Tuesday November 4th, 2008 was a milestone day in America. A day which saw us elect into office a new administration which promises to fix the mistakes and reverse the policies of the past eight years. That night I went to bed with a sense of optimism and hope about the next four years knowing that Barack Obama will be our new president. I am of course especially excited to have a president that is not going to be hostile to scientific inquiry. However, my optimism about my country was tempered the next morning by my disappointment with  my home state of California.  Wednesday morning I got the news that Proposition 8 (“Prop Hate”), a ballot initiative to ban marriages between homosexual couples, had passed by a narrow margin. I know this blog is about science and skepticism, and I usually try to steer clear of politics because it mostly involves value judgments and ideology rather than evidence. However I think it does apply here because Prop Hate was sponsored and motivated, as usual, by believers in the supernatural, in this case by religion.

The initiative was backed by money from evangelical Christians, the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, and Islamic groups.  It is appalling to me how these religious groups, who have historically hated each other, can seem to only find common ground on one thing, more hatred. In this case it is their shared disdain for homosexuality. This insane preoccupation about what other people do while they are naked seems to be a common theme in all faiths. Why should I, a straight man, care so much about the rights of a group I don’t even belong to? I just can’t stand discrimination and I think it is time we ended it once and for all. Our society (most of it anyway) has slowly but surely been moving away from that stupid, outdated, and medieval concept. After all, we just elected our first African American president, and that is something to be proud of. Unfortunately, however, a large portion of our society seems to think that there are still some groups that are okay to discriminate against. Two of these groups are the non-religious and homosexuals. I am a member of the former and feel a kinship with the latter. We are both viewed by the religious majority as evil and immoral, gays because of the way they have sex, and secular people because we don’t believe in an invisible man in the sky. We are also both not immediately visible as a member of each group. We have to “come out of the closet” in order for people to know what we are. This can mean the risk of being ostracized by family, friends, or coworkers. And in some places it can even even lead to threats, physical violence, or loss of employment.

While this is a temporary setback for human rights, I think that eventually it will be overturned. The reason is that it goes against the highest law in the land, the United States Constitution. Allow me to quote from the first amendment of that great document:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”

I think there is a reason that James Madison chose to make that the first line of the first amendment, even before our precious freedom of speech. He knew that if you let religion get control of the government and pass laws based on their beliefs, all of the other rights would be gone. Indeed this is what we do see every time in every theocracy around the world. To date, I have never heard an argument against homosexuality or homosexual marriage that isn’t either a logical fallacy or based entirely on religion. Because the denial of rights to a group of people is based on a religious belief, it violates the first amendment and is thus unconstitutional and illegal in the United States. Someday this will end up before the United States Supreme Court and should be struck down. The reason why we have a constitutional republic is because the founding fathers knew that sometimes the majority in a democracy can be as bad as a tyrannical dictator.

Separation of church and state is so important because it not only keeps those of us who do not believe free from religious dogma in our government, but it allows those who do believe to worship as they please without government intervention. Having the state recognize gay marriage does not mean that their churches will have to perform ceremonies for them or change their beliefs about homosexuals. They can all go on thinking what they do about them based on that line in Leviticus (I’ve often wondered why they are not trying to pass laws banning the consumption of shellfish, which is also prohibited in the bible) that they revere so fervently.  All it means is that same sex couples will be able to get a piece of paper from the state that grants them the same legal rights associated with marriage as everyone else.

Even though there are always setbacks, such as this proposition and the administration we have had in Washington for the last eight years, the overall trend is society has always been unmistakeably progressive. 150 years ago slavery was considered okay by most people, today it is considered as vile and reprehensible a thing as you can get. 100 years ago, women did not have the right to vote and there were many who did not want to grant it to them, today that would be unthinkable. And just 40 years ago in many places interracial marriage was still illegal (again because of religious beliefs), but now we are free to marry whomever we wish and the majority of people are fine with it. Back then, most were against it and used many of the same ludicrous arguments against it. The sign of the times moves on.

Even though I am not gay, I can sympathize with them because I can imagine how I would feel if people were to tell me that I could not marry the person I loved because of an old book that was written by primitive bronze age goat herders. So to the gay community I say keep fighting. Don’t ever give up until you have equal rights under the law. It may come slowly, but society will change and the type of thinking that led to the passing of this horrible proposition will be relegated to the scrap heap of history.