More Tolerance

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I love hearing that people like what I write, but I really like it when people disagree with me. That’s when I know I’ve made them think deeply, at least deeply enough to write me back. I wasn’t getting much of that, and I wondered what I would have to write about to get that kind of reaction.

Now I know.

Most of you know that I grew up in Nevada, Missouri, a small town where the closest thing we had to an ethnic minority was Catholics. Because my parents didn’t deal in hate, I grew up believing in equality as the philosophy that made America great. I often find that, having witnessed so little of it when I was a child, I really don’t know what inequality means in a visceral way.

There were no black people in Nevada. There surely were gay people, but I wasn’t aware of any. There were occasionally rumors, but I didn’t know any of the people the rumors were about, and I thought the people who spread them were just the kind of people who try to make their own lives more exciting by imagining and spreading scandal. Gays were people who lived in big cities, I thought.

So the first time I met somebody I knew was gay was in college, and my foremost emotion was curiosity -- curiosity tempered by the good manners I had been taught that you don’t pry into other people’s private lives. If they want you to know something, they will tell you. You don’t ask.

So, as one commenter said, I don’t really know how Obama’s invitation to Rick Warren hurts gay people. I can understand that it does, but I can’t feel it, any more than I can really feel what it is like to be discriminated against because of the color of my skin. I’ve experienced some sexism, but no one has ever threatened to beat me up just because I am a woman.

When I said that I wasn’t sure that Obama was wrong to stand his ground and not un-invite Warren, I was not trying to say that the gay community should not be upset, nor that they should be quiet about that upset. I was trying to say that I believe Obama’s choice of Rick Warren is not necessarily a rejection of them or a deviation from the message he has been spreading for the past four years.

His intent, I believe, is not, as papabear67218 said, to “throw the gay community under the bus” but rather to remind us all that getting to tolerance is a journey and that we’ve come a long way on that journey, even though we haven’t reached our final destination.

This afternoon, my husband and I went to see Milk, a movie I had been looking forward to for a long time. Like Artemis, I was strengthened in my quest for equality for the LGBT community. The movie reminded me of what it means to be a member of a despised minority. But it also reminded me how much has changed since the days of Harvey Milk.

How did we get from a time when the San Francisco police felt free to literally beat up on gays, just for the hell of it, to the day when the Mayor of San Francisco decided to unilaterally begin issuing marriage certificates to same-sex couples?

We got there step by step, feeling our way, working on one freedom at a time, reminding the Anita Bryants and, yes, the Rick Warrens that gays are people, too, that they are citizens and that they have the rights of all citizens.

Each of my three respondents focused only on Rick Warren’s opinions about gays and abortion. I suspect that Obama remembers that Rick Warren has been vocal in his desire to see evangelicals set aside these struggles – as important as he thinks they are – for the fight against poverty and hunger, both here and abroad. Obama remembers that Warren is concerned about people having access to health care and education. He remembers that Warren urges his flock to support mission work in Africa to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Warren believes that Christianity must be about more than who goes to bed with whom. He is on record as saying that gays should be allowed to live in peace, free of coercion. He may disagree with them, he may think they are sinful, but he has no desire to visit violence on them. Compare that to the stands of James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Fred Phelps. Surely Warren’s attitudes are ones we should be encouraging.

Does any of that make his opinions on gay marriage and abortion any less objectionable? Of course not. And the LGBT community should continue to argue against those opinions. But you can’t change someone’s mind if they think you’re rejecting them out of hand. Liberals, at least, know that there is no one so deaf as someone who thinks you’re out to get them. We’ve been on the wrong end of that paradigm too many times to forget the lesson.

The inauguration of a President is a solemn occasion. It is a time when the whole world is watching. It is a time that should include as many Americans as can be included, to remind everyone that our system protects all of us, no matter how venal or vile others find us. It is not a time to gloat.

The Republicans shut me out at the past two Inaugurals They made it clear that they didn’t want to hear what I had to say. They built a wall of religion against my kind. That was a mistake, a mistake for which, in my opinion. they have not yet been required to pay a sufficiently high price.

But our shutting them out now would be just as grave a mistake. If they think we have built a wall of anti-religion against them, they will retreat behind their own walls and create an echo chamber that reinforces all the worst in their natures until it breaks out in violence.

I want them voicing their opinions in the open so those opinions can be debated and they can hear not only that we disagree but why we disagree and how that disagreement does not mean that they must live “our” way, but only that they must not try to force us to live “their” way.

As I said in the original post, these disagreements are not going to go away entirely. There will always be homophobic evangelicals in this country, just as there are still racists of all religious stripes. We can’t kill all these germs, but we can drag them out into the light of day and let the sunshine be a natural disinfectant.

Don't you agree that would be a step forward?
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