Melissa Harris-Perry on the Intersection of Black and Gay Struggle for Justice, and Liberating Role of the Bible

Reading Dan Savage's remembrance of the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s, and of the role the churches played in that struggle, alongside Peter Montgomery's analysis today at Religion Dispatches of the thought of Melissa Harris-Perry is instructive.  Montgomery focuses on a keynote address that Harris-Perry recently gave to the Clergy Call conference of Human Rights Campaign.

Melissa Harris-Perry is an African-American political scientist who directs Tulane University's Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South.  Though she is not gay, she stands with LGBT people in their struggle for justice, since she believes that this struggle is the most significant struggle for justice and rights occurring in our culture today--and her faith-based commitment to human rights compels her to speak out.

Harris-Perry told those gathered for the Clergy Call conference, 

"I believe that the struggle for equal human and civil rights for lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, same-sex-loving, gender-nonconforming and queer persons is the civil rights agenda of our time." And, she said, "faith must be part of the work we’re doing."

In Harris-Perry's view, progressives relinquish the bible to conservatives at their peril.  We live in a culture that, whether we like it or not, is saturated with appeals to scriptural texts, which radically and persistently inform political thinking in the United States.  (Both Ms. Palin and Ms. Bachmann have recently reassured the public that their bible-based politics has a direct pipeline to God, as they toy with the idea of a presidential run.  Rev. Harold Camping had a whole nation and its media superstructure at his beck and call for several weeks, as he kept us on our toes with his intricate biblical calculations of when the world would end.)

And so where does Harris-Perry turn for a sound progressive reading of the bible to counter the misappropriation of biblical texts by the religious and political right?  She grounds her appeal to the scriptures in the black liberationist reading of the bible.  As she notes, people of color have experienced savage, persistent biblically based oppression for centuries in the United States.  And as they have struggled against that oppression, they have learned to read the scriptures with an ear for their real message, their liberating central themes, and not for the tortuous, highly selective exegesis of religious and political conservatives intent on using the bible as a tool of oppression.

Harris-Perry notes that her great-great-great grandmother was sold as a slave in Richmond, Virginia, in a world in which, everywhere she turned, people used the bible to tell her that she was less than human, that God had made her chattel, that she had no rights and should expect no rights.  But her own experience of herself as a human being made in God's image and loved by God caused her to center her faith, instead, on the central liberating themes of the scriptures that overturn this misappropriation of the bible to support slavery and black subordination: 

When my great-great-great-grandmother was sold on a street corner in Church Hill, Richmond, Virginia, she had never known anything but slavery. When she bore children, she expected that they would never know anything but slavery. She lived in a world where every religious person she encountered could show her chapter and verse why she was unequal, who could quote back the reasons that God wanted her in bondage, and every bit of empirical evidence around her, every bit of it, said there either is no god and if there is God does not like you very much. And she had the undaunting audacity to believe that God loved her.

And, of course, Harris-Perry is telling this story to feed the faith and hope of those who struggle for justice for LGBT people today, since those who are gay and lesbian are susceptible to the same constant bombardment of carefully selected, highly manipulated "terror texts" designed to rob LGBT people of humanity, to turn them into despised objects, and to support the denial of their human rights.  In Harris-Perry's view, LGBT people and their allies can learn something valuable from the black struggle for liberation and its use of the scriptures, as this struggle deals with the anti-gay "terror texts."  

What they can learn, in particular, is that it's more important to lift up the "countering texts of liberation" than to try constantly to combat the "terror texts" through careful exegesis that exposes their many flaws.  As Harris-Perry points out, over the course of Christian history, one form of oppression after another--all once based in appeals to the bible--has been overturned, as we recognize that we misuse the scriptures when we use them to oppress and keep people in their places: 

"There are all sorts of things that we’ve decided we no longer read in the way they were once read" she says, citing verses instructing slaves to obey their masters. People are still wrestling with Pauline claims about wives submitting themselves to their husbands. She says people who don’t live by those verses haven’t rejected them because they learned something new about the texts, but because they learned, or came to appreciate, something about the greater whole. For example, enslaved African Americans focused not on the texts telling them to obey their masters, but on the God who sent Moses to set His people free. "Black liberation theology," she has written, "emerges from this tradition of rejecting scriptural evidence of a slavery-supporting God and roots itself in a biblical interpretation of God as an advocate for the oppressed."

What Harris-Perry has to say here is extremely important, and valuable for progressives fighting for justice on many fronts in our culture.  For readers who want to know more about Melissa Harris-Perry and her work: Alternet also features her today, with an essay of hers recently published in The Nation.

Melissa Harris-Perry is well worth reading.  She first came on my radar screen when I saw her carefully and helpfully commenting on Rachel Maddow's show about the ongoing resistance to gay and lesbian rights in some sectors of the African-American community, following the prop 8 debacle.  As she pointed out, this is not the whole story, since there are many African Americans who read the scriptures as their ancestors did, to support all of those struggling for justice, human dignity, and rights, and it is the latter with whom LGBT people need to build stronger ties of solidarity.

I'm happy to see her work receiving the attention it deserves.

Sojourners Again: Questions about Coherence and Integrity in the Struggle for Justice

I'm continuing to find the story of Sojourners and its prejudice-driven refusal to take sides in the struggle for justice for LGBT persons in society and faith communities instructive.  The narrative line that catches attention here: it's a parable about how people of faith who profess to be committed to justice nullify this when they refuse to practice justice in some area in which, right before their eyes, the struggle for justice is being played out in a conspicuous way.



I recently received an email from Sojourners asking me to donate to them.  I immediately replied, of course, with an email telling Sojourners that there’s no way in hell I intend to give any money to a "progressive" and "justice-oriented" faith group that refuses to run an ad by Believe Out Loud asking Christian churches to start treating LGBT people like human beings.  Real human beings with the same human rights other human beings have.

This week, Sojourners emailed me back.  I have no way of knowing whether their email was crafted to reply to my concerns uniquely, or whether the organization has gotten other emails like mine, and this email was therefore sent to all those who refused to donate for the same reason I did.  I tend to think the latter is probably the case.

I appreciate the reply, whether it’s a personal reply to me alone or to a group of people disenchanted with Sojourners’ recent statement that it cannot take sides in the struggle of LGBT people for justice in society and faith communities.  At the same time, I’m hardly reassured by Sojourners’ response to my concern.  It’s long on "listening and reflection," on "dialogue and civility."

And it’s short on action.  It’s short on precisely the same kind of action Sojourners espouses in the case of other groups of people subjected to injustice and oppression—the economically struggling, working people, people of color, women, and so forth.  Its message—and this is consistent with what Sojourners has long said to LGBT people, and intends to keep saying—is that those who are gay and lesbian, bisexual or transgendered, are a case apart from all other people who experience injustice and oppression.  They're a case apart from all other people, period.

And they need to recognize this, and stop complaining.  Stop the uncivil calls to communities of faith to practice the same justice in the case of LGBT people they claim to practice in the case of poor people, working people, people of color, women, etc.  Start listening and reflecting—on the gospel message Sojourners and like-minded people of faith proclaim to their gay brothers and sisters.  A message that places those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered in a special category of people whose humanity is not equal to that of everyone else, and who therefore do not have the same rights that everyone else has.

Or the same claim on the conscience of people of faith engaged in the struggle for justice, so that the denial of the full humanity and full range of human rights that those people of faith offer to LGBT people does not, we’re asked to believe, undercut people of faith’s proclamation of justice for other marginalized groups.

Sojourners’ email to me directs me to an FAQ composed, the email tells me, to answer the many critical questions directed to the organization after it refused to run Believe Out Loud’s ad.  And here's what I find when I visit that page:

1. Sojourners is claiming that it decided not to run Believe Out Loud's ad because the group's campaign for justice for LGBT people "includes advocacy for gay marriage in the church."  And this is a matter about which "Sojourners has intentionally not taken a position" because Sojourners "encourages civil dialogue within the church."

2. Sojourners describes itself as "a welcoming organization," and claims that "we have welcomed openly gay and lesbian people on our staff and will continue to do so."

3. Sojourners denies that it doesn’t take sides on LGBT issues, and says that it "supports full civil rights for LGBT people and equal protection under the law," and has repeatedly done so in various circumstances.

4. Sojourners has been asked whether its refusal to "take a stand on this" [on what, precisely: gay marriage? the Believe Out Loud ad?] is because of its "work to build coalitions on poverty."  And the organization replies that this is, indeed the case, since it works with faith-based groups seeking justice for poor people who do not support the struggle of LGBT people for justice.  And so, "Not only is taking a stance on gay marriage in the church outside of the purview of our mission focus, we feel it would hinder our ability to build these coalitions."

Take a close look at Sojourners' rationale for not taking sides in the LGBT struggle for full inclusion in the human community and faith communities, and quite a bit does not hang together.  With regard to claim #1--that Sojourners did not run the Believe Out Loud ad because Believe Out Loud advocates for gay marriage in the church--as Jamie Manson recently pointed out in National Catholic Reporter, the ad Sojourners turned down makes no mention of gay marriage.  It's an ad in which various people of faith ask the churches to begin treating LGBT people as full human beings.

With regard to claims #2 and 3--that Sojourners is a "welcoming organization" which has unambiguously sided with LGBT people in their struggle for justice--as I've noted in previous postings on this blog (the first link in this posting points to one of those), I happen to know someone who has long been interested in working for Sojourners, and who has strongly supported Sojourners' ministries.  He also happens to be gay, partnered, and in a long-standing committed relationship.

Twice in the past several years, he has seen openings at Sojourners and has contacted the organization to find out whether Sojourners offers benefits to partners of gay employees.  Both times he's been told that the organization would discuss his request.  And each time, the reply has been, No.  No, we don't offer partner benefits.

Something may have changed since the last time my friend asked Sojourners about this issue.  I'd like to think that's the case.

But if not, what can the claim that Sojourners is "a welcoming organization," and "we have welcomed openly gay and lesbian people on our staff and will continue to do so" possibly mean, when a heterosexual couple working for this faith-based organization is able to receive partner benefits, but a same-sex couple is not?  This is a shell game that people of faith and their organizations have been playing for far too long with the humanity and the lives of LGBT people: we welcome you.

But please don't expect to be treated equally.  As if your humanity counts in precisely the same way that the humanity of everyone else counts.

As if your demand for justice matters in the same way that the demand for justice by poor people, working people, people of color, or women matters.  Because it doesn't.  You belong to a special category of people whose humanity is not precisely the same.

And so we can claim to be welcoming and justice-oriented while not really welcoming you.  And while actively discriminating against you.  And it is uncivil of you to point out that our behavior contradicts the wide-ranging claims we make about justice and human rights in every other area imaginable.

Though its FAQ implies otherwise, Sojourners did say, by the way, that it cannot "take sides" in the LGBT struggle for justice when it refused to run the Believe Out Loud ad.  And its feet need to be held to the fire about this refusal by anyone who cares about the integrity of faith-based communities' witness to justice in the world today.  This is, in fact, precisely why many people of faith are holding Sojourners' feet to the fire now.

With regard to claim #4--that Sojourners can't really take sides with LGBT people because its mission to work for justice in other areas, and its coalitions to serve that mission, prohibit such taking of sides--Jamie Manson has eloquent rejoinders in the NCR article to which I link above.  As she notes, Sojourners head Jim Wallis has persistently answered questions about the status of LGBT people and their claim on the conscience of Christian communities this way:

[D]ebates over LGBT issues "have not been at the core of our calling, which is much more focused on matters of poverty, racial justice, stewardship of the creation, and the defense of life and peace. . . . Essential to our mission is the calling together of broad groups of Christians, who might disagree on issues of sexuality, to still work together on how to reduce poverty, end wars, and mobilize around other issues of social justice."

But as Manson notes, Elie Wiesel writes, "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."  And in the case of LGBT people,  Manson reminds us, "there are soul-shattering repercussions" to the refusal of people of faith to stand unambiguously for justice.  There's the active unwelcome that many LGBT people of faith experience within communities of faith.

And there are further troubling facts that Manson can document from her hard-earned experience living in a committed same-sex relationship: there's the fact that she and her partner, both with academic backgrounds in church-related schools (Manson has an M. Div. from Yale Divinity School) not only sometimes find themselves made unwelcome in some church communities.  But, in fact, when some church groups find out that Manson is in a partnered gay relationship, they rescind invitations to her to speak about various issues.

There are, in short, significant real-life consequences to the refusal of Sojourners and other "progressive" communities of faith to take a stand for justice for LGBT people.  Those consequences are written across the lives and relationships of the people these communities continue to place in a special category of human beings--a sub-class of human beings whose human rights and struggle for justice matter less than do the human rights and struggle for justice of other groups of human beings.

But the consequences of the refusal of communities of faith to support LGBT people in their struggle to justice are also increasingly grim for those faith communities themselves.  As the culture at large reaches a tipping point at which increasing numbers of people recognize the full humanity of LGBT persons, churches and other religious bodies radically undermine their claims to be committed to justice, when they continue to treat LGBT people as a case apart, as human in a different (and inferior) way.  

What begins to happen as a cultural tipping point occurs in this area is that churches' call for justice increasingly appears to be incoherent, when these communities ask LGBT people to live on a special, sub-human reservation within the churches, while they urge us to recognize the humanity of other marginalized human beings.  And the integrity of those crafting this two-tiered system of humanity--one tier for heterosexuals, another for those who are gay--is also called into question.

Jamie Manson raises an important question, for instance, when she asks whether Sojourners' refusal to take sides in the LGBT struggle for justice is driven by economic considerations.  "Progressive" people of faith often refuse to stand in solidarity with LGBT people in their struggle for justice because they fear the loss of donations and financial support from their anti-gay coalition partners if they take sides with LGBT people.

The homophobia of faith-based "progressives" comes with an increasingly high price tag.  It increasingly undercuts the claims of faith-based groups like Sojourners to be about justice at all.  It exposes the justice-oriented message of these groups as incoherent, since that message cannot recognize the claims to justice (and humanity) of a significantly oppressed group right in the midst of these people of faith.  And it raises critical questions about the integrity of those behaving in this way.

So that now, when the Jim Wallises of the world write about the dangers of male-entitled misogyny, no one listens carefully.  Because misogyny and homophobia spring from the same male-entitled heterosexist roots.  And one cannot challenge one without challenging the other.  Not if one expects to be credible.  And one cannot speak credibly without acting, without acting to do justice for all of those excluded from networks of power and privilege--of humanity itself--by men who imagine that being male and heterosexual grants one an ontological status denied to those different from oneself.

Catholic Ethicist Daniel Maguire on USCCB President Timothy Dolan's "Love Letter" to Paul Ryan

Also noteworthy today: Marquette University ethics professor Daniel Maguire's assessment of the recent love letter that the head of the U.S. Catholic bishops Timothy Dolan wrote Representative Paul Ryan.  Though Ryan seems to have only the most tenuous possible passing acquaintance with Catholic social teaching and with the preferential option for the poor that animates this teaching, and though he has stated that his social philosophy is radically influenced by the self-centered social Darwinism of Ayn Rand, the USCCB president has essentially given Ryan his blessing and imprimatur.  

While he lays into Catholic thinkers who even begin to imagine deviating from the Catholic magisterial party line on issues like contraception, abortion, or homosexuality.  As Maguire notes, he himself experienced the rough side of Dolan's tongue in a letter Dolan wrote him as archbishop of Milwaukee, which characterized Maguire's moral theology as "preposterous and disingenuous," and "totally at odds with clear Church teaching, Sacred Scripture, the Magisterium, and Natural Law."

Ryan, by contrast, receives from Dolan a missive that is, in Maguire's view, a "mellifluous effusion" dripping with "adulatory congratulations" and "sweet nothings."  If Dolan were acting "in Jesus mode" (and not qua the mouthpiece of the Catholic Republican American Party [CRAP] that he actually is), he'd come to conclusions similar to those of the seventy Catholic scholars who recently took Speaker Boehner to task for promoting social and economic programs that attack and damage the least among us:

Could you not be as tough as Jesus was when he rebuked those in power who were mouthing pieties, while stripping the poor and favoring the pillaging rich? “Whitened sepulchers,” Jesus called them, covered with platitudinous posturing on the outside but inside filled with the stench of moral decay. “Hypocrites,” Jesus called them repeatedly, “blind guides” who are “fit for hell.” “Outside you look like honest men, but inside you are brimful of hypocrisy and crime.” (Matthew 23)

Nothing tepid about Jesus when poor workers and children were being trampled.

But, then, Archbishop Dolan doesn't intend to speak and act "in Jesus mode."  Not as long as he is  financed by, indebted to, and answerable to the Republican business leaders to whom he and other U.S. Catholic bishops have sold their soul.

For whom Jesus and his teachings clearly mean far less than Ayn Rand does.

Matthew 25 and Expectations of the End of the World

By the way: I read the strangest report yesterday morning.  Did any of the rest of you happen to see it?

It seems 284,000 empty shoes (all in pairs) were found Sunday morning around the world.  The people wearing them seem just to have . . . vanished.

And, strangely enough, they're concentrated among certain demographics: the homeless and mentally ill; several batches of gay and lesbian folks partying at fin del mundo parties in big cities; a number of transsexuals; quite a few prostitutes, people doing life terms in prison, etc.  Very few of these people belonged to any church or religious group at all, it seems.

Not a single one of these folks lived in D.C.  Or an episcopal palace.  Or the Vatican.

The report said two other down-and-out people also--believe it or not--appeared to be unaccounted for on Sunday morning.  Their families were reporting that they seem to have disappeared.

What on earth can all of this mean?

Paul Krugman on Voodoo Economics of Republican Budget Proposal: Ludicrous and Cruel

Good commentary today (as always) by Paul Krugman in the New York Times--on the Republican budget proposal, to be specific.  As Krugman rightly notes, it's both ludicrous and cruel.

Ludicrous, in that it continues the long-discredited shell game of neocon voodoo economics, which asks us to trust the very rich and give them even more concessions through tax cuts, because--trust us!--eventually the wealth that flows in ever-increasing floods into the treasuries of the wealthy will trickle down to all the rest of us.  And cruel, in that it asks all the rest of us to foot the bill for our entire infrastructure, while the rich amass that increasing wealth and decide whether or not to use it to sustain the societies from which it has come.

Hint: they somehow, mysteriously, never get around to the sharing step.  To the trickling down.

I'm frankly ashamed at (but hardly surprised by) the shilling Andrew Sullivan has been doing lately for Ryan's smoke-and-mirrors game.  The shilling, and the pretense that the Ryan budget proposal is a respectable document addressing our acute budget crisis, begin to bring into disrepute Sullivan's moral stance on just about anything else he addresses.  For me, at least.

The graphic is artist Stephen Hansen's "Trickle Down."

Maxwell Strachan on U.S. Income Inequality: Higher Than Any Time Since 1917

A quick note about an article well worth reading, as Paul Ryan brings the Republican budget proposal to the table: Maxwell Strachan's "15 Facts about U.S. Income Inequality That Everyone Should Know." Pertinent quote:

"Economists are not sure how to fully explain the growing inequality in America," Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in a new piece for Vanity Fair this week. "But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way."

While it's unclear whether Stiglitz is correct about the intentions of the super-wealthy, what's certain is that the rich have emerged from the rubble of the last 30 years as indisputable winners. Since 1980, middle-class wages have largely stagnated and lower-class wages have declined, while the upper echelons of American society have seen a windfall. A study by University of California, Berkeley professor Emmanuel Saez found that, as of 2007, the top decile of American earners pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages, a level that's "higher than any other year since 1917."

I'm not an economist.  I'm just a plain, ordinary citizen without much of a head for figures, but with a master's and doctorate in the history of Christian thought and social ethics.  Still, I think I might be able to 'splain to Joseph Stiglitz and the economists why the gap between rich and poor is growing so rapidly in this nation: its not only because the top 1 percent want it that way.  It's because they've fixed it that way, with several decades of neocon governmental leaders who have given them obscene tax cuts unprecedented in American history.

And they intend to keep it that way and buy each and every election they can succeed in buying for the foreseeable future. 

And I'm not in the least bit of doubt about the "intentions of the super wealthy": the rich want to remain rich and to become richer.  At the expense of the rest of us.  Hence the tax cuts and the ludicrous talk of balancing a budget that is out of kilter for one primary reason no one (in the beltway echo chamber) wants to bring to the table: the unprecedented and growing gap between rich and poor in American society at this point in history.  And the intent of the rich to keep it that way.  And the captivity of both major political parties to the wealthy.  And their ability now to buy any election that comes along, and almost anyone in office.

Update on Previous Stories: The Fast for Justice, the Koran Burning

Quick updates (and further commentary) re: two stories about which I've blogged recently:

First, at Religion Dispatches, Sarah Posner addresses the fast for economic justice about which I blogged several days ago.  Posner notes that the fast has some high-profile support, but she doubts that it will have much effect on the current Democratic leaders in D.C.

And I agree.  As Posner notes--and she's right--the power-brokers of the Democratic party as it's presently configured don't intend and have never intended to listen to the viewpoints of people of faith to the left of center in the American political arena.  Because, they imagine, they don't have to do so.  Our votes are sewn up, taken for granted, since we certainly don't intend to vote for leaders of a party that even more overtly and more unconscionably serves the interests of the tiny elite of rich citizens now controlling our political process.

That is, our votes will be taken for granted unless something new and unexpected comes along to offer an alternative to the deadlock both major political parties have created.  And it's for that that I will keep praying.  And fasting.  Since the God to whom we pray is the real owner of the future that our political leaders keep mortgaging on behalf of all of us.

Also at Religion Dispatches, and again Sarah Posner: commentary on Pastor Terry Jones's burning of the Koran, about which I posted this weekend.  Posner notes that strong indicators suggest Jones burned the Koran hoping that precisely what did happen would happen: that there would be a violent response in some Islamic parts of the world, which would prove the point he and his cronies want to make to the American public: that Islam is in and of itself violent.

Unlike Christianity.  Which would certainly never countenance someone doing an incendiary act that they knew would incite a violent reaction that might result in the deaths of innocent people.  

Would it?

And on the Islamophobia that is now sweeping through some parts of American culture like a mass delusion, and which is being cynically and deliberately promoted by the leaders of the Republican party, see Roger Cohen's good op-ed statement in today's New York Times.

Play with fire and you'll get burned.  And those who are going to get burned as this mass hysteria keeps playing out are going to be many of us in the U.S, I fear, who should be speaking out and pushing back against the hysteria right now, if we really want these fires to be put out.

And Speaking of Money, and Health Care, and the U.S. as a Shining City on a Hill

That by-invitation-only charity banquet with the fabulous menu that featured one of the princes of the Catholic church in 2006?  I don't imagine I'd have been invited.

Because Steve is working right now on computing information for our taxes, and--yaay!--though I brought in quite a bit more income this past year than in the previous year, I still don't think it would merit an invitation to a banquet whose purpose is touching people for charitable donations.

It's vulgar to talk in specific details about money.  Suffice it to say, what I made this year is in the range somewhere below $20,000 and above $10,000.  It's a bit higher than the salary I pulled down when I started my career teaching in a Catholic school in New Orleans in 1972-73.

It's the same yearly amount Steve made for six years teaching at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans from 1985-1991, when the seminary's rector denied him tenure (after the faculty and students voted to tenure him) on the ground that he could no longer pay a layperson's salary--between $10,000 and $20,000, and not close to the latter.  And the following year, lo and behold, that seminary rector, who is now an archbishop, suddenly found funds to hire two priests to replace Steve.

It's a few thousand below the salary at which I began teaching at Xavier University in New Orleans in 1984, and at which I continued for a number of years until I completed my dissertation.

All this and no health insurance, too, right now . . . . 

And I'm not complaining.  With Steve's fairly good salary, we meet our needs, as long as we budget carefully, keeping in mind that we're losing money monthly paying the note on the house in Florida that we bought when a friend promised us jobs there up to retirement, and then reneged on that promise.  After the Florida United Methodist Church that owns the university that she heads split on the very day we came to Florida over the question of accepting openly gay members.  And after the UMC bishop of Florida, who led the charge against including gays at the last UMC General Conference, told this university president--so she told us--that he would not have approved of hiring us if he had known we are a gay couple.

I'm not complaining.  We have it better than a lot of folks.  We have a roof over our heads, good food to eat, the opportunity to travel sometimes, books to read, good friends and family members, relatively good health.  I have time to blog that I would not have if I were gainfully employed full-time.

Even so, I'm baffled at all those folks who think that living in the U.S. is living in a land of milk and honey and streets paved with gold.  As I move into my 60s with no health insurance and a patchwork income I put together any way I can each year, with dwindling retirement savings, and wonder what retirement will be like for the two of us, when we also face the struggles any aging gay couple in this country inevitably faces: I wonder.

What we mean when we say we're a shining city on a hill.  And the new Jerusalem.  And a nation uniquely chosen and blessed by God.  And a nation with the soul of a church.

I certainly found my six years of graduate study in Canada, when I had health coverage provided at no cost by the state system though I was an American citizen, refreshing by contrast.

P.S. Just in case it's necessary, I think I should add the following comment about the graphic for this posting: I don't envy those with extraordinary wealth.  To the extent I can imagine their lives, I wouldn't want that life for myself--not at all.  I chose the graphic I did to illustrate this posting to make a point that seems obvious to me, as the U.S. (and other nations) now debate how to deal with economic downturn and budget crises.  This is that the one question never on the table, which is nonetheless the central question to be asked about where developed nations have ended up socioeconomically, is this: why are the extremely rich increasingly allowed to shrug off the burden of helping to sustain the social networks of the societies in which they gain their wealth, while that burden is increasingly transferred to the shoulders of those at the bottom of those societies?

Fasting for Justice

 

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: 

to loose the chains of injustice 

and untie the cords of the yoke, 

to set the oppressed free 

and break every yoke? 

Is it not to share your food with the hungry 

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— 

when you see the naked, to clothe them, 

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? 

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, 

and your healing will quickly appear . . .  . (Isaiah 58:6-8)

For anyone who might be thinking of ways to link Lenten penance to action on behalf for justice in our society, I'm recommending MoveOn.org's proposed fast for justice.  This organized fast is also a protest against immoral budget cuts that will shift the burden of sustaining our social networks onto the shoulders of the poor and working classes, while relieving those at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid of their responsibility to share.  Jim Wallis, David Beckmann, and Tony Hall launched this fast at the beginning of the week.

As I wrote in my comment at the MoveOn site when I committed myself to fasting, this action of solidarity and protest reminds me of the Vietnam War period, when students across the nation committed ourselves to fast for periods of time, to protest the war in Vietnam and call for an end to the war.  I regard the current socieoconomic (and moral) crisis of the U.S. as equal to that of the Vietnam War period.

I thought of the effectiveness of concerted action on behalf of justice during the Vietnam War period when I wrote a few days ago about how pressure from both the faculty senate and the student government association at Marquette University put the feet of Jesuit Fr. Robert Wild, that university's president, to the fire and forced him to offer partner benefits gay couples at that school..  I was struck by Fr. Wild's statement that taking this step is in line with the Jesuit pastoral principle of care for persons, cura personalis.

What the Marquette scenario brings to mind for me is what happened on the campus of the Jesuit university I attended in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Loyola in New Orleans, when students began to pressure the Jesuit community at Loyola to divest its stock holdings in companies manufacturing war chemicals.  Students at Loyola were particularly upset to learn that the Jesuits who owned and ran the university had holdings in Dow Chemicals, which was making the napalm used to burn villages, people, and the countryside in Vietnam.

When the student protests about this began, the Jesuits tended to react with disdain, blowing the students off and even, on one memorable occasion, sending one of their head honchos at the University to mock the student protesters and lie to us about the Jesuit investment portfolio.  But when the pressure continued and increased, and there were student take-overs of the student union building on the campus, the Jesuits began to discover their consciences, and began to take heed of the student requests.

And the point of that story is this: concerted action to protest immoral behavior of institutions that claim to have a moral basis does sometimes work.  And it's sometimes the only thing that will get such institutions to do the right thing, despite their lofty claims of moral principles.

These thoughts will be in my mind and heart as I commit myself to this particular fast for socioeconomic justice in the U.S.

Catching up on News at Two Catholic Colleges--Marquette and Chestnut Hill

 

Catching up to some stories about which I've blogged here in the past:

I mentioned this yesterday: the situation at Jesuit-owned Marquette University in Milwaukee.  In yesterday's posting, I alluded to what happened at this Catholic school last spring.  As I noted last May, controversy developed following an announcement by Marquette's president Fr. Robert A. Wild, SJ, and provost John J. Pauly that the university had rescinded an offer of an administrative position to an out lesbian scholar, Jodi O'Brien.

In response to this development, a nationwide conversation about how gay and lesbian faculty, staff, and students are received at Catholic universities in the U.S. ensued.  Because the controversy created such turmoil at Marquette itself, the school's vice-president for student affairs L. Christopher Miller commissioned a study of issues of gender identity and sexual orientation at Marquette.  That study, compiled by Ronnie Sanlo, director of UCLA's master's program in student affairs and senior associate dean of students at UCLA, was made available last month.  I reported on it here.

In extensive interviews with members of the campus community, Sanlo found a climate of fear and harassment for LGBT persons at Marquette.  One of the concerns Sanlo heard is that the university offers no partner benefits for gay and lesbian employees.  Her report recommended that the school consider taking the step of implementing such benefits.

And now, as Jim McCrea noted in a comment to my posting yesterday mentioning Marquette, on Thursday, Fr. Wild announced to the campus community that the school has decided to offer such benefits.  Sharif Durhams and Don Walker report on the announcement yesterday in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.  According to their report, Wild says he's been struggling with the thought of offering such benefits for some time now, since the Jesuit principle of cura personalis would seem to imply, at a pastoral level, that there's something uncaring and inhumane about denying access to health care benefits to a couple in a recognized civil partnership.  

However, as Durhams and Walker also point out, in recent weeks the university's Academic Senate and council of Student Government have both voted to urge the school's administrators to offer such benefits to gay couples at Marquette.  And it surely can't be coincidental that these votes came right on the heels of the release of Sanlo's report, noting the general climate of hostility to gay and lesbian persons on the campus, and recommending that one way to address the prejudice would be to extend partner benefits to gay employees.

In  other words, what's happening at Marquette right now proves the validity of the point I made repeatedly in yesterday's posting about the growing support of lay Catholics in the U.S. for gay and lesbian rights: that such support doesn't mean much, in the long run, until it's translated into action.  And action means pushing back in concrete ways against the prejudice and discrimination embedded in our own institutions.

What's happening at Marquette shows that pushback can be effective.  I applaud Fr. Wild for being a man of Jesuit conviction and conscience.  But I think I'm inclined to applaud even more all the courageous members of the campus community who put the feet of the Marquette administration to the fire and forced the administration to live up to its Jesuit principles re: extending health care benefits.  

And not just to talk grandly about them.

A second catch-up story: a month or so ago, I blogged about the firing of Fr. Jim St. George, an openly gay, partnered priest of the Old Catholic church, by Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, a Catholic school owned by the Sisters of St. Joseph.  As my posting noted, after firing St. George, who was an adjunct faculty member in its religion department, the college issued a statement through its president Sister Carol Jean Vale stating that permitting those in same-sex partnerships to teach on Catholic campuses is "contrary to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church." 

And now the Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that St. George and the college have reached an amicable agreement consistent with the religious beliefs of each party.  No further information about the terms of the agreement is available.  The Inquirer article does note, however, that St. George had substantial support among Chestnut Hill students, and they were preparing to rally on his behalf when news of the settlement broke.  

And so this would seem to be another illustration of the value of solid pushback against the homophobic prejudice that clearly does remain embedded in concrete, systemic, and extremely hurtful ways in Catholic institutions, despite the belief of a majority of lay Catholics in the U.S. that such prejudice is wrong.  As I said yesterday, we have work to do.  And what has happened at Marquette and Chestnut Hill suggest that collaborative efforts of lay Catholics to stand in solidarity with their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and to demand an end to discrimination can be effective.

Remembering Oscar Romero: God Hears the Cries of the Poor

 

Today is the anniversary of Oscar Romero's assassination in 1980.  Since several readers have mentioned in comments here lately that they don't know much about Romero, in commemoration of his life and profound witness to the gospel, I thought I'd point readers to some valuable resources to learn more about Romero.

The first is a wonderful set of articles and liturgical resources about Romero at the U.S. Catholic website.  The second is a collection of Romero's homilies, in a volume entitled The Violence of Love, compiled and translated by James R. Brockman, SJ.  It's online at the Plough website, and has a good foreword by Henri Nouwen.

Finally, I never think of Romero and the struggle of the poor in Latin America for socioeconomic security and humane lives without thinking of the magnificent 1986 film "The Mission," tracking the history of the establishment of the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay.  Here's a YouTube clip of Carlo Romano and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI playing the theme music of the film, "Gabriel's Oboe":

And, since one memory always links to another, remembering Romero and "The Mission" always brings to my mind the memory of the wonderful Jesuit whose scholarly work laid a foundation for "The Mission," C.J. McNaspy, the anniversary of whose death in 1995 recently came around.  Not only did C.J.'s book on the Jesuit Reductions play a role in providing the scholarly underpinnings for the 1984 Roland Joffé film, but he served as a musical advisor for the film, as well.

C.J. was my teacher when I was an undergraduate at Loyola in New Orleans.  I learned much from him--about music, philosophy, history.  But above all about the Jesuit ideal of living as a man for others.  His stories about what some of the early advocates of integration in New Orleans--he was among them--endured as they met and planned strategy in a culture hostile to racial reconciliation were hair-raising, and very moving.  These were people who put their lives on the line, as did Romero, to proclaim the gospel.

And so I never think of Romero without thinking of C.J.  Both are saints who occupy prominent spots on my own personal iconostasis.  C.J. died soon after Steve's and my careers as Catholic theologians were definitively ruined by what Belmont Abbey College chose to to do us, by firing us without providing a reason for the firing in my case, and on spurious grounds in Steve's case.  He was very unhappy about this, since he had recommended us for our jobs there.

And, above all, because he believed profoundly in justice and charity.  And so I pray to C.J. McNaspy along with Oscar Romero for the reform of our church, and for its renewed commitment to justice and charity for everyone, including those on the margins of church and society.

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.

Paul Krugman on the Wisconsin Situation: The Pertinence of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine"

 

I like Paul Krugman's analysis in today's New York Times of some of the parallels between what's happening in Wisconsin now and what has been happening in the Middle East.  After I blogged glancingly about that topic recently, I saw a segment of Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" in which Stewart did a take-down of the idea that the Wisconsin demonstrations in any way parallel what has been happening in Egypt, Libya, and Iran.

And, of course, he's right in some ways.  People aren't dying in Wisconsin.  Even so, as Krugman points out, there are some clear parallels, and they deserve attention--particularly if we want to understand the underlying causes of the Wisconsin situation.

As Krugman notes, the conditions for much of the upheaval in the Middle East were actually created by Bush-generation right-wing American ideologues who were determined to impose right-wing ideological political and economic ideas and structures on nations in the Middle East (and elsewhere), no matter how badly the ideology being imposed fit the situations on which the ideology was imposed.  Krugman notes that Naomi Klein explored this pattern brilliantly in her book The Shock Doctrine.

And in Krugman's view, Klein's analysis of how the conditions that have ultimately resulted in democratic revolution in the Middle East were created, ironically, by rigid right-wing ideologues definitely does fit the situation in Wisconsin in key respects.  As we all know by now, we're being lied to when we're told that breaking the unions in that state (or anywhere else) is a necessary precondition to balancing the state budget.

Here's Krugman's take: 

What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process.

A power grab.  Deliberately exploiting a fiscal crisis created by the political right in order to ram through an economic and political agenda of the political right that is at the very base of the economic crisis this ploy is purportedly designed to resolve.  As I keep insisting, we really need to educate ourselves as much as possible about what's going on right now in our country, vis-a-vis the democratic structures of our society, or it may soon be too late.

What's going on in Wisconsin is, I think, a hopeful sign that when more and more Americans become aware of how a filthy rich elite is trying to buy our democracy lock, stock, and barrel, we citizens will begin to push back--as citizens of the Middle East are doing, as well.  Against forces that in some respects are not entirely different from those eliciting the pushback now in Wisconsin.

The Moral Implications of the Budget Debate: L. Randall Wray on Moral Majority v. Moral Minority

I like very much the way in which L. Randall Wray turns the tables on those who claim that morality demands that we attack government, curtail much-needed government services, and transfer the burden of paying for such services as remain onto the backs of the working and middle classes. As Wray points out, the position espoused by neo-conservatives and tea baggers represents not the position of the moral majority whom they claim to represent, but a position of a moral minority in the U.S.

The majority of Americans want a society in which educational opportunities for all citizens are stronger, better, and spread around more widely.  Most of us want to see the sick cared for and the elderly permitted to enjoy productive and happy lives in retirement.  One of the huge mistakes of the Democratic party in recent decades has been to yield the language of morality to those who represent the minority position of the tiny wealthy elite whose ultimate goal is to safeguard obscene tax cuts for themselves, and, if possible, to pay even fewer taxes than they already pay.

Given that these folks are in the minority, how do they keep so many of us hoodwinked about their real agenda?  Here's Wray's take:

So what can the Moral Minority do? Deceive. Obfuscate. Scapegoat. Talk about "unfunded mandates," "unsustainable deficits," "debt burdens on our grandkids," "government is running out of money," "welfare queens," "illegal deadbeat aliens," "national bankruptcy." All deceptions.

I hope that Rep. Paul Ryan's admission that deficit hysteria is really about morality, not economics, gets wide coverage. The American people need to know that the morality campaign is well-financed by hedge fund manager Pete Peterson's billions. He and Ryan want to push their Moral Minority views on the Moral Majority.

But the Moral Majority of this country wants more education, not less. Americans want more publicly funded healthcare, not less. They want to help the homeless get off the streets. They want to help grandma and grandpa live a decent life in retirement. They support nutrition programs for mothers and infants. They want to rein in Wall Street and to jail the crooks. And they want government to play its appropriate role in all these matters.

And most of all, they want to leave the world a better place for the generations of Americans to come. As such, they do not, as Ryan put it, "choose to relegate America to another chapter in the history of declining nations." They want no part of the "dog eat dog," "every man for himself," Hobbesian vision hawked by the Morality Minority.

I think Wray (who is a professor of economics) is correct here.  And as I said yesterday, we need to educate ourselves more about precisely how the tiny elite who want to control our political process manage to keep us divided with tactics of  deceit, obfuscation, scapegoating, etc.

Snapshots of the Soul of American Democracy, 2011: Three Disturbing Takes

 

This is one of those news-commentary compendium postings I do every now and then, when several articles that seem to me to connect dots appear around the same time.  What strikes me with the following three articles is that they seem to be connecting the same dots from different vantage points.

All three articles address the underlying reasons that we see such a sudden proliferation of initiatives in state legislatures across the U.S. and at the federal level to pit one group of Americans against another: to pit the "Christian" nation against Muslims with spurious anti-Sharia laws; to pit citizens against so-called illegal immigrants with mind-boggling laws like one under consideration now in my state legislature which would require anyone using public services to have a notarized copy of a birth certificate in order to qualify for a service like an emergency room; and to pit "traditional" families against gay and lesbian people.

Each of these articles suggests to me that this flurry of pending legislation has, at least in part, a diversionary intent.  It's designed to keep us fighting as further inroads are made into our democratic system by a wealthy elite of corporate owners who want to have total control of the political process.  And to undermine our democratic system.

Here's Robert Reich's perspective in a recent Huffington Post article.

The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class -- pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.

By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.

And here's George Lakoff on the patriarchal mindset being used to justify this grab at power by corporate elites: 

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women's rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting, and on and on.  . . .

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

And, finally, here's Jim Hightower commenting on the role that the judicial branch of government has been playing and continues to play in the corporate takeover of our democracy:

Forget modesty and humility, an aloof and arrogant judicial branch of government has arisen and become openly political. Federal judges across the country are flagrantly abusing their authority and public trust by rigging America's economic and political rules for the further enrichment of already powerful and privileged corporations. The 'umpires' have taken sides against us, and it's time to call them out.

Progressives, along with honest conservatives, must focus more on this corporate takeover of the judiciary and directly challenge the judges' service to the moneyed elites. Let me be blunt: John Roberts, the leader of the pack, has turned into an autocratic, unelected national lawmaker, imposing his political vision as the law of our land. He is doing major structural damage to America's unifying sense of fairness and justice. We can't allow him to keep hiding behind the judicial robe while he mugs us and our democratic ideals. He should be impeached.

We are living through a moment of unprecedented peril for American democracy.  Unless we inform ourselves about what is happening and why it is happening, and unless we organize to fight back--as people in Wisconsin are now doing--it may soon be too late to recover the democratic structures we've built painfully and all too imperfectly since the beginning of the nation.

Austen Ivereigh on Change in Marriage Laws in UK: "Stand Up Against Equality"

As I wrote about Ronni Sanlo's recent report noting that Jesuit-owned Marquette university is characterized by a climate of fear and harassment when it comes to LGBT persons, I noted that some members of the campus community whom Sanlo interviewed are disturbed by the discrepancy between what Jesuit institutions proclaim about social justice, and what they actually practice in the case of those who are gay.  I wrote:

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.

And because I agree with those within Jesuit institutions who call for these institutions to practice the justice they preach to others in their own behavior towards gay and lesbian persons, I'm shocked to read the concluding lines of Austen Ivereigh's latest posting at Jesuit-owned America magazine about the debate re: same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom.  Ivereigh writes, 

Pope Benedict's trip to the UK last September emboldened the bishops specifically to stand up against equality laws which had the effect of diminishing religious freedom.

Emboldened the bishops specifically to stand up against equality laws: that's not a phrase you read every day in a social justice-oriented Jesuit publication.  Bishops praised for their "boldness" in "standing up" against equality! 

Try to get your mind around that for a moment.  Think, for instance, of a Jesuit journal publishing an article in 1957 or 1964 praising those who "stood up against" laws assuring the legal equality of African Americans in the U.S.  And then being told that they were "bold" for doing so.

And that they were promoting freedom even as they fought to deny rights to a vulnerable and oppressed minority group.

As Tom Krattenmaker noted recently at Huffington Post, a critical mass of citizens of the U.S. have now moved so far in the direction of fairness, inclusion, tolerance, and justice for those who are gay and lesbians that Christians who continue to praise the "boldness" of those who "stand up against" equality are now in danger of appearing every bit as infamous--one day soon down the road--as Bull Connor and George Wallace now seem to us.

Churches standing boldly against equality for LGBT persons--and in the name of religious freedom, no less!--are beginning to look as mean, as ugly, as unjust as white Southern Christian segregationists who stood in the door of schools preventing children of color from attending those schools now appear to us.  

The posting of Ivereigh's to which I link above is the second in a series he has written characterizing the resistance of some Christians in the UK to attempts to alter the marriage laws as a praiseworthy crusade to defend religious freedom and to protect the sanctity of "traditional" marriage.  The first is here.  What's this all about?

The UK currently has a two-tiered system of marriages and civil unions.  Same-sex couples are not permitted to enter civil marriages.  And conversely, opposite-sex couples are not permitted to have a civil union--though the claim is that both forms of legalized union are equal to each other.  

Because the two-tiered system is on the face of it discriminatory and a class system that turns one set of legalized unions into a second-class union, some opposite-sex couples--including many people from faith communities fighting the discrimination in this system--have been testing the waters by seeking to enter into civil unions, and then publicizing the fact that they have been denied this form of civil marriage.  As I noted in August 2009, the Quakers in the UK are at the forefront in this battle against legalized discrimination, as they were in the 18th and 19th century at the forefront in the battle against slavery.

There is also another level of discrimination.  Those entering into civil unions may not use religious language in these civil ceremonies.  It is expressly forbidden, and expressly reserved to marriages.  What Ivereigh is responding to--and calling an attack on religious freedom--is a decision of the British government to permit gay couples entering into civil unions to solemnize those unions in churches and to use religious language in the ceremony--if the church in question chooses to solemnize the civil union.  The law protects the right of any or all churches to opt out of such ceremonies and to refuse to perform them (see also here and here).

By contrast, in European nations that permit both civil and religious unions or marriages, same-sex couples are permitted by law to choose the latter--again, provided that the church upon which they call to conduct the religious ceremony is willing to do so.

And so it is strange, indeed, to hear Austen Ivereigh characterize the proposed shift in British laws as an attack on religious freedom, when the only freedom being attacked here is the freedom of same-sex couples to solemnize their unions in churches and with religious language.  And when the proposed change in the current laws categorically protects the right of any church that does not wish to perform such a ceremony to refuse to do so.

It is difficult to see this defense of "religious freedom" as anything other than a defense of gross discrimination against a targeted minority.  And it is rather sickening to hear this argument on behalf of what is said to be freedom but is in fact discrimination coming from the mouths of people who claim to be all about defending human rights.

As I've been saying for some time now, the message the Catholic church is now transmitting to the world--loudly and clearly, no matter what it says about human rights and justice for all--is that it is a club in which there is a strong preferential option for heterosexual males.  No matter what type of heterosexual males and what their own well-publicized sexual histories might be and what their own behavior has been when it comes exemplifying the values of traditional marriage. 

What does a Jesuit journal think it is doing promoting this kind of rotten heterosexist male entitlement in the church, with its nasty homophobic subtext, I wonder, while claiming it stands for justice?

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.