Another Empty Argument Against Gay Marriage...

The Christian right has put a good deal of time and energy into the argument that making gay marriage legal would force them to deny their beliefs or face governmental backlash. This is wrong of course, Christians will retain their right to hold onto their bigoted beliefs and promote them in their churches thanks to a little thing called equal protection before the law. Now, they will lose the right to appeal to the government to be a tool of their bigotry just like racists did after the Civil Rights Act but that hardly squares with the victimology they are embracing.

This is a little remembered point but the Mormon Church was, until 1978, structured in a way that was clearly intended to deny blacks equal footing with whites within in the church. And its worth noting that it was a handy revelation from God and not governmental pressure of any kind that allowed blacks to become fully Mormon and indeed many fundamentalist Mormon offshoots still disallow blacks full membership. Clearly racist and clearly wrong... but clearly legal.