Since I monitor the Christian Right for Tikkun Daily, I had to ask myself this week: What does the Christian Right (CR) think about the recent decision of the New York legislature to allow same-sex couples access to civil marriage? Their websites were actually less focused on this issue than I thought they would be, but those who did comment seemed to offer two major lines of attack.

The first argument, advanced by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), Family Research Council, and others, says the people of New York don’t want gay marriage and so the legislature shouldn’t have legalized it. Since we claim to be a democratic society, this makes sense as an argument. However, this criticism is not actually the principled argument that it at first seems to be because Christian Right spokespeople appeal to the will of the majority only when it serves their purposes.

That is to say, if you look at the arguments against gay marriage made by the Right over time, they change depending on the circumstances. When the courts order marriage equality, the CR says “leave it to the legislature.” When legislatures legalize gay marriage, then the CR demands a referendum.

For example, Maggie Gallagher from NOM, who is now pushing the will of the people argument, previously criticized the Massachusetts Supreme Court for overturning the laws passed by the legislature.

Well what if the people decide they want gay marriage? Would the Christian Right then drop its opposition to marriage equality?

This is not a theoretical question because as it turns out, the majority of Americans now actually do support marriage equality! According to the Washington Post, in two recent polls by Gallup and the Post, 53% of Americans said they favor the legalization of gay marriage, yet NOM pushes on with its agenda.

So Maggie Gallagher and others are dishonest, when they make it sound like they just want to enact the will of the people. They don’t. They want to enact their own agenda.

The second major argument made against the New York decision by Christian Right organizations, like the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), is that marriage is a covenant with G*d, and thus the definition of it cannot be changed by the legislature or even the people themselves. Personally, I prefer this line of argument because it is more honest, and I generally have at least some respect for people who stand by their values, even if I find their values offensive.

Nevertheless, I have three responses to this second line of criticism. The first is most obvious. Even if you accept the religious argument made by TVC, we do not live in a theocracy, where the government legislates on the basis of Divine law. The Christian Right cannot expect the government to impose a particular religious version of marriage on the American people. While the federal government is actually doing exactly that right now, it is clearly a violation of the separation of church and state. While those with “traditional values” will always be free to consider their own marriages covenants with G*d, the government cannot legitimately take that position in a liberal democracy.

Moreover, even if it were OK for the government to establish a religious definition of marriage as the law of the land, we live in a pluralistic society, and there are multiple understandings of what marriage is, even among the religious themselves, not to mention the non-religious. We don’t all agree, which is of course why we have the First Amendment.

My second response is that if marriage really is a covenant with G*d, then perhaps it does make sense to move towards the “disestablishment of marriage,” as some progressives have argued. Instead of trying to maintain a distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage, which seems to constantly confuse people, perhaps it would be more coherent to have state-sanctioned civil unions or domestic partnerships for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike and leave marriage to the churches, synagogues, and mosques. Tamara Metz makes a strong case for that position in Untying the Knot: Marriage, the State, and the Case for Their Divorce. (If you want to see my overview and review of that book, click here.)

The proposal is really not totally crazy. In fact, when Maryland State Senator Jamie Raskin introduced legislation to do just that, he reportedly got a lot of support for his proposal from constituents.

Third, however, while I recognize the sensibleness of proposals to get the state out of the marriage business altogether, I still resist doing that for one simple reason: I just don’t believe we should have to radically change our entire culture just to prevent same-sex couples from having access to civil marriage and its benefits.