The California Supreme Court has upheld Proposition 8, the California ballot proposition that denied some of the most basic human rights to LGBT people. Gay or lesbian couples who were married when it was legal will remain married. This ruling isn’t much of a surprise – court-watchers had pretty well predicted this was going to be the outcome – but it still, quite frankly, sucks. Sucks hard.

What sucks for me personally in this, as a Christian, is seeing my brothers and sisters in Christ applauding such decisions and standing in the way of basic human rights. Even if they accept what is, in my opinion, a rather piss-poor Biblical case that same-sex sexual acts are sinful, the fact is that Christianity is not, and should not be, the law in this country. The fact that their narrow interpretation of the Christian text says that homosexuality is wrong should not make it law. The fact that they personally can’t get past bigotry shouldn’t mean that others are denied their rights.

I will say it openly and without hesitation: Anyone claiming to be a Christian who stands against basic human rights for gay men and lesbians is in sin, and needs to repent. Even if they believe (wrongly) that homosexuality is sinful, that is no excuse to deny them equal rights under the law. It’s that simple. There is absolutely no validity to bullcrap arguments about “traditional marriage”; those who use such arguments are hiding their bigotry behind a rhetorical flourish.

So what’s next? I’d bet all the money in my bank account (which admittedly isn’t putting a lot on the line) that proponents of basic human rights are going to put an initiative on the 2010 ballot in CA. I will support that initiative full-throatedly as my top priority in 2010. It is imperative that anyone who calls him- or herself a Christian stand behind such an initiative and support it (as much as is possible) with his or her money, effort, and (if possible) vote. It is also imperative that every Christian put pressure on his or her own state legislature (or, in the case of us second-class citizens of DC, our city council) to bring equal human rights to his or her own state if it isn’t already one of the few that acknowledges such rights.

This is a blow, but not a fatal one. We who support equal rights will prevail in time. The question is: which side of history will you be on? Will you look back on the ’00s with regret, as supporters of racial segregation look back at the ’60s and ’70s, or will you be able to look back and tell yourself that you stood on the right side of history? That is the question before each of us today. God help us that we make the right choice.