After watching a rather humorous Colbert on NBC’s Meet the Nation on Sunday morning I was flipping through the channels and ended up watching an interview of presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and much of the interview was about his religion.
I found something he said several times rather interesting. Whenever Romney was asked about his religious beliefs he refused to answer the question and said he would defer to those who study his religion. There is the obvious conclusion about this that Romney cannot make his own beliefs, but I am not writing this to bash Romney.
I am writing this because this made me realize something. I realized that a large reason behind the bigotry and discrimination toward GLBT is because of religion. Not only is it because of religion it is because a significant number of people refuse to choose what to believe and simply follow their religion blindly.
According to CIA estimates from 2002 10% of Americans are not religious. Of the remaining 90% of Americans I would say 10-15% of those follow their religious leaders blindly and if the religious leaders say the sky is green would believe it. I estimate another 20-30% do actually think for themselves, but are afraid to publicly oppose the stance of their religion (Romney is an example). Then you have another 10-20% who do actually challenge what their religion says with the remainder being loosely affiliated with their religion. These are my estimates not facts.
When I do the math I realize that probably 35-40% of Americans oppose same sex marriage solely because their religion says so and they do not have a good argument otherwise. So in America, the land of the free, why do so many people not think for themselves? After America was discovered immigrants moved to America to get away from overpowering religion in Europe. So why is it that some locations in Europe now allow gay marriage, yet the United States is still bound by their religious leaders?
I do not know the answer. I do not know why Americans do not make their own decisions. Maybe the political activism in the United States has died away for a while? I have no doubt it will come back, but when was the last time there were major organized political protests in the US? Maybe there is some other reason entirely? Whatever the answer one has to ask, if religion is such a large part of American’s values what type of influence good or bad has this blind following of religion had on the current United States?
(By the way, I have no idea why the CIA is collecting religion data on the United States.)