Argument 1: This country was founded on Christian principles...

Argument 1: This country was founded on Christian principles, since Christianity clearly outlaws homosexuality, the founding fathers must not have wanted gays to marry.

The appeal to the intent of the founding fathers is a common refrain for conservatives. It's a clever retreat too, because we can't possibly know what their intent was. It has the same esoteric aroma that characterizes theological arguments. These backward Rightists say, "Our country was founded on Christianity." But any real patriot who has read the founding documents of our country knows that the founding fathers were very careful to explain and emphasize that what they were writing were not religious documents. Rightists refer to the biblical principles in the constitution. I don't know what they're talking about, because I can't find any biblical references in the Constitution, the Bill or Rights, or the Declaration of Independence. The fathers used the word "God" a lot, but so does Alcoholics Anonymous, the The Torah, the Koran and the Book of Mormon. These are NOT Christian organizations. So this argument that somehow the Bible is infused into our founding documents is really only something that appeals to the ignorance of people who don't care to read the founding documents. I am not one of those people.

I want to spend a minute on this because I think it's important and I don't like the inattention that it gets in the body politic. The founding fathers were Christian, all of them. So it only follows that their construction of the country's founding documents have some similarities to the Christian morality, but I feel confident that these are purely incidental. The founders had the opportunity to legislate the ten commandments, but they chose not to, and if you think there wasn't a very strong and powerful lobby for legislating scripture, then you haven't read enough about American history. There were epic arguments over the inclusion of scripture and theological writings in the founding documents. It was a choice not to infuse our founding documents with religious writ, not an oversight.

But these right wing fanatics have been using this argument to suppress people and freedoms and knowledge for the past two and a half centuries. And somehow this argument is newly sharp each time it's resurrected. I don't understand. If you look at the important issues in our society - abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, climate change, the list goes on and on – you'll see a laundry list of things the founding fathers would have no concept of and on which their judgment would be utterly worthless. So you can't say to me that you know how the founding fathers would vote or act or that it would matter on issues that are entirely a product of technology, modernization, and globalization. I will say though that if you were to apply the inclinations of the founding fathers, President Washington in particular was very concerned about our country's involvement in foreign affairs, and yet we don't find any discussion of that in the religious right wing's deliberation over the War in Iraq.

And the most important point I want to make about this founding fathers business is that the values they infused into our country's founding documents are not specific to Christianity. You look at the language in those documents - unity, justice, tranquility, welfare, defense - these are human values that transcend culture, religion, even time, and religious rightists have no special right to lay claim to them.

I think the founding fathers would be more interested in securing domestic tranquility by encouraging dialogue and equality among groups like Muslims, Christians, homosexuals, and the many others. What the founding fathers were looking for was a system that preserved the most fundamental human rights while facilitating the change required to survive the ages, to perfect our union. They wanted to facilitate and encourage dialogue, and the way to do that is not to dehumanize others for things that don't affect you and for things which they cannot control.