#ReligiousFreedomIs: Defending and Celebrating Religious Liberty As a Foundation of Democratic Society

Liberty and Justice for All from Coalition for Liberty & Justice on Vimeo.

Next Monday, 16 January, will be the 231st anniversary of the Virginia Religious Freedom Statute. In commemoration of this event, the Coalition for Liberty and Justice (which produced the video at the head of the posting) and others are engaging in various actions to educate about the authentic meaning of religious freedom, a core value of the American democratic experiment that has been under attack in recent years by people using the term as a slogan to justify religion-based bigotry and religion-based attacks on minority communities struggling for their rights.

Peter Montgomery on How Right-Wing Christians Justify Support for Trump; Frederick Clarkson on Dominionist Agenda Hidden in Plain Sight in U.S. Right-Wing Christianity

Trump is calling for “extreme vetting” of immigrants. Can his own supporters pass the test? https://t.co/EURoHVGdXQ pic.twitter.com/404Ivo372I

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) August 19, 2016

One of several reasons I have found it difficult to blog here of late is that the ongoing discussion of Donald Trump's candidacy in the U.S. has pulled me into rather intense daily discussions on Facebook and Twitter of issues like the influence of race matters in the 2016 elections and the role religion is playing in the elections.

Claim That the Culture Wars are Over and Religious Right Is Obsolescent Links to Claim That Political Left and Identity Politics Are Responsible for Trump: My Take

One thing I suppose many of us can agree on about the current U.S. presidential election cycle is that it has been full of surprises. Not the least of those has been the surprising way in which Mr. Trump has risen to the top of the GOP heap, when one media guru and statistician after another — most of these folks living in media bubbles and elite enclaves set apart from the rest of the nation — smugly assured us as the campaign began that we could safely laugh at him, since he had a snowball's chance in hell of being the Republican presidential candidate.

As Their Party Puts Forward a Reality-Show Star Who Spouts Racism, Misogyny, and Xenophobia, Catholic Bishops Use "Religious Freedom" Video to Attack Hillary Clinton

Did I just say that the yuuuge affection of large numbers of (white) Catholics in the U.S. for the outright racist (and misogynist and xenophobic) Donald Trump bespeaks colossal moral and pastoral failure on the part of the U.S. Catholic bishops — as do the ugly comments now piling up at the website of the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal, some from Commonweal subscribers, after that journal dared to publish an editorial chastising the Republican party for seeking to deny the right to vote to minority voters? As all of this happens, here's where the U.S. Catholic bishops are, where they want to lead their flock:

More Commentary on Frederick Clarkson's New Essay about Religious Freedom: Patricia Miller and Bill Berkowitz

More valuable commentary today about Frederick Clarkson's report on religious freedom entitled "When Exemption Is the Rule: The Religious Freedom Strategy of the Christian Right":

The Little Sisters of the Poor, Kim Davis, and the Challenge of Preserving Real Religious Freedom: Frederick Clarkson's Important New Essay "When Exemption Is the Rule"

As Frederick Clarkson points out in a just-published (and exhaustive and richly-resourced) must-read overview of the religious liberty battles facing us in the U.S. today, the "I believe it, so it must be right" "religious freedom" argument that the Little Sisters of the Poor and the U.S. Catholic bishops want to shove in the face of the American public through the sisters' lawsuit against the Obama administration builds on the claim that the Supreme Court allowed to prevail in the Hobby Lobby lawsuit of 2014. As I noted in my previous posting today, the Little Sisters of the Poor object even to signing paperwork exempting them from responsibility for providing contraceptive coverage to their employees, with the claim that they believe that certain contraceptives are abortifacients, no matter what sound scientific evidence says about these contraceptives.

Frederick Clarkson on Christianity in the Religious Freedom Debates: Highly Recommended

Another hot-off-the-press article I'd like to recommend to you today: Frederick Clarkson's "When the Exception Is the Rule: Christianity in the Religious Freedom Debates" at Political Research Associates' Public Eye. Fred's article is  very well-researched, and I think many readers will find it valuable for the bibliography alone. 

End-of-Week Items: Utah, Arkansas, Religious Freedom and Anti-Gay Laws, and Fixations of Conservotrad Catholics

A miscellany of end-of-week news items or blog postings I've read, thought were good, and want to pass on to you as the week ends:

Frederick Clarkson on Pastor Steven Anderson's Call to Religiously Fueled Violence vs. Gays

Baptist pastor Steven Anderson of Tempe, Arizona, is at it again. This time, he's calling for homos gay folks to be killed as a cure for AIDS (never mind that the majority of people in the world living with HIV-AIDS are African heterosexuals, including millions of children). As Frederick Clarkson reminds us, in 2009, this man of God called on his church members to pray for the death of President Obama and encouraged a member of his congregation to carry an automatic rifle when the president spoke in Phoenix. 

A Reader Writes: "Are These Conservative Churches Really . . . a Weird Kind of New World Hebraic Cult?" — Reflections on the Neo-Calvinist Movement in U.S. Evangelicalism

Several days ago, in response to my posting about how Steve's two aunts who are nuns received the news of our marriage in May, tinywriting posted some very good questions (and here) about how we can discern when Christian movements have departed in essential ways from the foundations of the Christian message and no longer adequately represent Christianity. Tiny notes that "when these conservative Christian churches take conservative life-style positions it's always the Old Testament that they quote."

Fred Clarkson on Alliance of U.S. Catholic Bishops with Evangelical Christian Right--and Import of This Alliance

At Talk to Action, Fred Clarkson reminds us of the tremendous responsibility the current bishops of the Catholic church in the U.S. bear, under the leadership of outgoing USCCB president Timothy Cardinal Dolan, for the right-wing politicization of American Catholicism in recent years. As I noted on Friday, Sarah Posner has pointed out that the templates being used by one state legislature after another to attack the rights of LGBTI citizens in recent weeks come straight out of the "religious freedom" playbook of the USCCB, as it's being followed by various state Catholic conferences and right-wing Catholic theologian George Weigel at his Ethics and Public Policy Institute.

Religious Right Extinct? Not As Far As USCCB Is Concerned

No, the religious right hasn't gone the way of the dodo bird. No, it's not extinct. No, it's not somehow distinct from the tea party movement that is now indistinguishable from the Republican party itself. 

Welton Gaddy and Barry Lynn on Religious Right and Religious Freedom: "Right to Do What They Want, Whenever They Want, Wherever They Want"

And talk about obscene inversion of moral narratives (I'm referring here to what I've just posted about the Trayvon Martin story): at Talk to Action, Fred Clarkson offers an excerpt from commentary about the religious freedom debate in the U.S. recently published by C. Welton Gaddy and Barry Lynn at Religion News Service. Gaddy and Lynn point out that, though there is absolutely no evidence at all that anyone is seeking to snatch religious freedom away from members of the Christian right, their rallying cry has now become that they are an embattled minority threatened by a bullying secular mainstream.

Fred Clarkson on Huckabee's Response to Sandy Hook Shootings, and More Reflections on Intersection of Catholic Hierarchy and U.S. Religious Right

In the News: GOP Primary, Catholic Right, Bully Bill Donohue, and NOM

In the news right now:

At Talk to Action, Fred Clarkson reprises former Republican insider Mike Lofgren's Truthout essay from this past September, about which I blogged some time back.  Fred notes that Lofgren's rueful truth-telling about what has gone wrong with the Republican party as it has sold its soul to theocrat zealots intent on dismantling American democracy is now viral, and is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding why the current Republican primary season is playing out as it's playing out.

At Week's End, the Rekers Story: Long Strokes and Little Mercy

 It has been a roller-coaster week, with the back-and-forth story of George Rekers.  The latest from his side is that he’s (of course) denying allegations of sexual activity with his rent boy and threatening to sue the “alternative newspaper,” Miami New Times, that broke the story.  

Rekers’ denial claims he had no sexual involvement with the young man he hired from Rentboy.com to travel with him.  In an email he sent to reporters around the nation on the day he posted the denial on his Professor George website, Rekers also launches into a bizarre diversionary point-by-point rebuttal of incidental aspects of his story, as it’s been told in the media—a rebuttal that focuses on questions like who lifted whose luggage, rather than the obvious question of why one would hire a luggage carrier through a website that specializes in offering prostitutes.  (A picture of Rekers and Jo-Vanni Roman, his young traveling companion whose identity was made known by bloggers shortly after the story broke, shows Rekers hefting his luggage in the Miami airport while Roman stands by.)

Frederick Clarkson on Silencing the Religious Left, and Centrist Game of Ignoring Progressive Catholic Voices

Frederick Clarkson has posted an outstanding reflection today at both Talk to Action and Daily Kos about the silencing of the religious left. He notes that the attempt of religious progressives to find common ground with moderate evangelicals and Catholics continues to require that progressives concede ground to their brothers and sisters of the right. The “common ground” that progressive religionists are buying now through a new, purportedly beyond-the-culture-wars coalition, is bought at a steep price, and progressives alone are being asked to pay that price.

The price is the silencing of progressive voices in faith communities, re: issues like LGBT rights, reproductive rights, and the separation of church and state. While moderate evangelicals and Catholics negotiate with (and welcome) their brothers and sisters of the right, they caution their progressive brothers and sisters to keep silent about these issues that might stir the ire of the religious right.

As a result, what the media are tagging as the center in a new coalition of progressive and moderate believers is a center that incorporates key presuppositions of the right while excluding many significant commitments and interests of the left.

Fred Clarkson cites a prescient essay by Debra Haffner and Timothy Palmer published prior to the last election, which rang a warning bell about these developments. Clarkson published the essay in his 2008 book Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America.

Haffner and Palmer note,

Some well-meaning progressives are privately cautioning advocates for sexual justice to recede quietly into the background. ...Their concern is that differences over sexuality will hinder them from forming coalitions with moderate evangelicals and Catholics, thus forestalling the election of progressive candidates. Instead, they prefer to seek common ground with the right on shared issues.

I think Haffner, Palmer, and Clarkson are absolutely correct in this analysis (as is Peter Laarman, whom Clarkson also cites here, and whom I’ve cited recently on this blog). What’s happening in the religious sphere parallels what’s happening in the centrist Democratic beltway coalition that I analyzed in my previous posting today.

In both cases, the right continues to dominate the center, even when its political and religious positions represent the thinking of only a minority of citizens or believers. In both cases, key presuppositions of the right are presented as if they are centrist-inclusive, even while they completely exclude progressive options and reflect the minority views of the right. These moves represent the normalization, the continuation, and the mainstreaming of policies (and positions) that were repudiated by American voters in the preceding election.

As I’ve noted repeatedly on this blog, I’ve been concerned for some time now by the phenomenon that Haffner and Palmer describe—the deliberate silencing of progressive voices in the American Catholic community not only by the right, but by centrists. I’ve noted that phenomenon—and the strange silence in which it results—re: gay and lesbian people and issues, for example, in major centrist Catholic publications and discourse communities. I’ve noted it in progressive Catholic organizations like Catholics United.

I’ve noted that, while these discourse communities and organizations defend human rights, they are conspicuously silent about attacks on the human rights of their LGBT brothers and sisters—including attacks by the Catholic church itself. I have noted my disappointment with centrist Catholic groups and discourse communities that exclude frank discourse about issues of sexual ethics—that exclude any discourse at all about these issues, in fact—even as large numbers of Catholics do not adhere to the magisterium’s position in this area.

I’ve noted the disservice centrist Catholic discourse communities do to the church when they refuse to talk about or even acknowledge the presence of their many brothers and sisters whose lives are made exceptionally difficult by magisterial teachings to which many in the center do not even adhere themselves. It is impossible to talk cogently at a theological level today about church, justice, communion, love—anything at all, actually—while we remain silent about the effects of magisterial teaching and hierarchical behavior on gay and lesbian Catholics.

As I say all of this, though, I’d like to point out that the unacknowledged secret of the campaign to lure Catholics into a centrist alliance by refusing to talk about reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and church-state separation is that a large number of American Catholics flatly refuse to buy into the positions that this campaign assumes as “the” Catholic position. As an example: various blogs (e.g., Dan Gilgoff at God and Country) are noting in the past several days that a woman featured in a No on 1 Ad in Maine (No on 1 opposes those who want to overturn Maine’s law permitting same-sex marriage) is a Catholic woman.

The Catholic mother featured in the ad notes that her faith requires her to speak out against those who would trample on the rights of a minority group. Because this particular Catholic has chosen to speak out about what her faith teaches her, she is now being attacked by Catholic groups of the right, who want to silence her voice and the voice of the millions of American Catholics who do not support the hierarchy’s current attack on the lives and rights of their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and sons and daughters.

There would be no need for the draconian episcopal politics I described yesterday, in which the bishop of Marquette, Michigan, noted that his duty as “the” teacher of his diocese is to prevent discussion of homosexuality and women’s ordination, if an increasing number of American Catholics did not reject official Catholic teachings about such matters. It is strange, indeed, to observe centrist religious activists colluding with the likes of Bishop Sample of Marquette, Michigan, in locking down necessary Catholic conversations about issues like homosexuality and women’s rights, and in ignoring the significant witness of the many Catholics who intend to keep critiquing the magisterial teaching (and hierarchical politics) about such issues.

The graphic for this posting is a photo by Chris Freeland available for replication through Creative Commons.

Frederick Clarkson and Chip Berlet: Is the Religious Right Really Dying?

Yesterday, as I summarized Frank Rich’s analysis of the timidity that seems to govern the Democrats’ approach to gay rights issues at present, I noted that Rich finds the stalling of the Obama administration on gay rights hard to understand at a time in which “the power of the religious right to undermine the new administration seems especially limited.”

What Rich says, to be exact, is the following:

It would be easy to blame the Beltway logjam in gay civil rights progress on the cultural warriors of the religious right and its political host, the Republican Party. But it would be inaccurate. The right has lost much of its clout in the capital and, as President Obama’s thoughtful performance at Notre Dame dramatized last weekend, its shrill anti-abortion-rights extremism now plays badly even in supposedly friendly confines.

It is important to note Frederick Clarkson’s countervailing view about the waning power of the religious right. Several days ago, in a posting at Talk to Action, Clarkson offered some compelling reasons to doubt the imminent demise of the religious right. Clarkson notes that, though some younger evangelicals appear to be be softening the hard-right religious stance on gay issues, this demographic group remains, on the whole, stridently anti-abortion.

In Clarkson’s view, it would be premature for progressives to conclude that the religious right’s power to skew the political and cultural direction of the country has vanished. Clarkson and Chip Berlet note that some progressives’ strategy of outreach to moderate evangelicals runs the risk of importing into the progressive agenda positions on reproductive rights that may move that agenda to the right. In Clarkson and Berlet’s view, a thoroughgoing commitment to human rights demands that progressives not mute their appeal for rights in one area while celebrating forward movement in other areas.

In my view, Clarkson and Berlet deserve serious consideration—though I am undermining the argument I made yesterday in noting this. I would like to second Frank Rich’s contention that the power of the religious right is waning. But I suspect that Clarkson and Berlet may be quite correct in their caution about the continued potential of the religious right to exert strong influence in the political sphere.

That potential resides, I think, in the ability of the religious right to impede rather than to determine. Though the numbers of its adherents may be waning, and though demographic trends do not bode well for its future, the religious right has created a well-oiled propaganda machine, and that machine still has tremendous power to crank out disinformation on a daily basis. It seems naïve to imagine that the political and religious right will avail itself of the resources of that disinformation machine whenever possible, as it seeks to probe weak spots in the new administration and craft pain for the new president. And it seems equally naïve to imagine that a significant number of citizens will remain unmoved by that disinformation, as it pours forth.

I sometimes suspect that those who are confident that the religious right is dying have never lived in places in the United States in which this movement is strongly represented, and therefore do not appreciate its tenacious hold on the lives of many Americans. From the standpoint of New Haven or San Francisco, the religious right may well look like a behemoth heading for extinction. From the vantage point of Amarillo or Topeka, Spartanburg or Little Rock, however, it looks like a vital critter still very much alive and kicking.

And that’s to say that it does continue to have the power to make the lives of many gay and lesbian Americans intently miserable, on an ongoing basis, in some places in our land. It continues to do so through disinformation campaigns designed to stir hatred against them among their fellow citizens which have great cultural power in some areas of the coutnry. As I noted yesterday, many of us who happen to be gay and lesbian also happen to live in places in which there are almost no legal protections against discrimination—places dominated by the religious right.

I noted, as well, that in such dark places in the land in the 1960s, it would have been impossible for hatred to be unchecked and a new course to be set, had the federal government not intervened decisively through the Civil Rights act of 1964. While there may have been widespread revulsion against racism in much of the country in the early 1960s, in the heartland of the religious right—in the American Southeast—the will to discriminate remained exceptionally strong, and plebiscites to challenge that will repeatedly confirmed the majority’s intent to deny rights to a minority.

The critical factor that tipped the scales, as many Americans repudiated racial discrimination while many others clung bitterly to their “right” to discriminate, was the decision of the president to intervene and to exert strong leadership. Certainly that decision did not end racism forever. What it did accomplish was very significant, however. It began a process of confining the “right” to discriminate, of exposing that “right” as indefensible prejudice, and of marginalizing those intent on clinging to this “right” so that the culture as a whole could move beyond the vise in which an angry, defensive minority wished to place it, while claiming religious sanction for its noxious agenda.

At tipping point moments, when strong indicators suggest that a growing number of citizens are changing their minds about deep-seated cultural practices of discrimination, whether on grounds of race, gender, or sexual orientation, and when powerful religious movements do all they can to resist such cultural shifts, decisive leaders with morally cogent platforms can make a world of difference.

Or they can choose not to do so, and allow some scapegoat groups within their culture to remain the object of derision and prejudice. But in making such a choice, they also ask an entire culture to pay a high price for their inaction, when circumstances have placed in their hands the ability to effect positive change. Even when savage, overt discrimination is confined to select geographic areas within a nation, it tears at the soul of the entire nation.

Ideas Have Consequences: Progressive Pragmatists, Idealists and the Future of Obama Administration

In my wrap-up posting about Mr. Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame, I concluded,

If there is going to be a resurgence of progressivism under this administration, that resurgence is going to have to come from the public itself, insofar as citizens become fed up with the cultural, political, and religious stalemates the right has produced for us for too many years now, while liberals appease the right and refuse to stand up, or to imagine a truly democratic society.

Which is to say that the moral backbone of progressive change in the Obama era is going to have to come, I believe, from progressive groups themselves, and not from the president and his advisors. I believe the president himself has that backbone, though I also believe he is, in many respects, a classic liberal who is willing to ignore strong moral considerations as he engages in pragmatic balancing acts. And it seems increasingly evident to me that he has surrounded himself with advisors who, to an even greater extent, are tone-deaf to the moral underpinnings of the agenda of change they talk about, and willing at every turn to ignore those underpinnings as they tinker, try to anticipate the winds of change, and seek to remain on top through it all.

And in a subsequent posting on the same theme, I noted that the power of the political and religious right to play unholy culture-war games remains strong. I pointed to the continuing ability of economic elites who benefit from the culture wars to disseminate lies through the mainstream media. And I noted the concern of those elites “to combat the emergence of a new coalition of progressive people of faith at this point in our nation's history.”

As a follow-up to these observations, I’d like to note some significant recent discussion about the diverging strategies of progressive pragmatists and progressive idealists (or, as Frederick Clarkson’s critique of centrist orthodoxy notes, using Mark Silk’s terminology, priests and prophets) in the Obama era. The pragmatist-idealist distinction is Chip Berlet’s, in an important recent article entitled “Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War.” Frederick Clarkson highlights this essay in his latest posting at Talk to Action.

Berlet centers his analysis on the concept of “frames.” He argues that the fundamental struggle going on among progressives who support the new president, but who divide along pragmatist-idealist lines, is the question of how to frame the debate for the progressive agenda.

Progressive pragmatists are persuaded that progressive movements have no choice except to reach out to evangelical voters of the center and moderate right at this point in history. In the view of pragmatists, poll numbers demonstrate that Obama won the elections—and will continue to enjoy success as a leader—by forming a coalition that joins progressives and evangelical voters. The decision to give a high profile to Pastor Rick Warren at the inauguration reflected the intent of the new administration to follow a pragmatist course with outreach to the evangelical community.

Berlet agrees that outreach to evangelical voters is important, if progressives expect to use the mandate for change represented by the presidential election to move their agenda forward. However, in his view the pragmatist stance concedes too much to the religious right: it allows the right (and its centrist-to-moderately right evangelical supporters) to frame the discussion.

In Berlet’s view, before we talk about building a progressive coalition that holds together evangelicals and progressive groups, “we need clearer criteria to determine who we seek to work with”:

If one wants to work in coalition with Christian evangelicals, perhaps it would be better to start by talking with Progressive Idealists, the religious left, and a variety women’s rights and gay rights activist groups to line up our support. Then together we can analyze the source of the ideological opposition (in this case the Christian Right) and develop a counter-frame. Finally, we can reach out to moderate and mildly conservative evangelicals using our counter-frame in a way that emphasizes common interests.

A counter-frame: as Berlet notes, social thinkers including Erving Goffman, Charlotte Ryan, and George Lakoff have argued persuasively that, when we allow our opponents to frame a discussion, we lose. We lose more than we gain when we permit the opposition to provide the terms that frame how we see our challenges and what we decide to do about those challenges. In Posner’s view, “[t]hat’s what the Christian Right has foisted on Democratic centrists—a rigged frame.”

Posner notes several debilitating consequences of the progressive pragmatist move to the center. One is that many liberal Democrats have allowed themselves to be convinced that “there is something inherently unseemly about advocating for reproductive or LGBT rights,” because continued advocacy for these causes in the face of fierce opposition from the Christian right prolongs the culture wars.

Another consequence of permitting the Christian right to provide the frame within which progressives approach issues like reproductive and gay rights is that we are led to see these issues as “problems” to be solved, rather than as challenges in which human rights are at stake. The alliance with evangelicals results in a weakening of the rhetoric of rights—human rights—in the Democratic party, such that progressives begin avoiding the very phrase that provides moral underpinning to their progressive causes.

As in a pre-election Huffington Post article on this theme, Berlet notes that people who expect to be taken seriously as moral agents cannot reduce human rights to political commodities. When we submit human rights issues to pragmatic considerations that diminish the force of our commitment to rights, we yield valuable moral ground—moral ground necessary to any viable program of progressive change:

. . . [I]it is clear that strong Democratic Party positions that stress community values as intertwined with social justice trump Christian Right campaigns against abortion and gay rights, even within the evangelical community. There is no need for Democrats to compromise on issues that reflect basic human rights. And to do so is morally wrong, even if it is pragmatically expedient.

And: “. . . [S]ince Reagan, the numbers do not suggest that compromise with the Christian Right even makes pragmatic sense—much less moral sense.”

And so, where to go with this analysis? Not to the White House, it appears: as I have repeatedly argued on this blog, even if Mr. Obama is attuned to the moral dimensions of these human rights struggles (and I continue to believe he is), the president is clearly persuaded by his pragmatist advisors that taking the moral stand in the struggles will hurt him politically. And, as I’ve noted, nothing compels someone who has made promises to combat injustice done to others to deliver on those promises. Other than that person’s conscience that is . . . .

No, as the opening section of this posting notes, I have come to the conclusion that the moral backbone of progressive change in the Obama era is going to have to come from progressive groups themselves, and not from the president and his advisors. Chip Berlet ends up at the same point:

This is more than just a squabble over who among the religious gets to claim the name progressive, it’s a struggle over whether or not the Obama administration will follow the path blazed by community organizers seeking social, economic, and gender justice. This will not happen unless there is sufficient pressure on them to do so. Social movements pull political movements toward them, not the other way around.

As Jacob Weisberg recently noted at Slate, Mr. Obama “sees the middle ground as high ground.” But this is a pre-moral conviction, when the moral insight one attains through listening and dialogue does not translate into solid moral commitment—commitment to do something in the face of injustice, when one can do something:

This is a wonderful instinct that is bettering America's image and making domestic politics more civil. But listening is not a moral stance, and elevating it to one only highlights the question of what Obama really stands for. The consensus-seeker repudiates torture but doesn't want to investigate it; he endorses gay equality but not in marriage or the military; he thinks government's role is to do whatever works. I continue to suspect him of harboring deeper convictions.

We are at a tipping-point moment in the framing of issues like the human rights of gay human beings as moral issues. For a number of decades now, neoconservatives and their religious apologists have succeeded in capturing the term “moral,” particularly when it comes to issues of gender, sexual orientation, and reproductive rights.

Now, the right’s exclusive ownership of the term “moral” is being hotly contested not only by progressives, but by the center itself. In the case of human rights for gay persons, two cultural developments in the waning part of the 20th century and the opening of the 21st century have radically shifted our culture’s perception of where the moral frame should be placed.

The first of these is the growing awareness of the public at large of the humanity of—and thus, the indefensible brutality of discrimination against—gay and lesbian persons. Too many of us have made our lives and stories public now, for the right to continue its malevolent depiction of us as sub-human and perverse—to continue that depiction successfully, that is. We are brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, co-workers, those sitting in the pew next to everyone else: we have a face, and that face does not correspond to the demonic one the right wishes the public to see, when it smears homosexuals.

The second important development shifting the center’s perception of the moral frame in discussions of gay people and gay human rights at this point in history is the increasingly evident moral bankruptcy of the political and religious right. People who have exposed themselves as immoral agents have a hard time convincing others, when they claim to be spokespersons for morality.

As Stuart Whatley notes in a HuffPo discussion today, conservatives' current strategy of making same-sex marriage the centerpiece of their challenge to Obama is not without significant risk—and that risk lies precisely in what the public at large, the center, may well come to think of the morality of this political strategy:

If conservatives wish to elevate their fight against same-sex marriage to primus inter pares without a smarting backlash, they will have to somehow justify this exclusive denial of rights as something other than hidebound bigotry. Indeed, a mis-tackle of this issue could very well transform the soi disant “moral majority” into an immoral minority, considering that an increased percentage of people will consider such a position to be driven more by social sadism than personal righteousness.

Ideas have consequences, as neoconservative thinkers have never tired of reminding us, echoing Richard M. Weaver. Faced with the waning power of the religious and political right to define the moral center, progressives may well decide to continue yielding moral ground to the right by “reaching out” and broadening the progressive center—even if this means muting progressive rhetoric about and commitment to human rights.

If progressive pragmatists choose to continue down that road now, under the Obama administration, however, there will be some pragmatic consequences to their decision. While it may be true that nothing can compel me to behave morally even when I see clearly the moral thing to do in a situation, persistent morally obtuse behavior on the part of leaders who claim to be all about progressive change siphons off my energy for progressive change, when pragmatist politicians finally declare the time is now right to move ahead.

Though my moral commitment to change in a number of important areas of contemporary culture—including the areas of gender and race—will not wane even when I detect moral betrayals and moral waffling in leaders in those areas, my energy for solidarity and for commitment does shift. Moral betrayal and moral waffling among leaders committed to change grounded in moral values impede my willingness (and, I suspect, that of others) to commit myself and act.

Ideas have consequences. Not very long ago, a friend of mine looked for the second time in a few years at an opening with the Sojourners organization founded by Jim Wallis. Wallis is at the center of the movement to join the energies of progressives and evangelicals. Wallis has also been notably resistant to gay rights, for much of his career.

My friend happens to be gay and in a long-term relationship. Before he looked at this job seriously, I advised him that, were I in his shoes, I would find out what Sojourners says and does about gay people and gay rights. Does Sojourners, for instance, have a policy of providing partner benefits for a gay spouse or gay partner?

On both occasions when a position at Sojourners opened, my friend took my advice. He asked. He was told both times that there are no partner benefits. The first time my friend approached Sojourners was before Obama’s election. The second time was after the election.

It appears that nothing has changed at Sojourners following Mr. Obama’s election—not, that is, for gay people. And, as a result, I find my energy for an organization in whose goals I wholeheartedly believe, and to which I have offered support in the past, significantly diminished.

Ideas have consequences. Lack of commitment to human rights for everyone on the part of groups claiming to stand for progressive moral change siphons off energy for the very changes those groups advocate. My second story has to do with the Notre Dame events last week.

Shortly before the president came to Notre Dame, I received an email request from Catholics United for the Common Good, asking if I would give financial support for an ad to appear at the time of the Notre Dame speech, which would underscore the widespread support the president has among Catholics.

Normally, I would have clicked through the menu of choices and made a donation—strait as our financial circumstances are now. After all, I am passionately committed to broadening the Catholic witness about issues of justice and peace. But I am committed to doing so precisely because I believe that groups committed to human rights deserve my support. It is that very same passionate commitment that compels me to distance myself from the Catholic church today, insofar as it betrays its clear witness to human rights in its teachings and its behavior.

When I got the recent appeal from Catholics United, I ignored it. I did so after deliberation. In moral decisions, one must think things through and weigh choices carefully. I do not break solidarity lightly with groups to whose causes I’m committed. I try to build into my moral decision-making checks and balances, including checks against my own rash judgment or propensity to act out of pique when I’m angry, hurt, off-kilter.

After careful reflection, I decided to ignore this appeal from an organization whose goals I support, for a cause very important to me. After all, only last Friday—a day before the Catholics United ad reached me—I noted in a posting on this blog that Frances Kissling recently called Catholics United to get their statement on the Harry Knox story, and was told they would get back to her.

I noted then that the Catholics United website contained no statement I could find about the attack of the Catholic right on Harry Knox. I’ve just visited it again. If any such statement is there—or has been made—I have not found it.

Ideas have consequences. Groups, including political coalitions, that claim to be acting on moral principle, but which have conspicuous blind spots about some key moral principles (e.g., the claim to human rights of gay persons), undermine my energy for collaborative action. In a world full of needs and causes, I decide to commit myself selectively. I have to do so. I have only so much energy and so much passion.

The energy and passion feeding the election of Barack Obama to the presidency have been extraordinary. The energy level behind the new president remains high.

I predict, however, that it will gradually diminish and slowly wane—and not only among gay citizens—if the president continues to listen to his progressive pragmatist advisors to the exclusion of his progressive idealist supporters. In coming months, we may see an increasing selectivity among the president’s supporters about offering support to his platform—particularly as he continues to back-step on his promises to address injustice to gay and lesbian Americans.