A good article by Timothy Kincaid today at Box Turtle Bulletin, putting the rank homophobia of groups like the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in historical perspective. In particular, Kincaid notes the inexorable, if slow and spasmodic, movement of democracy, with its belief in the inherent worth and rights of every human being, towards rights for everyone. Not merely for select, privileged elite groups.
A choice excerpt:
Consider, if you will, the man or woman who in 1963 firmly believed that it was right to segregate by race. At the time, their views were not outside the range of normal; they were not considered to be peculiar or automatically assumed to be grounded in hatred. When George Wallace stood in the schoolroom door, he was a reflection of his time and culture and held a view that was supported by the majority of his constituents. He was certain that God was on his side.
But time has not been kind to the image of George Wallace and his supporters. At this point we look back and marvel at the fear and animus that was so embedded into a culture that kind and decent people accepted these attitudes and presumptions as normal and good and ordered by God. “It was bald-faced bigotry,” we say, and have little patience or forgiveness for that part of our history.
And Kincaid's conclusion:
The future world will likely look back and wonder how the majority of Americans let a handful of religious zealots dictate discrimination. They’ll marvel at the fear and animus that is so embedded into our culture that kind and decent people accept these attitudes and presumptions as normal and good and ordered by God. “It was bald-faced bigotry,” they will say, and will have little patience or forgiveness for this part of our history.
Steve and I recently rented and watched Dustin Lance Black's documentary about the Mormon role in passing prop 8 in California, "8: The Mormon Proposition." The documentary interviews Fred Karger, who has carefully tracked and exposed the channeling of Mormon money to the prop 8 campaign, and the way in which the LDS church organized the campaign to remove the right of marriage of gay citizens of California.
All this was done in collusion with the Catholic church, of course, as well as with anti-gay evangelical churches. In the documentary, Karger charges the LDS church with having set up NOM--again, working closely with Catholic anti-gay operatives including Robert P. George and Maggie Gallagher.
As I watched Black's film, as I read about NOM's summer of hate, in which it is sending a bus around the country to gin up discontent with gay citizens and our rights, and as I think about the role the Catholic hierarchy continues to play in helping to spread this hate, I'm disgusted.
And ashamed to be Catholic. How can a tradition that defended civil rights so magnificently in the 1950s and 1960s have ended up where it now finds itself?
Much of the blame obviously has to be laid at the feet of John Paul II and Benedict, for whom there has never been any yielding or listening to the experience of gay human beings, or any respect for God's children who happen to be gay. And who have named the vast majority of bishops now running the Catholic church, whose blind commitment to the homophobic agenda of the Vatican flies in the face of the sensus fidelium, which easily gets the link between Catholic teaching about human rights and the gay question.
The graphic is a sign carried by a NOM supporter when the NOM bus recently stopped in Indianapolis. The photo was taken by Alice Hoenigham for Bilerico.
