When "religion" says that such-and-such a practice is wrong and sinful, it isn't communicating a charming ethno-cultural taboo. It isn't expressing an opinion. It is stating absolute truth. But things have gotten so screwy nowadays that liberals dismiss any and all religious appeals because "imagine if religion taught discrimination against Blacks." In other words, "religion" is an absolutely groundless rationale to the modern mind--yet those same modern minds never seem to consider that there is no other valid foundation for our laws!
Liberals have spent over a century discrediting G-d with "science" in order to do away with His "oppressive" rules, yet they never seem to have considered that the universe, rendered a meaningless material phenomenon of physical causes and effects, renders their own morality stupid and groundless as well. If the universe doesn't care if I'm "gay," it doesn't care if I'm a "bigot" either!
I'm afraid that with a population absolutely convinced that religion has absolutely nothing to say about anything--and who can't seem to think critically about the similar groundlessness of their own liberal moral concerns--we are doomed. We're going to have to change the way people think!
Even here on Free Republic people appeal to men and to human tradition as a valid reason to reject "gay marriage." It isn't. Homosexuality isn't wrong because it's "un-American," or because George Washington would have been scandalized, or because it is contrary to the traditions of the pilgrim fathers or because "this is a chr*stian country." It is wrong for one and only one reason: it has been declared so by G-d. We've got to stop being ashamed of that rationale. We've got to stop appealing to "constitutional rights" as the basis of morality. And we've got to stop appealing to John Locke, "western civilization," or anything else!
Yet conservatives allow liberals to play them like a fiddle. One minute we're invoking G-d against sin, the next we're appealing to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine as a defense against moslem "theocracy." Make up your minds, people!!! Conservative chr*stians who demand that moslems abandon their "theocratic" convictions are no different from Orthodox Jews who demand that chr*stians stop evangelizing.
Unfortunately, "separation of church and state" really only makes sense in a Protestant context. What such "separation" really originally meant was that no one is required to be "saved." It never meant religious strictures could not serve as law. Because Protestantism uniquely assigns to the church only the mission of "saving souls" and depends on the secular state to enforce moral law it has to make such a distinction. Before Protestantism there was no such thing as "religion" apart from the rest of life (though it was hinted at in earlier chr*stianity's dichotomy between G-d and Caesar, G-d and the "world," etc.).
When non-Protestants--members of religions that teach all-embracing moral codes rather than merely "getting saved"--accept the Protestant notion of "separation of church and state" they are naturally preparing the ground for the current idea that religious moral codes cannot serve as the basis of secular law (though liberals never seem to wonder why their hang-ups about "social justice" do). Jews, who learned by experience not to get into religious quarrels with chr*stians during the Middle Ages, long ago adopted secular rationales as the only way to make their points ("you should let us practice our religion so you and everyone else can be free to do as you wish as well"). And American Catholicism adopted Protestant separationism in the only way it could--by becoming the subjective heritage of certain ethnic groups rather than a universal religion with claims on all people (such a concept is "un-American"). It is no wonder the American Catholic Church can't excommunicate liberal politicians; the Catholic Church is the birthright of everyone with an Irish, Italian, or Spanish surname, and you can't kick anyone out of an ethnic group!
All of us are guilty for the situation in which we find ourself. Every one of us. America's Fundamentalist Protestants, just like everyone else, turned their religion into an ethnic heritage, treating jim crow as though it were from Heaven and the American redneck as if he were the chosen people. Catholicism not only ethnicized its religion but defined itself against those awful ignorant bigoted people who don't understand that religious truth is not factual but profound and symbolic. Eastern Orthodoxy and other even more exotic forms of chr*stianity are non-factors. Though present in this country they live in ethnic ghettos and refuse to take part in any of these controversies (when have you heard of a Coptic, Armenian, or Assyrian clergyman address these issues?). And as for the Jews . . . well, everything that happens in the world ultimately is for the sake of Israel, and how the vast majority of Jews have redefined Judaism from the covenant with Israel made at Sinai to a sort of Lenny Bruce/Weimar Republic decadence in the face of "chr*stian prudes" is too well known to need explication.
Americans are allergic to the word "theocracy." But what is G-d's universe if not a Theocracy? What is the law against murder or theft but a primitive Theocratic regulation no different from laws against homosexuality or the laws of animal sacrifice? This rot has been a long time coming. It is not the work of a few decades or a few centuries, but of millenia. By de-throning G-d as the King of the Universe and making Him a "spiritual" entity (a feat of which conservatives boast in their attacks on islam) we made this inevitable.
Ultimately, all agree that eventually G-d will rule and there will be no secular rationale with which to oppose His decrees. But until then the fact that we all believe different things (something considered beyond the pale of conversation in polite company because religion is subjective and besides, "chr*stianity built western civilization"), we're going to have to find a more creative way to honor G-d without "oppressing" our fellow man. Each and every Orthodox Jew lives in a portable Theocracy, and no one feels threatened (unfortunately). Is there some way the rest of us can adopt a similar tack? Perhaps the various religious communities could organize as governments united under some sort of common federal system. There has to be some way to enable each of us to live in subjection to the laws of G-d in a "pluralist" context. If you haven't noticed, the Left doesn't just want "gay marriage"--THEY WANT ALL OF US IMPLICATED IN IT! That's the whole point; they want to force us to violate the laws of G-d. Any system which didn't threaten them, but which would leave our consciences unmolested, is something they would oppose tooth and nail because their whole purpose is to molest our consciences.
As dumbed down as the average modern person has become about religion, is it possible to appeal to him to support a system in which those of us who care about such things are not implicated in the G-dlessness and schmutz the liberals are so fond of? Would the refusal of the hard core left to accept anything short of forcing us to violate our consciences wake the average non-Theocrat up?
Whether portable, ethnic, communal, "voluntary," or whatever, we need to find a way to allow those of us who fear G-d to follow His laws in this evil society. It isn't enough to "take back the culture" or "take back the country" (a country founded by deists?) or to appeal to "western civilization" or to northwestern European descended people (as if G-d's laws were civilizational, racial, or utilitarian). We have GOT to try something new! The old ways don't work any more! "Religious freedom" has destroyed them!
I may have my head taken off for this post, but there has to be someone out there who can contribute to a situation where acknowledgment G-d's absolute sovereignty and Kingship is allowed to exist. Ultimately this isn't about homosexuality. It's about G-d and G-d's place as the foundation of everything. A nation can have a law against homosexuality and still not acknowledge G-d (after all, we live in a society that outlaws murder for purely pragmatic reasons and not out of submission to G-d's Commandments).
What are we gonna do about it, people?
PS: This was composed at the keyboard. Please excuse any mistypes.
True. I don't think that merits a theocracy in this day and age, but then the opposite end of French/Turkish style laicity is wrong too. I rather think the Indian way of secularism which is "practise your religion openly even talk of it as a politician, but it's your own, don't force others" is the best way.
It's about G-d and G-d's place as the foundation of everything. -- note going to happen in a flawed human world. Even in history whenever this has happened its been brief and then collapsed.