There are a few arguments that never cease to fill me with R-A-G-E. One is Tom Cruise’s all-psychiatry-and-psychotropic-meds-are-evil spiel, and another is Sen. Bill Napoli’s delightfully misogynistic claim that the only “acceptable” form of rape that should merit an exemption from South Dakota’s abortion ban would be a woman who is “brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated.” So if you’re not sodomized, or if you’re not a religious virgin, you’re shit out of luck. Nice.

The argument against gay marriage also makes me seethe. This morning on the Today Show, Sen. Bill Frist was spouting off yet again about how gay marriage is wrong and should remain illegal in all levels, in all states. Like so many others on the religious and political right, he claims that the “sanctity” of marriage can only be sustained in heterosexual unions.

Okay, first of all, don’t confuse religion with laws. Just because your religion says that homosexuality and gay marriage are wrong doesn’t mean that they should be illegal. Um, separation of church and state, anyone? Yes, there are other things that are condemned by both religion and the law, such as murder, but the act of falling in love with a person of the same sex—and wanting to marry him/her—is in nowhere near the same league as the act of murdering someone, although many right-wingers would beg to differ.

Second, I hate the way so many people ignore the wretched state of heterosexual marriage. How do celebrities’ one-minute marriages show sanctity? Where is the sanctity in a man hitting his wife, or a wife cheating on her husband, or one spouse kidnapping the kids from the other spouse? Do heterosexual marriages never brim with emotional abuse, deceit, and unimaginable levels of horror and dysfunction? Of course they do! There are so many wonderful, productive heterosexual marriages out there, but for every healthy union, there is an unhealthy union that makes me want to run for cover. That’s par for the course. No institution is ever going to be 100% perfect, and that includes the institution of heterosexual marriage. Yet these people on the right are constantly complaining that only straight people can honor the sanctity of marriage and only gay people can dishonor it. I hate black-and-white thinking. Plus I’m a big Golden Rule gal, and I think that more people should to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. In other words, if you don’t want a lawmaker or a religious leader to come to you and say, “Sorry, you’re not allowed to marry that person,” then you really shouldn’t have the right to turn around and say that to someone else.

Would all homosexual marriages be utopist unions serving as shining beacons of healthy, sacred love? No, of course not—a generalization like that isn’t reasonable, just like it’s unreasonable to say that all heterosexuals preserve the institution of marriage. So I wish that people who are against gay marriage would just admit that it’s because they don’t like gay people, rather than hiding behind the bollocks of “Oh, it endangers the institution of marriage!”

Also, if the entire institution of marriage can be destroyed by an “invasion” of loving gay people who want to spend their lives together, then it’s a pretty weak institution. I said the same thing recently about the whole Da Vinci Code film brouhaha. Some religious folks are freaking out and saying that the film dishonors Jesus, threatens Christianity, and will shake people’s faith in the dogma they’ve always been taught. My response:

It dishonors Jesus. Okay, granted, I’m of the mindset that if Jesus lived at all, then he was simply a man. An historical figure. A good man with a lot of great ideas and a lot of charisma, but in no way divine. So it’s easy for me to say, “How does this film dishonor him? It portrays him as being a man, and that’s all he was—a man.” But even if I were a believer, I’d like to think that I’d be okay with Jesus’s depiction in the film. Is it shown that he was a rapist or a killer? Uh, no. It’s shown that he fell in love with a woman and wanted to spend his life with her. It’s shown that they had sex because they were in love and they made a child out of love. I’m sorry, but there are worse accusations to level against Jesus than that. As my gal Tori Amos said, “Because Jesus maybe had a sexual encounter with a woman, did that make him less? Was he soiled by it and what does that say about women?” Exactly. What does that say about women? Nothing good.

It threatens Christianity. A movie will not bring down an entire religion. Not even a film helmed by a talented director and a multi-Oscar-winning lead. The religion has been around for 2000+ years; it ain’t goin’ anywhere.

It will shake people’s faith in the dogma they’ve always been taught. To that I have to say, “Well, then, your faith must be pretty weak!” It’s one thing for your faith to be shaken by a terrorist attack, horrific natural disasters, illness, genocide, etc, but it’s another matter entirely for it to be shaken by a film. A summer blockbuster. Starring Tom Hanks. I mean, really! And if your own faith is strong but you’re worried that Joe Blow sitting in the pew next to you will have his faith shaken by the movie…well, why is that any concern of yours? If his faith is weak and he therefore drops a lifetime of religion because of a freaking Dan Brown novel, that’s his business—not yours. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with questioning dogma. Thomas Jefferson once wrote “Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.” That’s the kind of god/dess I’d want to believe in—one who wants his/her followers to ask questions. Buddha himself allegedly said “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” Questioning dogma doesn’t mean that you can’t continue believing it. And it doesn’t make you a heretic, just like questioning the tenet that the world is flat didn’t make early scientists heretics (well, in the end, anyway; initially they were considered heretics).

Wow. How did this post veer from gay marriage to Jesus?


song heard most recently before posting: The Freshman —Verve Pipe