I just read, via MeFi, about the town of Atwood, Kansas. This basic midwest town recently voted to deny gay people basic rights regarding their relationships. The margin of defeat for gay people was significant: 984 residents voted to amend the town charter to deny gay people their rights, while 113 stood up for decency.

Now the editor of the town paper’s online presence has shut down production, resigned his position, and posted an open letter to the town (and the world) to let them know how he feels. The man is obviously (and rightly) very torn about the fact that his home town is telling him to fuck off.

My disenchantment with the religious right is well known to my friends and family, and most know that I’m a skeptic about a higher power, to say the least. And as I’ve posted before, I appreciate the role of organized religion in a social sense, but abhor both its business and its complete bastardization of the Bible’s message. The basic jist of the Bible is: be good to people, live a life that helps others. That’s basically it. If you want to get down to those whose lifestyles or life choices are not “allowed,” the basic Biblical message is “love the sinner, hate the sin.”

However, this is lost on the majority of the so-called religious right. These people and their groups spend tens of thousand of dollars to build a propaganda machine of fear based in a warped interpretation of Biblical word. These groups don’t want people to think, to do their own research and come up with an educated conclusion – after all, the goes against the herd mentality that allows these groups to thrive. The people think that, because some self-annointed “expert” on the “gay culture of sin” says that gay people are bad, they need to work to banish these people from their happy community.

The reasons used are flimsy: protecting the “sanctity of marriage,” keeping “known child molestors” away from kids, and defending the right to “a traditional lifestyle.”

Whatever – all of these arguments are bunk, pure drivel and of no merit, whatsoever.

As Daniel ponts out in his open letter, what threats have gay people posed to people’s marriages? And marriage was originally performed to help define lines of inheritance and property, well before the Christian religions co-opted it into a religious “institution.” If you want to protect the “sanctitiy” of religious marriage, the best route is to make every marriage a civil union that has the option of being blessed by a pastor, deacon, priest, rabbi, guru or whatever. This way, nobody is denied their rights to live, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Furthermore, if you want to really protect marriage, let’s work on reducing the divorce rate in this country by allowing healthy relationships to thrive. The days of “shotgun weddings” and such are so out-of-sync with any educated thought and true moral fiber that it’s no wonder that the divorce rate in th U.S. has steadily risen over the past century.

With regard to the “known child molestors” argument, there is no statistical proof that homosexual people have an increased tendency to molest. In fact, most molestors are heterosexual people who have serious mental health issues. And what about the pedophelia scandal in the Roman Catholic church? Has this been dealth with? If you said “yes,” then you really need to do some research. Every time I drive up Massachusetts Avenue, I pass the Vatican Embassy and the well-known protestor who is out there every day, denouncing the church for not addressing the pedophile scandal. It would be nice if he didn’t have to protest, as he’s quite old. But he knows the truth, and he’s trying to speak truth to power.

And traditional communities are a completely subjective concept. Tradition in one community can be fringe thought in another – even in towns 20 miles apart, such as Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah. Times change, people change, and those who refuse to acknolwedge and embrace the change are free to do so, but not at the expense of loved ones. Those who choose to shun loved ones over a warped sense of “tradition” truly do not know love, or have not matured to the point of comprehending the depth of true, unconditional love. If anything, the Bible teaches that love is the ultimate answer.

I hold out faint hope that many of these “blind faith” followers will open their eyes and read, listen and process everything: every opinion, thought, text clipping, dream, nightmare, person and idea, and draw their own conclusion. As humans, we try to parade around the concept that we are a superios species. But following a cause blindly certainly puts a major dent in the argument.

At this point, one may question my faith: whether I can have any without religion, and whether I actaully can be moral without religious undrepinnings. My response to this is: yes, I have faith, and I am a moral person. Faith and morality are not the exclusive properties of religion or religious doctrine. Being a good person is not a matter of whether one prays, reads the Bible, Torah, Koran or Book of Mormon, observes the sabbath, sacrifices during Lent, or whatever; being a good person is a very basic trusim: be good, be loving, and be true to yourself.