Why Gay-Marriage Friends, Foes Need One Another

Commentary
Inside the First Amendment

By Charles C. Haynes
First Amendment Center senior scholar

Same-sex marriage advances in one region, then retreats in another, making the United States a two-nation nation on this issue — now and for years to come. Advocates on both sides are in the majority somewhere, but in the minority somewhere else.

That’s why two church-state encounters this month, in two very different parts of the country, are instructive reminders that…