Mike Delph and the Book of Mormon

In the wake of Mike Delph’s bizarre meltdown, and his obvious inability to distinguish between his personal (and idiosyncratic) religious commitments and his civic and constitutional responsibilities, I couldn’t help thinking of The Book of Mormon.

Bear with me here.

For those of you who have yet to see the musical, Book of Mormon is both a delightful comic entertainment and a meditation on the role of religion in human society, for good or ill. While the ostensible subject is Mormonism, the real subject is the uses to which religious commitments are put, and the various harms done by unquestioning adherence to dogma.

When youthful “Elders” from Salt Lake City are sent to Uganda to convert the villagers, they find horrific conditions: widespread AIDS, hunger, poverty and hopelessness. The blond, blue-eyed, privileged Americans are steadfast in their beliefs; they sing of the “spooky Mormon hell dreams” that follow even minor indiscretions, of the “little Mormon trick” of “turning off” and denying unapproved sexual impulses, and–in my favorite, a song called “I Believe”– they affirm all manner of (implausible) doctrinal beliefs, including the belief that “in 1978, God changed his mind about black people.”

Elder Cunningham, one of the missionaries and the play’s comic relief, is a reluctant apostate: when a member of the tribe announces his belief that he can cure his AIDS by raping a baby, the appropriately appalled Cunningham invents a scriptural passage about AIDS that forbids such behavior (and substitutes a frog…you really need to see the show.)

This spontaneous invention–and many others that follow, including a divine prohibition against genital mutilation and commanded reverence for the clitoris–is clearly not consistent with Mormon doctrine. But it’s just as clearly humane and socially useful. And in fact, Cunningham’s version of Mormonism (which owes a considerable debt to Star Wars) is wildly successful with the Ugandans.

This musical morality tale brings us back to what I am going to call the Delph Dilemma.

Every religion has its doctrinal fundamentalists, a minority of believers for whom (their version of) the letter is far more important than the original spirit or purpose of religious law. And that’s fine, so long as we all recognize the wisdom of the First Amendment’s religion clauses, which essentially say “Okay folks, you have a right to believe what you want, and to live in accordance with those beliefs (at least until you start sacrificing small children or violating other basic laws of society). But you don’t get to make the rest of us live by your rules, especially when those rules require marginalizing those who are different.”

People like Mike Delph and Eric Miller and Micah Clark have an absolute right to their belief in a God who doesn’t want gay people to get married. They have an absolute right to throw a hissy fit (on twitter or elsewhere) when they lose a legislative battle. Those of us who see religion as one of many ways humans approach questions of ethics and morality, one of many way we try to understand our obligations to the other humans with whom we share this planet–have a right to think and live differently, and in our system, the government doesn’t get to make anyone’s religious doctrine the law of the land.

Although none of us has the right to impose our preferred religious doctrines on others, we do each have a right–perhaps even a duty–to assess whether any particular belief system ultimately encourages loving-kindness or abets mean-spiritedness– whether any particular worldview promotes amity or enmity.

We get to decide which is better: the dogma that sacrifices the baby, or the modification that targets the frog.

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But Think About the Children!

There are few things more important to Indiana policymakers and lobbyists than the welfare of our children. Just ask them–or ask Eric Miller, who routinely appears at the legislature to insist that we have to disadvantage gay people “for the children.” Miller has worked diligently to “protect” Hoosier children from the dangers posed by GLBT folks, no matter how fanciful or invented those dangers might be.

For some reason, Miller is far less concerned about the documented, decidedly real-life threat posed by unlicensed church daycare operations. As the Indianapolis Star reported in January

Child advocates have been pushing for decades for tighter scrutiny of unlicensed Indiana day cares but have often watched the legislature take little action, even as the grim tally of child injuries and deaths has grown..An investigation last year by The Indianapolis Star found that at least 22 children have died in Indiana day cares since 2009, with 16 of those deaths in unlicensed day cares.

As the Star noted, bills to tighten licensing requirements have died in prior sessions, killed by objections that the regulations would “infringe on the religious freedom of the churches that run day-care ministries.”

Eric Miller of the conservative advocacy group Advance America has been among the loudest voices of that position.

So let me see if I have this right. Miller says Indiana needs new laws discriminating against gay citizens because children will be traumatized if they have two mommies or see gay neighbors being treated like everyone else. But Indiana absolutely doesn’t need new laws to prevent children from being neglected or abused in unsupervised facilities affiliated with a church. Because making a church follow the same rules that apply to other daycare operators will infringe their religious freedom.

Let’s call that what it is: utter bullshit.

On that logic, church school bus drivers should be exempted from traffic laws. Religious structures shouldn’t have to be built in conformity with building and fire codes.

Eric Miller and his cohorts don’t give a rat’s patootie about the welfare or safety of Hoosier children. They care only about pursuing–and in Miller’s case, profiting from–their Christianist agenda.

The biggest danger to children comes from a legislature cowed by these pious charlatans.

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Back Home in Indiana…

If our legislature paid half as much attention to job creation and economic realities as it does to time zones, same-sex marriage and teaching cursive, Indiana’s economy might actually improve, and state agencies might not have to lie about their performance.

If our lawmakers took an honest look at the results of ideologically-driven measures like tax reductions, constitutionalizing the tax caps and “right to work” legislation–we might  encourage the kinds of economic activity that would work for everyone.

Honest to goodness.

Instead, Indiana continues to underperform on a wide range of measures. In a recent column, Morton Marcus highlighted one of those– a significant increase in the gap between the average weekly earnings of a Hoosier worker and that of the average American worker– and he asked a pertinent (and impertinent) question:

 In Dec.’07 that gap was $20.74; by Dec.’13 the gap between Indiana and the nation grew to $58.99 per week. Is this the economic progress our elected legislative and executive leaders travel the world to advance? Is this consistent with those boastful press releases we read about how well Indiana is doing because of our low business taxes and slack regulation?

Elsewhere in the country, it is dawning on elected officials that it is quality of life, not tax rates, that drives relocation decisions. A state that boasts of its “slack regulation” is advertising its resemblance to West Virginia, where  drinking the water has gotten hazardous.  A state touting its low taxes is communicating where its priorities lie; increasingly, when businesses being courted are told “we have low taxes,” they hear “we have substandard education, poorly-maintained roads and parks, and not enough police officers to protect you.” And they’re right.

Amazing as it may seem, people smart enough to run a successful business are smart enough to know that states, like people,  get what we pay for. And back home in Indiana, we aren’t willing to pay for much of anything.

Honest to goodness, Indiana.
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Gotta Love Texas

Facebook friends and even the Indianapolis Star have been having a lot of fun with Mike Delph’s unhinged tweets in the wake of the Senate vote on HJR 3. Delph–who can make even other Indiana legislators look relatively balanced in comparison–tweeted a long string of increasingly incoherent rants about the Godless Hoosiers who rejected Christianity by refusing to outlaw sin and civil unions. Or something.

If you thought that no one could top Delph’s little display of faux religiosity topped with a soupçon of constitutional ignorance, however, you were wrong. Once again, Texas wins the “you’ve GOT to be kidding” sweepstakes.

Watch this and weep!

Theocracy, anyone??

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How Sweet It Is….

Yesterday, the Indiana State Senate voted for the version of HJR 3 that previously passed the House–a version without the legally ambiguous second sentence.

Because a constitutional amendment must pass two consecutive legislative sessions with identical language, the vote will keep the measure off the 2014 ballot. If the single-sentence version passes the next legislature, that version will go on the 2016 ballot.

If I were a betting woman (and I’m not, because I’m wrong about nearly everything), I’d wager we’ve seen the last of this retrograde effort to let “the gays” know that they just aren’t worthy of that pesky “equal protection of the laws” thing. By 2016, even the “God told me my marriage will be worthless if you get to have one too” folks will recognize that this battle is over. 

If I may, I’d like to share a few reflections on the campaign that has now (mercifully) ended:

  • Megan Robertson is awesome. The campaign she directed was brilliant, bipartisan and virtually flawless. (It’s almost enough to make me forgive her for Greg Ballard.) We will hear more from and about this young woman.
  • The GLBT community demonstrated its maturity and civility. When I first became involved in working on gay rights issues, some twenty years ago, it could be very frustrating. There were factions and “hissy fits” and unhelpful public behaviors. Those behaviors were nowhere to be seen this time around. The community was unified, dignified and focused, laser-like, on what needed to be done. GLBT folks shared their stories, made their case, and stood up for their rights as citizens, as taxpayers and as Americans.
  • The so-called “allies”–PFLAG moms and dads, pastors of welcoming churches, business leaders, bloggers and editorial writers, and hundreds of Hoosiers who just care about fundamental fairness and decency–shook off their usual apathy and made their opinions known. They swarmed the Statehouse, they wrote letters to the editor, they volunteered at phone banks, and they wrote checks.

And the democratic process worked the way it is supposed to.

In a bright-red state not noted for progressive policies, in a Statehouse dominated by Republicans accustomed to doing the will of their rabidly conservative base, the good guys actually won.

As my husband likes to say, campaigns matter.

I’ll drink to that.

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