"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...."

A friend of mine, after six years of school and obtaining degrees in music and engineering, is now pursuing a graduate degree in theology at Berkeley. He raised a discussion on Proposition 8 citing all sorts of things regarding the family as a sociological construct and raising questions about the various arguments for and against gay marriage. I wanted to share my response to his ideas, because it seems I've had this conversation all too often in the past month or so:

The issue here on proposition 8 is not a sociological or theological one. It's not about unions and procreation or family integrity with only one type of parent. Proposition 8 brings to light a serious issue of civil liberties guaranteed in the U.S. constitution.

What's happened to spawn this issue is our government has failed us at both the state an federal level. The establishment clause in the first amendment guarantees freedom of religion by all citizens by enforcing freedom from a state religion. Because our culture is one of monogamy, the state has appropriated the term "marriage" from religion for the civil and legally binding contracts into which people enter, and this is a big problem.

When Christians thump their bibles and decry "gay rights" citing the "sanctity of marriage" they are confusing the sacrament and the secular contract. These are two very different things.

The state supreme court found that a ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, based on our state constitution. The very idea of denying a significant minority basic civil rights based on a single quality that separates them from other was found to be what is is: legislating bigotry.

Propositions allow initiatives to bypass the legislature and go straight to voters, and basically what's going on is a special interest doesn't like the rules and is trying to change the game.

The proposition that should be on the ballot is one that would remove the term "marriage" from our state laws and tax system, replacing it with "civil union," as that is what it is, a contract. We should be leaving the sacrament of marriage to the churches, and if they would rather discriminate based on sexual orientation, (a very Christlike behavior, I might add) that's their prerogative.

The state does not enjoy such a luxury.

Besides, on the issue of procreation: homosexual unions are pro life. Think about it. The pope should reach deep into that hat of his and pull out some good old fashioned pragmatism.