just for the record
Sometimes, I really despair of some of my family.
My brother and his wife had the lack of good sense to post anti-equality sentiments in response to my status update on Facebook celebrating Judge Walker's ruling.
They were quickly schooled by my friends.
And then I replied.
"We're talking about civil rights and fundamental equality under the law. What anyone chooses to believe regarding religion is moot. It's completely orthogonal to the matter of law, folks. What matters here is that we're talking about the very basic issue where in our society we're governed by laws which expressly guarantee inalienable rights to all under equal protection, and state that these cannot be taken away without due process.
"What Judge Walker's ruling does is make that exceptionally clear, demonstrating that Prop 8 and its proponents have no rational basis in law to deny marriage equality to all, and that their main articulable objection--what's essentially a private moral/religious one--does not trump the inalienable (civil and secular) rights of those whom they disapprove.
"In other words, just because you believe your church thinks gay folks are going to hell is NO reason for the law to deny them their rights. It is, in fact, expressly NOT a reason (hello, 1st Amendment!).
"Moreover, your church has every right to believe what it wants--BUT what it doesn't have the right to do is make everyone live according to its dictates, especially in civil matters. And marriage under the law is a civil, legal matter. As a member of its clergy, the Universal Life Church grants me the right to perform whatever wedding ceremonies I deem fit; however it's the State of California which grants me the privilege of legally solemnizing marriages--and it's that legal, civil aspect that concerns us in this discussion.
"Despite the efforts of some conservatives, we do not live in a theocracy. Just as you have the freedom to believe and worship or not as you please, so does everyone else, and none of those beliefs are, in themselves as religious beliefs, sufficient to compel the law against the people.
"In my opinion, the fact that you're not getting this means a few things: you're not paying attention, you're not being good Americans, and frankly, you're not being good Christians. In all honesty, I'm having trouble seeing you as being good people if you can argue that it's a good thing for our laws to be warped so that some people are officially, legally, less-than. Making people civilly less-than is making them to be less than fully human. To be blunt, and to couch it in religious language so we're clear on it: that's a sin. In my opinion, it's a heinous one. In the Catholic vernacular, I'd call it a mortal sin. It's a betrayal of human dignity, of compassion, and of the march toward justice--it is a truer turning away from the face of God than anything else I can imagine when we forget that our fellows are every much as human, every much as holding a spark of the divine, as we are ourselves.
"However you dress such a turning away from justice and compassion up, whether it's backed up by Deuteronomy, Paul, or Nephi, it remains, at heart, a betrayal of what Jesus taught as the whole of the law: love God above all things, and love your neighbor as yourself.
"I may be no Christian, but I need not be to know that.
"If you sincerely believe that such a denial of human dignity is what honoring the divine in all of us is, you make me ashamed of you."
And honestly, that's not even hauling out the dirty laundry that I will bring to light if either of them so much as makes a peep about the "sanctity" of marriage.
I am sick of people who claim to be moral failing so horribly at the most basic aspects of morality and ethics. I refuse to cede them the moral high ground, and I'm calling them on it.
My brother and his wife had the lack of good sense to post anti-equality sentiments in response to my status update on Facebook celebrating Judge Walker's ruling.
They were quickly schooled by my friends.
And then I replied.
"We're talking about civil rights and fundamental equality under the law. What anyone chooses to believe regarding religion is moot. It's completely orthogonal to the matter of law, folks. What matters here is that we're talking about the very basic issue where in our society we're governed by laws which expressly guarantee inalienable rights to all under equal protection, and state that these cannot be taken away without due process.
"What Judge Walker's ruling does is make that exceptionally clear, demonstrating that Prop 8 and its proponents have no rational basis in law to deny marriage equality to all, and that their main articulable objection--what's essentially a private moral/religious one--does not trump the inalienable (civil and secular) rights of those whom they disapprove.
"In other words, just because you believe your church thinks gay folks are going to hell is NO reason for the law to deny them their rights. It is, in fact, expressly NOT a reason (hello, 1st Amendment!).
"Moreover, your church has every right to believe what it wants--BUT what it doesn't have the right to do is make everyone live according to its dictates, especially in civil matters. And marriage under the law is a civil, legal matter. As a member of its clergy, the Universal Life Church grants me the right to perform whatever wedding ceremonies I deem fit; however it's the State of California which grants me the privilege of legally solemnizing marriages--and it's that legal, civil aspect that concerns us in this discussion.
"Despite the efforts of some conservatives, we do not live in a theocracy. Just as you have the freedom to believe and worship or not as you please, so does everyone else, and none of those beliefs are, in themselves as religious beliefs, sufficient to compel the law against the people.
"In my opinion, the fact that you're not getting this means a few things: you're not paying attention, you're not being good Americans, and frankly, you're not being good Christians. In all honesty, I'm having trouble seeing you as being good people if you can argue that it's a good thing for our laws to be warped so that some people are officially, legally, less-than. Making people civilly less-than is making them to be less than fully human. To be blunt, and to couch it in religious language so we're clear on it: that's a sin. In my opinion, it's a heinous one. In the Catholic vernacular, I'd call it a mortal sin. It's a betrayal of human dignity, of compassion, and of the march toward justice--it is a truer turning away from the face of God than anything else I can imagine when we forget that our fellows are every much as human, every much as holding a spark of the divine, as we are ourselves.
"However you dress such a turning away from justice and compassion up, whether it's backed up by Deuteronomy, Paul, or Nephi, it remains, at heart, a betrayal of what Jesus taught as the whole of the law: love God above all things, and love your neighbor as yourself.
"I may be no Christian, but I need not be to know that.
"If you sincerely believe that such a denial of human dignity is what honoring the divine in all of us is, you make me ashamed of you."
And honestly, that's not even hauling out the dirty laundry that I will bring to light if either of them so much as makes a peep about the "sanctity" of marriage.
I am sick of people who claim to be moral failing so horribly at the most basic aspects of morality and ethics. I refuse to cede them the moral high ground, and I'm calling them on it.