Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Politics: Supreme Court Judges and LGBTQ Rights

Let's start with the good news. In a 6 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court protected the rights of LGBTQ folks in the United States. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/politics/supreme-court-lgbtq-employment-case/index.html.

Now the bad news. Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas voted against equal job rights for LGBTQ people. Those three judges are anti-American idiots. It's super simple that the American ideal is for equality. It's part of the founding documents. On the other side are people that seem to want to limit the rights of LGBTQ people. Why might they want to do that? Maybe there's a reason I'm not aware of. I doubt that. And if I had to guess, it's based on an interpretation of the Christian Bible that suggests homosexuality is wrong. Thankfully we have the First Amendment to protect us from that nonsense. The government and public organizations like schools CANNOT favor any one religion. No laws can be made based on religious belief. And I greatly appreciate the founding fathers for building our country that way.

The Bible says it's okay to own slaves and that the slaves should treat their masters like God... with respect and deference. The Bible also says not to wear mixed fabrics or have tatoos (right near where it says a man shall not lie with another man). If I'm not mistaken the Bible also says you can kill your wife via stoning if she cheats on you. Now, we know that the Bible spouts off about ridiculous things that make it awful as a framework for morality, but it also has the weakness that not everyone believes it. In fact there are a good number of religions in the United States (and around the world). And there's zero reason to believe that any one of them got it right. In order for our government to treat all of us different people fairly, it has to be agnostic to religion... it has to make laws without any basis in religion. That's how it should be. Again: Thank you Founding Fathers for making this an agnostic nation.

Now put all that together and realize that the only apparent motivation to discriminate against LGBTQ citizens is religion AND we have three judges sitting on the Supreme Court who think it makes legal sense to discriminate against people based on sexual-identity. That's terrifying. What's as terrifying is that there are people who will vote to support religious tenets around being bigots.

I'm going to describe religious freedom one more time because I feel like it fits here. Religious freedom is the freedom to follow your religion as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights. Obviously, no human sacrifices or ritual killings. What might be less obvious is that it means that all of us can pick any religion and have it be just as valid in the eyes of the government. I could be a Shinto practitioner if I wanted to be and it would be just as valid as that Christian next door. THIS IS NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION. It never was, and is should never be. We are not a theocracy. But government not supporting a religion is exactly what religious freedom is.

If our Supreme court might make a decision based on one religion's ideals, the Supreme Court is broken and we are all in danger. I hope those three judges get booted as quickly as possible.

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