Tomorrow we vote. Tomorrow the Castro, West Hollywood, Hillcrest and every rest stop along highway 5 will be gathering the locals to either celebrate or protest the outcome of proposition 8. Every conservative church from the Rick Warren's mega-church in Saddleback to the smallest mountain church in Lassen will either claim their prayers worked or what they have been predicting all along - Satan has control over the USA and the horsemen and locusts are next.
So this morning I ask- what if? What if prop 8 passes? Is that it? Does the fat lady sing "Amazing Grace" and our struggle is over? I am no expert on law, but I do have some assumptions. Assuming we have an Obama Administration, I predict the same-sex marriage issue to work its way to the Supreme Court, and in what is sure to be a bloody argument, the same-sex marriage bans will ultimately be deemed unconstitutional much like the sodomy laws in 2003.
What else I think could be brewing is an unintended consequence for the religious right - which is the ultimate battle between church and state. In the end, the traditional marriage viewpoint is rooted in a Christian belief that marriage is "sacred" (although the bible itself is fuzzy on the issue). However the bible doesn't set law in the country - the Constitution does and at some point I think we will see this battle on the hill. It will be emotional, it will be intense, but the state will win out.
If I were a pastor I'd see prop 8 as not a fight for so-called traditional marriage, but as a step toward legislating discrimination who's passage can set precedence for the next group of people to lose their rights. Could race and religion be next? That would be my message to my flock - "we might not agree with same-sex marriage, but we sure as hell don't agree with tampering with people's rights, because ours could be threatened next."
Vote. Come rain or shine or earthquake or work.
No comments:
Post a Comment