When I was in elementary school I didn’t mind the long days of repetition or the congealed mystery meals in the cafeteria, but I always resented being bullied into standing up every morning and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
I wasn’t exactly sure why I resented it so much but as time has passed I have realized that it was the idea of pledging allegiance to a country that believes it is one nation under God, with liberty and justice for those with similar beliefs that left a bad taste in my mouth, not the cafeteria food.
Despite the fact that I firmly believe in God, I find it disconcerting to live in a country that is under a cloud of religious divisiveness that is thicker and at times more foul than a winter’s worth of inversion in Utah. I wonder how different our country would be if a swirling tornado were to whip through this religious inversion and sweep it away. Would we finally see with clarity, and if so, what would we see?
Perhaps we would see a long history of laws that have been birthed by religious doctrine which have divided our country and inhibited liberty and justice for many. While there would be many things that would need to be changed, none would be more important than marriage equality and women’s rights. Without the hindrance of our current religious climate, more than several centuries of flawed thinking could be unraveled with relative ease.
In Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense,” he wrote, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
If as a country we were to rethink our views on marriage and women’s rights by subtracting our religious views from the equation, there would be tumult on both sides of the political spectrum. Giving liberty and justice for all isn’t as easy to digest as it would seem. It would require several things that are always at a premium: compromise and understanding.
If we really believe the truths of the Declaration of Independence to be self evident, and that all men (and women) are created equal and endowed by their Creator (whatever that may or may not be) with certain unalienable rights, then our revision of marriage would certainly allow gay couples to have the same rights as straight couples. There would be no debate. However, part of the right for everyone to engage in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would need to include those who wish to enter into plural marriage as well. Again there would be no debate.
While many would consider marriage to be an extremely sensitive issue, there may not be a more delicate issue to address than that of women’s rights, specifically a woman’s right to have dominion over her own body. It’s a natural argument to say that the unborn fetus has rights. The fact of the matter is, while the fetus may be alive it isn’t living until it is born. When taking the influence of religion out of the debate it makes no sense at all to deny women the right to decide what they want to do with their bodies.
These rights would also need to extend to women who choose to have their babies and decide to give those babies up for adoption. It can be reasonably argued that within the contract of a marriage the father would have the right to not allow his wife to give up their child for adoption. However, in instances involving an unmarried couple, a woman should have the right give up her child for adoption without the father’s consent.
There have been several recent cases in Utah where the unmarried father has sued to prevent the mother from giving up the child for adoption. In these cases the woman should have full rights regarding the child because she is the one who carried it for nine months — the father simply provided the ammunition.
Regardless of our individual opinions on issues such as marriage and abortion, we need to uphold the values our country is supposed to stand for, which is to protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Taking God out of our government isn’t about denying the fact that Christianity played an integral part in the birth of our nation, it’s about continuing to work towards the dream of equal rights for everyone that our forefathers tried to put into place. Religion has every right to be in our homes and in our hearts, but it has no place in our government.