Labeling the Other Side

Proposition 8 is a ballot proposition in California to ban gay marriage in response to a California Supreme Court ruling legalizing it. Not surprisingly the vote is a hot topic in the newspaper opinion section. In Al Martinez’s LA Times editorial, God, Gay Marriage and One Unhappy Man, he argues for gay marriage and against the proposition. In order to prove that he is right he comically uses an example of a man whom he depicts as behind the times. According to Martinez, Harvey is not happy about anything. He hates gay people, believes in Creationism, and is only useful to Martinez as a way of keeping in touch with “the blurry thinking of the religious right.” By taking this approach Martinez loses any chance he had of appealing to those who disagree with him and he is not impressive to those who agree with him either.

In some sense, Martinez is taking the viewpoint opposite of Jerry Falwell’s. Falwell argued that homosexuality, feminism, and abortion were ruining America. According to him, we needed to deal with these problems or we faced certain failure as a nation. All Martinez is basically saying is that the people who agree with Falwell, even only to some extent, are the ones really ruining America. Martinez ends the article by saying he want to “see how [Harvey] feels about forbidding marriage between a man and woman with IQs lower than 75 to prevent more idiots from populating the world.” As someone who is pro-gay marriage I have always laughed when someone claims that gay marriage will lead to bestiality or something of the sort. But, by implying that all Creationists and anti-gay marriage people are too stupid to procreate Martinez is making an argument that is just as offensive and unproductive to a logical discussion about the issue.

When we look back through American history it quickly becomes apparent that our greatest heroes are those who could articulate their opinions in a way that did not create and us against them argument. Martin Luther King is a great example. Obviously, in many ways he was fighting an us against them battle, but he did so without making dishonest and unwarranted claims about his opposition. Instead, he appealed to a sense of justice that he saw at the heart of American ideals.

In the debate on gay marriage we have a long way to go in understanding where people on both sides of the argument come from. Columnists like Martinez only hurt the chances of this happening by mocking and labeling the opposition. And, in an increasingly polarized America it seems unlikely that these types of columns will stop anytime soon. The political world seems to do nothing to ease this polarization. Is this another issue that religion will have to somehow come to terms with if America is to move past the current us against them debate?

"To serve Allah and my country"

In his op-ed article, The Push to ‘Otherize’ Obama, Nicholas Kristof delivers the disheartening results of a Pew Research Center survey of which 13% of voters identified Obama as Muslim, while another 16% remained unconvinced that he was Christian. Even more alarming, these percentages have risen since June! Theories of Obama as the Anti-Christ do not seem to help; the online Red State Shop sells products tarnishing an “O” with horns. While the most conservative Christians are not all too fond of McCain, they would rather vote for him than Satan. Never mind that Obama is more active in church than his opponent.

Kristof will suggest that “religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice.” He goes on to support his claim: “In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian.” To justify, excuse, or otherwise mask racism, certain voters have taken a religious discrepancy (largely based on his middle name, Hussein, and his childhood in Islamic Indonesia) and run with it, well beyond its boundaries. It is to say Obama is “other,” or specifically un-American.

I could not agree more with Mr. Kristof, my only critique on his claim: he is not harsh enough! These voters are cowards. Although he does a great job of reprimanding his fellow journalists who choose to promulgate falsehoods at the disservice of politics. In reading his article I was reminded of another, (I was pleased to see Rachel used this piece on the 22^nd) in which it is written: “One parishioner ruled out voting for Mr. Obama explicitly because he is black. ‘Are they going to make it the Black House?’” It is possible had I not read this article, I would have had a harder time buying Kristof’s argument. I wish I did not know of such ignorance.

Having studied abroad in South Africa last semester I was alarmed, terrified and saddened to witness the “xenophobic” attacks directed on foreigners – particularly refugees or immigrants from other African nations. Some of you may have heard of this in the news back in May. At the time I struggled to put the violence into an American context. But what makes us any different? Unless we are of Native American descent, we are all immigrants of this country. I see now that I was getting hung up on the PHYSICAL violence. There is no denying that killings, especially motivated by differences, occur in America. But in our capitalistic society, it is the malice in wanting the “other” to fail that is most dangerous. We see intentional sabotage on the personal and professional levels all too often. How Christian is that?

All said, shame on any Christian who pulls the wool over their own eyes allowing him or herself to be blinded by ignorance. It’s a cowardly way out…

Politics in Sheep's Clothing

In an important election year, pastors from particular churches are openingly endorsing and opposing candidates based on candidates’ positions on policies ranging from abortion to same-sex marriage. Because some churches and charities are tax-exempt under the Internal Revenue Code section 501(c) (3), they are forbidden by law to intervene in political campaigns. The Religious Right is not taking this restriction lightly. According to Reverend Steve Riggle, “The government should not be telling the Church what it should or should not be saying”. As a direct response to the government’s intrusion, the Alliance Defense Fund has started a campaign urging pastors to discuss potential candidates for public office at the pulpit in hopes of sparking a test case that will once again catapult the issue of “separation of church and state” to the federal appeals court, which has previously (in 2000) unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the tax law.

Are the churches being defiant of justified legal establishments or is the government side-stepping the right of the Religious Right towards religious freedom? This is a compounded issue that needs to be tweezed out into its separate components. At face value, Rev. Riggle’s statement is true. After all our Founding Fathers were adamant in protecting religious liberty as “a right as natural and as significant as those of thought and expression” (Meacham, 84). However, Rev. Riggle overlooks at least one condition that makes this struggle between church and state unique: the church in which these pastors are preaching are tax-exempt.

Tax-exemption is a financial status that benefits organizations that perform charitable, religious, or educational functions. Through the tax-exempt status, the church—in this case—enters into an agreement with the understanding that it will not attempt to influence legislation. In this pact, the religious institution becomes neutral in its own political agenda. If the pact is broken, financial support from the American people inadvertently advocates the opinions of that institution which may not be the conviction of the majority. In the Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson remarks that the use of public funding (or the exempt of taxes, in this case) to advocate the belief of a particular group is oppressive: “That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.” Like Jefferson, it appears that the drafters of the Internal Revenue Code were also sensitive to benefiting a particular group without reservation.

Through political preaching, the pastors in these controversial churches are no longer promulgating religious beliefs but rather employing “religion as an engine of civil policy” (Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments). If pastors like Rev. Riggle propose that political preaching is an expression of religious freedom, the Founding Fathers would probably turn in their graves at the sound of such “unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation” (Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments).

With the appeals court holding fast to the basic principles set forth by Jefferson and Madison regarding the role of religion in government, much has not changed in the idea that religion and government are better off apart whenever possible; however, some vociferous religious proponents have become increasingly bold and more political in their attempts to integrate religion into government than in the past. Fortunately, they are met by an equal secularist force that quickly identifies when preaching becomes a political agenda in sheep’s clothing.

To see the original article, visit Pulpit Perfidy.