Long Overdue Rant
Nov. 5th, 2006 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
artyartieTwo measures on this year's Colorado ballot have prompted this long overdue rant. For those of you who don't know me in person or haven't yet guessed, I'm very liberal, and often jokingly refer to myself as a liberal of the "pinko commie bastard sort." So there's a lot of liberal anger behind the cut, and how that ties in with my faith, eccentric as it is. I know I have friends of a wide range of ideologies-beliefs, and I hope this doesn't offend or anger anyone on the other end of the spectrum. It might be better not to click.
There are two measures on the Colorado ballot this year - one to amend our constitution to define marriage as "one man, one woman," and the other to have a limited 'dometic partner' access for same sex couples. I wholeheartedly voted no on the former, at the latter - it just made me sad and angry.
As a straight single woman it might seem strange that opposition to gay marriage angers me as much as it does. Trust me, as a liberal, I get worked over a lot of stuff - the environment, access to health care, women's rights, etc. But these ballot measures just triggered a lot of latent rants about the subject and a lot of what angers me about the religious right.
Someone was shocked to hear me describe myself as a progressive Christian, but if we have people self-identifying themselves as conservative Christians, I think it's an applicable label. I admit, I've wrestled with the issue, whether I should just take the step into Unitarianism, but my tradition, the Episcopalian Church, has a strong hold on me. As different as my beliefs can be, I just feel home here, and I feel the marginalized Christian left doesn't need anymore deserters.
The Episcopalian Church has been wrestling with gender and sexuality for some time now. We have female priests and bishops, though this nearly split the church apart. Currently, we're wrestlign with openly gay priests and bishops, as well as blessing same-sex marriages. We've had parishes break off from their dioceses, the Archbishop of Canterbury is happy with us at all, and there is serious talk of schism, though we seem to keep pushing it off. I'm extraordinarily proud of the courage it takes to affirm the humanity and grace of all memebers of all communion, no matter whom they love.
What angers me about the pushes against equal rights for marriage is the way it's presented as a "values" issue. I'm sorry, but something mentioned perhaps all of five times in the Bible, with most of those incidents in Leviticus, is not a "values" issue. That would be, oh, taking care of the widows, orphans, and the other marginalized people. That would be truly taking our stewardship of creation seriously, especially when we have handled it so badly. That would be working to end predatory lending practices that prey on the most vulnerable. That would be ensuring the sickest members of society could see a doctor, and not live without fear of being dropped from their insurance rolls, if they even had it. Yes, my faith is driven by a desire for peace and justice, I'll admit it without shame. For me, that call, that God's preference is for the marginalized and opressed, is clear. We *are not called* to be the ones to opress other people.
And that's what all the anti-gay-marriage measures are about. It is about denying an entire set of people the right to marry whom they love, to see them in the hospital, to make decisions for their beloved spouses, to adopt children in need of loving homes and raise families. The thought of a Constitutional amendment on this frightens me so much - The United States of America, founded on the beliefs of freedom, albiet for a few, now enshrining a statute taking those precious freedoms away. Where would we go next? Denying marriage to infertile couples, since hey, marriage is only for procreating anyway? Denying marriage to older couples and people who didn't want to have kids for the same reasons?
Christianity should be about so much more than a crusade against same-sex couples that have been together for years, even decades, who simply want to have the same rights as opposite-sex marriage. To me, it seems like the greatest theft, and we've done it to ourselves. Ideally, we should simply have the government perform civil unions for couples, no matter their gender, and have the marriages themselves performed in the church. So us wacky Episcopalians could go on and bless the unions, and other churches wouldn't have to. Problem solved.
In the end, it comes down to how we act on our faith. Religious faith has motivated some truly courageous and noble people - Martin Luther King, Boenhoffer, Wilberforce. But it has also been used to justify the very things these brave people spoke against - slavery and extreme anti-Semetism. If we started embracing all the Bible's teaching on sexuality, well, we wouldn't have to worry about rape anymore. Just marry the girl off to her attacker if she screamed, and if she didn't, well, just stone her along with her rapist. Problem solved?
It is very hard, for me, to justify stripping anyone of their humanity, much less because a handful of verses in my sacred text had issues with two men together. Note, there is nothing about two women, if we get down to it. But this stripping of humanity can go so much further - all the way to murder. I do not want to imply that anyone who opposes gay marriage would gladly stone them to death, but it contributes to a climate where someone hateful enough could do it.
Matthew Sheppard was killed when I was in college, and the Sunday afterwards, our priest read a letter on his murder from our presiding bishop. Afterwards, I could barely get through the prayers of the people, I was sobbing for this Wyoming boy, just about my age, a Eucharistic minister at his church, just like me, who was pistol-whipped and left to die because people couldn't stand who he was.
Maybe that's why this issue is so personal for me, the memory of that Sunday morning. Maybe that's why the second measure, that halfhearted effort, seemed more a concession than any kind of victory. Maybe that's why the "uproar" over the NJ verdict angered me so much. It's because religious faith has been made so bitterly political, that our biases and fears can become enshrined into law, that I get so angry about it. But in the end, all I have to fight with is my voice and my vote, and eccentric, otherwise quiet faith, that one day we'll recognize and cherish the holiness of all of God's children, no matter whom they love.
There are two measures on the Colorado ballot this year - one to amend our constitution to define marriage as "one man, one woman," and the other to have a limited 'dometic partner' access for same sex couples. I wholeheartedly voted no on the former, at the latter - it just made me sad and angry.
As a straight single woman it might seem strange that opposition to gay marriage angers me as much as it does. Trust me, as a liberal, I get worked over a lot of stuff - the environment, access to health care, women's rights, etc. But these ballot measures just triggered a lot of latent rants about the subject and a lot of what angers me about the religious right.
Someone was shocked to hear me describe myself as a progressive Christian, but if we have people self-identifying themselves as conservative Christians, I think it's an applicable label. I admit, I've wrestled with the issue, whether I should just take the step into Unitarianism, but my tradition, the Episcopalian Church, has a strong hold on me. As different as my beliefs can be, I just feel home here, and I feel the marginalized Christian left doesn't need anymore deserters.
The Episcopalian Church has been wrestling with gender and sexuality for some time now. We have female priests and bishops, though this nearly split the church apart. Currently, we're wrestlign with openly gay priests and bishops, as well as blessing same-sex marriages. We've had parishes break off from their dioceses, the Archbishop of Canterbury is happy with us at all, and there is serious talk of schism, though we seem to keep pushing it off. I'm extraordinarily proud of the courage it takes to affirm the humanity and grace of all memebers of all communion, no matter whom they love.
What angers me about the pushes against equal rights for marriage is the way it's presented as a "values" issue. I'm sorry, but something mentioned perhaps all of five times in the Bible, with most of those incidents in Leviticus, is not a "values" issue. That would be, oh, taking care of the widows, orphans, and the other marginalized people. That would be truly taking our stewardship of creation seriously, especially when we have handled it so badly. That would be working to end predatory lending practices that prey on the most vulnerable. That would be ensuring the sickest members of society could see a doctor, and not live without fear of being dropped from their insurance rolls, if they even had it. Yes, my faith is driven by a desire for peace and justice, I'll admit it without shame. For me, that call, that God's preference is for the marginalized and opressed, is clear. We *are not called* to be the ones to opress other people.
And that's what all the anti-gay-marriage measures are about. It is about denying an entire set of people the right to marry whom they love, to see them in the hospital, to make decisions for their beloved spouses, to adopt children in need of loving homes and raise families. The thought of a Constitutional amendment on this frightens me so much - The United States of America, founded on the beliefs of freedom, albiet for a few, now enshrining a statute taking those precious freedoms away. Where would we go next? Denying marriage to infertile couples, since hey, marriage is only for procreating anyway? Denying marriage to older couples and people who didn't want to have kids for the same reasons?
Christianity should be about so much more than a crusade against same-sex couples that have been together for years, even decades, who simply want to have the same rights as opposite-sex marriage. To me, it seems like the greatest theft, and we've done it to ourselves. Ideally, we should simply have the government perform civil unions for couples, no matter their gender, and have the marriages themselves performed in the church. So us wacky Episcopalians could go on and bless the unions, and other churches wouldn't have to. Problem solved.
In the end, it comes down to how we act on our faith. Religious faith has motivated some truly courageous and noble people - Martin Luther King, Boenhoffer, Wilberforce. But it has also been used to justify the very things these brave people spoke against - slavery and extreme anti-Semetism. If we started embracing all the Bible's teaching on sexuality, well, we wouldn't have to worry about rape anymore. Just marry the girl off to her attacker if she screamed, and if she didn't, well, just stone her along with her rapist. Problem solved?
It is very hard, for me, to justify stripping anyone of their humanity, much less because a handful of verses in my sacred text had issues with two men together. Note, there is nothing about two women, if we get down to it. But this stripping of humanity can go so much further - all the way to murder. I do not want to imply that anyone who opposes gay marriage would gladly stone them to death, but it contributes to a climate where someone hateful enough could do it.
Matthew Sheppard was killed when I was in college, and the Sunday afterwards, our priest read a letter on his murder from our presiding bishop. Afterwards, I could barely get through the prayers of the people, I was sobbing for this Wyoming boy, just about my age, a Eucharistic minister at his church, just like me, who was pistol-whipped and left to die because people couldn't stand who he was.
Maybe that's why this issue is so personal for me, the memory of that Sunday morning. Maybe that's why the second measure, that halfhearted effort, seemed more a concession than any kind of victory. Maybe that's why the "uproar" over the NJ verdict angered me so much. It's because religious faith has been made so bitterly political, that our biases and fears can become enshrined into law, that I get so angry about it. But in the end, all I have to fight with is my voice and my vote, and eccentric, otherwise quiet faith, that one day we'll recognize and cherish the holiness of all of God's children, no matter whom they love.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 08:08 pm (UTC)go christian left! ^_^
no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 08:17 pm (UTC)For me, that call, that God's preference is for the marginalized and opressed, is clear. We *are not called* to be the ones to opress other people.
Amen.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 08:52 pm (UTC)The thing that gets to me second-most about the anti-gay-marriage arguments (after the sheer bastard totalitarian psychopathic bigoted selfrighteous assholery) is that it presumes, even presupposes, that marriage is a religious institution.
It isn't. That's why we *have* civil marriages. No one has to get married in a church. For...how long now? A century? More? We've been just as able to get married solely by the state as not. In fact, you can have all the church wedding you want, but without that lovely, state-sponsored marriage license it means nothing. The precedent, legally speaking, is that the church has no vote on what the state calls marriage.
Why does this bother me? It may have something to do with the fact that my parents were not married in a church, or a synagogue, or a mosque, or any other religious building. It may have something to do with the fact that no religious person (except my uncle) was even there, much less officiating. It may have something to do with the fact that my mother is Christian while my father is Jewish. It may have something to do with the fact that my mother's mother is Lutheran while her father is Catholic. It may, just maybe, have something to do with the fact that, if we start defining a valid marriage by what conservative religious groups approve of, I and my mother will both be illegitimate really damn fast.
It definitely has something to do with the fact that my family definitely believes in our right to marry whoever the hell we want.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 09:25 pm (UTC)I join you in your anger against the extreme religious right. It's ironic that the scandals that have cropped up recently have involved some of these "righteous" people.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-05 10:14 pm (UTC)I didn't vote early, but on Tuesday I plan to vote NO on the marriage amendment. To me, this is a blatant attempt to impose the religious beliefs of one group of people - even if I belong to that group - onto another, which in my mind is absolutely wrong. You can't ban people from choosing who they love any more than you can ban them from believing in one god or another.
My family in Denver, whom I love dearly, will be voting for the amendment, and will likely be extremely disappointed in me when they find out I didn't. A few months ago, when there was a petition going around on the issue, my cousin joked that if I didn't sign it, I couldn't have dinner. He didn't press the point, but if he had, I wouldn't have gotten any lunch that day.
I agree with everything you've said here (except that I know nothing about the Episcopalian church, sadly). Always glad to read your elegant opinion on anything. :)
I'm with you 100 percent...
Date: 2006-11-06 02:13 am (UTC)Actually, it's downright f**king hilarious.
What really chaps me, is that it says in the bible to "Love Thy Neighbor".
I have a theory that people are taking that phrase more literally than it was intended.
Love all others like you love yourself, is a core principality in the teachings of the bible. It is taught at nearly every christian church.
Which sort of makes you think, if someone is willing to dip to such lows as to hate another human being for something as trivial as sexuality, it sort of says a bit about how they view themselves.
Then again, I'm no religious, or political scholar. I'm just a man who likes Dr. Pepper...