If it is based on your PERSONAL values, beliefs or preferences, I'm saying that is the same thing "legally" as having an equal religious preference that is protected by law.
All law is based on personal values, which values drive the election of the officials who make the laws.
Those values can be diametric to religious dogma or teachings.
Be gay. A state can decide it is not going to sanction it.
I agree with you that laws are based on personal values.
Where we seem to disagree is that you seem to limit what constitutes
"religious dogma or teachings"
If Constitutionalists "believe religiously" in separating federal from state jurisdiction,
or secularists "believe in" separating church and state,
I argue those VIEWS should still be considered equally as a "religiously held belief" that deserves equal protection
as any other type of "established" religion considered organized or official.
Otherwise, this unfairly discriminates against people "unless they are a member of a named group recognized as a religion"
The other factors that are important in deciding constitutional protections:
A. you cannot make other people pay for your views, but must accept financial and social responsibility for whatever options you are proposing
B. the change proposed must include solutions that don't impose either. (for example if you block or change abortion laws on the basis
of free choice from religious or political imposition, there must be agreed alternatives that don't impose a contested bias either)
any consequences of laws or reforms must be agreed to so it doesn't create other problems that impose
C. overall you can't go and commit the "same, equal and opposite wrong"
by defending your protected viewpoint in such a biased way that it then imposes on the view you were trying
to protect yourself from. big fat duh!
That is mainly why the pro-gay marriage advocacy fails.
not because people don't have equal right to defend gay marriage.
they just don't have the right to impose the beliefs on others,
especially if this is the gist of their defense arguments!
So that is why it is conflicting.
Gays may not be a protected group,
but people who are pro-gay should be equally a protected VIEW
as are people who are pro-Christian, pro-life, pro-choice, pro-gun.
The views are protected, regardless of the group or label.
Otherwise we are discriminating by whether you are part of a group or not!