I feel bad about the Pope being dead. I can’t say I don’t have respect for him. He spoke seven languages and in general did what a good leader is supposed to do. He stood-up for what he believed in even if a lot of those things are areas that I don’t believe in. They flew flags at half mast for him on Sunday even in Brookline.

But today I was listening to NPR while driving and I got very angry with the religious folks in the US. The issue that was causing my blood to boil was the folks in Kansas being the 18th state to work towards a vote in the near future amending their constitution to prevent same sex marriages. The amount of money raised to fight this constitutional amendment raised by the opposition to it is $32,000. Now I have to draw a hard line on this issue. Although people do appear to cloak the issue as a clarification of what is already included as standard policy it has become overwhelmingly clear that standard policy is that gay people don’t have the same rights as heterosexuals. So while we are fighting in the world to liberate women who don’t have the same rights as men in the middle east and riding a wave of democratic fervor in the name of human rights it is clear that even the world’s model democracy has a major problem understanding the basic concepts of human rights.

The concepts theoretically are taught in the bibles read by the folks heading to vote. As I understood the Christian bible the Jews had come to a crisis where law makers, the rabbis, had gone far abreast of the spirit of the bible itself. They had taken the literal parts relating to rules and forgotten about the important areas of how humans are supposed to treat each other through the Golden rule. The Golden rule is a clear statement and whether you are worried about what God thinks of you or not you can base almost all the ethics of human rights upon it. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. The golden rule is about empathy and equality. Basically you shouldn't entitle yourself to rights that other people don’t have. You shouldn’t do things to other people that you wouldn't want them to do to you. You should act towards other people as though you were the person who was being acted upon.

So let’s apply this Golden rule concept to the question of same sex marriage. Regardless of whether you like homosexuals or not the Golden rule doesn’t say anything about liking other people. In the example set for Christianity Jesus helps the disenfranchised people who many people didn't like or would be likely to be disapproved by God including prostitutes, invalids who could not work, and folks who didn’t like the way the government and the temple was being run. So putting it into the context of a heterosexual looking at a homosexual's right to marry. Would you as a homosexual vote on a law to prevent heterosexuals from having equal rights for marriage? How about some simpler cases? Would you as a Jew in a Jewish majority state vote to have Christians be unable to marry under equal rights for marriage? What would you want the majority to do if you were in the minority and you would never have the voting power to protect yourself through the power of democracy?

This is what is disturbing to me about the issue of the right to have same sex marriages. It is that a group of people claiming a moral high ground are brainwashed into believing that they actually are conforming to the human rights that their religion professes. I think Christianity is a beautiful religion – it moved a society locked into very legal interpretations of life into one that could appreciate love, beauty, and charity as core values. In this case an anachronism continues to drive the basic enemies of freedom – fear and hate.

While it seems like people are having a debate about whether homosexuals can have the same rights upon examining the underlying debate there is clearly something insidious and disgusting. This debate from the side of the people looking to clarify marriage is a platform to use the hatred of a specific group of people to deny them the respect of the Golden rule. This legal battle to deny equal rights to homosexuals is an ugly socially sanctioned hate crime. Denial of the Golden rule is not acceptable as it quickly breaks down into breaking down the rest of the moral structure that follows from it. Thou shalt not kill or not steal can’t be conditional and allow for casting people you don't like outside of the rules. You weren’t about to kill or steal from people you liked? Were you?

The rules only work if it includes all people. So ultimately when people in the United States claim to be taking the moral high ground and included in that moral high ground is essentially the persecution of specific easy to identify segments of people then what we have is a real problem and a country that claims to be a champion of human rights but really is just a façade for human rights for certain humans. That is the root of totalitarianism, the stuff of Animal Farm. That is something every Christian should have learned to be very afraid of and after learning the core of the Christian faith be something to defend with all of their strength.

When the Centurions decide who is going up on the cross and they hate you then who will be strong enough to protect you?

While the pope is dead Catholics have't shed the shadow of a religion whose legacy should be to keep working towards the original vision of people fighting for human rights by applying the Golden rule first and the law second.