I was looking through some old files today and found this.\u00a0 I’m not sure what I did with it when I originally wrote it.\u00a0 I may have sent it somewhere – a newspaper, perhaps.\u00a0 Or I might just have let it sit there, encoded as 1’s and 0’s on my hard drive.\u00a0 I thought I’d like to see if anyone has anything to say (that is, if anyone is reading!).<\/p>\n
Here it is:<\/p>\n
Ours is a secular country. Yes, the Founders each had their own view of religion and included references to \u201cGod\u201d in our founding literature. This by no means establishes our country as \u201cChristian\u201d or any other religious affiliation.\u00a0 Our country was founded to be a haven for the people who were persecuted for their beliefs in other places.\u00a0 It is not our responsibility to maintain a \u201cChristian\u201d government (nor \u201cJewish\u201d, nor \u201cIslamic\u201d or \u201cHindu\u201d).\u00a0 It is, however, our responsibility to ensure that people can worship as they please.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at this in the context of gay marriage.\u00a0 First, even Christians can\u2019t agree about whether this practice should be allowed.\u00a0 Some say that only heterosexual marriage is sanctioned by the church.\u00a0 Many others, including myself, have attended homosexual ceremonies.\u00a0 In my case, the ceremony was presided over by a gay woman pastor.\u00a0 If a religion is so divided internally about an issue, who is to choose the \u201ccorrect\u201d path for all?\u00a0 Remember, our country is secular and has a responsibility to allow every person to worship as s\/he sees fit.\u00a0 By outlawing gay marriage, wouldn\u2019t we be outlawing the branch of Christianity that allows for this, thereby not allowing people to worship as they see fit?<\/p>\n
Additionally, our country is highly equipped right now to allow for atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and a whole slew of others in a wide array of belief and non-belief.\u00a0 By taking one flavor of Christianity (the one that looks at homosexuals as unnatural and wrong in God\u2019s eyes) and making it into law, anyone who ascribes to another belief will become disenfranchised.\u00a0 Soon Washington D. C. will look a lot more like Tehran than it cares to admit.<\/p>\n
The point lies here:\u00a0Our legal system is based on morals that all can agree on, religious affiliation aside.\u00a0 It is secular.\u00a0 Each church, pastor, and priest has the ability to consent to marry a couple or not, depending on how they see that the couple fits into the belief structure of the organization.\u00a0 Each church should maintain that right \u2013 not everyone needs or wants to get married in a church.<\/p>\n
However, there is a whole section of our society over which there is some debate whether their homosexuality is something they are born with or something they choose to embrace who are constantly (and legally) prevented from holding the same rights as the rest of society. First let me ask you to consider this:\u00a0Who in their right mind would engage in a lifestyle that ensured their social and legal illegitimacy by choice?\u00a0 Even after considering this question many still believe that homosexuals choose their lifestyle, for what reason I can\u2019t imagine.\u00a0 Even so, aren\u2019t we the \u201cland of the free\u201d?\u00a0 Apparently here all are free except for homosexuals.\u00a0 They need to be allowed (and guaranteed) the same legal rights as heterosexuals.\u00a0 They need to be able to see each other when one of them is dieing in a hospital bed.\u00a0 They need to be recognized, legally, for the important social unit they are.<\/p>\n
If a priest, pastor, or other religious clergy wants to refuse to marry a homosexual couple, then that\u2019s perfectly fine.\u00a0 They can even refuse to marry a heterosexual couple because they live together or in other ways show signs of impropriety.\u00a0 That is perfectly acceptable.\u00a0 However, if our legal system refuses to marry people, homosexual or otherwise, based on a religious belief, we are all in trouble and the implications for a religious state in the United States of America are enormous.<\/p>\n
If you want to live in a religious society, move to a religious state, join a convent, monastery, or other religious order or group that fulfills this need.\u00a0 But leave secular society alone, we\u2019re doing fine without the infusion of your religion and we need to keep America the melting pot it is for many reasons.\u00a0 Without a secular government that respects all kinds of belief and non-belief in a deity, or country will quickly become homogenous as those who don\u2019t fit leave and the only new people that come are those who ascribe to the approved belief system.\u00a0 I guess it\u2019s worked okay for Iran, but I don\u2019t know how the US can handle it.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s keep our country respectful of the documents on which it was founded.\u00a0 Let\u2019s make this an accepting place for all, no matter what religion or sexual preference they have.\u00a0 We owe it to our future and our own stability as a nation.<\/p>\n
I once had a woman ask me how a religious book could be nonfiction if its contents were not in the Bible, to which I replied \u201cMa\u2019am there are some people who would say that the Bible is fiction.\u201d\u00a0 And her absolute shock was shocking.\u00a0 Surely we all understand that our religion is not the only one, just as we understand that our skin color is not the only one.\u00a0 Please, America, open your closed minds and stop forcing your beliefs on all those who surround you.\u00a0 Please allow others to be as they are and as they need to be for themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was looking through some old files today and found this.\u00a0 I’m not sure what I did with it when I originally wrote it.\u00a0 I may have sent it somewhere – a newspaper, perhaps.\u00a0 Or I might just have let it sit there, encoded as 1’s and 0’s on my hard drive.\u00a0 I thought I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[28,35,36,55,71,75,83],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-ethics","tag-family","tag-life","tag-politics","tag-religion","tag-society"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3aAvV-rant","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}