Good People

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

The above is an old adage, usually attributed to Edmund Burke, a famous 18th Century political philosopher, lawyer and politician. And few would disagree with its message, regardless of political affiliation, because everyone understands that evil thrives when good people absent themselves from confronting it. The problem, as always, lies in the details.

For the last four decades, we have witnessed the growth of a religious and political movement in this country that has sought to encourage allegedly “good people of faith” to participate in politics in order to confront what they perceive to be the evils that exist in modern society. That movement, in large part has been driven by fear: fear of the other.

The others who they blame for society’s ills and who they claim must be opposed and defeated if America is to be reclaimed as a Christian Nation, number a vast array of diverse groups, including liberals, atheistic scientists, feminists, abortionists and secular humanists.

Yet, perhaps no one group has been so consistently vilified by the Christian Right, blamed for the decline of American society, and portrayed as a threat to “American values” as have gays and lesbians. To the leaders of the Christian Right, gays have been the principal scapegoat, and demonization of the LBGT community has been the primary tool which they have used to rally support for their political agenda. Under the guise which casts their bigotry in a “Hate the sin, Love the sinner” message, they have fostered a climate of increasing hatred and violence against anyone who is, or who is perceived to be, homosexual, bisexual or transsexual. As Chris Hedges writes:

(cont.)

On the morning of March 8 in Sioux Center, Iowa, a bus parked outside a hotel was found covered with anti-gay slurs, along with a hate-filled message on a piece of cardboard reading: “God does not love feary fags.”

The bus was one of two that were transporting some 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, along with supporters, on the start of a two-month trip to 32 Christian colleges with policies that discriminate against those who are not heterosexuals. The Equality Ride, as it is known, organized by Soulforce, had first traveled to Sioux Center to visit Dordt College, a school that counts “sexual activity with someone of the same gender” as possible grounds for “an employee’s discharge or a student’s dismissal.”

The harassment is not new. During a similar series of protests last year, someone in Cleveland, Tenn., scrawled “fags-mobile” on the side of the bus. Members of the Equality Ride have been arrested for trespassing, at the West Point military academy and elsewhere, and greeted at many of their stops with active hostility. The night before the buses were spray-painted with hateful slogans, three vehicles circled the hotel where the activists were staying to harass those inside.

The website has more on the ride, including pictures of the bus graffiti. But what is important is not this specific incident, or any other recent examples of public intolerance, but the seismic shift in public mood in much of the United States, a shift largely engineered by the radical Christian right. The Christian right has begun to strip gays and lesbians of their constitutional rights and render them second-class citizens. The gay rights movement, which made many gains over the past couple of decades, is reeling backward. And the mounting persecution of gays and lesbians is ominous not only for them but for the rest of society. […]

… The methods that will finally sever [gays] and their supporters from a Christian America are often left unmentioned, but the rhetoric makes clear that there will not be a place for them. Gays and lesbians, like other enemies of Christ, are not fully human. They are “unnatural.” And preachers in the movement argue that if America does not act soon to eradicate homosexual behavior, God will punish the nation.

I beg to differ on only one small point with the analysis of the inimitable Mr. Hedges. All too often, at rallies and conferences attended by members of the Religious Right, many speakers are not shy about what they see as the ultimate solution for the problem gays pose to their vision of a Christian America. Dr. Paul Cameron is an individual whose research James Dobson’s Family Research Council and other Christian Right organizations have frequently cited as support for their stereotypical and bigoted propaganda against gays (e.g., labeling them as more likely to be pedophiles who have sex with their own children). At a 1985 meeting of the notorious Conservative Political Action Conference (i.e., CPAC, the same organization whose attendees this year cheered on Ann Coulter’s “faggot joke” about John Edwards) Dr. Cameron had this message to impart to his fellow Christians in the audience:

“Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.”

And Paul Cameron is not alone in his belief that the extermination of LBGT individuals is a legitimate option. Many, many religious right leaders, including some conservative politicians have remarked that under biblical law, the same law they hope someday to impose on all Americans, the mandatory punishment for homosexuality will be the death penalty.

“The Bible is clear on moral issues that are culture-killers: homosexuality, homosexual marriage, and abortion,” says [Gary] DeMar, who is closely allied with D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, where he frequently speaks.

While DeMar insists that homosexuals wouldn’t be rounded up and systematically executed under a “reconstructed” government, he does believe that the occasional execution of “sodomites” would serve society well, because “the law that requires the death penalty for homosexual acts effectively drives the perversion of homosexuality underground, back into the closet.”

Mr. Demar is hardly the only person to advocate this position. Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore (of Ten Commandments fame), in a 2002 legal opinion which denied a lesbian custody of her three children, wrote that homosexuality is so “heinous” and inherently “evil” that laws authorizing the execution of those who choose a “homosexual lifestyle” would be a good thing:

“The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle.”

This vision of state sponsored genocide is a goal that many who consider themselves to be “good people” espouse and which they are actively seeking to bring to fruition within our collective lifetimes. Why? Because they have convinced themselves that homosexuality is the greatest evil, and the greatest danger to their way of life. That fact that gays and lesbians are no more of a threat to their families than anyone else, and far less a threat than most, does not reach past the fear that has been drummed into them by those who would exploit their prejudices for political gain:

These attacks mask a sinister agenda that has nothing to do with sexuality. It has to do with power. The radical Christian right — the most dangerous mass movement in American history — has built a binary worldview of command and submission wherein male leaders, who cannot be questioned and claim to speak for God, are in control and all others must follow. Any lifestyle outside the traditional model of male and female is a threat to this hierarchical male power structure. Women who do not depend on men for their identity and their sexuality, who live outside a male power relationship, challenge this pervasive cult of masculinity, as do men who find tenderness and love with other men as equals. The lifestyle of gays and lesbians is intolerable to the Christian right because its existence is a threat to the movement’s chain of command, one they insist was ordained by God.

This hypermasculinity, which crushes the independence and self-expression of women, is a way for men in the movement to compensate for the curtailing of their own independence, their blind obedience to church authorities and the calls for sexual restraint. The images of Jesus often show him with thick muscles, clutching a sword. Christian men are portrayed as powerful warriors. […] Jerry Falwell, in a New Yorker interview, said Christ was not a gentle-looking, willowy man: “Christ was a man with muscles,” he insisted. Falwell and Gibson see real men, godly men, as powerful, able to endure physical pain and suffering without complaint. Jesus, like God, has to be a real man, a man who dominates through force. The language of the movement is filled with metaphors about the use of excessive force and violence against God’s enemies.

Yet, as Hedges points out, the leaders of the religious right mask their terrible agenda with the illusion that they are merely seeking to eliminate “special rights” for gays, and protect their families and marriages. It is a political strategy that over the last thirty years has slowly chipped away at the legitimate struggle of gays and lesbians for tolerance, acceptance and equal protection under the law:

The Rev. Mel White, who founded Soulforce and is one of our country’s most important if unacknowledged civil rights leaders, has spent most of his life, since coming out as a gay man, mounting nonviolent protests against these “Christian” bigots. But he and most gays and lesbians who resist usually resist alone.

“They [the Christian right] want to end homosexuality in America,” White told me, “and by doing that one step at a time, first the federal marriage amendment and then comes no adoption, no service in the military, the restatement of the sodomy laws and driving us back into our closets, or worse. They do not want to compromise, but they begin with compromise, after compromise, after compromise.”

So, what are we, who also believe ourselves to be “good people,” to do? What are we to do in the face of such a blatant and unambiguous assault on our fellow human beings, people who are denounced and discriminated against merely because their sexuality doesn’t neatly fit into the dominant heterosexual paradigm which the Religious Right would make the ultimate litmus test of whether you or I deserve a “right to life?” Well, perhaps we can start by confronting the bigots and their stereotypical attitudes about LBGT people in our own families, our own circles of friends and in our own communities, as these good people, to their great credit, recently did:

TROY — Erin Davies thought the plastic-wrapped envelope on her windshield was a parking ticket. Her heart dropped when she saw what was written on it: “Hero.”

“You are an inspiration,” said the letter inside, which included a $5 bill. “… I would give more if I could afford it.”

The writer was one of many people touched by Davies’ courage since she discovered someone had tagged the words “fAg” and “u r gay” in red spray paint on her Volkswagen Beetle.

The 29-year-old, openly gay for years, could have cleaned the paint and peeled off the rainbow sticker she believes provoked it. Instead, the Sage Graduate School student decided to showcase the defaced Beetle to raise awareness about homophobia.

On Monday, with the school’s permission, she drove it onto the Troy campus’ main quad. About 50 supporters with signs and rainbow flags rallied around her. Then they paraded around the neighborhood behind her car.

That’s all it takes, really. Standing up for our LGBT brothers and sisters when they need us. Even small things matter. Attend a rally in support of gay rights, write a letter to the editor in support of gay marriage or simply tell your next door neighbor that his faggot jokes aren’t funny and that you don’t want to hear them from him anymore.

Make the people in your world, the one in which you live, aware that you do not tolerate acts of violence and intimidation against fellow human beings, people who are just like us, no better, no worse, no different. Do this, and you will encourage other people to act on their beliefs, rather than standing by in uneasy silence while a minority of Christian fascists preach their gospel of hatred and violence. Do this, and you can change the world.

For it is not your beliefs, no matter how noble or compassionate, that make you a good person. It is the actions you take to demonstrate those beliefs to others, which are critical. It is those acts of love and kindness and justice which define you.

Let me close with a quote from another long dead political philosopher, Marcus Aurelius: