Fear of a Gay Planet

What a shame that 1000's of Americans, including our doofus of a president, want to corrupt the most precious document in our country by amending it to include blatant discrimination against an entire class of working, taxpaying people who deserve the same rights as all.

What a shame that so many think it's just hunky-dory for government to legislate forced "morality" based on the irrational demands of a minority fundamentalist mob.

Whether or not you agree same-sex unions are right or wrong, it shouldn't be the federal government's place to tell anyone who to marry or how. It is a state's right to decide those laws, as Massachusettes has done. It's the right of a religious group to decide their own code of morality, and there are many reform groups that support same-sex unions. It's a debate we should be having fairly and openly, and a Federal Marraige Amendment would close that debate.

Most people who are against gay marriage probably don't know many gay people. They haven't seen happy, loving gay couples walking together on a sunny day with a baby stroller. They don't know about gay couples who've been together for over 20 years and who by all rights and purposes, should be allowed marriage. Many everyday Americans who have been biased against homosexuals in the past have changed their minds as they've come to know homosexuals and see them for the real people they are, and not the demons the religious right makes them out to be. Many Americans who don't support gay marraige at least support civil unions, which the religious right wants to eliminate as well.

The religious right has a well-known history of denying rights to those they consider deviant or otherwise damned by their god. The religious right need to have their bogeymen, their scapegoats. It wasn't too long ago that blacks and women had little to no rights at all. The gay struggle today for equal rights echoes the struggles blacks and women had (and still have). Is it no coincidence that religious fundamentalism brings about inequality for minorities, ie: anyone but "straight" men?

Quote from an article in USA Today:

"Once, black people, women and homosexuals were viewed the same way by the leading theologians of the times: "They were all cursed by God in Scripture, inferior in moral character and willfully sinful and deserving punishment," says the Rev. Jack Rogers, former head of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and author of a new book, Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality.

Eventually, most churches found a biblical basis for changing their stance on race and gender but not on homosexuality."

We are a country based on religious and individual freedom, not religious dominance and mob rule. Writing anti-gay dogma into our Constitution corrupts religious freedom and denies equal rights to gay Americans. Each religion has the right to decide whether to sanction same-sex couples, and an anti-gay marriage amendment would deny that. Passing the Federal Marriage Amendment would impose the beliefs of some upon all.

What I'm afraid of is that the same people who would deny gays their rights to marriage are the same people who want to take away my reproductive rights. I am a strident secularist involved in a committed hetero relationship and I don't want kids, ever. This makes me the enemy to these people as well. If I'm not married and popping out children and quoting Psalms, I am not a good American or even an adequate human being.