The Defence Of Discrimination Act

Replacing the word Religion with Discrimination would be a more appropriate name for Harper’s proposed Defence Of Religion Act (DORA), but it would kill one the best acronyms I’ve heard in ages, DORA just sounds so Gay I love it.

Obviously religion is a much more acceptable word than discrimination, but it’s remarkable how it’s lost on the people promoting this act that a good religious doctrine should require no such defense.

I guess this is where I tend to confuse religion with any system of faith really intended to bring people closer to their spirituality. I certainly don’t have a problem with people practicing faith and following a spiritual path, but I do have a problem with religions that allow their members to think, through doctrine no less, that they are better than other people. To me, these are nothing more than social clubs with enough religious dogma in their charters to give them tax-exempt status.

Let’s not forget that we now have laws that protect people from discrimination largely because religion has dominated this society and promoted beliefs that have allowed people to discriminate with virtual impunity. They have allowed people to gain the impression that their claim to god makes them better than people who don’t share their beliefs. Some might say that teaching that Homosexuality is a sin is not the same as teaching hate or discrimination, but history has proven that to be the end result. Church leaders rarely seem to take responsibility for their parishioners taking their messages and using them to persecute other people. There is still a prevailing view among some that religion, particularly Christian religion, is the dominant view in our society. That may have been the case at one time but now it ignores the fact that many more religions are being practiced here, and many people have also chosen to live an entirely secular life.

Obviously what conservative Christians are going after with a bill like this is special status in society that allows them to continue to discriminate, it can’t be anything else. They may claim that they merely want to practice their faith without fear of persecution, it would appear that the irony of that desire is lost on them because they seem to forget that their faith is responsible for the persecution of millions for centuries. Their dominant position in society is responsible for the creation of laws that make some people better than others. That position of dominance created a society where untold millions were forced to live a life of fear and lies where even the laws of the land were against them.

The world has changed, at least our part of it has changed, people are no longer interested in living in a culture of intolerance. I find it astounding that people would want that anyway but it seems that some still do. Society has become too educated, too diverse and too open to be bothered with a bunch of Christian dinosaurs harboring a bad case of sour grapes.

Social responsibility is no longer dependent on religious dogma, society has shown maturity in understanding the basic good of people in a secular, democratic system. People are far less willing to accept a world where failure to conform to certain, sometimes impossible dogmatic beliefs is the only way to gain acceptance.

It is astounding that in the space of less than a generation, conservative Christians now claim persecution by the very people they taught the world to hate, they couldn’t even let the body get cold. They now claim martyrdom that Homosexuals at least had the good taste not to claim. The difference between the struggle they now claim and the very real struggle Homosexuals faced is that Homosexuals were never looking for special status in society, they were trying to get away from it. The single ultimate purpose of the Gay Rights movement has always been, and has only ever been, to gain acceptance and full cooperation in society, not special status because we understand a very simple and irrefutable truth:

Faith is a choice, sexual orientation isn’t.

For those who say that allowing Homosexual marriage could lead to polygamy and bestiality and all manner of horrible things, I could pass them off as ridiculous arguments. Then again, I could ask who’s to say that allowing institutionalized discrimination won’t lead to persecution, torture, rape and murder? Oh wait, it already has.