I now hear people saying that this issue ought to be the subject of a referendum and the tired old cliché is being trotted out that these are activist judges “making law from the bench.” That is absolute poppycock. The job of the courts in a constitutional democracy is to protect the rights under the law of all citizens. One does not subject constitutional rights to the prejudices of the general population. That is the rule of the mob. Mobocracy and democracy are not the same. We heard the same thing in the days of the civil rights movement as people, who had historically violated the constitutional rights of our black citizens, wanted to subject those rights to majority vote. That is nothing except bigotry, either racism or homophobia, with the hope that their prejudice is still a majority viewpoint in the society.

California and Massachusetts are leading the way. New Jersey is just one step away. In a decade this issue will be settled in terms of equality before the law for gay and lesbian people.

As usual the religious institutions will lag behind. Churches fought the suffrage movement that finally won for women the right to vote in presidential elections. Churches resisted desegregation until their opposition was dismissed for the racism it was. Churches are today the last bastion of homophobia in its resistance of the rights of our gay and lesbian citizens. Their typical weapon is to quote the Bible. Of course a review of history will reveal that this tactic has lost every battle in which it has been used. The church quoted the Bible to oppose the Magna Carta and to support the divine right of kings. The church lost. The church quoted the Bile to oppose Galileo and to support a flat earth at the center of the universe. The church lost. The church quoted the Bible in defense of slavery, segregation and apartheid. The church lost. It quoted the Bible to deny women equal education, equal opportunity and equal status before the law. The church lost. The church quoted the Bible to oppose evolution and the work of Charles Darwin. The church lost. Today the church quotes the Bible to defend its rampant and dishonest homophobia. The church will lose this battle also.

John’s Gospel had Jesus declare that his purpose was to bring life to all people abundantly. Perhaps the church ought to look at its sorry record of using the Bible to diminish the humanity of one group of its victims after another or to descend to the moral pits represented by Pope Benedict XVI, who persists in defining homosexuality as deviant and abnormal, despite massive evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the Vatican has forgotten they did the same thing to left-handed people just a century ago. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who places ecclesiastical unity above both truth and justice, is one more example of moral ineptitude.

The time has come for churches to face the dark side of their own contribution to human ignorance and prejudice. The laws of this nation will give equality to homosexual people. The blessing of the churches will be conveyed to gay and lesbian couples. There is no doubt about this. The only thing in question is how many more people will be victimized by ecclesiastical homophobia before enlightened leadership appears that will first apologize to our victims for our negative history and, second, lead this nation into a new understanding of our essential humanity, which comes in black and white forms, in male and female forms, and in gay and straight forms. I will rejoice to see that day. It is not far away.