Two More Updates: Gays on Christian College Campuses, Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli Blocks Access of Poor to Health Care

And two more quick follow-ups:

I blogged some days ago about the controversy that developed at Arkansas's Harding University, when gay students and alumni launched a website to create discussion about how gay members of this Church of Christ campus community are treated.  As I noted, Harding responded to the website by blocking access to it in the campus's computer network.

Today, Erik Erickholm writes at the New York Times about the growing movement of gay visibility on campuses of evangelical Christian colleges and universities.  This movement of visibility is fighting for the inclusion of LGBT people within the communities of these campuses.  

One of the interesting segments of this article--and I heard this repeatedly when the Harding situation was discussed at the blog of the Arkansas Times website some weeks ago--is the refrain, Why would the gays want to go to one of our Christian schools, anyway?  Erickholm writes,

Gay students say they are often asked why they are attending Christian colleges at all. But the question, students say, is unfair. Many were raised in intensely Christian homes with an expectation of attending a religious college and long fought their homosexuality. They arrive at school, as one of the Harding Web authors put it, “hoping that college would turn us straight, and then once we realized that this wasn’t happening, there was nothing you could do about it.” 

And, of course, what's perplexing about this question is how anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with the gospels and the teaching of Jesus would want to keep anyone on the outside looking in.  To send signals to anyone that she is not welcome, has no place, doesn't belong.  That he is not a brother with a place at the Christian table.

Is the real message here this: some Christians are demanding that their comfort levels not be challenged by having to confront real-life human beings who happen to be gay?  I suspect it is.  And I suspect that, no matter how uncomfortable the recognition happens to be that gay people do exist, and that they are right within Christian families and churches, this reality (the gays exist!) is not going to go away anytime soon for any groups of Christians--regardless of how high they build their walls and how tight they fasten their doors.

And yesterday, I wrote again about my perplexity that any Catholic informed about Catholic social teaching (or any Catholic who has read the gospels) would defend or take lightly political initiatives to block the access of socioeconomically deprived people to health care.  And today, I'm reading that the Catholic attorney general of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, has chosen to do precisely that.

As Tara Lohan notes at Alternet, not content to hate on the gays, attack climate scientists, and try to censor a state symbol that pictures a bare-breasted goddess, Cuccinelli issued a ruling early this year that effectively blocks non-profits providing free health care for poor people from receiving state funding.  Lohan links to an article by Bruce S. Trachtenberg at The Nonprofit Quarterly which says that among the groups affected by Cuccinelli's ruling is the Virginia Association of Free Clinics, a network of 60 medical clinics that served 72,000 patients last year.

Again, some of the Catholic church's most ardent defenders these days--notably, the Republican politicians with whom Catholic leaders seem intent on getting into bed--are, in my view, working fast and furious with the bishops to turn the church into a mean machine.  If what Cuccinelli stands for is authentic Catholic values (and spirituality and the movement of the heart to God), I want nothing to do with those values.

Last fall, Cuccinelli, who claims to be pro-life, issued the notice of Virginia's execution of a mentally retarded grandmother.

Wik Wikholm Reviews "8: The Mormon Proposition": Must-See Viewing about Role of Religious Groups in Attacking Gay Rights

I meant a day or so ago to mention Wik Wikholm's fine 1 April review of the documentary "8: The Mormon Proposition" at the glbtq website, and then forgot to do so.  A lazy Sunday evening is the perfect time for me to take note of this review before it slips away from my notice.  For anyone following the role of religion in the battles over gay rights in the U.S., this sounds like a must-see film.

Wikholm minces no words about what he thinks the documentary demonstrates: here's his opening statement,

The documentary film 8: The Mormon Proposition indicts the Mormon Church as the puppet master that orchestrated, funded, and deliberately concealed its role in what appeared to be a successful grassroots Evangelical and Roman Catholic campaign for Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment that ended same-sex marriage in California when it passed on November 4, 2008.

The film frames its analysis, Wikholm notes, with an interview with Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who says that success with ballot initiatives like prop 8 in California demands money, volunteers, and a message that resonates.  The LDS church provided all three to take away the right of civil marriage for gay citizens of California, Kendell thinks.

Activist Fred Karger has succeeded in obtaining a set of internal Mormon church documents which show that the LDS church is aware that its image is an impediment in the public square, and for that reason, it allied itself secretly with conservative evangelical Christians and powerful Catholic anti-gay groups in California, supplying the bulk of the money and volunteers for the prop 8 campaign behind the scenes, while permitting the other two groups to appear to be spearheading the drive to repeal gay marriage as a grassroots initiative.

The documentary suggests that, having found this approach so successful, the LDS church is now strategizing with the largely Catholic National Organization for Marriage (NOM) to apply a similar formula--behind-the-scenes money and manpower, as NOM takes a high-profile public role with Mormon support hidden in the background--in states other than California, including Maine and Maryland.  As he notes,

The film suggests that the Mormon Church is engaged in what amounts to money laundering by concealing its funding of non-tax-exempt PACs like NOM so that the church's own tax-exempt status as a non-political religious organization is protected.

NOM, of course, persistently refuses to reveal its funders, even when federal and state laws demand such transparency, and it mounts legal battles repeatedly to keep its funding sources secret.  In the view of the documentary, the Mormon church has a strong interest in colluding with Catholic groups like NOM (and with the Catholic bishops) in attacking gay marriage because Mormon theology teaches that God, Heavenly Father, once had a human body and became a god when he died, and then married many spirit wives, populating the earth.

As Wikholm notes, "According to church doctrine, good Mormons will become gods when they die and populate their own planets just as their heavenly father did."  Hence the abhorrence of same-sex relationships and of gay people, since the theology of the LDS church is heavily invested in maintenance of traditional gender roles and in a model of family and procreativity that stresses the obligation to marry heterosexually and have children.  And though what Catholics and evangelicals call "traditional" marriage is miles and miles apart from this theological understanding, the shared hostility of some religious adherents in these religious traditions to gay and lesbian people leads them to make common cause with a religious group whose understanding of marriage (and of God) is strongly at variance with traditional Christian notions.

This sounds to me like a necessary film to watch, for those interested in the role that religious groups and (some) people of faith are playing in the American political context today to block gay rights and attack same-sex marriage.  And as I notice Wik Wikholm's review, I'd like to put in a plug for the outstanding glbtq website, which is one of the best online scholarly resources around for information about gay and lesbian people, lives, and issues.

Diana Butler Bass and Jim Wallis: Moral Dimensions of Wisconsin Story

 

And, turning from Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee to some real and substantial moral analysis of the current American political scene: two good commentaries as the week ends by Diana Butler Bass and Jim Wallis about the situation in Wisconsin.  Both touch on the significant moral-religious issues involved in what's happening there.

As Bass notes, though a large number of religious leaders, including several Catholic bishops, have condemned Gov. Scott Walker's attack on labor, Walker does not intend to relent.  Butler's explanation of why Walker remains obdurate in the face of strong opposition from faith leaders is compelling: as she indicates, he is firmly ensconced within a particular kind of evangelical spirituality strongly represented in some areas of the U.S., with strong political influence.  This kind of American evangelicalism stresses biblical inerrancy, sin (viewed in narrow individualistic and moralistic ways), exclusive salvation through Christ,  eternal damnation for unbelievers and the immoral, and and individualistic "Jesus and me" approach to salvation.

And so issues like how corporations or governments treat working people are not, in the view of this individualistic, moralistic kind of evangelicalism, even moral at all.  Morality has to do with what one pelvis does to another pelvis, or with what women who are outside male control do with their bodies.  It doesn't have to do with what happens to workers, with the oppression of the weak by the strong or the poor by the rich.

Moreover, in this form of American evangelical piety, it's considered a virtue to be defiantly stubborn in the face of opposition--including or even particularly opposition coming from other religious groups.  You and you alone, your group and your group alone, has the corner on the salvation market and the bible-interpreting market.  And Butler's conclusion: 

Walker and those who stand with him in this particular (and powerful) corner of the religious right are dangerous--dangerous to all the rest of us, because they do not intend to dialogue, compromise, listen, have any checks placed on a power they regard as handed to them directly by God: Unlike the Roman Catholics and traditional Protestants who have spoken on behalf of the laborers, Walker has no spiritual "check" on him, no authority other than the ones he hears in his own head, and no moral culpability in this situation. He's the good Christian soldier, just following God's lead.

And this is why Scott Walker's religion is actually dangerous in the public square. Because it lacks the ability to compromise, it is profoundly anti-democratic. Many faith traditions actually possess deep spiritual resources that allow them to participate in pluralistic, democratic, and creative political change. But those sort of traditions tend emphasize the love of God and neighbor over strict obedience to an unyielding Father God. Despite anything Scott Walker might say, the confident dictum of the old hymn, "Trust and Obey" is not the best way to govern a state.

And Jim Wallis's take--also from an evangelical standpoint, but fan evangelical standpoint that recognizes the obligation of all followers of Christ to do justice in the public square: programs that target the weak and vulnerable, and seek to transfer the burden of balanced budgets onto the backs of the poor while giving the rich a free ride, are not and cannot be called moral.  Not ever:

The Republican governors' counter parts in the U.S. House of Representatives are also not cutting spending where the real money is, such as in military spending, corporate tax cuts and loop holes, and long term health-care costs. Instead, they are cutting programs for the poorest people at home and around the world. This is also just political and not genuine fiscal conservatism. It is a direct attack on programs that help the poor and an all-out defense of the largesse handed out to big corporations and military contractors. If a budget is a moral document, these budget-cutters show that their priorities are to protect the richest Americans and abandon the poorest -- and this is an ideological and moral choice. The proposed House cuts, which were just sent to the Senate, are full of disproportionate cuts to initiatives that have proven to save children's lives and overcome poverty, while leaving untouched the most corrupt and wasteful spending of all American tax dollars -- the Pentagon entitlement program. This is not fiscal integrity; this is hypocrisy.

What Jim Wallis says here, and his subsequent observation that American military spending now constitutes 56 percent of all military spending around the world and is more than the military budgets of the next 20 countries in the world combined, brings me back to the ongoing discussion of the attack on Planned Parenthood on this blog.  As I've said in that discussion and will repeat again: until my brother and sister Catholics who are calling for elimination of federal funds to a program 97% of whose services are medical services to poor women begin talking about withholding their tax dollars used for military expenditures, I will continue not to find the Catholic pro-life movement credible.

Though many Catholics have allowed themselves to be duped by the lie that their tax dollars support abortions through Planned Parenthood, no tax dollars may be used to support abortions.  This is expressly forbidden by law.

But all of us are funding that out-of-control military budget through our tax dollars.  All of us are buying weapons and assisting wars through our tax dollars.  Even if the question of war is morally debatable, there is something extremely troubling, in moral terms, about the selective blindness of the Catholic pro-life movement in the U.S.--and, now, about its willingness to collude in and egg on a cynical politically motivated attack on an organization providing much-needed medical services to poor women.

While those applauding the attack on Planned Parenthood aren't talking about how their tax monies fund the production of weapons and the waging of wars.  If pro-life means anything at all, pro-life means pro-life.

Period.