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11/30/2009
Video: Saying anything they can to reach preconceived ending
The Family Policy Institute of Washington lost its recent anti-domestic partnerships fight by waging one of the most over-the-top, faith-based, wantonly hostile campaigns in recent memory. Now that it's on the record books, FPIW is trying a new approach. Namely: Muddying the line of church/state separation, so as to create a convoluted "justification" for their desire to strip gays of civil rights:
This is a big ol' strawman. No gay activist -- NO GAY ACTIVIST! -- is saying that ideas are innately unconstitutional simply because one faith or another might see them as being consistent with their personal religious doctrine. But on the flip side of that token: No citizen should be saying that certain ideas are innately right, good, moral, and constitutional because their personal faith tells them so! Yet in the marriage debate, the latter is exactly what is happening.
Our religious-motivated opposition wants to place the burden on LGBT activists, acting as if we have declared war on any and everything that is good, decent, and moral. But in reality, the burden is on them to justify their faith-based biases! We have more that made our case for why we are entitled to the same CIVIL marriage equality as our heterosexual peers (which, we will remind everyone, doesn't mean that churches will or should be forced to marry ANY couple, gay or straight, that they don't want to marry). We have more that justified our right, using the basis of our citizenship, rather that the myriad of faith views that make up our rainbow-hued fabric. If groups like FPIW want to stop our CIVIL right to marry, then they're going to have to present an equally-merited push back. Playing the victim and acting like the big, bad gays are trying to forbid them "from reading, discussing, thinking about or even legislating ideas that happen to be religious in nature" is not going to bear lawful fruit. Maybe in the Garden of Eden, but not in the halls of CIVIL justice.
Your thoughts
All I hear is "other stuff came from the Bible for some people!! You don't want to get rid of THAT!! Even though being gay harms nobody and has no effect on other people, it's the exact same thing as rape!". Yeahhhh... no.
Posted by: Yuki | Dec 1, 2009 12:33:59 AM
I hate to break it to the idiot in this video but RI Constitution Article 1 Section 3 says this:
"Section 3. Freedom of religion. -- Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; and all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness; and whereas a principal object of our venerable ancestors, in their migration to this country and their settlement of this state, was, as they expressed it, to hold forth a lively experiment that a flourishing civil state may stand and be best maintained with full liberty in religious concernments; we, therefore, declare that no person shall be compelled to frequent or to support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatever, except in fulfillment of such person's voluntary contract; nor enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in body or goods; nor disqualified from holding any office; nor otherwise suffer on account of such person's religious belief; and that every person shall be free to worship God according to the dictates of such person's conscience, and to profess and by argument to maintain such person's opinion in matters of religion; and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect the civil capacity of any person."
I'd say that's a pretty solid wall between church and state.
Posted by: Tony P | Dec 1, 2009 2:33:12 AM
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