by: Marceline Donaldson
It is time for us to get some things straight and stop obfuscating because our need to keep a society, which is bigoted beyond belief even into 2018, functioning with its traditional who is better than – who deserves what – who gets oppressed, etc.
The Supreme Court’s decision on the wedding cake bit needs to be revisited and either the attorneys who presented the arguments need to understand the basis of their arguments – which they clearly don’t as of now – or the Supreme Court justices need to understand what is religious belief and practice and what is not.
The laws of the United States say, in effect, thou shalt not discriminate. That has not stopped us from discriminating against many for hundreds of years and we continue to do so as we defend the laws which reach to the core of our discrimination and our bigotry. The marriage laws are the most lethal. And to the gay community – one does not lessen bigotry by joining and making sure you are covered under those laws even if that coverage is tenuous. One lessens bigotry by changing those laws.
All of this business about marriage – gay marriage particularly – is ridiculous because it ignores a fundamental fact: MARRIAGE IS OF THE STATE AND NOT OF THE RELIGIOUS. Therefore, a court cannot say a baker does not have to bake a wedding cake because of his deeply held religious belief. What religious beliefs! Those that are of God or those that are of the theologians who want to continue and increase the control of their religion over the state and of those who want to use religion to continue to control and spread the bigotry they need to feel whole.
If this baker holds, as he has claimed, that his Christian religious beliefs do not allow him to bake a cake for a same sex couple he is dead wrong and practicing heresy not Christianity.
In Christianity, as in every other religion, the rector, the priest, the minister, the ordained person is not the one who marries anyone. In every religion in these United States, the ordained person, the believer, the committed, their religion has nothing to do with the “marriage” between two people whatever their sex.
Marriage is a contract between the people presenting themselves to be married and the state. It is a state relationship not a religious relationship no matter the religion. Marriage is a very commercial venture which is becoming more so by the hour. We are going to the United States Supreme Court over a wedding cake. I can’t think of anything more ridiculous.
If an ordained person – ordained according to the rules and requirements of Christianity or of any other religion in these United States (and in other countries, as well) – performs a marriage ceremony between whoever – and that ordained person is not licensed by the state to perform a marriage ceremony those people are not married. According to Christian belief – if one is not “married” one is living in sin. And that Christianity is talking about marriage by the state, there is no such thing as “Christian” marriage.
Those people supposedly “married” by an ordained person who does not have a state license allowing that person to perform marriages has caused the people that ordained person supposedly “married” to be living in what Christianity has defined as sin. Sin taken to be a violation of state law – a ridiculous concept on its own. Christianity says – render unto Ceasar what is Caesars and unto God what is God’s. A violation of state law is not sin and every Gospel has fought against that concept for eons and here we have brought that concept into Christianity for reasons we barely understand, but passionately defend.
The role of the ordained person is the role of one who blesses the marriage – he or she does not actually marry the people involved because marriage is not and never has been a ceremony of any religion. Religions bless what the state has done, defined, dictated the terms for getting into marriage and the laws for its dissolution.
Given that – how can this baker claim his deeply held Christian religious beliefs do not allow him to bake a wedding cake – made of sugar, which one should not eat because it is not healthy, according to the health people of the day, along with other ingredients which should not be eaten anyway either. The baker should be more concerned about what he puts into his wedding cake than he is about the people for whom he makes it. When he set up as a commercial adventure he opened his doors to whoever decided to use his services, if they paid his asking price. His is a commercial business following the laws of the state. The same entity which defines the laws of marriage.
One could not have a more ridiculous case taken all the way to the United States Supreme Court – taking the court’s time; taking the money and other resources of the two sides fighting each other; the time and resources of the press covering such ridiculousness and on and on it goes.
Why does this happen and we feel righteous about using this societies resources in such a way? Because we are a society bound and determined to keep bigotry alive and well and functioning on all levels otherwise we might have to recognize and acknowledge that we are all human which means we will all die the same death – in different ways, but the same biological conclusion.
We have never been able, in these United States, to believe that beneath the skin we are all alike. We are committed to the German model of “blood” which infected the United States when large numbers of Germans immigrated to the United States about 1880 or so and brought words and concepts which were foreign. In Germany they had a meaning to the country. In Germany one could only be Germany by “blood.” – In the United States, one had “black blood” or “white blood” or etc. And one had to have “white blood” to be right. Those concepts brought over the ocean promoted Jim Crowism because they were national concepts brought from one country into another and used to promote and support the bigotry in the United States.
I have never understood why the gay community spent so much time and resources fighting to be able to be “married” under the traditional laws of these United States which were outdated and horrific before their movement started and which have and had seriously and painfully oppressed so many people – Africans and women in particular. Would that time and resources have been better spent working through a redefinition of the laws which govern marriage to make them more equal and beneficial to all. Somehow that way of thinking doesn’t happen often. We think instead of how we can elevate ourselves – no matter which oppressed group we belong to or identity with – to the level of those oppressing us instead of seeing how beautiful is the equality concept.
I remember conversations because I sat in on meetings when this movement was beginning. Conversations which talked about the pros and cons of a movement to bring gay people into line with everybody else as far as this marriage business goes. It would foster “equality” and “acceptance”. That would never happen, but the movement took that turn – and got derailed for years.
Marriage has oppressed human beings for hundreds of years and not just in the United States. In the United States, however, the marriage laws were used as the basis for the laws which established African slavery. We don’t like to acknowledge nor admit such things, but truth will out – hopefully, one day soon.
Instead of using their time and resources to fight for – along with those who were not gay – to establish a permanent relationship between two people which is fair and equal and not oppressive to anyone – the gay community went along with some of its leaders who were power and control absorbed – and launched this incredible fight for gays to be oppressed under the marriage laws the same way the rest of society is oppressed under such a concept.
The United States Supreme Court needs to take its biases out of the room and reconsider the decision they just made about this wedding cake. The ridiculousness of it should bring about peals of laughter in the court before they are able to settle down to have any kind of semi-serious discussion and then the justices need to take a look at exactly what constitutes marriage. Given the fact that marriage is of the state and not the religion – any religion – they then need to make a decision which is accurate and not covered with their own biases which are showing all over this decision.
Even in England – the recent Royal Wedding that we all enthralled over – was a blessing of an event which happened some place else as a state contract. At one point the participants – bride, groom, mother of the bride, father of the groom all left the main chapel and went into an outer chapel to “sign the papers”. What papers did they sign? The state papers where the real marriage took place.
The same thing happens in the United States. There is a big show with beautiful gowns, marches down the aisle, attendants in wonderful clothes having spent a small fortune on cosmetics, hair, accessories to be a part of this “wedding” only to have the main participants leave what is made to look like the main event to go off into a side room for the marriage to actually take place and to be made “legal”.
What the wedding cake maker is wrapped up in and so fervently and passionately committed to Is his own bigotry. He has made his own bigotry the focus of his religion. Many people and groups have done the same thing – the KKK, White Supremacists, Nazis, terrorists and all the other hate groups who probably have come to his defense because they recognize one walking their path.
The bakers payment for his heresy will come when he dies – in the meantime the rest of us don’t need to be dragged into such religious mumbo jumbo used to maintain extreme discrimination using religion as its base. I am better than you are because I am not gay. I will create my society to define you as less than and use you to do the work of keeping my society going while I do little or nothing and enjoy the fruits of your labor. When I need a push and a pumping up I will turn to you and your community to produce just that. – and that has been enormously successful for a very long time.
And to all of you homosexual people walking around feeling more equal because you are “married” and have a “spouse” – take another look. The only thing that has happened is that you have publicly agreed to be a part of bigotry which has been around for hundreds of years and your “marriage” has simply strengthened the discrimination against women and justified the slavery laws that were promulgated against Africans which took hundreds of years to crawl out from under with so much damage done to a group of people because of the color of their skin that we are still wrapped up in its evil. We have written words, taken twisted and evil concepts. done lots of things to lead others to believe all of this is ordained by God. White Supremacists spread the “gospel” of whiteness as better than any other “color” of people as something which was ordained by God. That does not make it so.
The baker should have to produce the wedding cake of this couples choice without delay – however, the couple needs to take its money to support a baker who is not into such bigotry and advise his friends, colleagues, family and even strangers to stay away from this business and patronize others who are not so totally wrapped up in a vicious life killing belief system which takes down these United States every day and every hour of every day.
Let the groans and screams and obscenities and all the other ugly stuff begin!
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Tags: politics, Racism, Sexism, Wedding Cake
