Time for homosexuals
to be treated as equals
is long overdue
Gene Racz, Home News
Tribune Online April 30, 2007
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposed
a bill Friday that would make his state only the second, along with
Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriage.
The day before that, the New Hampshire Legislature approved civil, same-sex
unions to become the fourth state in the nation to extend legal rights to gay
and lesbian partners. New Jersey, Vermont and Connecticut are the others.
These developments make me think of two guys named Tom and a line or two for the
ages. No, I'm not talking about a pick-up line in a gay bar. I'm
talking about Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Leviticus 18:22, the one that
reads, "You shall not lie with a male as those who lie with a female; it is an
abomination." Might as well throw in Leviticus 20:13 while we're at it:
"If a man lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have
committed an abomination and they shall surely be put to death."
Jefferson took a straight razor to the King James Bible and cut out every
statement he thought qualified as supernatural or religiously dogmatic. He
wanted to leave the pure, ethical teachings of Jesus unadulterated by that which
he did not believe. (You can still buy The Jefferson Bible to this day in
book stores.)
I have full appreciation for what he did. I believe those lines in
Leviticus to be filled with hate, ignorance and bigotry — the kind of primitive
stupidity you find sprinkled here and there in the Good Book, which also has
passages saying that eating shellfish is an abomination and that we should kill
adulterers.
I don't see any fundamentalists protesting lobster shacks; and I've yet to see a
slut stoned to death in public. But I do see plenty of people gung-ho for
gay bashing in the Year of Our Lord 2007.
My thoughts also turn to Paine, who had the brains and sheer guts to excoriate
in his essay "The Age of Reason" what he considered to be silly mythologies in
Christian religion, all the while boldly singing the praises of Christ's gospel
of unconditional love. Paine deemed Christ's message of "most excellent
morality and the equality of man."
How many among us really have the guts to take on hateful, antiquated
orthodoxies? I suspect those Leviticus lines in the Bible have done more
damage throughout the centuries than people will ever know. Widespread
religious beliefs can also strongly influence public policy.
You've got to admire the courage of men like Spitzer, who said he didn't think
the gay-marriage bill had a realistic shot at getting passed. He submitted
it nonetheless saying, "It's a statement of principle that I believe in, and I
want to begin that dynamic."
I fully support that principle and the dynamic Spitzer is talking about, which
comes down to evolution. Not evolution of physiology, but of ideology.
Yes, Jefferson held slaves, but he also evolved to the point in his heart where
he came to see slavery as immoral.
We as a society still have plenty of evolving to do. A good first step
would be substituting enlightened reason for primitive fundamentalism. As
Americans we assert "all men are created equal" and that we hold this truth to
be "self-evident." The time for homosexuals to be treated as equals in
every sense of the word is embarrassingly overdue.
This enlightened thought must come from within, not from any book. Paine
put it best when he wrote: "My own mind is my own church."
Gene Racz covers Middlesex County government and is co-author of
Bury My Heart at Cooperstown (Triumph Books, 2006). He can be reached at
gracz@thnt.com.
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