Hijacking the Civil Rights Legacy

Eugene Rivers and Kenneth Johnson, in a Weekly Standard editorial (Hat Tip: Christian Mind), show how the gay rights movement is "hijacking the civil rights legacy." (The Senate has already voted on the marriage amendment--this may be old news--but the issue is not going away.)

The experience of blacks in the United States is unparalleled for its oppression, and the courage of leaders going back as least as Sojourner Truth who have stood for justice for African-Americans is part of the great story of American history. Progress in civil rights has been encouraging, though the issue remains complex and difficult.

The homosexual experience is being cast in civil rights terms, but it is simply not parallel to it. Nevertheless, as Rivers and Johnson write,

"This strategy [tying the homosexual movement to a civil rights agenda], though cynical, has enormous strategic utility. For what reasonable, fair-minded American could object to a movement that conjures up images of Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellows campaigners for racial justice facing down dogs and fire hoses? Who is prepared to risk being labeled a bigot for opposing same-sex marriage?"

Earlier this week a U.S. Senator said something to this effect (having heard it on the radio while driving, I may not have the words exactly right, but this is close):

"I fear that the Defense of Marriage amendment is an attempt to write discrimination into the Constitution."

Such language of fear and discrimination shows the success of the gay movement in placing their agenda into a civil rights context.

There was a time in history when the word "discrimination" had a clear reference, because there was only one serious question on the table: racial discrimination. Yet even then it was a shorthand term: "discrimination" was short for "racial discrimination," which in careful analysis really meant "discrimination on the basis of irrelevant factors."

We discriminate in many things all day long, every day. I'm writing the first draft of this entry on an airplane. Apparently someone with a name like mine has a checkered history, so I'm one of those lucky travelers who has to go through a special clearance procedure before I can board, to make sure I'm not that questionable person. If I really were that person, I would be denied boarding. That's discrimination.

I'm quite sure the crew on the flight deck has special training and skills to fly this aircraft. I wouldn't want anybody else up there. That's discrimination.

The U.S. Constitution has had discrimination written into it from the beginning--so I can't imagine why this Senator was so afraid of it. Our country will not allow a naturalized citizen to become President, or non-citizens to vote, and many more things. That's discrimination.

A few decades ago it was not necessary to speak the full phrase ("discrimination on the basis of irrelevant factors") to be understood correctly. But in the course of time the shorthand form (just "discrimination") has lost its meaning.

The horrifying evil of racial discrimination was never just that it prevented certain people from taking certain jobs, living in some communities, riding in the front of the bus. It's that the reason for that exclusion was utterly irrelevant to such persons' worthiness or qualifications. We know now that African-Americans carry no racial handicap to effectiveness in any job except perhaps for playing George Washington in the movies. (Note: to cast a white man--a man, no less!--in that role is discrimination, but it's on the basis of relevant factors. Who complains about that?). We also know that aversion to mixed housing and community is not based in any real differences between persons, but only on prejudice.

Discrimination on the basis of relevant character and behavior, on the other hand, has always been supported by every community. (Not convinced? Do we allow every man to run a day care?)

The homosexual experience and agenda and agenda are surely complex, and I would not deny that gays experience some completely undeserved pain. If there is to be discrimination against homosexuals, it ought to be in areas where it is relevant.

God's word makes clear that there are relevant areas for such discrimination. Jesus spoke of marriage as between a man and a woman. The Bible strongly condemns sexual immorality, including the heterosexual kind. There will always be immorality, of course--the question is, will we give it our approval? That's what the gay rights movement is looking for--to sweep all of God's word aside, and to make it more moral to support homosexuality than to question it. That's the purpose, for example, of Gay-Straight Alliances, now in one of ten high schools.

Now let's take this back to the historic American Civil Rights comparison. Has any advocate ever said, "Being black is not immoral!"? Well, it's an absurd thing to say, offensive even to raise as a topic for discussion. (Pardon me for bringing it up, but for the purposes of examining the comparison it seems necessary.) The Civil Rights movement was never about changing morality, but about applying it justly to all persons.

Rivers and Johnson further point out,

Whatever wrongs individuals have suffered because some Americans fail in the basic moral obligation to love the sinner, even while hating the sin, there has never been an effort to create a subordinate class subject to exploitation based on "sexual orientation."

and,

Why should an institution designed for the reproduction of civil society and the rearing of children in a moral environment in which their interests are given pride of place be refashioned to accommodate relationships integrated around intrinsically non-marital sexual conduct?

We could add, why does the agenda also include attempts to silence disagreement? Ask whether disagreement with homosexual behavior can safely be voiced on most college campuses in North America, for example, or why a pastor in Canada was censured recently. If this Senator is so concerned about the Constitution, is he also concerned about the First Amendment?

And again, if civil rights are the issue, what happens when same-sex "marriage" steamrolls civil rights in other areas of life? A WORLD Magazine article shows the likely effect of increasing acceptance of gay "marriage," as noted by supporters as well as opponents of the practice:

In May, the Becket Fund published a series of scholarly papers generated from a December 2005 conference at which First Amendment scholars and lawyers—several of whom favor or are undecided on gay marriage—weighed in on a series of critical questions: If same-sex marriage is the law of the land, can government then force traditional religious groups to treat same-sex and different-sex marriages exactly alike? Can the government punish groups that resist by denying them government benefits—including tax exemption? What religious freedom defenses can be exerted and which will succeed?

. . .

The Becket Fund's panel could hardly be said to have an anti-gay-marriage bias. And yet its findings on the questions at hand showed same-sex marriage sharply curtailing, and in some cases wiping out, the religious freedom of its opponents in spheres ranging from taxation, charitable giving, housing, public accommodation, and employment to licensure, professional practice, education, and equal access. . . .

That's because the term marriage and its legal emanations echo throughout the canons of American law, Mr. Picarello said. "Once you change the definition of marriage, you don't change one law, you change thousands of laws."

Consider Boston Catholic Charities, denied a license for adoption services because of its refusal to place children in homes of same-sex "marriages:"

In March 2006, Boston Catholic Charities, after a century of service to needy children, announced that it was getting out of the adoption business. It is worth noting that the state's encroachment on a religious charity—and by extension on the welfare of orphans—had nothing to do with the agency's receipt of public funds. The case also showcased the rigid stance of the state against providing a religious exemption—a stance that endures today.

. . .

[M]ost of the Becket Fund conference scholars agree that it is likely a "when" and not an "if"—American society may undergo a fundamental shift with respect to religious freedom. First, in their long quest for complete social acceptance, homosexuals will use the club of the state to beat back religious dissent.

Genuine, historic liberties are being lost, and government-supported censorship is taking their place. For example:

The attorney general of New Jersey recently backed officials at William Patterson University after a non-faculty employee objected to receiving a mass e-mail inviting people to see gay-themed movies. The school disciplined the employee for having engaged in harassment because of her use of a single word, "perversions," to describe the content of the films.

First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion--the absolute bedrock of American freedoms!--are being trumped by a supposed civil right that is newly minted, opposed by the great majority of Americans, cynically and falsely cast as parallel to the African-American struggle, and an attempt to place character and behavior as being irrelevant to our choices. It's a great PR move. I can't say anything else good about it.

Civil Rights Abuses Promoted By the "Gay Rights" Movement

Hijacking the Language of Pathology

Postscript

Posted: Wed - June 7, 2006 at 01:55 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Hijacking the Civil Rights Legacy

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson