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.
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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.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
