Last week, the Texas A&M University Student Senate passed a bill that would allow students to opt out of funding of the school’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center for religious purposes. Though the bill didn’t make it past the student body president’s desk, our Southeastern Conference counterparts have helped reinforce the misconception that religion and the LGBTQ community are mutually exclusive.
The bill was evidently controversial, and it lacked substance to be seriously considered. For starters, the bill allowed students to opt out of the funding of the GLBT center for “religious purposes” but failed to mention in what scenario this would be done. Would everyone who chooses to opt out have to prove his or her faith to do so, or could anyone abuse the system in order to anonymously discriminate?
It’s also worth mentioning this would be the first funding opt-out at Texas A&M, so I question: Where are the rest of the bills drafted to protect the religious freedom of other students? Where’s the bill that allows Jewish and Muslim students to opt out of funding for dining halls serving pork? What about the bill drafted for certain Christians who would prefer their student fees not fund the university apparel store that blends fabric?
The use of religion as a justification for legal discrimination of the LGBTQ community in the United States is contradictory to what “freedom of religion” actually means. We tend to forget that our ancestors founded this country in an attempt to escape religious perjury, and included the freedom to practice any religion in the First Amendment to make sure that it never happened again. They made sure to create a democracy, not a theocracy, but as of late, the church and state haven’t been so separate.
It’s hard for religion to not seep into our government when the majority of the people who have been a part of it have had their morals heavily influenced by their own personal faith. This is seen most clearly in the struggle for marriage equality. Many opponents would argue the word “marriage” itself is a Biblical term, but once it became the term used in our laws, it lost any religious connotation in our legal system.
The religious word “marriage” and the legal term “marriage” are two separate entities. I do not wish to change the religious “marriage” to something that goes against a core belief of a certain faith, but I do wish to change the legal “marriage” to apply to all American couples seeking life-long partnership.
It is easily refutable to say that to combat the controversy in the similar terminology, our government should create another term for marriage that can be used for same-sex couples. This has been seen with the creation of “civil unions” that some states have adopted, Colorado being the most recent. But there are still differences between “marriages” and “civil unions” — the main one being that they don’t offer the same benefits from the federal government. Therefore, as the term stands today, this alternative is not a fair solution.
Even if, hypothetically speaking, the term “civil union” offered the exact same benefits as a “marriage” did, the only difference being the sexual orientation of its recipients, this would still be discrimination. That is saying same-sex couples aren’t worthy of the same title as their heterosexual counterparts. This isn’t equality; this is legal justification of bigotry.
Can we, as citizens living under the law of the United States government, really remain separate and still consider ourselves equal? Our past says no, and our future agrees.