> The closest he has come is to suggest that homosexuality is a sin. Again, that is a religious opinion.
>

I agree with you that is a pretty critical distinction. And this is another area where the President and I part company. It seems to me perfectly logical to have a religious belief that homosexuality is wrong ( a belief I don't share but that's neither here nor there ) and a judgment that gay marriage should be legal.

I think a religion should be allowed to take a stand on this and refuse to marry gays ( as the Catholic church does to divorced persons in absence of sometimes purchased loopholes ) while the State - which has no problem taxing persons without regard to sexual orientation - should not.

I just cannot follow the logic that heterosexual union must somehow be "protected" ( except, perhaps, from the actions of heterosexuals and a history of the subjugation of women that stems from a lot of the same Biblical and Koranic ideas that have lead to the anathematizing of homosexuality )

I understand there are grey areas in terms of people of faith acting on that faith in their response to public issues, and that certainly gets complicated in life-and-death issues like abortion and the state's power of life and death in both the criminal and military realm as people of good conscience on both sides struggle with their moral responsibility as they see it.

But it would seem that in the area of somehow proscribing loving, committed relationships in others a person of good faith would have to err on the side of the right of another human to live their life true to the way they were created.

The opposition to gay marriage falls more in a category with apartheid laws against "race-mixing" as being unnatural and a somehow a crime against God.