Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 70

66 Popular Culture Review “Will a new Bible be mandated?” No one is suggesting a new Bible, although Thomas Jefferson thought writing one without the miraculous and dogmatic stuff would be a good idea (see professor of history Joseph Ellis’s award-winning biography American Sphinx: The Character o f Thomas Jefferson). The Bible is what it is, and the histories of the organized religions it represents are filled with bloodshed and hatred. The Bible can be an inspiring literary text, but it can also be used to incite fear, hatred, and bigotry, as well as justify and sanction heinous acts against humanity. In the hands of the State, religion has historically become a weapon of mass destruction. 9. Other nations are watching our march toward homosexual marriage and will follow our lead. Dr. Dobson cites a personal conversation with “Darrell Reid, president of Focus on the Family Canada, [who] told me recently that his country is carefully monitoring what is happening in the United States. If we take this step off a cliff, the family on every continent will splinter at an accelerated rate” (61). Both Dobson and Reid would seem to be more than a bit behind the times: Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, a Catholic, has supported a proposed law that would conform to court rulings in defining marriage as a union between two people, rather than a man and a woman. “As prime minister of Canada, he has the moral responsibility to protect the equality of Canadians,” spokesman, Thoren Hud yma, told the Globe and Mail newspapers in explaining that Mr. Chretien’s duty was to the public, not his Church. —AP, July 31, 2003 In Belgium, where three-quarters of the population is Roman Catholic, the Flemish Christian Democrats who voted in favor of the law [legalizing same-sex unions] said the issue boiled down to supporting all kinds of families. “For us, what’s important is sustained relationships,” said Luk Vanmaercke, a party spokesman. “We do not want to exclude gay couples from sustained relationships. On the contrary, we want to encourage them to take that responsibility too.” “It’s the Vatican’s good right to make statements like this [condemning state-sanctioned same-sex marriage], but here in the Netherlands, we have separation of church and state,” said