Diss queers to appease fundi prejudices?

REACTIONARY JUSTIFIES DISCRIMINATION AGAINST GAYS

David Benkof (the regressive reactionary formerly known as David Bianco) opposes equal rights for queer persons, and advocates letting fundis discriminate against us. He wants to restrict "civil marriage to male-female couples", so as not to offend the feelings of medieval bigots.

In the mainstream press, Benkof claims that adoption agencies "have legitimate reasons to discriminate against same-sex couples" [ - San Francisco Chronicle, 18 January 2004]. When secular adoption agencies discriminate against same-sex couples, the reason is secular bigotry, not religion.

He further claims that "traditionally religious business owners who give preference or a discount to married couples should be able to make their own decisions about whether such benefits apply to same-sex couples, rather than have that choice taken away from them."

In other words, "business owners" should be able to judge the validity of the link between two partners, according to their own religious prejudices, and to discriminate accordingly. Let's think this through. Some business owners belong to racist churches, which teach that no valid marriage can exist between persons of differing races. Some belong to religious groups which believe that marriage between persons of differing religions is invalid. (Example: a Muslim man is allowed to marry a non-Muslim woman, but a Muslim woman isn't allowed to marry a non-Muslim man.) They do have a right to practice such racial and religious bigotry within their own private religious groups -- but not when doing business with the public.

Benkof's privileging of religious prejudices would likewise allow landlords and hotels to discriminate against unmarried couples, including couples consisting of one woman plus one man, who choose to "live in sin". Welcome back to the Victorian era!

And when landlords can discriminate against unmarried couples, on religious grounds, then they can also decide who is validly married. A devoutly reactionary Roman Catholic landlord wouldn't recognize secular divorce; so if a divorced person marries somebody new, while the ex-spouse is still living, the second marriage is bigamous, and therefor invalid (in the landlord's opinion). And if a Muslim man has two wives, validly under Islam, a Baptist landlord can reject the family, because most Baptists believe a valid marriage is only between ONE man and ONE woman. By giving the power of secular law to sectarian prejudices, Benkof would tear down America's wall between religion and government.

Why did our newborn nation erect that wall, when adopting our Bill of Rights? Our founding parents did so because they were sick of the religious wars which had recently been ravaging Britain and Europe. Likewise they were sick of government discrimination, sometimes amounting to persecution, against Quakers, Jews, and various so-called "heretics".

When religion mixes with politics, polarization becomes likely. Look at Northern Ireland.

Majoritarians may not even know when they are oppressing religious minorities. In the 20th century, many public schools sponsored daily reading-aloud of the (Protestant) King James Bible. Protestants couldn't understand why Jewish and Roman Catholic students preferred different Bibles.

And today's fundi Protestants, who erect public monuments to the Ten Commandments, don't seem to realize that various Christian churches differ on how to divide the ancient texts (Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21), and therefor on how to number the commandments. Most Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox churches follow Jewish tradition in this respect; while the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches differ. [For details, see World Almanac.] So if fundis force public schools to post "the Ten Commandments" in every classroom, just whose traditions will be honored, and whose will be dissed? If you'd like to see more fist-fights between Catholic and Protestant boys at public schools, go ahead and bring sectarianism back into secular life.

And how does Benkof justify tearing down secularism? Obscurely, by citing the religious history of our seven-day week. "Our week has seven days for no other reason," he pontificates, "than the Judeo-Christian belief that God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh." Benkof forgets that Hebrew traditions and tales existed long before being written down. It's just as likely that the Hebrews, and/or their ancestors, had been following a seven-day week for longer than anyone could remember; and that this week had naturally been melded into their creation myths. Perhaps seven had some long-lost magical meaning. More likely, seven days may have been intended to symbolize one phase of the moon (one-fourth of the lunar month).

He further argues that any governmental attempt to change the week would be anti-religious, "because the government calendar does not affect when our faiths tell us the Sabbath falls." He seems ignorant of Sunday-closure laws, by which governments forced non-Christians to honor the Christian day of worship.

He seems equally ignorant of the most glaring example of a government restructuring the public week, which occurred when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Then, as now, Saturday was the seventh day of the week, and Sunday was the first. Until then, everyone, including pagans, understood that the Jewish Sabbath (and hence the original Christian Sabbath) fell on the seventh day, which by Jewish reckoning started at sundown on Friday and ended at sundown on Saturday. But Christian emperors desperately needed support from members of the Roman Legion, many of whom worshipped Mithra (a sun god) on Sunday. To please these sun-worshippers, the Roman Church moved the official day of worship (and rest) to Sunday, thus abandoning the Sabbath. This political syncretism worked so well that most modern Christians aren't even aware that Sunday services honor a sun god. No more than they realize that the word "Amen" honors Ammon, an ancient Egyptian god.

Like marriage, many secular institutions have religious histories. Many of California's cities are named for Roman Catholic saints or concepts -- Sacramento, San Francisco, Merced, Los Angeles -- yet we no longer require those city governments to follow Roman Catholic doctrines. Since U.S. civil marriage laws historically descended from medieval English marriage laws, including Roman Catholic canon law, Benkof believes that tomorrow's civil laws should likewise enforce medieval prejudices. That's the fascist approach, merging state and church into a totalitarian system.

Freedom-seekers, whether secular or religious, should seek to separate "religious marriage" (defined differently by each sect, and indeed by each individual) from "civil marriage" (defined by secular laws).

Our California state constitution should explain clearly that this state regulates and defines only "civil marriage"; and that this state cannot and will not presume to regulate, nor to define, "religious marriage".

Examples: After a civil court grants CIVIL divorce to two Roman Catholics, their church may still see them as RELIGIOUSLY married. In the Shinto faith, it's possible to perform a ceremony which marries two trees to each other. Some persons, especially pagans, might wish to marry one animal to another. A celibate nun or a monk may symbolically marry Jesus. Some religious groups may honor polyandrous, polygynous, or other multiple forms of religious marriage. Such religious practices are none of any government's business, unless or until some person claims a secular privilege based on a religious ceremony.

[There may be a few rare exceptions, as in the case of immigrants from foreign countries where purely secular weddings aren't available, where-in religiously married couples might apply for civil marriage, perhaps retroactively; or apply to be recognized as common-law spouses. But purely religious ceremonies, conducted within California, when performed without a civil marriage license from this state, should have no legal standing.]

We should also go through our statutes and change the terminology. Where a law refers to "marriage" , in a civil sense, we should change the term to "civil marriage".

The state should provide civil marriages (plus limited domestic partnerships for persons who don't want full marriage); but the state should not offer any religious ceremony nor sacrament.

Let's get government entirely out of the religious marriage business.


Tortuga Bi LIBERTY,
San Francisco