For several years, I’ve often written about the right of all people to marry the person they choose, regardless of their sexual orientation and the gender of their chosen partner. In the first of these articles, published in the Arizona City Independent/Edition on March 15, 2006, and reprinted in my essay collection, The World I Imagine: A creative manual for ending poverty and building peace, I explained what is perhaps the most important reason for my support of same-sex marriage:
“If the U.S. wants to impose a wall between religion and government in places like Iraq [which was foremost in the news at the time], then we must do the same here at home.”
In other articles, I’ve explained that even if gay marriage were to become legal throughout the country, no church would ever be forced to marry two people of the same gender if they didn’t want to do so. And beginning on May, 2009, I wrote my first article addressing the fallacies of as many of the objections to legalizing gay marriage as I could think of at the time.
I’ve since updated that article and reprinted it twice as a single article in this blog. Finally, I’ve expanded my coverage of this issue by explaining these points in the two videos on this page, one on the religious issues and the other on the secular issues involved in the gay marriage question.
I hope I explained clearly enough the basic principle that no matter what any person believes, they have absolutely no right to use the law to impose their religious values on people who are not members of their religion. So, we must continue to work for the end of all laws that limit the civil rights of anyone simply because of their sexual orientation.
Let’s put an end to all hate in our society. This is an absolute necessity if we’re ever going to put an end to poverty and war.
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