Allowing the consequences of death to dictate how you live your life to me is the single greatest concept religious organizations ever came up with.  This was the foundation and source of their greatest power which enabled them to use religion as a means of control.  Once they realized that a large enough group of people believed in the story, they knew they could control the majority of the population simply by telling the masses that if they don't behave as the book says they will burn in "hell".

Unfortunately, organized religion and its leaders were greedy, power-hungry tyrants who also were very shrewd and calculating in the way they mass produced the fear of "god" and "the devil" in order to turn people into sheep and herd them exactly where they wanted them to go.

This is one of my biggest problems with organized religion as a whole; they control people!  By either exploiting their fear of death or by tapping into the guilt they fear when they are told they've "sinned".  Once a "religion" knows you believe in it, it knows it can exploit that fear of what happens to you after you die.  Why this fear of death that people seem to have in the first place?

For those who are so afraid of death and what happens afterward, this is where they go so terribly wrong I think.  Death is a natural part of life.  Whether or not you believe in an afterlife of some kind isn't the issue, the issue is that the people who claim to believe in a "religion" are claiming they KNOW that they will go to "heaven".  The problem with that is, they DON'T know, nobody does.  And that ever-present fear they have of dying inherently belies their certainty and confidence in that which they claim they KNOW.  If those who are so devout that they can say they know for a FACT that they will go to "heaven" when they die are so confident in that belief, then why do people still instinctively fear death?

The fact that so many "religious" people find homosexuality so abhorrent only proves to me that these people don't bother to follow the very tenet and philosophies laid out to them in their very own book.  And those who believe that by persecuting any other group, however you want to view persecution, is still going to allow them to get into their "heaven" are the ones that are truly missing the point of faith.

Rather than fear dying and what happens afterward, I've chosen to live my life in the here and now.  I may be gay, and I may not believe in anybody else's version of "god", but in the here and now, I live my life in such a way that allows me to know within myself that if I were to die at the end of this particular day, I would die knowing that I lived my life as a good person.

I will not apologize for who or what I am.  I will not bow down to anybody else's idea of what I should be or what I shouldn't do simply because MOST people believe as you do or because of the ill-conceived notion "the majority is right"!  I don't recognize your "sins" or your punishments for said "sins".  I also do not fear death.  When it's my time to die I will accept it.  And because MY beliefs tell me that dying isn't necessarily the END, I do not fear what comes afterward as I believe there is no heaven or hell, other than that which each individual creates for them selves.

I most certainly will NOT live the rest of MY life according to what a 2,000 year old book says, nor by the ancient and obsolete views of MEN from a time in Earth's history when people genuinely believed that slavery was ok.  Nor will I lie down before an army of religious zealots (which appears to be shrinking every year I'm alive) who would attack me or my own beliefs with theirs simply because they and/or myself are different.

What I WILL do is defend myself and those like me in regards to how my country, which includes its people, views my rights as a human being.  I will not keep quiet against the religious battering ram of hate, intolerance, ignorance, fear, bigotry, selfishness, egotism, arrogance, and superiority simply because while in the SAME BREATH those very people who condemn me for who and what I am are also telling me, "You shouldn't bother responding because it only hurts your cause!"  Wow, I wonder if the bullies in school get all their "Bully Training" in church?

If everybody who was ever bullied in their lives thought that way, the bullies would always win because those being bullied would never stand up to them.  Imagine a bully in school is picking on "the nerd", and when the nerd tried to tell him to stop picking on him the bully simply replied, "You know every time you try to stand up to me you're just making me hurt you more!"  And imagine if that "nerd" BELIEVED that statement to the point that he feared getting picked on SO MUCH that he never stands up for himself again.

My point is that you can belittle me all you want; quote me as much scripture from your fairy tale that you want; even say spiteful, hateful things about me because of who and what I am; but if your goal is to break my spirit or something like that in order to get me to give up my beliefs and arguments thereto, sorry, hope you like being the bullied for a change!

What I will also do is condone your rights to practice whatever faith you so choose.  I will fight just as hard for your right to believe as you will as I will for my right to believe as I will.  That's called equality.

If I could equate the "religious" Americans today to something from the past, I would have to say they very much resemble the England that our forefathers were escaping from to establish this country.  And why did they want to flee?  What were they fleeing from?  Why would it have been SO important for them while establishing this country to make sure they included rights that specifically prevent the church and/or religion from having the say-so in the lives of Americans by law?  Think about it if you need to, there is a very basic, undeniable reason for it.  Since it should be glaringly obvious, I won't say it, I'll just ASSUME that everybody knows what I'm talking about...which may be a mistake to assume anything with some of you.

I have seen posts on ireports for gay marriage that were for it, against it, love it, or hate it.  I've seen posts that were written by people (you know who you are) specifically to stir up bitterness and provoke people to say things they normally wouldn't.  I've seen posts that call for people to stop the hate and actually discuss the issues, and I've seen posts that think the issue being discussed IS hate!  This post is none of those things.

This post is simply a declaration!  I declare, for myself and any others who would like to see a REAL world rather than a utopian one, there may possibly never be a common ground for the "religious" fanatics to agree upon with this issue.  So as far as what everybody BELIEVES, we'll have to agree to disagree.  This declaration of MY independence is declaring independence from religious slavery and persecution.  Independence from oppressors who would use every trick in their book to make me feel as though I'm less of a person when it is in fact they who are lacking, or completely bereft of any humanity, compassion, understanding or acceptance.

In closing, I'd like to just say; instead of letting the consequences of death, and the unknown of what happens after death to dictate your life, try living by the day-to-day rewards and benefits that come from treating people as you would want to be treated.  In other words, live for today; tomorrow is important, but it is the choices we all make today that determine which tomorrow we want to see.