There is plenty of commentary as the country’s earliest presidential campaign roars ahead on race and gender and whether they stand in the way of getting elected. Despite all of this Hillary and Barack appear to be generating both support and money and are likely, one or the other, to be the next President of the United States.
That, to me, is a wonderful change in American thought. That race and gender should no longer matter and merit can be the deciding factor is a great step forward in civilization.
Then, last night while listening to the LoGo.com Gay and Lesbian Presidential Forum, it dawned on me that the real wall which stands in the way of an intelligent civilization is religion. The question on “gay marriage” was raised with each of the six challengers (Dodd and Biden were not there due to “scheduling conflicts” — yeah, right!) and the responses we got have to be weighed against the state-by-state arguments currently going on.
Gravel and Kucinich, with no real need to knuckle under to the party faithful since they are pretty much ignored as real candidates, had no problem with gay marriage. Why shouldn’t every American have the same rights?
The other four played the “civil unions” game, but would not endorse “marriage” for gays. The reason, although not stated clearly here, is not one of rights but one of religion. Marriage has, to most Americans, a religious context. To support gay marriage is to be seen as “not religious” and that is frightening to the candidates.
It will be a long time before we, as a free country will actually be free of religious influence. The parties that are the holdouts in acceptance of homosexuals as normal Americans are the religious organizations like Focus on the Family (indeed, when a politician stresses “family values” it is “religious values” that they mean.)
I often wonder how strong the actual beliefs of our candidates are. One of the reasons I liked Howard Dean in 2004 is that he avoided even mentioning religion until he was forced into it, and even then did not make it the foundation of his campaign. Today’s candidates seem required to make statements about their “faith” in order to be taken seriously by anyone, and that is unfortunate.
There is very little that separates the power of religion to dominate what is merely a label for civil union – marriage – and the power of a religion to dominate the idea of being politically right (Sunni’s? Shi’ia’s? Born Again Christians?).
It would be interesting to jump ahead a century or so and see if we have worked our way out of this remaining entanglement of western history. One could hope that we have.
