There’ve been a lot of recent news developments revealing that religion is the problem.
The Respect for Marriage Act passed Congress, with begrudging bipartisan support, which is a triumph, even though distasteful concessions to religion were required.
In spite of these compromises, Christian extremists in Congress whined and caviled about the bill, which should not even have been controversial. It protects the rights of those legally married in one state, specifically same-sex or interracial couples, to have their marriage recognized in another. Despite religious institutions being exempted from participating in marriage ceremonies and protected from losing tax-exemption if they discriminate against same-sex marriages, Rep. Vicki Hartzler expostulated, “This bill only serves to further demonize biblical values … silencing voices of faith and permanently undoing our country’s God-woven foundation.” Nuff said.
Religion is also the problem in Indonesia, which passed some scary legislation this week. Its Muslim-dominated Parliament unanimously passed a law forbidding sex outside of marriage. Unmarried couples who live together can now be jailed for six months and face fines. It also increases blasphemy penalties.
A lawmaker from the progressive NasDem party noted that passage of this law shows officials failing to distinguish the difference between public and private affairs, “which is the most elementary thing in democracy.” Bingo.
In a democracy with a bill of rights, the government cannot make personal, intimate decisions for its citizens, such as whether to get married or who to love, much less whether to continue or abort a pregnancy. It can’t tell trans children they can’t participate in fourth grade sporting teams. It leaves up to parents and physicians the treatment of trans teens. It doesn’t ban books that a small portion of zealous citizens object to. Questions of bodily autonomy are left to the individual, short of real criminal conduct.
But in authoritarian states, the state knows no such boundaries. While not all authoritarian states are theocracies, all theocracies are authoritarian states. The extremists who are edging the United States ever closer to a Christian authoritarian state certainly do not recognize basic boundaries. They insist, because their bible says homosexuals are an abomination, that they have the right to discriminate. This is the argument of the self-righteous evangelical Christian litigant in the 303 Creative case, heard this week by the Supreme Court.
But of course, Christian nationalists and supremacists go further: They insist they have the right to impose their dogma by law on the rest of us, hence the dissenters against the Respect for Marriage Act in Congress, such as Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., who said: “This bill certainly disrespects God’s definition of marriage, and his definition is the only one that really matters.” Nuff said, again.
The bigoted would-be website designer thinks laws recognizing the LGBTQ as a protected class do not apply to her. But what she and her backers really want to create is a new protected class whose rights trump everyone else’s: Christian extremists with “sincerely held religious beliefs.” The 2015 Supreme Court Hobby Lobby ruling unfortunately laid the groundwork for helping the religious right achieve its goal: to privilege its religion at the expense of everyone else’s freedom.
Despite the theocratic challenges, we freethinkers can take solace in the fact that the United States is slowly following in the United Kingdom’s footsteps, with less than 60 percent of Americans identifying as Christian and three in 10 professing no affiliation.
“Is it surprising when what we’re trying to do to our nation is to educate it to be critical thinkers, to not take things at face value, but actually investigate and to talk about whether or not you know information is reliable?” commented Dr. James Williams, a science education lecturer at the University of Sussex, about the decline of Christianity.
Critical thinking skills are indeed the answer.
