-freedom-attacks-america-all-time-high-first-liberty-institute-warns-158461/

MTodd–I don’t think I understand what you mean by slippery slope. Our church has a particular belief system–the one dictated to us by scripture– that has worked very well to guarantee children could, as often as possible, be raised by the two responsible people, their Mom and Dad, who brought them into the world. Adoption is necessary in our imperfect world, but we should be proud that Mormons have a good record of creating intact families that we believe last into eternity. It has been understood that this is the gold standard for children, even by people who don’t embrace our belief system. A lot of research has shown this is true. Remember the Murphy Brown controversy? After that there was a lot of research that showed the importance of Moms and Dads in kids lives. Men and women aren’t the same and we each have unique gifts to give children. This doesn’t mean that gay people can’t be good parents, they can, but they can’t give children that vital Mom and Dad in the home family. The social point of marriage, I believe, is not only to give adults life long companionship, but to give children their own Mom and Dad as often as possible. When marriage is redefined, that important underlying assumption about it is substantially damaged. Your gay friends could live together and have the lives they wished previously. No one stopped them. But now the assumptions about family and children have been changed, and not in a way that is good for children, the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

Our particular beliefs about sex, eternal families and so forth, as laid out int the Proclamation, are part of a larger story that helps us understand what male and female mean, how we should live, and what is best for adults and children alike. Other people are free to believe as they wish. Redefining marriage, however, has emboldened those with a more pagan, sex-centered world view to want to crush anyone who disagrees with them. That’s the worry here.

But, I hope churches will be given the freedom to continue to define their own standards of belief and conduct for their members. I think there is a real concern that the proponents of same-sex marriage will try to use the power of government to force churches to stop teaching their adherents that same-sex marriage is sin. In the United States, we don’t want the government to dictate what a church may or may not teach — the government might define crime, but it cannot define sin. But where a church chooses to teach that same-sex marriage is sin, I hope it will do so with as much charity as practicable. I understand why some church members are concerned about protecting religious liberty against governmental intrusion.