Friendly reminder: Many people advancing liberal arguments will try to dismiss the views of religious people just because they are religious people.  Too often people let them get away with that truly bigoted, prejudiced anti-religious argument.

These responses specifically address the marriage debate, though they also work when they try to dismiss your pro-life or other views that align with your religious convictions.  Feel free to use them as responses when people try to shut you up just because you trust in Jesus.

Here’s why I am free to support real marriage in the public square:

1. That First Amendment thingy.  We’re allowed to let our religious views inform our political views whether you like it or not. It doesn’t inhibit religious freedoms, it protects them.

2. My religion tells me that stealing, perjury, gay bashing and murder are also wrong.  Do you object to me letting those views inform my political views, or just the views you don’t like?

3. Lots of churches are thoroughly pro-gay, such as the UCC and the Episcopals.  I don’t recall you objecting to their advancement of the pro-gay cause.  If you were being consistent and if you really opposed any religious beliefs in the public square, shouldn’t you be objecting to their views just as strenuously?  Why do you just use that argument against views you disagree with?

4. You are begging the question by assuming what you should be proving.  You claim that we are denying “rights” to gays but you must change the definition of the word in question to draw that conclusion.  But the whole debate is whether to change the word and give them a new right.  You cheat and pretend that we’ve already changed the word and given them the right and then insist that we’re denying this existing right.  Sadly, pro-gay apologists commit this fallacy so reflexively that I doubt you realize what you are doing.

Ironically, the “rights” talked is best founded by a Christian worldview.  The Declaration of Independence notes this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But most of the world – religious or not – doesn’t regard those truths to be self-evident at all.  They make sense in our culture because we are still running on the fumes of Christianity.

5. Did you ever notice how China, the former Soviet Union and other communist countries hold explicitly atheistic views yet all recognize the timeless truth that marriage, by definition, is a union of one man and one woman?  Implying that those who oppose government recognition of same-sex unions are trying to establish theocracies is silly –unless you are trying to claim that atheistic, Christian-hating communists qualify as religious-right Christian extremists.

6. Finally, and most importantly, I didn’t bring up religion.  You did.  I can argue this topic without it — though of course, if you want to know Jesus’ views on it I’ll be glad to share the biblical view with you.