Marquette Situation, More Commentary: "Not Catholic Enough" When It Practices Discrimination

  

What I posted yesterday about Ronni Sanlo's report re: the situation for LGBT faculty, staff, and students at Jesuit-owned Marquette University in Milwaukee focused on the disparity between what Jesuit institutions proclaim about themselves--"We do justice!"--and how Marquette  actually deals with LGBT members of the campus community, if Sanlo's report is correct.  For the epigraph to my posting, I took something from Ranlo's report that she heard from the Marquette community about this disparity:

While inclusion of social justice is a strong Jesuit tenet, LGBT inclusion at Marquette is generally not part of the social justice work

In my commentary on the situation at Marquette, I wanted to suggest that the disparity to which the preceding statement points run through almost all Catholic universities in the U.S.--as, indeed, it runs through almost all Catholic institutions.  We who are Catholic like to talk about social justice issues as if those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered somehow do not count when we state that we are committed to upholding the human rights of everyone, and that we are committed to working for justice for the marginalized.

The Wisconsin Gazette summary of Ranlo's report to which I linked yesterday quotes one member of the Marquette campus community who makes these points in a powerful way.  In this postscript to what I posted yesterday about the Marquette story, I'd like to highlight her testimony. 

Louis Weisberg notes in his Wisconsin Gazette report that Margaret Steele is a grad student in Marquette's philosophy department and an LGBT ally.  According to Weisberg, Steele was attracted to Marquette precisely because it offers a "values-based educational environment that promotes the Jesuit tradition of social justice."

But Steele has been disappointed by what she's found at this Jesuit university.  Here's her testimony:

But she said she’s been disappointed to find herself engulfed in a culture that seems to elevate “a couple of ambiguous statements about sexuality” over “the hundreds of scriptural injunctions about helping the poor, the sick and the disenfranchised."

“For me, Marquette is not Catholic enough,” Steele said. “They use their Catholic identity as window dressing to attract a certain customer base. But they don’t show a true commitment to Christianity or Catholicism at is best. They talk up Catholicism when they want to defend something they’re doing to appease their conservative customers and donors.

“There’s a lot more the university could do without going in any way against Catholic teaching – just by emphasizing the shared humanity of people. The university could make the campus a more comfortable place for most people by sending the message that we might have different views but there’s nothing in Catholic teaching that says we can’t make people feel comfortable on campus.”

For me, Marquette isn't Catholic enough.  Marquette calls on its Catholic identity selectively when it wants to add some window dressing to its image to appease a certain "customer base."

This is significant testimony.  Steele is pointing to the glaring discrepancy between what Catholic institutions proclaim about social justice, and what they actually do in the case of those who are gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgandered.

Decisions of many Catholic institutions to discriminate against LGBT persons are often driven by financial considerations, by the need to add Catholic "window dressing" to their institution which appeals to well-heeled conservative donors who argue that a bona fide Catholic identity requires these institutions to discriminate.  If Steele is correct, however, what institutions like Marquette do when they engage in anti-gay discrimination is precisely to betray their Catholic identity.

Institutions that discriminate against LGBT persons are not Catholic enough.  Jesuit institutions that profess to be all about social justice, while they ignore the needs of gay and lesbian persons or, even worse, engage in discrimination against these persons, betray the Jesuit tradition.

This is valuable testimony.  It's testimony thatt Catholic institutions need to hear, if they care about being authentically Catholic.

Making Things Tic: A Codger's Ruminations on Literacy Today (and What the Lack Thereof Portends for Our Future)

Is Conor Friedersdorf intending to be cute with this coy use of the word "tic"--"What makes you tic, sir?"--or does he really not know how to spell the word "tick" (and that we commonly ask what makes things tick, not tic)?  If the latter, then I'm baffled.  I'm increasingly baffled by the shaky literacy of graduates of  even elite universities these days.  I've just read a novel by an English writer who's a graduate of New College, Oxford, and a former Conservative MP, who appears not to know that the case of the pronoun "whoever" is governed by its use in the clause in which it appears, and not by the preposition or verb setting the clause into motion.

So, "He told whomever was in the room his secret" is not correct, while, "He told whoever was in the room his secret" is correct.  And when I read sentences like this with increasing and depressing frequency in pieces written by highly educated English speakers these days, I have to wonder what's going on in our schools.

Do teachers no longer teach those basic rules/tricks of grammar that were pounded into the heads of my generation by our junior-high school years?  E.g., "If you wonder whether a pronoun should be in the nominative or objective case in this phrase, ask yourself what an educated, literate person would normally say using just the preposition and the pronoun."

And so when I read a sentence in my statewide free paper this week, written by a journalist with a degree from a university in Virginia, which contains the following phrase, I immediately wonder what kind of teachers this professional writer had, if he can write the following phrase and assume it's correct English: "insults traded by he and his date."  This in a piece criticizing the quality of another journalist's writing!

Did no one ever teach this college-educated journalist to stop and ask if he'd say "by he," if he were using the preposition and pronoun alone?  Would those who glibly talk about "going with Paula and I" say "going with I," if the "Paula and" got stripped from their sentence?

For that matter, does anyone even teach students any longer that there are nominative and objective cases for pronouns?  Or that there are pronouns and prepositions?  Or that thinking about how we use language is a preliminary to thinking, period--since we can't think carefully when we don't speak or use words carefully?  Or that diagramming a sentence helps us to identify the parts of speech and see how they function in a sentence?

Or are these considerations hopelessly out of date?  And, if so, should old fogies like me who continue to be moved by them simply find some way to live out our final years in somewhat literate space apart from society at large, surrounding ourselves with classics written by people who used to know how language works, and to care how it's put together--and about the ideas that can result when we think carefully about what we say, about how we use language, and about what words and the ideas they clothe really mean?

Religious Roots of Anti-Gay Attitudes: Two Recent Commentaries

Two noteworthy pieces in the past several days dealing with the significant connection between religion and people’s approach to issues of sexual orientation.  At Religion Dispatches, Constance Chellew-Hodge dissects the divine “chain of command” argument that structures many conservative Christians’ approach to homosexuality.

As she notes, 

Christianity, especially in its most conservative or fundamentalist form, is obsessed with gender norms, and will tolerate little deviation from them. A 5-year-old boy dressed as a girl offends the senses — and breaks, what Soulforce founder Mel White calls, “God’s chain of command.”

In my book, Bulletproof Faith, I quote White from an interview I did with him on this topic. For conservative Christians, he said, the universe falls apart if this chain of command is broken.

Chellew-Hodge argues that what is particularly threatening to some Christians is the notion of women getting out of control: resistance to gay and lesbian folks (particularly to gay men) flows from a more general intent of conservative Christianity to assure that women remain in their place, underneath men in the divine chain of command, because any lapse in that chain will produce social and cosmic chaos that threatens the divine rule of the world.  Chellew-Hodge writes,

Feminist theologian Beverly Harrison has written that the connections between homophobia and misogyny run deep because “the social control of women as a group has totally shaped our deepest and most basic attitudes toward sexuality.”  That control is so complete that society expects “compulsory heterosexuality” and its only alternatives are celibacy or asexuality.

This social control then, Harrison posits, is at the heart of not just the inequality of women, but the inequality faced by gays and lesbians.

“We must acknowledge that it is through our socialization to sexuality that we begin to learn ‘fear of equality’ and either to feel ‘strong’ by lording it over others or to feel ‘safe’ by being controlled by them. By conforming rigidly to ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ roles, we learn, at a foundational level, to tolerate inequality.”

And so, Chellew-Hodge concludes, there is no way effectively to address issues like the bullying of gender-transgressive or gay teens without confronting the religious roots from which hostility to gay and lesbian people grows:

You don’t break the chain of this violence by simply punishing the bully, or his parent, but by working for deeper change within both church and society to end the misogyny — and the homophobia and fear of any gendered “otherness” that arises from it.

Chellew-Hodge’s conclusion closely parallels the conclusion of another significant study released this week by Faith in America, a report entitled “Addressing Religious Arguments to Achieve LGBT Equality.”  As Steve Hillebrand writes in this report’s foreword, the primary reason it has proven so difficult even for a pro-equal rights President and a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass legislation forbidding workplace discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or to abolish the discrimination represented by DADT is “because there is an air of acceptability in America to be against LGBT people based on one’s religious beliefs.”

Hillebrand and Faith in America maintain that, 

For faster, significant change, the mood has to change.

We should keep trying to change laws, but until we deal with core issues causing discrimination, progress will continue to be slow. Religion, morals, harm, bigotry, science, fear, understanding – these are core issues we need to confront head-on if we want to reduce discrimination toward gay people.

Hillebrand notes that “the biggest barrier to achieving LGBT equality is religion-based bigotry, coupled with the failure of the gay community to confront religious arguments.”  Hence Faith in America’s report, which seeks to provide those confronting religious-based bigotry against gay and lesbian persons with a set of “core messages” to use in this educational process, as well as guidelines for dealing with people of faith.

“Addressing Religious Arguments to Achieve LGBT Equality” frames its core messages by noting that “[r]esearch has confirmed that most anti-gay prejudice and discrimination are based on religion. ” The report proposes three core messages for those dealing with religion-based anti-gay bigotry to seek to communicate in discussions with people of faith:

1.    Religion-based bigotry causes enormous harm to LGBT people, especially young, vulnerable teens.

2.    Sexual orientation is a natural part of a human being, whether it be heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. Same-sex orientation is not a choice to go against God’s will. It is a normal, natural and healthy expression of human sexuality that is innate for some people.

3.    Religion-based bigotry against LGBT people is wrong ... just as it was wrong to use religious teachings to justify discrimination against Native Americans, African Americans, minority religious groups, women and interracial couples.

Sound guidelines for dealing with the objections that many people of faith continue to raise to the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in church and society, and to the eradication of discrimination against people on grounds of sexual orientation.  But, unfortunately, the attitudes of religious communities are not going to change significantly until members of those communities themselves undertake the task of educating their constituents--though I very much applaud Faith in America for continuing to try to educate, and I recommend this report.