Same-sex “marriage” (SSM) advocates complain of serious stereotyping in the marriage debate. I’m afraid they’re more right than they realize. Look at this language from the Slacktivist about the Manhattan Declaration. According to the Slacktivist (each of the following is a separately written description, quoted verbatim), we who signed and support the declaration are:
- Right-wing persecuted hegemons
- Reflexively fearful white Christians who have already proven [we] can be easily manipulated by scary stories
- Scared donors.
- Conservative, fearful, anxious, white Christians.
- Scared white Christians.
And we are easily controlled by
- A “money-making machine.”
- A group whose “primary function” is “fundraising.
- A group that “pretends” its media appearances “have something to with advancing its purported agenda of defending America from the scary secular gay abortionists,” when in fact “those media appearances only exist because better name-recognition boosts the rate of return on those quarterly direct-mail solicitations.”
- A fundraising organization whose “main focus . . . is just on fleecing their base,” which is “unable to get competent people to work for them…. notorious for transparent hack-work.”
And more.
This is wrong on the face of it. It’s assigning every signer of the Declaration to one tiny category: we are, each one of us, exactly the same sort of mindless, easily manipulated moron. And scared. And white. Or in other words, “Hey, they all look the same to me.”
It is classic prejudicial stereotyping, as ought to be obvious even without digging deeper into the diversity of the Declaration’s supporters. But since you asked, some of those “scared white Christians” include:
- Most Rev. Peter J. Akinola, Primate, Anglican Church of Nigeria (Abuja, Nigeria)
- Rev. Daniel Delgado, Board of Directors, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; Pastor, Third Day Missions Church (Staten Island, N.Y.)
- Dinesh D’Souza, Writer and Speaker (Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.)
- Dr. Jeanette Hsieh, Executive Vice President and Provost, Trinity International University (Deerfield, Ill.)
- Bishop Harry R. Jackson, Jr., Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church (Beltsville, Md.)
- Rev. William Owens, Chairman, Coalition of African-American Pastors (Memphis, Tenn.)
- Joni Eareckson Tada, Founder and CEO, Joni and Friends International Disability Center (Agoura Hills, Calif.)
- Juan Valdes, Middle and High School Chaplain, Florida Christian School (Miami, Fla.)
- Ravi Zacharias, Founder and Chairman of the Board, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (Norcross, Ga.)
Oh, and I’m on that list, too, and I’m not “reflexively fearful,” I assure you. I’ve given the whole matter a whole lot of thought.
I would never describe gay-rights activists in such stereotypical terms. I disagree with them, but I know that they and we are all human beings. Does the Slacktivist think so, too, or does he consider people like me something less than fully human? What does the evidence here indicate? Who’s displaying prejudice here?
This is no way to conduct a debate.
And to the Slacktivist I ask this question. Whether I have an opinion about what you write, surely matters little to you. I can’t help wondering, though: is this the kind of person you want to be? Is this the way you want to treat other humans? Does it represent your side of the debate the way you think is best? Does it represent you well? This might or might not be who you are; I don’t know. I can hardly believe it’s who you want to be.
When you have the weight of the entire media on your side you don’t need to be polite or rational or have justified your position. In fact, it’s better if you are just the opposite of those things. Finger pointing, accusatory rhetoric and bigotry are more effective.
Well, it’s not like he’s coming out of nowhere with this. In the first page of the Manhattan Declaration it references “resisting tyranny”, believers who both sacrificed their lives and “died bravely”, and uses other emotionally charged words like “combated”, “crusades”, and “costly grace”. On page 8 it specifically condones civil disobedience.
Other rhetoric:
“nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships”
“We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”
“It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices”
“We view this as an ominous
development,”
This isn’t moderate or reasonable dialogue – it is inflammatory rhetoric intended to play off of fear and righteous outrage. Some passages distort law, practices, and legal efforts of those that the authors of the Manhattan Declaration ideologically oppose.
There is so much that you could have responded to in this post, Tom, that I wonder why you just take him to task for his apparent stereotyping (edited, with apologies for how it was previously worded). You could have spoken to his characterization of the Manhattan Declaration as a third tier fundraiser, or Eric’s neologism “Oprah-doxy”, or the characterizing love and justice as unprincipled emotions (something that I’d really like to hear your take on)…
…I also wonder why the Manhattan Declaration logo strikingly resembles that of the Flatirons Church, but I guess that’s for a different time and place.
Where is it edited with apologies, Sault? I can’t find anything like that anywhere.
And just what is it about strong language in a document like this that justifies stereotyping?
The ManDec is not primarily a fundraising instrument. The Slacktivist is just wrong about this. I could have spoken to that on the basis of my relationship with Eric Teetsel’s predecessors in the position of steering the effort associated with it. I knew Chuck Colson. I know the people who were working hardest on this declaration. They’re not in it for money.
I don’t know why I would have bothered with this other blogger’s reference to Teetsel’s “Oprah-doxy” word. So what? I think it was a pretty good neologism, myself.
I could, however, have jumped all over the Slacktivist’s mischaracterization of love and justice as “unprincipled” in Teetsel’s view. I could have, but I was busy pointing out the Slacktivist’s extreme prejudicial stereotyping. That’s what the post was about.
I didn’t realize that one of the sentences that I wrote came across as very rude until after I had already posted my comment. On the off-chance that you had read it before my edit, I threw in an apology.
Tom, does your experience of being stereotyped in this way allow you to have more compassion for LGBT people? It seems as though in this regard you are beginning to get a taste of the stereotyping, bigotry, and distorted representations that the LGBT community has experienced for decades.
Moments like this make me wonder what sort of common cause might be found between evangelical conservatives & LGBT people. And do we have the courage to stand in our communities and raise our own voices to stop the demonization of the other side?
BACH, that’s a great question. Common cause? I think we ought to be able to agree on treating one another as humans, as I have been urging in this debate for many months.