By Ande Jacobson
I had a disturbing discussion with a good friend the other day. We got into a discussion about gay and trans rights. While neither of us are gay or trans, we know and love people who are and support a person’s right to be who they are. That said, my friend talked about the past when people who were gay or trans lived their lives as they could and kept their views and actions that went counter to what was considered mainstream private. My friend asserted that before things became so contentious, people who were apart from the mainstream didn’t and shouldn’t make their differences public and lamented that it wasn’t still the case. My friend claimed to understand how some people might see somebody living a lifestyle counter to the mainstream as a threat, particularly in religious communities, and their concerns needed to be taken into account in the law and in allowed public behavior.
I was dumbfounded and angry. My friend claimed to support a person’s right to be who they are yet said that if that expression went against what my friend (or my friend’s religious community) considered mainstream, it needed to be kept private, and a person just needed to be comfortable living how they could.
I tried to get my friend to understand how dangerously oppressive that philosophy was. I pointed out that based on my friend’s logic, before women could vote or had individual rights, they should have just been happy living as they could, as the property of their father or their husband. They shouldn’t have strived for any kind of equality or individual rights because that would disrupt the status quo. By that logic, women should just have accepted that they were less than. My friend bristled at that saying that it wasn’t the same thing. I tried to point out that it was exactly the same thing. Oppression is oppression, and nobody should have to settle for being less than. Everyone should be able to express themselves based on their own identity, not based on what or who somebody else says they must be. Everyone should be able to be comfortable in their own skin without fear. Everyone should be able to make a life with the person they love out in the open. They shouldn’t have to hide who they are or who they love.
My friend is very religious and active in their Christian faith. They claimed the big reason for the concern was that if things keep going the way they are, then clergy would be forced to perform marriages that they do not condone, i.e., my friend was afraid that all clergy would be forced to perform and sanction gay marriages in their faith even if they thought those marriages violated their religion. Talk about an obtuse rationalization. Religious organizations can already discriminate more than most as a matter of course, so that’s an unrealistic fear. For instance, they can actively discriminate against mixed religious marriages if that violates the tenets of their religion. Many clergy will not officiate or sanction a marriage in their religious organization where both people aren’t of the faith of that organization. If one of the potential spouses is of a different faith, in those cases they need to convert before such a religious marriage can take place. If the tenets of a faith require a particular definition of marriage (that doesn’t violate civil law, so polygamy is right out), they can enforce that within their organization. They can’t prevent a civil legal marriage contract though. As far as the law is concerned, marriage is a contract between two people who have chosen to make a life together bound by various legal protections. It is possible to be married under the law but not have it recognized in a particular faith as a religious marriage. This shouldn’t be difficult to understand.
Bigotry and oppression come in many forms. No matter the form, they come down to the same thing. The result is that some group is seen and treated as less than others, and that is illegal, immoral, and cruel. It cannot be condoned. Once any group is ostracized in some way, everyone is at risk, and anybody’s rights can be violated. We’ve seen that in the US as people of color are targeted and punished for how they look. We’ve seen that in how women are treated where their individual rights and bodily autonomy are stripped away. We’ve seen that with various religious minorities where people are attacked for their faith despite their religious practice being completely legal and protected by the Constitution. And we’ve seen that as gay and trans people are targeted and ostracized for who they are or who they love. The culture wars are politically motivated, and they cause real harm to people who are following the law and living their lives.
This is one big problem that I’ve had with religion overall – particularly certain forms of Christianity where its adherents think themselves perfectly rational and reasonable, yet they seem unable to just practice their faith without trying to force others into adhering to their restrictive practices. This type of religion is oppressive. It violates others’ rights to freely practice their own faith, or to adhere to no faith at all if that is their choice. Freedom of religion can mean freedom from religion if a person so chooses, and the Constitution grants them that individual right at the top of the Bill of Rights.
Now granted, the rights that we’ve collectively accumulated since the founding of the nation weren’t all there from the start. As Heather Cox Richardson has written in her book, How the South Won the Civil War, the American paradox addresses the contradictory nature of how equality was defined through American history. At the time of the founding, the only equals were white, property owning men, and their equality was largely dependent on all others being subservient. They were the only ones who had a say in the new nation’s government. They were the only ones who had equality under the laws at the time. In other words, the equality of the favored group depended on mass inequality among the population at the outset. As time went on, more people were added to those considered equal under the law if not necessarily in practice. Each addition was hard won and required great courage, effort, and sacrifice before it was eventually achieved, and each time there was pushback that continues to this day.
Under the law, all adults are equal, yet we still struggle to fully achieve that in practice, and views like those my friend espouses continue to block the achievement of true equality finding holes in the law to define groups they can exclude. That my friend’s specific concerns trace back to religious objections is patently unconstitutional from the start. My friend’s religious community voices objections over visible lifestyle differences as reason to fear and ostracize others, in their case gay and trans people. It doesn’t matter which group is targeted as “other” though. As long as any are defined as “other,” all are in danger when the tide shifts. Oppression is oppression, and nobody should have to settle for being less than.
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