I'm not sure how to respond to you, Jerry. What if the Tao or Talmud or Confucious or Koran was all we had to go on? Not all, just one of those? Do you really want to be a Muslim. What if the government that took on that moral role you speak of was Muslim? You wouldn't like that at all, same as any other believer doesn't want their belief system forcibly imposed.
That said, religion has a critical role to play in a society in that it provides people with freely-accepted bounds of acceptable behavior.
The Jews made their dietary laws for a good reason -- no refrigeration. Trichinosis was a bad deal, and guzzling down unpasteurized milk wasn't so smart either.
So there was some practical stuff in there to keep the good guys alive.
Never mind STD's in pre-drug days. Bacchanlia would have killed off the population in no time, leading to invasions from healthy nations.
The reason for all the brimstone talk was simple...with an all-seeing God up there in the absence of cops, there wasn't a need for a huge gummint. The weekly guilt-trip on Sunday worked...for a long time.
Okay, now lets go to an atheistic nation where the theorists decided to kill the church and replace it with Father State. USSR. The state controlled behavior so completely that subjects never had a chance to develop skills of individual self-government, self-restraint. The repression was so pervasive it developed to the point where if someone could do a crime, no matter how petty, they would -- simply to prove to themselves they were still humans and not automatons.
When the Soviet Union went belly-up, this nation without a moral compass went totally bonkers...but there has also been a resurgence in religion, and Russia and all the spinoffs (well, most anyway) seem to be finding their way with a little bit of a moral compass.
However, when you get down to the dirt here in America, I would never willingly accept moral guidance from government. That is for society at large acting as parents and fellow citizens.
My parents hardly ever went to church or temple (I'm a mutt), but they managed to inculcate me with a sense of right or wrong that needs no reinforcement. The state could never have done that.
Finally, the Texas decision. I feel it was the right one. Just like government should stay the hell out of our gun rooms, it should stay the ($*^&# out of our bedrooms. That said, I do not support a societal legitimation of "gay marriage." That's not what marriage is for, not how biology is designed to work. Period.
If two froots want to make a life partnership among themselves, fine. If they can find a private employer willing to insure the "partner" and hand over such private-sector benefits that normal married couples get...well, fine. But spousal Social Security benefits? Nah.
Bottom line is I don't think gays et al should be persecuted, nor do I feel they should be supported. Leave 'em alone -- in return, they are expected to leave the rest of us alone.
