Missing The Point

The internet and social media in particular is a lot like Who's Line Is It Anyway: everything is made up and the points don't matter.  Nonetheless, with the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments on Proposition 8 and DOMA this week, the pro-gay-marriage folks have taken to the virtual streets in force and you can't swing a flamboyantly homosexual cat on Facebook without tripping over someone with a red equals sign as their profile picture.

The anti-gay-rights folks, who are apparently just now realizing that it's inadvisable in this digital age to pick a PR fight with a group of people who are stereotypically young, technology savvy, pop-culture literate, and willing to endure derision for the sake of what they believe, have managed to marshal an image commissioned from the only anti-LGBTQ graphic designer in the country and are making an anemic effort to mount some kind of counter-attack.  

It's sad, really.

Not surprisingly their counter-argument to "liberty," "equality," "basic human rights," "love," "idealism," and all that other liberal nonsense that only hippies and decent people believe in boils down to "but... but Jesus."

And ya know what, yea.  I'll spot them that.  I mean, we could get into the political undertones of the various translations of the Bible, the rumors of King James I's (for whom the King James Version is named) bi-sexuality, the fact that the Bible explicitly condones slavery roughly twenty times more frequently than it condemns homosexuality, and a host of other issues -- the validity of the Biblical foundation for Christian homophobia is far from settled -- but this is neither the time nor the place for that.

Well, at least it's not in Comic Sans....

Postulated: American Christianity has a dim view of homosexuality.  Ya'll can have that one; it doesn't matter.

As the failed attempt at a viral counter-punch states, "you might be able to change the laws of America. But you will never change the Laws of God," but no one is attempting to change the "laws of God."  The point -- the entire point here -- is the laws of the United States of America.  I do not hold a degree in Theology and I confess some confusion about many aspects of Protestant doctrine  but I remain reasonably certain that no one -- not even the Mormons -- believes that Jesus appeared to Chief Justice John Marshall and said "upon this Court I will build my Church... and whatsoever thou shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven."

It is not the business of the Supreme Court, nor the Congress, nor the President, nor the government of the United States as a whole to either know or enact the will of God.  It may well be that the anti-abolitionists were right; that God did, in fact, sanctify slavery; and that America's departure from it in the 1860's was an anathema to Him.  It may well be true that the anti-suffrage movement was correct; that the Lord wants women to submit to their husbands in all regards including  the political; and that the granting of women's suffrage flies in the face of divine providence   

Those things may be as equally true as the supposition that God's Law forbids a marriage between two men or two women and equal weight should be given to all three -- which is to say none at all.  

This is a nation of Men, of Laws, and of Equality and we are, each of us, entitled to whatever faiths, superstitions  and fantasies we might like but none of those give us the right to deny others equal protection under the law.