Secularism and civilization

The riots in the Islamic world over an anti-Islamic video (ie: people responding to vile accusations against them by proving them true) have reinforced one thing for me. The biggest single indicator of a civilized society today is the degree to which that society is influenced by the separation of church and state.

People have every right to follow their religious faith in their own lives. They do not have the right to impose their faith on everyone else. Civilized societies recognize this. Regressive ones do not.

The Catholic Church's evaporating moral credibility

A friend of mine posted this sad and outrageous story about his godfather. It's a great example of why the Catholic Church in America is hemorrhaging members.

My friend's godfather was the music director for a Catholic parish in North Carolina. The parish knew the man was gay and that he lived with his partner and, surprisingly, were okay with that. The fact that he was apparently a good music director trumped those things. But then the man and his partner got married and immediately, the parish fired him.

Of course, this is legal. It's legal because the Catholic Church has fought very hard for its special right to be able to ignore anti-discrimination and employment laws (and tax-exempt status but that's an issue for another day). The fact that the Church has fought so aggressively to protect those special rights (while acting equally aggressively against gays having equal rights) was an indicator that it fully expected to use them.

Many people of faith act contend that religious institutions should be immune from any public criticism, that we must mindlessly respect them as they relentlessly disrespect others, that we can not call such actions by their real name, that we must not apply the Church's own standards of morality to its own actions and inactions. To put it far more mildly than this issue deserves, this is wrong.

Perhaps if the Catholic Church had acted as vigorously against priests abusing boys as it does against loving, married (and CONSENSUAL) same-sex couples, the Church's credibility wouldn't be in tatters in the eyes of so many former members, such as myself.

Update -- another friend commented on the same article: "I know someone who is the victim of domestic violence and teaches at a catholic school. She can't get a divorce or she'll be fired. She has to find a new job first. Social justice, my foot!"

A third friend remarked more succinctly: "Jim Crow is alive and well."

Clerks claim 'right' to flout law

WAMC News did a story about how some municipal clerks in New York are claiming the 'right' to refuse to issue same sex marriage licenses, now that it has become law in the state. The so-called Alliance Defense Fund rails against "threats from top officials of the Empire State to charge clerks who decline to issue such licenses with a criminal offense--forcing clerks to decide between their career and their faith"... as though this is somehow both illegal and unprecedented.

If a Muslim clerk wanted to refuse to issue marriage licenses to Christian couples because of religious beliefs, would these organizations defend their right to do so? What if a gay clerk wanted to refuse to issue marriage licenses to a straight couple? What if a racist white clerk wanted to refuse a marriage license to a black or interracial couple?

Let’s take this further. What if an evangelical clerk wanted to deny a birth certificate to the newborn of an unmarried woman? What if a strict Muslim DMV worker wanted to deny driver's licenses to women? What if a Protestant bureaucrat wanted to deny a building permit to a Catholic church?

Would any of these be tolerated on the basis of the ‘rights’ of the bureaucrat? Of course not.

The clerks, like all citizens, have the right to their religious beliefs. They do not have the right to a job.

A job is a privilege, not a right, and is subject to conditions and expectations defined by the employer. For example, I may have the right to freedom of speech as a citizen, but if I exercised that right by shouting in the workplace that my boss was a lying crook, I probably wouldn’t have that job much longer. No one would argue with a straight face that my firing would be a violation of my free speech rights.

Rights outside the workplace and those related to the execution of your job duties are two very different things. Why should religious public sector workers be subjected to a different standard?

Taxpayers have the right to expect that public sector workers they are paying will apply and respect the law as written, regardless of their personal biases, prejudices and beliefs. They have a job to do. If they can’t do their job in good conscience, they should have the principle to resign, as some already have. If they won’t do their lawful jobs, the public has the right to replace them with somebody who will.

I don’t discriminate against Catholics... I just want them to have fewer rights than everyone else

George Wallace at the University of Alabama during his notorious "Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" speech.



The title of this essay is obviously exaggerated to make a point but there actually were those amongst our country’s sainted Founding Fathers who wanted to deny Catholics the right to vote. Would that have constituted discrimination against Catholics? Perhaps not, according to Timothy Dolan, the Catholic archbishop of New York.

If you want an classic Orwellian read, check out this blog entry by Dolan. (If you want to read pure vile hatred and lies, check out some of the reader comments at the bottom)

It was a pretty standard regurgitation of the Vatican’s position.

And no Chicken Little hysteria would be complete without an evocation of a fascist or Stalinist regime -- in this case, North Korea.

The particularly Orwellian passage by the archbishop that caught my attention was this: Our beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination against homosexual people.

Except that applying different standards to different people on the same issue is the EXACT definition of discrimination.

Discrimination is not always bad. DMVs discriminate against the blind in issuing driver's licenses. The Constitution discriminates against young people in who can run for president. Voting laws discriminate against non-citizens. All of these forms of discrimination are generally considered legitimate. But legitimate discrimination is, by definition, still discrimination.

As such, one might argue that the Church’s anti-marriage equality position constitutes legitimate discrimination but even if that's so, it’s still discrimination. It’s one thing to defend a pro-discrimination position; the Catholic Church has a number of them. It’s another thing to deny its reality.

(The most enraging thing about the position of the Vatican and many other religious organizations is not that they are defending their own right to discriminate internally, which would remain unaffected by same-sex marriage bill; it’s that they are trying to mandate that the state practice discrimination itself based on the Church’s own religious beliefs)

The archbishop insists that marriage was invented by God and can’t be modified by Man, even in our non-theocracy. A cursory look at history shows that this is demonstrably false.

But I say that if Albany can’t redefine marriage, then Dolan can’t redefine the dictionary.

***

Opponents of equal rights in New York state have recently invoked the Torah (even though we're "not a theocracy"), the Holocaust and, of course, the totalitarian North Korean regime. State senator and evangelical minister Ruben Diaz, New York's own George Wallace, compared marriage equality proponents with the Ku Klux Klan.

(Maybe there is hope... Wallace eventually came around to the fairness position, recanted his anti-civil rights views and apologized for the damage he helped inflict).

Surely that can’t be it! No Chicken Little hysteria is complete without a Nazi reference. He may have sent gays to the gas chambers, but Hitler would've supported same-sex marriage too, right?

***

A few days ago was the 44th anniversary of the Loving decision, named after the plaintiffs Richard and Mildred Loving. That was the US Supreme Court ruling that struck down all state laws banning interracial marriages.

In his ruling, the initial trial court judge ruling against the Lovings said: Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The rhetoric sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it.

In a statement a few years ago marking the 40th anniversary of the case, Mildred Loving wrote: I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no
matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over
others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

She then expressed her pride that her husband's and her name is on a court
case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life.

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

If "Wallace" Diaz's assertion is correct, then the African-American Mrs. Loving was no doubt wearing a white hood.

Why Dolan and Diaz, both self-proclaimed men of God, are so rabid in demanding the state deny this basic humanity is beyond me. I just hope the God who they claim to be representing will ask them that exact question when the time comes. I will leave the judgment up to Him. I'd urge them to do the same.


Update: the United Nations passed a historic resolution insisting up equality for all humans, without regard to sexual orientation. The Vatican joined Saudi Arabia, China and Russia in opposition.

Barbarian demands to dig up Muslim cemetery... and other musings

"If fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." -Sinclair Lewis

Religion is a strange thing. It seems to bring out either the absolute best in people and the absolute worst in people. For example, it was Christians who were instrumental in pushing the black equal rights movement. And it was also Christians who perpetrated the Inquisition and the Holocaust and, on a less severe scale, are the most vocal opposition to the gay equal rights movement.

I found interest a survey by the Pew Forum concluding that atheists and agnostics in America know more about religion than the religious. It reinforces my suspicions that organized religion discourages intellectual curiosity by its insistence on deference to a central authority.

But this isn’t that surprising. My experience as a Catholic growing up depended greatly on the priests at any given time. The good clerics drew out the religion’s humanity. The mediocre ones never went beyond the realm of theory and scolding. Though this variation was counterintuitive to the principle of a universal church.

I wonder why anti-Semitism is (rightly) considered vile and repugnant but Islamophobia is increasingly socially acceptable... if not mandatory in some circles.

And speaking of Islamophobia, I don’t think you can demand the desecration of cemeteries and call others barbaric and uncivilized.