Gay Marriage: After the Honeymoon, by Augusto Zimmermann.

Ever since the Canadian Parliament legalised it, in 2006, same-sex marriage must be treated identically to traditional marriage in law and public life.

Civil celebrants were the first to feel the remarkable consequences of such legal change. Several provinces refused to allow civil celebrants a right of conscience to refuse to preside over same-sex weddings.

At the same time religious organisations were fined for simply refusing to rent their facilities for post-wedding celebrations.

Finally, ‘Queer theory’ is now part of the compulsory school curriculum, and business owners do not have freedom to deny any service to gays and lesbians for religious reasons. …

In the United States, soon after that country’s judicial elite arbitrarily imposed the legalisation of same-sex marriage, the Obama administration handed down regulations requiring all entities contracting with the federal government to adhere, without exception, to absolute non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

In Massachusetts, a venerable charity was forced to stop its activity of placing children through adoption because it refused to violate church teachings by accepting a total anti-discrimination policy on grounds of gender identity and sexual orientation.

Finally, ever since marriage was re-defined to enable two people of the same sex to marry in that country, businesses owners have been fined and put out of business when they have declined to provide services for same-sex weddings. Consider the following examples:

• Christian bakers in Oregon were found guilty of discrimination for declining to provide a wedding cake for a lesbian couple.
• A Colorado baker who declined to provide a cake for a same-sex wedding was ordered by the State’s Civil Rights Commission either to serve gay couples or face fines despite it being against his beliefs as a Christian.
• New Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that Christian photographers who declined to photograph a same-sex union violated the state’s Human Rights Act.
• A Christian florist in Washington was prosecuted for refusing to provide flowers for a same-sex couple’s wedding.
• In New York owners of a farm were found to have violated the civil rights of a lesbian couple when they declined to host the couple’s same-sex ‘marriage’ ceremony and fined $13,000.

These cases are the leading edge of a massive reorientation of public life and law. …

Anyone in [Canada] who dares to reject the idea of same-sex marriage can be legally charged with anti-homosexual bigotry. In late October, 2016, Canada’s Senate passed Bill C-16 by 67-11 vote, which adds prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender orientation to the Canadian Human Rights Act. The legislation amended the Criminal Code to extend protection against hate speech and allows judges to take into account when sentencing whether a crime was motivated by hatred of the victim’s gender identity or expression. In Canada, Dawn Stefanowicz explains:

Freedom to assemble and speak freely about man-woman marriage, family and sexuality are restricted. Activists often sit in on religious assemblies, listening for anything discriminatory towards GLBT, so a complaint can be made to the Human Rights Commission. Most faith communities have become politically correct to avoid fines and loss of charitable status.

Consider also the example of Ireland. Following the May, 2015, landslide defeat for opponents of same sex-marriage — the referendum went 62% in favour of gay marriage to 38% against — the Irish Parliament stripped away all laws which protected the rights of people to freedom of religion when in conflict with ‘gay rights’. This parliament voted unanimously to repeal Section 37 of the state’s Employment Equality Act. Section 37 granted specific exemptions for ‘religious, educational or medical institutions’ which allows them ‘to maintain the religious ethos of the institution’. Removing the section means that LGBT teachers will be free to talk to school pupils about their personal relationships, even in faith schools. …

For many supporters of same-sex marriage, such infringements of religious freedom are not morally wrong; quite to the contrary. Georgetown University law professor Chai Feldblum, a member of the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, contends that so-called ‘marriage equality’ should always trump the constitutional right to religious liberty:

[F]or all my sympathy for the evangelical Christian couple who may wish to run a bed and breakfast from which they can exclude unmarried … couples and all gay couples, this is a point where I believe the ‘zero-sum’ nature of the game inevitably comes into play. And, in making that decision in this zero-sum game, I am convinced society should come down on the side of protecting the liberty of LGBT people.

Increasingly, the Australian LGBT lobby is urging the adoption of anti-discrimination laws to prevent dissenting voices from expressing their views in the public square. The Labor Party enthusiastically supports same-sex marriage and it is entirely committed to the further suppression of free speech on grounds of alleged ‘anti-homosexual discrimination’.

Hence, once same-sex marriage is legalised, there is an enormous possibility that the law will equate the traditional view of marriage with the notion of ‘homophobic’ bigotry. As a result, anyone who dares to criticise the homosexual agenda will be subject to very harsh legal treatment.