Saturday, March 30, 2013

Equal Rights - The Stupidity Factor

Preface: This posting will probably ostracize me from some friends and family, and may cost me some of those relationships. I would hope that any friends and family that read this understand that I support equal rights and freedoms, and that I respect each group's right to retain their freedoms. 

Let me first say that I am really getting tired of all the one-sided equal rights brew-ha-ha. Everyone wants to be granted their equal rights. The problem occurs when one groups equal rights infringe upon those of another group.

This is more about conveying my contempt for double standards used throughout the continuing equal rights debate. Its simple folks, consider the First Amendment of the Constitution: of the United States, Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Based on this, if you claim to be a Christian, but do not believe in the resurrection of Christ, then you are not a Christian, as you do not believe in one of the core principles of the religion. Time to choose to either embrace the values of Christianity, or go find another religion. This does not mean you get to impose your beliefs on the rest of Christianity, and it does not permit you to waste the time of our already over-taxed court system by trying to have the judicial system force all of Christiandom to accept your belief.

Let us explore this interesting concept in a slightly different way...

If you are a devout and your religious texts embrace same gender marriage, then stick to your guns. If it does not, then that religious belief may not be for you and you should either support your religious texts, or find another religion that conforms to what you want to believe and support, or go found your own religious group that holds true to your values. 

The same holds true for non-religious organizations. If a private entity (church, religious organization, business, school, university, social group) has rules in place regarding their membership, practices, requirements, etc, then leave it alone. If its a public entity, then leave them alone! If you don't want to be part of that organization for whatever reason, then don't! Start your own organization, religion, school, whatever. Don't go pushing yourself into an organization that you do not support.

Here is an example. There is a group of people who did not like parts of the Boy Scouts program, so they started their own. They are called the Cascadia Scouts, and they have no affiliation with the Boy Scouts at all. They camp, and do all kinds of stuff like that, but they are not Boy Scouts, and don't want to be Boy Scouts. A new interest group was started and it is appealing to those who hold similar values.

Now we get into another hot topic: Same Gender Marriages

While there is a history of same gender unions throughout known history , today, out of 193 countries recognized by the United States, only 11 allow same sex marriages. That's barely 5% of all countries in the world. Strangely enough, that really does not have any influence over this article one bit, but it is an interesting point to note.

Unfortunately this kind of falls back to "religious doctrine" versus "equal rights under our Constitution." For the sake of this discussion lets try to separate the two. Attempting to force all religions to accept and embrace same gender marriage via court order or written law  is an infringement of our First Amendment rights.

If you put into place a law that allows all existing marriages are civil unions, any new civil unions should allow any couple, heterosexual or homosexual, to be legally bound and entitled to equal rights under the law, regardless of religious or social affiliation, you have now honored the First Amendment, and allowed couples the same legal rights regardless of gender.

Keep in mind that if you intend to be part of a same gender civil union, you may be going against your religious beliefs. Change the law, don't try forcing change upon the religions of the world. They are not yours to change. Start a new religion if yours doesn't suit your needs/beliefs.

That my friends is how this Equal Rights argument over homosexuality should be handled.