UK marriage equality rights and religion, one anthropologist’s opinion

I do try to steer myself away from the overtly political posts, but in all honesty I’m constantly surprised by UK politics, and though I’m open to the debate on issues of marriage equality I get slightly irrate at the direct use of religious principles to persuade political decisions.

If you look at the statistics of the typical person who becomes an anthropologist, they tend to be highly educated and scientifically focused, and with that comes a whole range of beliefs that don’t rule religion out, but accommodate the very founding principles of anthropology as a humanistic science. This demands that one observes a wide range of peoples’ beliefs to promote understanding without making judgmental statements about what is witnessed. Though anthropologists compare and contrast belief systems, this is usually done to help interpret the observations made and not specifically to judge them, which is also true of world religions.

Being a product of my education and fairly liberal upbringing, I happen to be a liberal. With that comes my innate belief that having a set of rules which separates one group from the rest of society because of their race, sexual orientation, gender, nationality, religion, or disability is inherently wrong - and I’m pretty sure many conservatives would agree with this statement. Equal rights are supposed to be afforded to everyone in society and yet for some reason, there are still those who feel same sex marriage should be denied on religious grounds.

I’m not a person without faith, but I find it really hard to swallow that an entire country should live by the principles of the belief systems of a select portion of society. Despite the United Kingdom being a recognized Christian state, it is still socially secular and should remain so. Vacuous statements such as ‘Marriage between a man and a woman is the fundamental building block of human society’ do not take the place of a thought out argument for or against same sex marriage. A statement taken from various religious beliefs cannot act as a substitute ethos for why everyone in the UK must have their marriage policies decided based on others’ religious systems.

Upsettingly this weekend I read a news article stating faith leaders of the UK signed a petition to David Cameron urging him to rethink his bill on gay marriage reform (article here), and I was especially disturbed by the inclusion of Buddhists and Sikhs into this group. I was slightly relieved to see that the inclusion of Buddhist and Sikh community members was small, and in all honestly pretty obscure. John Beard was the only Buddhist representative (not sure I remember any Buddhist canons morally judging the way people choose to live).

Everyone has the right to freedom of speech of course, but when you bring religion into the mix, you bring another set of overarching principles into your argument that for political and policy making situations are wholly inappropriate. As an anthropologist, I think religion has its function in society in the same way that marriage also functions as an aspect of society, but the freedom to choose whatever religion suits you and beliefs you ascribe to your identity should also be applied to the freedom for people to choose to live as it suits them. Discrimination is discrimination. Marginalizing, castigating, and denying a certain group marriage rights based on religious beliefs is a dangerous basis and tenuous ground from which to make public policy decisions. The Church has continued to evolve over the years letting people get divorced and remarried, and letting women become priests. If the Church never wants to accept same sex marriages, as a separate entity from the state it can of course make that decision, but using religious arguments to prevent SSM from happening rings altogether undemocratic to me. In an ideal world, the SSM debate would be decided based on principles of tolerance and a complete separation of church and state.