ZackFord Blogs | Behold the musings of Zack Ford, a politically-minded white, gay, male, nondisabled, middle-class, atheist educator with a passion for social justice.
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Zack and Peterson work on mending their relationship after the Joe Gee debacle by discussing fundamentalist Christianity. Angela from Austria thinks that fundamentalist Christianity is a great way to absorb “non-thinkers” who might be recruited by more dangerous groups (like neo-Nazis). From the conversation that ensues, you almost wouldn’t know that Peterson’s a believer and Zack isn’t. ALSO, more lesbian movies coming your way!
Here are more lesbian movie recommendations, courtesy of The Lesbian Mafia:
» Watching You (Short Films)
» The 10 Rules (Short)
» If These Walls Could Talk 2
» D.E.B.S.
» High Art
» The L Word (First Season)
» Imagine Me and You
» Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love
» My Summer of Love
» Girl Play
» Loving Anabelle
» Lost and Delirious
» We Have To Stop Now (Seasons 1 & 2)
» Girl/Girl Scene (Web Series)
» Bound
» But I’m a Cheerleader
» Itty Bitty Titty Committee
» Lovers and Friends (Urban Web Series)
» I Can’t Think Straight
» The Ultimate Lesbian Short Film Festival
» Lesbian Nation
» Lesbian Sex & Sexuality
» Fingersmith
» Desert Hearts
» Amy and Jaguar
This drives me crazy, because it makes it hard to blog about Christians. It’s a word that means so many different things to so many people, and for some people, it’s the only word that describes them. In reality, there is nothing I can say to generalize Christians as a group except that they believe Jesus Christ is their savior, and in some cases, even that might not be true.
This makes it very hard to write about Christianity. There are a lot of Christians who say a lot on behalf of Christianity (or some vague sense of Judeo-Christianity), such as Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, Rick Warren, Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson. Glenn Beck certainly made it quite clear that his 8/28 rally was all about God (and I doubt he meant Allah). I take responsibility from time to time to call these people out (I quickly realized it was foolish to try to cover them all), and then I have to say, “This is what Christian leaders are saying.” There are surely many Christians who do not agree, but these individuals and their groups still unabashedly claim to speak on behalf of (all) Christians.
Catholicism doesn’t have this problem. It’s a specifically defined institution with a very clear hierarchy. And whether all followers buy into it or not, the Catholic Church has very clear specifications for who IS a Catholic and who ISN’T. And given that the Catholic Church is pretty regularly deciding what’s best for other people in a very public and powerful way (or demonizing gays as the scapegoat for all their internal problems), it’s not surprising I end up writing more about them. It becomes all too easy to point at Catholics and say, “Look at what your Church is doing. You realize you’re still supporting that?”
The Mormon Church is similar, but doesn’t face the same challenges. When you’re no longer a Mormon, the good folks at LDS make it quite clear. They’ve been surprisingly quiet since the Prop 8 mess, so there hasn’t been as much to say about them lately. Even when they are in the news, there’s little finger-pointing to be done. Mormons who go against their Church are excommunicated pretty expressly; they very much take accountability for their institution’s actions in ways many Catholics blithely avoid.
But then there are those Christians. There are Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Pentecostals, Fundamentalists, and Evangelicals, Quakers, and Mennonites, to name a few. I’m usually not too interested in what each of those groups do internally, because I see no point in trying to change the nature of individual religions. My goal is just to diminish the obscene privileges they have in society. Given that atheism defines the purview of this blog, I don’t think my time would be well spent arguing whether there is one better way to worship God or another. As a recent example: I feel bad that Rev. Dr. Jane Spahr was rebuked by the Presbyterian Church for presiding over same-sex marriages, but I’m not going to write about it extensively here. While I do care about the visibility of pro-gay messages as an LGBT activist, I’m more concerned here on the blog with the volume of religious voices, regardless of their content. I want to dismantle religious privilege and disempower faith. To chime in regarding an internal religious debate would suggest I think one religious explanation has more intellectual merit than another, when my actual point of view is that they all are equally lacking.
And so I’m left to write about Christians who are trying to control or manipulate the lives of people beyond their Church walls. So often, there is no other moniker to describe who these people are. They are Christians. This summer alone, I’ve written about local Christian organizations trying to evangelize through church camp and VBS (here and here), I wrote about the Christian Legal Society at Hastings School of Law (here), I’ve responded to WorldNetDaily’s Christian evangelism to its followers (here and here), I’ve responded to groups who privilege Christian beliefs about LGBT people over the science like AFTAH (here) and NARTH (here), I’ve responded to Christian counselors who think they know best (here, here, and by the way, the second girl also lost), and I also responded to a Christian evangelist who commented on the blog (here). I could have probably written even more, but Prop 8 and Netroots Nation swayed a lot of my focus toward LGBT activism. Still, I think I called out a lot of “Christians.”
If you, my reader, are a Christian, what should be your take-away? Many might say, “Well, I’m not that kind of Christian.” Great! I’m sure there are a ton of live-and-let-live Christians out there and even some who are very passionate allies of social justice. Unfortunately, there is a divide between the proactive and the reactive. In the United States, those who are proactive have a much louder megaphone, and arguably the most followers. These are the Christians who think it’s their mission to spread their faith and dictate that others abide by it. These are the individuals who claim that we are a “Christian Nation.” We’re talking about the AFA, FRC, WND, NOM, the Tea Party, and frankly the whole “religious right.” They define Christianity in this nation. They harness the privilege that religion has in our nation in ways no group ever has.
If you’re not that kind of Christian, I’m glad. But if you call yourself a Christian or you defend Christianity, know that those groups claim you and speak on your behalf. If you’re not happy with how they’ve defined what it means for you to be a Christian, you have a responsibility to stand up and correct them. As someone speaking out on the harm religion does to society, I cannot make exception for “all those other Christians” who don’t stand up for themselves when they are not pleased with what is said about Christianity. I’m not a Christian. It is that group of “Christians” who have to make an example of themselves.
This is one of many burdens Christians carry. Yes, you have an obligation to speak up for yourself and to repudiate and disavow those who try to define not just your faith but your place in society. I don’t care if you live in Washington, DC, or Coudersport, PA (I’m in probably a very small minority of Pennsylvanians who even know where Coudersport is); when people use your faith to foment their hate or discrimination, it is your responsibility to correct them, not mine. My job is simply to let you know that you’re still way behind.
Because of a job interview and weekend-long family wedding, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to comment on the coming out of former RNC chair and Bush campaign strategist, Ken Mehlman. I’ve been very proud of my friends and blog colleagues like Joe Jervis, Michelangelo Signorile, and of course, the infallible Mike Rogers, for making sure that this story was not sugar-coated in the way Mehlman wanted it to be.
In spite of the terror his philosophies inflicted on LGBT citizens and in spite of the decades long scare-fest of anti-gay hatred, gay-baiting and discriminatory laws foisted on us, Ken Mehlman wants us to know that his coming out experience has been just peachy. No apology for all the suicides his party’s stances inevitably brought on. No apology for hate crimes. No apology for the election campaign involving some of the worst anti-gay hatred anyone has ever witnessed. No apology for the terror LGB military people have had to endure. No apology for the forced rapes female soldiers went through to “prove” they are straight.
He just wants us to know that he’s been through a whole, whole lot and that he’s a very happy and well-adjusted person. Well Ken, fuck you.
An acquaintance of mine (who has been the covert long-term partner of a still-practicing gay Catholic military chaplain) implored me that this reaction was harsh, and had I no compassion for Mehlman’s struggle?
Do I have compassion for the struggle of coming out? Of course. That’s why I’ve committed my life to education and support for the LGBTQ community. But have I sympathy for Mehlman? Not really.
Why?, I was pushed. Is his struggle so different from anyone else’s? Why would you begrudge him? I could tell my acquaintance was speaking from a very personal place, given the decades of compassionate hiding he has done to make sure his partner is not outed to Church leadership. I explained to him that, much as for his partner who enables and promotes the Catholic Church’s messages of hate through his own self-hatred, I do have compassion, but it is not sympathy; it is pity.
I then asked my acquaintance whether he fully understood that Ken Mehlman was instrumental in coordinating Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, in which same-sex marriage was used as a threatening wedge issue through a federal constitutional amendment as well as 11 state constitutional ballot initiatives. He did, but tried to repeat Mehlman’s own spin that he hadn’t figured out that part of his life by then.
So then I asked whether he was aware that Ken Melhman knew he was gay back in 2004? This was news to him. I said, oh yes! Mike Rogers started reporting it that year of that election, and Eric Resnick was writing about it the following year in 2005, and Bill Maher was even talking about it on CNN in 2006.
Shocked, my acquaintance demanded: Well why haven’t I heard about it until now? Because, I said, the mainstream media doesn’t want you to. They very much protect the closeted opponents of gay rights. That Bill Maher interview? After Maher talked about Mehlman on the live show, they censored it out of the rebroadcast. Here’s a clip from the movie Outrage showing just that (with much thanks to Mike Rogers for it!):
My acquaintance clung on: But that was then, now he is supporting marriage equality! Can’t you forgive him and move on?
I will forgive him when he apologizes and also stops funding anti-gay candidates. He hasn’t apologized for his past destruction, nor ceased all his present anti-gay support. If you read his interview with The Atlantic, he chooses his words very carefully. He does not use word “apologize” or “sorry.” He speaks of regret, but not about any of the harm he did. In fact, he continues to downplay the role same-sex marriage played in 2004′s elections. He speaks of regret very selfishly, that he is sad that he wasn’t further along in his journey:
“What I do regret, and think a lot about, is that one of the things I talked a lot about in politics was how I tried to expand the party into neighborhoods where the message wasn’t always heard. I didn’t do this in the gay community at all.”
He said that he “really wished” he had come to terms with his sexual orientation earlier, “so I could have worked against [the Federal Marriage Amendment]” and “reached out to the gay community in the way I reached out to African Americans.”
That’s not an apology and it certainly doesn’t speak of responsibility or accountability. It’s political maneuvering. All of this, as ever before, is about what’s good for Ken Mehlman. He wants credit for coming out and supporting AFER. He wants pity for the tough position he was in. But in his mind—or at least in his words—he did no wrong. He’s a victim.
Well, it’s been said elsewhere, but it’s worth saying here again: that’s bullshit. And when I say that’s bullshit, I’m not coming from some super emotional, angry place. Frankly, I’m rather unfazed by this whole newsbreak because it wasn’t news to me. What does concern me is individuals like my acquaintance who had no clue what was going on while his life and his rights were being hit around like a fraying political shuttlecock.
There are a lot of LGBTQ people who have found “good enough.” They’ve got porridge they can eat and they’ve got just enough privilege that their lives aren’t too bad. So you know what they do? They turn a blind eye to LGBTQ issues. They aren’t in the closet; they’re in the dressing room. They’re going about their business like their fellow queers aren’t still fighting for their lives. Remember the lesbians whose kids were refused from the Catholic preschool? They got all upset that their super-comfortable we-have-everything-we-need, we-vote-and-that’s-as-political-as-we-need-to-get lives got upset, which was their own fault for subscribing to the Catholic Church to begin with.
What our LGBTQ community doesn’t know hurts us—is hurting us. I don’t know where my acquaintance now stands in regards to Ken Mehlman, but he definitely wasn’t in an informed place when he talked to me. We’ve conflated “pride” with “activism,” such that all the people who don’t want to be out and proud also choose to let others fight their fight for them. Some go so far as to say they don’t care; when faced with opportunities to learn what is happening in regards to LGBTQ issues, they actively reject that information. This privileged ignorance is one of the most destructive forces for our movement, because it gives everyone the impression that we’ve all found “good enough,” so there’s nothing left to work for.
We haven’t. Right now, in my home Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I can be denied housing, employment, and civil security for my relationship and family just because I’m gay. There is still bullying that goes uninterrupted. There are still hate crimes that go unprosecuted. In many ways, the LGBTQ community is just as unequal as it ever was, with the TQs even a few steps further back than where the LGBs have gotten.
But there is no outrage. Everything’s golden! Ken Mehlman’s helping us out now? Swell. I don’t know who he is, anyway. Let’s just keep everything peachy. After all, I don’t know any better anyway.
It’s like that old poem: “First they came for the gays, but I didn’t know I was gay, so who gives a shit?”
We all have to care. We have to applaud the efforts of activists like Mike Rogers, even if they sometimes make us cringe. It’s our lives that continue to suffer from the spread of untruths and the manipulation of fear. Whether it’s quislings like Mehlman or just our most crass and vicious opponents, we have to know what’s going on, and we have to stand up for ourselves. If we don’t, we have only ourselves to blame.
This week we got reminded about a lot of crazy things Americans believe, with almost one in five believing President Obama to be a Muslim. He’s not, but who cares if he is? There are severe undertones of xenophobia bouncing around the echo chamber of paranoia that is the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center. How dare we even consider letting Muslims go swimming in a former Burlington Coat Factory! (Notice what words I didn’t use?)
But while post-9/11 bigotry against Islam was being discussed like it was news, some other studies showed that Manchurian Muslims aren’t the only nonsense Americans buy into.
I remember a point in my life where I might have believed in one, if not more, of these. For example, I am a perfect picture of a Virgo (what are my readers getting me for my birthday??), and I remember one day when I read my horoscope at the end of the day and it described the day I had had in ridiculous detail. I was convinced.
Of course, I was wrong. Astrology is BS. Just ask yourself this question: who writes your horoscope and how?
It’s disappointing, but perhaps unsurprising, that so many people are so easily duped. I wonder what the correlation would be if the same sample were asked if they believed being gay was a choice or that children of same-sex couples are not as well-adjusted as those of opposite-sex couples.
Unfortunately, this study showed no connection between level of education and level of gullibility. But another study did on one compelling point.
Those with college educations were much less likely to believe Jesus would be returning. Even those with only some college responded differently than those with only a high school education.
This, I think, bodes well for higher education. It’s one little observation about one little study, but I still think it’s one to be proud of.
A college education, in addition to preparing folks for their chosen profession, should promote critical thinking skills. While some might be saddened to see a loss of faith, I am proud to see an increase in rational thinking.
The Pew Study also found that Republicans were more likely to have a negative view about the future of education and were less likely to believe in ongoing global warming. Maybe if they cared a little bit more about supporting the education we already have, they would better understand concepts that are not really up for debate in the world of science.
I would love to see critical thinking skills and scientific literacy taking a higher priority in education, but in the meantime, I’m at least optimistic to see some great things are happening. It’s sad that our country is still so influenced by paranoia, but continuing to have the conversations is how we move forward.
Take a look through the studies to see some other interesting results.
Catholics for Equality empowers pro-equality Catholics to put our faith into ethical and effective political action on behalf of the LGBT community and their families.
Something about “pro-equality Catholic” just doesn’t sit right with me. There’s very little in Catholicism that in any way resembles “equality” and Catholicism has never been known for being pro-anything. Let’s hear a little bit more from their website:
Drawing on the rich tradition of Catholic social justice teachings, grounded in the Gospel message of Love, American Catholics are among the strongest supporters of equality for LGBT people of any religious group in the U.S.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HE HE HE HE HE HE HE!! WHOO! I’m rolling around on the floor. Seriously ROTFLMFAO!!! That’s the best joke I’ve heard all day. You can’t be serious, right? I mean, the Catholics come close, but it’s definitely the Mormons who are the strongest supporters of LGBT equality, by far. Oh, that’s rich, or it would be if it weren’t so offensive to all the religious groups who do actually support LGBT equality.
Now, mocking aside, what they’re talking about is that there is a rift between congregants and the leadership. Catholics for Equality is a group designed to oppose the bishops. The Catholic Church isn’t exactly democratic or egalitarian in any conceivable way, so if congregants don’t want to accept what the leadership is spoon-feeding, they have to form a separate group to represent their point of view, and this is such a group.
The question here is: what does it mean to be “Catholic?” Is it anyone who maintains belief in the holy trinity? Is it anybody who just chooses it as a cultural identifier regardless of belief? There are a lot of folks in these categories who can be heard to say, “Well, I was raised Catholic.” Is it anyone who is technically still on the books as Catholic? If that’s the case, then I’m Catholic too.
When I think of people who openly identify as Catholic, I think of people who are still actively participating in the Catholic Church. This seems a fitting assumption for Catholics for Equality; they want to mobilize Catholic voters, influence legislation, and even get some pro-equality Catholics into office. I don’t think a lapsed Catholic (and flagrant atheist) like me would count as a victory for them.
Let’s grant the premise that there is a difference between Catholics and the Catholic Church. I despise the Catholic Church, and without writing an extensive rant, I think it’s safe to say that centuries of oppression of women and children, hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of anti-gay ballot measures, and the withholding of safe-sex education that would slow the spread of HIV in Africa are plenty of leg to stand on. (The fact that I was involuntarily assumed into Catholic membership is just icing on the cake for my unabashed bias.) I don’t despise Catholics, but if someone is going to identify as a Catholic for Equality, that person must convince me that they are actively working against all the injustice the Catholic Church stands for. And it does; platitudes about social justice teachings in Catholicism do nothing to excuse the behemoth of bigotry that was and is the institution of the Catholic Church.
So if there are several key points in Catholic dogma you don’t agree with, what does it say if you still identify as Catholic? That sounds like cognitive dissonance to me. I would ask such a person, “Why do you still identify as Catholic?” Sure, it could be for reasons I mentioned above, like it’s the term that still best resonates with a person’s personal religious belief or it’s an ethnocultural marker (like Irish Catholic or Italian Catholic). But if you’re actively participating in the Catholic Church or any of its ministries, that strikes me as a huge conflict.
The bottom line, I think, is whether or not a person contributes any money to the Catholic Church. I can get past a person identifying with the word “Catholic” and I can even keep my cool with people enjoying Mass. I think it’s boring as hell (and I’m still going to challenge you on your religious beliefs), but I can at least appreciate how someone might like the pageantry and ritual. However, if you allow a single penny from your pocket to make it into that offering basket or tithing envelope, we have a problem.
Giving the Church money is giving the Church your blessing. It’s enabling the Church to continue doing what the Church does. It’s an investment. It’s an assumption of accountability for the Church’s actions. And honestly, if you give to the Church and then tell me you support LGBT equality, I will probably just laugh, because knowingly or unknowingly, you are participating in hypocrisy.
That’s why I really struggle with Catholics for Equality. I want to support them; I really do. I am sure that they will educate some Catholics and make some positive change. I also truly appreciate the way they stand for separation of church (Church) and state. But ultimately, it’s just political masturbation. More Catholic influence on our culture is not going to do anything to help me in my life as a gay man. I don’t want more Catholics in power. As it is, I have to worry that the Supreme Court won’t uphold my right to equal protection specifically because it’s got so many Catholics on it. If you’re supporting the Church and working against the Church at the same time, are you actually making any progress?
The whole reason I started blogging is because I saw beliefs to be the problem. The intellectual fallacies I could understand as a freethinker were the same ones I saw oppressing me as a gay man. We wouldn’t have a problem with homophobia and transphobia (or heck, even patriarchy) if religious organizations did not continually push negative beliefs that ignore our modern-day understandings of sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Why should we applaud members of an organization hell-bent on resisting social justice for trying to support social justice without disavowing the very group they’re working against?
Were this group Ex-Catholics for Equality or even Lapsed Catholics for Equality, I’d applaud them for organizing. But Catholics for Equality? That sounds about as absurd as Quakers for War, Jehovah’s Witnesses for Blood Transfusions, or Muslims for Female Immodesty. If you want to support equality, take responsibility for resisting it in the first place.
This week, a group called 