Rauch: We gays should tolerate religious freedom
I’ll read anything Jonathan Rauch writes. I can’t think of a more fair-minded advocate for gay rights. He stands up for what he believes in, but he doesn’t hate his opponents — and he can distinguish between people who disagree with him and outright haters. Can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.
His essay from the December issue of The Advocate is a must-read. [UPDATE: December 2010 -- sorry, a friend e-mailed the link last night, identifying it as "from the December issue" -- RD] Rauch argues that gays have won the war for the hearts and minds of the American people. They don’t have what they seek yet, but by now it’s just a matter of time. The polls don’t lie. The generational shift on gay rights is profound. (Though I’m on the other side of the marriage issue, I happen to think his analysis is accurate.) Because of that fact, he says, the gay rights movement is at a crossroads:
[W]e—gay Americans and our straight allies—have won the central argument for gay rights. As a result, we must change. Much of what the gay rights movement has taken for granted until now, and much that has worked for us in the past, is now wrong and will hurt us. The turn we now need to execute will be the hardest maneuver the movement has ever had to make, because it will require us to deliberately leave room for homophobia in American society. We need to allow some discrimination and relinquish the “zero tolerance” mind-set. Paradoxical but true: We need to give our opponents the time and space they need to let us win.
What does he mean by that? I can’t do justice to his argument in a blog post, so I urge you to read the whole thing. Below the fold, a couple of key excerpts, and some commentary by me:
Rauch says that gay rights opponents today have developed a narrative that sounds like this (the italics are his):
Gay rights advocates don’t just want legal equality. They want to brand anyone who disagrees with them, on marriage or anything else, as the equivalent of a modern-day segregationist. If you think homosexuality is immoral or changeable, they want to send you to be reeducated, take away your license to practice counseling, or kick your evangelical student group off campus. If you object to facilitating same-sex weddings or placing adoptees with same-sex couples, they’ll slap you with a fine for discrimination, take away your nonprofit status, or force you to choose between your job and your conscience. If you so much as disagree with them, they call you a bigot and a hater.
They won’t stop until they stigmatize your core religious teachings as bigoted, ban your religious practices as discriminatory, and drive millions of religious Americans right out of the public square. But their target is broader than just religion. Their policy is one of zero tolerance for those who disagree with them, and they will use the law to enforce it.
At bottom, they are not interested in sharing the country. They want to wipe us out.
The Gay Brownshirts Thesis. I credit Rauch for his insight. I also think this is exactly true — not only true in the sense that that’s what my side thinks, but true in that it’s an accurate description of reality. Rauch continues:
A lot of gay people have trouble taking this narrative seriously, partly because in its more extreme forms it sounds so paranoid and nutty—as when Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, recently said, “If this case [overruling California’s ban on gay marriage] stands, we’ll have gone, in one generation, from 1962, when the Bible was banned in public schools, to religious beliefs being banned in America.” It would be a false comfort, though, to suppose that the gays-as-oppressors narrative can’t and won’t take root among moderates and thoughtful, mainstream conservatives—people like Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, former Bush administration officials, who write, “If [gay] marriage is deemed to be a civil right—and if opponents are therefore deemed to be the equivalent of modern-day segregationists—churches may eventually be compelled to act in a way that complies with the spirit and letter of ‘anti-discrimination’ law rather than with orthodox Christian teaching.” Stated that way, the claim happens to be true. [Emphasis mine -- RD] Nor must we suppose it is a mere stratagem, cooked up to scare open donors’ pocketbooks. It is a product of a genuine and widespread fear of marginalization and stigmatization on the cultural right—and it is all the more biting as a result.
More:
The other side, in short, is counting on us to hand them the victimhood weapon. Our task is to deny it to them.Two important strategic changes would go a long way toward doing that. First, accept legal exceptions that let religious organizations discriminate against gays whenever their doing so imposes a cost we can live with. Second, dial back the accusations of “bigot” and “hater.”In the gay community, taking any kind of nonabsolutist attitude toward discrimination is controversial, to say the least—largely because we carry in our heads the paradigm of racial discrimination. In today’s America, though, the racial model is overkill for gays. Injustice persists, unquestionably, but the opposition is dying on its feet and discrimination is in decline. And, unlike white supremacism, disapproval of homosexuality is still intrinsic to orthodox doctrines of all three major religions. [Emphasis mine -- RD] That will change and is already changing (younger evangelicals are much more accepting of same-sex relations than are their parents), but for now it is a fact we must live with.Before we shrug and reply, “So what if it’s religious? It’s still bigotry, it’s still intolerable,” we need to remember that religious liberty is America’s founding principle. It is embedded in the country’s DNA, not to mention in the First Amendment. If we pick a fight with it or, worse, let ourselves be maneuvered into a fight with it, our task will become vastly harder.
I’d find this position a lot more tenable if there weren’t still a body count involved.
Very interesting. I’ve been reading your posts on the issue but haven’t had the opportunity to comment, so I’ll make the best of a few minutes to share my thoughts.
I agree that it’s very important for any civil rights movement to avoid making its opponents into martyrs. The problem as I see it is that Christian conservatives (especially Southerners) tend to twist the concept of “freedom” into a fun-house-mirror definition: freedom for me to oppress you.
When that’s how the opposition defines freedom, you have little choice but to fight an all-or-nothing battle. Abortion and the teaching of evolution are two classic examples of the Christian right wrapping itself in the mantle of civil rights in order to restrict the rights or actions of others. There’s no real middle ground there, and if they continue to use the same tactics, there will be no middle ground over gay rights, either.
Now, as it happens, I feel fine about this. I have no sympathy for Bible-thumpers, and I admit to feeling a big heap of shadenfreude when I imagine them getting a dose of their own medicine. But as fun as it is to imagine Rush Limbaugh being dragged off the air by the Feminazi Gestapo (you go, girl!) Rauch is probably right, and so are you, at least in part.
Sigh. I suppose the Gay Leap Forward will have to wait another year.
Park, does that mean next year is Gay Leap Year?
Rauch concedes in his piece (which is actually a year old) that he’s not sure where the line should be drawn. It’s the line drawing on so-called religious liberty that is the sticking point and why neither side wants to give up too much distance.
For gays, they see the religious exemptions that have been part of every same-sex marriage (and gay rights advance) effort to be enough. It’s reasonable to say no church has to perform a same-sex marriage. But it’s quite another to say that a church-run day care center should turn away the children of a same-sex couple.
On the other side, we have people arguing that innkeepers, caterers, photographers and pretty much anyone else who says “I’m a Christian” should be able to discriminate at will when it comes to gays. That’s an extreme position that has no real place in First Amendment history.
So the question comes down to where to draw the line. Is it at any religious institution, even if it primarily has a secular purpose. So should Catholic Charities be able to violate state laws in placing kids? Should a Baptist hospital be able to violate state laws in recognizing same-sex partners of patients? Should a megachurch-run counseling center receiving state funds be able to reject gay clients? That’s the tension point.
I agree with Rauch that the gay community (and the legislatures and courts) will have to give some room here. But the religious community also needs to give some room and be willing to give up their demands to discriminate at-will regardless of who is doing the discriminating.
Rod,
In what sense do you consider the so-called Gay Brownshirts Thesis an accurate description of reality? As a description of the activist minority or the larger near- or bare-majority in support of same-sex civil marriage?
I think that the eventual popular majorities in support of same-sex civil marriage will consist of large numbers of (heterosexual) non-activists and non-pundits for whom any sort of absolutism will be a non-starter. Witness the general support for religious exceptions as in New York, or the work of highly visible and well-known gay writers such as Rauch and Sullivan (on First Amendment issues, etc). The more vocal and activist may be different (on both sides, no doubt), but for the majority of those who support SSM and/or gay rights, the Gay Brownshirts Thesis is simply not a reflection of (their) reality.
I wonder if the equilibrium we’ll reach is that we have on the issue of divorce. Catholics and some other theologically “conservative” groups still openly teach that divorce is wrong, and that the divorced-and-remarried are living in sin.
But in broader society, there is little discrimination against divorced people, and perhaps because of that, there is no “divorced community” agitating against the “bigots” who would refuse communion or a church wedding to the divorced. .If you don’t like the rules, you switch churches and that’s that.
Rauch writes that they “have won the central argument for gay rights.”
What argument was that? There was never any argument, only specious appeals to rights and emotions.
I see a lot to respect and agree with in Rauch’s article.
One thing that makes it difficult (speaking as a [religious] supporter of LGBT rights) is how our conservative religious opposition is still throwing punches. They put a marriage amendment on next year’s ballot in my state — I can’t exactly back away from that!
Elizabeth Anne, care to unpack your comment a bit? I’m not sure what you mean by “body count.”
A more recent joint piece by Rauch and Blankenhorn is here: Old Foes Agree to Agree on Gay Marriage.
No argument is specious to those who agree with it. And if you have the power to roll over the opposition, you don’t need an argument. As I’ve often said, “Give me five votes on the Supreme Court and it does not matter what anyone else thinks.”
Matt, rather than a positive argument for same-sex marriage, what’s won is a redefinition of marriage (already accomplished by straight people) that makes it hard to justify excluding same-sex couples from marriage as it exists today. This builds on a parallel argument, largely won, that gay people should not be treated differently than straight people under the law, which is reflected in the Lawrence decision.
And what is marriage today? Here’s Francis Fukuyama’s description: Today many people have come to think of marriage as a kind of public celebration of a sexual and emotional union between two adults, which is why gay marriage has become a possibility in the United States and other developed countries.
Link.
OK, kiddo is sleeping so I can expand on that a little bit.
Just a couple of weeks back, in the UK, a young man was tied to a light post, beaten, and set on fire for being gay. Over Halloween weekend a man was beaten, slashed with a beer bottle and thrown onto a fire in Texas for the same reason. And those are the two cases I was able to find in 30 seconds via google. Every gay and lesbian person I know can tell you about the first time they faced violence because of who they are. And as long as that remains the case I don’t think we can call anything “won” or settled.
I think a corollary problem here is that the “Christians are persecuted” narrative is setup in a way that they can’t be given a space to lose, as the only space that they would take would be unacceptable to everyone else.
The religious freedom in regards to gays is important, and there are a number of issues where I agree Christians have been wronged (the AZ photographer case, some UK/Canada cases that can’t happen in the US) and some where it’s at least arguable (Adoption cases). But gay marriage opponents them into the same box as cases that are complete bullshit (the NJ boardwalk case*), that their theology isn’t a guide when the subject comes up in public school (MA), etc. And beyond that, it’s part of the “Christians are persecuted” narrative in the larger culture war, with the usual Creationism/War on Christmas/etc stuff.
As a whole, the problem with this is Christian religious freedom gets conflated with Christian religious supremacy – not theocracy, but a position above other religions or the non-religious. Which isn’t a space that can really be given.
* The NJ organization didn’t lose its tax exempt status for denying a civil union ceremony on its property, it lost a specific exemption for keeping said property open to the public, as it was no longer open to the public.
The phrase “Gay Brownshirts Thesis” as it appears in this post makes the whole thing self-contradictory and imolicitly nasty, as well as being a fairly mindless and preemptive implementation of Godwin’s Law.
The other day, one of my former students posted a message that really gave me pause.
We simply said that he was looking forward to the day, in terms of the gay-rights debates, when “intolerance has been eliminated.”
I started to write him a note saying: “How do you expect that goal to be accomplished in a land built on freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion?”
I never clicked SEND.
Peter H — it’s the “anything remotely negative you say about gays will cause them to immediately kill themselves” meme that’s developed as the latest “strategy” to win (emotionally blackmail) the issue in the past year.
Charles,
Tell that to the Cherokee.
“Rauch: We gays should tolerate religious freedom”
I don’t doubt Rauch, of whom my reading these last two decades or so persuades me of his anti-authoritarian bona fides and his wholesome allergy to illiberalism of all kinds, so much as I smile at the wording of the headline. “Well, we’ll put up, we guess, with that annoying Bill of Rights, ‘cos if we’re patient enough to leave in the social dough and then flatten the lumps of residual bigotry with the rolling pin of our large-souled tolerance for the sinner – sinner down now, or at least in the fullness of Hegelian baking time – and bide our millennial time like the canny Chinamen of legend, the Empire, grasshopper, will be ours at the last.”
What a beautiful I’m-virtuous-and-so-should-you-be “message” bumper sticker, after all the others that tempt me on the road twelve times hourly to instigate a blazing Hollywood end-over-end canyon-descending automotive fireball: TOLERATE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. I guess the notion of that value as a higher-order good for its own sake, with the fight against homophobia and all other fights forced to know their place beneath it, is off the table in a world where all is instrumental and must prove its cash value on the road to utopia.
Elizabeth, what do you mean “body count”? Victims of AIDS? Or victims of bullies?
I think this gets to the heart of how I’d like to see this play out. The divorce comparison is fantastic and should be more widely discussed.
I think it’s seen as socially acceptable for a minister to refuse to marry a couple if one person has been divorced, and socially outrageous if the refusal is because they are from different ethnic groups. Now I think many, indeed most, of this near majority in favour of gay marriage would be content to see it treated like the former rather than the latter case.
I’ll ask my gay friends about that distinction and will be very interested to hear the response…. I don’t think Rauch is such an outlier. I hope not.
Does it sum up your viewpoint Rod? “Treat gay marriage like divorce, not miscegenation” Hardly a bumper sticker I grant you…
really though i think it’s gotten bad when the main thing religious right-ers are discussing is how gay marriage will force them to bake them wedding cakes or whatever. now having been brainwashed by the patriarchal, heterosexist American system i agree that such people aren’t the second coming of Jim Crow but still…really, that’s what it’s come down to? and besides if you haven’t effectively rebutted the anti-gay marriage = racist line of thinking nothing you say on this will matter.
what about a more substantive aspect of it, like say, gay adoption. is it possible for instance to favor a tiebreaker adoption preference for hetero married couples these days without being a gay-hating fascist. tongue-in-cheek aside i’m actually curious about the one they passed in Arizona that didn’t seem to get much notice outside of liberal sites, has it effectively banned gay (and single) adoption by making waits too long (or limiting their options to kids most people don’t want,) or is it just a minor legal preference. i’d assume the latter but i don’t really know much about the process.
he was looking forward to the day, in terms of the gay-rights debates, when “intolerance has been eliminated.” … I started to write him a note saying: “How do you expect that goal to be accomplished in a land built on freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion?”
To quote an old-school British headmaster I once knew, “Freedom is not when people do what they want to, but when they do what they ought to.”
I look forward to the day when Americans actually believe and act on the values that they claim to espouse.
“On the other side, we have people arguing that innkeepers, caterers, photographers and pretty much anyone else who says “I’m a Christian” should be able to discriminate at will when it comes to gays. That’s an extreme position that has no real place in First Amendment history. ”
Except, you know, for the first 200 years of the country’s existence. I guess history began in 1964 for liberals.
It was a nice idea Rod, but no, you will never get an inch from the homosexualists. They are in it to win it. If we are fated to lose, then well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
@ treebeard
she was talking about murder/attempted murders, not bullying.
but to answer your “question”, she’s not talking about AIDS, since you don’t get AIDS from just being gay, but you can definitely be bullied/murdered just for being gay.
also she explained herself about 40 minutes before you posted. be sure to read all the comments so you don’t miss something.
“it will require us to deliberately leave room for homophobia ” Rauch could begin by not using the term “homophobia” or as he writes later on “dial back the accusations of “bigot” and “hater.””
while a thoughtful piece starting off with “leave room for homophobia” turned me off. he calls for tolerance but that term is intolerant to begin with. it ranks up there with “bigot” and “hater”
“In what sense do you consider the so-called Gay Brownshirts Thesis an accurate description of reality? ”
I see that as accurate statement because I know that I can no longer express my opinion about homosexual rights with out being accused by homosexuals and heterosexuals of being a “bigot” or a “hater” i’ve learned to keep my mouth shut except when I am around folks of like mind. who wants to get beat up in public, and trust me the ad hominem attacks in blog comments can be rough
To quote an old-school British headmaster I once knew, “Freedom is not when people do what they want to, but when they do what they ought to.”
Well the problem with that is – who gets to define ‘what they ought to’ ?
Because criticism in blog comments is just like being tossed into prison or persecuted by Fascists. Got it.
I just have to shake my head and sigh when even someone as thoughtful and eloquent as Rauch gets nitpicked to death, especially for linguistically correct usages. “Homophobia” is a legitimate term, there being very few who are prejudiced against homosexuals who don’t also have some element of fear behind their attitude.
Be that as it may, as we had during the opposition to racist bigotry in the 60s, we will have to just grit our teeth on behalf of the fearful and usher them through the changes in the hope that they will, sometime before the pass away, realize that their fear is unfounded.
Clarification: I have no doubt that there will be court cases stemming from abuse of anti-discrimination statutes. Those cases that involve the recently oppressed engaging in criminal behavior will be the exception rather than the rule, in my opinion. An aspect of the fearfullness that I’m especially interested in letting play out is the fear of retribution, because in a common sense world those who fear retribution probably did something for which they believe they deserve it.
Refreshing to listen to a gay rights advocate who recognizes that tolerance begins by tolerating your opponent. (A civilized opponent, at least – there sure are opponents who wear out their tolerance period).
I also think that, although many don’t like that the slippery slope argument be applied to gay marriage because they seriously think it is something different, the “brownshirt” position will make it relevant.
In particular, the views on polygamy are changing to a more favorable view too (blame HBO’s “Big Love” if you want, but the trend has begun). Anti-polygamy laws are already under challenge in Canada (though they might take years to get to a final decision) – and remember Canada already has gay marriage. If gay marriage becomes legal federally in the US or all states are faced with an obligation to recognize gay marriages from any other state, the stage would be set. Under such established law, with only a slightly more favorable public opinion I could see some polygamist church or family launching a legal challenge in the USA – the obvious target would be a state law, but with the intent to take it all the way up to reach a federal decision. It wouldn’t even need to have an in-the-bank 50% public opinion approval, because the gay precedent would make it acceptable to impose it generally.
The paradox would be that the “brownshirt” position is taken by people who have usually extreme liberal and strongly feminist leanings. These are people who hate polygamous marriages and communities in principle, for being especially retrograde to their tastes (known and ugly exceptions aside, marriages don’t have to be forced anymore than gay marriages are, of course). After the fact they would realize that their embrace of a maximalist position enabled people who they would never invite for dinner, to have their invitation to their table too.
@ Saint Andeol:
Please don’t take my question personally. I really didn’t know what she meant.
Of course you don’t get AIDS (or any other STD) from merely being gay. We are talking about gay marriage, which implies sexual union.
You can also certainly get bullied or murdered for any number of reasons, including being gay. No argument there.
I posted my comment before she answered. Comments take awhile to appear.
St Andeol: In Treebeard’s defense, the current queue system has a fairly long post wait time. Our comments were posted simultaneously.
“Perhaps the Supreme Court could carve out a niche of protection for religious freedom on the gay civil rights question, but I think that quite unlikely. The High Court made no allowance for racial discrimination with regard to religious freedom.”
This is so wrong, whether you are militantly in favor of gay rights, or circling the wagons around the Defense of Marriage Amendment. Neither the Supreme Court, nor the legislature, has to “carve out a niche” of protection. We already have a very expensive protection. It is called the First Amendment, or more precisely, the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses, the first two clauses in the most important article of the entire Constitution.
As a matter of fact, there was nothing that any civil rights law could do about the fact that the Mormon Church excluded people of African descent. That only change in 1978 when Spencer Kimball went up into the tower of the Tabernacle, and came down to announced that God had given him a vision, and they could all join now. The civil rights laws were authorized by the interstate commerce clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, but neither gives congress any jurisdiction over churches, nor the courts for that matter. Courts decide cases that touch on internal matters of faith and doctrine by accepting the decision of any church’s highest judicatory body as binding.
It is also not true that gay rights advocates are unanimously in favor of leaving churches along, inside the church. There was that whining narcissist who was given space in TIME magazine to moan that even in New York, he is not truly equal, so long as a church can refuse to host his wedding. Well, until the First Amendment is substantially amended, that’s reality, so he might as well stop crying and get used to it.
Some gay rights activists do want to rub everyone’s face in exactly what they are doing and why, and order us all to appreciate it. But, whatever fantasy they have of the law, the First Amendment is real, and they won’t be able to get past it. Some conservative Christians are so anxious to sound the alarm and declare imminent martyrdom that they are prepared to prematurely pronounce the demise of the First Amendment, citing the whining narcissistic narrative as “evidence.”
There is a bit more to quibble about when it comes to commercial businesses, but there are some interesting grounds to work with. Ethically, I would say you can’t EXCLUDE a customer from what you are offering because they are ______, but, a customer cannot REQUIRE a business owner to PARTICIPATE in something offensive to their own values. For example, if you sell general merchandise, you can’t turn a customer away because “you’re gay.” But, if you do photography, you can decline to come out to a gay wedding.
It is a sensible distinction, which might pass constitutional muster. It is not a sure thing. Protection of churches, as churches, in matters of faith and doctrine, is as sure a thing as human government can establish.
As for the body count, that is almost irrelevant. Murder and battery are violations of the law. One does not have to revise the content of anyone’s catechism in order to prosecute them as such. Rauch is actually making a good strategic point: the tolerance for acts of violence will drop sharply, once those who believe homosexuality is a sin are assured they have the same right to say so as those who believe drinking alcohol is a sin.
I really don’t think these shroud-waving arguments about moral conservatism causing gays to be murdered and bullied do anyone any credit. It’s shoddy emotivism, based on conjecture and deliberate obfuscation. Just by the by, at this stage, it seems that the murder of that poor young chap in Scotland had precisely nothing to do with his sexuality – but don’t worry folks, I’m sure his family and friends don’t mind you hijacking his horrific, as-yet-unsolved death to further your political aims.
Every day, a Christian somewhere in the world is murdered for his faith. I doubt secularists and non-believers would agree to stop arguing against Christianity on the grounds that such arguments supposedly encourage those murders. Can you imagine the reaction of Ditchkins and the “Brights” (sic) to such whiny special pleading?
Obviously I will reconsider my view if Elizabeth Anne et al can find me a single mainstream Christian leader, from any denomination, who advocates, tolerates or encourages violence against gays.
For those of you who doubt that the new gay rights ascendancy is going to cause serious problems for religious freedom, I leave you with the response of Ben Summerskill, the CEO of Stonewall, the British gay rights organisation, to the question of whether religious bodies should be compelled to allow gay marriages in their buildings:
“Right now faiths shouldn’t be forced to hold CPs, although in 10 or 20 yrs that may change”.
In above comment, CPs = civil partnerships, which is what gay marriage is currently called in Britain.
Why can no one understand how much it hurts to oppose gay marriage and then encounter severe rebukes in the form of…words. Harsh, sharp, homosexual words. Also, Hitler.
i still wanna know how many people think favoring married hetero couples for adoption makes you a modern-day Bull Connor.
the “bigot” argument is pointless…it doesn’t matter how many reasons you present, the gay rights movement is always going to see even the more persuasive arguments as cover for bigotry (and possibly even worse than the easily dismissed Fred Phelpses because they convince regular people — see Chuck Schumer’s recent reference to MLK-skeptic business leaders in the South who weren’t hardcore segregationists.) so why not offer more arguments instead of “i’m not a bigot” protests, cuz there’s absolutely no “middle way” gay marriage wins and opponents of it aren’t portrayed as such.
Niall,
You are absolutely right to remind everyone of the fact that Christians have faced, and in some places still face, ugly persecution.
However gay people have also faced such persecution, and still do in many parts of the world (notably in decidedly non-Christian places like Iran and anti-Christian states like Cuba). And the nation of Uganda is being egged on by its religious leaders (who have financial and rhetorical support from religous leaders in the US) to enact the death penalty against gay people.
The principle ought to be simply this: no one should face discrmination or persecution because of who they are or what they believe. The persecutors of Christians and the persecutors of gays whould share quarters together in hell.
Why can no one understand how much it hurts to oppose gay marriage and then encounter severe rebukes in the form of…words. Harsh, sharp, homosexual words. Also, Hitler.
This, of course, is standard operating procedure: any complaint, however mild, about the intolerance of pro-gay marriage folks is to be mocked and ridiculed, because everybody knows perfectly well that those who oppose gay marriage are bigots who don’t deserve any consideration.
How nice it would be if there were a single prominent gay activist or voice that sounded like Jonathan Rauch. They don’t really exist.
Rod, is calling gay activists “Brownshirts” because they use the term “bigot” really a “mild” complaint? Or is it as much of an overreach as you are accusing gay activists of? You want civility, then call people gay Brownshirts when they say things that hurt your feelings.
The “how dare you call me a bigot” hysteria is as shrill as what’s coming from gay activists. Time to man up on all sides, so to speak.
Rod:
“How nice it would be if there were a single prominent gay activist or voice that sounded like Jonathan Rauch. They don’t really exist.”
You mean, besides Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, Dale Carpenter, etc.?
and Jonathan Rauch would be surprised to know that he doesn’t really exist.
^Be serious. While I appreciate Rauch for arguing for SSM on grounds other than “equality” these are not gonna be the guys credited as the driving force behind gay rights activism when all’s said and done. Well Sullivan maybe. But that’s it.
Anybody remember the 1970′s? The complete and utter depravity of “gay culture?” A marginalized group, denied their basic human right to live lives according to their nature, lived on the margins of society and their sexual mores reflected their marginalized status. As the consequences of that behavior became known (AIDS) attitudes toward gay relationships started to change, and over time the mainstream gay culture started looking more like mainstream straight culture.
I believe sexual orientation is biological. In the past, with marriage more about economics and familial alliances, gays often married and had families, while doing their gay thing on the side. The secular definition of marriage has changed radically–if marriage is just two people who lurve each other and want to live as a married couple as long as it works out, then I see absolutely no reason gays should be denied the right to marry.
In my worldview, loving commitments and family formation is the greater good. Promiscuity is more of a social ill than gay marriage. Let ‘em get married—it’s better than what went on before.
I should clarify AIDS and changing attitudes developed in parallel–I don’t know if the AIDS epidemic had anything to do with the gradual acceptance of gays in society. I don’t think it did, but maybe it forced people to confront the fact that people they loved–parents, children, siblings, friends–were gay.
“arguing for SSM on grounds other than ‘equality’ ”
Spot on, dear boy, for in the dungeons I grew up in, it was its very inequality that put the SSence in SSM, though a becoming switchability does, I admit, enable one to feel how one’s other half lives first Upstairs and then Down.
And if you’re going to practice SSM, it’s always good to pack a lunch* along with your safe word; as to the latter and since I too practice PB&J, mine currently are “Jif” and “Welch’s”.
*As linked in my latest email roundup, this week titled Drops Pants and Leaves.
Anybody remember the 1970′s? The complete and utter depravity of “gay culture?” A marginalized group, denied their basic human right to live lives according to their nature, lived on the margins of society and their sexual mores reflected their marginalized status.
Do you really believe it was society’s fault that many gay men turned to complete and utter depravity? Do you really think that that’s over? Please don’t ever find yourself on lower Bourbon Street, especially during Carnival. It will disillusion you on this point. Besides, if that theory were true, why weren’t lesbians behaving the same way at the time? Why does promiscuity persist among gay males, even in these relatively tolerant times, and in very tolerant cities (e.g., San Francisco, New York), but not among gay women?
“Why does promiscuity…not [persist] among gay women?”
As this thread assays all aspects of the rise among The Gays of first the culture of raunch and then that of Rauch, turning smartly at the last from his staff to distaff, I find myself now streaming on my monitor a brief MeTube clip from an old episode of The Lez Boat (that’s me on the lido deck with, or rather as, the beard), as first posted to a c. 2008 thread at Rod’s old blog.
Elizabeth Anne, thanks for the clarification. I agree that it’s important to stand against violence and bullying. I don’t think Rauch is advocating a retreat on that front.
“Do you really believe it was society’s fault that many gay men turned to complete and utter depravity? Do you really think that that’s over? Please don’t ever find yourself on lower Bourbon Street, especially during Carnival.”
So what explains the sexual ethics of the “Jersey Shore” set?
I have two words for anyone who believes that homosexuals will be tolerant of non-approved opinions. Carrie Prejean.
Peter H nails it.
The idea that there is some sort of special depravity belonging only to homosexuals is pure bull.
Niall, I credit the quote from the Brit as accurate but please remember that
a) That is his personal opinion, not the law, even in Britain, and, more important,
b) Britain has a sloppy constantly compiled unwritten constitution that changes whenever parliament votes a new law; we have the First Amendment.
Do I really think it was society’s fault that many gay men turned to complete and utter depravity? It certainly contributed… cats love in the alley, and worms love underground, and when people have to hide in back alleys to pursue their romantic interest, the whole thing acquires the characteristics of the alley. When you can openly go over to your significant other’s home and spend the night, it tends to clean things up a bit… but old habits do die hard. A study of families in which several generations consisted of single mothers whose daughters got pregnant at 15 found that the family could literally be traced back to Sen. James Eastland’s plantation, where that was the normal lifestyle for n—–s. Similar cause and effect.
It is truly thin-skinned to express a sense of martyrdom because someone responds to your public statements with harsh words, or even insults. Shoot some harsh words back, or better yet, more coherent principles and facts. Yes, some gay activists are acting like brownshirts — the ones who insist everyone must conform to their particular brand or be ostracized. But, every viewpoint has a right to be clearly presented.
“The idea that there is some sort of special depravity belonging only to homosexuals is pure bull.”
Well, maybe not belonging *only* to homosexuals, but statistics show that either (1) male homosexuals engage in more risky behavior than male heterosexuals or (2) the mechanics of gay sex is more risky, or most likely a combination.
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A data analysis released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention underscores the disproportionate impact of HIV and syphilis among gay and bisexual men in the United States.
The data, presented at CDC’s 2010 National STD Prevention Conference, finds that the rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) is more than 44 times that of other men and more than 40 times that of women.
The range was 522-989 cases of new HIV diagnoses per 100,000 MSM vs. 12 per 100,000 other men and 13 per 100,000 women.
The rate of primary and secondary syphilis among MSM is more than 46 times that of other men and more than 71 times that of women, the analysis says. The range was 91-173 cases per 100,000 MSM vs. 2 per 100,000 other men and 1 per 100,000 women.
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http://tinyurl.com/yk9mzyc
Mitchell Young, given that this post starts with a gay man’s call for tolerance, it would seem that your blanket statement is an overreach.
Surely you would object if someone were to insist that Christians can’t tolerate non-approved opinions, even if he offered up Richard Cizik’s firing as an example.
Gays are no more of a single mind than are Christians.
It’s worth noting that when he started making the case for same-sex marriage back in the early 1990s, Andrew Sullivan’s in-box was filled with hate mail from homosexuals.
We can do the “straights do blahblahblah too” back-and-forth, but while straight married couples cheat, they don’t have any visible figures advocating non-monogamy as acceptable like the gay male community does.
also not even the most vitriolic anti-gay commentators out there present straight America as some kind of paragon of virtue, so i dunno why everytime someone points out that differences in male and female sex drives exist people feel the need to play the hypocrisy card. not everything is a personal attack
re: Please don’t ever find yourself on lower Bourbon Street, especially during Carnival.
My one visit to the famed Bourbon Street showed me quite a few instances of debauchery, from passed out guys in the gutter with an occasional cop prodding them to see if they were still breathing to women flashing their mammaries to the crowd from balconies above. The gay part of town was actually tamer than the straight area, unless you find drag queens über-scandalous. But NOLA is an equal-opportunity den of inquity, not to be compared to, say, Castro Street, as some uniquely gay carnival.
Yes Peter H. with regard to Prejean I should have said the militant homosexual lobby. But that is a pretty good proportion of homosexuals.
For those saying that militant gays merely use harsh words, I give you Scott Eckern, who lost his job at the California Musical Theatre because he had the temerity to support Proposition 8.
http://tinyurl.com/6o8ghc
JonF
You’d have a hard time finding anything public display we heterosexuals engage in even close to San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair. (Yes, a few “edgy” heterosexuals now participate, but the event was started by homosexuals and is still overwhelmingly homosexual).
Rod, Bourbon Street is as good a metric for gay life as for straight life. I’ve visited that blessed locale several times, incidentally. And while I witnessed hundreds of examples of degraded behavior, the overwhelming majority involved heterosexual folks. But if everything I knew about gays had been gleaned from Bourbon St, I’d probably be for locking ‘em all up.
But Rod, I promise there’s a lot more to gay folk than Carnival and Castro! Plenty of ‘em are just focused on reading airport bestsellers, going to Costco, and living boring lives of unimpeachable respectability (apart from being all gay and such).
But Rod, I promise there’s a lot more to gay folk than Carnival and Castro!
Oh, of course. Seriously, I know that. But there is nothing in straight culture like the normalization of promiscuity among gay men (not women, I hasten to point out.) I once had to go find a gay friend in a French Quarter bar because I had to give him some important information. He’d told the rest of us that he’d be at this particular place if we needed him. I walked in — the women who were with me weren’t allowed past the door — and found the main room of the bar to be extremely dim. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that quite a few of these guys were openly having sex, right in the middle of the bar.
This was not some dingy hole on a sleazy backstreet, either.
My gay friend told me that once he went into a particular Quarter bar at Mardi Gras, and found that they had put plywood on the pool tables to keep semen from staining the velvet. Also at that bar, a naked man was lounging in the urinal, asking people to pee on him. My friend thought all that was hilarious.
That just does not happen in straight society. I’m not saying all gay men participate in that — I don’t believe they do — but debauchery is a lot more accepted in gay male circles.
(Sorry to be vividly detailed, but it’s important to know what we’re talking about here. I’ll never forget in the mid-1990s, going to cover the gay rights march in Washington, and being down there in the crowds. Many typical bourgeois gays, of course, but also many, many freakshow denizens, including topless lesbians, elderly leathermen, a group of gay male nature lovers, one with a branch sticking out of his butt. Et cetera. Those didn’t make the news. The bourgeois did. Surprise, surprise.)
“That just does not happen in straight society.”
So what? Just because a subset of a group participates in some activities you find repugnant, the entire group should be suspect? Perhaps if you went to a swingers convention in Las Vegas or hung out in the San Fernando Valley you would find some hetero things that pushed the same buttons. You’re gay friend was a jerk for inviting you into to such a situation knowing it would be repulsive to you. What consenting adults do is their own business, regardless of it being icky.
Regarding gay men being more promiscuous than gay women, is it really a mystery to you?
Just because a subset of a group participates in some activities you find repugnant, the entire group should be suspect?
Give me a break. Quite a lot of you are willing to run roughshod over the religious freedom of tens of millions of Americans because of a tiny minority of true bigots who bully gay people.
Having been to Bourbon Street during a Hallowe’en Saturday in the ’90s, I would say that the gay end was *far* less lewd and lascivious than that straight end. And the police were much more occupied on the straight end, too. (The police in the French Quarter were amazingly swift; I’ve never seen anything like it, but it’s what I imagine the Israeli police must be like in terms of catching things before they fully happen.)
I do know many gay and lesbian folks, and their opinions vary a lot but Jonathan Rauch speaks for far more of them than not, and temperamentally nearly for all of them. It’s just that these people are not particularly given to prattling on in comboxes or on blogs: we always need to remember the distortion field of the Internet, where there’s a barbell curve instead of a bell curve.
I will also say that virtually all my gay and lesbian friends have had to deal at at least once and often more than once with physical violence from straight people due to their perceived or known orientation. Rod might have another look at this, from the perspective of his own experience of humiliation, which may well have been the result of being mis-identified as a potential closet case in school. I find straight guys who get mis-identified as gay as teenagers can either be very open to the claims of gay folk for equal rights, or very queezy about it; both perspectives are understandable from the context.
Nope, Liam, I was just a nerd. That’s all it took.
I don’t deny that some gays and lesbians are bullied and worse because of their sexuality. I condemn this and abhor it. I’ll never tire of saying that bullying is wrong, and should be punished. Full stop. That said, though, it is by no means logical to say that because some bigots mistreat gay people that therefore whatever gay people want should be permitted by society, even at the expense of bedrock values like religious freedom.
“Give me a break. Quite a lot of you are willing to run roughshod over the religious freedom of tens of millions of Americans because of a tiny minority of true bigots who bully gay people.”
Really! Who’s this “you” you’re referring to. Where have I said anything like that? Sounds like you’re getting a little worked up there Rod. Just where are you being run roughshod over anyway? Please.
@ Mitchell Young,
I read an article in Playboy in the late ’70s or early ’80s, when serious debauchery was Th Thang among gay males, claiming that the reason for this was that gay male culture consisted of young men living out male sexual fantasies and proclivities, without any of the moderating effect that women exercise on men.
Being a young man at the time myself, I could appreciate and testify to that rather strong set of brakes for those of us who were dependent on the participation of women for our sex lives.
Really? Tens of millions of people have their religious liberty threatened because you can’t discriminate against a gay couple who want a wedding cake? Who are these people. Raise their hands. Because the anecdotal evidence is that the victims of true religious liberty violations because of gay civil rights could be counted on one hand with a few fingers left over.
The overreach and emotionalism on the side of religious conservatives on this issue is intellectually dishonest.
Totally agree Dan — I get Playboy for the articles too!
Still waiting for a defense of this statement:
“Quite a lot of you are willing to run roughshod over the religious freedom of tens of millions of Americans because of a tiny minority of true bigots who bully gay people”
In all seriousness, where is this? Please enlighten me.
Let’s be clear: Nazi Brownshirts attacked and killed people. Gay rights advocates, even the strongest of them, aren’t doing anything like that, just using legal processes to advance their cause and restrict their opponents. You are violating the “no Hitler comparison” rules of netiquette here.
The only actual Brownshirts in the history of this debate have been the gay bashers who have attacked and often killed gay people for centuries, and utterly repressed and punished them just for “coming out”. Examine Oscar Wilde for just one prominent example. There is nothing, literally nothing to compare to that history going on from the other side now. What is being restricted is the ability of people to discriminate in the public arena against gay people, regardless of their rationale for it, religious and otherwise. In the religious community, they are free to continue to hold those beliefs and to organize themselves around it. Outside that community, no, they aren’t, anymore than the guy with the confederate flag altar in his living room can discriminate against black people if he owns an apartment complex or a hardware store in those settings.
Sure, that makes things a bit difficult for those people to adhere to their private beliefs in the public sphere. Join the club. You think gay people never had any trouble with their own private religious beliefs in the public sphere? Get real.
Also, Rod, I’m really not seeing how religious freedoms are being restricted by any of this. One can still practice one’s own religion, one just can’t discriminate in the public sphere based on religion. That’s fundamental to America. What other way would you have us organize society?
“One can still practice one’s own religion, one just can’t discriminate in the public sphere based on religion. That’s fundamental to America.”
Assuming by “can” and “can’t” you mean actionably at law or not, yes, “one” can indeed so discriminate, in some respects if not in all. What’s “fundamental to America” since its founding is the tying of the hands of the government(s) regarding either the favor or disfavor, toward one or another denominational fold, under which they legislate and adjudicate. Such a doctrine is at the very bedrock of the post-Lockean constitutional liberalism that has formed the dominant strain of political theory practice since the founding: a clear distinction between the public and private spheres is instinct within liberalism itself.
The late 20th century saw the rise in the United States of such proscriptions upon religion-based discrimination by private concerns as Fair Housing laws, Equal Opportunity employment laws, civil rights laws in regard to public accommodation, &c. Though the scope of these laws is to some extent in constant tug-of-war flux, amd with a lucrative legal sub-industry to show for it, that scope has its limits in the yoke it places upon private non-state actors. One obvious zone of freedom lies within the hiring by churches and temples and synagogues and mosques for positions with a specifically officiating or doctrinal or administrative function. Another lies, and I should hope obviously so, in the requirements within all such houses of worship for subscriptional membership itself. An avowed Mormon has no grounds to sue should she be denied a position as deacon within a Catholic diocese; if the position be that of clerk-typist, varying state and local laws may well bind the church much more than in the former case.
The obvious Rubicon here lies within the figurative extension of public accommodation laws unto a binding requirement that a church whose members are forbidden by subscriptional commitment to marry those of the same sex will be required to perform civilly such marriages upon others. Whether such fears on the part of traditionalists are overheated or not is one thing, but the thought that should such a Rubicon be crossed a bitter whirlwind might indeed be ours to reap, and in ways that we could easily envision coming back to bite social liberals and radicals no less than their traditionalist opponents of record, is not one that liberals should blithely dismiss out of hand.
Re: This was not some dingy hole on a sleazy backstreet, either
It actually does sound like a pretty sleezy dive, and I agree wuth the poster who said that guy was a total jerk for inviting you there. (In fac tI;d say worse, but this is a famiy friendly place)
Most gay bars don’t feature public sex acts. In fact many are popular with straight women so they can go out and drink, dance and socialize with their friends and not get hit on by boozy boys. Gay places tend not to have bar fights too. And, gay clubs tend to have the best DJs so anyone who likes to dance will gravitate to them. Maybe some naughty stuff still happens in the restrooms, I don’t know– I am not the sex police after all.
As for gay prides, I’ve noticed the exact opposite trend in reporting: it’s usually some statuesque flashy drag queen with a name like Helen Bedd or Ivana Ball who ends up on TV, maybe along with a leather-clad grampa and the ever-popular dykes-on-bikes.
Scott makes some good points. For example, there is lawsuit going on in VT by a lesbian couple against an inn that refused to host their wedding once they realized it was a gay couple and told them so in no uncertain terms. “We’re booked” instead of “they don’t host gay receptions” would have save them a lot of trouble.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/us/20vermont.html
However, unless you are hardcore against the civil rights act, we wouldn’t be having this conversation about a mixed race couple in the same boat. There is no inherent right to run a an inn or restaurant. If you do, you unfortunately have to abide by the rules the state mandates. If you can’t tolerate a certain type of person or wedding ceremony, then running a public accommodation probably isn’t the business for you and you can easily open yourself to litigation. I’m not a lawyer, but if Hooters can manage to hire only buxom women as waitresses, then it shouldn’t be too hard for a church to hire believers. It’s already against the law to inquire about someone’s sexual-orientation, religion, age, marital status, etc. when considering employment. So I don’t see how hiring practices are going to materially change.
Incidentally, the law in Vermont under which the couple is suing leaves an exemption for religious organizations.
Rod, I see you aren’t going to respond. That’s pretty weak. It seems to me you have some hang-ups here that are going to prevent you from looking at this in a rational manner.
You state: “As Mark Shea likes to say often, it is not enough that you be tolerant; you must approve!”
No one cares whether you approve or not. I think the issue is YOU want approval in polite company of your negative views towards homosexuals. It frightens you that your view is rapidly becoming an anachronism and that even the younger generation of christians are leaving it behind. Tolerance means granting full and equal rights to someone, regardless of whether you approve of their lifestyle or views. You and your ilk are actively working against those rights. If you said “we think you should have the same rights as everyone, we just don’t condone your lifestyle”, then you wouldn’t generate half the animosity you do. Instead, you use terms like “brownshirts” and harp on promiscuity and deviant sex. It really says a lot about you and the quality of your argument. Then you paint yourself as a victim of those mean gays. “They called me a bigot! They’ll think twice about that when they’re burning in hell for their sinful ways!”
Rod, I see you aren’t going to respond. That’s pretty weak. It seems to me you have some hang-ups here that are going to prevent you from looking at this in a rational manner.
No, here’s the deal: I’m running a blog here on which I post 15 or more items per day (my wife said to me, “Don’t you realize that TAC isn’t paying you to work 18 hours a day?” I do, but I love this stuff). Yours is a great question, but it’s also one I have answered, and answered, and answered, for years. I don’t blame you for asking it, but I’m assuming you’ve only just discovered this blog. Yours is kind of like asking Andrew Sullivan, “So, just why should anybody support gay marriage?” I am faced with the question: Do I got into a blog thread that most people aren’t reading any more and once again answer a question I’ve answered a thousand times? Or do I spend my time on new posts, or participating in fresher threads?”
It is very, very, very easy to find on the web credible explanations for why gay marriage threatens religious freedom, and will do so on a massive scale. This is five years old, but still good: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/191kgwgh.asp
Conradg, I commend this article to you as well. I understand people who say that the rights of gay people should trump religious liberty. Don’t agree at all, but I understand their point of view. What drives me crazy is people who say that there is no significant threat at all, when that is plainly, plainly untrue.
And please, don’t analogize this to race. As Rauch rightly recognizes, no major religion has had racial discrimination justified in its basic moral teaching. Orthodox (historical) Judaism, Islam, and mainstream Christianity do. The idea that tens, even hundreds, of millions of American religious believers must have their most sacred convictions dismissed because they don’t fit an abstract secularist concept of liberty is abhorrent to me. But not, I see, to many of my fellow Americans, who think no consideration is owed to us bigots. I, like many Christians, am willing to concede a change in the laws to make it easier for gay citizens (e.g., end of sodomy laws, civil partnerships). I’m starting to believe that we accomodationists have been suckers. Doesn’t matter; we will have lost anyway.
Rod,
Thanks for the response. With all respect, I feel it’s bad form to take the time from your busy day to throw a blanket accusation at me in the comments, without any reference and then act as if you don’t have the time to respond. It’s your blog and you can act as you wish.
I read the linked article, and I have to say I’m not impressed. The Boston Catholic Charities adoption agency, just as I mentioned in another post, has to abide by the licensing the state mandates. According to the article, the local decision makers felt that gay couples were qualified and placed children in several same sex homes. Once that news was broadcast by the press, Cardinal O’malley stepped in, ultimately deciding they would rather cease operations than comply with state law. While operating an adoption program is a noble and much needed service, it’s not central to worshipping as a catholic, so no discrimination there.
The second example in the article is the lawsuit against California Lutheran High School over the expulsion of two suspected lesbian students. The courts decided in 2009: “The 4th District Court of Appeal in Riverside on Monday upheld California Lutheran High School’s right as a private, religious organization to exclude students based on their sexual orientation.” I agree 100% with that ruling. No discrimination there.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/court-expulsion-based-sexual-orientation-california-lutheran-high-school-case-article-1.369571
Regarding loss of tax-exempt status, I really don’t have a problem with religious organizations paying taxes. If an organization would rather discontinue charity work than comply with state or federal law, they are welcome to make that decision. It certainly doesn’t prevent worship or charitable acts that comply with their doctrines. They just don’t receive the same tax treatment. As mentioned in the article, Bob Jones Univ decided they would rather continue to disallow inter-racial dating than receive tax-exempt status. Again, I have no problem with that. Again, no discrimination there. They actually changed their policy and apologized in 2008.
It pretty much boils down to: take the governments money, play by the governments rules. No one is being discriminated against in those examples, unless you see being tax-exempt as fundamental religious doctrine.
Rod, I simply don’t see any issue of religious liberty at stake here. You and others are defining “religious liberty” in a fashion never before conceived of, that one’s own religious conscience should take precedence over the laws of the land. I have much sympathy with conscientious objectors in principle, and often in practice, but neither the first amendment nor any practice of religious liberty I know of requires the state to bend to religious beliefs when they conflict with state policy.
Freedom of religion means you cannot be coerced by the state into going against one’s religion. It does not mean the state can be coerced into going along with one’s religion. Someone who cannot go to war for religious reasons has a sound case to be exempt from military service, for example. But that same person does not have a case that they should be able to serve in the military, but only follow those orders which agree with their religious conscience.
Likewise, there is no infringement on religious liberty if the Catholic Church decides it cannot in good conscience go along with adoption by same-sex couples. If they were coerced into that it would be one thing, but they are not, they are free to not provide adoption services. I think it’s a shame that they are making that decision, but it’s not as if there are no other adoption services to make up for their departure. Just as there are plenty of other soldiers to make up for those who take conscientious objector status. The purpose of adoption services is to best serve the kids and parents, not adoption agencies. If an adoption agencies view of what does that disagrees with state laws, they can either bend their righteous beliefs, or they can get out of that field.
You say that no religion has ever justified racial discrimination, but this is of course untrue. The white churches during slavery and Jim Crow were adamant supporters on religious ground of slavery and discrimination, and they resisted change deeply and for a very long time. Another example would be the Mormon Church which taught the spiritual inferiority of black people for a very long time. Confronted with the changing mores of the nation, it responded by changing its own authoritative views on race. That was its choice, and the choice when it comes to religious views on sexual orientation are similar. One can go against the tide, or realize that one’s religious beliefs are not based in either love or spiritual reality, and change them. If one chooses not to change them, some blowback is going to occur, particular when there is a conflict with government law and policy. In neither case is this a matter of curbing religious freedom, however. People are free to be bigoted in whatever way they choose privately. They are free to follow their religious beliefs privately also. They just can’t expect government to bend its laws to allow them to do so in the public sphere. Those laws aren’t formulated by religious belief, and they don’t respect religious objections to them.
On the wider social issue of tolerance for those who oppose gay marriage and gay rights, I’m quite in favor of that. I think taking too righteous and intolerant a stance against even intolerance is always a mistake. Love is still the best social law for personal relations. But one still has to abide by the rules of government in respecting the legal rights of others, despite one’s own personal religious beliefs. Work to change those laws, fine, but trying to carve out religious exceptions for one’s own particular beliefs is not likely to work, especially in cases like this. It may mean that orthodox Catholics are going to be even less likely to support gay rights, but I think their vote was always doubtful.
“Scott Eckern, who lost his job at the California Musical Theatre because he had the temerity to support Proposition 8.”
One reason these things happen, is that conservative voices are telling us, that is the state of the law, this is what liberals have done to our constitutional rights, this is the way it is. The same kind of cowardly, uncreative, nebulous thinking is what allowed the claim of a constitutional right to a marriage license to reach the federal appellate level.
Eckern was fired in retaliation for his exercise of a constitutionally protected right. That is actionable under the civil rights laws. It is not different than firing an employee for having a McCain sticker on their car, when the CEO of their company supports Obama (or vice versa).
“The only actual Brownshirts in the history of this debate have been the gay bashers who have attacked and often killed gay people for centuries”
Considering the variety of human cultures over the centuries, the variety of ways each has dealt with homosexuality (not all with hostility), and the absence of a consistent pattern of every culture in every century routinely killing people engaged in homosexual acts, that is a prime bit of self-serving hysteria. Don’t forget, the leadership of the Brownshirts WERE homosexual, which is one point Hitler used when he decided to destroy the organization.
Although it is not illegal, getting hold of petition signatures, making a list, and sending letters to neighbors saying “You should know how your neighbor thinks,” as if there is something odious about signing a petition, or holding a political position in a referendum, is a form of intimidation that plausibly merits the appellation “Brownshirt.” In fact, Conradg’s assumption that All Right Thinking People Support Gay Rights is a bit totalitarian in itself, even assuming, arguendo, that all gay demands are ethically sustainable. Most human beings are wrong some percentage of the time, and gays are not exempt from this generalization.