By Tim Baldwin
For a long time, religious beliefs have played a significant role in politics. In America, religious beliefs bled into statutes, both on state and federal levels. For example, past generations used religion to limit individual liberty, such as, keeping women from voting, different races from marrying, and alcohol from being consumed. But a different view of religion prompted liberty movements. What is the next religious push in America?
Republicans tend to use Christianity and the Bible to impose their view of morality on the rest of society. The most notable issue for which Republicans have used religion is gay marriage; but the U.S. Supreme Court determined that our Constitution protects individuals’ right to obtain a state-issued marriage license. This, like other issues of history, may be a moral or religious issue, but it is essentially a dead political issue.
With courts recognizing that government has no legitimate interest in governing certain privacy interests of people, Republicans may have a more difficult time explaining why voters should vote for them as a matter of “morality” instead of Democrats. Like other liberty movements of the past, religion’s next big push may be to show that human government is not designed to impose religion or morality on society but rather to protect the individual’s right to govern himself as long as he does not harm others.
By Joe Carbonari
Same sex marriage complicates life. The possibility becomes greater that your loved one may hook up with someone else. The possibility, unlikely as it no doubt is, always exists to some minute degree. Odd things happen.
Limiting the possibilities for trouble at home to opposite sex relationships seems to have worked best for most of human history. For those whose physical or psychological wiring led them to same sex needs and proclivities, accommodations in custom have been made.
Fewer babies may be born, but we do not lack for babies. Sex cements marriages and relationships. The likelihood that you are going to lose your mate to someone in, or leaving, a same-sex relationship is not high. Could happen, but unlikely.
The likelihood that Our Creator wanted us to show our disapproval of such behavior, for some reason, kept to him- or herself is also, to me, not likely. If the end reasoning for disapproval of same sex orientation is “God Told Me So,” I’d suggest you may have miss-heard. Think it through and talk to some of the people that you respect who are not in your normal “group.” It may lower internal tension.
Neither God nor man commands that we show disrespect to our fellows. It does not serve. It diminishes the disrespectful through guilt, and the disrespected by shame. It is unnecessary and unwarranted. Consider it an ecclesiastical miss-understanding. The Golden Rule rules … and God forgives.