My state, Ohio, passed one of the shameful and misnamed "Defense of Marriage Acts" (DOMA) a few years back, thus encoding religious bigotry into our state law. I could not be more ashamed to be a citizen of a state that would do this.
During the campaign for the act, the usual group of guardians of public morality, i.e., non-denominational evangelical Christians, led the homophobic team, with a health boost of aggressive from the pastors of churches of more traditional denominations that had mostly black membership. The LDS also shipped in some 'advisors' to add their own bit of self-righteous bigotry to the mix, and this team saw their wish realized. SIGH.
It was sad to watch the lies and distortions they used to push their agenda, but the whole campaign was an AMAZING and almost textbook example of total hypocrisy. The idea that allowing "Adam and Steve" to marry could somehow destroy the institution of marriage itself was an assertion for which nobody ever made a CASE, they just kept repeating it.
Now, i'm a practcal man, grounded in reality. There are plenty of things that can break up a specific marriage, but i can't see a case for how allowing two OTHER people to marry could affect anyone else's marriage, much less the institution itself. OTOH, i would agree that a tendency to DIVORCE instead of staying together could be seen, if ANYTHING, as a threat to the institution.
Theists, especially Xtians, claim to have a lock on moral superiority over non-Xtians, and especially over atheists, since they can't IMAGINE a reason to live ethically if there's no reward/punishment involved. However, as in any OTHER objective measure, the FACTS of the matter regarding respect for the sanctit of marriage don't bear out that claim.
Here are the stats for divorce broken out by high level spiritual view:
Religion % have been divorced
-------------------- ---
Jews 30%
Born-again Xtians 27%
Other Christians 24%
Atheists, Agnostics 21%
Of course, when these stats were originally published, they drew the expected protests from the folks who are never all that good at honest self-assesment, but these are stats from the US Bureau of Statistics, not from "Atheist Today". The facts speak eloquently about which groups ACTUALLY honor marriage, but there's more irony coming.
I was surprised at the stats for Jews, but i also noted that for the most part Jewish organizations OPPOSED the DOMA, so nobody couls accuse THEM of hypocrisy. 30% is the highest stat on that chart, but it got put into context when i saw a further break out.
Here's a more detailed break out of JUST the stats for Xtians.
Denomination % who have been divorced
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Non-denominational Evangelical 34%
Baptists 29%
Mainline Protestants 25%
Mormons 24%
Catholics 21%
Lutherans 21%
SURPRISE! (Well, not to ME). If you limit the analysis to the main champions of the DOMA, you get the highest divorce rate of all.
So, while people can rationalize their homophobia to their heart's content, the facts tell a different story. Allowing gays to marry doesn't sem to presnt any real threat to marriage, but according to these stats allowing evangelical Xtians to marry makes a mockery of that intitution at least 1/3 of the time. I'm not suggesting that we disallow them from doing so, as we all know it's "better to marry than to burn", but i do wish they'd get off their moral high horse and realize that they are exactly unqualified to judge who should and should not be allowed to marry.
