In America’s first official document, the concept of universal equality was elegantly stated even though the Founding Fathers never really believed or adhered to the notion, and throughout the country’s history, inequality was legally enforced and continues to this day. America will never have universal equality unless legally enforced and unjustified discrimination based on a person’s identity are stricken from the law, but leaders driven by religious indoctrination and hatred will continue preventing all Americans from enjoying equal rights. Now that the Supreme Court is fully engaged in the issue of same-sex marriage, Justices must acknowledge the prohibition on same-sex marriage, and homosexuality in general, has no other foundational basis than it is prohibited by a 6,000 year-old deity and legally enforced by adherents of the Christian religion in defiance of the Constitution of the United States.
On the first day the Supreme Court heard arguments defending California’s discriminatory Proposition 8, the Proposition’s proponents danced around the religious argument and proffered all manner of hollow and meaningless excuses for why gays are forbidden from marrying the person they love. The lawyer defending state-sanctioned and religion-based discrimination talked about procreation, the harm to traditional marriage, and whether or not “redefining marriage to include same-sex couples will have real-world consequences.” However, when pressed by Justice’s inquiries, the attorney could not cite, or enumerate, even one real-world consequence and at one point admitted “it is impossible for anyone to know exactly what those real-world consequences would be, but among those real-world consequences, we would suggest are adverse consequences.”
The religious right’s spokesman, Mike Huckabee, made a similar argument on Monday when he warned Republicans that if they dare support same-sex marriage, “they’re going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk. And it’s not because there’s an anti-homosexual mood, but many of us, and I consider myself included, base our standards not on the latest Washington Post poll, but on an objective standard, not a subjective standard.” Even Huckabee is reticent to cite what he and evangelicals base their objective standard on, but like the attorney defending inequality, he cites “a 2,000-year old tradition” that is code for the bible prohibition on homosexuality; a prohibition they claim cannot be abridged because the deity’s gay hatred goes back over 6,000 years.
In the House Republicans’ reply brief defending their original brief supporting DOMA the Court will hear next, they gave several arguments against marriage equality that amounted to “because we don’t like it” and were careful to avoid stating the obvious; the bible says god hates gays. They claimed, among other phony reasons, that it is “more uniform to ban all same-sex marriages than recognize valid marriages, most states already ban them, sexual orientation is a behavior, children are better off with biological parents, only straight couples need marriage because they have kids accidentally, and let democracy play out so opponents aren’t called bigots.” Like Huckabee, Proposition 8 supporters, and at least four High Court Justices, DOMA supporters depend on biblical “traditions” dating back thousands of years that America adopted and later changed because they were discriminatory.
The Christian bible’s deity promoted slavery, dark-skinned people as cursed, subservient women, unprovoked war, and discrimination against religion not aligned with Christianity, and although those god-sentiments still exist in America, to ensure equality America changed regardless thousands-of-year old traditions. Tradition is the catch-all phrase to defend various laws supporting discrimination against same-sex marriage, but gays marrying is not the real issue, being homosexual is as evidenced by the evangelical and Republican argument that “sexual orientation is a behavior, a tendency to engage in a particular kind of conduct;” a conduct the Christian bible’s god labeled “an abomination.”
Legal experts suggest the High Court is “not prepared to issue any sweeping gay rights ruling” because ”no member of the court seemed to be interested in that,” and are likely to ” limit their ruling” to California and allow the rest of the states to discriminate against gays at their biblical pleasure. At best, experts opine, the High Court will let stand the Ninth Circuit ruling striking down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional because it unfairly discriminates against gays and it begs the question; if it is unconstitutional to discriminate against gays in California, why is it Constitutional for other states to discriminate against them under cover of biblical law? Because America traditionally discriminates against its own citizens with scriptural precedence whether it was legal slavery, keeping women subservient, or discriminating against “god-cursed dark-skinned people” and little has changed despite over one-hundred years of tradition overturning legal discrimination.
If opponents of same-sex marriage were capable of veracity, they would simply state they hate same-sex marriage and homosexuals because “the bible tells them so” and not because of procreation, tradition, or adhering to “objective standards.” If they admitted their opposition was purely religious, then the High Court would not be forced to wade through bovine excrement to continue imposing legal discrimination and inequality on one segment of the population. However, the truth would put the onus on the Supreme Court to rule that either the bible supersedes the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights and the 1st Amendment is null and void, or that America is not a theocracy. Any ruling that does not strike down the ban on same-sex marriage in all fifty states informs that the High Court intends for Americans to continue suffering scriptural edicts as legislation, signals that America is a theocracy, and gays are second-class citizens.
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Churchlady
Mar. 27th, 2013 at 7:17 pm
There is nothing in the Bible about same sex commitments at all. The Bible forbids all kinds of exploitative relationships but is silent on committed ones even between same sex people. It raises NO objections to same sex commitments because in Romans and Corinthians, the words for same sex relationships they opposed are translated from the Greek meaning exploitative and selfish sexual encounters not from the Greek words meaning committed and enduring bonds even in same sex relationships. When Jesus speaks to the woman taken in adultery “go and sin no more” it’s a directive against her breaking her COMMITMENT not about sex. It is why he opposed divorce. He is silent on same sex relationships because they were not, in his view, sinful on the face of it.
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Just A Dumb Fireman
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 10:28 am
Pos to xerete? Milate ellinika?
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Shiva
Mar. 27th, 2013 at 7:43 pm
There is little doubt in my mind the court will take the low road and not issue anything that will effect the nation. Meaning that the people will have to bring case after case in front of a court that will not want to hear the cases.
I have a feeling the bible will win in 56 states and the law will win in one state. And the court will again close its doors and attend more Koch Brothers affairs.
And the people? They will continue to lose workers rights
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Ripley
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 7:53 am
First ? the answer is simple ….. the separation of Church and state. Religious beliefs need to be kept at home and out of court.
secondly ?
Jesus never said man should not lie with man. He actually blessed the Centurions gay sexual servant but most are ignorant on the bible/ koine greek and culture and Roman practices at the time .
Alot of Christian biased scholars refuse to accept that the Centurions servant was actually a male sexual slave and it was about homosexuality . Roman soldiers away from Rome were ‘ forbidden’ to have families or children outside of the Rome which keeping a same sex slave would avoid.
The Marriage Of Roman Soldiers, (13 BC-AD 235): Law And Family In The Imperial Army, Sara Elise Phang, Brill Academic Publishers, 2001, p. 2.
Centurion and Pais.
Dr. Kenneth J. Dover, (a heterosexual), formerly President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, and Chancellor of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, 1981 until his retirement in 2005 and noted authority on ancient Greece, in his book, Greek Homosexuality, tells us the younger partner in a homosexual relationship is called pais or paidika. This information impacts our Centurion and pais discussion.
“The pais in a homosexual relationship was often a youth who had attained full height.” p. 16.
“The Greeks often used the word paidika in the sense of ‘eromenos.’ “[Meaning "the boy you are in love with]. p. 16.
“boy” (pais) could be used of any junior partner in a homosexual relationship, even one who was fullgrown.” Dr. Robert Gagnon, The Bible And Homosexual Practice, p. 163, footnote 6. anti-gay scholar Dr. Robert Gagnon, Pittsburg Theological Seminary.
First century Greek readers of Matthew’s Gospel would have picked up on the pais references which most twenty-first century English readers miss. Pais and paidika were used by writers in ancient times to refer to a lover (like the Centurion and pais story) in a homosexual relationship.
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Just A Dumb Fireman
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 10:30 am
Pos to xerete? Milate ellinika?
Not to plead the other side’s case by any means, but the Hebrews were down on all sex outside of marriage.
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Churchlady
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 1:55 pm
Oddly, Christians in practice were not. What our colonial forebears did not want is children born without the supports of the family economic unit. Victorian Americans imposed the anti-sex standards (then violated it wildly) but Puritans were rather indifferent to SEX issues at all. There was no punishment for the sex but only for procreating and creating a dependent, highly vulnerable child. Abortion was also legal in the colonies and into the late 19th century before again Victorian assertions about faux morality raised the issue and caused legal prohibitions.
Jesus’ message, missed or rejected by post-Victorian conservative Christians, is that the sins about which he cared were selfish lack of compassion for equity in economics, inequality between and among people, hate and hostility against others especially outside your own ethnic or cultural group. About personal behavior ALL he ever said was about keeping commitments to one another that you freely made.
So if the Bible thumpers want the Bible to prevail over the Constitution – if they demand Dominion for their control and their views – they are guilty right from the start of being heretical in their interpretations.
The Constitution exists to permit any damned fool to worship as he or she chooses. It also assures that the rest of us don’t have to be impacted in our civil or our own spiritual or philosophical lives by their particularistic views.
THAT is American Exceptionalism!
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Churchlady
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 1:57 pm
Great scholarship summation, Ripley. Thanks.
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Sherlock
Mar. 29th, 2013 at 8:07 pm
Ripley
Very good – thoughtful- factual comment. Well researched. Too bad the ninnies who most need to hear it have their heads up their ass. You show the patience I lost many years ago.
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Christopher
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 8:51 am
Does the Bible supercede the Constitution? What is there to decide? Article VI says, “This Constitution (not the Bible)…shall be the supreme law of the land.” and Article III says the Courts shall have jurisdiction over cases, “arising under the Constitution (again, not the Bible)”, so it seems like a no-brainer to me.
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Shiva
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 9:15 am
Unfortunately the court does not live by that rule. They think they also moderate morality
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debra caballero
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 11:08 am
There IS no argument here! Separation of church and state. The supreme court, I thought was supposed to rise above personal opinion and use the letter of the law which in this case is black and white. We should not even be having this conversation.
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Barry Roope
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 2:26 pm
You never know, maybe this court will be a profile in courage and make history.
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Sherlock
Mar. 28th, 2013 at 3:48 pm
Justice Scalia is not wearing any underwear under his his robes. He is having a difficult time containing himself with a week of “queer talk”. He keeps seeing Palin and Bachmann walking down the aisle drooling.
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Roger
Apr. 1st, 2013 at 12:27 am
[Hi Rmuse. I submit an item I spotted on the web.]
(The following paper was inspired by Bill O’Reilly whose TV show favors God Dumpers and not “Bible Thumpers.” Quotes are from “Vital Quotations” by Emerson West.)
DANGEROUS BIBLE THUMPERS OF AMERICA
ROBERT E. LEE: “In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength.” (p. 21)
DANIEL WEBSTER: “If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper.” (p. 21)
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS: “I have made it a practice for several years to read the Bible through in the course of every year.” (p. 22)
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: “I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated to us through this book.” (p. 22)
GEORGE WASHINGTON: “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” (p. 22)
HORACE GREELEY: “It is impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible-reading people.” (p. 23)
THOMAS JEFFERSON: “I hold the precepts of Jesus as delivered by himself to be the most pure, benevolent, and sublime which have ever been preached to man. I adhere to the principles of the first age; and consider all subsequent innovations as corruptions of this religion, having no foundation in what came from him.” (p. 45)
THOMAS JEFFERSON: “Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would by now have become Christian.” (p. 47)
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: “As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, is the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see.” (p.49)
WOODROW WILSON: “The sum of the whole matter is this—-that our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually. It can only be saved by becoming permeated with the spirit of Christ and being made free and happy by practices which spring out of that spirit.” (p. 143)
PATRICK HENRY: “There is a just God who presides over the destiny of nations.” (p. 145)
THOMAS JEFFERSON: “Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.” (p. 225)
THOMAS JEFFERSON: “Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.” (p. 237)
GEORGE WASHINGTON: “The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low, that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.” (p. 283)
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: “Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped.” (p. 301)
CALVIN COOLIDGE: “The strength of a country is the strength of its religious convictions.” (p. 305)
GEORGE WASHINGTON: “The perpetuity of this nation depends upon the religious education of the young.” (p. 306)
Prior to our increasingly “Hell-Bound and Happy” era, America’s greatest leaders were part of the (gulp) Religious Right! Today we’ve forgotten God’s threat (to abort America) in Psa. 50:22—-”Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.” Memo to God Dumpers: In light of Rev. 16:19, can you be sure you won’t be in a city that God has already reserved for destruction?
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