Tuesday Open Thread [5.13.14]

Arkansas becomes the most Dixie state to have marriage equality. Dale Carpenter looks at the national picture:

There are now more than 70 lawsuits involving same-sex marriage pending in courts around the country. A dozen federal district courts have issued opinions in favor of same-sex marriage since last summer’s Supreme Court decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor. Five federal appellate courts are now considering the issue.

Today, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond will hear arguments in the case challenging the constitutionality of Virginia’s ban. No matter who wins, and no matter who wins in similar cases like it across the country, I expect that we are going to get a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on the unconstitutionality of these bans by June 2015.

“The freedom of religion doesn’t mean that every religion has to be heard,” said Republican Al Bedrosian, a Roanoke, Va County Supervisor. “If we allow everything, where do you draw the line?”

Indeed. Which is why our Founders had the better idea not to hear religion, at all, in the public government sphere. Which is why they built a wall of separation between church and state.

Yet this pond scum Bedrosian thinks our Founding Fathers established a Christian nation and they were just lying to themselves when they wrote that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

“I think America, pretty much from Founding Fathers on, I think we have to say more or less that we’re a Christian nation with Christian ideology,” Bedrosian said. “If we’re a Christian nation, then I would say that we need to move toward our Christian heritage.” […]

That’s what Bedrosian intends to do in his position as county supervisor, saying he would reject any request by any non-Christian adherent to deliver a religious or secular invocation. “I would say no,” Bedrosian said. “That does not infringe on their freedom of religion. The truth is you’re trying to infringe on my right, because I don’t believe that.”

So, according to Bedrosian’s “logic” or “reasoning,” if you hear a prayer at a public meeting that is not something you believe, that infringes on your rights. So if you are a Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Catholic (I add Catholic here because we Catholics do not want to be associated with these Evangelical loons) citizen of Roanoke County, Virginia, your constitutional right to free exercise and non-establishment of religion are being violated, according to Bedrosian himself.

I suppose Bedrosian does not view non-Evangelical Christians as humans or American citizens entitled to their constitutional rights. That is the only explanation of why Bedrosian is defying his own logic.