There’s a bit of an ideological war going on in the Christian faith, and if you weren’t paying close attention, you wouldn’t even know it’s waging. Take the “Manhattan Declaration” for instance (not the one on climate change), a frightening manifesto by religious conservatives that claims equality and anti-discrimination laws are destroying people’s freedom of religion. Their biggest issues, unsurprisingly, are gay marriage (which they equate to bestiality, polygamy and incest), abortion rights, and assisted suicide:

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s [NOTE: are they referring to taxes here, cuz they usually hate that shit]. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s

The whole document is an attempt by Conservatives to paint themselves as martyrs fighting for people’s rights. In reality, they’re resisting the way society is changing; namely, how it’s becoming more tolerant and egalitarian. It’s taken a long time, but we’re finally beginning to understand human sexuality is not a covenant with a supreme being, but rather the product of biological impulses. You can no more chose your sexuality than you can your eye color, although there are plenty of ways people try to cheat this (think colored contacts and gay-to-straight “therapy”).

You want to know why it’s a bad idea to let religious institutions dictate what marriage is all about?

Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life…Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit.

You hear that? Marriage isn’t about romance, love or wanting to share your life with someone else. It’s all about procreation, and if you aren’t happy about that, too fucking bad! Your body was made by God to create offspring, and if you think otherwise, you’re committing a sin against him. So, rather than divorce the man who fathered your children and who lovelessly sticks his seed-squirter into your baby-receptacle, you should stick it out for the good of mankind; happiness and love be damned!