Abstract
The overwhelming majority of support for bans on same-sex civil marriage has come from religious believers, and the so-called "secular justifications" for these bans are mere pretexts for religious beliefs that homosexuality, homosexuals, and same-sex couples are evil or sinful. Courts should take a hard look at the substantive justifications offered in support of same-sex marriage bans, bearing in mind that (1) these justifications are universally offered by religious believers but are infrequently offered by credentialed Secularists, and (2) they are the result of a studied use of pretextual, secular-sounding language to cloak a religiously-motivated bias against homosexuals and same-sex couples.
Citation
Justin T. Wilson,
Preservationism, or The Elephant in the Room: How Opponents of Same-Sex Marriage Deceive Us into Establishing Religion,
14 Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy
561-680
(2007)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/djglp/vol14/iss1/19