It’s the proper thing to do
This is true, very true.
It’s the proper thing to do
This is true.
If you love a nice young man
Always marry him if you can.
for it’s the proper, proper, proper thing to do.

IT’s the proper thing to do
If you woo, when you do.
It’s the proper thing to do, when you woo.
If you’ve tried the boys all round
You can Marry the best you’ve found.
That’s the proper, proper, proper thing to do.

It’s the thing we’ve got to do
Me and You.

A picture (or scanned) of your wedding invitation would be sufficient.

A copy of the announcement in the local newspaper and the resulting “Letter to the Editor” in protest.

A link to your Macy’s or Pottery Barn Wedding Registry.

…though it was on my agenda to destroy marriage this week, i find i just don’t have the time.

“Protect ALL children, Vote NO on Prop. 8″.

This one fact is The Great Solace on right wing forums. A great many revenge/reconquest fantasies and We Will Win When the Baby Boomers Die fictional scenarios are built upon it. They have also convinced themselves that Gen Yers are secretly social conservatives or can easily persuaded to be it.

Christians cannot recruit – so they reproduce!

Well, the real demographic story is a bit complicated. Basically, the American upper middle class has de-religionized and it’s spreading into the middle middle class. Religionist Christians (who are mostly lower middle class) are having a terrible time with this situation. There are in effect glass ceilings when they have trouble working with liberals and disbelievers, a sense of quietly being ostracized outside places full of their own, all for a net effect of sideways or quiet downward mobility.

And in that sideways or downward mobility lies the counter to the We Will Outreproduce You. The long range prospects for that life strategy are that their True Believer kids will keep the rigid dogmatism and get frustrated with mainstream society and education and drop to working class. Or (if fervent) soon flee to where their attitudes are accepted or not rejectable, i.e. to ever deeper and poorer Red Statia, fortresses and outposts of Redstatia, and/or the Third World outright. Even there there is no safety in the long run, and the retreat must continue. Eventually that means caves in Afghanistan….

Of course, most kids raised by these idiots are smart enough to recognize the inviable load of b.s. their parents are trying to pack into their heads and condemn them to drag around for life. Some reject it all outright. But most do what we’re seeing all over American Christianity now: dropping the fervor, quietly disbelieve as much of the crud as they can (and it’s a struggle), act according to their own best judgment in their private and professional lives, and go passive toward all the Big Causes Every Christian Should Side With. And their kids tend to be pretty free of the b.s. and practical about it all.

That building passivity and “liberalism” (i.e. following individual conscience) in the churches is tearing up the religious conservatives. That’s why we’re seeing all these church schisms and such.

So the numbers don’t quite tell the story- yet. In 10-15 years the pre-WW2 generations and a lot of the early half of the Boomers will be gone, and I think we will be surprised at what a difference that will make in social attitudes.

Nevertheless, if religion is 100% choice, then would we not expect to find religions more evenly distributed within families, communities and nations?

Martin, you do raise some interesting points, but perhaps I should clarify my point a bit further.

There is no christian gene, no gene that makes you believe in Jesus Christ. People have to be told about Jesus, they have to be told about the Bible. No one has to be told they are black. No one has to be told they’re missing an arm. I knew I was “different” long before I had a name for it. No one ever thinks to themselves “Oh my God, I think I might be a Christian!” Christians go door-to-door, the Mormon’s spend their 18th year on this earth on a “mission”. Religion actively seeks converts. They actively recruit– to use the oppositions wording “it’s a lifestyle choice”.
People switch religions, or abandon religion altogether. It’s very much changeable.

Of course, our choices are certainly influenced by our parents and the culture around us. A family of sports fans is likely to produce sports fans: but fandom is not genetic, it’s not part of one’s DNA, it’s not produced by womb environment or hormone levels during pregnancy.
Religion is 100% choice. People may be raised in their religion, but it is their choice to continue to go to church, to continue to observe the tenents of their faith.

Why is it that if you are born in the USA you are overwhelmingly likely to be Christian,

For the same reasons they are likely to speak english — environment. Environmental factors do not trump choice, they merely provide context for it.

Conscious choice of one’s religious affiliation is probably more the exception rather than the rule. IMO religion is culturally transmitted and is more akin to other cultural products (like language and customs) than it is to things that are freely and consciously chosen.

I see what you’re saying here, but I disagree. I think that acceptance of religious teachings is a choice. I rejected mine, that was a choice. As children grow up they are introduced through TV, Movies, Friends, Classmates, coworkers, etc to different religions and ideas, and they make the choice to learn more, experiment, even change their religion – or to continue on as before.

Perhaps religion and sexual orientation are more similar than they appear to be at first blush?
…
In any case, I think far more research into the causes of religious affiliation are required before we can definitively pronounce that religion is freely chosen. ;-)

We’ll just have to agree to disagree, at least in part :P

I wrote back:

Dear Ms. Klein:

Thank you or your response. I do post occasionally, but to me, whatever I post is not actually a story, it is my opinion, and its distribution and impact are limited.

On the other hand, the basic hypocrisy of the anti-gays IS a story. If they want to claim that they have no animus towards gay people, that this is all about ‘preserving traditional marriage’, yet they make absurd, vicious statements like the ones made to your editorial board, then that is a real story.

You may not remember the Briggs Initiative 30 years ago, which would have banned any openly gay people from the classroom. It was all that ’save the children’ crap all over again. The vitriol and the hatred expressed by its supporters shocked me. As with so many things, it was not about teachers or children, but about how much those people HATED gay people. Their arguments were all about serial killers, child molesters, sin, and so forth, not gay people. It was one of the reasons they lost, even in 1978.

I’ve said it many times before: these people will spend their last nickel attacking gays but for some odd reason you rarely hear them mounting the same kind of efforts to help the uninsured or the poor. If they were to take this same initiative with regards to providing health care, I suspect they could improve the lot of countless ‘real’ children.

Randy Thomason calls gay marriage a ‘plague.’ Perhaps a better notion of plague in our democracy is the use of hate, fear, and prejudice, whether disguised as sincere religious belief or just admitted for what they are, to demonize the lives and aspirations of law abiding and productive members of society, in order to accrue money, power, and votes to promote an extremely conservative religious and social agenda, or the goals of a political party that has led our nation to the very precipice of financial, constitutional, and political ruin.

That’s why I think this is a story that should be told by a real reporter, not posted in a blog that few people read.