Pride Month 2022
The Cultural Appropriation of a Religious Covenant
June 26th, 2015.
The United States Supreme Court rules in a 5-4 decision in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, that state bans on same-sex marriage and on recognizing same-sex marriages duly performed in other jurisdictions are unconstitutional under the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Majority Justice opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy stating the right to marry is “inherent in the liberty of the person” and therefore protected by the due process clause, “which prohibits the states from depriving any person of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” ”
What the justices in support of same sex marriage failed to see then when making this decision is what marriage actually is, or was, and that is it is still a Judeo Christian religious covenant between one man and one woman under and with God that predates the founding of the United States and most Western countries by thousands of years.
Since then in the West, marriage has been culturally appropriated by secular society and is now as far removed from what it actually means as is the Easter holiday and to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But this doesn’t mean Easter doesn’t still stand for and is practiced by those who continue to celebrate it for what it actually means, a reverent religious ceremony.
Those of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths share this belief of the origin of marriage in common and arguably lost the handle on marriage being a religious practice when they agreed to the marriage certificate that is really nothing more than a receipt showing you paid for a tax to the government on your religious covenant between one of the opposite sex and God. We wouldn’t agree to pay for a tax on communion or the eucharist or Passover or Ramadan, but for some reason we continue to pay for a marriage certificate. Why?
By paying the government for a marriage certificate, people of faith end up agreeing to permit government to define what it is and isn’t. Since 6-26-2015, actually before another religious symbol, the rainbow, has also been culturally appropriated by secular society as the symbol in large part for the culturally appropriated covenant, marriage. Two-thing-in-one.
This is what Pride Month represents to me, a time secular society celebrates culturally appropriated religious symbols and covenants. This of course should not prevent us, those of the religious sects that celebrate marriage in its original context, from practicing our religious covenants for what they really mean. Instead of being conditioned to secularize religious covenants, we must never forget where we come from, who we represent, and why we acknowledge marriage for what it truly is.
