Anyone who counted out the influence and power of the National Organization for Marriage should think again. On Tuesday, three state Supreme Court justices in Iowa found themselves out of jobs after voters opted not to send them back to Des Moines for another term. This is the first time in Iowa history that voters have fired justices from the Supreme Court.

And what was their crime? Voting with the unanimous majority in Varnum v. Brien to uphold a lower court’s ruling that the state’s limitation of marriage to only between a man and a woman violated the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. This ruling instituted marriage equality in Iowa in 2009, making the state one of only five states in the nation (plus the District of Columbia) that allow for full marriage rights for all couples. As reported in the New York Times, this vote was intended to send a message nationwide:

Leaders of the recall campaign said the results should be a warning to judges elsewhere.

“I think it will send a message across the country that the power resides with the people,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor who led the campaign. “It’s we the people, not we the courts.”

The campaign to remove the three justices at the ballot box was heavily supported by the National Organization for Marriage and the American Family Association. The Des Moines Register reports that over $650,000 from these and other groups was spent on the campaign to remove the three justices.

As for the justices themselves, they saw something nefarious afoot. From the Times:

The judges declined requests for interviews but released a statement that decried what they called “an unprecedented attack by out-of-state special interest groups.” The statement defended the system for selecting judges but offered what a veiled warning about populist impulses to remake the judiciary: “Ultimately, however, the preservation of our state’s fair and impartial courts will require more than the integrity and fortitude of individual judges, it will require the steadfast support of the people.”

Judicial retention elections are meant to serve as a democratic stamp of approval on the work of judges. For example, in Iowa the justices do not run contested campaigns; voters are merely asked on election day if they approve of retaining the justices in question, and more than fifty percent must vote yes for the judge to be retained. Justices usually do not campaign to retain their own seats, and receiving less than half the vote is rare. By the very nature of the judicial system, justices are likely to rule on controversial issues; with retention elections there is a great deal of risk that the work of the justices will be politicized. This fear was expressed by Joseph R. Grodin, a law professor and former California Supreme Court justice who was voted out in 1986 after a campaign asserting that he was soft on the death penalty. He told the New York Times:

Obviously it has an impact on the independence of judges and how they think of their role — I think that’s demonstrable…But more than that…I think the damage is not on judges, but that courts will come to be seen and judges will come to be seen as simply legislators with robes.

And if you look at the National Organization for Marriage’s victory statement about the Iowa elections, released yesterday, it is clear that they do desire to politicize the work of the bench. From the statement:

“The victories we have achieved this election are truly historic and stunning,” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). “First and foremost, we wanted to defeat the judges in Iowa who had usurped the will of the people and imposed gay marriage in that state. The three judges were overwhelmingly rejected, sending a powerful message to any judge who thinks they can impose gay marriage by judicial fiat against the wishes of the people. We thank Iowa for Freedom, the American Family Association, and the Campaign for Working Families for working together to hold these judges accountable.”

If Iowa judges are limited to making rulings that are only supported by the majority of Iowans, then obviously the power of the judiciary in Iowa to defend the State Constitution would be completely neutralized. Why bother having a judicial branch with the power of examining constitutional questions at all? Of course, I strongly suspect that the language of direct democracy is merely what the NOM finds convenient in making its argument against marriage equality. As the struggle to defend marriage equality continues, arguments against it will evolve, especially in light of the fact that support for marriage equality continues to increase across the United States.

In the meantime, expelling the justices from Des Moines does not change the fact that marriage equality remains in effect in Iowa. But it could send a chilling national message that the Religious Right will pour resources into campaigns around the nation opposing other justices who make rulings perceived to be too friendly to LGBT rights, therefore staying the gavel of justices who want to side with, well, justice. This is the most pernicious effect of Tuesday’s judicial retention election in Iowa, and it could have national consequences. But the lesson is learned: in future elections of this nature, outside organizations on the side of marriage equality will have to get down in the mud a little bit too, spend some money, and work to defend the judges who rule in favor of equal rights under the law for all.

The night Obama was elected, my roommates and I huddled around our beaten and battered television amidst term papers and study guides to watch a rare, if not once-in-a-lifetime event occur: history catching up to our own ideals.  Obama appealed not only to the “bleeding-heart liberals,” but the youth who needed to believe that change was possible. A clichéd concept, but to a generation watching their parents lose their jobs, their grandparents lose their houses, and their peers die in Afghanistan, change was salvation.  Obama was our savior.  So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Sharron Angle.

His speech was moving, carrying all the themes and meaning we expected from a man of such deep intelligence and passion. I doubted we’d be disappointed, but a simple statement left us stunned:

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

“Oh my gawd!” my roommate shrieked, “did he just shout out to the gays??”

He did, and understandably so.  A large portion of the LGBT community threw all their weight behind his campaign, thrilled to root on a man who had no apparent moral objections to homosexuality (a claim that couldn’t be made for the McCain/Palin Bible camp).  It was assumed Obama would, with the magical flick of his wrist, give gays their rights.  All of them.  Stat.

What some members of the LGBT community failed to remember was that Obama’s agenda wasn’t driven by the 10 percent of the population who smacked his campaign logo next to their rainbow bumper stickers.  He never claimed (once running for President) to be a proponent for gay marriage.  He still needed to take into consideration the moderates and conservatives of the country who couldn’t sit through an episode of Will and Grace without squirming.  And they were out there.  The country was reminded of this when news quickly broke of the Proposition 8 victory in California.  An initiative Obama opposed.  See how this works?

Obama has managed to theoretically support the LGBT community without completely ruffling the feathers of the Christian right.

“Yes, the Defense of Marriage Act is wrong.”

“No, marriage is between a man and a woman.”

”Yes, Prop 8 is divisive.”

“No, give them civil unions.”

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is wrong.”

“Now hold that thought.”

Obama is not an advocate, but an ally of the LGBT community, and a meek ally at that. Wednesday’s enormous Prop-8 smack-down victory (hopefully the first of more to come) gave gay rights advocates a reason to celebrate, but left the more critical thinkers to contemplate Obama’s impending moment of truth.  As gay marriage rises from the shadows of the states and begins to enter federal territory, how will Obama respond?

Maybe two years ago, when the country was crawling out of its George W. hole, a vague nudge of support from the president would have been briefly sufficient.  Some bread, water, and a charismatic nod were more than the Bush administration had ever bothered to give.  But in the months to follow, as a flood of hostile bigots came barring down on local street corners and assembly halls, and the Christian right’s disgusted disapproval began to border on abusive rage, bread and water were no longer enough.  The scraps being fed in the form of partner benefits and a glacially-paced repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell only served as a reminder of what was truly deserved: equal rights.  All of them.

Much has changed within the country since the Obama campaign. Hope has sunken with his approval rating, and many have thrown their hands in the air, branding him a failure and a disappointment. Though I’ve not given up on Obama, this country certainly isn’t where I envisioned it to be on that inspiring night in November.  It has warped, mutated, and blistered into a nervous “before” picture of a crumbling empire.  That’s changed its citizens.  It’s changed me.

And yet, somewhere deep down, I’m still that liberal arts college student who waited five hours in a line to hear Obama speak about “hope” and “change” and the possibility of me and my friends becoming adults in a world that wouldn’t tell us, “No.  Who you are is not good enough.”

In these times deprived of Martin Luther Kings and Harvey Milks, my fellow students and I believed that Obama was supposed to fill the void.  He was supposed to save the world.  He was supposed to be everything to everyone.  But as it turns out, he isn’t a super hero or a miracle worker; he’s simply a person.  Just like the gays and lesbians who want to get married to the people they love. We’ll accept that you’re only human, Obama, if you acknowledge that we’re all human, too.

The reaction of the Catholic Church to last week’s court decision striking down California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 was swift and to the point. Speaking for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Francis George mourned that “It is tragic that a federal judge would overturn the clear and expressed will of the people in their support for the institution of marriage.” On the Protestant side, Focus on the Family chimed in that “Judge Walker’s ruling raises a shocking notion that a single federal judge can nullify the votes of more than 7 million California voters.”

This sudden Christian solicitude for the will of the people should make anyone familiar with the history of Christianity gag.

Democracy was invented by the Pagan Greeks; there is some reason to believe that Pagan Germanic tribes practiced a rough form of democracy as well. It certainly isn’t found anywhere in the Bible; when 250 “men of renown” complained to Moses that he was being overly autocratic, God obligingly opened a pit in the earth to swallow them up.

After Christianity seized control of the Roman Empire, democracy vanished from Europe altogether; Middle Ages society was founded on Augustine’s iron notion of rule by God, not by man. The Middle Ages Church did all it could (and that was quite a bit) to snuff out any glimmer of democracy before it could take hold. When the Emperor Frederick II published his “Constitution of Melfi” in 1231, it provided among other things for a representative assembly, with each town sending two delegates to inform the Emperor about local needs. A livid Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Frederick and called him the Antichrist. That should not have been surprising, for only a few years earlier Pope Innocent III had declared England’s Magna Carta, the first written expression of the English people’s rights, null and void because it purported to rein in the power of a divinely ordained monarch and vassal of the Pope.

The Protestant Reformation did nothing to advance the cause of democracy; neither Luther nor Calvin had the slightest intention of giving the common people any more power than the Pope had. By the 1640s, when the English Civil War broke out, the rebels were a curious mix of proto-democrats, heavily influenced by John Lilburne, and radical Calvinists, led by Oliver Cromwell. Lilburne’s goal was simple: he wanted all adult males to be able to elect Parliament, rather than just a small handful of the propertied class. Cromwell’s goal was equally simple: rule by the God experts, to impose morality on a sinful island. Cooperation between the two camps was easy when both were simply warring against the status quo, but once the king was defeated the incompatibility of their goals quickly surfaced. Cromwell ordered Lilburne’s arrest for treason, but after a dramatic trial before a jury Lilburne was acquitted. Didn’t matter; Cromwell threw him back in jail anyway, without bothering to file charges. Cromwell proceeded to expel the elected members of Parliament who voted against him – so much for democracy. Read the rest of this entry &raquo

This is a big week for marriage equality in North America. First, same-sex couples can now start applying for marriage licenses in Washington DC:

D.C. Superior Court began accepting marriage license applications from same-sex couples Wednesday morning, a historic milestone for gay couples and activists that was made possible by the city’s new gay marriage law.

About 45 couples with their coffee, newspapers and blackberries — many dressed in blazers and slacks as they planned to go to work after filing an application — were waiting in line when the court’s marriage bureau opened its doors at 8:30 a.m. Employees allowed 10 couples to enter at a time, and had extra personnel on hand to accept the applications.

Licenses take up to three days to process, so early next week will see the first same-sex marriages in the District of Columbia.

This follows a barrage of attempts by opponents to stop the marriage equality law passed by the DC Council in December by any means possible. Local anti-equality activist Bishop Harry Jackson had attempted to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States after the DC Court of Appeals declined to intervene, arguing that District residents deserved the opportunity to vote on marriage equality before it took effect. His effort failed.

And in Mexico City, a marriage equality law will takes effect today, after being passed in December of last year by the city’s leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD)-dominated government.

The Catholic Church has been, predictably, up in arms,
as is the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), the party of Mexico’s president Felipe Calderón::

“The family is under attack,” warned Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera, saying that the “perverse” measure would inflict psychological damage on “innocent children.”

…

“Marriage, as it was originally conceived, as a union between a man and a woman, guarantees the future of the state and of Mexican society,” Mariana Gómez del Campo, PAN’s leader in Mexico City, told a radio interviewer.

But opinion polls on the subject show widespread support among resident’s of Mexico’s capital city:

An opinion poll by El Universal newspaper in November found that 50 percent of Mexico City respondents accepted gay marriage and 38 percent opposed it. Residents ages 18 to 39 were more likely to be supporters.

Marriage equality is moving forward. While neither the United States nor Mexico currently have it on a national level, the symbolism of the national capitals of each nation enacting equality laws in the same week surely will not be lost on the world.

The Washington Post reports today on how pro-marriage equality organizations have recently been targeting the Mormon Church with advertisements and campaigns:

As more states take up the debate on same-sex marriage, some advocates of legalization are taking a very specific lesson from California, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominated both fundraising and door-knocking to pass a ballot initiative that barred such unions.

With the battle moving east, some advocates are shouting that fact in the streets, calculating that on an issue that eventually comes down to comfort levels, more people harbor apprehensions about Mormons than about homosexuality.

In particular, the article mentions web ads sponsored by the anti-Proposition 8 organization Californians Against Hate. The ads (which can be viewed, along with their accompanying documentation and campaign information, here), appeared on newspaper websites in three states on the East Coast but were apparently rejected by at least some newspapers for being insulting against the Mormon Church.

Why is the Mormon Church in particular being targeted by pro-marriage equality ads? The Washington Post explains how it may have played a big role in the narrow margin of passage for Proposition 8:

A torrent of last-minute contributions from church members across the country financed well-framed TV ads in the final weekend of the campaign. Opponents’ analysis of campaign-contribution reports indicated that Mormons contributed more than half of the campaign’s $40 million war chest.

The Mormon Church seems to be reluctant to actually take public credit for working for the passage of Proposition 8. The Washington Post notes that the Mormon Church was involved with an anti-marriage equality campaign in Hawaii in 1998 and spent $400,000 of church money but requested that the Catholic Church take the lead when it came to the public image of the campaign. This may have something to do with Mormons’ overall low favorability ratings with the American public in general, which declined to 37 percent last year. Perhaps, for this reason, the Mormon Church doesn’t feel that the most effective public face for the anti-marriage equality movement would be a Mormon one.

When it comes to marriage equality, is it fair to target the Mormons? While I am certainly against stigmatizing any particular individual based on his or her religion, the institution of the Mormon Church is fair game for criticism for its strong support for the suppression of LGBT civil rights. The institution has inserted itself into this issue to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of funding and resources for anti-gay campaigns. This is a campaign of bigotry, and the institution must be held accountable for it in the court of public opinion. In particular, Californians Against Hate has been working to illuminate areas that the church seems to prefer keeping quiet, such as the participation of top Mormon leaders in the creation of the the National Organization for Marriage, the national anti-marriage equality organization that drew attention for its laughably poor attempts to frighten people about same-sex marriage.

My one caveat is that I do not want to see this particular focus on the Mormon Church come at the expense of looking at the broader picture of anti-LGBT bigotry. In the end, for a successful campaign to reinstate marriage equality in California and to bring it to other states, the religious and non-religious alike are going to need to understand marriage equality as an issue that is fundamentally about civil rights and equality. This will require massive outreach, but it can be done; indeed, a movement to repeal Proposition 8 is already under way.

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam recently spoke at the Pew Forum on Faith in Public Life about his latest research on religion in America. He discussed the increasing lack of affiliation with any religion amongst younger generations in the United States, saying that the percentage of Americans in their 20s that declare no affiliation is now between 30 and 40 percent.

This comes on the heels of the recent news from the Pew Forum’s US Religious Landscape Survey that over 15 percent of Americans now report themselves to be unaffiliated with any religion. But looking at Putnam’s recent work, it is clear that there is a generational divide: young people are more secular than ever.

Why? Writing about Putnam’s speech, former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post op-ed columnist Michael Gerson characterizes the trend this way:

The politicization of religion by the religious right, argues Putnam, caused many young people in the 1990s to turn against religion itself, adopting the attitude: “If this is religion, I’m not interested.”

And as ABC news reported on Putnam’s speech:

This movement away from organized religion, says Putnam, may have enormous consequences for American culture and politics for years to come.

“That is the future of America,” he says. “Their views and their habits religiously are going to persist and have a huge effect on the future.”

For just one example of this, look at the generational divide on support for marriage equality (found via Daily Kos)

Fifty-four percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday say marriages between gay or lesbian couples should not be recognized as valid, with 44 percent suggesting they should be considered legal.

But among those 18 to 34 years old, 58 percent said same-sex marriages should be legal. That number drops to 42 percent among respondents aged 35 to 49, and to 41 percent for those aged 50 to 64. Only 24 percent of Americans 65 and older support recognizing same-sex marriages, according to the poll. (emphasis added)

With full marriage equality in five states now and New Hampshire poised to soon be the sixth, it is clear that the political landscape for marriage equality is shifting. The current generation of young voters are less likely to support future efforts to limit or repeal marriage equality. Hopefully Proposition 8 in California will be one of the last of its kind – while two-thirds of voters over the age of 65 supported it, the measure failed to gain a majority in any other age group.

While some of the political implications of this increase in lack of religious affiliation among young Americans are clear, another major question is, will it stick? Are young Americans going to be secular for good? As reported by Gerson::

Putnam regards the growth of the “nones” as a spike, not a permanent trend. The young, in general, are not committed secularists. “They are not in church, but they might be if a church weren’t like the religious right. . . . There are almost certain to be religious entrepreneurs to fill that niche with a moderate evangelical religion, without political overtones.”

Putnam’s book on this research is yet to be published, but I’ll be interested to read it when it comes out, because his discussion with the Pew Forum seemed to mainly focus on politics and the negative impact of the Religious Right on religious affiliation amongst younger Americans. But political and social views are only part of the picture. What else influences younger people’s lack of religious affiliation? In their report Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S., the Pew Forum provided additional research on this very subject, examining the reasons why Americans in general change affiliations or leave their former religious affiliations without adopting a new one. From the executive summary of the report:

Two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated and half of former Protestants who have become unaffiliated say they left their childhood faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, and roughly four-in-ten say they became unaffiliated because they do not believe in God or the teachings of most religions. Additionally, many people who left a religion to become unaffiliated say they did so in part because they think of religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, because religious organizations focus too much on rules or because religious leaders are too focused on power and money. Far fewer say they became unaffiliated because they believe that modern science proves that religion is just superstition. (emphasis added)

I initially thought that the increase in the number of people that are unaffiliated with organized religions would be driven in large part by increased scientific literacy. But even if this is happening, it’s not a very conscious process; as the Pew Forum reports, not many people credit science for their changes in religious outlook. Rather, the changes take place in light of what the report calls “disenchantment with religious people or institutions.” This is similar to Putnam’s characterization of the younger unaffiliated being driven away by intolerant religious conservatives.

Also significant is the age range at which the Pew Forum found people make their most monumental religious changes:

The survey finds that religious change begins early in life. Most of those who decided to leave their childhood faith say they did so before reaching age 24, and a large majority say they joined their current religion before reaching age 36. Very few report changing religions after reaching age 50.

So the religious decisions that people make in their younger years often end up staying with them. Nevertheless, the report points out that the unaffiliated population is one of the most dynamic religious populations in the United States, with over half of people who are raised without any affiliation later joining one.

I will be very curious to see how Putnam’s research fits with the picture painted by the Faith in Flux report. I certainly feel that humanists should not take for granted that the younger, less affiliated generation is going to automatically join our ranks. The Pew Forum reveals a dynamic religious population that may get disgusted with the politicization of religion or the frailty of human institutions but isn’t necessarily going to march in step with organized non-religion. The key, of course, will be humanist outreach to this population: we have to offer something of value, something beyond a critique of the institution of religion, something that offers the sense of community and togetherness that people are seeking, even as they decide that religious institutions are not serving their needs.

A Religious Right legal organization has a message for county employees in Iowa: if you don’t like same-sex marriage, then don’t do your job! From the Iowa Independent.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a legal advocacy group founded in 1994 by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and the late Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, sent an e-mail to each of Iowa’s county recorders asking them to tell their staff that they “shall not be required to issue or process a marriage license, or to perform, assist or participate in such procedures, against that individual’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

They’re asking county recorders to defy the recent Iowa State Supreme Court ruling that enforces marriage equality, with ADF Senior Legal Counsel Doug Napier saying, “Government employees who believe in marriage as the union of one man and one woman should not be penalized for abiding by their beliefs.”

See a problem with this reasoning? The First Amendment guarantees your freedom to believe and worship as you wish without government interference. But I’ve said it here before, and it’s worth repeating: religious freedom does not mean the freedom to not do your job. Some beliefs can be accommodated in the workplace, others cannot; if your job is to issue marriage licenses, your desire to issue them only to certain types of people is discriminatory and cannot be accommodated.

The State Attorney General sees it that way:

Attorney General Tom Miller has repeatedly warned county recorders that they do not have the authority to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, and “recorders do not have discretion or power to ignore the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling,” Miller said.

Can you imagine what life in the United States would be like if government employees could ignore court rulings at will? What if a school principal tried to ignore Brown v. the Board of Education because desegregation would supposedly be against his or her conscience? What if county recorders simply refused to issue marriage licenses to nonreligious or interracial couples? What if a Catholic county recorder refused to issue marriage licenses to divorcees?

We can’t go down that road. The government can’t step in and force you to believe or not believe something. But when you’re on the clock, you do your job. Any county recorder or staff member in Iowa that refuses to abide by the Supreme Court ruling should be fired.

On the heels of recent victories for marriage equality in Iowa and Vermont, more good news comes today from the state of New York. From the New York Times:

Gov. David A. Paterson plans to introduce legislation on Thursday to make marriage between same-sex couples legal in New York, advancing his push for greater rights for gay men and lesbians, at a time when other states have done so.

Mr. Paterson’s plans represent the most public effort yet by the governor, who has been a consistent supporter of gay rights, to position himself and New York at the crest of a broadening national movement.

The bill may have some difficulty passing the Senate (although it is expected to clear the Assembly easily), but Governor Paterson is hoping that the recent momentum in favor of marriage equality will sway a few more votes in Albany. If the bill passes, New York will become the fifth state to legalize same-sex marriage.

There are several reasons why marriage equality is so important to humanists. First, it is an issue of separation of church and state. To this day, I have never heard an argument against marriage equality that wasn’t ultimately rooted in religion. Usually the case rests on certain selectively read passages from the Bible. But we know that public policy decisions have to rest on secular grounds. We can’t prohibit something simply because the Bible prohibits it. Religious tradition isn’t adequate when we’re discussing today why same-sex marriage should continue to be banned.

More importantly, at the core of humanism lies the tenet that ethical values must be based in the real world and can change over time. Humanism and Its Aspirations states it this way:

Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond. We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility.

There simply isn’t any room in this worldview for arbitrarily denying equal rights to one population based on a 2,000-year-old text that is only relevant to one portion of society. To tell one couple that their love and relationship simply doesn’t count as much as another couple’s does not respect their inherent worth and dignity. Humanists want to see concrete reasons for laws, reasons that go well beyond “it’s tradition” or “the Bible says so.”

If New York passes this bill, the pressure will increase in other states to legalize marriage equality. When you see lawmakers debate this issue and decide to favor human needs today, rather than prescribed behavior from thousands of years ago, you are seeing humanist values in action.

(Crossposted at Friendly Atheist)

You almost feel sorry for Rick Warren. As Hemant at the Friendly Atheist and others have pointed out, he was recently caught making statements that could charitably be called misleading and uncharitably called baldfaced lies. He claimed to have never endorsed Proposition 8 but everyone found a video that showed him doing just that. As far as I can understand, his excuse is that his video telling people to vote for Proposition 8 wasn’t an endorsement. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either. Now he’s making excuses not to go on ABC’s This Week, citing exhaustion.

But things must be particularly bad when one of Rick Warren’s supporters starts calling him out on his bad excuses. Warren blamed Beliefnet founder Steven Waldman for phrasing a question poorly, saying “I was asked a question that made it sound like I equated gay marriage with pedophilia or incest, which I absolutely do not believe.” Waldman responded in a post sarcastically entitled “Why Rick Warren’s Controversial Words on Gay Marriage Are Entirely My Fault”:

Judge for yourself. Here’s the full exchange:

“WARREN: The issue to me, I’m not opposed to that [some partnership rights] as much as I’m opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

BELIEFNET: Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

[WARREN:] Oh , I do. For 5,000 years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion – this is not a Christian issue. Buddhist, Muslims, Jews – historically, marriage is a man and a woman.”

Had he wanted to clarify that he didn’t equate gay marriage with those other relationships he might have slightly altered the wording from “oh, I do” to something like, I dunno, “oh, I don’t.” That might have been clearer.

…This whole controversy could have been easily avoided if he’d taken a modicum of responsibility and said, “I’m sorry. I did accidentally imply that homosexuality and these other relationships were morally equivalent. That’s not what I believe, and I apologize for implying that.” Instead, he’s blamed other people for distorting his words.

Now, Steven Waldman is not my favorite person in the world (he doesn’t even crack the top 10), but I admire how he handled the situation. After criticizing Warren for failing to take responsibility, he ends his post saying “Having not learned my lesson, I want to close with another defense of Rick Warren. Despite his lack of self awareness on gay marraige [sic] (and the pain he’s caused gays), I still think that he deserves to [sic] great credit for his extraordinary work in fighting poverty and disease in Africa. This man is saving thousands of lives and we should keep looking at the full Rick Warren.”

Indeed. Let’s give credit where credit is due and blame where blame is due. Rick Warren has flaws, and those deserve condemnation. His excuses are wearing thin and his views on homosexuality are harmful. But he is also doing good works, and let’s not forget those.

An article in today’s USA Today explores the connection between legislative proposals for marriage equality and the relative proportion of people answering “None” for their religion on the recent American Religious Identification Survey. The results, of course, are no surprise:

Same-sex marriage proposals are sweeping into New England state legislatures this spring, particularly in places where organized religious opposition may be the weakest…states where the percentage of “nones”—people who say they have no religion—is at or above the national average of 15% are more likely to push expanding the scope of marriage, civil unions or same-sex partner rights.

For example, Vermont’s Senate just passed a same-sex marriage bill, which is expected to be passed by the House this week. And Vermont also has the highest percentage of the religiously unaffiliated in the nation at 34%. A similar situation is found in neighboring New Hampshire, where a marriage equality bill is expected to pass soon, and the unaffiliated are 29% of the population.

The analysis also found the reverse to be true: the states with the highest percentage of adherents to conservative religious sects were most likely to have taken legislative action against same-sex marriage. That, of course, is not news.

But what is particularly interesting in all of this is the generational aspect:

Barry Kosmin, Trinity College sociologist and co-director of the survey, says the correlation (between support for same-sex marriage and lack of religious affiliation) is no coincidence. “Given that 25% of GenX (those ages 29 to 42) and GenY (ages 18 to 28) are nones, this is where we are headed,” he says. “It’s a standoff between young people with a tremendous sympathy for civil rights and what appears to be biblical injunctions from religion.”

I think it’s very significant that the opponents of marriage equality have been generally unable to articulate a secular case for their position. For example, an essay on same-sex marriage by religious right leader James Dobson concludes like this:

Marriage is a sacrament designed by God that serves as a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and His church. Tampering with His plan for the family is immoral and wrong. To violate the Lord’s expressed will for humankind, especially in regard to behavior that He has prohibited, is to court disaster.

That message simply doesn’t resonate with the unaffiliated, for obvious reasons. Frankly, to a large portion of society it reads like gibberish.

Opponents of marriage equality have had more success when they can obfuscate the religious basis of their opposition with judicial or legal issues, such as with the recent successful passage of Proposition 8 in California. The proponents of the measure seemed to be successful in convincing enough people that the real issue was that the California State Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage rights was trampling on democratic rule. Nevertheless, the margin of victory for Prop 8 was narrow.

California missed the chance to lead the nation into a new era of greater marriage equality, but other states, all with relatively high percentages of unaffiliated, or “nones,” are moving forward:

Coming up: Legislatures in Rhode Island (nones 19%) and Maine (nones 25%) will hold hearings this spring on marriage “equality” bills. Nearby in New York (nones 14%), the Legislature could approve a bill “by the Fourth of July,” Rouse says.

This new push in the post Prop 8 era is very encouraging. With the diminished influence of conservative sects of Christianity all over the United States, I hope we’ll see this push for marriage equality continue and spread out of its current Northeast stronghold.