The past year has been an important one for gay rights activists.

In the last year, FOX broadcasted an episode of “The Simpsons,” featuring gay marriage and England announced earlier this year the passage of a bill granting same-sex couples the right to form legally binding partnerships. Feb. 13 marked the one-year anniversary of gay marriages in San Francisco.

But just as America was the last developed country to end slavery and remains one of the last with the death penalty, it appears we will also be the last to recognize gay rights.

As I watch the same-sex marriage debate rage on countless fronts, my mind keeps wandering back to God. I imagine he’s probably pretty upset about where this issue has taken us.

Opponents of same-sex marriage typically have one primary objection to granting gay men and lesbian women a right that every heterosexual person has, claiming “marriage” is a religious institution. They believe that, based on the Bible, God is against homosexuality.

There are plenty of religious or spiritual homosexuals, and what I have trouble comprehending is how any religion would so willingly lock out an entire sect of its members. I always saw religions as welcoming, nurturing institutions. We were supposed to look to our places of worship as sanctuaries, to our clergy as beacons.

And that’s there, as long as you’re not gay.

Politicians have turned religion into a weapon. Opponents of same-sex marriage use their self-assigned, God-given right to bring legitimacy to discriminating against those who do not meet a rigid definition of who is truly worthy of God’s blessing.

Whether or not a particular religion chooses to bless marriage between members of the same sex should be up to the leaders of that religion. The state, however, has a greater responsibility to all citizens and it cannot deny rights to a group of people based on such trivial distinctions as race, religion or sexual orientation.

Just as it is no longer legal to prohibit interracial marriage, it should be illegal to ban gay unions. Everybody should be allowed to have a civil ceremony regardless of sexuality. We can call all vows exchanged before a religious leader “marriages” and those recited before a justice of the peace “civil unions.”

The argument in the 1950s and 60s for racial segregation was based on tradition. Alabama Governor George Wallace proudly displayed, “Segregation yesterday. Segregation today. Segregation forever!” Just because it was socially acceptable to discriminate against blacks in the past gave much of the nation the regressive idea that things should stay that way.

Obviously, as we can see today, the rest of the nation saw the error in that — so why is there so much angst in giving equality to gays?

Ignorance takes its toll nationwide, and unless we as a nation can unite and step up, history will repeat itself. Although a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage was voted down in the House last fall, there was still bitter resentment from some congressmen.

As Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) eloquently put it, “God created Adam and Eve. He didn’t create Adam and Steve.”

Classy.

As for society, I can’t see how same-sex unions can be any more harmful than the rising divorce rate, which is making a mockery of marriage.

I hate to break it to you kids, but the sacred institution of marriage has been in trouble for a good while now, and gays have had little, if nothing, to do with its decline. Heterosexuals have done a bang-up job of trashing marriage all by themselves.

American society is no longer structured around healthy marriages and nuclear families. In fact, some historians argue that the traditional “Leave it to Beaver” family never existed.

If anything, homosexual marriages may provide troubled heterosexual couples with a solid example of the virtues that make up a good marriage in the first place.

If those opposed to the same-sex marriage campaign spent more time building bridges and less time building walls, we’d all be able to live more harmonious lives, within our marriages and within society as a whole.

I’m not a Biblical scholar, but this seems to be a little closer to what God wants us to do.

Send comments to Chelsea at [email protected].