Free speech, making things better. Religion, still ruining everything.

How many issues does religion need to be on the wrong side of history before it just withers and dies?  Maggie Gallagher’s Refusal to Attend Gay Weddings - Hit & Run : Reason.com: ""National Review social conservative Maggie Gallagher has a telling and useful column today explaining to a hypothetical gay male friend who has invited her to his wedding why she... will refuse to attend. 

Excerpt: We are born male and female, and marriage is the union of husband to wife that celebrates the necessity of the two genders' coming together to make the future happen. I know you don’t think that. I know the law no longer thinks that. But I have staked my life on this truth. The problem for me in celebrating your gay wedding, as much as I love you, is that I would be witnessing and celebrating your attempt not only to commit yourself to a relationship that keeps you from God's plan but, worse, I would be witnessing and celebrating your attempt to hold the man you love to a vow that he will avoid God's plan...

The notion that someone has staked their life on marriage staying male-female is frankly bizarre. To single out same-sex couples for being disqualifying unable "to make the future happen," and untenably mired in sin—in a world with tens of millions of multiply-married people, many of whom re-couple after child-rearing age; while younger same-sex couples eagerly adopt otherwise unwanted children—is to demonstrate that some Christian conservatives are elevating homosexuality far above other sins, most of which involve actual discord and harm rather than a joyous union of two loving people. Gallagher's literal intolerance of gay marriage can quickly become an argument in its favor...

"It's a counter-intuitive point, one that many progressives find hard to swallow, but compelling people to change their minds and hounding minority viewpoints into silence is not nearly as persuasive as, well, persuasion. And it has the added benefit of being more harmonious with America's rich and enviable history of liberal free speech...

'For politically weak minorities, the best and often only way to effect wholesale change in the world of politics is by effecting change in the world of ideas. Our position as beneficiaries of the open society requires us to serve as guardians of it. Playing that role, not seeking government protections or hauling our adversaries before star chambers, is the greater source of our dignity.'"