Five reasons why the "I'm sorry, but I have to do this
because my religion says homosexuality is a sin" argument holds no weight
with me:
1.) A subset of
Christians in America
use their devout religious beliefs as justification for marrying underage girls
against their will, raping and siring children on them. They further use that religious belief to
justify marrying multiple women, keeping them uneducated and highly dependent
on the males in the society. It is their
fervent religious belief that this is not only okay, it is actually what God
calls on them to do. See: Religious
polygamy in America. There's a heart-wrenching book about it.
2.) Certain subsets
of Muslims in different countries use religious belief as justification to
prosecute, imprison and even execute (whether legally and formally or illegally
and informally) women who have been raped, maintaining that the rape victims
have committed adultery or that they are now "black virgins". Families and communities who stand up for the
rights of these women often become victims of violence themselves. See: Honor killings. There's even--again--a great book about it,
probably more than one.
3.) Certain subsets
of Muslims use religious belief as justification for keeping women from getting
an education, having a career, or even simply getting a driver's license. Many of these religious subsets also refuse
to allow women to bare more skin in public than what shows around their eyes. They devoutly believe this is the right thing
to do. See: The recent controversy over
women fighting for the right to drive in Saudi Arabia. See also: Malala Yousafsai, the target of
attempted assassination by religious extremists for fighting for the right of
girls to receive an education. These are
simply two examples of a widely pervasive problem.
4.) Religious (and/or
cultural) belief in certain parts of Africa (and in many Africans who have
immigrated to different countries, including America and England), demands that
young women be castrated and have their genitals permanently mutilated in the
name of proper femininity, leaving them permanently scarred, incapable of
experiencing sexual pleasure, and in many cases leaving them with lifelong,
sometimes debilitating health consequences, or even death by infection. Many of these women find sex to be so
humiliating, such a violation and so physically unpleasant (Read: painful) that
they engage in it only a few times in their lives in order to produce children,
and their husbands often keep mistresses who don't have such physical
limitations. This practice continues
despite having been illegal in most places for something like twenty years. See: Google.
It'll take about 0.2 seconds to find a wealth of information on female
genital mutilation.
5.) Religious belief
in certain sects of orthodox Judaism demands that when a newborn boy has been
circumcised, the man performing the circumcision must use his mouth to cleanse
the wound. This ancient practice has led
to the contraction of herpes in an infant at least three times in the past
couple years alone in America,
and to at least one death from the illness.
See: Google again. Probably a combination of the words orthodox
Judaism, circumcision and herpes will get you where you need to go. (I personally don't believe in circumcising
male infants at all. I think if a
person's anatomy is going to be permanently altered for no medical benefit
whatsoever, the person should be old enough to make the decision himself,
though I also know male circumcision has become absolutely routine in America
over the last one hundred years, more as a cultural thing than a religious one,
for a variety of "reasons" you'd probably be surprised to learn. You can Google that too.)
These are but a few examples of the violation of human
rights in the name of religious belief.
The people who engage in these practices believe, devoutly, that this is
the right thing for them to do.
These things, things like the risk of passing on a deadly
virus during the commission of an unsanitary medical procedure on an infant
(not the circumcision itself, but the use of the human mouth as a cleanser for
the blood afterwards), are why human rights should always trump religious
rights.
Yes, people have the right to believe, and they have the right
to practice religion in their personal lives.
That right, however, should never allow them to infringe on the rights
on another human being.
I purposefully left off all worldwide violations of the
rights of homosexuals, bisexuals and transgender individuals in the name of
religion, wanting to keep the list simple and easy to understand by alluding to
multiple kinds of human rights violations.
"Well," you say, "What I do is nothing like that. I just state my opinion and stick to my
beliefs. No one is hurt, and I'm not
violating anyone's rights."
The problem is that a lot of people aren't just voicing a
belief. They're using that belief to actively
discriminate against other human beings, even in this country, even when they
think what they're isn't discrimination, just an exercise in religious beliefs. They use religion as an excuse to refuse to
sell products or services to homosexuals and to transgender men and women. They use religion as an excuse to fire those
men and women from their jobs. They use
religion as an excuse to refuse death benefits to the surviving partners of
same sex couples after one of them has died.
They use religion as an excuse to bully children and teenagers, to keep
them from attending certain schools, from using certain bathrooms or even from
wearing certain types of clothing or from going by names that are different
from what is listed on their birth certificates. They use religion as an excuse to keep people
from getting married. They use religion
as an excuse to keep homosexuals from visiting family members in the hospital,
or to keep them from obtaining legal rights to their children, or to keep them
from adopting children, or to keep them from providing vital health and life
insurances for their families. They use
religion as an excuse to deny fertility services, such as artificial
insemination, egg donation and surrogate pregnancy services to gay and
transgender individuals, couples and families.
They use religion as an excuse to protest and to hold picket lines at
the funerals of LGBT citizens, or even at the funerals of members of the
military who are not gay, lesbian, bisexual or
transgender themselves, bringing additional pain to already grieving
families. They use religion as an excuse
to send LGBT youth to schools for "ex-gay" therapy, schools in which
they are emotionally, psychologically and even physically abused, schools from
which it takes them years to recover, if they ever do. They use religion as an excuse to disown
children, to push them out onto the streets.
They use religion as an excuse to exclude LGBT individuals from public
events. They use religion as an excuse
to publicly heap verbal abuse on men and women who have behaved in no way
inappropriately except to dare to be themselves or to be a family in public. In extreme situations, they use religion as
an excuse to commit hate crimes--to murder, rape or physically assault members
of the LGBT community simply for being LGBT.
They donate their money to American religious organizations who "fight
for traditional marriage", and these organizations are largely responsible
for using that money to influence the governments of countries like Uganda,
whose recent human rights violations include enacting lifetime prison sentences
for same sex sexual activity, and prison time for anyone daring to found or
participate in LGBT rights organizations.
I'm sure I can think of more, but I've already made myself
sick with just this short list of atrocities committed in the name of faith.
Your religious belief does not give you the right to deny
civil rights to another person. You
should not choose to use Christianity or Islam or Judaism or Hinduism or any other
religion as justification for denying rights to LGBT individuals, or to women,
or to any other human being, living or dead.
Here's a legal news flash for business owners: In many states (and soon, I believe, in ALL
states, due to impending new federal laws, though I could be mistaken on this),
you cannot refuse to sell your products to gays anymore than you can refuse to
sell your products to blacks or Muslims.
You own a public business, and therefore you have to abide by civil
laws. Religion is for your personal
life, not your professional one.
Keep some perspective.
If you wouldn't use religion as justification for executing
a victim of rape, why would you use it as justification in discriminating
against a gay person?
The same thing goes for those business owners using religion
to deny certain health coverage to their employees on the basis of religious
belief...like birth control. If you
don't believe in birth control, don't use it.
Believing that it's wrong doesn't give you the right to inflict that
belief on someone else. For a woman whom
you pay $7.25 an hour to work thirty-nine hours a week, birth control may be
exactly what she needs to keep herself from having more children than she can
afford to raise, and at that rate she clearly doesn't make enough to afford it
without the aid of medical insurance.
Personally, I believe contributing to the birth of children who will go
hungry, under-clothed and without proper healthcare is a much bigger religious
violation than contributing to the use of preventive care to keep this from
happening. Schools should keep that in
mind when they refuse to teach anything other than abstinence in their
"sex education" courses.
Catholic hospitals:
You absolutely do not have the right to refuse to inform a woman that
she is in need of a lifesaving medical procedure after her water breaks eighteen
weeks into her pregnancy. Termination of
pregnancy in this case is not an elective procedure, and facing the reality of
her unborn child's probable death after such an occurrence is traumatic enough
without the possibility of her own death hanging over her as well if she
doesn't get the treatment her condition requires. In many places in America, Catholic hospitals are the
only hospitals in the area. People don't
have the luxury of choosing to go elsewhere, and therefore you shouldn't have
the luxury of choosing to refuse them the care that they need.
Politicians: You
serve the people of the United State of America. We do not serve you. As public servants, you agreed to uphold the
Constitution, a Constitution which guarantees equal rights and protections to
all citizens. This country was founded
on ideals of keeping religion and law separate from one another, and therefore
your religious beliefs have no place in your politics. Do your job and support equal rights. Otherwise, you are not a proper servant of this
country, and you should be immediately stripped of your position and relieved
of your governmental responsibilities and privileges.
I, too, am a public servant.
I am a 9-1-1 operator. If I take
an emergency call from a person whom I believe serving is against my religious
beliefs--for instance, if a woman is suffering medical complications from an
abortion, and if I believe abortion is a sin--I still cannot refuse that person
service. If I do, I can be fired, sued
and potentially even criminally prosecuted if they suffer illness, injury or
death due to my negligence. I can believe
all day long that it is against my religious beliefs to provide a specific
person an ambulance or to provide lifesaving instructions over the phone line prior
to the arrival of that ambulance, but if I refuse to offer any of those
services, I am breaking the law, and I am engaging in discrimination.
Religion is personal.
Human rights are global, or at least they should be.
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