Waiting for the Age of Reason

ACCORDING TO THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE, homosexuality is a sin, and according to Christians, the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Homosexuals are to be put to death, as are children who curse their parents. Three of every four Americans is a christian, yet the percentage is slowly but steadily dwindling, as the world begins to enter the scientific age. In the seventeenth century David Hume, the father of skepticism, declared the seventeenth century to be an age of miracles, the foremost miracle being that so many people still embraced religion in an age in which science disproves it credibility. In the twenty first century along comes a mentally ill person who doesn't know the difference between hezbollah and the Islamic state, murders dozens of people in a gay nightclub, and suddenly it becomes an act of "Islamic terrorism". In truth, it was likely an act of desperate anger by a person unable to comes to terms with his own homosexuality in a world which the broader culture would never accept him. Neither the christian nor Islamic faiths is tolerant of homosexuals; in Islamic countries gay people, if caught, are murdered, in America, they are allowed to exist only because secular law takes priority over religious belief. By law, America is neither an Islamic nor christian nation. In neither religion is God loving and tolerant of deviant sexuality. American Christians tolerate gay people only because by law they must, but anytime they get a chance to marginalize and exclude them, they do. The "Age of reason" arrived in the seventeenth century, and departed in the early nineteenth century as religion reasserted its stranglehold on mainstream culture. In 1797 Congress passed a law reaffirming that the United States is not a "Christian nation", a law which is still in effect, and reinforces the constitution, but which is conveniently ignored today by the Christian community. Although we appear to be reentering the age of reason, we have yet to fully do so. If we are fortunate, we won't have to wait much longer.