Saturday, August 4, 2012

No, the United States was NOT founded on Christian principles

Just to clear up some misapprehensions...

The USA was not founded on Christian beliefs.  The country was founded on a strange combination of freedom for some and slaveholding for others, with the Puritans not drinking on Sundays and the mountain folk (and later the Midwesterners) getting silly drunk on Sundays.  In fact, the founders explicitly believed that people should be free to live according to their religion, or not, as they want.  There are even a lot of varieties of Christianity, and they are compatible with things like polygamy, slavery, and so on.  Jefferson was not a Christian as we'd know it.  Washington, not strongly.  Adams was sort of a left-wing Unitarian.  Others were Catholics and others were devout Protestants of all stripes, and there were plenty of other nonbelievers in the mix.  It makes no sense to project mid-twentieth-century Pentacostalism onto these guys, much less to suggest that they favored a sort of Pentacostalist theocracy.

I mean, come on, these guys ate shrimp (banned in the Bible), fornicated with the slaves, were stone-cold drunk when they wrote the Constitution, killed each other over insults, and stole what belonged to the Indians.  At the same time, they gave fair trials, guaranteed a free press, and founded an entire country.  Great men are not necessarily good men.  Any system which relies upon the perfectability of mankind will fail, as Communism (another Christian idea) did.

Despite all this, there is something and uniquely good that the country was built on, with intellectual influences ranging from Christianity to the enlightenment to Saxon customary law.  It was the idea that freedom and responsibility were a better way to run society than figuring out what the Houses of Stuart and Wettin wanted at that moment.  Even when we haven't lived up to our ideals to treat others the way we'd want to be treated, we feel bad about it, and we try to make things better.  That is a particularly Christian way to think, but it sometimes leads in socially liberal directions.  Think, freeing the slaves, ending Jim Crow, letting women own property or drive cars, and so on.

I happen to think that anti-black bigots, anti-gay bigots, and those more fair-minded folk who just think that social change should proceed slowly should have an equal right to speak.  I simply don't believe that cities should have the authority to shut out people who think a little bit differently from them.  This does not imply a right not to be ridiculed mercilessly.  But fairness is fairness, and it applies to everyone.

But, I'd like to ask for something in return.  Christianity is about love.  Treating others as you'd want to be treated.

I want the right to spend my life with one person that I love, with all of the responsibilities that such a choice entails.

I want to care for them when they are sick, with things like hospital visitation rights.

I want to be able to transfer financial assets, pensions, and real estate upon death, tax-free, the way that any childless straight couple can.

I want to be able to meet someone, anywhere in the world, fall in love, and have them allowed into my country.  What's in their pants doesn't matter.  I care what's in their heart.

I will not live in fear.  Small minds have no authority over me.

I want our union to be recognized across state and national lines.  Right and wrong do not know such lines.

I don't want Orwellian 'Newspeak' or euphemism.  'Civil marriage' is fine.  'Registered domestic partnerships' is a mouthful, and it is intended to imply lesser status.

I will only live in a way which is honest with myself.

I pay my taxes, so that future generations can be educated, and things like roads and courts can be provided for.

I appreciate the sacrifice that parents make.  While I will not be a parent, I understand that they are the heroes of the future.  I admire my own parents.  They are role models.  They did a lot; I mean, they dealt with me for so long.

I am pro-marriage, for everyone.

Many Christians are too.