In February 2006, Baltimore Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock ruled that a Maryland state law banning same-sex marriages was unconstitutional. In response to that decision, state lawmakers opposed to same-sex marriage introduced a resolution to impeach Judge Murdock (a move which was defeated in the Judiciary Committee) and a bill calling for the amendment of Maryland's constitution to prohibit all same-sex marriages. Although the bill failed to garner sufficient support for passage, it was reintroduced in a version that would define marriage as a union between a man and a women only but would still allow for civil unions. The latter bill was being debated by a Senate committee on 1 March 2006, when, according to the Baltimore Sun, "Clergy, constitutional law experts and children of gay parents were among those who packed the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee room to speak out on the issue."
Part of that debate featured some give-and-take between Nancy Jacobs, a Republican state senator, and Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law from Washington's American University over the influence of the Bible on modern law. The Sun reported the following exchange taking place between the two:
"As I read Biblical principles, marriage was intended, ordained and started by God — that is my belief," [Jacobs] said. "For me, this is an issue solely based on religious principals [sic]."
Raskin shot back that the Bible was also used to uphold now-outlawed statutes banning interracial marriage, and that the constitution should instead be lawmakers' guiding principle.
"People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don't put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible," he said.
4 comments:
The reason why Abdur Rahman was threatened with death was that he is living in a theocratic society. Our founders wanted a secular government meaning that it allowed those with differing religious convictions the freedom to act according with their own consciences as long as those actions did not violate the liberties of others.
Your error lies in your attempt to say that a secular society is an amoral society. That those in our secular government are barred from drawing from their moral principles including those of faith in deciding on legislation.
What is harmful is to try to say that my particular faith should be binding the behavior of others. That because I believe in a certain revelation, that revelation must be the one and only truth that all must follow.
Unless I can show how a certain action violates human dignity, degrades justice, or creates real inequality, then I stand on very shaky ground when I say that your behavior must be held to my stand of morality.
Clearly slavery violates human dignity. And unless you can convince me with absolute certainty that the death penalty is always applied without error and in a completely fair manner, that the poor and the marginalized aren't more likely to be put to death than the wealthy, then I have to believe that the death penalty is an unequal, unfair, and unjust punishment both cruel and unusual to those who lack the means to fight it.
Kevin Phillips, who once worked for Richard Nixon's political campaign and wrote "The Emerging Republican Majority", has written in his latest book, "American Theocracy", that the current Republican party is America's first "religious party". We have a president whose closest advisors are right wing clerics. I am not alone in my concern that we are seeing the establishment of a government based not on justice, but on a narrowly defined religious dogma.
The clerics are people like James Dobson, Pat Robertson and the like. They may not be elected officials, but they wield power over those who are. My desire is to warn, to sound a prophetic voice if you will. People tend to dislike prophets in the present tense and honor them in past tense. Just look at people like Dr. King for a recent example.
The day that Revs. Jackson or Sharpton say, "Any church member who votes Republican is not a real Christian.", they will receive my condemnation also, rest assured.
Believe you me, there are conservative clergy, some in my town of OKC, who have said that Christians don't vote Democratic.
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