Seperate Church and State

After over 40 years of existence as a Caymanian, and now with children of my own, I’m perplexed at the narrow sightedness of some of my fellow Caymanian people on the Human Rights Issue regarding the Constitution and the continuous injection of out dated, religious views especially in the area of homosexuality. I attended the debate at the Family Life Centre and felt physically ill from the hate coming from the so called ‘church people’ at that meeting.

There is a good reason why in modern society there is a ‘wall of separation’ between the church and state. The Hon. Kurt Tibbett’s said something at the debate that really resonated with me: “the constitution is only as good as the people we have in power or in charge”. How very true and it’s concerning that it seems as if our country is being run by a few church leaders that have their own religious agenda and whom are being given the floor to preach this agenda to the population in the name of God. This is not being fair to all and is more the way that Afghanistan is indoctrinated by regimes such as the Taliban.

Please allow me to quote a scripture from the same Bible that gives us the foundation for our moral standing:

Deuteronomy 21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
21:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
21:20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

If we were to follow the Bible literally, we all know that as parents existing in an intelligent society that we would have to kill most of our sons and daughters if we were to follow this quote from the Bible. We therefore should not be cherry picking the passages that we want to live by and need to understand that we can no longer abide literally by these archaic rules from a different time and culture. This is same reason that we cannot abide by the scriptures that say we should also execute gays (Leviticus 20:13) or put to death all those who work on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2) The scripture of Leviticus also states that it is prohibited to get tattoos, eat pork or shellfish, get your fortune told or play with the skin of a pig (there goes jerk pork and playing football!)

It really scares me that there are fellow Caymanians that live thinking that the only thing that will seriously erode the moral fabric of our society and culture is to give gays and lesbians any rights to exist. I commend the lady who quoted all the issues that are never discussed by the religious institutions during the course of our every day existence, yet which are crimes classed as abominations in the Bible and happen daily in our society, such as adultery, child abuse, domestic abuse and our ever increasing crime rate. Why don’t we look at how many of the gays in our community commit these acts? I can tell you without a doubt that these acts are being committed every day by some of our so called Christian members of society.

Do we really believe that acknowledging that some people in our society are gay will destroy the institution of marriage or corrupt our children? I ask you, how many couples are there that each of us knows that have been married more then once or twice. Or know of any child that has seen gay relationships on TV and decided that because of that they will 'become' gay. Yet we concentrate on taking the rights away from two people who only want to love each other, because it is not within the guide lines of what you as an individual see as ‘proper’. That is a sad society indeed.

The Hon. Mr. McLaughlin has started his fear-mongering campaign, trying to convince the Caymanian people that if we give rights to all we will have to pay for housing and medical care to ex-pats. Well I know that if I went to America, to work and couldn’t afford proper health care or housing, it would NOT be provided for me free of charge, so why would that be true of Cayman? It's a ruse to try to steer you away from the real concerns the Church has regarding giving rights to all as that would include gays. The bottom line is if the person is not a citizen and doesn’t have health care then he/ she has to pay the bill. Just like my family is now paying a CI$175,000 health bill incurred after my half brother (a born Caymanian) was killed by a hit and run driver here. Life is hard for some Mr. McLaughlin, and no one expects a Government hand out but what we all want as human beings is the ability to live like human beings and have the same rights for all Caymanians whatever ‘differences’ they might have.