A missed point

[avevale_intelligencer]

With trepidation (and probably softening of the brain) I dip my toe into the burning petrol again...

filkertom and others have been commenting on Obama's appointment of an anti-gay-marriage pastor to speak at his inauguration, and asking, with brows furrowed in honest puzzlement, "how does someone else's marriage affect him?"

To ask this, to assume that this is the important question, is to miss the point by a hundred and thirty seven miles, as I've pointed out on a number of occasions, and to fail to understand your opponents by that much is to diminish to a serious degree your chances of ever reaching an accommodation with them, which short of killing them is the only way to end this rhubarb.

Disclaimer that no-one ever reads: I do not agree with these people nor am I opposed to gay marriage as should have been obvious to anyone who reads this journal at all regularly. I've taken my knocks for uncomplicatedly opposing Prop 8, so you could at least listen to me while I explain this about the other side to you.

Assuming for the moment, outlandish as it may seem, that this Warren person is sincere in his Christian belief...it doesn't have to affect him. There's this story, see, that the Christians tell, about a guy who got mugged and was lying in the road wounded and broke, and only one person stopped and helped him, and that was the ideal held up by Jesus to his disciples. It didn't affect the man from Samaria that this guy had got himself robbed and beaten, but he saw a fellow human being in trouble and wanted to help.

Now supporters of Prop 8, those who are sincere in their beliefs (yes, I know that phrase doesn't compute because you can't imagine how anyone could sincerely believe such nonsense, just file it somewhere and move on), they see a whole lot of people in trouble with God. God (and I've said this before as well) isn't a choice to them, he's not negotiable. He's like gravity. He's THERE and he has RULES and if you break them you will go to HELL and that's true as far as they know whether they like it or not. It really isn't any of their business who other people marry...but they wouldn't be good Christians if they did not try to save people from the pains of hell, and if that means dissolving marriages that are not made according to the rules of their God, then they'll do it. Not to interfere would, to them, make them the same as those people who stood by while Kitty Genovese was murdered.

None of that matters to the people whose marriages, legally entered into, are now threatened, of course, or to those whose view of God is more modern and flexible and New Testament, or to members of other faiths, or to atheists. And you don't have to try to get inside these people's heads, to understand that they genuinely think they're helping. But it might help to bring a good ending to this fight just a little closer.

Comments

[rozk.livejournal.com]

In the end, my anger with that sort of Christian derives, in part, from the arrogance with which they hold beliefs for which, even within their system, there is comparatively little justification. They suffer from spiritual pride, almost all of them, one of the sins which the Gospels condemn most - they are not even prepared to consider the possibility that they might be mistaken, and that unpreparedness is a sin both according to their own beliefs and a more humanist one.

There is a wilful stupidity to, say, Rick Warren's claim that, if Darwin were true, homosexuality would have been bred out of the species, a claim that is wrong on so many levels, and involves so many crass misunderstandings both of science and of human behaviour that it is hard to know where to begin. People who follow a man like that have sacrificed intellectual awareness, and spiritual rigour, for the lazy comfort of a morality which is mostly about disapproving of other people. Kierkegaard somewhere compares the behaviour of most believers to schoolkids who copy the answers out of the back of the book rather than working it out for themselves.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying they're right, or even that their good intentions are enough to excuse them. I understand and respect your anger. Wilful stupidity is one of the hardest kinds to get rid of, especially in oneself as I know only too well.

But if they merely disapproved, if that were all or even most of what their morality were about, they would happily stand by and let all the sinners go to hell, figuring that that would leave more heaven for them. Their morality does not allow them that lazy comfort. Unlike, say, Calvinists, they have to believe that everyone can be saved, and that it is their job to save them.

They are, to develop Kierkegaard's analogy, like schoolkids who see other kids getting the answers wrong, and give them the answers from the back of their book. The fact that the other kids are working from a different book, or no book at all, is not something for which they should be blamed, or at least not if that blame gets in the way of understanding and reasonable dialogue. That, at least, is what I think.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican seems relevant here. Christ states explicitly that the humble uncertainty of the Publican is morally preferable to the arrogance of the Pharisee who is clear of his utter probity. Christians of this stripe believe in biblical inerrancy yet fail to apply it to themselves.

The argument that you have a duty in charity to save sinners from Hell even by killing them was of course the standby of the Inquisition. Again, Jesus said that, faced with plausible new teachers, you have to judge them by their fruits - hatred and murder are not in the end signs of charity.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

Thank you, an excellent explanation of a difficult issue.

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

I suppose. But I doubt very much that most of these people think as charitably as you portray. Some of the least Christian people I have ever met have been "Christians". But such is the nature of the beast, not of the religion, I think.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not going to go all no-true-Scotsman on anyone, and I'm sure there is a certain admixture of what Tom calls Ewww Teh Icky Gay in there for some of them. But if that were all, then all they would have to do is pretend that gay people didn't exist. Leave them alone. Not speak their names.

The fact that they are interfering in the lives of other people, working quite hard to do so when apart from their religious reasons they would have no cause even to acknowledge their existence, bespeaks something separate and distinct from visceral disgust or moral contempt. I suppose you could say, from their standpoint, that they hope to bring about a change...

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

visceral disgust or moral contempt

Frankly, I think most of it is fuelled by that, plus a desire on the part of various churches to interfere with and control the lives of large numbers of people.

I do think you're right about the altruistic motive of honest Christians. I just doubt the number of those.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Yes. I have no idea why so many people have difficulty grasping this.

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

Okay -- going into the fallout shelter now.

Please, someone, let me know when it's All Over.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

No, it's all right, people are being nice.

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

Very well put.

I'm a Christian who believes in Love, whatever set of genitals might be used to express it, and it hurts to see *anyone* (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Pagan etc.) decry what I interpret as the central core of my faith and human existence on this planet.

But I do have a respect for those who hold beliefs so passionately, no matter how violently I must disagree with them, and how misguided I believe they might be.

If there was more respect for other peoples' (sometimes utterly bonkers) beliefs, then I think the world would be much nicer.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Which is fine, except when they claim their position is defending the institution of marriage from being weakened, not saving their opponents from Hell. If they claim marriage in general is weakened by allowing gay marriage, then it's entirely reasonable to ask how or why.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is, and I still haven't seen a satisfactory answer.

[howeird]

For a satisfactory answer, I would take a twist on the old Groucho Marx quip, when he was invited to join a country club which otherwise banned all Jews, "I wouldn't join a club which would accept me as a member".

There are people out there who look at marriage as a kind of club, with membersip rules. Allowing someone into the club who doesn't qualify will bring down the value of being in the club. "There goes the neighborhood", and all that.

I don't agree with these people, but I understand the point.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I understand that. For me, though, the problems are manifold:

1. The religious beliefs of other people are not the law. In the United States, according to our Constitution, they are not allowed to be law. (This doesn't stop it from happening, but nearly all of those are contested and most overturned.) Religious people trying to save us from the fires of Hell, especially a Hell that some of us don't believe in, is illegal.
2. Many of those fighting gay marriage -- and this includes Mike Huckabee, this month, on The Daily Show -- make the argument that the purpose of marriage is procreation. Gee, then sterile people, old people, and child-free people of heterosexual persuasion should be disqualified as well. Oh, wait, they're not.
3. If the laws are God's laws, and if God is all-powerful and all-knowing and all that, then let God take care of his own.
4. Once again, this is one of those situations where the laws of God conflict with the incredibly hard-wire instincts supposedly given to us by the same God, who created us. Rather dastardly game the old boy set up, really: Follow the urges I gave you and go to Hell forever, or repress them and be miserable your whole life and hope to Me that I let you into Heaven.
5. I strongly object to the whole notion that religious types care that much about the Different. I base this on hundreds and hundreds of years of empirical evidence. Yes, there are many individual churchgoers who care deeply about other people... as long as they don't have to get too close. I think they're operating on the basis of If It Happened To Sodom And Gomorrah, If It Happened With The Flood, It Can Happen Here. And they're trying to clean up the world so that when Jesus comes back he won't be so offended that he smites everybody before bothering to Rapture them.
   
   Religious types don't love gays and want to save them, for the most part. Gays weird them out. The things they do are very much the same things that used to be done to blacks. They're not trying to help, they're trying to take rights away.

Sorry if this seems incredibly cynical, and I know we differ greatly on subjects religious, but this is what I've seen for years and years.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't have hundreds and hundreds of years of empirical evidence, I only have fifty-four, but my eyes have been open for most of them and what I've seen, I would say, has almost as much value as what you've seen.

Of your points:

1 is irrelevant, unless everything not compulsory is forbidden and vice versa, or unless religious people are actively barred from being involved in the lawmaking process. Hey, another way to create an underclass!

2. Yes, they're wrong.

3. That--if I didn't know you better--I'd take as indicating a complete failure to understand anything about this subject. As it is, I assume you're just being flip.

4. Or to take another example, eat the burgers and the candy and get fat, or don't eat them and still be able to run for the bus when you need to. Save your money and continue to eat, or buy the cute guitar and be stuck for cash when the car explodes on you. Yes, it's a rotten game, but in that it resembles real life perfectly. The repression of urges, in many areas, is a necessary part of civilised behaviour. Say that these particular urges are not in need of repression, and I absolutely agree with you. Claim that that dastardly game isn't part of the nature of life, with or without God, and I will roll on the floor laughing madly and often.

5. Then you're going to go on missing my point, and if the supporters of gay marriage and other innovations threatened by religion all feel as you do, I believe there will be no resolution short of outright conflict. Which I think is kind of a shame.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

You know what I mean. Religious persecution, and persecution by religions, especially on fallacious moral grounds, has been documented all the way back to the Garden Of Eden at least.

And I'm not arguing the value of what you've seen. I'm saying that I've seen other things, and in a few cases the same things.

1. It is not irrelevant. The US Constitution is based upon secular law. The only mention of religion is in the First Amendment, where it says people can worship as they wish but you can't force religion on others. If you don't think churches trying to outlaw gay marriage because their God tells them it's wrong is forcing religion on others, then I don't know what to tell you.
2. See? It's easy to agree.
3. Or not. Yeah, there's flippancy there, but every time I think about it it makes me boil a little. God created us, God rules us, God judges us. Except God needs a whole lot of help from his worshippers. You'd think He wasn't that all-powerful or somethin'. You do remember that the Inquisition burned witches to get a head-start on their suffering in the fires of Hell, right? Seriously, the US does not have a state religion, and laws must not be made based on what one God or another thinks is right or wrong. And if you invoke "Thou Shalt Not Kill" I'll write a goddamn song about you.
4. This is beneath you. All of the instances you name haven't got churches organizing politically around the world to outlaw them and ostracize the people who do them. Nobody's been beaten to death for eating cheeseburgers or buying a guitar.
5. Then, indeed, I'm going to go on missing your point, because religion is actively threatening gay marriage. And now and then there is outright conflict, and it's almost always some religious person, or persons, attacking gay people.

I suspect we're gonna have to agree to disagree again, ol' son.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

1. The First Amendment explicitly prohibits Congress from making any law regarding an establishment of religion. It's been subsequently interpreted in light of the Fourteenth to apply to the other branches of the Federal Government, and later to local governments. Whether this is actually a law regarding an establishment of religion is obviously an open question, or it wouldn't even have got on the ballot in the first place.

2. And this means what? I agree with you on a lot of things, including that these people are wrong in what they're doing and have misunderstood the basic tenets of their religion. I don't have to agree with you on everything, especially just because it's easy. It's easy to agree with a lot of things, including a law once made.

3. Yes, God needs (or at any rate wants) help from his worshippers. That's one of the fundamental reasons behind religious doctrine in the first place. But the point behind what I was saying is not that these people believe they're helping God. They believe they're helping other people to live within the rules of their God, whom they believe is everyone's God whether they know it or not. I don't know how much clearer I can make that. And, yet again, the Inquisition was formed by secular authority for secular reasons.

4. Didn't say they did, and I think you misunderstand again. My point here is that the perceived unfairness of telling people to repress their sex urge is precisely congruent with the fact, manifest in many other areas of life, that following all your primal instincts will cause you trouble. Does that make it any clearer?

5. So the solution is to attack them back, and again, and again, and again, till someone picks up a gun? I don't think so. Someone needs to find some common ground and talk to them, and the first step to that is to stop being angry and try to understand. Maybe Obama will be the one to do it. Maybe it won't be just yet. But he has a foot in both camps, and he has four years, and that's a start.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

1. ... and, therefore, making a law based on the precepts of a religion -- in this case, gay marriage is against the will of God -- is wrong. A number of other religions, granted not as big as the major ones in America (and here we are back at the whole "protection from the tyranny of the majority" thing), have no problem whatever with gay marriage. Who is to say their faith is wrong?

3. ... and, therefore, they must force them to obey the word of their God? Do I have to make that any clearer? And, there were several different periods of Inquisition; the Spanish and Portuguese were more secular, started by the royalty, but the Medieval and Roman Inquisitions were very much based in the church.

4. ... and, yet, none of those other things are being argued in court. No one is trying to take away rights in any of those other matters. No one is saying "separate but equal", or worse, in those other matters. Does THAT make it any clearer?

5. I hope Obama can do it. I have my doubts. And let's define "attack" here. I, and others on this side, attack verbally. Their side has a tendency to attack with weapons. Shall I link to Matthew Shepard and a bunch of others? You know I'm not violent. But this isn't attacking -- it's self-defense, and defense of my friends, who have laws against their private behavior and public partner choices because of the type of person to whom they're physically attracted.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Nope, I'm obviously still not making my points clear, so now's the time to stop. Some have seen what I'm saying, which is good.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I'm going to stop as well, but please understand that I think your points are quite clear; I just disagree with them.

[howeird]

Obama is, himself, a conservative Christian who is against gay marriage. He has spoken at Warren's church, and privately agrees with most of Warren's beliefs. The important difference is Obama also believes in separation of church and state, and unlike Warren, does not wish to turn his religious beliefs into laws.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

As I said, a foot in both camps, and I'm very glad of it. I hope that that means he's wise enough not to make a big confrontation out of this and give the other side a holy cause to fight, because that's exactly what their leaders want. Mediation and understanding will end this. Nothing else will. Anything else is more than likely to make it worse for the people who are suffering right now, and in the long term, for everyone.

That, at any rate, is what I believe. Make of it what you will.

[howeird]

I agree and hope for the same.

[lordofthewheel.livejournal.com]

I suspect the difference would be that the guy on the road did not walk around waving to would-be passers by asking to be mugged please, where the folk who want to enter into gay marriages are, in fact, saying hey god, go and send me to hell, I'm asking for this. Not sure, but that's just the difference that seems to spring to mind to me...

[artbeco.livejournal.com]

I can certainly see your points here, Zander. And yet, I have to question the sincerity and motives of the people pushing the anti-gay marriage issues. On election day here in California, there were activists from both pro Prop 8 and anti-Prop 8 near the voting areas. The Pro 8 camp blanketed the surrounding streets with pro-8 posters and removed many of the No on 8 posters. There were numerous substantiated reports of the Pro-8 supporters getting physically and verbally abusive and actively violent towards the anti-8 activists. I understand that you're not arguing in their favor, just explaining a viewpoint that they might be purporting.

However, their actions before and on election day and since have all added up to a campaign of hatred, fear and discrimination. It really does seem very similar to the way that blacks were treated in the sixties; it's discrimination, without question. You present a possible viewpoint for the fundamentalists quite well, but I see no evidence that it is based in their actual reality. I cannot in all honesty say that they show any signs of sincerely caring for the souls of gays and others; they seem rather to treat them as a scourge to be exterminated. It's scary, really, and it's happening here, in my town, in my state. I still can't believe that this behavior and these views are being led by California, which is supposed to be such a liberal and accepting state.

I do appreciate your bravery and thoughtfulness in playing devil's advocate, and I really wish that your suggestion for the motivations behind their actions could be the true one because it would be more possible to reason with them, understand them and have a meaningful dialog with them. But evidence points more steadily towards hatred and fear, and those are hard to reason with.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I never knowingly advocate for the devil: if I put an argument it's almost always because I mean it, or at least see some possible reason in it. And I would be the last to deny the existence of hate and fear and discrimination, towards gay people or black people or Jews or any distinct group that can be characterised as "different." It all still exists, despite the efforts of valiant and good people to fight it and destroy it and wipe it out, because that never works. Fight hate and you strengthen it. Try to destroy fear and you give it food and drink. Seek to wipe out discrimination and you drive it underground to fester and grow.

And here's where I'm really going to enrage Tom. Even knowing this, even knowing that many of the opponents of gay rights are motivated by base and unworthy emotions, I believe the thing to do is to talk to them as though we knew their motives to be noble. Talk to them, in other words, not as contemptible hate-ridden enemies unworthy of our condescension, but as reasoning beings capable of understanding and meriting respect.

Hatred and fear are not hard to reason with; they are impossible to reason with. So the reasoning must be done around the hate and fear, and without engaging with it. Because reasoning must be done if this is ever to end, if there are not to be Matthew Shepards fifty and a hundred years from now, and new Proposition 8s coming on to statute books with every new administration.

Christ said "love your enemy." His followers have either forgotten this, or are interpreting it wrongly. Someone has to remind them, and that someone had better be us, because there isn't anyone else. And example is the only way to do it.

This is the truth as I see it.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Put like that (I don't think I've seen it expressed that clearly anywhere else) I have to agree completely, and it's not just on that subject. It's a basis, possibly the only workable basis, for any communication, to take as a premise that the other person is rational, not stupid, and wants to communicate. If they don't, well, that's their choice, but by starting with the assumption that they are 'bad', 'stupid', 'evil', or whatever, it fails before it begins.

Thank you for that, and Happy Christmas!

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

I missed this bit of US fun. YOu really do deserve a job someplace wehre you wirte things in a calm balanced way. You alwasy seem so sane. (No insult intelnded)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

This is thought-provoking, but I don't think it's actually the argument being made by Rick Warren, nor the supporters of Prop 8.

Prop 8 campaigners (http://protectmarriage.com/) don't argue that they're trying to save gay souls, but that gay unions would endanger The Family and society. Warren says he doesn't want marriage to be "redefined" and invokes (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28298093/page/2/) the slippery slope: "What if it's between a brother and a sister?" But he explicitly rejects the frequent claim that gay marriage would threaten straight marriage.

So, since the argument is that gay marriage would cause harm to others, the question "What's it to you?" (http://www.queerty.com/keith-olbermann-special-comment-on-gay-marriage-20081110/) is extremely relevant to the campaigners - and somewhat relevant to Warren.