The 49 to 48 Senate vote fell short of the 60 votes needed Wednesday to prevent judges from striking down existing state bans on gay marriage via Constitutional Amendment.

The night before, votes were cast here in old Alabama, and voters gave overwhelming approval to a state constitutional ban on gay marriage.

I’m a religious man. I believe in God, and his law. I believe that our nation's laws are based, in part, from the essential law provided in the Bible. I also believe that these basic set of laws are acceptable to most humankind:

Legal Commandments:

-Do not murder

-Do not steal

Social Commandments:

-Do not commit adultery

-Do not lie

-Do not covet

-Do not dishonor your parents

Religious Commandments:

-Do not worship any other god

-Do not take God’s name in vain

-Do not worship idols

-Do not break the Sabbath

Now I’m not sure, but I don’t think anything about gay marriage is in there, not under either legal (the foundation of our legal system), social (moral precepts to ensure harmonious society), or religious (ensure a close relationship with God) areas of the Commandments.

The marriage that homosexual couples are seeking is a state institution, with state granted privileges that come along with it. If we, upon moral grounds based from religious standpoints, try to deny those same state instituted privileges, then we are practicing discrimination.

There is no other way to look at it. The idea behind the Founding Father’s design of no state religion was to keep specific religious overtones from government policy.

The Bible says that no sin is higher or lower than any other sin; that God sees all sin the same. If this is the case, then the adulterer is just as sinful as the homosexual. The murderer is no guiltier than a liar; in God’s eyes.

To suddenly assume that homosexuality, and the union by the state thereof is any more sinful than a common-law marriage (two people live together long enough, the state considers them married) is to put a personal hierarchy or value system on sin.

We, all of us Americans, have no moral, religious, or legal high ground to use in denying privileges to people based on something that, in God’s opinion, is no more sinful than when you looked at that co-worker and thought less than honorable things. It is not our place as humans to judge their sin, nor to deny them state institutions because of our notion of that sin.

Now realize I am not advocating that churches around the country pick up and start trying to unify gay couples under God, because THAT is wrong. But state unions are not of God, and have no religious bearing. They are equal to legal contracts entered at the Probate office every day (i.e. selling land and merging a buisness).

This is discrimination; to call it anything else is breaking rule number 9.