It’s right there in the first amendment to the constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…
The reason that this rancorous battle over same-sex marriage will never be over is because one side of the argument is based completely in religion. And as you know, religion is certainly not based in any concrete, rational views. It’s based on belief.
I’m a rational person. I don’t let belief stand in the way of fact, although my belief in the underlying premise of this nation is pretty strong; and it’s on my side in this debate. Everyone in the United States has an equal right to the benefits of this country. That’s a civil pact the founders made.
Every time someone talks about “marriage” and that it’s a “sacred tradition”, they’re talking about religious unions. When they rail against it, they use the bible as ammunition.
The thing is, the bible is not the law of this land. It is the basis for laws of a church, not our country. As such, it’s “inadmissable”. Take away the religious aspects of this battle, and you see that you’re just talking about inequality, discrimination, and bigotry.
Yeah, it’s weird. When a long-time tradition changes, it’s scary and bizarre. Yet, somehow, it doesn’t rip society apart, nor does it harm anyone. How many people these days are harmed by inter-racial marriage? By marriage across religious groups? if my next door neighbor gets married, how in the world does that affect my life? This argument that allowing same-sex marriage will somehow harm traditional marriage is a load of unmitigated crap. If the religiously-motivated fundamentalists were truly working to strengthen marriage and protect it from harm, they’d have proposed a constitutional amendment that outlaws divorce, prohibits adultery, and refuses marriage to any couple that does not intend to have a child or is incapable of doing so.
I could rail about this for hours, days, weeks, months… and probably would do so except that I am so tired of being rational, logical, and clear about the arguments for same sex marriage, and I’m afraid that I will soon be voicing over-the-top, irrational, and invalid arguments, the same way the right-wingers do it.
Anyhow, this interesting bit of news just arrived: the Supreme Court ruled in a church-state case today, coming down on the side of those of us who believe in the separation of the two:
The Supreme Court, in a new rendering on separation of church and state, voted Wednesday to let states withhold scholarships from students studying theology.
The court’s 7-2 ruling held that the state of Washington was within its rights to deny a taxpayer-funded scholarship to a college student who was studying to be a minister. That holding applies even when money is available to students studying anything else.
“Training someone to lead a congregation is an essentially religious endeavor,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote for the court majority. “Indeed, majoring in devotional theology is akin to a religious calling as well as an academic pursuit.”
Isn’t this interesting — Justice Rehnquist ruling against taxpayer dollars going to religious instruction? What does this do to our tiny-**cked leader’s “faith-based initiatives”? And if someone could figure out the right way to bring a case against all this marriage discrimination — i.e., exposing the truth about it’s religious implications — what could happen? I mean, since married couples receive a slew of benefits from the government, then why am I paying taxes to support this religious institution of marriage? Perhaps those benefits should not be given to people who are married only in a church. Oh, and just as a little extra point: I’m tired of making religions tax exempt. Why is the government giving religions a break?
Oh, and then the dissenters:
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.
“Let there be no doubt: This case is about discrimination against a religious minority,” Scalia wrote for the two.
I’ll leave the gentle reader to divine what I have to say about that ironic statement.
