Celebrating diversity

In the last several weeks following the election, there was a lot of shaking heads, disappointment, heartache, anger, and retrospection on the Prop 8 discussion boards. A lot of my fellow Facebookers have been discussing the kinds of forces that drive such a proposition, and the one word that keep popping up is "religion". We all know that religious groups were behind Prop 8, like the Mormon Church, and some people are angry that religion is used to justify homophobia and opposition to same-sex marriage, as well as all sorts of nasty acts against humanity throughout history. I know that a lot of people, when asked why they are so against same-sex marriage, start quoting the Bible and how it says that homosexuality is a sin. Frustrating, I KNOW. However, I'd like to point out the word "used". People use religion. It is not the cause. It is the excuse, and more so, the weapon.

Many people who supported segregation and the ban on interracial marriage supported the separating of races for religious reasons. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister. Does anyone think he would have said that religion was to blame? I don't think so. Religion is not to blame. People are to blame. Just like in a murder, the person is to blame, not the weapon. People can use whatever weapon they want to justify their personal beliefs. In this case, people used their churches, and the social connections and money-making power of those connections to help pass Prop 8. And churches, with their social connections and ability to raise money and rally people, created a political machine to do work to pass Prop 8. I guess this is why its called "organized religion." Unfortunately, the No on Prop 8 campaigners could have better utilized their own social connections before the election.

Besides, I just had a IM chat on Facebook with a guy who isn't religious but had a whole lot to say about "fags" and how they should "grow up and learn to eat fish." Ew ew ew. (And I'm sure this guy has no problems at all with lesbians. Jerk.)

He also said that we are all animals, and animals are supposed to reproduce, and that's all. Here's the icing on the cake: he said that I should abandon my "project" and do something more worthy, like work on legalizing porn. (And porn is already legal, stupid.)

/sigh
/emote shakes her head

The greatest champions of civil rights, equality, and social justice of our time were spirtual leaders who celebrated diversity. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and others... they neither blamed religion, nor used their religion to snub their oppressors. Gandhi once told a Hindu man after he confessed to killing a Muslim child to avenge his own child being killed, that in order to atone for his sin, he needed to find an orphan whose parents had been killed by the fighting... and raise that child as a Muslim. Diversity indeed. I think we can take a few lessons from them. Also, consider this: Spain, which is largely a Catholic country (over 75%) legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, which over 66% of the population in approval. Ironically, at least one Spaniard, Pedro Almodovar said, "It's about time. This law will enrich society. It is pro-family."

We need to remind ourselves of what makes America so special: liberty, equality, and diversity. We should be celebrating diversity, which is really what makes our nation unique from all the others, the "beacon on the hill", however we want to describe ourselves. People are going to have different beliefs about things, and maybe it doesn't matter how they come to the same conclusion. We just hope to convince as many people as possible that same-sex marriage is a good thing. Attacking religion is harmful for the cause, not only because a lot of religious people voted against Prop 8, but in order to teach others to celebrate diversity, we ourselves have to show that we do too. So, I think the solution is not in being weary of religion, but in convincing people to celebrate diversity. Without diversity, we wouldn't be the country that we are today. I can't think of anything else that makes us different.