This quote has been all over the blogs today, but I thought it was worth repeating. This is from President Bush, meeting with a group of Amish supporters on Friday:
"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job"
- George W. Bush
Skipping over the fact that it's highly disturbing that he thinks he's a prophet or messiah, let me point out a really obvious truth: God should not speak through the President. The American People should be speaking through the President. That's his job. He's not there to be god's emissary. He is there to represent the people of the United States.
Of course, this recent bunch of anti-gay marriage pushes make it pretty clear that the US government represents one deity only, and that their responsibilities to that deity outweigh their responsibilities to the people. It's all fine and good to say “civil union is fine, after all, marriage is a religious institution between a man and a woman”, but it's a fallacy. The fact is, gay marriage was permitted by the Catholic Church until the 1500s, and is still permitted by many faiths around the world including active Christian Churches inside the United States. So the truth of the matter is that the anti-gay marriage movement has little to do with attitudes on homosexuality (that's just a symptom), and much more to do with forcing a state religion onto the subjects of this modern theocracy independent of their beliefs.
Not that this is anything new. Remember when Utah wanted to join the Union (well, remember it from school at least)? At that point polygamy was perfectly legal in Utah (as it was in many parts of the world, and still is, since there are cultures and faiths that accept it as a valid way to live). However, the federal government refused to allow Utah to join without first banning polygamy, which they did, thus allowing the government to force a specific religion on the people.
Don't forget that both polygamy and homosexuality are common (and often healthy) in a historical and international context, and looking at the world more broadly, also extremely normal in the animal kingdom. None of this has anything to do with morals, ethics, concerns about society crumbling, issues of what's “normal”, or anything like that — it is literally the government officializing its state religion.
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