These videos are to be viewed consecutively. The people in the videos are atheists who discredit the top five arguments against gay marriage. (if the videos are not loading correctly, then go to youtube.com and search “gay marriage and religion” and scroll down and they are listed as 1, 2, and 3)
Since Thanksgiving is next week I thought to focus on modern religious freedom. Thanksgiving is a holiday rooted in historical religious freedom of the pilgrims who adopted America as their home. They were escaping religious persecution in Europe and desired a place to freely worship their religion and religious ideals. Modern religious freedom, as it was in the past, is bound politically. An example is gay marriage whose primary objectors base their arguments behind religion. Though religion espouses equality, people manipulate religion and exploit it as an end-all excuse.
The five arguments against gay marriage stated in the videos are: same sex marriage is bad for children (according to religious conservative devotees), same sex couples cannot have children (what about heterosexual couples who cannot have children or do not want children, older couples), homosexuality is both unnatural and abnormal (homosexuality is present in animals), marriage is defined as one man and one woman (what about harems, polygamy, polyandry, bigamy), and marriage is a sacred institution and homosexuality is a sin (what about political marriages in history, priests raping young boys, marriage was not originally a sacrament, seen as an excuse for sinful acts).
The statements these men discuss are accurate and veritable. Religion should not be a pretext for why something is bad or wrong, but why they should be better understood and accepted. Though these videos will upset radical and conservative religious people, they bring to light why same-sex marriage is seen as wrong by religious people and why they are wrong. Religion is supposed to broaden our minds, not provide unexplained and unsubstantiated limitations. Things are not bad or wrong “just because”.
Work Cited
Atheist Experience, viewed November 17, 2008. youtube.com
Spirituality vs. Fundamentalism 
I think at the same time that we look at Thanksgiving as a holiday formed for religious freedom, we also must look at the founding of our country. Our country was founded on men who believed in God and therefore God is written into every one of the long historic details of our country that our society is currently trying to erase. It is written into the pledge of allegiance and it is written on our money. It used to be written in our court rooms. As we begin to erase that we are erasing what some people hold as valuable. While you may not think that faith in God in something to base your beliefs off of I do. They are still a belief system. And I think the purpose of our country was so that everyone could hold to what belief system they wanted to. Some people may take religion as a means to broaden their minds, but some people maybe take it as a relationship and a lifestyle, not just some set of rituals that they follow. If you are going to fight for religious freedom, there must be a freedom for religion as well.
W. Sherritt
i think that when we look at how some of our own hoidays are made, some just think that in fact they are just marketing schemes for the economy, which makes me think about our times right now, i think we need to make up a holiday right now that deals with no religion such as st. valentines day , most religions celebrate that because of love, but here in our time now we need to figure out how to do something else because religion is a big cornerstone of the world, but then again how spiritual is everyone ?
I think that if there is a freedom to choose what religion you are there should also be the choice to have no religion at all. The government says that there is separation of church and state but in actuality things like gay marriage would not be an issue if this was true. Marriage is one of the strongest ties between church and state and if it was simply a governmental aspect there would be no reason to make gay marriage illegal.
Also, atheists are so extremely looked down upon in our society however, they should have the same “religious” or in their case “non religious” rights as everyone else.