NOM co-founder Maggie Gallagher's syndicated column in Human Events on this week's Supreme Court decision:

Lost in the political shuffle in New Hampshire was an epic U.S. Supreme Court decision this week in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

By an astounding, unanimous 9-0 margin, the usually ideologically divided Supreme Court slapped down President Obama's radical doctrine that the federal government can tell a church who it must employ as a minister if the church violates anti-discrimination employment provisions.

The Obama administration's claim that there is no special protection for clergy in our Constitution, the majority ruled, "is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations. We cannot accept the remarkable view that the Religion Clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization's freedom to select its own ministers."

Professor Douglas Laycock argued the case for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which defended the little Michigan church in court. Laycock is a longtime advisory board member of the organization (becketfund.org), which defends the religious liberty of all religions.

"This is a huge win for religious liberty," he said via a press release. "The Court has unanimously confirmed the right of churches to select their own ministers and religious leaders."

The Washington Times:

Nearly 40 religious leaders, including Catholic, evangelical, Jewish and Mormon figures, issued an open letter Thursday that argues that the battle against same-sex marriage is a fight on behalf of religious freedom.

“Marriage and religious freedom are both deeply woven into the fabric of this nation,” clergy members wrote in their letter, “Marriage and Religious Freedom: Fundamental Goods That Stand or Fall Together.” It calls on all Americans to promote and protect marriage “in its true definition.”

The “most urgent peril” associated with legalizing same-sex unions is that religious individuals and organizations would be forced or pressured to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct, they explained.

... “It is sad to admit that our culture has reached a point where such a statement is necessary, and yet it is for just such a time as this that the Lord has called the North American Lutheran Church into being, to be able to make such a stand and offer our support to this important cause,” said the Rev. John F. Bradosky, bishop of the NALC, which was created in 2010 as a church body for “traditionally grounded” Lutherans.

“Marriage and religious liberty are at a crisis point in the United States. This letter is a sign of hope,” said Cardinal-designate and New York Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan.