Separation of Church and State

Today I want to take some time to talk about the separation of Church and State in terms of the federal government and why we have it. I bring this up because of the issue of same-sex marriages, perhaps one of the biggest social debates of our time. I recognize that everyone has their own opinion on the subject and their own reason for opposing or supporting it, but I believe that there are some important points that both parties have been overlooking during this drawn-out battle.

In school we are taught the story of the pilgrims and how they left England to escape religious persecution. We know these people to be puritans or protestants. Of course, its far more complicated than all of that. The point is that these people left their homeland because they were being persecuted and wanted freedom from that persecution. It wasn't just the state persecuting them, either. It was the Church. When Martin Luther nailed his ninety-nine theses to the door of the Church, there was a split. The people who moved away from the traditional church became known as Protestants, because they protested against the wrongs of the Church (not to be confused with the Puritans, a slightly more extreme religious sect that was more like a cult).

So, the Protestants found a way to compromise with their governments. They would go somewhere else and settle. They founded the Colonies on the eastern shores of what is now the United States under the principle of religious freedom. And by freedom I mean freedom to practice the different versions of Christianity. Other religious groups - such as the Quakers - were highly frowned upon.

So, what does all of this have to do with separation of Church and State, you wonder. Well, in England and other European countries at the time the Church was closely linked to and heavily influenced the government. The mixture of the Church with the government was what allowed the two to have considerably more power than either ought to have had. The government was able to punish people for religious malpractice (or what they decided religious malpractice was) and the Church was able to persecute people with the government's backing.

When the Colonies were founded, this was an important issue that they considered. Once they were independent of England and began to set up a government of their own it was something that they thought important enough to put on paper. This we have separation of Church and State.

This is important to keep in mind when we discuss the issue of same-sex marriage. One of the leading arguments is religiously based. People argue that the Bible says that same-sex relationships are wrong and sinful. That's fine. Maybe they're right and it is a sin. But it doesn't matter if they are wrong or right. What matters is that same-sex marriage is a political issue, not a religious one. Just because a same-sex couple gets married doesn't mean that the church has to recognize it as "right" or "ok". It just means that the state is recognizing a legal union between two consenting human beings. You can be married without the church. All it takes is a judge and some signatures and a witness.

My point is that Church and State are to be separate. When they are mixed bad things happen and people abuse power. Look at the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, or the selling of "tickets" to have sins forgiven (a clever guise for making money, yes, but wrong).

It is against the law to prohibit something based on religious grounds. And for those people who think that it's wrong or unnatural...well, I'm fairly certain we do a lot of things that are considered wrong or unnatural, but over the years they have become acceptable part of society anyways. And that opinion doesn't have any legal standing, anyways. It's not like allowing same-sex marriages means that you have to marry someone who's the same sex as you. I say keep your values to yourself and don't force them onto other people.

I realize that people can look at this and assume that I am saying all of this because I identify as bisexual. While that doesn't certainly weigh in on my opinion, I want to make it clear that I think each person should be allowed to live by their own morals and values without other people trying to force their opinions and values onto them. By denying people the right to marry whoever they want that is exactly what is going on. If same-sex marriage is allowed, what do heterosexual couples lose? They can still have heterosexual relationships and marriages. Nothing will change for them. The other option - the one that currently holds in many states - is denying someone the right to choose. And, being Christian myself (though I'm loathe to put a label to my spirituality these says, with as many times as I have been targeted by a Christian institution), I'm fairly confident in saying that God gave everyone the right to choose. We have free will to make the right or wrong decisions. Who are we to deny each other that free will if it isn't hurting people?

Closer to Love

I was raised a Christian - not quite born, but raised from a very young age. I was taught to believe that other religions are wrong and that homosexuality is a terrible sin. I believed what other people said - that the Bible preaches against homosexuality, that all other religions are wrong...I was nothing more than a sheep, just like a large majority of American Christians are these days.

I'm not trying to offend anyone here; this is my own opinion and my own process of thinking. But there are a lot of Christians who hardly ever pick up a Bible and actually read it. And, to be honest, I am one of those. I have a hard time picking up my Bible because I struggle with religion in general. In fact, right now I am not a "Christian," as most Americans would describe it. I believe in God and I believe in the Bible. I draw my own conclusions. I am not Catholic or Protestant. I am not Baptist, Methodist, or Lutheran. I'm not even a non-denominational Christian.

I am spiritual. That is all.

I was raised to discriminate. There was something wrong with people who followed other religions. And, while I wasn't given that message word for word, that was the example that I was given. Homosexuality, too, was a sin, and homosexuals were wrong in some way.

Then I went to high school and I realized that believing in a different religion didn't make someone wrong. It just made them different. It wasn't my job to judge them or stay away from them. It was my job to love them and accept them for who they were. And while I did, and still do, believe that there is only one right religion, that does not mean that I have the right to label other people sinful or wrong simply because they believe something different from me. What if I am the one who is wrong and they are the ones who are right? Just because I believe something doesn't make it the truth. I can believe that we don't need oxygen to live, and obviously that would be wrong. It works the same way with religion, in my opinion. And I had no right to judge other people as sinners when I myself am a sinner - I lie, I hurt people, I lose my temper and I yell and I fight. All sin is equal. I can't judge anyone for their sins.

I was taught that homosexuality was a choice and that it was the wrong choice; it was a sin to be homosexual. I believed that, and I did my best to crush certain feelings that I had for a couple of people who were the same sex as me. I was determined to not make that "choice" and sin in that way.

And then I went to college.

I researched birth order in my first semester of college and discovered something that I found quite fascinating. It opened up many doors in my mind that had previously been closed because of what I had been taught to believe all my life. See, there is some evidence that the mother's body see's the male fetus as a threat or an illness because the male fetus has horomones and such that are not normally found in the female body. Therefore, the body's defense systems may attack the male fetus. This could possibly cause homosexuality in men - and it is a perfectly viable explanation. After all, there are other instances in which the mother's body and the fetus don't get along perfectly. But if this were true then homosexuality wouldn't be a choice now, would it?

Imagine that.

All my life I also believed that the Bible condemned homosexuality. I believed that because other people had told me to believe it. And then in my Sophomore year of college I went with a friend to a church that was showing a film that examined biblical evidence concerning homosexuality. While that video didn't convince me to completely turn around and believe that the Bible didn't condemn homosexuality, it did make me think and it did help me to begin to really form my own opinions and stray away from what I had been taught to believe.

By then I had already been toying with the knowledge that I was most likely bisexual. Now, let me explain how this worked. I did not simply decide one day that I was going to like both guys and girls. Do you know that feeling you get when you really like someone? Like, you know a guy and you get this funny feeling when you think about him or you're around him? You like him for his personality; it's not just a "OMG he's sooooooo cute" kind of crush. It's deeper thann that. One day I noticed that there were a few girls that I felt this way for. I had felt similarly for a few guys in the past. I was confused at first because I didn't understand what was happening. I tried to ignore the feelings. They persisted, and eventually I accepted the fact that there was nothing I could do about them. They came without invitation, just as my feelings for certain guys did. It was a physical reaction to begin with, and then when I knew the person better I began to like them for who they were as well.

It wasn't a choice. It just happened. I tried to kill those feelings off somehow, and I failed rather miserably. If anything it caused me pain. so I stopped and I accepted it and I learned to live with it. I became what people call "bisexual," though in reality it can be better described as pansexual, or the ability to love many.

There are two terms that people need to understand the difference between. Sex and gender. Sex refers to one's physical parts - you are male or female based on your genitalia. Gender refers to a social status of some sort (e.g. man, boy, woman, girl). In our country gender is usually perceived as a social manifestation of the sex, but this is more social expectation than anything else. There can actually be a lot of variety in gender because it is abstract, unlike sex which is concrete.

I was so afraid of what my family and friends would think of me if they found out what I was that I confided in my abnormal psychology teacher via the journal that we kept as a class assignment. I told her that I was denying the possibility that I might be bisexual because I didn't want to be labeled negatively by friends and family. She sympathized with me and acknowledged the high cost that I would have to pay if I continued down that path. I also asked her if bisexuality had a basis in neuroanatomy. I would like to share her response with you.

"Yes. In fact, Dr. Perkins. now director of the HAB program, did research on the brains of "gay" sheep. Because sexual orientation occurs on a continuum (rather than just male or female) she refers to 32 sexes, not just three: male, female, and bisexual.
In other words, in the world of intersexed children there are many more normal variations than just boy or girl.
In Kinsey's bipolar scare of exclusive hetero or homo, he indicated that most people are somewhere in between the extremes, with bisexuals occurring closer to the middle. [Very few individuals on the continuum are exclusively hetero or homo, whereas many are bi].
Polyamory iis another way to discuss this issue. Poly = many, amor = love, or able to love many. This term can be used to describe people who are attracted to and 'able to love' more than one narrowly defined class of partner, e.g. just men or just women.
The bonobo, a primate, is considered a good example of naturally occuring (i.e. occuring in nature) bisexuality. They mate with both males and females. They masturbate frequently and even use sex to distract each other from being violent. They literally 'make love not war.'"

This really opened my eyes. Thirty-two sexes? Hard to believe, right? Physically, there's a limited range of sexes - typically just male and female. But when it comes to the mind there are many, many more sexes and a lot more variation. It's normal to be bisexual and love more than one "gender" - in fact, it's similar to being able to love people of different colors or different heights.

I am not wrong. I am not sinful because I can love people. And for me it's not about having sex - I don't want sex with anyone, male or female. I just want to love and be loved, and if I find that with a girl then so be it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

My mind is open to new things. Once I followed the crowd blindly, like a sheep. And then my eyes were opened and I realized that I couldn't let other people tell me what to think or believe. I also realized that I had to be open to alternatives, and when I finally was it made a lot more sense to me. Rather than simply saying that homosexuality was a sin, I was able to look further into it and realize that homosexuality and bisexuality aren't even "choices," as so many Christians put it. It's biological/genetic. If it really is based on the body and not a choice, then how can God punish people for that? To be honest, if He will punish me for having feelings that I have no control over, then He is not the God I have been raised to believe in.

We are all human. I am human. You are human. No matter what you look like, what you believe, or who you love, we are all human, and therefore we are all equal. And to me, that's part of what makes the world beautiful. Discrimination is the abomination, not homosexuality.

There is nothing wrong with me. I am Ashley and I am exactly who I am supposed to be. God made me this way, and I will do whatever good I can with it.

I believe in God. I am bisexual. I am proud.