Live_and_Let_Live

Live and Let Live The campaign to rebuff marriage equality is led mainly by evangelical Christians and the Catholic hierarchy. Let us give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that their opposition to same-gender marriage is based on the Bible. To illuminate further, we must research what the Bible says about this subject. In Leviticus 20:13, the Lord says to Moses, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.” Now if the Bible is the authority for religious opposition to gay marriage, we must suppose that, following the Bible, they would advocate the death penalty for adultery, incest, bestiality and fornication prior to marriage. But hang on. Not even the most fundamentalist Christian could possibly take seriously everything the Bible says since it is replete with ancient superstitions and prohibitions that no one, not even an evangelical would follow. We may then reasonably conclude that everyone reads the Bible selectively. How fortuitous. Deuteronomy 25:11-12, informs us that if two men get in a fight and the wife of one them comes to his aid by-grabbing the assailant's genitals, her hand must be cut off. Further, Deuteronomy, 22: 20-21 also informs us that if a bride is found not to be 'a virgin, "the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones." This is the kind of barbaric zealotry that defines the Taliban, not American Christianity. Again, thank goodness for biblical selectivity. Religious opponents of marriage equality conveniently ignore all the biblical injunctions that are antithetical to modern civilization, not just the vicious, patriarchal Old Testament death penalties, but also things like the Old testament's condoning slavery, prohibiting interracial marriage and permitting women to be treated like chattel. What those with religious objections to gay marriage refuse to understand is that it is not a religious issue at all. The sacrament of marriage is unaffected by the granting of marriage equality. Churches that take a traditional view of marriage will still be free to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people if they wish. Same-sex marriage is entirely a civil rights issue, a matter of social justice, just like women's suffrage and racial integration. Opponents of gay marriage also need to be reminded that the Bible is not the law of the land. It never bas been and never should be. Biblical strictures only apply to those who freely believe. And the United States is not a Christian nation. It never has been and never was meant to be. As Steven Waldman wrote in the introduction to "The Founding Faith," the best 'book on the subject of the politics of religious freedom in the U.S., "The Founding Faith ... was not Christianity, and it was not secularism. It was religious liberty - a revolutionary formula for promoting faith by leaving it alone." The divine irony, of course, is that we have the constitutional seperation of church and state today because ' evangelical Christians at the founding of this country demanded it be so. Now the spiritual heirs of those who fought for religious liberty want to force their beliefs into law and onto all of us. Well, not all Christians, indeed not even all Catholics, are opposed to allowing two people in a loving, committed relationship to marry. As children of a loving God, we should recognize that.