John Aravosis and Mark Jordan: A Debate about How to Approach the Role of the Bible in Gay Bashing

I agree with John Aravosis here.  When I linked several days ago to Mark Jordan's essay on which Aravosis is commenting (I linked to an earlier version at Religion Dispatches, while Aravosis is linking to it at the Alternet site), I did so to point to a problem that needs to be addressed in the American cultural and political discussion of homosexuality.  This is that many people talk about what "the bible says" without having a clue about what it actually says.

In the American political and cultural context, people speak about the Jewish and Christian scriptures with supreme confidence that the bible condemns homosexuality--and that supreme confidence is usually in direct proportion to their ignorance of what the scriptures actually say about anything at all.  Because I thought Jordan made that point well, and his call for educating ourselves (and the public at large) re: these issues seems on target, I linked to his essay.

At the same time, I did know, of course, that he was responding to John Aravosis on these points.  But my posting didn't mention that, because, to be honest, I thought Jordan had misunderstood Aravosis's primary point about how the bible is used to support gay-bashing in the U.S.  And so my references to Jordan's essay didn't mention Aravosis at all, since I didn't want to reinforce the critique of John Aravosis.

Now that Aravosis has reiterated his point--and I'm very glad he has done so--I want to address the debate between him and Jordan, and others who have also been criticizing John Aravosis re: how the bible is understood and used in American culture to lambast gays.  I think this criticism has been unfair.  The primary point I understand John Aravosis to be making--and it's an extremely important one--is this: regardless of whether the Jewish and Christian scriptures actually do condemn homosexuality, and regardless of what they really say about "homosexuality," the bible is constantly used in the American cultural and political context as a basis for discrimination and violence against those who are gay and lesbian.

And we have to acknowledge and deal with that fact if we hope to get anywhere with movements to combat anti-gay oppression and secure gay rights.  There's a double challenge in the American cultural context, vis-a-vis gay bashing and the bible, and Jordan and Aravosis are identifying two different facets of that challenge, it seems to me.

On the one hand, the persistent, serious challenge faced by anyone struggling for recognition of the human rights of gay persons in American culture is to face the fact that, for millions of Americans, the bible is an obvious and unquestioned source of anti-gay teaching.  And that uninformed, widespread cultural assumption is going to continue to be there, and to continue to be strongly persuasive for a large sector of the population, regardless of what scholars say about the biblical texts. 

On the other hand, for the last several decades, there has been significant scholarly discussion about the six clobber texts to which homophobic groups persistently return, which strongly refutes the widespread cultural belief that "the bible condemns homosexuality."  And it's important to educate ourselves and others about that biblical scholarship.  It's particularly important, I'd maintain, for people of faith committed to gay rights to begin to assure that this scholarship impacts what the churches say, think, and do about gay people and gay issues.

The role of the churches in challenging cultural misappropriation of the bible to attack gay people could, if the churches ever dared to do the work they claim they are about, be considerable.  And that correction of cultural misapplications of the scriptures needs to begin in the churches themselves, if communities of faith are to make a dent in the prevailing cultural norms.

Here's why I think John Aravosis's point is undeniable and important: no matter how wrong or misguided they are in thinking so, many Americans, whether churched or unchurched, take for granted that the bible instructs them to despise and marginalize those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered.  I cannot think of a single other minority group in this country right now that is routinely subject to violent attacks by people spouting bible verses.  I don't know of any other group of citizens we can point to, where someone still takes for granted that he or she has the right to fill a sock with stones and beat a man to death because the bible tells us to stone homosexuals.  Or where someone defending the savage beating of a gay man comes out to defend that action displaying a tattoo quoting the Leviticus verse that, as we all know, condemns "homosexuality" and calls for the stoning of gays.

Or where this kind of ugly hate speech, which is in the news today at the Box Turtle Bulletin site, pours out of the mouth of someone attacking a minority group, who repeatedly cites the bible as the source for his hatred--and for his right to attack.  We have a problem in American culture, and it is, to some degree, unique to our culture.

That problem is the taken-for-granted, casual belief that the bible supports hatred of those who are LGBT, and that those engaged in activities to demean and deny rights to gay people are doing a holy thing, something commanded by God--whether they themselves happen to be churchgoers or not, or whether they've even read the bible (and noticed how predominant its insistence on love, justice, and mercy is--and not on those six exegetically murky clobber texts).  In American culture, those working for gay and lesbian rights have a volatile combination of factors to contend with unique to American culture and politics: biblical literalism (undergirded by ignorance) runs throughout our cultural and political lives, whether people are churched or not; and because we are a nation with the soul of a church in which people, whether churched or unchurched, take for granted that the bible is the foundation of our unique city on a hill, ignorant biblical literalism wields enormous influence in our culture and political sphere.

My point in posting about these themes several days ago, as I cited Jordan's essay, was to note that this kind of biblical literalism is now affecting many American Catholics, too, despite the skepticism of traditional Catholic theology and teaching re: biblical literalism.  Listen again to those video clips of Fr. John Hollowell indoctrinating Catholic high school students in Indianapolis about their gay brothers and sisters, to which I linked several days back, and you'll hear the surprising claim that there are "multiple" bible passages condemning homosexuality, which see homosexuality as an "abomination" and "grave offense" against God, and if we question any one of these, the whole bible will become "completely useless."

These are not in the least traditional Catholic arguments.  They're not how Catholics do theology at all, including moral theology.  They're not how Catholics would approach any other moral issue today.

There's something unique about how contemporary Catholics have decided to deal with the issue of gay and lesbian people and rights, and, as I noted in my previous posting about this matter, that uniqueness begins with the 1986 letter of the current pope on the "pastoral" care of homosexual persons, which was roundly criticized by biblical exegetes and theologians when it was issued precisely because it adopts a fundamentalist approach, and pulls biblical proof texts out of context to insert into its argument, without grappling at all with the core meaning, the real meaning, of the scriptures to which it points.

The Catholic magisterium has made a calculated decision at this point in history to do, in the case of gay persons, what it refuses to do in the case of any other moral or theological issue.  The Catholic church has decided, in the case of the discussion of gay and lesbian people, to adopt a biblical literalist approach that is far more characteristic of Protestant fundamentalism than of traditional Catholicism.

To me, the reason for that calculated decision is obvious: it's a politically driven decision motivated by the desire of the leaders of the Catholic church at present to make common cause with the religious right, particularly in the United States, but also in developing parts of the world such as Africa where American-style religion has made huge inroads, to combat gay people and gay rights.  The price of this calculated decision and the coalition it forms is that Catholics are encouraged, in the single area of combating gay rights, to adopt a biblical literalism alien to traditional Catholic theology.

And this has proven to be effective.  As I've noted, I'm suspicious of the way in which the Catholics-promote-gay-rights story has gotten shopped around in recent weeks.  I'm suspicious about that story not because I doubt that an increasing number of Catholics in the U.S. do reject the politics of the hierarchy and endorse gay rights, nor because I doubt that this is a very positive development.

I'm suspicious because I think the growing meme about this development overlooks (and even masks) the very real and very powerful continued ability of some influential, highly placed, and well-funded Catholics in the U.S. to keep on doing serious damage to their gay brothers and sisters.  Anywhere that there are battles for gay rights underway in this nation, Maggie Gallagher and the National Organization of Marriage are there, with tons of money flowing their way from donors whose names they refuse to disclose, with expensive, slick videos pouring hateful disinformation into people's minds.

Anywhere there are struggles for the rights of gay and lesbian folks in the U.S. now, the Knights of Columbus are on the scene, funneling large sums of money that this organization used to give to the homeless and the hungry into the anti-gay cause, colluding with other religious groups, many of them fundamentalist ones, to block gay rights or remove rights from gay people.  And then there's the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops, Timothy Dolan, who went on national television recently to inform America--and he was speaking as head  of the USCCB, as the spokesman of all American Catholic bishops--that same-sex marriage is equivalent to incest, that it would be equivalent to his wanting to marry his mother (for more on this, see the link at the end of this posting).

The bishops, the Vatican, Maggie and the Knights: they know very well what they're doing when they make outrageous, incendiary statements like this.  They're playing to deep-rooted prejudice, prejudice fueled by misappropriation and misunderstanding of biblical texts--precisely the kind of misappropriation and misunderstanding these Catholic leaders now deliberately seek to foster as they attack gay and lesbian people in concert with religious groups used to biblical literalism.

The bishops, the Vatican, Maggie and the Knights know what they're doing and why they're doing it, why they have allied themselves with fundamentalists of the religious right and why they're adopting the tactic of biblical literalism exclusively against the gays: they're doing what they're doing because they intend to keep on bashing gays.  And the bible--the culturally deformed version of the bible that circulates through American political networks of the right--is a useful tool in this battle.  It's one of the most useful tools they have.

For that reason, we need to keep listening (I think) to what John Aravosis has to say on these points, even as we also listen to Mark Jordan when he encourages us to educate ourselves and others about how these cultural misuses of the scriptures misrepresent what the bible actually says.  And we need--I would also argue--to push back.

If you want to push back against Timothy Dolan and what the U.S. Catholic bishops are doing to their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters right now, here's one way you can do so: the Care2 site has a petition now underway calling on Dolan to apologize for his incendiary remarks equating gay marriage with incest.   I encourage readers to log in and sign this petition.

The hate-mongering needs to stop.

National Organization of Marriage's 2009 Tax Returns: Catholic Values Still for Sale?

In the final months of 2010, I spent quite a bit of time reporting on and critiquing the decision of the Catholic bishops of Minnesota to accept what is thought to have been a sizable donation from an unnamed donor or donors, permitting the bishops to produce a video attacking same-sex marriage and to mail that video to every Catholic household in the state.  As my several postings about this event note, there are a number of troubling aspects to this story: these include the decision of a group of bishops to make an issue out of something that had not been raised as a significant issue in the 2010 election in their state; their decision to attack a vulnerable minority for the political benefit of a particular political party; and their willingness to weigh into the election debates in a clearly partisan way.

But most troubling of all in the behavior of the bishops of Minnesota during the 2010 elections was the willingness to accept a large amount of funds from a donor or donors they refused to name in order to pursue these partisan political objectives.  As I noted in a number of postings about this issue, in behaving this way, the Catholic bishops of Minnesota have contributed to what is a growing, and exceedingly dangerous, trend of American political culture at present: they have contributed to the buying and selling of democracy by wealthy hidden donors, who exercise disproportionate influence on the democratic process, often by using tax-exempt faith-based groups like the Catholic church to shield their identities as they wheel and deal behind the scenes in attempts to influence the outcome of elections.

This is a story that is not over with in 2011, by any means.  As Don Hazen reports at Alternet, there is increasing concern in many sectors of American society about the hidden influence of wealthy behind-the-scenes far-right political activists such as the Koch brothers, whose fingerprints are all over the Tea Party movement of the past several years.  This month, the Koch brothers will sponsor a top-secret meeting in Palm Springs of conservative activists--including Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas--to strategize about their right-wing takeover of the American political process.

This story about the Koch brothers and their hidden behind-the-scenes influence on the political process, the story of the Minnesota Catholic bishops in the 2010 elections, and the story of one prominent anti-gay activist group in the U.S. dovetail as stories about the way in which the political life of the U.S. is increasingly controlled by a small group of exceptionally wealthy right-wing donors, whose identities are rarely disclosed, and who sometimes use religious organizations, with their tax-exempt status that shields their financial transactions from public scrutiny, as fronts for their political activity.  The prominent anti-gay activist group of which I'm speaking is the National Organization of Marriage (NOM).

Even as I write this posting, NOM is dropping major sums of money into Rhode Island to try to block civil marriage for gay citizens in that state.  Because of NOM's influence, because this quasi-religious group works tirelessly around the nation to try to block civil rights for gay and lesbian citizens and to attack gay and lesbian persons, and because its chief spokesperson, Maggie Gallagher, persistently represents NOM's anti-gay positions as Catholic positions on gay and lesbian issues, the question of NOM's funding sources deserves careful attention, particularly by anyone concerned to defend the authentic Catholic tradition of support for universal human rights.  This question deserves particular attention in light of the willingness of many U.S. Catholic bishops, including the bishops of Minnesota in 2010, to ally themselves with and use the resources of this anti-gay political activist group.

But here's the problem: we don't know who funds this exceptionally powerful anti-gay political activist group that claims to represent "the" Catholic position on gay and lesbian issues, any more than we know who gave the Minnesota bishops money to pursue an out-of-the-blue gay-bashing campaign in the 2010 elections--even as some of those same bishops were closing churches and merging parishes due to financial exigency.  We don't know who is funding these quasi-religious crusades against gay and lesbian human beings and their human rights in the U.S., which appeal to the Catholic church for their legitimacy.

As I've reported previously on this blog, NOM is exceptionally secretive about its funding sources, and is even willing to skirt federal and state laws in order to keep the identity of its funders secret.  And this continues: as Luke Johnson reports recently at The American Independent*, after repeated requests to disclose its 2009 IRS tax returns, which have to be disclosed to the public because NOM is a 501(c)(4)organization, NOM has finally released at least a part of its 2009 tax returns.

And though what NOM has made public is still not complete, what the 2009 returns reveal is interesting, indeed.  As Johnson notes, NOM's 2009 tax returns show that 68% of its funds in 2009 came from three unnamed and obviously well-heeled donors.  Two more unnamed donors also gave large sums to NOM, bringing the total of its funding base in 2009 to five unnamed donors, who provided three-quarters of NOM's funding.

A number of points deserve attention here.  As Luke Johnson notes, NOM is fond of representing itself as a grassroots organization whose base of support is the general public--or, at least, a segment of the public energized by its right-wing, anti-gay politics.  But NOM's 2009 tax report belies the organization's representation of itself as a grassroots organization.

When one examines NOM's funding sources, the conclusion one has to reach is this: this influential right-wing anti-gay activist group, which represents itself as a quasi-religious organization with the endorsement of the Catholic church, is funded by a handful of unknown wealthy donors, who exercise disproportionate influence on the American political sphere through this organization--and through the Catholic church, insofar as its leaders continue accepting donations from these hidden donors, and acting as a quasi-religious front for their political activities.  While their identities and their motives are unknown, shielded from public scrutiny, since NOM does not disclose the identities of these donors.

Second, NOM's 2009 tax returns deserve careful attention, because there's reason to believe they still do not tell the whole story--the whole story of NOM's funding base.  For instance, as Luke Johnson points out, Jesse Zwick of the Washington Independent has uncovered a $1.4 million donation to NOM in 2009 by the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus.  And for some reason, that large donation is not listed in NOM's 2009 tax return.

As I've noted in various Bilgrimage postings for some time now, under the leadership of their current Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson, who began his public career in the Reagan administration and has continued to have an exceptionally cozy relationship with top Republican leaders, the Knights of Columbus have become in the view of many observers an outright political operative group doing the work of the Republican party, and, in particular, bolstering the anti-gay campaign of key Republican leaders.

And the Knights pursue these goals while claiming to represent the Catholic church in their politically oriented anti-gay activities.  Last year, while the Knights gave $3 million to traditional charitable ministries such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, they gave $4.7 million to anti-gay groups, to attack gay and lesbian human beings and seek to block the human rights of these human beings.

And yet, with this dishonorable recent history, with his organization's now overt connection to the Republican party (a connection criticized even by some of his fellow Knights), and with the $1+ million that his organization donated to remove the right of civil marriage from gay citizens of California, Mr. Anderson can still say, with a straight face, that he strongly supports the beatification of John Paul II because the Catholic church "stand[s] up for human rights when they are attacked"?!

Standing up for human rights when they are attacked hardly seems to be what either the National Organization of Marriage or the Knights of Columbus, both claiming to represent the Catholic church, are all about.  Nor does it seem to be what the Catholic bishops are about, as they ally themselves with political groups whose primary purpose in attacking a vulnerable minority and blocking the human rights of that minority is to score points for a particular political party.

What many Catholic pastoral leaders are doing these days, vis-a-vis their brothers and sisters who happen to be gay and lesbian, and what the Vatican itself encourages in this regard, radically undercuts the claim of the Catholic church to stand for human rights and against the oppression of stigmatized minorities.  Linking the canonization process of Pope John Paul II to movements that attack the human rights of minority groups--and that's what Carl Anderson is doing here, as he defends John Paul as a champion of human rights while his own Catholic organization fights tooth and nail to remove rights from LGBT persons--calls into question the meaning of John Paul II's sanctity and his canonization process.

And makes one wonder, given the propensity of some of the Catholic groups I've just discussed for accepting huge donations from hidden donors whose identities they shield from public scrutiny, how much money changes hands behind the scenes with a canonization process that is hardly above political manipulation, as it precipitously advances the former pope to sainthood.  If the Catholic church expects its sanctity to be apparent to the world at large, it needs to do a better job at transparency, and at dialogue with contemporary culture.  And it needs to stop trying to strongarm the political process in democratic societies that value open disclosure of information in the public square and the contributions of everyone to dialogues about the Acommon good, while selling itself to wealthy right-wing donors. At the same time it seeks to represent itself as all about compassion and healing the world . . . .

People aren't fools.  They see through the smoke-and-mirrors machinations of this canonization process. Large numbers of people understand that what is going on with this canonization is yet another diversionary spectacle designed to distract our attention from the ongoing, lamentable, and highly publicized failure of top Catholic leaders to manifest core Catholic values in their pastoral leadership at this point in history.

The abusive treatment of gay and lesbian persons by the current regime of Catholic leaders is only one facet of a much larger story, which includes shocking mistreatment of survivors of childhood clerical sexual abuse and of women.  And no amount of ecclesial showmanship--of resplendent scarlet cappae magnae or vials of blood drawn from a dying pope and displayed at retro-medieval shrines--is going to stop many people from wondering just what the Catholic church imagines it's proclaiming to the world today about human rights, as it bashes gays and lesbians, excommunicates religious women who embody mercy in their dealings with people caught in complex moral situations, and trashes survivors of abuse.

For many of us, what comes through loud and clear in these actions is not the commitment to embattled human rights of which Supreme Knight Anderson speaks so eloquently (and, obviously, insincerely).  It's precisely the opposite of this commitment.  And this is why Catholics will continue to walk away from the church in ever increasing numbers, as the intellectual elite of the church, its centrist theological caste who keep producing one apologia after another for the indefensible actions of the church's shepherds, continues to babble on about the need for theological pertinence while never engaging these issues in which the church's pertinence is most clearly at stake at this point in history.

*I'm not sure why the link to this report is leading to a blank webpage; I'll keep trying the link to see if the story reappears, and will update the posting and remove this link if it continues not to work. (Later in day: it seems to be working now.)

The Price of Catholic Homophobia: While Spending to Bash Gays, Minnesota Catholic Bishops Close Churches

I've noted in my previous postings about the current political initiative of the Minnesota bishops to affect the state's gubernatorial election by issuing an anti-gay marriage video that this initiative is thought to have a price tag of around a million dollars, though the Minnesota bishops claim not to know the cost of this video and its mailing, and are shielding the identity of the donor(s) who is paying for this political operation.

And now this:  yesterday, the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, which is spearheading this partisan anti-gay political initiative, has announced plans to close 20 churches and merge many parishes.  Due to financial exigency.


At a time in which it cannot keep churches and Catholic schools open, a Catholic archdiocese has used lavish funds to mount a political attack on a targeted minority.  With the assistance of the Knights of Columbus, who gave $1.5 million last year to the anti-gay organization National Organization for Marriage, who were among the top donors to the battle to remove the right of civil marriage from gay citizens of California, and whose total donations to anti-gay groups last year totaled $4.7 million, while this Catholic organization gave $3 million to support works of mercy such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless.

All over the country, while Catholic dioceses and groups like the Knights of Columbus and the National Organization for Marriage spend huge sums of money to beat up on gay citizens as they seek to score political points for the Republican party, the Catholic church is closing parishes and schools and curtailing funding for works of mercy.  Something about the choice of the top pastoral leaders of the Catholic church to allocate money to political causes designed to deprive a vulnerable minority of rights, while money donated by faithful Catholics to support charity (and churches and schools) is diverted to this political cause, is deeply troubling.

Deeply troubling as a statement about where the core values of the pastoral leaders of American Catholicism lie right now . . . . Particularly when the gospels inform us that we will be judged at the end of our lives according to what we have done to the least of our brothers.

Matthew 25's description of the last judgment  talks about the hungry, the sick, the stranger, the homeless, the prisoner, and those without clothing.  I don't recall that it says a single word about the gays--or that Jesus ever mentions the topic of homosexuality in the gospels at all.

I wonder what the U.S. Catholic bishops imagine they are proclaiming, as they allocate money to gay bashing while removing it from charitable causes and the upkeep of parishes and schools.  It's hard to believe that they can imagine they're proclaiming the gospel through this choice.

Because they're not.

Related articles

• Catholic Bishops Meddling in Minn. Governor's Race? (abcnews.go.com)