And I Had Such High Aspirations

Timothy Dalrymple, Evangelical Gatekeeper, asks, Is the Defense of Traditional Marriage Like the Defense of Slavery?:

While [sic] I believe (and I would encourage all Christians to believe) that every homosexual individual deserves all of the same rights and protections that heterosexual individuals enjoy — and preventing gays from suffering bullying, for instance, is absolutely a civil rights issue.  

Well, not exactly a civil rights issue. More a human dignity issue. But in the case of protection in the law, yes. In terms of hate crimes and such, yes!

I believe all humans are, essentially and in themselves, equal in the eyes of God and ought to be treated as equal before the law. 

Wow. That was just... I'm amazed! I'm floored, really; I can't believe such a prominent member of the religious right is making such a bold declarative statement on behalf of the rights of LGBTQI.

But...

Ah, daggannit. Spoke too soon, didn't I? I shouldn't be surprised, of course. Just, I...

...just as it does not follow that every human action is equal in the sight of the law (the state has every right to treat people differently on the basis of their actions), so it does not follow that every human relationship need be equal in the sight of the law.

SMDH.. One can assume just from this that Dalrymple isn't arguing that homosexuals are equal before God. Certainly I'd expect him to say that same sex/queer relationships aren't "God's plan for our best" or some such argument that the Christian church should continue to shun, alienate, and perhaps belittle non-heterosexual relationships. But this goes the extra step to say that such relationships should also not be recognized as on equal level with heterosexual relationships.


I can see why gay rights advocates make the comparisons in their plight to the struggles of Black slaves and unwilling-participants of Jim Crow, and I can also see why such incomplete comparisons are troubling to African Americans (in that making such comparisons is belittling to both struggles with their unique identities). But Dalrymple here brings up a very familiar argument I hear in studying Black US history: Of course they are equal before God and before the law. Except in practical terms. And they're not really human, too.

Also.

Oh, and the short answer to Timothy's question? The same biblical exegesis used to promote freedom for slaves is the same used to liberate Christianity from homophobia. The same exegesis used to promote slavery is the same used to entrap Christianity within homophobia - and thus teach that White, heterosexual Christianity serves a God who can't see outside White, heterosexual Christianity, and is afraid and hateful of those outside the gates.

Oh yeah. Gatekeeping.

Come on, Timothy. Surely you can do better. I believe in you.

EDIT:
There is much more to say about this. I know that many would argue that Timothy - who is a Facebook friend of mine, though we never interact - is a good guy and that others would argue that there isn't a homophobic bone in his body, etc., etc. The truth is, whether or not he, personally, is a bigot is not the point. I don't blog just to point out the errors and the prejudices of specific people - that would take too long and that's what HuffPo is for. I'm also not interested in whether or not this person has a good heart and is kind to homosexuals/kittens/undocumented/little old ladies. I mean, it'd suck if he wasn't and be nice if he was. I'm taking issue with his stated words which have power. I'm interested moreso in patterns and particularly the patterns of Evangelicals that are used to silence, shame, sequester, ostracize and, yes, oppress those who are different than they. And Mr. Dalrymple is but one of many, many, many within that movement - that I myself am a native son of and still love and want to identify myself with - that make such alarming and disastrous mind-bends. It is a very, very, very unloving and unChrist-like and bigoted position and posture to publish to take against people while at the same time say that you're NOT taking such a position against people. This is not to mention how the guest post was all sorts of wrong, using a tradition that has not been kind to women, the poor, slaves, and people of other faiths and ethnicities as a rubric for how we should now treat gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer and trans* people.

Not cool. Not cool for Dalrymple. And not cool for Evangelicals who read and agree with his positions and further along marginalization and oppression in the name of a man who affirmed, invited and welcomed all outcasts and outsiders.

Not. Cool.

Bad Scholarship, Bad Theology

Let's be perfectly clear here: Eric Metaxas is nothing but a political hack. Nothing. But.

A writer for Culture Warrior Chuck Colson's Breaking Point and a current hack author and talking head for evil political network Fox News and hack news network CNN, Metaxas read some stuff on the complex German theologian and Nazi-resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer and wrote a book about how Bonhoeffer would have written for Breaking Point and commented at Fox News if he were alive now. Or something like that.

Metaxas, like much of White Evangelicalism, takes an iconic and rebellious figure like Bonhoeffer and whitewashes him. White Evangelicalism - particularly the more conservative wings, but not solely - consistently does the same with other radical movements and figures.

White Evangelicals claim the abolitionist movement as their own*, and the Civil Rights movement as their own. And Martin Luther King, Jr. as their own.

And if Dr. King were alive today, he would be against Affirmative Action and pro-color blind. Because restorative justice is racist, apparently. 

Jesus would want us to buy guns and shoot bad people.

And the same guy who wrote the radically egalitarian anti-hierarchical statement, "In Christ, there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free-born," would want women to be subservient, want the rich to control the earth, and Americans to control everything else.

Not only do they defang these leaders, re-haloing them for their purposes, they completely co-opt them for a double-negative impact - both taking away from their messages of radical inclusion and justice and re-purposing them towards an agenda that is exclusionary and privileged for a small minority of people - particularly those who can afford privileges. And so Metaxas compares Bonhoeffer and his Barmen Declaration with conservative Evangelicalism and its Manhattan Declaration (this, by the way, is old hat for this group. They've already compared the MD, which is a religious-cloaked cultural assault against homosexuals and the poor, to "Letter from a Birmingham Jail").

[W]ere he alive today and living in America, costly grace for [Bonhoeffer] would likely mean preaching what the Word of God teaches about human sexuality**--even when activists and their allies in government try to suppress his work and attack his church***. Costly grace would mean standing against churches that mix radical new doctrines about marriage with Christian truth. Costly grace would mean standing up to a government attempting to force him to buy health insurance that violates his beliefs—even if it led to his arrest.
And costly grace would, I believe, lead him to sign the Manhattan Declaration in defense of human life, marriage, and religious liberty, just as he signed the Barmen Declaration, which I quote at length in my book.
Now I must say that Chuck Colson had the Barmen Declaration in mind when he co-authored the Manhattan Declaration. Chuck saw many parallels between what the church faced in Nazi Germany in the thirties and what faithful Christians are facing today in America.

Nazi cat forces you health care and gay marry.

Such views are based on bad scholarship, as Victoria J. Barnett, the editor for the English edition of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, and the Director of Church Relations for the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum explains. She speaks of Metaxas' book on Bonhoeffer as "badly flawed."

There are two central problems [with the subtly-named Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich]. The first is that he has a very shaky grasp of the political, theological, and ecumenical history of the period. Hence he has pieced together the historical and theological backdrop for the Bonhoeffer story using examples from various works, sometimes completely out of context and often without understanding their meaning. He focuses too much on minor details and overlooks some of the major ones (such as the role of the Lutheran bishops and the “intact” churches). The second is that theologically, the book is a polemic, written to make the case that Bonhoeffer was in reality an evangelical Christian whose battle was not just against the Nazis but all the liberal Christians who enabled them.

But Metaxas also misunderstands the type of teaching that he promotes here:

All of this, however, leads to a selective misreading of Bonhoeffer’s theological development and a profound misunderstanding of what happened to the German churches between 1933 and 1945. The failure of the German Evangelical Church under Nazism was not that it was filled with formalistic, legalistic Lutherans who just needed to form a personal relationship to Jesus, but that it was filled with Christians whose understanding of their faith had so converged with German national culture that it tainted both their politics and their theology. (As an interesting aside, when I first interviewed Eberhard Bethge in 1985 he explicitly compared this kind of Protestantism to what he had seen of the American religious right. A thoughtful evangelical reading of the development of Bonhoeffer’s extensive writings on the church-state relationship and the public role of religion would be a major contribution to the field, but Metaxas doesn’t even mention that aspect of Bonhoeffer’s thought). What Metaxas fails to grasp is that there were many devout, well-educated, Bible-reading Christians in Germany who read their Losung each morning and fully supported National Socialism.

You can read the whole review (and these critiques are just the tip of the Nazi iceberg) here. And then read Clifford Green's critical review here. Green, by the by, is the executive director of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works.

Descending to insult, even insulting the subject of his own book, is a sure sign that an author is in trouble. Why does he do this? Ostensibly because the death-of-God theologians, those "liberals," have "hijacked" Bonhoeffer. But why whip a few writers who made a brief splash 40 years ago and who have had little or no influence on theology or the church? Because they function as straw men in his polarizing narrative about "orthodox Christians" and "liberals." His real target is liberals, and not just theological liberals, but political liberals too.

Metaxas insults Bonhoeffer throughout his book by misrepresenting him. And he continues the insults on every given opportunity with bad scholarship, bad analysis, bad politics.

Such bad scholarship is based itself on bad theology - a theology that teaches its adherents to displace and de-contextualize whatever it is studying to fit our own prejudices. The bible, according to such theology, wasn't written by men and women who live in a specific time and addressing specific issues for specific audiences and specific times - it was written, they believe, in a placeless heaven and has the same impact for White Conservative Evangelical Republicans as everybody else at all times. Which then means that other readings of the bible are incorrect because they are not understood through the particular lens of White Conservative Evangelicals. 

Metaxas' "scholarship" leads conservative Evangelicalism to deny poor and marginalized people common rights and access under the guise of the "true" "Confessing church" - which he misrepresents.

But the true Confessing Church will not deny access. It will swing wide open the Kingdom of Heaven for all to enter. It will seek healing. It will feed. It will clothe. It will forgive debts.

That's what the Kingdom of Heaven is about. Not White, Middle Class Christian Hetero privilege.

-----------------------------------------------
*Yesterday, on a shared link from the Left Cheek page, I saw a woman argue that white Christian women were the ones most responsible for protesting slavery and freeing slaves in America. No shit. Guess all the black slaves were too busy enjoying their slavery to protest it.
Also, you know who the second largest proponents of American slavery was? White Christian women. Right behind White Christian men.
**ie, Gays can't marry other gays! That's gross and ungodly somehow or another!
***ie, Allowing gays to marry gays is persecution!!

The Trouble with Powerful Men and Political Hacks

A couple weeks ago I read an interview where a hospice worker made an observation that how we live our lives demonstrates how we end our lives. Some go out fighting every step of the way; some go out peacefully; some with reservations. But you can generally tell how they're going to go out the way they've acted the last forty, sixty, eighty, hundred years.

I'm becoming convinced that Billy Graham's greatest downfall is his semi-worship of powerful men. Often, those powerful figures were presidents, from Nixon to Clinton and most inbetween (save Carter. Odd, that). These men often benefited from the relationships with one of America's most beloved and trusted public and religious figures. But now the most powerful man in his vicinity is his son, Franklin.

But Franklin doesn't have the advantage of being an actual politician who can inspire roughly half the population of the United States. He did not rise through the fire of political discourse and meddling and the tribulation of trying to please most despite the impossible odds. He is a political hack who only needs to please a certain (and generally white, privileged, male-dominated) Evangelical base. But he is shrewd enough to recognize that his father's legacy is stronger and wider than his will ever be. As long as he can ride those coattails, he will. As long as he can convince his locked-away father - who is losing breath and consciousness - that he is taking care of him and convince his followers that the words that are supposed to be representative of Billy Graham are actually Billy Graham's - such as the recent two-page ad in the WSJ.- then, glory be! Franklin Graham the scam artist/political hack can get away with destroying a legacy and helping to steal an election at the same time.

I'm convinced that's what's going on here. The problem is that Billy Graham has had this moral character failure (trusting powerful men) threading through his life, and that his son - a moral failure himself - is exploiting that.

Not only is Franklin Graham purposefully and sloppily burning through the last vestiges of respect that his father earned through a scandal-free public life in order to establish his own credentials within the Fundamentalist/Evangelical Moral-less Majority (because, really, what else does he have?), but Billy is letting him do so because he fundamentally trusts powerful men. I recognize that draw, sadly, because I'm wired to think that way too. Yet, I've been on the other side of privilege and seen what those same men have done to my non-white/non-male cis/non-middle class friends and family and neighbors and students long enough to recognize that Navin Johnson's father was right.

Especially if that whitey is a middle aged no-good-nic son taking advantage of his late-stage Parkinson's nonagenarian father.

Edit:
I hasten to add that I do not believe that the elder Graham is cognizant enough to know what he is ascribing his name to. Nor that he believes nor certainly says that which is being applied to him. I'm confident that Franklin comes to him, asks him to sign or if he will agree with some document or photo and Billy, not being fully aware but trusting his son, nods in approval, or some such way shows approval. Not of the content, but of whatever it is that he thinks that Franklin is asking of him. He trusts him that much. To his detriment.

When Your God Hates F*gs

This, this is why I sometimes consider leaving Christianity all together. (The points addressed here are from Jesus Needs New PR, aka Matthew Paul Turner. The responses are from JP Moreland. Both are in response to Chick-fil-A Day of Support organized by professional hater Mike Huckabee)

POINT #2
[Regarding the Chick-fil-A Day] People felt hate and we ignored that. At the end of the day, regardless of whether or not your Christian understanding of scripture harbors hate or not, a large group of people felt hated..  

RESPONSE
Regarding his point about people feeling hate, this is the other side's issue, not ours, and to be quite honest, they may need to search more deeply within themselves if they, in fact, felt hated.  Very few went to CFA with hate; they were angry about the other side's hate, but they were not hateful. Matthew confused hate with the hard virtues of confrontation of moral evil and standing for what is right, and he confuses real hate with the feeling of hate.  The feeling of hate was not the protester's fault; it was a projection of the other side onto the protesters and probably reveals a need to be more discerning about those who disagree with you and not to react emotionally.  Such an emotional reaction is often narcissistic (I and my feelings of acceptance are all that matter; the issue, and people’s right to disagree with me are not the issue)....

Because, Moreland, when marginalized people feel hatred directed at them, there is often some validity to it - whether or not you feel that is the case. It is not the victim's job to turn off their Abuse Meters just because you say you're not directing abuse at them.

 How can you even know, love and care for people without truth and knowing “issues (alleged truths) about people and how they think?  One of the most loving things one can do to someone is to stand up against their harmful behavior.

It takes all sorts of mental gymnastics to think that standing against LGBTQ people isn't standing against LGBTQ people.

We [prove we don't hate gay people] by warmly inviting them to attend church, to receive love and healing and so forth.

It takes a sort of fortitude to conclude that LGBTQ people or their allies would ever want to step foot in a church that demeans and ridicules them. Or that those same people are supposed to feel loved when their request to be treated as equal human is scoffed at by those who claim to love them.

Or that anybody wants or would benefit from whatever kind of "healing" they're offering.

My favorite version of this meme, as envisioned by a friend of mine,, Terry R.

I'll close out the quotes with this right here:

[H]ow about loving the CFA people and all those on their side?  Don't they need love, mercy and support?  Yes they do, and people chose to express that love and respect
Wednesday.  That was a very Christian thing to do.

Did he mean the employees at CfA? The hourly wage earners? The people who get by with fast-food wages and were constantly told, on that fateful Wednesday, "Thank God. I stand with your company against the gays!" The homosexual ones who were subjected to that kind of "support" all day long. Or the ones who are barely getting by while conservative American Evangelicals like Moreland politically fight any notion of fair wages and accessible health care for the working poor?

Or does he mean, by "CFA people," the family owners of the company? Because that's who the CfA Day people were supporting. With a few, outlying exceptions (the wad who started yelling at employees, or the people who spray painted a franchise were being ignorant and hurtful. But they were roundly denounced by most LGBTQ activists anyway...) the employees were not being targeted by protesters and boycotters - at least not directly. The family company was. Was it really "a very Christian thing to do" to support the corporation? Did they need to know that they were getting Christian love that day? Was that what Jesus meant by comforting those who mourn?

It makes sense that Moreland is a "distinguished" professor of philosophy in that he doesn't have to make his profession relevant to the real world - just make up a system, a different world that makes sense within its own cloistered system, and apply it on top of this one. In his ontological world, God is a hateful monster, but He can be a monster and yet love those He's being monstrous to. Those the Monster God hates can and should (must!) accept the fact that Monster God is a loving God because the Monster God is the true arbiter of love and truth.Therefore, what Monster God - as represented by Moreland and his co-priests - says is Real and True and Good.

And if you can't accept that Monster God and his Monster Priests absolutely love you while they're telling you what a horrible person you are for being different and wanting to be respected as a human being, well, that's your problem.

All these accolades, however, don't, in the least, mean that Moreland is a distinguished person, or even a distinguished scholar or teacher, really. Nor a distinguished follower of Christ. But the fact that he has so much pull and claims a mantle at Christian schools like Biola or Liberty and even a fellowship at something called the Wiberforce Forum* says that there is serious, fundamental problem with Christian scholarship.

That a man like this has any influence over today's pastors, that he is part of their training process, that what he does in any sense passes for real-world scholarship is a fundamental problem and speaks to a fundamental disorder within the American Christian church. I can testify with story after story after story about how, exactly, pastors who follow the Monster God that Moreland speaks on behalf of are the real threat to the traditional family.

Or any other family.

----------------------------------
*William Wilberforce. Yes. THE William Wilberforce. While most American Evangelicals were busy arguing that slavery is a good force from God and that Africans were designed to be subservient to white male leadership, Wilberforce was a leader in a movement to shame the English into abolishing slavery in their territories. Contemporary conservative Evangelicals like to claim Wilberforce's legacy, though he was every bit the radical that, say, Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were for their times, but without the colorful language that could condemn much of what conservative Evangelicals like Moreland stand for...

Polyamorous Chikins and Families

I've never eaten at Chick-fil-A. I'm not a Southerner, so I don't have that regional affiliation that makes others love Carl, Jr's or Waffle House or Taco Mayo or whatever. I'm from Chicago. We do the far more dangerous deep dish pizza and thousands of versions of encased leftover meats. When/if I ever move, that's what I'll miss. I haven't tried Chick-fil-A, so I don't know what I'm missing. And CfA will not really miss me, either.  But that's not what this is about. This isn't about making a statement, because, at least individually, I don't have much to make a statement with.

But, on International Eat Moar Chikin Day, tempers are flaring up. There is real injustice concerning the defense of marriage being solely between a male and a female partner. But maybe the bigger injustice is the inability to empathize and share in the sufferings of others that many, many Christians are having right now. As a result, I often feel victimized myself when some of my Christian friends ask, "What's the big deal? He's just expressing an opinion..."

Well, for starters, the opinion itself is hurtful. It's kind of mean and exclusivist to say that a family is only defined how you define it. And that way is one man, one (usually subservient) woman, and a gaggle of babies. Those of us who do not fit into that stereotype (with extended family, with add-ons, with divorce, with infertility, with differing sexual preferences, different socio-cultural values, with children born out-of-wedlock, etc,) do not need for people to define for us what is and is not a "proper" family - or, for that matter, a "biblical" family.

All these hens. Where are their husbands?

Because, as we're probably aware by now, families in the bible were never, ever exclusively one model or another. And the typical nuclear family wasn't even an option (until privilege and luxury allowed young families to be independent of others - but even that is misleading).

But that's not what this is about. The majority of Evangelicals tend to believe that the fracas over CfA is about a belief or an expression of that belief, but it's about practice. CfA president Cathy and his supporters contend that they give sandwiches to anyone who comes in the door, regardless of their sexual affiliation or "lifestyle choice."

I guess they want a cookie for this? This kind of stance is utterly dismissive as well. One, it's supposed to be that way. We live in a country with civil rights laws. It's the law. They're supposed to welcome every paying customer into their business. So what? Do we celebrate every time a Waffle House decides to let an African American buy pancakes now? What year is this?

The same people also counter that CfA also doesn't discriminate on hiring employees. Well, franchises may not discriminate so much locally (let's thank the CRA and the Equal Employment Opportunity Standards for that), but the company does discriminate in hiring and promotion. And fairly openly.

Cathy... wants married workers, believing they are more industrious and productive. One in three company operators have attended Christian-based relationship-building retreats through WinShape at Berry College in Mount Berry, Ga. The programs include classes on conflict resolution and communication. Family members of prospective operators--children, even--are frequently interviewed so Cathy and his family can learn more about job candidates and their relationships at home. "If a man can't manage his own life, he can't manage a business," says Cathy, who says he would probably fire an employee or terminate an operator who "has been sinful or done something harmful to their family members."
The parent company asks people who apply for an operator license to disclose marital status, number of dependents and involvement in "community, civic, social, church and/or professional organizations."
But Danielle Alderson, 30, a Baltimore operator, says some fellow franchisees find that Chick-fil-A butts into its workers' personal lives a bit much. She says she can't hire a good manager who, say, moonlights at a strip club because it would irk the company. "We are watched very closely by Chick-fil-A." (Forbes)

WinShape, btw, is CfA's "pro-family" charitable branch. Which we'll get into shortly.

But not only does CfA discriminate just by their definitions of family values or what-have-you, but also for more explicitly religious reasons:

Chick-fil-A, the corporate parent, has been sued at least 12 times since 1988 on charges of employment discrimination, according to records in U.S. District Courts. Aziz Latif, a former Chick-fil-A restaurant manager in Houston, sued the company in 2002 after Latif, a Muslim, says he was fired a day after he didn't participate in a group prayer to Jesus Christ at a company training program in 2000. (Forbes)

This is in addition to the million-plus they give to anti-gay groups (explicit hate group and Kill-the-Gays sponsor Family Research Council, Alliance Defense Fund, and Georgia Family Council, for example) or funds set up specifically to go towards anti-gay groups such as the FRC, American Family Association or Focus on the Family, or the millions they invest in groups that are explicitly limited to straights only and condemning of "homosexual behavior" (Campus Crusade for Christ and Fellowship of Christian Athletes, both of whom try to and have a history of "fixing" and post-gay "recovery") through WinShape. (Equality Matters)

And then there's the former employee who is suing CfA on the grounds that she was fired in order to be a stay-at-home mother. (via)

Each of these, on their own, probably wouldn't be enough to earn nation-wide scorn. But put them together and we have a pattern deeper than just "expressing a different opinion." It's a systemic pattern of discrimination for a certain way of being a "family." Privileging male-dominated and bread-winning, multiple-children-having, nuclear, straight families far above and over others.

That is an explicit problem. A fundamental problem that I've noticed with Evangelical Christians is that we tend to go along with the rest of society - but generally a couple decades after society has. Rather than being on the vanguard of equity, we hold the line until society moves it and past when society moves it. So we are strong for capitalism long past its usefulness to society. We are struggling with "Earth Care". We mock vegetarians. And we say we love homosexuals, but when we're not ignoring them or talking down to them, we're fighting their recognition every step of the way. (Also, we completely ignore - at best? - transgendered people. )

Now, is a boycott the best way to protest or change policy? I really DK. Remember when Disney was being actively boycotted by these same "Family" groups in the eighties and nineties for being pro-gay? For, actually, extending many of the same benefits to the partners of homosexuals that these "Family" groups still don't want extended to non-straight families? Will it change perspectives? I know a lot of information is being passed through right now, and I hope seeds are being planted. But boycotts and counter-boycotts, are they effective? I guess it depends. Aims? Objectives? Procedures?

I'd be more interested in, say, dialog. Particularly, dialog where Evangelicals are willing to just. shut. up. and listen and try to understand why LGBTQI persons are upset instead of Evangelicals telling LGBTQI persons that they shouldn't be so upset (Can you tell I've been triggered here myself?).

Maybe we can learn a lot from each other. I'd like to know why, for example, visitation rights are denied to same-sex couples. And I'd like to know why that's okay for some, or if that's really ok with Evangelical Christians. Are they aware that when they get the state to pass constitutions against homosexual marriages, this is what they're doing? This and refusing to acknowledge the same rights that heterosexual couples have. According to the Human Rights Watch, "1,138 benefits, rights and protections[are] provided on the basis of marital status in Federal law," which puts homosexual couples in a precarious position in doing taxes, raising children, sharing benefits, family leave, etc.

Additionally, this isn't just limited to financial and visitation rights. It's about who qualifies and doesn't qualify to have basic dignity and participation in society as a full human being with full rights. Remember, just a few years ago, interracial marriages were outlawed and considered unbiblical by many of those fighting against full marriage equality.

But, let's expand this a bit more, shall we? For it's not just same-sex couples that are denied basic human equalities, rights, privileges. It's also, in some cases, extended family members. And maybe that's an issue that has to do with other types of privilege. Some instances have to do with ageism. For example, older best friends are closer than recognized family sometimes and sometimes would like to enter into agreements to watch each other, but are denied the privilege by unconcerned family members. The fact that distant, unconnected blood relatives can have more impact than life partners is kind of scary, really.

But, at least we can be comforted that KFC and Oreo love the gays. Call it consumerist appeal, but at least they're recognized as people, even if just consuming people...

Here's your cookie, Cathy.

Holding on to What's Good

Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil.

I Thess 5:19-22 (NLT)

Traditions.

I was raised in Bible churches. We liked to claim that we didn't have religiosity, only the Bible. That there was no tie in to the traditions of men, but only the pure, unrefracted, open, plain Word of God. Which of course wasn't true. Each interpretation of the Bible is built on several layers of traditions, each made by men (and often and only by men); each church practice is based on some mixture of social, cultural, historical, familial customs. Sometimes the passing of these practices and belief systems are well thought out. Often not.

When my church refused to practice Lent, when it refused to tackle the Lord's Supper with any seriousness (except to scare off guilty congregants), I seriously considered going full papal. If I weren't newly married to an ex-Catholic, I probably would have too. I liked their respect for thousands-year old traditions, for a link to their past. I appreciated their appreciation of the forbearers, "the cloud of witnesses cheering us on."

And there are many things to love about Catholicism and many to love about the Orthodox Church. But much about the traditions that they had kept didn't hold true for me. I also felt that Jesus or the first disciples wouldn't approve of the male-centric dominance and (especially in the Catholic Church) a hierarchical rule that squashes questioning and, thus, discussion and necessary change. This wariness of innovation leads to a church resistant to having female leads, leaving functionally half of the church from the body itself, transitioning the church proper into more and more of a cold, dead institution - a lifeless corpse.

When Christians and Churches (whether new megachurches or storefronts or ancient networks of parishes) prioritize institutions over community, we forget those we were sent out for in the first place - the marginalized, the outcast, the oppressed. In order to maintain institution, with property and monies and prestige, we must maintain the favor of the well-to-do, of the institution-holders. In order to do so, we must not upset their comfort by questioning male superiority, or hetero normalcy. Or White or Middle Class Supremacy.

Protestant churches, of course, are known for protesting the conventions of the Catholic Church. Many decided to radically protest any vestiges and remains of Catholic thought - but that's silly.

And, maybe a bit dangerous. Because if you don't have a line of traditions to interpret your bible with, what do you do with some of the parts that aren't quite understandable? You could build up a whole other rubric and system of theology to handle thorny issues of theology. Or you could pretty much pull whatever you want out of your ass to defend your own fear and hatred.

The world’s got an earful of that ass noise recently, though. A pastor suggests that the US should air drop homosexuals (and queers, I guess?) into an electrified gate in order to exterminate gayness from our country. Because when the gays die out with all their gayness, then they can't teach the kids to be gay no more, right?

Or the pastor whose solution for homosexuality is to scare or capital punish it out of them:

They should be put to death. That’s what happened in Israel. That’s why homosexuality wouldn’t have grown in Israel. It tends to limit conversions. It tends to limit people coming out of the closet. — ‘Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them, no?’ — I’m saying the government should. They won’t but they should.

Or the little boy who learned and then sang (with much applause) happily that the gays certainly won't be making it past Peter at the Pearly Gates Luxury Resort. The pastor may be on the run, but the church isn't apologizing.

The Pastor and members of Apostolic Truth Tabernacle do not condone, teach, or practice hate of any person for any reason. We believe and hope that every person can find true Bible salvation and the mercy and grace of God in their lives.
We are a strong advocate of the family unit according to the teachings and precepts found in the Holy Bible. We believe the Holy Bible is the Divinely-inspired Word of God and we will continue to uphold and preach that which is found in scripture.

You see, they're not hating, because it's in the Bible. And if it's in the Bible, according to them, it can't be about hatred; it can only be about God's Word and God's Truth. And what could be hateful about that? They "found" it in scripture, after all.

They say it’s in the Bible. And I believe they’re right. There’s a lot of stuff in the Bible. There’s a story of God-ordained genocide from the book of I Samuel, in addition to the many other acts of genocide ordained earlier in Joshua and then the utter carnage in Judges.

Most civilized Christians don’t like to talk about this. But I learned about it early on. In much the same way it’s being taught to grade school kids in public schools through a Bible club (endorsed by the Supreme Court, thank you very much). And when it’s a part of the whole, unvarnished Word of God, well, that’s a tradition you need to upkeep, right?

Misogyny, genocide, homophobia. Those are God’s traditions! We don't question them! They are in the Word of God and part of the tradition of our fathers! And so they become Christian traditions, handed down from fathers to sons who listen to these stories and preachings and learn them well - thus sanctioned to hurt and marginalize those who are different, weak, other, effeminate, darker, foreign, immobile, sick.

Sure, it is congruent with stories of a certain god, revealed through the passages of scripture, claiming the same name as the Christian and Jewish God. But maybe not the same legacy. Not the same tradition. It is counter to another tradition of the Christian God - the one based on the Christ. One of inclusion and participation and acceptance and redemption. A God who’s tradition is particularly of love.

Test everything.


Hold on to what’s good.

The rubric is love. If it is not of love, it is not of God. Not - as the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle would have us believe - if it is of “God” then it must necessarily be of love. Test the spirits. Test everything. Hold on to what’s good.

And when what we think is the Word of God contradicts with the revelation of God through Jesus Christ, we must ask, "What is good?" What is revealed to be the God we long to follow? Who are we worshiping? If I am to follow a god of hate, then damn it all, I'm not going down that route. I'm holding on to what's good.

Maybe there is a bright spot, a small one, to our intentional marginalization.In our mistreatment of women and other marginalized people groups, we've sent out the marginalized to reach the marginalized with the voice of their own marginalization. I think I'd rather have church outdoors, if that's where the good is...

Knocking It Out

Trigger warning: Homophobia, parental abuse, spiritual abuse

Much negative publicity has formulated around the Beat the Gay out of Your Kids pastor (all types of triggers). As well it should. This pastor, who is incidentally in the same state as the Amendment One anti-equality bill, gave his congregants a special leniency to crack and punch (to applause and laughter) their four year old sons if they started acting “limp-wristed” in order to knock that problematic homosexuality out of them. He then went on to say that "butch" girls need to "dress themselves up" to be "beautiful" and "attractive". Because we all know that lesbians are ugly, right? And that, in order to become straight, all they need is to look purty.

My fear, though, is that in pointing to him as an example of extreme homophobia, we may be doing normal homophobia a bit of a solid. Opponents of equal rights use that example as they use the example of the God Hates Fags church. “At least we’re not like those guys. Those guys are sick, amirite?”

They continue:

BtGooYK Pastor is a bad man for even joking about violently disposing children of their homosexual behavior. At least we’re not like that. At least we don't purposefully beat them. Though we don't frown on bullying by their peers. If a kid wants to beat the gay out of another kid, who are we to stand in their way? We only seek to ex- their gayness by using shoddy psychiatry and shaming. We only seek to keep them from children because their gayness may catch on them – or they may practice their gayness on the kids, because that’s what the gays do. They do the gay with little kids. We only want to keep them from exercising the same rights straight folks have in openly declaring their love for another.

At least we’re not like those other guys, the say.

Soft-peddled homophobia is still homophobia. And just by getting caught, the hard-peddlers make it easier for the soft-peddlers to enforce their religious views on others. They can claim that they aren’t bigoted (and they may honestly believe that) in the same way that a racist can claim to not be racist because he’s not burning crosses or lynching, even as he’s writing newspaper articles about how Jay-Z’s basketball team should be called the Brooklyn N*****s.

What is up with the Amendment One thing, anyway? Is this the first amendment given in a state constitution that moves AWAY from and even contradicts the Bill of Rights? Can a state constitution be ruled unconstitutional on the basis that it clearly establishes a religious practice over civil practices? Because it does. Not even a good one.

So, congratulations, North Carolina! A small minority just decided that a smaller minority of you are sub-human. Like the chattel slaves of old, homosexuals are not even worthy of the dignity of getting married. And voters did this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I suppose they’re coming for adulterers next. I’m sure the amendment will be amended to exclude fornicators from marrying. And divorcees, definitely, will also be excluded from that right – unless their previous spouses cheated on them, or they remarried their original partners. I mean, it’s not that we hate these sinners. Just their sins, right?

No? Nobody ever is going to suggest these laws? Just for teh gheys and the lesbos? Oh. I see…

Because we all need something to meditate on

H8r Crimes & White Christian Privilege

"Suspicious... These assholes are always getting away."

Fox News and other White, male, heterosexual, Christian supremacist spokespersons like to pretend that Hate Crime legislation give potential victims - particularly Black, Arab, and Latino people, females, those with mental and/or physical disabilities, homosexuals and bisexuals, trans*, Muslims, Hindus, and atheists - more rights than they have. As one of my friends put it, those people groups would belong to a special "protected class."

This type of thinking, and the acceptance of it by much of White American Christianity, belies the fact that those groups already belong to a special attacked class. But it also reveals privileged thinking.

Privileged thinking doesn't comprehend the fact - largely because privileged people are safe from these types of realities - that entire people groups are constantly, systemically, and substantially attacked. And because it can't comprehend this fact (and because we're human and if we don't need to be aware of an ugly fact that makes us look bad, we most likely won't), it has to make up silly disclaimers that minority groups are seeking extra rights.

• School desegregation and busing? Extra rights. Black children already have their own schools; they shouldn't be allowed to overrun ours.
• Civil rights laws? Extra rights. See, black citizens already have the right to vote; they just need to quietly apply like the rest of us. They'll get their turn when it's their time.
• Anti-bigotry laws? Extra rights. Gays are trying to force their views on God-lovin' straights. If I want to voice my disapproval at their lifestyle in a demeaning and threatening manner, that's my Constitutionally-protected right.
• Ramps, elevators, special bathrooms, and handicap accessible doors? Extra rights! Why do we have to accomodate them? We'll take care of them when they come, not before.
• Same-sex unions and/or marriage? That's extra rights, right there! Straights can only get married to a person of the opposite gender. It's not fair that they get to marry somebody of the same sex! (Yes. I have talked to somebody with this view. In 2010. He must've thought he was so clever.)

And so on and so on, ad infinitum...

/HaterJustificationText...

And if you disagree with them, then it's reverse racism. And if you tell them that they're supporting a racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, classist system, they take it personally and deny the fact that they've ever had a hating bone in their body.*

Of course they missed the point. They're privileged. Not only can they afford to ignore the very institutions that don't challenge them, but they also profit from ignoring those systems.

A number of young Christian slacktivists, like myself, have done a good job of cataloguing oppressions of the US empire overseas. We recognize the horrible costs of war, cheap oil, and cheaply-produced consumptives. We call it by its name: murder.


Yet, are we recognizing the implications of this murderous system when it's at home and so obvious it smacks us in the face with its obviousness?

Trayvon Martin's murder - instigated by racial fears and racist subjugation - is one such obvious case.

For more:
GraceIsHuman (where I first was made aware of this travesty): "Look, I don’t give a shit how George Zimmerman or Bill Lee personally feel about black people or what their personal relationships with black people are like. I am not in the least interested in whether they’re “really racist” or not. I care what they did. I care about the cultural and institutional realities that made what they did (and are still doing, on the part of the Sanford PD) possible, and made them think – with very good precedent for thinking so – they could get away with it."
Sarah Over the Moon argues that White Christians love to patristically defend African children - as if we were their only hope - but we ignore racism in our own backyard.
And Fred at Slacktivist does a journalist's job of consorting and compiling - in an effort to amplify - the voices of those who understand oppression and privilege.

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*Much like the KKK and White Citizens Council did in the 50s and 60s.

Wrath and Patience

We struggle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.

This is where it gets personal for activists/slacktivists and others like me filled with, say, righteous indignation. It's right and good to be angry about certain things. But to be overcome by it is to lose grasp of the fact that we are in a long-range run.

The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice.

That means, for me, I must not grow weary in doing good. But I must not also stoop to the level of demonizing those I disagree with. And trust me, that's freaking easy. Someone accuses Black and Latinos pointing out institutional racism as being, itself, racist, and I'm ready to send them a verbal hell-storm.

But maybe being incredibly radical isn't about forcefulness of the mean as much as direction of the end. Maybe radicalness isn't so much about treating one group of persons as a protective class as it is about treating the (oftentimes ignorant, sometimes ignoble) oppressors as fully human persons and demonstrating that shared humanity in front of them.

I, for one, can learn much from the patience - and radicalness - of the Quaker John Woolman.

John Woolman believed slavery was unjust— that it was cruel for those in bondage and corrosive for the bondsman. So he wrote an essay explaining why (“Some considerations on the keeping of Negroes: Recommended to the professors of Christianity of every denomination”). And then, since he was sure that his condemnation of slavery was true, and that the truth of it was compelling, he set out to talk to those who disagreed.
One by one, meetinghouse by meetinghouse, home by home. He would speak to gatherings of Friends, or would arrive for dinner at the home of Quaker slaveowners, and he would talk to them about his “considerations” and concerns with this practice. After the meal, he would pay wages to those slaves who had attended him. And he would invite the slaveowners to liberate their slaves, paying them back wages for their years of service.
Crazy. But even crazier: This worked. Conversation, liberation, transformation. That was Woolman’s method and he continued it, unchanged, throughout his life.

Well, almost unchanged. He eventually switched to traveling on foot out of consideration that the stagecoaches he had been riding in were cruel to the horses.

If you live somewhere on the East Coast of the United States, anywhere in between New York City and Richmond, Va., then you’re probably not far from some old historic Friends Meeting House. John Woolman spoke there. He arrived there on foot and spoke about slavery until he had convinced the Friends who gathered there to condemn the practice and cease participating in it by emancipating their slaves and paying them for their service. And then he left on foot, heading for the next such meeting house or home to have that same conversation again, and again and again.

And that is how John Woolman changed the Friends, and how it came to be that the Friends would help to change America. 

That really happened. That is really how it happened.

A re-education. Others talk about violence being the only way out of slave conditions. Still others maintain (out of a belief that property rights trump all else) that the slave owners need to be paid for the loss of their "property." But I see that as a false equivalence. The best process is to demonstrate that there are better ways, while protecting the oppressed.

Homosexuals, bisexuals, transgendered, African-descendents, mixed-raced, Anglo, Latino, poor, rich, management, cops, protesters, the 99%, the 1%, indigenous, English Language Learners, gringos, straights, queers, agents, hip-hop heads, scholars, Africans, South-East Asians, long-distance drivers, manufacturers, union members, prostitutes, slave-wage earners,sweat shop workers, bureaucrats, Parisians, Kenyans, Afrikaans, day laborers, servers, activists, civil servants, farmers, pharmacists

Among this list are scattered oppressors and oppressees, with many carrying both titles. But all are human, even when they/we don't seem to be. The greatest danger, IMO, is forgetting that we, in our fight against the violence of oppression, do not pick up the tools of the oppressor and so become the oppressor - only changing the face of the game, but not the game itself. Compare Woolman's approach to Soviet Russia's.

Although sometimes the new masters are better and more benevolent than the old ones, it seems to me that history has taught us that we need a different approach, a different way of seeing reality than through our relation to our money and our leaders. These are abstract ways of viewing life and they serve the function of denying us the pleasure and reward of our own work, world, and relationships.

It is not righteous wrath that will deliver us out of the systems of oppression, but revolutionary patience.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Ok, the title is a bite of a mislead. I'm not talking about a religious CIA, Glenn Beck's secret caliphate, or men who give each other a high five after mutilating female genitalia. In fact, neither am I making an inter-religious pantheistic call to uniformity.

Rather, I just want to evoke the image of Dr. King's Brotherhood of Man language. For me, being raised in a fundamentalist Christian church, the BoM thought is nothing short of revolutionary - and somewhat heretical. I had normally reserved the title of brother/sister only to fellow Christians. Or, how I would define "Christians", which was an extremely narrow scope and excluded most of the Church. Martin Luther King, Jr. was referencing the fact that we are all connected and that when one is affected, we all are. Jesus called this being neighbors, and he himself extended this intricate connection to everybody - including both the Enemy and the Other. But seeing all the hubballoo that Christias make over the Other/Enemy, I'm not sure the revolutionary message has sunk in.

A recent example of this contradiction between what American Christians profess to believe and what they actually support can be termed the Terror Turkey episode.

This turkey is ready to attack!

When outraged and hysterical blogger Pam Geller mentioned that Butterball brand makes some turkeys halal-friendly, a small but vocal group of concerned anti-Muslim citizens became very, very alarmed. Watching it unfold was like a hysterical, sad, and daunting replay over the Cordoba House once again. Maybe it'd be progress for the American people to recognize just how awful the Islamaphobes are. Maybe it's progress that only a few people and outlets - the ironically-named American Thinker, worst person in the world Bryan Fischer - gave ANY credence to this story. Maybe it's progress that the Boycott Butterball Facebook page only had a few hundred fans, even though it was set-up by the main accuser, Gilly-Geller, herself.

But more likely, the story itself was just too outrageous and stupid to spread beyond the most virulent Muslimaphobes - the people who hate Muslims and Arabs so much that they've lost all sense of grounding in reality. You would think that was true of the story of the Cordoba House a bit over a year ago, though.

In case you' ve forgotten about the story of the Cordoba House initiative or, more likely, you recognize it according to the name that it got popularized by thanks to sensationalistic and garbage media outlets, here is a refresher:

The Cordoba Islamic community in Manhattan has been around for a hundred years. American Muslims, they were seeing that, unlike many other religious and ethnic groups in the city, there were no options for their kids to hang around and learn about their culture and religious background. They wanted to give them a community center, not unlike Christian-based ones in my neighborhood. A place to play sports and receive tutoring and just feel safe from the streets and unreceptive bullies and bigots. Additionally the comunity center would be open for all in order to spur religious/cultural dialog between members of the area. Additionally, the initiative was spurred by a Muslim who worked as a translator and aid for the CIA following the 9/11 attacks. This man was comended by none other than President Bush and even Glenn Beck.

But then the rabid Muslimophobes struck, starting with Gilly. They called the community center a Mosque (a house of worship that is somehow scary largely because it's a house of worship for Muslims. And all Muslims, we are told, hate Americans and most are terrorists. Amirite?? no, of course not) and the Muslimophobes called the center a 9/11 memorial, supposedly built on the land that Muslims conquered - even though it was several blocks from the actual site of the World Trade Center. Which, in Manhattan, constitutes as miles and miles away.*

And the rabid Muslimophobia went viral. Hate became the flavor du jour and buildings were burned and painted with the efficacy of bigotry. Meanwhile, the "good" Christians of the community washed their hands when they didn't blame the Muslims for provoking their own attacks.

The problem was hardly that a sensationalistic 24 hours news channel and its related blow-hards decided to focus on this. It's that any Americans, let alone Christian Americans, listened to them and gave them credence.

I'd like to think that we've evolved past that bigotry. That maybe the lack of approval for Pam's latest round of repressed kinkiness was due to the fact that most Americans don't know what a halal is. And that quite a few who bother to research it would find that it's largely indistinguishable from the kosher process.

But then there's the glowing, inescapable fact that churches in Michigan have tried to excuse themselves from anti-bullying laws in the state. On the grounds, of course, that it's okay to intimidate a non-straight if god says it's okay.

In other words, it is okay to not follow Jesus' primary commands when we can justify it on grounds that completely contradict the commandment of Jesus. It's okay to lie about, intimidate, harass, scare, and publicly humiliate Muslims and transvestites and pre-teen lesbians and Wiccan teens as long as we can pretend that we love them.

In Jesus' name!

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It's all effing silly and doesn't make a lick of sense. But that's what hatred is. -

A Million Miles in the Wrong Direction

Jesus... did not think of equality with God

as something to cling to.

Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;

he took the humble position of a slave

and was born as a human being.

When he appeared in human form,

he humbled himself in obedience to God

and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

 - Philippians 2 [New Living Translation] 

Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.
- Matthew 16 [New Living Translation]

I know it's a bit faddish - or at least that's what I've been told - but I prefer being called a Christ-Follower to being called a Christian. Although there are many reasons to hold onto the typical label*, the term Christian gives off the impression that conversion and purification is something that has happened at a specific moment in time. It is as if I've been Jesus'ed - as if Jesus had happened, and there is nothing else to be done. A moment in time, a simple prayer, some recitation and closed eyes and it's over. The rest is just waiting to happen.

But Jesus called his disciples to follow him. Daily. The book of Philippians instructs us that we are to follow in Jesus' acts of humility. Jesus told his first followers to pick up their crosses of sacrifice and forget the ways that the harsh, cruel, cynical world was teaching them. The world taught them to act in bitterness, told them to love and accumulate power, to bow down before the emperor as if he was a god.

And it only makes sense to, right? After all, the king's seat is the center of power and wealth. And if those are good things, surely those who control them are blessed by the gods, right?

Rather, Christ's followers are to follow him in submission. We see how the God-man acted in his sacrifice - in his actions of becoming a lowly, working-class "slave". In his

We are to follow him by turning our backs on the ways of the world and towards the things of God.

Although many Christians would agree with that assessment, I'm not sure they understand what the ways of the world are. And I'm particularly troubled that they may not understand what the ways of God are - whom God values and treasures. So though their intensity in the struggle may be commendable, the direction of their struggle can be easily misguided. We've gone very far, but in the wrong direction.

Jesus made it clear that his way is the way of the humble, the meek, the lame, the blind, the outcasts, the poor, the shepherds, the prostitutes, the dirty protesters, the aliens, the outsiders, the rejects, the mentally handicapped, women, people who look different than us, who sound different than us, those whose ways are strange to us...

According to Jesus and his early followers:

• We cannot worship both wealth and God in our churches - or our politics.

• We cannot consume all the world's resources while most of the world starves and follow the same Jesus who reviled gluttony and sided with the poor. That's gluttony. The US must repent, starting with Christians, for our consumptive culture.

• We cannot simultaneously hate Arabs and Muslims and claim to love Jesus.

• We cannot bear false witness while honoring the ten commandments. Such bold lies as when we allege that Muslims are trying to take over the Western world. Or that Sharia Law is a danger to the US Constitution. Or that Islam is a cult. No religious group that has been around for over a hundred (er, thousand) years and has over a million followers (let alone a billion) can be reasonably called a cult by any reasonable explanation.

• We cannot mock homosexuals and yet keep the two commandments (Love God, love neighbors).

• We either follow the desires of the world - fame, money, wealth, exclusion, power, gratification - or of Jesus - inclusion, healing, peace, service.

I am not suggesting that I am wonderfully following in these ways. I recognize that I let my anger and rage - often a selfish-influenced anger - get the best of me. I recognize and know my short-comings - or at least a few of them. I feel as if I've only crawled five miles in the general direction of Jesus. But that's not what this is about. This is about the error, the sin, of letting the sins of the prevailing culture - the ways of the world - take precedence over the gospel of freedom and deliverance for all - including the poor, the outsiders, the aliens, the sick, the hungry, the cold, the imprisoned, the lepers...

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*The sense of identification, the family, the history, the traditions, the security, etc. These are not bad in and of themselves and are in many ways a positive benefit of belonging to the universal church. In fact, in general they are good and necessary, and with a bit of soul-searching (apologizing and making up for past and present abuses, for instance) these attributes can once again be a blessing to the world and the name of Jesus. For now, however, we have some demons to exorcise.

In-Tolerance

A few days ago, our friend Alise (aka, Allison) Wright said:

• Alise McCoy Wright

  If you equate gay and lesbian relationships with sex with animals or children, I'm not very interested in talking to you. #intolerant

The ensuing dialog got me to write my very own status:

Jason M Dye

Who passed around the memo that says that tolerance (willing to abide with those who are different than you) is supposed to mean blind support for intolerance? If someone hates others for their differences, and then makes up willfully ignorant excuses as to why he hates them, I *don't* have to put up with that bull****.

Among the many interesting discussions we had around this and around the ensuing discussions that followed was a little foray into what the word tolerance actually means.And this is where I disagree with many. When some talk of tolerance, they are speaking in a First Amendment sense: The right of people to speak whatever they believe or want to say without government interference.

In the First Amendment sense, of course, everybody has that right. What I don't like is the idea that because somebody has a right to say whatever they feel like (a radio talk show host repeats the term, "Ni**er, Ni**er, Ni**er", for instance, or a blogger says that homosexuals want more rights than straight people, because they want to "gay-marry" on top "straight-marry"), that I'm supposed to - as an enlightened, tolerant fellow - accept their statements without criticizing them.

photo © 2009 Howe Kee Wong | more info (via: Wylio)They argue that it's the only tolerant thing to do. Apparently, they don't understand the essence of tolerance, just some sort of self-serving form of it.

What they are asking for is not only NOT tolerance, it's also not Freedom of Speech.

In grade school, we were taught that each one has the right to express himself, to make herself heard, unencumbered by the federal government (though I'm not quite sure how that works in broadcast - since it's obviously not unencumbered by federal regulations...). While there are other censors out there (monied interests, for instance; gatekeepers; self-preservation), the main idea that most of us growing up with an American education have been taught is that we live in a marketplace of ideas. This marketplace is a sort of competition in the open fields where the best ideas try to outshine each other to grab the American conscience.

photo © 2006 Glen | more info (via: Wylio)As flawed as this comparison truly is (for one, its need for retail / consumer analogies), it is still the best picture we collectively share for how FoS works. For every Neo-Nazi that floats an idea out, an anti-racist can respond to it in a million other ways. It's not intolerant if the anti-racist objects to the racist's claims. That's actually free speech in practice. That's the idea of the marketplace of ideas.

The intolerance would come if the anti-racist would criminalize the racist before the racist did anything violent - recognizing however that some forms of speech/expression are violent calls of aggression (the 'n****r' word in certain circumstances. Calling out for armed rebellion, for others). This is especially true among racists.

Intolerance isn't even that, however. Intolerance says that the majority population cannot live with a minority population for fear of contamination. Intolerance tells the minority population that the other populations are dangerous/stupid/insane and therefore should not be lived with. This is where war begins - racial/religious/ethnic/cultural differences are not accepted as being different, but being worse and less-than-human.

What we need is more tolerance. Not more hateful/hurtful ideas being bandied about. Nor the excuse that not accepting those hateful ideas is, in itself, intolerant. But actual, living, breathing tolerance.

Then maybe we could move on to hearing each other out and living in community.

The New Bullies: Grandma Peace Activists, Christian Feminist Bloggers, and Consumer Advocates

photo © 2007 Simon | more info (via: Wylio)Did somebody say Wookie?

There's a cynical and ironic phenomenon that I've noticed most glaringly in US foreign relationships in the Middle East and is now manifesting itself in the financial / political world as well as the Evangelical social media world in the States: Bullies like to call anybody who holds them accountable a bully.

Israel does this any time her stranglehold on Palestinians is challenged. Likewise, WORLD Magazine (a Neo-Conservative Christian bulwark) called Rachel Held Evans a slanderer for calling out mega-pastor Mark Driscoll's irresponsible, homophobic, and trans-phobic behavior (with a bit more civility than I would probably afford him). And now House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, (R-CA) and spokesmouth for corporatocracy, is calling Elizabeth Warren, consumer advocate, a bully who would target the poor, little, downtrodden banks and loaning institutions and give them swirlies and wedgies and all that mean stuff.

Small pockets of men and women (and most recently, grandmas) try to get into Gaza, armed only with senselessly banned material - including harmless school supplies. At one point, they are gunned down at point-blank range by Israeli soldiers. At another point, Greece enforces Israel's rules for them, in the hope of international aid favor from the US. Illegal settlements are being sprouted up on top of Palestinian homes, bulldozing and setting ablaze homelands, groves, and families that have resided there for hundreds and thousands of years. The Palestinians are denied pencils, buildings, and jobs in their own homeland.

And yet, it's the international, hippy grandmas that are the bullies...

Author and blogger Rachel Held Evans demonstrated occasion after occasion of Mark Driscoll's dehumanizing taunts towards women, feminists, "effeminate" males, and queersteh gays. And then she asked her readers to address their concerns to the board of elders at his church. While Driscoll (of a large church in Seattle named Mars Hill) offered some sort of apology, WORLD Magazine writer Anthony Bradley belittled the criticisms and offered his amusing perspective that, "There is nothing loving about calling a pastor a “bully.“"* The rest of the paragraph sends a message that this male writer can only interpret as, "Woman no talk to manly man such way." (Considering that - without any evidence - Bradley calls her a liar who spreads false testimony, I'm left to believe that the problem isn't the testimony itself, but the testifier. After all, in biblical times, woman no important.)

So, it isn't the influential, authoritarian pastor who, once again, ridicules so-called effeminate men who needs to be corrected. It is the woman who dared stand up to him...

Issa is a bit of an extreme example in an extreme time of extreme extremities. It's common (though often ignored by pro-corporatists) knowledge that the recession is a direct result of predatory lending, borrowing and all means of deceit by big banks and other financial institutions - much at the hands of the poor and middle class. Warren, who has a proven track record of looking out for that important buffer - the middle class - as well as for those on the margins, is trying to protect the rest of us from the horrible practices that make a few very wealthy, very fast, on the backs of the rest of us who are left with fewer and fewer options. But she, not the banks that foreclosed on millions of hard-working Americans, is the bully? Because she would rather that these institutions not eat the poor and devour the middle class?? Really?

I suppose Orwell is shaking in his grave. It got awfully chilly.

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*Obviously, nobody has informed Bradley of the practices of spiritual abuse rampant in fundamentalist churches, specifically. I'm sure that if he were dealing with questions of his own sexuality in such a church, his perspective would change.