Religion: Religious Impulse
Salon recently interviewed gay writer Richard Rodriguez on the topic of “Why churches fear gay marriage,” a situation Rodriguez blames on the crisis in the American family. He explains:
The possibility that a whole new generation of American males is being raised by women without men is very challenging for the churches. I think they want to reassert some sort of male authority over the order of things. I think the pro-Proposition 8 movement was really galvanized by an insecurity that churches are feeling now with the rise of women.
Rodriguez is an amazing thinker and writer, and in this interview I enjoyed his explanation of how the gay rights movement has more in common with the women’s movement than the black civil rights movement, and his criticisims of religious insecurity and hypocrisy. However, I’m not sure I agree with his opinion on how gays should deal with religious institutions:
We should not present ourselves as enemies of religion…I was a little concerned about the recent protests outside the Los Angeles Mormon temple. I’ve seen this sort of demonstration escalate into a sort of deliberate exercise of blasphemy. For example, in the most severe years of the AIDS epidemic, activists from ACT UP went into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, took the communion wafer and threw it on the ground. That is exactly the wrong thing to do. One should be respectful of the religious impulse in the world. If we decide to make ourselves anti-religious, we will only lose.
I agree that some gay religous protests have been in poor taste and ultimately lacked benefit, but what is this “religious impulse?” What is blasphemy? Are there varying degrees of blasphemy? Most religions consider disagreeing with them to be inherently blasphemous, so where is the line that we shouldn’t cross? Why should we tip toe around this impulse if it historically places male heirarchy over equality, irrationality over critical thinking, and faith over science? Some say that religion also creates an impulse for good, but is all the good impulse worth all the bad? Considering the effect of “religious impulse” in my life and the lives of many I know, and the reality born of religious conflict that I’m faced with every time I turn on the television or open a newspaper, can we honestly believe that obtaining our civil rights is possible without calling bullshit on religion?
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It is better to say I disagree with you on this point than I can not fathom the place of stupid that you come from. People wrap themselves in religion to mask their bigotry. Invalidating their religion totally is much worse than changing their world view.
We shouldn’t be proving that by asking for Gay Marriage that we are going to poop all over everything they consider sacred. We want marriage, we don’t need to stomp all over their beliefs.
Call bullshit on their gay marriage views and leave the rest for another fight.
It is better to say I disagree with you on this point than I can not fathom the place of stupid that you come from. People wrap themselves in religion to mask their bigotry. Invalidating their religion totally is much worse than changing their world view.
We shouldn’t be proving that by asking for Gay Marriage that we are going to poop all over everything they consider sacred. We want marriage, we don’t need to stomp all over their beliefs.
Call bullshit on their gay marriage views and leave the rest for another fight.
re: Clearlyhere
So anti-gay bigots can invalidate our lives, shit all over everything we consider sacred and stomp all over our rights? That’s ok?
No. If churchies decide to step outside the parameters of religion (and privately held belief) and fuck with the political process AND MY RIGHTS in the public realm they will be countered, their attacks will get my response.
Why are we so worried about what they think? Isn’t that the problem?
Don’t let their religions indenture your fear and complicity.
Today's New York Times has an op-ed by Charles Blow on black voters and gay marriage that is worth reading. His analysis of religion, sexuality, reproduction and health issues as it relates to gay marriage and voting blocks is insightful.
Op-Ed Columnist
Gay Marriage and a Moral Minority
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: November 29, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/opinion/29blow.html?_r=1&hp
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a door mat.
clearlyhere, i agree with you.
if you meet irrationality with irrationality, no one wins and both sides end up tilting at windmills. if we commit any kind of blasphemy beyond our disagreements with the churches and our open gayness, then we give them reason to believe that we are as demonic as they think we are.
and why do we care what they think? because they VOTE, and they are the ones who will continue fight against us, unless we can change their minds. we’re not going to get to go form some little gay utopia.
i said it before in another comment on a different post. we have no one to blame for the passage of prop 8, except for ourselves. we have to show the people that hate us because “we’re gay” that we are no so different from them. and if we go around throwing the eucharist wafer on the floor or violently protesting in front of churches, then we present ourselves as very different.
we don’t have agree with them, and we don’t have to change all their views (we couldn’t anyways). but we have to–have to–offer them what we want: respect. regardless of your religion, or your lack of one, we can all agree on the golden rule.
I guess it depends on your goal. If what you want is the temporary emotional satisfaction of offending someone you’re angry with, then screaming at Mormon churches is gonna do it. If what you want is political enfranchisement, then you have to persuade people that your cause is virtuous. Freedom of worship is a deeply-held principle in American society, so yelling at people in church offends not just the people you’re mad at, but nearly everyone.
re: Steven & Allison
and in 50 years how far has that gotten us? sounds weak to me.
Anonymous, are you serious? You’re either a very young anonymous or a very unaware anonymous, because it’s a radically different world out there for gay people than it was 50 years ago. It hasn’t even been 30 years since being gay meant you were mentally ill, and it’s been barely 5 years since it was illegal in much of the U.S. for us to have sex.
re: Steven
Yeah, I’m serious. I am neither “very young” nor “very unaware”. Do not insult me. Where do you get you knowledge of Gay history?
It was precisely the in-your-face, communion wafer destroying style of ACT-UP and Queer Nation that woke heterosexuals out of bigoted complacency and forced them see us as actual people. Their anger and action is the actual origin of the civil rights, media exposure and television characters you now laud as examples of enfranchisement.
Before ACT-UP there were NO rights.
The premise of dialogue with conservative christians is flawed for several reasons:
1) it presumes they are reasonable
2) it presumes they will listen to you
3) it presumes they will respect you
Have you read statements of the Mormon Church post-vote? Do you know their actual dogma? If not watch this program and understand how futile dialogue with nutjobs really is:
http://www.pbs.org/mormons/
The history of the world, not just social movements, is conflict. You must get in their face and demand/force the respect. Then and only then can dialogue take place. Seriously, talking Gay rights with conservative christians is no less a flawed enterprise as debating human evolution with them.
Remember, if America had to vote on rights for women and blacks they’d still be sitting at the back of the bus.
The Gays won’t get a presidential order. WE’RE GONNA HAVE TO FIGHT.
Enough process bullshit. Let’s just do it.
re: Steven
Yeah, I’m serious. I am neither “very young” nor “very unaware”. Do not insult me. Where do you get you knowledge of Gay history?
It was precisely the in-your-face, communion wafer destroying style of ACT-UP and Queer Nation that woke heterosexuals out of bigoted complacency and forced them see us as actual people. Their anger and action is the actual origin of the civil rights, media exposure and television characters you now laud as examples of enfranchisement.
Before ACT-UP there were NO rights.
The premise of dialogue with conservative christians is flawed for several reasons:
1) it presumes they are reasonable
2) it presumes they will listen to you
3) it presumes they will respect you
Have you read statements of the Mormon Church post-vote? Do you know their actual dogma? If not watch this program and understand how futile dialogue with nutjobs really is:
http://www.pbs.org/mormons/
The history of the world, not just social movements, is conflict. You must get in their face and demand/force the respect. Then and only then can dialogue take place. Seriously, talking Gay rights with conservative christians is no less a flawed enterprise as debating human evolution with them.
Remember, if America had to vote on rights for women and blacks they’d still be sitting at the back of the bus.
The Gays won’t get a presidential order. WE’RE GONNA HAVE TO FIGHT.
Enough process bullshit. Let’s just do it.
Anonymous, I was IN ACT UP and Queer Nation in the 80s in New York. I don’t discount their influence, but I think you’d have a hard time proving that it was their tactics alone that changed anything. It’s a long process, and it’s mostly about persuading people of the rightness of your cause.
I never said anything about television characters, but now that you mention it, I think Ellen DeGeneris’s wedding likely had a much bigger effect on people’s attitudes toward same-sex marriage than a bunch of pissed-off people screaming in front of a church.
Confrontational tactics work when you’re demanding to sit at the front of the bus. You just sit at the front of the bus and stay there. But tell me how demanding the right to get married is going to change anything.
Yes, I do know something of the dogma of the Mormon church. I never said anything about dialogue with conservative Christians. I say ignore them.
re: Steven
As long as we’re comparing bona fides I was a member of ACT-UP New York for 7 years.
While ACT-UP was deeply flawed it’s tactics brought the Gay rights movement into a new age of visibility and immediacy that had been previously impossible.
I don’t see how anyone who was a member of ACT-UP and Queer Nation can plausibly argue that the Gay Culture of today was produced in a vacuum without the visibility and relevance that AIDS activism made possible.
I don’t think Ellen could have even come out on television if it weren’t for the precedent of visibility that AIDS and gay activism established. Remember Silence=Death?
Why do we care about offending people who already hate us, won’t recognize our relationships and would rather see us dead? Why do we expect them to respect us?
You don’t have to like me to recognize my civil rights.
I don’t see how anyone who was a member of ACT-UP and Queer Nation can plausibly argue that the Gay Culture of today was produced in a vacuum without the visibility and relevance that AIDS activism made possible.
I don’t know who’s arguing that. It’s not me. My name is on my comments above, so it should be easy to go back and see what I wrote.
Why do we care about offending people who already hate us, won’t recognize our relationships and would rather see us dead? Why do we expect them to respect us?
I didn’t say this either. I don’t care about offending the Mormons. In my original post, which is what I thought you were arguing with, I said that protesting a church offends not just the people in the church but EVERYONE who believes that freedom of worship is an important principle to uphold. Which is just about everybody in the U.S.
The whole argument behind gay marriage is that gays would be just as respectable as everyone else if they could just get married and settle down. If you want to sit at the grownups table, you have to behave yourself.
re: Steven
Ok. Here is what you wrote:
“I was IN ACT UP and Queer Nation in the 80s in New York. I don’t discount their influence, but I think you’d have a hard time proving that it was their tactics alone that changed anything.”
Sounds like you are saying that the tactics of AIDS activism changed anything.
“…protesting a church offends not just the people in the church but EVERYONE who believes that freedom of worship is an important principle to uphold. Which is just about everybody in the U.S.”
Just about everybody in the U.S. is a christian or was raised christian. We have the right to protest churches when they go outside the religious realm and attempt to influence politics, public policy and fuck with voters heads.
Sounds like you are saying that the tactics of AIDS activism didn’t change anything.
of course you have the right to protest churches. That doesn’t mean it’s not stupid.
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