Jewish Experience and the DOMA Decision: Religious Right Reaches Its Cheeseburger Moment

Exodus 23:19, 34:26, Deuteronomy 14:21

Speaking from the standpoint of the historic experience of the Jewish community, Neil Steinberg provides some unsolicited advice to right-wing evangelicals and Catholics who are angry that they've (as they imagine) lost control of American culture with the DOMA ruling. As he points out, the bible is very clear about the immorality of mixing milk and meat, but Jews have never tried to force McDonald's to stop selling cheeseburgers.

And so:

Anti-gay Christians are now approaching their cheeseburger moment—welcome, welcome—after the Supreme Court has tossed out much of the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. The legal whip drops from the fundamentalist hand, which strikes them as oppression, forgetting they can still practice whatever private dogma they like regarding gays—never marry their own gender, disown their own gay children—but gay marriage is going up on the menu in more and more states. Society is marching—running, really—off without them, into a future of gay folk living openly without fear. 

It hurts, bubbie, I know. Here’s a Kleenex.

Steinberg's bottom-line advice to the religious right: "You’ll get used to it. Take it from a Jew."

McDonald's keeps on selling its cheeseburgers, and the world continues to turn. Even though the bible plainly says . . . . 

(Thanks to Dan Savage's Savage Love site for the link to Neil Steinberg's Chicago Sun-Times column.)