2 posts tagged “freedom”

The only starting point for the existence of human life is the one that an individual chooses to recognize and deem to be of significance. Though bio-medical science’s capacity to indefinitely preserve life is limited, it is technologically possible to preserve it for an extended period of time.

For various reasons, sperm, egg, body parts, and embryos are preserved based upon the values and choices of those presented with the opportunity and capacity to do so. Thus, some human life forms are preserved and some are allowed to perish.

If a like-thinking religious group, legislative body, or writers of letters to the editor can in the abstract pretend to know at what stage an imagined life is important, then a woman faced with actually dealing with a life and death choice is just as morally fit, capable and prepared by God to know what she should do.

Government should get out of the “Holy Matrimony” business and leave its celebration to religious organizations.  The First Amendment establishes that government shall “make no law respecting the establishment of religion.”   Thus, sacraments and rituals of sanctification should be non-public matters and private concerns to be pursued in accord with individual conscience and proclivity.

Government does however have a Constitutional responsibility to protect the rights of consenting adults to freely enter into relational and obligatory contracts.  In accord with its responsibility to keep State law from impairing this freedom, marriage licensing should be stripped of religious trappings and redefined as civil unions.

If gays and lesbians, or others, desire to extend their civil union into Sacramental Marriage, they can find a body of faith that is willing to sanctify their contractual relationship.  If they cannot find one, their freedom of religion entitles them to start a denomination of their own.