How far we have strayed!

I'm going to be voting on the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment (sponsored by Florida4Marriage.org and appropriately numbered two) in November, and I'll be voting NO.

Here's the official ballot summary:

This amendment protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife and provides that no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.

I'll be voting NO because Proposition 2 would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The exclusion of homosexuals from marriage is a religious idea that serves no secular purpose. Florida4Marriage.org doesn't even try to conceal their theocratic agenda, and (among other things) outlines a "church action plan" and provides "sample sermons." The largest contributors to the campaign are all religious organizations:

• Florida Family Action (exists to "promote Chrisitan worldview")
• Florida Catholic Conference
• Florida Baptist Convention
• Focus on the Family (exists to defend "God-ordained" marriage)

The problem is that organizations like Focus on the Family don't think they need a secular justification for legislation. To them, the USA is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles, and this mythology permeates even the highest levels of American government. Presidential candidate John McCain claimed last year that "the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." Let's be perfectly clear on this point: The Constitution does not even once contain the word God, let alone Christ! Furthermore, the Constitution mentions religion only twice: once in Article VI, section 3 ("no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States"), and again in the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"). This was not an accident. The American Constitution is explicitly secular.

Apparently our second President, John Adams, was being a little too optimistic when he wrote in 1778:

It will never be pretended that any persons employed in [the formation of the American governments] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven ... it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.