“Christianity neither is, nor ever was part of the common law.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1814

“The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State.” — James Madison, 1819

I could fill the entire page with similar quotes from America’s founding fathers, but the subject at hand is State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe.

Metcalfe used the term “God’s law” in the Legislature to censor a fellow lawmaker who wished to make a statement regarding the recent Supreme Court decision regarding same-sex marriage.

Some of Metcalfe’s supporters have written praising him as a righteous man of God who defends traditional marriage as defined in the Bible. Let’s briefly examine descriptions of traditional marriage from the King James Bible:

If a man rapes a virgin who is not promised for marriage, he must pay her father and marry her. (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)

Male soldiers can take slaves as spoils of war and marry them. (Numbers 31:1-18, Deuteronomy 21:11-14)

If a bride cannot prove her virginity, she is to be stoned to death. (Genesis 2:24)

Polygamy was rampant in the bible. Solomon had 700 wives. Many Biblical characters, such as Abraham, had concubines. Solomon had 300 concubines. Lot’s daughters had sex with him and bore him sons. This was after Lot offered his daughters up for a gang-rape at Gomorrah.

All of these activities met the approval of the Biblical God. If one is a fundamentalist Christian who takes every word of the Bible as God’s true words, these laws still stand. We all know homosexuality is listed as an abomination to God. So is eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:12).

Shall we govern by the words and original meanings of the U.S. Constitution, which mentions God nowhere in its text; or, by a Christianized version of Sharia law, enforced by Taliban-like legislators, as Daryl Metcalfe would have it?