oil/water

The gay rights movement has gained significant progress in the unites states in recent years with same-sex partner benefits to government employees - legalization of gay marriage in Rhode island, Vermont, Idaho Main, and the push to repeal the governments “don’t ask, don’t tell policy.” Although these are wonderful steps to equality for gay Americans it is still not enough. Unfortunately one of the main problems with the progression of “gay rights” is that we live in a country dominated by Christianity. I firmly believe that Christianity and religion as a whole are to blame for the nation wide discrimination of gays.
In this essay I plan to disscuss the “supposed” separation of church and state and and how anti-gay laws are based on "biblical principles of sexual morality." The thought that marriage for example, can only be defined as "between one man, and one woman" is based on christian values. I belive that the gay rights issue is really a civil rights issue and will not make true headway until people start to distance themselves from the oppressive religious views and adopt a more open and loving attitude towards their fellow man.
In my essay I plan to elaborate on the damaging effects that christian dogma has on homosexuals and can lead it's fowllers to a life of hate and discrimination. I plan to talk about extremist hate groups such as Fred Phelp's Westbro Baptist Church and how they and similar religous groups impact gay americans. I will also give several examples of various political and powerful public figures that have been caught in some major scandles,: Ted Haggard, Mark Foley,Larry Craig just to name a few. Besides the public figures caught in "gay" scandles, I want to mention some others caught is "straight" affairs (Spitzer,Edwards,Duvall,ect.) because it is important to point out their own hiprocicy of not living up to the same christian morals that they use to justify their descrimination on gays. Gay teen suicide is another issue that I feel is necessary to disscus because it is often a product of gay theists struggling to reconcile their sexuallity and their own religion.
Richard Dawkins is a prominent atheist scientist and author of the book "The God Delusion," and in it he talks about different aspects of atheism and how the very concept of religion is detramental to society as a whole. As an atheist myself, Dawkins is one of my favorite scholars and I will be incorperating some of his writings into my essay as well. And lastly, what good essay on gays and religion would be compleate without mentioning the current crisis of the catholic curch and it's gay pedo priests. I also plan to disscus how these issues affect me as a gay man in a long term relationship and how my views on religion have changed drastically, despite being raised as a catholic and then converted to christianity at age 15.