Politician as Person of Faith, Part 97

In this blog post from the Sun, Matthew Brown shares that Archbishop O'Brien urged Martin O'Malley not to support gay marriage based on O'Malley's Catholic faith. This is yet another example of the difficulties presented by separating church and state. (Not that I'm against the separation, of course!)

How does a political person handle this? On the one hand, I look to my faith to shape my decisions and to make me a moral person. And the church has a long tradition of working toward consistency and comprehensiveness in terms of a moral belief system. On the other hand, we have a separate way of judging what is right and wrong in the public sphere, and sometimes that moral code overlaps with religious views, and sometimes not. The US legal system's "belief system" is very much rooted in modernity and the rights of individuals, while those aren't always the first priority for different Christian worldviews.

I'm glad that O'Malley decided in favor of the commonly held view of individual rights.

On a side note, the language of "redefining marriage" that Archbishop O'Brien most likely assumes that marriage is not the union of two equals. Here's a piece from Slate on how gay marriage is good for straight women and men's equality.