Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘lynn’

Lynn rings in on the subject of gay marriage, and of course says everything I would have wanted to say, but better than I ever could (as she so often does):

For the record, the only real argument I’ve ever heard against homosexuality is Biblical. The Bible says it’s bad, end of story. That’s what people mean when they say it’s “unnatural.” (”God created Adam and Eve, not . . . .”) That’s what they mean when they talk about protecting the “sanctity” of marriage. What “sanctity?” Marriage is a sacrament in the Catholic church. It’s a religious rite of passage in the Jewish faith and in just about every other faith as well. Exclusive control over marriage has traditionally been usurped by religious authorities and they don’t like giving up their grip on it because it’s a very powerful institution to control.

Problem is, in this country, in the United States of America, we recognize civil marriage. In the United States of America, we recognize the rights of individuals to marry without the blessing of any priest, minister, rabbi, mullah or guru. In other words, without the approval of any god or his/her minions. Here in America, control over marriage is shared by religious institutions and our civil government. But the last word belongs to the state, not the church, and the First Amendment to our Constitution says that the rules and regulations of the latter do not govern or dictate to the former. Religious doctrine does not, can not and must not determine the rights of citizens under the civil law.

So if a gay couple wants to get married in a synagogue, they need to take that up with the rabbi. If they want to get married in a church, they’re going to have to find a minister who’ll perform the ceremony. A member of the clergy can say “I won’t agree to do that because the Bible says it’s wrong. What you want to do violates the religious beliefs of this institution.” If you don’t like it, you have to lobby to change it or find a different religious institution that’s freed itself from this particular form of bigotry. But neither the U.S. government nor the governments of its constituent states or municipalities have any business discriminating against some citizens on the basis of Biblical invective let alone invoking such invective in support of such discrimination.

Lynn B. deconstructs an article by Ari Shavit from Friday’s Ha’aretz. I suggest checking out her extensive commentary, but one thing in particular about the article struck me:

We visited Sheikh Raad Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement (he received us with eyes beaming and talked about the abandoned mosques in the ruined villages throughout the country and about the danger looming to the Al-Aqsa mosque, and about how the Jews had no right to Al-Aqsa. You know, he said, even according to the Israeli historians, even according to Ha’aretz Magazine, the Jews have no right to Al-Aqsa: The whole story of the Temple Mount never happened).

Upon reading this, I thought to myself, there it is! Right there, in black and white. The Palestinians believe their religious claims are valid and those of the Jews aren’t – why? Because there are more secular Israelis than secular Palestinians!

It seems so obvious. While there are many Christian Palestinians, and Muslim Palestinians are among the most secular Muslims in the mideast, they’re still overwhelmingly more religious and inclined to believe their holy texts than are Israelis. Israel is sharply divided between religious and secular, with religious communities battling for more control but with a huge secular population ready to throw out all claims attached to Jewish history or biblical ties.

As a secular Jew myself, I guess this affected me even more than it might affect someone religious. Do I believe in the bible as literal truth? No. Do I respect the right of others to believe in it? Absolutely! This is, after all, what freedom of religion is all about.

I support the right of religious Jews to believe in the Torah, of religious Christians to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, of religious Muslims to believe in the Koran and in the words of Mohammed, and of the Raelians to believe we all came from aliens if that’s what they friggin’ want!

But what the Shavit article exposes is what we’ve always known: that religious intolerance is behind much of what is being falsely portrayed as a secular movement for Palestinian rights. Salah’s rantings come from the perception that Islam is right and Judaism is wrong, and, as with most matters of faith, to him this is an unshakeable belief – as unshakeable as my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow.

It’s much easier to delegitimatize your enemies if you believe yours is the only true religion. And it’s easy to claim rights over land if you believe your holy text is right and theirs is wrong. To us, it seems like a double-standard but to them there’s no contradiction at work here; it’s simple truth.

That, right there, is what Israel is fighting. Not reason. Not a willingness to compromise. Not openness to logic or even centuries of hatred. Israel is fighting an enemy engaged in what it perceives to be a holy war. And people who beleive they are backed by the heavens aren’t going to compromise or see the other side anytime soon. It’s a zero-sum game to them.