Bigotry and Religious Extremism

Earlier today, Facebook pointed me in the direction of thinking about gay marriage, and then slacking off at work pointed me in the direction of this.  While Slate admittedly has a bit of a liberal slant, their bias is in this instance irrelevant.  Why, you might ask?  Easy.  There is literally no good, rational, critically thought out reason for gay marriage to be illegal.  The continued ban on gay marriage is discrimination, pure and simple.  Let us consider the arguments against gay marriage:  


1) The gays will destroy family values.  First of all, the divorce rate is indicative of the fact that family values were on the decline, without any help from the insidious gays.  The divorce rate keeps climbing because the family values to which the  Republican party so frequently refers never really existed, Leave it to Beaver notwithstanding.  They are an idealized version of a nuclear family that was based entirely on the fact that women had few options besides sticking with their man, cooking, and cleaning.  Given the fact that the Greatest Generation, as well as subsequent generations who fought in Korea and Vietnam, was composed largely of war veterans who had seen horrible, horrible things, PTSD was probably a defining aspect of quite a few marriages.  What are the most common symptoms of PTSD?  Insomnia, alcoholism, and domestic abuse.  Even in the military today, which is actively attempting to diagnose and provide treatment for PTSD, alcoholism and domestic abuse are significant problems.  In 1950, without any recourse for treatment, I guarantee that they were significant aspects of the social fabric that were never mentioned.  Child abuse in the physical sense was significantly more socially acceptable than it currently is, and in the sexual sense most likely was undiscussed and unaddressed due to the stigma surrounding it.  It was, of course, just as prevalent as it is today, because pedophilia has been a common theme throughout human history (just ask the Ancient Greeks).  Adultery was largely unaddressed, because boys will be boys and women had no power to address the affront to their dignity.  And don't forget how racist we used to be.  


Accordingly, the family values that the gays are allegedly destroying were alcoholism, domestic abuse, pedophilia, sexism, racism, and rampant adultery.  These are not family values that are worth defending.  


2) God Hates the Gays.  Quite a few people argue this point, as if religious belief should be the underpinning for all legislation.  To get a general feeling for what I think about the idea of religious belief underpinning the government, read this, this, and this.  As far as I know, Christian hatred of the gays is based on the story of Sodom and Gomorra (a bunch of people try to rape an angel, Lot offers to let them rape his daughter instead.  Seriously.  Look it up), a passage from Romans (Paul basically say, "If people want to fuck dudes, having a dick in their ass is punishment enough."  Also, the verse is in the perpetual context of Paul defining Christianity as an opposition to conventional pagan morality so that it can develop an identity of its own, instead of just revising the Jewish identity, and all the scriptures around that verse are about forgiveness, compassion, and being nonjudgemental), and a couple other passages here and there.  The thing is, in just the Gospels, there's probably a stronger argument that Jesus was a socialist who supports universal healthcare than there is "God hates fags."  In the Pauline epistles, there are more references to the Second Coming of Christ occurring in Paul's lifetime than there are condemnations of homosexuality, and a much stronger argument that women should cover their hair and stay in the kitchen than that God hates fags.  In the Bible as a whole, there's certainly a better argument that Saturday is the Sabbath, we should have periodic jubilee years during which all debts are forgiven, and we shouldn't eat pork or shellfish.  People who say God hates fags are picking a very small number of verses to interpret much more strictly than their context warrants, and saying, "SEE!  SEE!  FAGGOTS ARE AN ABOMINATION IN THE EYES OF GOD!"  


If you'll notice, the point about family values doesn't stand in the face of rational examination, and the religious argument, always a good fallback when reason fails you, isn't scripturally consistent.  This is because the decision to prohibit gay marriage is based entirely on prejudice.  The real reason is that they think that GAYS ARE ICKY.  I don't know about you, but "Gay people are icky," doesn't seem like much of a legal argument to me.  


So as it stands, the gays don't enjoy the same tax benefits or visitation privileges to hospitalized love ones as straights.  DADT was repealed, which means that they can fight and die for our country, but the Defense of Marriage Act means that even if they get married in a state where gay marriage is legal, the federal government won't recognize the marriage.  Their spouse won't be eligible for health care or housing, and unless they have a child together, the homosexual service member will be required to live in the barracks.  If they have a child together, the servicemember and the child can live in base housing, but the spouse is not allowed because the spouse is not recognized as a dependent.  This applies to all federal employees:  legally married homosexuals cannot cover their spouse under their government health insurance if they are a federal employee.


Taxpayers are funding the systematic discrimination of homosexual civil servants, people who voluntarily work for the government to provide for the common good of America's citizens.  


What the fuck, America.