Who knew cuddling = oppression?
Pursuant to last week’s post on the far right and American history, Sarah Posner posted recently at Religion Dispatches Magazine about the post-Prop-8, post-DADT positioning of the Christian right which believes itself to be not only a persecuted minority but (through the looking glass material here) a minority that is being persecuted by the act of securing equal rights for others. Namely, the civil and human rights of non-straight citizens. Learning from its opponents on the political left, the politicized Christian right — specifically those Christians who seek to transform the United States into a Christian nation — has decided to spin the cultural divide into a fight played out in the courts.
This necessitates translating their fundamentally theological arguments into legal philosophy — and then spinning that legal philosophy into something that will fly in U.S. federal courts. Since, as the Proposition 8 failure proved, religious disagreement with a person’s actions (i.e. same-sex sexual activity) does not stand up to Constitutional scrutiny. So those intent on taking the Christian fundamentalist battle into the courtroom have chosen to play the minority card — they argue that their rights as citizens — their right to disapprove of queer folks’ access to equality — is being unconstitutionally limited by the legal recognition of those rights.
You following me?
So, to crib Sarah Posner’s example, it’s not the non-straight soldiers in the U.S. military whose rights as citizens have been curtailed all these years because of cultural homophobia … but rather the rights of Christians in the U. S. military whose rights are now under threat because they’ll be forced to recognize the rights of others. When in fact the opposite is true. As Posner observes,
At its core, the war against the “homosexual agenda” pits the rights of LGBT people against the “Christian nation” mythology. Since we are a Christian nation, the argument goes, our laws must reflect that Christian theology condemns homosexuality. Despite being on shaky ground both theologically and historically, religious right legal organizations — claiming the need to counter the ACLU and its advocacy for both LGBT rights and the separation of church and state — have attempted to transform this culture war argument into a legal one.
The most recent effort was in the Supreme Court case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, in which the CLS argued that Hastings Law School should grant it official recognition as a club, even though it required “members and those wishing to hold leadership positions in the club to be professing Christians and to disavow ‘unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle,’” in violation of the school’s non-discrimination policy.
… [Such arguments are] is only a few steps away from specious arguments that LGBT equality “criminalizes” Christianity. The reality in the military is that nontheists, Jews, Muslims, and even Christians who aren’t evangelical are subject to the imposition of evangelical religious belief, all funded by the US government.
Read Posner’s entire post over at RDmagazine.
My inner skeptic finds it very difficult to believe that evangelical Christians, who enjoy the passive cultural privilege of living in a majority Christian nation, actually experience the life of a persecuted minority. Rather, I suspect that shrewd tacticians have calculated that playing the “minority” card will get them what they want (a nation of Christian evangelical privilege) whereas arguing for straightforward supremacy will not. However, I also believe that many evangelical Christians do feel under siege, feel as if they are an embattled minority within a hostile secular culture.
Pushing back against the minority-card tactics is one thing, since claims of persecution fail to stand up in court where actual evidence is needed to support truth claims. Helping those who feel threatened by diversity (of belief, of life-choices, of actions and ethics) is a much more complicated proposition … and one which I sometimes despair of making much headway on.
Last time I checked, courts require evidence of actual discrimination, not just pitiful stories about feelings. No one has the right to serve in the military, get funding for explicitly bigoted organizations, or make others live in ways that are comfortable for you. So go whine somewhere else, fundies.
shrewd tacticians have calculated that playing the “minority” card will get them what they want
Brian Brown of NOM on gay marriage: “If gay marriage is allowed, then the state is essentially saying that my views on marriage, and the majority of Americans’ views on marriage, are equivalent to discrimination…It profoundly affects me if my children are taught in the schools that my views on marriage are bigoted. I profoundly affects me if the church (RCC) I am part of is treated in the law as bigoted.”
Bingo Brian. We are saying you are a bigot.
I had this conversation with a family member recently, who told me that she thought that “Unfortunately, in our “post-Christian” culture, it has become politically acceptable to be intolerant of Christians”… to which I said…. PAHAAAA!… and that any white, Christian American should think twice about playing the ‘intolerance’ card.
I think a lot of our cultural battles get played out within the military because the military is under direct Congressional/judicial control and the UCMJ also covers ‘lifestyle’ choices, so it gives right-wingers and evangelicals a big ego boost to know they really can control a million people. I also think that’s why it scares them so badly when they lose battles like DADT.
Also the idea that all Christians are anti-equality is ridiculous since basically all the major mainline Protestant denominations have recently voted to allow gay pastors and gay weddings within their churches. The mainline Protestants need to start doing a better job of showing their numbers and highlighting the fact that they have been in the United States since before it was the United States, so if any church can make claims about what the Founding Fathers believes in, it is probably the ones they actually attended.
@WingStaff I absolutely second your point that not all Christians are anti-equality (having come to political feministm through liberation theology as an undergraduate, I have always seen social justice issues and faith going hand-in-hand). It isn’t just Protestants either; there are many Catholics here in the America who, despite the official stance of the Catholic hierarchy, are very welcoming and pro-queer rights.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jerry Limnent. Jerry Limnent said: In which my equal rights “criminalize” the rights of the majority …: Pursuant to last week's post on the far r… http://bit.ly/fWNWhk [...]
I have nothing reasonable to add to this because this whole oppressed christian nonsense makes me viscerally angry and then I just want to curse and yell at people. So I’ll just say head desk repeat.
My parents have been saying this for a couple of years now, and it’s so infuriating that it leaves me speechless. My father is very fond of saying that he has the right to live in a country that follows God, like America used to, and that people like me are encroaching on his rights and oppressing him. White, straight, middle-class, cisgendered, able-bodied man whining because he might have to live in a country where queer people can marry.
@ WingStaff,
While I appreciate your point, I’m not sure where you’re getting your information on mainline Protestantism; I fear we may be a bit more narrow-minded than you think. To the best of my knowledge, only the Episcopal Church allows gays to serve in all levels of the clergy. The largest mainline denomination (mine, the United Methodist Church) does not yet allow the ordination of gay pastors and regularly defrocks those who come out. There’s been a lot of contention over this policy in recent years, with many attempts to repeal it. I’m not sure where Lutherans, Presbyterians, ect. are in this process, but I suspect they are engaging in similar debates. General opinion seems to be turning (unless I’m too optimistic), but reform has lagged behind. I guess my point here is that even members of the supposedly “good denominations” can’t afford to just sit back and laugh at the fundies. There’s still a lot of work to be done.
I’m ELCA Lutheran (the largest of the three Lutheran denominations) and at last year’s national meeting we voted to allow gay ministers. It was a narrow vote but considering most of our members are older White mid-westerns it showed how far the Church has come… believe me, it was studied for years. Several gay ministers who had been defrocked in earlier decades were brought back into the official ministry.
I know that not every mainline denomination has fully accepted gay and lesbians, but if they even stood up and said, “No, this is not a cut and dry issue. The three Bible quotes that are anti-homosexual behaviour are not the only verses that affect this debate. We’re not sure how inclusive we want to be but we cannot let the most anti-gay churches speak as if this issue has been decided for all Christians.”
At least that’s what I would wish they would do until they vote for inclusion.