Prop 8: 'This is about freedom of religion - mine, yours, ours!

Comments prepared by Oasis President the Rev. Tom Jackson for community meeting outside US Court of Appeals in San Francisco Dec. 6, 2010.

This is about freedom of religion: mine, yours, ours. This is about freeing us from being forced to live by the religious beliefs of those who call themselves conservative Christians and believe that they and they alone know the correct meaning of scripture. This is about religious freedom: about freeing us from a civil law that forces us to live by the Biblical beliefs of someone else. This is about religious freedom: about freeing most of us from the strict judgmental theology of a few of us. This is about religious freedom: the freedom we each deserve to live our lives according to our beliefs and not those of Jerry Farwell or our next door neighbor or any other person in America. This is about religious freedom: you, mine, ours. I want mine back. Don’t you?

That’s why Judge Walker’s decision is so important. He looked at the facts advanced by those who support Prop 8 and found they did not present any scientific facts to support Prop 8. He ruled they did not document any real harm caused by marriage equality. The only reason he found to support Prop 8 was the animus towards LGBT people of those who oppose equality in civil marriage. And he ruled that animus – for many clothed in terms of religious belief – cannot stand as the sole foundation for an amendment to the constitution of this state.

Those who support Prop 8, at their best, do so based on their faith: the way they read the Bible, they believe same gender marriage is a sin. We support their right to hold and to live their life according to these beliefs. No one suggests that any man or woman ever be forced into a same gender marriage: if you believe same sex marriage is a sin, marry someone of a different sex.

That’s not the argument of Prop 8. Prop 8 says we all have to live be the religious belief of those who read the Bible in a literal sense. That is not the way I read the Bible, my understanding is that God’s justice demands marriage equality. So repealing Prop 8 is about religious freedom: about freeing me and you and you and you from a law that forces us to live by the religious beliefs of someone else.

Prop 8 tries to force all of us to live by standards some see as ‘biblically correct.’ But their view of what the Bible says is radically different from mine, All I want is the freedom to be the kind of Christian God calls me to be; all I ask is an end to laws and amendments that impose someone else’s religion on me and my church. This is about religious freedom: about freeing me and you and you and you from a law that forces us to live by the religious beliefs of someone else. As an Episcopal priest, I should have the freedom to minister to people based on my understanding of what God calls us to do. Prop 8 tries to take away our freedom of religion. I want it back – don’t you?