Pride & Opinions

…called separation of church and state.

I suppose it’s nice to know that the U.S. doesn’t have a monopoly on ecclesiastical interference in matters of state, but in this situation I hardly find it comforting. According to this New York Times article,

“A directive by Italian bishops telling Roman Catholic politicians that they have a moral duty to vote against gay rights legislation has prompted fresh charges of Vatican meddling in parliamentary affairs.”

Am I the only one sick of hearing that argument?

Moral duty. As the debate over gay rights rages up one hemisphere and down the other with little ground gained or lost to either side, we constantly hear these arguments trotted out to the point where they’re becoming as trite as the over-used phrase sanctity of marriage. We have a moral duty to oppose gay marriage, gay equality, gay everything. A moral obligation, to be precise. Homosexuality is immoral and must not be allowed.

What we don’t hear is why. If God loves all equally, why does God not love gays? How can God love the person picketing with a sign that says “When a fag dies, God smiles” and yet he cannot love a gay man or lesbian woman for wanting to join in sacred union (and even more sacred tax benefits) with his or her chosen same-sex partner? How is proclaiming hatred more moral than proclaiming love?

The answer, kids, is that it’s not. And if you’ll take a look at the definition of moral, you’ll see that nowhere in that rather lengthy breakdown of the word does it define specifics of morality beyond a distinction between right and wrong.

Right and wrong are relative, and too often what’s “right” is determined by those in power. This is why interpretation of the First Amendment demands a separation of church and state, so that those in power are not unduly influenced by morals that may vary from faith to faith and thus create instability in the process of government. Instead their morals rest on objective determination of right and wrong based not on faith, but on human rights and precedents set by past legislation. The right to life, the right to fair treatment–

–wait, what’s that you say? Fair treatment? Sure, back then fair treatment only applied to moneyed white males, but we’ve come a long way since then. We’ve established premises for fair treatment regardless of ethnicity, and regardless of gender. Men, women, black, white, Asian, Native–no matter the sex or the race, people are guaranteed fair treatment under the law…as long as they aren’t gay.

Why? Every homosexual is either a man or a woman, and belongs to some ethnic classification. Does a matter as simple as sexual preference strip away the rights to fair treatment given to every human being?

Under the principles of moral duty, yes, it does. Because we have a moral duty to discriminate against others over matters that, frankly, are none of our business. We have a moral duty to force our beliefs on others through legislation, when mere word-of-mouth discrimination will no longer work. We have a moral duty to treat others in a hateful and dehumanizing fashion in the name of God’s almighty love.

If that’s my moral duty, then I choose to be immoral. I choose to be immoral in advocating tolerance for all–yes, even tolerance for those who’d condemn me for loving another man. I choose to be immoral in believing that my love is as sacred and pure as a man’s love for a woman, or her love for him in return.

I choose to be immoral in standing up for my rights as a human being.

Moral is not perfectly synonymous with right, no matter how often we’re told that it is. Morality is wholly subjective from one individual to the next, and if we were to operate on the idea that what is moral is also unequivocally right, then only one person could be right at any point in time because no two individuals’ morals are exactly the same.

Life doesn’t work that way. So tell me: do you believe in what’s moral?

Or do you believe in what’s right?

gay marriage, gay rights, morality, separation of church and state, politics