Heavenly bound, earthly good

Quote from the comments on an article on pro-Gay backlash on Proposition 8:

“Some people are so heavenly bound, they’re no earthly good.”

Quotes on Sanctimony.

One thing that I didn’t get across in this article was the following: how much my viewpoints have changed and continue to change. Because of this, in the comments I tried to elucidate how my misconceptions could be so held bare with the switching with a small paradigm shift of perspective.

More recently, I had the viewpoint “civil unions” could be successfully separated from marriage, but now I’m caught with the revelation that the arguments I use sound a lot like “separate but equal” discrimination. When, at first blush, I might think that it is reasonable to deny someone service for any reason, when faced with the concept that some things cannot be discriminated against (gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference)—these are things deserving special consideration. There is a revelation at how much this discrimination based on religious beliefs could have been argued half a century ago against photographing a mixed-race couple based on a belief against miscegenation—at one time the social and religious law of the land.

I simply replace “civil unions” with “discrimination” and “gay marriage” with “mixed-race marriage” and I’m shocked I ever held that view! (Similarly, if “being gay” is a “choice” and therefore not deserving in protection (like gender and ethnicity), so too is “believing in God” and therefore religion must not be deserving protection?)

Just as we reel in horror that our great-great grandparents could have accepted and defended slavery, or our grandparents could have accepted and defended miscegenation, or our parents accepted segregation, so too our children will look toward our defense of “traditional marriage” with shame and regret.

I am already very ashamed on my views of homosexuality in the recent past. I am getting a little bit wiser about my views of the present. So I write this down—like a dim lightbulb turning on in my brain—so that I can hope that, this time, I can be on the right side of history.

(If Bush’s Manichean view of the world is right and the world can be divided into “for us or against us” and Good and Evil. Then, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to choose Good.)

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