The majority's decision (Obergefell vs. Hodges) is not, however, the first time in which the Supremes have swept aside the people and states and the natural law by discovering a constitutional right to something that in fact is gravely wrong. In 1973 the court did worse than Obergefell and discovered a right to kill unborn children.

Now not everything that is contrary to the law of God and of nature should also be against the civil law. Envy and covetousness are grave sins, but the civil laws really cannot and should not attempt to outlaw such things. But killing and the bestowal of public benefits through marriage are outward acts with secular effects that are properly governed by civil law.

Congress and the states could reverse Obergefell by constitutional amendment. That will not happen. Congress could more easily permit the states to reverse Obergefell by stripping the federal courts of their jurisdiction over marriage law. That also will not happen. So now marriage is whatever the courts say it is, or whatever the legislatures say it is provided "political power and cultural influence" are on their side. Laws against polygamy will fall next. In fact there is, to use Anthony Kennedy's phrase, though not his argument, from United States vs. Windsor (2013), "no legitimate purpose" in the bestowal of government benefits on marriage once marriage has been, as it were, divorced from its traditional purposes. Marriage as now defined by the U.S. government is simply an arbitrary grant for no good reason of benefits to publicly favored, privately chosen, domestic arrangements. This grant relatively harms or discriminates against the single, polygamists, households of elderly siblings, cohabitating basketball teams, and all other not-favored domestic arrangements.

In the United States and in many other countries where our Church works, there now is a deep discontinuity between the secular state of marriage and the Church's sacrament of holy matrimony. Church law has to take account of this growing rift.

We also have to assume that the state will increasingly intrude into internal Church activity. Particularly in the area of human sexuality there already is ample evidence that the mere articulation of traditional Church teaching is an intolerable offense against what Mr. Alito calls the new orthodoxy. The assertion of a right to opinion contrary to that orthodoxy has been swept aside in many places, to the ruination of small businesses. I do not think that even the First Amendment will be allowed to stand against the new orthodoxy. The assertion of the divine and natural law in this area is already deemed by many to be "hate speech," and already legal scholars and enforcers of the new orthodoxy are asserting that free speech and religious rights must be "balanced," and sometimes overbalanced, by other considerations. At present the courts do not usually go so far. But Obergefell shows how quickly the courts can discover new, hitherto unsuspected ideas that sweep all before them. If Roman Catholic nuns can be forced to pay for their employees' contraceptives, we need to prepare for other once unthinkable things. Proponents of traditional marriage will increasingly come under pressure. The Church must prepare.

The ACC's canons already are tightly written so as to protect clergy in marriage cases. The local priest is given full authority to decline to officiate at any marriage. Also our clergy may only officiate at marriages when both of the parties are baptized and believing Christians and when one of them is a practicing member of the ACC. Both of the parties must sign a Declaration of Intention whose text comes in a canon asserting that marriage is a "union...of one man with one woman." The couple are required to accept premarital counselling. The priest giving the counselling has to inform the couple of impediments to valid marriages, and in turn the couple must assure the priest that no such impediment is present.

One of the impediments which must be discussed and ruled out is homosexuality.

However, all of that may not be sufficient. The Provincial Chancellor and other canonists are preparing legislation for the next Provincial Synod which will tighten up the canons further with an eye to the likelihood of future, intrusive attacks on the Church and her clergy. This care may show an excess of caution. But I don't know many clergy who think that it does so. One priest in my diocese has already been asked to perform a marriage for a same-sex couple. There will be other such cases, and some of those will probably be deliberately designed to lead to litigation.

One possible response is that our clergy simply refuse to serve as marriage officers for the state. That is, as in France and some other countries, we might tell couples that if they want a marriage that the government will recognize, they need to go to a government office to get it. The Church, of course, still will offer the sacrament of matrimony, but will also teach that this sacrament is quite different from civil, government-sanctioned "marriage." The Church will withhold or administer this sacrament just as it withholds or bestows baptism or Holy Communion. Just as the Church does not recognize civil divorces as having any sacramental effects, so the Church will not recognize civil marriages as implying a sacrament, nor will the state recognize Church marriages as having civil effects.

At present our canons require that no clergyman may perform a marriage which has not met the requirements for a civil marriage. Sometimes this hurts our members. For instance, an elderly woman might lose Social Security survivor's benefits if she remarries. At present the Church cannot permit her a Church wedding unless she also has a state marriage, even though that state marriage will adversely affect her financial position. It is hard to see why the Church should help the state any longer by binding our members to onerous government marriages as a precondition for bestowing a sacrament. Government marriage and holy matrimony, which have long been different, are now hardly in the same ballpark. Canonical changes will increasingly need to recognize this fact. Likewise canonical changes may be needed to tighten policies concerning the use of church facilities by secular groups.

While the U.S. Constitution is officially agnostic, the American Founders and later leaders recognized that American society was largely religious. The consensus has been that national policy should encourage private religion for two main reasons. First, churches and other religious groups perform a host of charitable deeds which benefit the public. Secondly, religion tends to inculcate private virtues which the Founders assumed were essential for a successful nation. So the U.S. has long granted tax exemptions for religious groups, publicly-funded chaplaincies, and fostered a generic public respect for religion.

As traditional religious groups increasingly seem to dissent from the new moral orthodoxy exemplified by Obergefell, such indirect support for religion is likely to end. Tax exemption could be abolished by a simple change in the tax code. I would anticipate an adoption of the Australian policy: no tax exemption for strictly religious gifts (e.g., to pay clergy or maintain church buildings) but only for "humanitarian" gifts (e.g., to pay for a soup kitchen or a school). This would allow the New Orthodox to contribute to universities, hospitals and NPR, but discourage funding for benighted churches.

Likewise, I do not think the military chaplain corps will long survive. It is one Supreme Court decision away from abolition. It will not be abolished in the next five years. But I do not think young men becoming chaplains now will be able to retire with a pension. My own policy as a diocesan bishop now is to support young men if they insist on becoming chaplains, but to discourage them from so doing by presenting a realistic picture of the pressures they will come under and of the likelihood that their career will disappear.

Some people will view such prophecies as unlikely. But I think the handwriting is on the wall. Already in California judges have been forbidden from joining the Boy Scouts of America because of the BSA's discrimination against homosexuals. (The BSA has recently caved on that issue, so the example is dated. But the point stands.) If the New Orthodoxy forbids judges in the BSA, why may not the bar forbid lawyers from joining the BSA? And then why not forbid membership in the ACC or the Roman Catholic Church or the Southern Baptists or Hasidic Judaism? For the moment the answer to the last question is: the First Amendment. But again, don't count too much on freedom of religion when what we really face is a federally-established orthodoxy which includes the doctrines enshrined in Obergefell and Windsor.

Ancient Christians would not join the Roman army or accept public office because their faith forbade them from offering to pagan images the pinch of incense which such offices required. Christians now need to think carefully about the incense of approval they will increasingly be expected to offer to the new public orthodoxy. Again, such considerations may not be decisive quite yet. But the day is coming when they probably will be.

This article first appeared in the September-October 2015 issue of THE TRINITARIAN the official arm of the Anglican Catholic Church in America. The Most Reverend Mark Haverland is chief bishop and Acting Primate of the Anglican Catholic Church.