I got to thinking how up in arms the right-wing fundamentalists would be if, while I had been in school, I (now an atheist) had started actively, vehemently, and loudly denouncing fundamentalists as abominations whose sick lifestyle choice should be condemned and fought by all good citizens. In public school, it’s likely I would have been severely disciplined.
Then a solution came to me. A way for gays to receive legal protection from discrimination:
Declare that homosexuality is a religion.
Gays can claim religious freedom for their beliefs, and protection against discrimination for their sexual activities, which can be classified as religious worship/ritual. (heck, sex is a religious experience for most people, right…?)
A somewhat funny proposition, but honestly, it could work. Whaddaya think? Any …um… converts?
Even if it’s a religious practice, it’s still not allowed to do illegal things (like Voodoo practicers have to obey health codes when they kill their goats, Mormons can’t practice polygamy (when they did so)), so gay marriage and sodomy would still be off-limits. I reckon it would not be considered discrimination if you fired someone for openly admitting they do illegal things, so gays still would probably be SOL. What would probably work best is start a religion but make it all secretive so no one knows what its beliefs are, get it all accepted and respected, and then reveal that homosexuality is a required practice. It’ll go over much better. But it seems really like just a roundabout way of achieving acceptance the way gays are already working to do; you have American’s love affair with religion (whoops, sorry, little editorializing slipped in there) to help you out, but there’s also a strong undercurrent of rejection of small, “weird” religions that will pull you down, so I figure its kind of a wash.
But, hey, at least you’d get some money from Bush’s “faith-based chartities” plan!
I would think that a better loophole would be exploiting the “stereotypes” section of the law on sex. It could be argued that all the discrimination on gays comes from stereotypes of how people should be.
While I don’t agree with the suggestion of the OP, not all religions have a standard holy book. Take Wicca for instance. Wicca does not have a single standard holy book, yet it is still a religion.
Spoofe: Tales Of The City.
One basic problem with this idea is that I simply couldn’t become a member of the Church of Harvey Milk of Latterday Fags because I’m already a Wiccan. So there you go.
?