This Is How A Straight Man (Religious or Not) Can Stand Up for Gay Marriage

A cursory glance of human history will show that religion has added to and detracted from the human experience.  This post will only examine one area where religion has detracted, and also touch on a couple of principles that the religious might want to contemplate.  I believe if the reader correctly understands what I am saying in this post, he or she will see that I am not trying to suppress any religious beliefs or practices.  This blog is devoted to freedom, and this post will be no exception.  Also, it should probably be pointed out that I am primarily addressing Americans who are coming from the Christian perspective, though other religions in other countries have certainly been making the same mistake for generations.

The mistake I refer to is that of trying to legislate religious beliefs into the law books of civil society.  There are two principles which, if understood, will show why this is a mistake.

1.      Civil society is not entered voluntarily.  Civil society could be represented as the whole circle in a pie chart.  Every human being belongs to civil society by virtue of their birth.  Religious organizations could be represented as slices of varying sizes within that circle.  People are free to jump in or out of any of those slices (or different organizations), and can freely choose to obey the various precepts of those organizations they join.  But people cannot realistically leave the actual circle (civil society) except through death.  Therefore, the only civil legislation that can be considered just is legislation that deals with the common needs of every human – common civil needs.

2.      Anyone who chooses to follow what might be termed “divine revelation” should understand that what they are following is not actually revelation, but hearsay.  Ultimately, your faith rests in the people who claim to have received revelation.  If God chose to reveal something to Paul, Peter, Isaiah, Matthew, Abraham, or Joseph Smith, then what those men pass on to others is, technically, hearsay.  It is only revelation from God if God told you directly.  So, you are choosing whether or not to believe those MEN.  You either believe them or you don’t.  If God actually spoke to me as the men of old claimed he spoke to them, you would then have to decide whether or not you believe me.  ME, not God.  “The Lord has told me that the western half of the United States will sink into the sea in one week.  If you want to live, you must repent of your sins and move east of Colorado!”  What would you do if you lived in or west of Colorado?  What would happen to you if God really had spoken to me, but you chose not to believe?  You see, I am either divinely inspired, or a crackpot.  What will you make of the hearsay you have received from me?  The choice is yours.  The point is, every person within the circle is free to decide which hearsay they will follow, if any.

If anyone decides they are going to go with Joseph Smith, civil society has no right to stop them.  The same goes for all other religions, including Christianity.  Civil society has no right to judge those who decide to believe that the writers of what Christianity calls the Old and New Testaments were literally passing on what God had revealed to them.  People are free to make that choice, and so long as the practice of their religion harms no one in civil society (in other words, harms no one), then civil society has nothing to say to them regarding their choice.

Problems arise when those who belong to a specific slice of the pie decide that their beliefs and practices are so superior to all others that they should be able to legislate those beliefs or practices so that everyone within the circle will be obligated to follow them.  The devoutly religious tend to forget that their teachings and way of life are available for anyone who is part of the larger circle to enjoy – but available only if freely chosen.  No one should be forced into a religion or forced to follow its precepts.  The larger circle has only one excuse to interfere with the practices of the “slices” within it – when those practices harm other people.  On the other hand, the “slices” have no excuse, and, more importantly, no right, to burden the entire circle with their beliefs or practices.  But this mistake has been made over and over and over again.  The mistake might be made with a good heart, but it causes injustice nonetheless.

Get the picture?

For those of you who are not orthodox Jews: would you submit to civil legislation that banned all pork products and any work on the Sabbath (Saturday)?  Would words like “Liberty!” and “Freedom!” and “Theocracy bad!” not come spewing out of your mouth?  It’s fine if orthodox Jews want to live their life this way, and anyone is free to partake of that “slice of life,” but it is simply unjust for those within that slice to impose their specific beliefs on the entire circle, on all of society.

So, what about the slices within the circle which ban homosexuality and/or gay marriage?  Where do they get the right to impose their beliefs on that subject on the entire civil population?  The truth is, they don’t legitimately have that right.  Yet, for centuries, they have asserted a right which they do not possess.  But anyone within the larger circle is free to join with those organizations which forbid such things among their own voluntary members.  You know, either God is truly against it, or some kosher dudes who lived in the desert a long time ago just decided it was nasty (because they didn't happen to swing that way) and, therefore, no one should be allowed to do it.  The fact that they said God told them so settled the matter for a lot of people.  But I am free to choose whether to believe the hearsay or not, and so is everyone else.

This is how liberty works: civil society allows anyone to join any group and do anything which harms no one (and by harm, I mean performing criminal acts against a person or their property).  Those smaller groups within the circle are free to judge everyone outside of their little slice, and to have and voice opinions about how those outsiders live their lives.  And they are free to invite those outsiders to join with them, and to live what they believe is a righteous life according to the teachings of the people they believe actually talked with God.  But, man or woman of God, not everyone is going to choose to join your group, and part of your responsibility as a free human being is to leave those alone who choose another way.  You do no favors and no justice by trying to throw a rope out there and bind everyone to your beliefs, to your way.  Some people want to eat hotdogs; some people want to leave their face uncovered; some people want to love members of the same sex.  Your God may condemn such things, so make sure that those who freely follow him with you refrain (and that you refrain yourself).  But you simply do not possess the right to drag people along the “straight and narrow” against their will by translating your narrow beliefs into civil law.  This is anti-liberty; this is coercion; this is theocracy; this is oppression; this is spiritual kidnapping; this is getting your Taliban on.

You are only forsaking your religion if you let those within it go against its teachings, or what you believe them to be.  You are not forsaking your religion by leaving those outside of it alone.  You can preach to them, you can voice your opinion on their way of life, you can plead with them to join you and change.  But the only people you can bind to your religious beliefs are those who have joined your group of their own free will.

The separation of church and state is there for good reason: it protects both civil and religious society – protects them from each other.  Ultimately, it protects the human right of liberty.