Movers and Quakers

Thanks to the likes of Foley, Haggard and the gay marriage ban on ballots during the midterm elections Gays and Same-Sex Unions are hot again. One of the primary stumbling blocks in the road toward Gay and Lesbian equality is the religious right. But who could have guessed the most devout and literal of all Christian sects, the Quakers, would publish this letter as a response to the Gay Marriage controversy.

On November’s ballot, Wisconsin will vote on a constitutional ban on same-gender marriages. We of Religious Society of Friends believe the movement to isolate and scapegoat homosexuals, to promote hatred against them, and to impose in law one group’s religious beliefs on us all, is blatantly immoral and contrary to Jesus’ teachings.

With half of marriages ending in divorce, unquestionably the right thing to do is to strengthen marriages. But diverting the question to whether two people of the same sex can have legal rights together completely loses track of the problem of frail marriages.

The proposed constitutional amendment really has nothing to do with marriage; it is a thinly veiled attack on gays and lesbians, part of a pattern of discrimination and institutionalized hatred. It is a strategy of power practiced by would-be tyrants throughout history.

Some have portrayed persecution and hatred of gays as a Christian thing to do. We can find nowhere that Jesus said anything about homosexuality. Nor did Jesus ever suggest encoding Christian teachings into a Sharia-like law to force religious beliefs on society.

We believe that God loves us all equally, and that we are called to treat each other with the same love in which God created us. We have no need to hate, or to discriminate against, any group for any reason. It is simply not Christian to do so.

To determine where you stand on this issue you must answer one core question: Is homosexuality a choice or is it genetic? If you believe it is the conscious decision of the participant then granting marriage rights to a sexual fetish would be daft. However, if you contend it is an uncontrollable feature of one's development then it is cruel to deny them the same benefits you and I are capable of taking advantage of.

There is one point I'd like to take to task in the Gay rights camp. Their struggle is often compared to the African-American struggle of the 1960s, this is completely incongruous. Gay and Lesbians did not migrate from the Motherland to America, homosexuality is a pan-cultural characteristic and is more akin to Women's Suffrage and Feminism than the Civil Rights movement. They would do their cause a great service if they were to correct this flawed connection and give the public a clearer idea of the true nature of their fight.