As a native Chicagoan, I was thrilled to see this posted last night:
I have countless relatives back in Illinois, including my mother and grandmother, and hopefully we’ll all get invited to attend some same-sex weddings in the coming years.
The image does implicitly raise the question of the relationship between religious belief and the legal recognition of same-sex relationships. As it hapens, this particular question can be approached using a pair of maps. Firstly, here is the map from Wikipedia showing where at least some level of state recognition exists:
Notice the massive chunk of negative space running from the southern tip of Florida to the northern tip of Idaho, encompassing all of the Old Confederacy and most of the plains states. Where have I seen that pattern before?
This map comes from the Pew Forum, of course, and shows the fraction of each state that interprets their holy writ as literally true. Generally, there is a pattern connecting the two maps together, and it is that those states which have voted to recognize same-sex unions have surveyed levels of scriptural literalism below 30%. Personally, I suspect that this is one of those cases where the correlation is significantly causal, that is to say, it seems perfectly plausible to me that increasing levels of literal belief in Abrahamic scriptures will tend to drive homophobic social attitudes and policy outcomes. If this is true, then perhaps there is a case to be made that atheists are already adding to the cause of social justice merely by encouraging people to read their Bibles and Qurans with their critical thinking caps on.
That’s just about enough cup-half-fullness for today. Anyone care to bet on which states will be the last to treat our gay and lesbian friends and family members equally under the law?
