Should clergy who perform marriages for gays go to jail?

[Zookeeper]

That is the question of the day on the MSNBC TV site. "No" is ahead of "yes," I'm happy to say. But it hadn't occurred to me that clergy could be sent to jail for that anyway. Has anyone heard of clergy being threatened with jail time?

[Melodybe]

1. link?

[Zookeeper]

4. 'Sorry. I was being lazy...

trying to find a pen in this house full of kids is a workout!

http://msnbc.msn.com/

[damnraddem]

9. Ican find no poll of any kind on the page, ...

much less on the subject of gay marriage.

[Zookeeper]

10. They've already posted the results...

on the MSNBC TV page:

Yes: 39%
No: 61%

out of 4,288 responses.

[kixot]

2. Sure

And I think that people who perform circumcisions without a surgeon's license should be sent to federal pound-you-in-the-bum prison. Especially those commie-socialist rabbis.

</sarcasm>

[Bronco69]

3. My church does it all the time.

Of course we are a predominately gay and lesbian church, but if clergy should have to go to jail we'd be closed down. :-)

[damnraddem]

8. Performing a sacrament without a license?

Should your minister be jailed for marrying a gay man to a lesbian woman? ;-)

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Only in the case of clergy who perform

gay-lesbian shotgun weddings.

[Snow]

6. Butbutbutbut.....

forgive me if I'm uninformed here, but aren't all the weddings taking place involving marriage certificates civil ceremonies? If so, why is MSNBC pretending this is an issue?

[damnraddem]

7. Clergy act for their own church and can also act for the state.

I suppose that a state could claim that anyone licensed to perform marriages was guilty of malfeasance for performing a marriage the state didn't allow for. But it could also simply rule that such a ceremony had no legal force. Presumably a minister could perform whatever marriage was wished as a representative of a religious community, so long as there was no claim that the marriage had legal force -- to do otherwise would be to infringe on freedom of religion. Let's say that a Cathollic priest performed a marriage that the state did not sanction -- could the state regulate the priest's performing of a religious sacrament?

On the other side, SHOULD the state license ministers to perform marriages as agents of the state?

[sybylla]

11. No marriage is recognized in my state without a license

The clergy can marry whomever they want and it has no legal effect without the state certificate. It is merely a committment ceremony.

I would like to assume this is the case in most states.

[kayell]

12. That is a totally bs poll

Clergy can marry whomever they want to (within the strictures of their own denomination usually.) They can also decline to marry anyone they don't want to. To have the govt. get involved in such an issue would be an incredible violation of first amendment protections.

What currently is the situation is that in most locations gays can not get a marriage license, which provides them with the civil recognition and rights that go along with marriage.

To imply that the clergy could be prosecuted for marrying whoever they wish, also implies that clergy could be forced to marry people they don't wish to marry. Watch out for these stealth polls whose intent is to spread a meme rather than to gather information.

[Jacobin]

13. Only if there are two gays in jail who want to get married.

:-)