Religion and Political Platforms.

Something that has really been bothering me lately is the incessant actions of key political figures to drag their religious beliefs into politics. As much as I hate to rag on any one party, it seems to me that the predominating perpetrators of this behavior are Conservative, Right Wing Republicans. Mitt Romney, for example, states under the selection of his 'values' on his campaign website, that 

"Marriage is more than a personally rewarding social custom. It is also critical for the well-being of a civilization. That is why it is so important to preserve traditional marriage – the joining together of one man and one woman. (1)" 

He is not alone in this belief. His previous opponent for the Republican nomination for the presidency, Rick Santorum, had even more to say about it. 

"Marriage is, and has always been through human history, a union of a man and woman – and for a reason. These unions are special because they are the ones we all depend on to make new life and to connect those new lives to their mom and dad.

A husband is a man who commits to a woman, to her and any children she may give him. He commits to his wife without any reservations, to share with her all his worldly goods and to exclude all others from this intimate communion of life.  From this vow of marriage comes a wonderful and unique good: any children their union creates will have a mom and a dad united in love, in one family.

That’s the special work of marriage in law – to connect things that otherwise fray and fragment: love, life, money, moms, and dads.

A man who does not seek to do this – who doesn’t choose to give himself to a woman and any children they may have together in this unique and special way – may well be a very good man and have wonderful other kinds of relationships, but he isn’t seeking to be a husband. We can’t redefine reality to accommodate politically fashionable wishes.  Words matter because they capture enduring and timeless truths about human nature and about the common good." (2)

When I read Santorum's arguments, I could only pause and stare dumbly at my screen. The arguments he was producing seemed to me to be nothing short of bigoted hate-speech cloaked in a political guise. Marriage, if you will, can be broken down into two very basic components. Complexities aside, there is a religiously based ceremony, and a legally based signing of a license which unites a couple financially and in the eyes of the law. I would like to stop here and state that I do not believe it is the right of the American government or any legal systems to force a church of any religion to preform a ceremony for a gay couple. That is not the right of the government, and is instead at the discretion of the church. I DO however protest that many of the Church's supporters believe that they should dictate a gay couple's ability to sign a legal document declaring them married. Beyond that fact, there are many types of marriage. Hand Fasting, for example is an old Norse tradition, while some more primitive cultures simply viewed the selling of a daughter and the taking of the maidenhead to be all the ceremony required for a union. 

In fact, if you classify marriage as a union between two people, then Ancient Greeks, Romans, and the Chinese all had same-sex marriages. In fact, these unions continued until the introduction of Christianity to the Holy Roman Empire. A law in the Theodosian Code issued in 342 AD began the outlawing of such unions and condemned the participants to death. (3) Judging by that, then gay marriage has existed before and only the introduction of religion into the society had an impact upon it's continuance. This both wipes out Santorum's argument that there have only been straight marriages in the world, but also blows a bit of a hole in Romney's quip about 'Traditional Marriage'. Pardon me Romney, but these traditions are older than yours. The entire marriage debate is just dragging religious views into a political spectrum. This isn't the first (and I doubt it will be the last time) that this happens. Sarah Palin went on the O'Reilly factor, and what follows is a direct quote. 

"I think we should keep this clean, keep it simple, go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant" ... "They're quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the 10 commandments, it's pretty simple." (4)

The founding fathers might like to disagree with you, Mrs. Palin. Our history clearly shows that the original Pilgrims who settled in America came because of religious persecution. In the New World, out of the reach of the church of England, these people were finally able to practice their religion in peace. In fact, our founding fathers remembered the sting of persecution up until the signing of the Constitution, when the lack of clear and defined rights led to the drafting of the First Amendment and the entire Bill of Rights. In fact, Thomas Jefferson himself coined the phrase "A separation of Church and State" so to claim he wish aught else but the Wall of Separation we currently have shows not only a positively Anti-American ignorance of our history, but also a desire to willfully misunderstand the factors that created this great country.

At the end of the day, politician's can gripe all they want about a gay couple's right to marriage, but that is a personal bias and belief. Do not attempt to skew history and slander the ideals of progressive men such as our founding fathers with your own nonsensical hatred. In the name of Jesus in whose name you condemn homosexuals "Love thy brother as you love thyself." In the basis on which this country is founded, stop attempting to regulate what goes on in a courthouse because of what you think God might want. Please, in the name of all the things YOU hold holy, work on it. In the mean time, I will be at my friends house. She was raised by a gay couple, and has a well balanced life, good education, and is going very far. Maybe after that we will go do some service work in foster homes where children created by straight couples try and find some sense of normalcy, and hope that if they are lucky, a nice family of a husband and wife, or husband and husband, or wife and wife will give them a home, and love.

And love is free of both religion and discrimination.

~Emily Carroll

Note: This is not an attack on religion. Religion has the right to believe what it wants, however, that does not give it the right to veto a legal union between two loving people.

Sources: 1) http://www.mittromney.com/issues/values
2) http://www.ricksantorum.com/we-hold-these-truths
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions
4) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/sarah-palin-american-law_n_569922.html