The Obama Project@WindonWater.net

At first I found this headline shocking, seeing as it sounded like we needed a conservation effort lest homosexual people went extinct. I didn’t think the Pope would be advancing that idea at all..

Of course, the headline was a little misleading. Here’s the article:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

Yeah. That sounds more like Catholic doctrine. I’m not mad at the Pope for his statement, but I do see how homosexuals can be a little alarmed at the sentiment - I think, on a global scale, saving the rainforest deserves quite a lot more consideration than saving homosexuals specifically, or in isolation from all of the other things humanity has on its plate (war, hatred, racism, sexism, materialism, godlessness…), and being singled out like that can seem a bit… unfair.

But of course, the Pope’s position isn’t tremendously different from Rick Warren’s (or the Baha’i view, come to think of it). Because of his global stature, President Obama (when he actually becomes that) will welcome an opportunity to meet with the Pope. Will stand on the stage and shake his hand. Will not turn down a blessing if one is offered. Millions of Catholics in the United States would approve. As it turns out, because of Obama’s stand not on abortion, but more saliantly on birth control and conception, I don’t think that blessing is coming.

Similarly, and in fact, even more pertinently, Rick Warren could bring with him the approbation of millions of evangelicals who are ready to think more like Rick Warren, and less like some of the evangelicals who can’t think of anything else but the culture war that has engulfed the nation for decades. Unlike the Pope’s unlikely blessing, however, Obama has already earned, through character and friendship, though not through shared idealogy, the blessing of Rick Warren.

I say score one for Obama.

QT

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/even_more_prop_8.php

One guess at what group feels they were robbed of “meaningful gender identities,” and thus likely long for them with a much greater intensity than the rest of the populace. It’s quite likely that the same impulse that would attract men by the hundreds of thousands of men to the Million Man March–the sense that something had been lost–is the same impulse them that would lead them to reject an expansion, and to their mind, a redefinition of marriage.

A very good point. Another: the feeling that black people’s marriages are persistently under attack. A clinging to traditional marriage as a cure for some of the ills that affect black people is a characteristic of black America that is under-appreciated.

This is from Richard Ford’s article that Ta-Nehisi is quoting:

After all, traditional marriage isn’t just analogous to sex discrimination—it is sex discrimination: Only men may marry women, and only women may marry men. Same-sex marriage would transform an institution that currently defines two distinctive sex roles—husband and wife—by replacing those different halves with one sex-neutral role—spouse. Sure, we could call two married men “husbands” and two married women “wives,” but the specific role for each sex that now defines marriage would be lost. Widespread opposition to same-sex marriage might reflect a desire to hang on to these distinctive sex roles rather than vicious anti-gay bigotry. By wistfully invoking the analogy to racism, same-sex marriage proponents risk misreading a large (and potentially movable) group of voters who care about sex difference more than about sexual orientation.

After all, many opponents of same-sex marriage don’t oppose gay rights across the board. In California, same-sex couples enjoy significant civil rights protections and legal status as domestic partners, and voters have shown no interest in changing that. National polls show that overwhelming majorities support employment-based gay rights, including equal access to careers in the military, and same-sex civil unions. It’s only when it comes to marriage—the word, with its religious as well as civic connotations—that pro-gay sentiment dwindles: Recent polls show that only 30 percent to 36 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage. It’s this finding, of course, that the results of last week’s elections echo.

The sharp differences in the polling numbers, depending on whether the question is marriage as opposed to almost any other gay rights issue, suggest that opposition to same-sex marriage isn’t simply the 21st century’s form of racism. After all, whites who opposed racial miscegenation in the Jim Crow South didn’t support other civil rights for blacks or civil unions for mixed-race couples. In fact anti-miscegenation laws worked hand-in-glove with laws prohibiting sex outside of marriage and intimate cohabitation of unmarried adults to effectively outlaw interracial intimacy altogether. When Mildred Loving, who was black, and Richard Loving, who was white, successfully challenged Virginia’s law barring interracial marriage, they were not just fighting for social acceptance and hospital visitation rights. They were fighting a jail sentence, suspended on the condition that they leave the Virginia and never return together: effective banishment from the state. Anti-miscegenation laws were designed to prevent intimate racial mixing of any kind; by contrast, many of the people who voted to ban same-sex marriage are apparently supportive of same-sex intimacy—provided you don’t call it marriage.

Coates is not overwhelmingly persuaded, but I quoted more than he did because I think there’s a “there” there.

QT

What is it to me that homosexuals have or do not have the right to marry? When most marriages only have a 50-50 chance of surviving - a number driven up by the 75% failure rate of black marriages, why would I want to deny anyone else the chance to get it right?

I’m answering this question personally, because Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment” was addressed personally, and to not take personal ownership of the issue seems a cop out, unfair, and unjust to those who are sincerely asking. Here is his special comment:

I take it Mr. Olbermann is not a religious man. If he were, he could not use some of the words he used. A religious person doesn’t start from the point of view of “no matter what the text says, my heart says different.” A religious person agonizes over that conflict, and tries to find a way to live within the constraints given. A religious person recognizes in him or herself any number of conflicts - of ways that they fall short of the text they strive to follow. A religious person turns continually to the God of their understanding for both forgiveness for their shortcomings, and understanding of why some things are required of them. A religious person turns often to God and says “that seems capricious… why did that have to happen?” And a religious person considers that ongoing struggle, argument, fight, and reconciliation - to be the substance of faith.

Because that is the way of religious life, the appeal to conscience is destined to fail. Every time someone accuses a religious person of hypocrisy, or sneers at a religion just because it says something contrary to what other people believe, they are reinforcing the behavior they hope to change. Those who are faithful expect the sneers, and those who are faithful expect the agony. Those who are faithful can honestly look at what is hypocritical in themselves, and try to make good - but making good doesn’t come by dropping their faith - it comes by clinging more to it. Whenever you ask me, “How can a loving God reject the love of homosexuals?” I ask God. (In fact,I don’t believe that God rejects the love of homosexuals - that’s a strawman argument. But I’m answering as if I did.) I don’t decide, unilaterally, that God is wrong, and I am right, or that the God of my understanding is wrong and the God of someone else’s understanding is right. That way of thinking - of changing what we believe when it is no longer convenient to believe it - is the fundamental definition of hypocrisy.

My understanding of homosexuality has evolved. I don’t believe homosexuality is a symptom of sin. I don’t hate homosexuals. And I don’t personally believe that homosexuals getting married have anything to do with me, nor do I believe it affects me in any way. But - if you ask me should they do it, I’m still likely to say “No.” I will say it because I’ve belonged, in my lifetime, to three different religions, none of which embraced gay marriage.

I THINK I would have voted “No” on Proposition 8, had that task fallen to me. I think I would have, because the supreme court already said that the right existed. But I’m not judging those who voted “yes” because I was not in their climate - I was not subject to the argument day and night - I’m not sure if everyone would automatically understand their duty to vote on the issue as a separation of church and state issue - their obligation to reserve their personal judgment in favor of voting for a civil law.

So - what does this mean? Ultimately, it means we need to find a way to articulate, loudly, clearly, that we are talking about a civil issue. We need to find ministers and other religious leaders who can authoritatively say “this is a separation of church and state” issue. We need to vote on what our conscience CAN vote on.

Having said that… I note that the landmark changes to people’s fundamental understanding of the law required intervention by the Supreme Court, and a war. Blacks did not get the right to marry, nor the right to intermarry by plebiscite. Perhaps there is something to be learned here. I would sign on for a fight all the way to the Supreme Court to make civil unions the law of the land, and marriage the domain of religious institutions to administer as they will. I would join on such a fight, wholeheartedly.

QT