You are here: Home » Commentary » Fear Mongering To Explain Their Over Reaction To Marriage Equality

Fear Mongering To Explain Their Over Reaction To Marriage Equality

03/10/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
When the Catholic Church made the decision to strip away the health care offered by its insurance from the spouses of those it employs, they were not protesting or protecting the right to freedom of religion. What they were doing was what they did in Massachusetts when a law was passed regarding same-sex couples adopting children. They were throwing a fit in the only way that they knew how. They decided to take their toys away and not play anymore.

The Bible is rife with things that are no longer applicable to modern life. These range from not mixing fabrics (that polyester/cotton blend robe your priest is wearing- definitely not Biblical) to the consuming of pork and shellfish (send back that lobster dinner!) Even many of the things found within the New Testament are not applicable to today’s society. Women working outside the house- what WOULD Paul say to that!

The thing is that the reasons why these people want to avoid allowing gays and lesbians the right to marry, or heck the right to exist, comes down to power over society. They want to impose their beliefs of what society should be because they lost that power not all that long ago. For instance, during the debate over abolishing slavery, people stated that doing so violated their religious beliefs. The same was said when blacks were given equality. These are people who try desperately to destroy the idea that the United States was founded as a secular nation. They trot out the fact that Thomas Jefferson wrote a translation of the Bible without ever stating that Jefferson removed every single trace of God and miracles from that translation. Instead, they propagandize and hope like hell that people will not listen to others telling them that they are wrong.

The battle over marriage equality is not about religious freedom, or more accurately, it is not about freedom to practice one’s religion. Instead, the battle is over freedom from religion. That is, it is about the right to have the freedom to practice one’s religion free from the constraints of another person’s religious beliefs. Imagine, if you will, how these Christians would scream if they were told that their wives and daughters had to wear scarves over their heads, or horror of horrors, that they would have to be circumcised. Yet, those are the religious practices of others. Those are the religious practices that are mandated by a variety of religions- including some that are Christian.

In the end, this is about fear. It is about selling fear to a people who are terrified that the world they knew is no longer there. They are terrified that their masculine and feminine images are more elastic than they want them to be. They are terrified of the idea that women could want to be whole without men. They are terrified that a man could sexually love another man. They are terrified that they, themselves, will be passed up by a prospective spouse because they were the wrong sex.

In the end, it is men like Charles Colson, who helps to spread the fear of the Other among Evangelicals, to scream that their freedoms are being abridged when they are not being asked to perform a marriage ceremony that they disagree with or, heaven forfend, get married to a person of the same sex as they are. In the end, it is to this Watergate orchestrator that so many look for their daily dose of fear. It is to this man who preaches to a captive audience in the prisons that people look for justification for their prejudices. It is to this man who helped to draft the Manhattan Doctrine that people go to in order to justify ignoring the law of the nation.

Yet, it is their fear that they spread, and they know is slowly waning. Eventually, fear goes away. The more a person knows another who was once the “other”, fear disappears. Unfortunately, these are people who hide behind their religion as a reason for committing crimes. They justify the murder of another with cries of how that person was un-Godly and unChristian. In the end, they hide from the evil and wrong that they do by claiming that God is on their side even when their beliefs go against the Bible.