![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Spoofie says something meaningful
Nov. 6th, 2008 12:49 amThe letter I just sent to my local paper (and some of you have already heard this argument from me before):
A law against gay marriage is a law against religious freedom.
In the wake of Proposition 8 and a number of other anti-gay measures being passed across the country, the only word to describe my feelings is outrage. I am outraged, of course, as a person who identifies as asexual and therefore also as queer, but moreover I am outraged as a Christian and simply as a human being. The question of the institution of marriage is not one that should ever have come into the hands of the state. The separation of church and state was put into place in this country to both protect the state from the church and, equally important, to protect the church from the state. Any ban on same sex marriage is a violation of that pivotal policy, and it is a violation in both directions. In this case, the religious right has violated the separation of church and state by forcing its beliefs on the government - and the government will now proceed to violate its supposed separation from the church by forcing those churches that support and uphold same sex marriage to cease and desist from performing religious ceremonies - namely, certain marriages. The question of whether or not any two consenting adults can and should get married should never be decided by the government, or even by the people. Whether or not a church chooses to perform gay marriage should be entirely up to that church. No one would dream of forcing a church to perform a certain marriage, so what gives anyone the right to ban another church from doing so? As for secular marriages, any legal right held by heterosexual couples should be held by same sex couples. There is no valid reason to deny our brothers and sisters the rights we enjoy just because of whom they happen to love.
A law against gay marriage is a law against religious freedom.
In the wake of Proposition 8 and a number of other anti-gay measures being passed across the country, the only word to describe my feelings is outrage. I am outraged, of course, as a person who identifies as asexual and therefore also as queer, but moreover I am outraged as a Christian and simply as a human being. The question of the institution of marriage is not one that should ever have come into the hands of the state. The separation of church and state was put into place in this country to both protect the state from the church and, equally important, to protect the church from the state. Any ban on same sex marriage is a violation of that pivotal policy, and it is a violation in both directions. In this case, the religious right has violated the separation of church and state by forcing its beliefs on the government - and the government will now proceed to violate its supposed separation from the church by forcing those churches that support and uphold same sex marriage to cease and desist from performing religious ceremonies - namely, certain marriages. The question of whether or not any two consenting adults can and should get married should never be decided by the government, or even by the people. Whether or not a church chooses to perform gay marriage should be entirely up to that church. No one would dream of forcing a church to perform a certain marriage, so what gives anyone the right to ban another church from doing so? As for secular marriages, any legal right held by heterosexual couples should be held by same sex couples. There is no valid reason to deny our brothers and sisters the rights we enjoy just because of whom they happen to love.
