Civil Unions instead of Gay Marriage

One may think that civil unions for the gays are marriage in all but name. The gays have equal rights. But if they have equal rights in all but name, why not name these rights that which they are, i.e. marriage?! The reason if course is that they do not enjoy equal rights.

They also do not enjoy equal consideration by the majority of people. The recent California ballot initiative, Proportion 8, to define marriage as between man and woman and to limit marriage to such an arrangement has shown this. The initiative was passed by the majority. The majority of people do not like gays (mostly derived from the bible and other religious intolerances and nonsense not from some fact). This fight the gays are fighting is not about marriage, it is about much wider want of being accepting as equals. If gays were equal to other people in the eyes of the public there would be no arguments about them being able to have equal rights, like a right to marry.

One can only treat everyone equally by applying the same standards and rules to everyone. When one singles out a group or individuals and applies different rules and standards one is discriminating, one is not treating that group equally. Some would argue that it is possible to treat the gays equally yet somehow keep them separate. They propose to keep marriage for normal heterosexuals and civil unions for the gays but to have the civil unions grant the gays the same rights as marriage grants to heterosexuals. This would be exactly the same as the racist Jim Crow laws that kept the blacks separate but equal. Since the gays have done nothing wrong except to be born the way they are, singling them out and preventing them from doing something is treating them not equally. Preventing someone from causing damage or injury is justifiable. But what are the gays being prevented from doing exactly? They are prevented from expressing love and commitment to that love and to have this recognised by society. It seems strange to deny people to do this.

A question of Belief

I once spoke to a friend who was in TA with me. She was an atheist and declared herself to be such on the officer application form. During the interview she was asked how she could maintain religious soldiers’ morale and spiritual well. She could not answer this question.

This question is a perfectly reasonable question to ask. A soldier’s fighting spirit is one of the most important resources an army has. Most people on seeing the horrors of war will start to question their beliefs and in the process forget their training and orders.

On reflection my answer will avoid the prickly issue of theism versus atheism. I would tell the soldier that God does not come into consideration. The British Army’s goal is to safeguard UK and do things for the greater good. The army does not carry out God’s will but the will of the British people which are represented by the government. That is the reason why we fight. Those are good enough reasons to fight irrespective of God’s existence or will.

Organised Religion

There are a lot of people in this World who hold a deep faith of one kind or another. Christians, Jews, Hindus and others all know that their religion is a presentation of absolute truth.

How do these people know that they are right in their belief? The simple answer is that someone, the leadership of an organised religion, has told them so and then forbade anyone to question the presented view. Anyone who does is a heretic. The heads of varies religions validate their commands through an interpretation of one or more holy scriptures or even going as far as saying that omnipotent power is working through them. This system is deeply flawed.

Firstly the scriptures themselves were written at different times in different political, economic and social situations and thus for different reasons. The authors without a doubt came from different backgrounds and had very different writing styles. The bible is a good example of this. The bible consists of texts written thousands of years apart and brought together under instruction of a Roman emperor whose primary concern was to standardise the new state religion. It is thus improper to take the bible as is or to say that it is a coherent text. The Christian church gets around this by saying that God was working through the various writers and editors of the bible. how convenient?!

Second problem is that the various interpretations of holy texts themselves are greatly influenced by the interpreters’ context, political needs and background. For instance, most if not all religious rituals and traditions are either inventions or interpretations of earlier, in many cases earlier religions', ceremonies. Various ideas and beliefs, wholly invented, but said to be based on holy scriptures are taken as infallible. The Pope, for example. The whole church dogma becomes obviously illogical and irrational for the true believers because the church becomes disconnected from the original prophet or holy event and slowly creates its own, more self beneficial, set of rules and beliefs. Organised religions obscure this progression with a combination of indoctrination, lying, covering up and whitewashing the past.

Thus what often results in all organised religion is manipulation of people or simply lying to the worshipers for the benefit and enrichment of the establishment and bureaucracy of the religious order or its allies. The fundamental problem is that faith requires blind obedience, this is obviously leads to bad outcomes. If religious people really want to get closer to whoever they want to get closer to then they must learn to be more inquisitive and critical of their churches' leaders. Of course all of this reasoning is only true if God or whoever is not actually working through the various leaders. Looks like the faithful have some thinking to do.