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Monday, June 1, 2009

Help make this the last summer of marriage inequality!

Render Unto Caesar is a movement whose purpose is to encourage clergy to separate civil and religious marriage. We have joined forces with refusetosign.org and encourage all interested parties to sign their pledge! Refuse to sign is an ecumenical effort to encourage clergy of all denominations and religious leaders of all faiths to refuse to sign legal marriage documents. We still fully support clergy blessing the unions they see fit to bless in the religious ritual of their tradition. We believe that at the heart of the conflict between those who support marriage equality and those who do not is role confusion. Religious leaders bless unions, but are not agents of the state. Once these roles are appropriately separated the solution becomes clear. Faith traditions are free to continue defining and blessing unions as they see fit, and the state is freed to do its job, which is protecting its citizens.
Posted by Jeremy Nickel at 9:33 PM 0 comments Links to this post
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Mission Statement

We believe that marriage is so essential that it must be available to all committed, loving adults. Marriage is not only fundamental to healthy families, but it also provides a particular status in the eyes of the law, offering over one-thousand legal benefits and protections. Because these are only available with marriage, our current system is both separate and unequal. We believe that at the heart of this issue is confusion about the role of religion in the covenanting of human relationships. Through out time religious leaders have blessed the unions of note in their culture and time. We now live in a culture that sees the benefit in drawing clear boundaries between religious and political issues. In order to protect the personal and private commitments held by all religious institutions and to uphold the need of the state to offer equal rights to each and every citizen, we believe it is time to separate the religious blessing from the legal status found in marriage. To that end, while we encourage Clergy and religious leaders of all faiths to continue blessing the unions they see fit to bless, we seek to fully untangle the religious blessing from legal status of the state and all of the benefits that come with it. Our goal is for religious leaders to give up our role as agents of the state and work for equal rights for each and every American. We invite you to join in our effort and Render Unto Caesar asks all religious leaders to make a pledge not to sign any legal marriage document.

Like Minded Folks

Render Unto Caesar has joined forces with RefuseToSign.Org so check out the new hub of the movement at refusetosign.org.

In this NPR interview The Rev. Art Cribbs, pastor of a UCC church in San Marino, Calif., said with Proposition 8 "a boundary has been crossed" between religion and civil law. The state, he said, "failed to protect a vulnerable minority from the tyranny of a majority."