I started F*’d up Fridays as a way to vent some frustration. It’s simple, if there’s something you think is F*’d up then write a post and link your post to the below Mr. Linky.
My F*’d up Friday this week:
This is going to be a long post. It’s going to talk about Prop 8, religion, and our government. Either get a cup of coffee now or just pass this post over. Some people may get mad, but I don’t care, it’s my blog. And maybe if everyone just tried to actually understand the issues, there wouldn’t be such a problem.
I’ve read many blogs in the last week talking about Prop 8 in California and would like to weigh in with my two cents. I think it’s a disgrace how gay people are treated in this country. Was America not formed to embrace all people? Our founding fathers fought long and hard for equality. For all.
Marriage itself is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. States have their own rules/laws governing marriage. There are Civil Unions and Marriages. Marriages are basically religious, civil unions are secular. The problem becomes that a marriage legally provides more rights to the couple then a civil union, except for example, in Vermont.
Anyhow, Prop 8 was essentially voted on due to propaganda put out by religious groups in which false information was used to induce fear into people of faith when casting their vote. For instance, that same sex marriage would be taught in schools and that your priest may be jailed if he failed to perform a same sex marriage. All crap.
Before I go any further, I want to stress that I respect everyones right to express themselves through their religion (or lack thereof). Religion gives you your foundation and your moral beliefs. And to live your life through your faith and beliefs is a wonderful thing! I just don’t think that any one faith or belief should be governing our Country. And neither did the Founding Fathers.
This is one reason that I shake my head at organized religion. You’ve got groups of people who are so afraid of beliefs other than their own that they are willing to tell untruths in order to further their own agenda. And I would think that truth would be something their faith is based on in the first place. Maybe that’s a subjective idea?
It’s almost as laughable as people who cheat on their spouse and then go to church every sunday. Or steal from their company and then shake hands with the pastor. Or those that believe in loving their fellow man on Sunday and then go on to disparage them the rest of the week. You cannot profess your faith and then fail to live by it. But then there’s that loophole in organized religion, that if you just go to church, give your offering and ‘try’ to be a better person, that’s cool.
I’m not saying that every single person in every single religion is like this. There are a great many people who live and breathe by their faith. I respect that.
Now, before we get back to Prop 8, let’s look at how our country was founded. The reason this is necessary is because sometimes people have the distorted view that the laws of our Country are somehow based on the Christian religion.
Let’s take a look on how our Country was actually founded. First we have the Declaration of Independence. This declared our independence from England. Pretty much as simple as that. It was written before a lawful government was established. Although it’s a wonderful political piece of work, today it holds no legal power.
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the bulk of the Declaration, declared “the Law’s of Nature and of Nature’s God.” (God of the Deist) Jefferson was not a Christian, but practiced a deist philosophy, which is where ‘Nature’s God’ comes in. Although the Declaration mentions God, notice it doesn’t mention a Christian God.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Then there’s the Constitution. Here’s another example in which groups pick and choose what they believe in order to suit their cause. The Constitution of the United States of America not only lays out our laws, but gives perfect insight to what was in the minds of our Founding Fathers.
Our Constitution is a secular document which means it rejects religion, not subject to religious rules or communities, pertains to the present world and not the spiritual. It pertains to the average person, not the clergy. And for that matter nowhere in it is a relation to God, Jesus, Supreme Entities, or any one faith.
This is evident in the preamble where it says: “We the people of the United States”. Leaving out the mention of God was not a mistake but a deliberate intent to not allow and religion to mix. (Or to let religion influence lawmaking.)
So religion doesn’t form the Constitution. But the Constitution makes clear that all religious institutions are protected by the document, as well as view of people who do not accept a religion. Because our government is secular, the Constitution protects the rights of ALL religions and their expression, as well as their right to exist. In other words, the right to practice Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormon and everything else is protected but not the governing force. The same rights that allow, for example, Christians to practice their faith, also allow for the Jewish to practice theirs, and so on.
The Constitution includes the word ‘Lord’ in it only at the bottom where people signed it. “the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord”….yadda yadda. Mistakenly people take this as a religious connotation. It refers to the method we use in dating things. AD, anno domini, latin, meaning year of our Lord. Note, the document also contains
paganistic words like January and March and Sunday (Latin Janus, Roman god Janus; Latin Martius, Roman god of war; Latin Sunne, Saxon Sun god)
So the Constitution encompasses many things. Oh, and note also, the words: Senate, Justice, Democracy and Liberty are Greek and Roman concepts (also pagan).
And to go a step further, look at many of our Government buildings and their architecture. Most are modeled after pagan Greek and Roman buildings. All you have to do is look at the top of the US Capitol Building where you do not find a religious statue, you find the pagan statue of freedom. In fact, neither the Bible or the Torah or the Koran for that matter recognize freedom as a viable concept.
Then we have the Bill of Rights. This protects our civil liberties. Like the right to practice any religion, bear arms, freedom of speech, fair trial, own property, privacy among other things. Oh, then there’s the 14th Amendment which guarantees equal protection which prevents the government from creating laws that discriminate in application or effect.
Homosexuals are maybe the last ‘class’ of people that are still denied equal protection under the 14th Amendment, as evidence by things like Prop 8.
So it would seem to me, in understanding the documents which our Country is founded on and governed by, that Prop 8 is really a violation of civil rights. And the bigger problem is that gay couples do not get to enjoy the legal benefits that male/female married couples do. Which, are basic rights of every citizen. Why is it that you have more rights as a married couple than, say as a gay couple or a straight couple who have been in a relationship for years and years? If marriage defined comes from religion, and religion doesn’t form our legal process, why on earth do married couples benefit more than those in a civil union? Why do we then even use the term ‘marriage’, and not just ‘union’.
Look, a person’s personal faith is a wonderful thing. It helps them to how they want to live their own life. It’s their compass and guide. But it’s THEIR PERSONAL compass and guide….it’s not every one’s compass and guide.
And why is it that loving faiths throughout the world cannot accept others different lifestyles? Do you mean to tell me that a gay person cannot believe in Christ because the Bible says that’s bad? The Bible says a lot of stuff. You’ve got God saying in a time of war to kill the woman and babies. We certainly don’t practice that. You’ve got God saying that children should be slain if they swear at their parents. Ummm, 90% of the population would be slain by now if we followed that.
It was also very common in Biblical times that fathers slept with daughters, and sisters married brothers. Obviously in the few millenia that have passed since the Bible was written, there are certain things that have changed and we don’t follow.
For a religious organization to sow the seeds of fear as the Mormons did in California is just so completely wrong. To deny any group of people the same rights that are afforded to you, because they don’t live their life exactly as you, is just simply stupid. Not to mention unlawful.
Isn’t it within the Mormon religion that certain sects can have more than one wife? I wonder how well redefining the constitution to say ‘one man’ and ‘one woman’ will go over with that group.
I'm Sheila. In addition to raising 1 husband and 3 teens, I've founded 
great post. couldn’t agree more.
i’m respectful of religion but always bewildered why it doesn’t work the other way around. i’ve often joked with the jehovah’s that come knocking on our door by saying….”religion is something you seek….i don’t think its something that comes knocking on your day.”
people are so determined to make you drink the water. i don’t get it.
sorry..that was meant to be DOOR …not “day”
I wholeheartedly agree with you that gay marriage should be allowed and given all the benefits of hetero marriages. It is shameful that partners of decades (like my great aunt and her recently deceased “housemate”) have no rights. I will say, though, that most of the people that I have talked to about this issue who are against it are less about the religious side than just a general prejudice towards homosexuals.
Aren’t we all hypocrites?
It’s a civil rights issue. It’s frustrating when you talk to people who are against it and their first argument is, “God says it’s wrong.” Actually, the God I believe in doesn’t. Convenient thing how our forefathers set it up so I and others wouldn’t have to live my life based on your religious views. Separation of church and state people. Good post.
This is such a GREAT post. I agree with every word. It’s just trying to get it through the THICK heads of the people who see it differently. It really can’t be seen in any other way.
And what you said about the “loophole” in organized religion – how convenient to be able to “get out of” acting like a Christian because you can say you are “trying” to be a better one.
Okay, I know after I post this my wife will be calling me screaming but oh well. First things first, you need to know before I say this is that one of my closest relatives someone I respect and love very much is gay so I am not in any way homophobic. I do believe they have the right to live free and happy like everyone else BUT when it comes to marriage I believe thats a different story.
I am not religious in any way shape or form, in fact I don’t know if I really believe in god so this is not a faith based opinion. Our country, our world from the beginning of time as we know it has lived by an unsaid rule, Man with Woman. If we decide to start changing that with gay marriages does that open doors for other people to then come out? Maybe Billy and his pet chipmunk want to get married or little Johnny and his grandma Mary. Why not it could happen. We would then have to offer them the same rights as anyone else. It’s well known that our history has incestual tendencies in it and it was acceptable then.
We the people of this WORLD have lived by this system of man with woman since our time began, why should we change? We are talking about a minority amount of people that want this, talking up a good case for themselves but I feel the majority has spoken and the majority says NO. We are always going to have smaller groups with fetishes and lifestyle differences , It doesn’t mean we change the rules. Sometimes I feel some things are just better left alone and this is one of em.
Well, I hope your wife not only screams at you, but hits you upside the head. lol. First off, chipmunks and people are two different things. Second, people were homosexual in every period of time probably all the way back through cave people. It only has been in the last couple hundred years that this has been dejected.
Being gay isn’t a fetish.
and, btw, when did we start giving people in general, the right to vote VOTE on our civil rights? Aren’t civil rights supposed to be guaranteed by our laws? The people in CA may have ‘spoken’ but unfortunately it shouldn’t have been theirs to speak. Civil rights are there to protect people, in mass and in minority. And the majority should not be ‘voting’ on what civil rights the minority should receive. (We ARE in America, right?)
And beasteality has also taken place for thousands of years also, doesn’t make it right nor should it be part of our everyday life.IF you want to sleap with a chipmunk that’s okay with me.(If the sex is consentual only) But if you want to marry one and give it medical insurance then I do have a problem. And who says being gay isn’t a fettish? I know plenty of people who have tried it, then once they graduated from college got married and had kids and lived straight the rest of thrie lives.
I am someone who believes that the majority of gays don’t choose to be gay they are born like that, and it does somewhat feel unfair that they can’t marry BUT like my mother told me life is not fair.. We can’t always make everyone happy, that is life. We should always take these types of situations to the people to vote on, it is the American way. That is our right!!
Well, forget your wife knotting you upside the head, but I’d like to. Urhhh.
People may ‘experiment’. But you don’t ‘try being gay’ and then ‘lead straight lives’ You don’t turn it off and on like a switch. OMG, how dumb.
The public doesn’t have the right to vote on issues of civil rights. Do 5 minutes of research on civil liberties, civil rights and then tell me that it’s right for the majority to decide on what rights the minority have. It is NOT your right to do that, it simply is NOT.
We’re not voting on a school levy or a strip club at the corner of the street. Civil rights are not VOTED on by civilians.
All you have to do is google civil rights. We, as Americans, have civil rights the minute we are born. We don’t earn them and they don’t come with strings attached. We don’t have to be a certain gender, race or religion to get them.
I’m sure your ‘gay friends’ would be very disappointed in your take on this issue.
David seems to think that lots of gay and lesbian folks “choose” their orientation, and can choose to move past it once they’ve grown up.
ARGH. Of course, one in ten human beings would “choose” to belong to a group of people that are ostracized, beaten, killed, discriminated against and in general loathed by their allegedly straight counterparts.
I’m sorry, but this lezzy is sick and damned tired of the same tired old arguments about how Johnny will marry his grandma and creepy Uncle Rufus will marry his parakeet.
If this is the best folks can do to argue against two people wishing to make a commitment to care for each other for life, no offense, pretty lame.
If someone can once offer me a valid reason why my committed, faithful relationship of almost 30 years in any way interferes with their marriage, I am ready to listen. However, as long as a whole lot of these holier than thou folks, like my neighbors here, will welcome anyone into their bed who brings a six pack, and more than 50% of these “sacred” unions end in divorce, I think I’ll stick with my brand of commitment, thanks.
My relationship takes NOTHING from David’s marriage. Not a thing. Not any more than David’s marriage affects me, except that if David kicks the bucket, his social security goes to his wife to help raise kids if he has them. I’d like the same opportunity to see to it that if I die, my Social Security can go to the daughter I helped bring into this world. What a bold new concept, a person that WANTS to be responsible!?!?!
If my partner gets sick, I’d like to visit her in the hospital.
I don’t care what it’s called. Marriage, Civil Union, whatever.
I’d like to receive the more than 1,100 benefits afforded to my straight counterparts.
That is a civil right. And as my good friend points out, civil rights shouldn’t be up for vote.
Imagine if the country got to vote on whether people named David have the right to marry and have kids?
In my lifetime, less than 50 years, it was illegal in many states for white people to marry African-Americans.
There was a big hoop-de-doo if a Catholic married a Protestant. I distinctly recall in the early 60′s hearing my neighbors whisper about a Methodist man that married a Jewish lady, and further got into a fight with the neighborhood kids who said they hated Jews because they killed Jesus.
Ignorance is ignorance, David. Discrimination is discrimination.
Count your lucky stars that you weren’t born into one of the groups like I was that has a great big target painted on our backs.
Wow! I stand in awe of you. I applaud you. Well said, well lived. You have such a wonderful voice. People just need to listen.
Donna & Shiela I appreciate and respect both of your opinions. And Donna being a straight man who loves women I can truly say I love lezbians!!!lol… Listen I know that what I’m saying here is almost undefendable. You are right there probably is no good reason why gay marriages shouldn’t exist you are Americans and you do have rights.
Ten years ago I would have answered this post differently, I would have said to you I don’t care what you do, marry don’t marry whatever as long as it doesn’t affect me I’m fine with it. Now jumping ahead 10 years my life has changed so dramatically, I now have a family, kids a home and live somewhat of a trditional lifestlye. I like it. For some unexplainable reason I find myself saying I like the thought of the good ole days. Minus a few things (Women Rights)(racial issues with people of color)I really like the idea of the family unit, man, woman, 2.6 children per family, spending Sunday at Grandmas house eating homeade Sunday dinner, not having to worry about letting gays marry, building foot fountains for the middle easterns to scrub their toes in on college campuses in America,pro life pro choice, evolution or creationism, Is my internet up yet??? OMG it’s not! what do I do now???
Life has become so confusing and so hectic here and truthfully I’m tired. Am I turning into that OLD WHITE GUY?? I hope not. I beliieve in tradition, I like tradition. Maybe if one of my children were to say I’m gay maybe my tune would change I don’t know. I just believe when you start changing history when does it stop. This country could turn into something I don’t recognize. I know that the both of you ecspecially you Shiela with your extremely liberal opinions could take any argument I throw your way on this topic and shred it to pieces. I get it.. It just comes down to a way of life that is comfortable for me and as horrible as it sounds I like the traditional life.
I don’t have an answer to this problem, maybe there is a way around these issues without calling it MARRIAGE. Believe it or not I do believe that gay people should be offered the same rights as straight people..
Well. Back in the ‘good old days’ people were still gay but didn’t show it, and black people were hung for talking to a white woman and young girls died from coat hanger abortions. So tradition is never set in stone, things change. Thank God.
I believe in Donna’s comment she was willing to accept whatever term they want to give it as long as it insures her rights are the same as any married couple.
The issue is not whether you approve or disapprove, like or dislike, respect or not respect gay people. The issue at hand is their CIVIL RIGHTS. Maybe you cannot see them, as they are under your SHOE right now.
With that said, I
will agree with you on one thing….I can take anything you throw at me. I won’t always shred it to pieces, but I’ll try
)
Funny because we’re so alike on most other issues. But I still like ya anyhow, despite your obvious flaws.
Sheila,
Thanks for fighting the good fight. I admit that after the election I was just so angry that I couldn’t focus on Prop 8 any more.
I don’t know you, David, so I don’t want you to think I’m picking on you when I say this but… how is your comfort level while eating dinner at Grandma’s any consideration whatsoever when it comes to my basic civil rights?
I don’t really understand how the fact that gay people are getting married would affect your life at all. However, even if I were to grant your assertion that your world would somehow be impacted negatively by my marriage… oh well… too bad.
I’m sorry to be harsh but once not so long ago there were an awful lot of old boys that sat around saying, “if’n those uppity blacks ever get the right to marry good white girls it’s going to destroy our country” and a whole other group of old white guys sat around saying, “women need to be at home where they belong — who do they think they are out there taking mens’ jobs?” and other such stupidity.
You say you find yourself longing for the good old days. Which good old days exactly are you yearning for? The ones where blacks had to ride at the back of the bus and drink at their own water fountains? The ones where women who took jobs considered “mens’ jobs” were taken out behind the shop building and taught a lesson about keeping their place? Because all of that IS the good old days.
But you were saying that you long for the good old days only with civil rights for blacks and equal rights for women. So you’ve grown comfortable thinking of blacks and women as your equals? This is odd considering through generations of American and European history — and throughout the history of western civilization in general for that matter — they have both been treated as second-class citizens.
America today is a place that citizens from the 1900s wouldn’t recognize. Gay people should have the same civil rights that straight people have… period. Don’t worry… you’ll adjust.