Superior morals?

One of the things that has always bothered me about Christians/Republicans/my religious family is their smugness about their moral standing. I want to comment on the reasons why they are wrong.

I want to discuss two issues that I find I differ from the above groups diametrically. The first issue is the death penalty. I have lots of reasons for thinking the death penalty is immoral but I'll only mention one because it should be the one that changes minds...and it doesn't. Our justice system is so flawed that we convict and sentence lots of innocent people to death row. That system is not going to change in the near future. Our states are killing innocent people because of this flawed system. I have used this argument before and it rarely changes minds. (That's a subject for another post, BTW.)

The second issue is equal rights for homosexuals. Again I have lots of reasons I think the current bigotry against this small group of people is immoral but I'll focus on one. We should not be using the opinion of the majority of the state to dictate what rights a minority can have. Imagine that we are back 40 years when African-Americans were fighting for equality and the abolition of the "separate but equal" laws. This is exactly what gay people are fighting for and it is shamefully immoral to deny them the same rights heterosexuals enjoy.

There are lots of reasons I'm given from Christians/Republicans/religious people for these opposing views on these two issues. The reasons are always religious. When it comes to the death penalty the reasons for their closed-minded acceptance can be traced to the myths of a vengeful God in the Old Testament of the bible. And again, the bigotry against homosexuals clearly originates from this Old Testament. There is no other reason for it.

It is disturbing to me that religious people are smug and outwardly proud of their morals, morals that are harmful to people and cause lasting pain and anguish to families. What do you tell the family that spend all of their money on trying to prove that their father is innocent only to see him get murdered by the state for a crime he didn't commit? How about the couple that want to spend the rest of their lives together, as their friends have been able to, that they can't get married just because they are a same-sex couple?

This is cut and dry. It is immoral to single out a small group of people who aren't hurting anyone and make laws to discriminate against them. It's also immoral to kill a group of people when our justice system still cannot guarantee that each person is 100% guilty. Fortunately as we progress through time these issues will become painfully clear. Already the old bigots are dying off and being replaced by people who are comfortable with gay people and want them to have the same rights as straights. With the acceptance of DNA testing it's becoming clear that a high percentage of people on death row are indeed innocent. It is also very expensive for the state to kill people and it's becoming better policy to convict without parole. Time will tell.