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We, the People

Here are two curious facts:

1) 90% of Americans believe that sex extramarital sex is almost always a serious moral flaw.  In fact, about half of the States in the Union have severe penalties for married people who engage in extramarital sex.  At the same time, other surveys show that at least a majority of people do it.

2)  90% of Americans list tax evasion as a serious social moral flaw.  At the same time, a flood of radio and TV ads by lawyers offer to help people who owe the government thousands of dollars:  "After all," the ads say, "it is your money!"  And our recent history is a recitation of how much people despise government.

I cannot recall what the next most serious moral flaws were, but they trailed badly, and may have had to do with selling used cars.

It is easier for me to believe that 90% of people disapprove of marital infidelity.  After all, it is undoubtedly the fact that in most marriages, there are children to be raised, and whatever else is to be said for marriage, when it works moderately well, it is best for the kids, financially, socially, and psychologically.

In our present political climate, polluted by carbon dioxide emissions and Tea Part inanities, it seems nearly incredible that a pollster could find that most people think that not paying taxes is a serious moral flaw, but it is so.  There may be a parallel to marital infidelity.  Perhaps we do know that, just as a stable adult relationship is beneficial for the job families have to do, it is also necessary that we all do our share to support social institutions.  Maybe people are just quibbling over what constitutes a fair share.  Or maybe they mean that other people ought to quit philandering and evading taxes.

We do live in interesting times:  our definition of what a family is, what a marriage is, is changing significantly.  The struggle to recognize that two men or two women can love and live together, and raise children and pay taxes, just like real people, is not quite over, but the outcome is clear.  The laws are changing, and so are people's opinions.  Here in the Mountain Southwest, everyone knows that there are fundamentalist Mormon families who have practiced polygamy for a long time.  And why should that surprise anyone?  Great parts of the world do the same thing.  What bothers me most about that is that those societies who practice polygamy seem to be the most aggressive at oppressing women.  But we have our share of that, right here in fundamentalist Christian America, where 90% disapprove of such urges.  I should not be surprised if we find a way to allow polygamy "for religious reasons".

Now there is a precipice!  "For religious reasons."  People do damned fool things for religious reasons.  They play with snakes, suppress women, mutilate women sexually, and drive whole dioceses into bankruptcy for sexually molesting altar boys.  For religious reasons, people won't allow the sale of alcohol to anyone on Sunday.  Now that is a crime!  Not drinking:  banning it.  People won't eat pork here, or crustaceons there, for religious reasons.  People justify slavery for religious reasons.  They outlaw interracial marriages for religious reasons.  It is hard to engage in genocide if you do not have a good religious reason.  Don't drink beer.  Don't drink coffee.  Don't wear two kinds of cloth.  Don't dance.  Look at yourself, and announce that you are the apple of God's eye, and that everyone else is inferior.  Well, who is to argue with God?

Religions are not really about angels and demons and gods and liturgies and puberty ceremonies.  Religions are a claim for how society ought to be organized.  And maybe once that was more common than now, but we write constitutions to organize societies.  The age of theocracies is not quite dead, but it ought to be.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

 Our constitution defines what government shall and shall not do.  We write laws to say what a marriage shall be, and how men and women shall be treated.  We do not say that we are a Jewish or a Muslim or a Christian nation, and that whatever the Pope or the Episcopal Bishop or Roaring Evangelist says is how things will be.  We have a constitution.  

 There will, of course, there may be, a great deal of overlap and agreement between what we endorse by law and what some religious traditions say, and that is fine, but just because some religion, whether European Christianity, or Mid-Eastern Islam, or New York/Missouri/Utahan Mormonism says it is what they do truly believe does not mean we have to endorse it.  

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