Month: December 2013

Impacting Indiana for 33 years!

Advance America, in a Sunday bulletin insert offered to churches, lays out what its leaders see as dangers ahead:
» Authorities jailing pastors for preaching against homosexuality.
» Cross-dressing men violating women’s privacy in their restrooms.
» Government forcing business owners to cater to same-sex weddings.
» Schools teaching children that gay marriage is normal.
The flier, put out this fall, argues that the items are “Just Four Dangers of Same-Sex Marriage” that could be on the horizon if Indiana fails to safeguard its traditional marriage definition, which already is contained in state law.

(Indianapolis Star story reprinted 12/13 by the Journal & Courier on page C1)

The flyer was quickly dismissed by “experts.” I’m an expert of sorts, and in the context of the article (“dangers of same-sex marriage”), I’d say the fourth is almost certain to happen in Indiana if Indiana recognizes same-sex marriage, even if there’s no legislative mandate to do it.

The others really are, in varying degrees, either (a) plausible but not consequences of recognizing same-sex marriage or (b) outright implausible in the United States.

Bear in mind that the defeat of HJR-6 does not mean that Hoosiers favor same-sex marriage or that SSM will become law. I likely would vote against it, with mixed feelings, because the second sentence is so vague that it feels like deliberate sabotage of the Resolution by false friends. (This isn’t an accusation of anyone. I don’t know who dreamed up that second sentence, or what they had in mind.)

A statutory prohibition already exists. The way litigation on homosexuality-related laws progress these days, things like the Advance America bulletin insert likely will end up marked as Trial Exhibits in any lawsuit alleging that Hoosiers only approved HJR-6 because they’re bigots with a “bare desire to harm” gays (not to mention that we’re ugly and our mothers dress us funny). That kind of evidence weighs heavily with Justice Kennedy, and he’ll be sure to accuse us of bad stuff in his 5-4 opinion for the majority.

But how about the specific “dangers ahead”?

  1. “Authorities jailing pastors for preaching against homosexuality.” “Jail,” implies crime. Eric Miller of Advance America, a lawyer, knows this. Free Speech remain pretty secure, though the made-up right to sexual expression, free from any stigma, is ascendant. I’d not bet against jail in 50 years, nor would I bet against extreme social and media hostility toward anti-homosexuality preaching in very short order. And there will be preachers so obsessively fixated on this particular sin that they’ll deserve to be held suspect. But jail? I call “bullshit” on this one.
  2. “Cross-dressing men violating women’s privacy in their restrooms.” Not a consequence of same-sex marriage. There are apparently true stories about “gender identity” mismatches with biological sex, and of a school being forced to allow a boy who identifies as a girl to use the girl’s restroom. Weird marks of cultural insanity, to be sure, and of the sort of insanity that would also think same-sex marriage reasonable. But whoever came up with this “danger” was just free associating about the outlandish things sexually troubled people do, not reasoning about consequences of SSM.
  3. “Government forcing business owners to cater to same-sex weddings.” This is a big topic. Lots of stories about this sort of thing from states that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Indiana has no such law. New Mexico bans SSM adheres to a traditional definition of marriage but does have such an anti-discrimination law, and a New Mexico photographer is on her way to SCOTUS appealing her hefty fine for declining to photograph a “commitment ceremony” that couldn’t be a “marriage” precisely because of the state’s non-recognition of SSM. Some Indiana cities and counties, moreover, have banned (maybe more accurate to say “subjected to free-floating flak from do-gooders on Human Relations Commissions if someone complains”) “discrimination based on sexual orientation.” I think it’s highly likely that caterers, photographer, bakeries and the like will be subjected to petty harassment of Human Relations Commissions in some localities if Indiana recognizes same-sex marriage, but those ordinances are relatively toothless.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine Indiana recognizing same-sex marriage without previously or concurrently banning discrimination based on sexual orientation statewide.  Bear that in mind as you look at my precis on some of these three items.

Advance America, despite its Christian pretenses, appears guilty of transgressing the 9th Commandment which, even Protestant Reformers agreed, includes reckless gossip.

But what do you expect from a group whose website boasts that it’s “Celebrating 33 Years of Impacting Indiana!”? What say we give Indiana a high colonic, to thoroughly rinse out 33 years of accumulated Advance America toxins, and call it a day?

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Saturday: 72nd Anniversary of Pearl Harbor bombing.

  1. “Not a Christian view of God”?!
  2. How a new morality crushes the old
  3. From the vault: dubious educational distinction
  4. In praise of snark
  5. Sen. McCarthy’s Poetry Inquisition
  6. [Fill in the Blank], God help us
  7. Memory Eternal, Dad!

Continue reading “Saturday: 72nd Anniversary of Pearl Harbor bombing.” →

Nelson Mandela and St. Nicholas

Certain portions of the right wing are exercised today about anybody having anything nice to say about Nelson Mandela. For instance:

Please STOP making comments about how wonderful Nelson Mandela was. He wasn’t the kind gentle old man the media, yes the media, makes him out to be. You might as well praise Osama bin Laden, Castro or Hitler. Please, read below on what this man did The hero of the anti-apartheid struggle was not the saint we want him to be.

The image of Nelson Mandela as a selfless, humble, freedom fighter turned cheerful, kindly old man, is well established in the West. If there is any international leader on whom we can universally heap praise it is surely he. But get past the halo we’ve placed on him without his permission, and Nelson Mandela had more than a few flaws which deserve attention.

He signed off on the deaths of innocent people, lots of them

(Punctuation or lack thereof in original) After initially calling “bullshit” (because a half-truth is a form of bullshit), I repaired to my treadmill, and as I walked, I thought.

Specifically, I thought about the notion that Nelson Mandela could not be a saint because he ordered the deaths of people. And I thought about who deserves death and who might mistakenly be thought to deserve death.

The forces against which Nelson Mandela fought – and frankly there is no sugar coating that he was a “militant activist” with all that implies – were white Calvinist proponents of apartheid. They were of Dutch ancestry.

In 1990, when Mandela was released from prison, I was a member of the church consisting largely of Dutch Calvinists. And in that era, if not in that exact moment (my memory of the sequence isn’t all that clear), we came under suspicion of harboring similar racist thoughts.

But as I pointed out at the time (and I was actually quoted on All Things Considered one evening, defending my Church in letter or e-mail), the Christian Reformed Church in North America had already condemned apartheid as a “heresy.” The Orthodox Church, which later allowed this sinner into its fold,  has condemned apartheid’s cousin, phyletism, as a heresy.

Coincidentally, today is the feast of St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas is remembered among other things for having opposed the proto-heretic Arius at the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea, from which we got the first draft of the Nicene Creed. Arius denied the divinity of Christ, a doctrine which was not invented at the Council of Nicaea but which was affirmed in the face of the threat posed to Christ’s church by the heretic Arius. At one point in the proceedings (although the story is probably apocryphal), Nicholas became so indignant that he struck Arius in the face.

For this, he was stripped of his rank as Bishop and actually was confined in prison, perhaps with the intention of releasing him after the conclusion of the Council. But as the hagiography has it, key people experienced visions about him, and he was released from prison and returned to the Council, restored to the office of bishop.

Did I mention that this violent opponent of heresy is universally recognized as a saint?

On the wall in my icon corner is an icon of a man with very dark skin and very curly hair. It is the icon of St. Moses the Ethiopian. St. Moses was a violent thief and criminal, and I believe that he was guilty of murder, probably many times over. But he was radically converted, and went on to live an exemplary life. I believe that the story of his life concludes, ironically, with him being killed by a band of violent thiefs and criminals who were attacking the monastery of which he was the Abbot, and whose monks he was trying to protect by interposing his unresisting body.

So, dear right-wing, stop telling half-truths about Nelson Mandela. There was fear of extreme violence, whipped up by him, upon his release from prison in 1990. But he did something much more radical than that: he forgave.

I have no opinion on whether Nelson Mandela is a saint. As I write, I cannot even recall whether he  professed the Christian faith.

But I do know that history is messy, repentance happens, and that Nelson Mandela is a historical figure remembered not for his “militant activism,” but for his role in truth, reconciliation – indeed, “Truth and Reconciliation” – and in moving his country forward dramatically during the last 23 years of his life.

May his memory be eternal!

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.