Category Archives: Gay Rights

Credulity 101

Are the members of the churches in his network as ignorant and credulous as Eric Miller clearly thinks they are?

If so, it’s the most convincing evidence to date of the need to improve civics education.

As the Indianapolis Star has reported, Miller and his fellow culture-warrior Curt Smith are trying to rally their troops by claiming that, if HJR6 doesn’t pass, pastors who preach against homosexuality might be thrown in jail.

This, of course, is utter bullshit.

Although his willingness to tell humongous fibs does raise the possibility that Miller didn’t really graduate from an accredited law school (or listen to church lessons about bearing false witness), I’ve always presumed that he did, and that somewhere along the way he had to encounter the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment–and specifically, the Free Exercise Clause–clearly allows pastors to preach whatever they believe without fear of punishment by big, bad government. (If bigotry from the pulpit were a criminal offense, a lot of racist pastors would be ministering from behind bars.)

The worst thing government can do to churches is revoke their tax-exempt status when they become too involved in partisan political campaigns–and the IRS has historically been loathe to impose even that penalty.

Miller’s other assertions are equally bogus. HJR6 would place a ban on same-sex marriage and civil unions in the Indiana Constitution.  The presence or absence of that ban would have absolutely no effect on merchants’ decisions about what customers to serve. A prohibition on discriminating against gay customers would only take effect if Indiana ever amended its state civil rights laws to include GLBT folks. Unless and until that happens, homophobic business owners remain free to refuse service to gay people, to fire people for being gay, and to refuse to hire people they suspect may be gay.

I’m not going to dignify the restroom accusation, except to point out that most public restrooms are used by one person at a time, and–don’t tell Miller–a lot of establishments today only have one facility for both men and women. I’ve never understood the Right’s hysteria over toilets.

Speaking of hysteria, these latest, patently ridiculous accusations are the latest sign that Miller and his merry band of culture warriors are getting pretty hysterical. They are not going softly or gracefully into the dustbin of history.

But hysterical or not, that’s where they’re going.

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When Abstaining Isn’t

There’s been an unpleasant little episode playing out at IUPUI, where I teach. Although both Indiana University and IUPUI have officially come out in opposition to HJR6–passage of which would make it incredibly difficult to recruit first-rate faculty–the Executive Committee of IUPUI’s Staff Council recently decided to abstain, and remain neutral.

As the name suggests, the Staff Council is an organization of staff–the administrative assistants, IT experts, development professionals and others without whom the university simply couldn’t operate. And evidently (unlike the situation with faculty, virtually all of whom oppose the measure), some staff members support HJR6.  So the Executive Committee–without a staff vote and in what I take to be an effort to avoid controversy–decided to sit this one out.

The problem is, there are some things you can’t sit out. There are some issues–and this is one of them–where taking “no position” is taking a position.

We don’t think kindly these days about the white Southerners who decided to “stay neutral” about segregation, or the whites (North and South) who “stayed neutral” about discrimination in housing and on the job.

When you say “Well, maybe black children should be entitled to go to school with white ones, but a lot of my neighbors think blacks are inferior and I don’t want to piss off my neighbors so I’ll just stay quiet and accept the status quo,” you are endorsing that status quo. When you say “I know gay people already can’t marry in Indiana, but some of my colleagues want to make sure we outlaw civil unions too, and I don’t want to argue with them,” you are endorsing the legitimacy of your colleagues’ anti-equality position.

I understand that some Christians–certainly not all, or these days even most–consider homosexuality a sin. That is their right. Their churches have a right to preach that doctrine, a right to refuse to marry same-sex couples, to write letters to editors and to fulminate to their family members at Thanksgiving. But in our constitutional system, they should not have a right to deny gay people equal treatment under the law, and (however grudgingly and inconsistently) most courts, government institutions and everyday Americans have come to agree.

The right to equal treatment by civil authority is more than a constitutional requirement; it is a moral touchstone of American culture. It’s not something one can be neutral about.

Refusing to engage–abstaining from the struggle in an effort to placate everyone–satisfies no one. It’s cowardice–and betrayal.   

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Public Duties, Private Rights

It’s a bitch having to share the country with other people. Especially when so many of them are so wrong about everything.

A friend of mine just sent me the most recent tantrum (excuse me, newsletter) from the Indiana Family Institute’s Micah Clark, and that’s pretty much the message. According to Micah, those of us who don’t share his belief that “kids do best with a mom and dad”–that is, those of us who oppose a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and civil unions –are thereby labeling people like him “bigots.”

I realize that needs a bit of deconstructing. Or, perhaps, psychiatry.

Here’s what Micah and his fellow “victims” don’t get: we live in a society with a lot of other people, many of whom have political opinions, backgrounds, holy books, and perspectives that differ significantly from our own. The only way to govern such a society–the only “social contract” that allows us to coexist in reasonable harmony–is by respecting those differences to the greatest extent possible. That requires treating everyone equally within the public/civic sphere, while respecting the right of individuals to embrace different values and pursue different ends in their private lives.

I know this is hard for you to understand, Micah, but a refusal to make everyone live by your particular interpretation of your particular holy book is not an attack on you; it is recognition that we live in a diverse society where other people have the same rights to respect and moral autonomy that you claim for yourself.  Ironically, a legal system that refuses to take sides in your religious war is also the only system that can safeguard your own religious liberty. I know you don’t want to believe it, but most Americans really don’t share your religious certainty and belief in your own moral superiority. If your right to live in accordance with that certainty had to be put to majority vote, you might find your own “lifestyle” legally marginalized.

As I’ve noted previously, poison gas is a great weapon until the wind shifts.

As to your accusation that those of us who support marriage equality are calling you a bigot–well, here’s the dictionary definition of the term: “a person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group.”

If the shoe fits…..

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Senator Coats Embarrasses Us in Washington

The U.S. Senate has finally passed the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), a measure that has been languishing in Congress for at least twenty years despite the fact that for a good part of that time, multiple polls have shown support for passage hovering around 80%. (Approval by the more dysfunctional House remains uncertain.)

ENDA extends the basic civil rights protections that currently prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion and gender to GLBT workers. In other words, if you are an employer who is subject to civil rights laws, you can no longer fire someone –or refuse to hire someone–solely because s/he is gay or lesbian.

Although a number of Republican Senators voted against the measure, only one Senator took the floor to urge its rejection: Indiana’s own Dan Coats.

Coats says ENDA “violates religious liberty.”  And it is certainly true that the law would prevent people whose religions preach intolerance from acting on that intolerance in the workplace.

Coats is making the same arguments that were used by those opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and subsequent state-level civil rights laws. “My religion teaches that women should tend the home.” “My religion teaches that black people shouldn’t mingle with whites.” And of course, the ever-popular, “A law telling me I can’t disapprove of certain people and refuse to serve/employ/educate them is an infringement of my liberty to run my establishment as I see fit.”

Well, yes it is. That’s the price we pay for living in a system that strives for equal protection of the laws, a system that separates civil law from religious beliefs.

I first met Dan Coats in 1980, when we were both Republican candidates for Congress. (He won his race; I lost mine.) When he later ran for Senate, he asked if I would host a fundraiser for him, and I agreed. I hadn’t paid much attention to his record, however, and when I asked several female friends if they would attend, I got an earful about his positions on reproductive rights and other issues affecting women. (For younger people who may be reading this, I kid you not: before the party effectively became an arm of fundamentalist Christianity, the GOP used to harbor lots of pro-choice women. Honest. Google it if you don’t believe me.)

When I explained to Dan that his votes to make abortion illegal made him persona non grata to pretty much anyone I’d invite, he was gracious about it. But I’ve never forgotten his explanation: “this is a religious issue for me.”

There are two problems with this defense. First, my religion (and that of many other Americans) had–and has– a very different view of reproductive morality, just as today religious denominations have very different positions on same-sex marriage. And second, the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits people like Dan Coats or Rick Santorum or anyone else from using the law to impose their religious beliefs on those who don’t share them.

Coats is a perfect illustration of a phenomenon that drives me batty–the (apparently sincere) belief that if the law isn’t forcing everyone to live by his religious rules, he is the one being discriminated against.

Take that position to its logical consequences, and a diverse society could neither exist nor function. Dan Coats doesn’t have to like gay people, or Jewish people, or any other people. He doesn’t have to invite us into his private club, or invite us over for dinner. He does, however, have to share civil society with us.

And that, Dan, requires giving unto others the same rights you demand for yourself.

Speaking of morality, I would submit that an inability to understand that simple truth–an inability to respect the equal human dignity of people who differ from you– is a pretty significant moral failure in the view of most religions.

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Because Freedom. Or Something.

Yesterday, Emmis Communication joined Freedom Indiana, the growing coalition opposed to HJR 6, the proposal to constitutionalize Indiana’s ban on same sex marriage and civil unions.

Also yesterday,  a northern Indiana Tea Party group joined the homophobes agitating for passage of that constitutional amendment. Because Tea Party folks are all about limited government.

Right.

Listen up, Tea Party people: limited government means limited. Not just low-tax, not just no pesky government interference when your business dumps toxic waste into the local river. Limited. As in “government doesn’t belong in my boardroom or my bedroom.” As in, “government doesn’t get to decide who or how I love, how many children I have, whether I use contraceptives, or even whether I carry a pregnancy to term. Government doesn’t get to dictate my religious beliefs or observances, doesn’t get to tell me what political positions to endorse, doesn’t get to prescribe my reading materials, and doesn’t get to choose the people with whom I associate.”

As George Bush Senior might say, read my lips: you are either genuinely for limited government or you aren’t. If you are truly a limited government advocate, you’re required to be at least moderately consistent. At the very least, you have to refrain from demanding that government impose your religious beliefs on your fellow citizens.

If you just want to “limit” government’s ability to tax you, you aren’t an advocate of limited government. You just don’t want to pay for the services government delivers.

You’re just one of those assholes who doesn’t want to pay his dues.

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