In their CNN to-and-fro last week, Focus on the Family’s James Dobson wagged his finger at the media for not demonizing and ostracizing homosexuals — while the Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese summarized the Gay Agenda:
But I would be lying if I said that we don’t have an agenda — we do, and this is it:
1. A good job, where workers are respected for the work they do, are treated fairly and offered equal benefits
2. A safe home. So that we and our families can live in a community without fear of hate crimes and persecution
3. Fair and quality health care so that we have the ability to take care of our loved ones
4. And the right to be in a committed and legally recognized relationship that includes the same legal protections and rights offered to every other American — no more, and no less.
And that, my friends, is not a radical gay agenda — it’s the American dream.
(Hat tip: Pam Spaulding)
But Steve Boese points out that both Dobson and Solmonese left the central and indispensable issue out of their CNN op-eds:
The faith and morality of gay people.
Boese’s commentary is much too thoughtful and nuanced for me to summarize easily.
Instead, I’ll simply add that, while Solmonese may be a conventional Democratic secularist (someone who views faith as a private matter), Dobson is a joyous secularist: someone who worships the idols of the state, such as flag and “founding fathers”; who misapplies superficial trappings of Biblical meaning to those state idols; and who weds the power of the state to majoritarian heresies that oppress religious minorities while corrupting political and social institutions.
Although I am firmly a liberal Democrat. (Or even further left sometimes.) I grew up the child and grandchild of Midwest Lutheran Republicans. (Or Independents. But never Democrats.) I also have a pair of grandparents that are so far to the right, we don’t talk about it.
And I was raised to believe first and foremost: that religion is a private matter.
Of course, Iowa Republicans and Atheist Detroit-area Republicans would tell their decedents things like that. Privacy still matters in those parts of the Midwest that aren’t Kansas or Missouri.
Certainly, though, no one would have said that the notion that religion was a private matter would have said that was a Democrat conceit.
Solmonese is just the kind of American that I thought everyone was, who have an understanding of public and private and where you don’t talk about (or display) religion or politics.
I think, in some ways, what upsets me the most about the rise of Evangelical “Christians” is that I was raised to believe that kind of religion was inappropriate and tacky. Tacky is winning right now. And that’s a shame.
Point well taken, Christopher — I’ll scratch out “Democratic.”
And insofar as the word “secular” is misused by Christian Nationalists (religious rightists) as a codeword to insult, dismiss amd eradicate the privacy of each person’s relationship with the Divine, perhaps my usage of that word needs to be more careful, as well.
NB the faith and morality link needs the leading “t” removed. 😉
Atheists and agnostics are moral as well — am I missing something in the message here?
Faith is separate from morality — that’s why atheists aren’t really any different, as a group in behavior from others who do believe.
Some people (esp Dobson) need to read Plato’s Euthyphro dialog:
https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html
Good summary here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro
Things are not right because God(s) say(s) so — they’re right because they are right.
Maybe the writer at Tenable Belief feels gay believers are the best warriors against Dobson’s ilk, since he believes we’re all atheists anyway. I disagree: an apostate/heretic is just as bad in his book.
Tiki,
Dobson and Solmonese seem to assume that all gay people and all liberals are agnostic. Folks like Tenable Belief and Barack Obama seem to be fighting back against that myth.
Mike:
“Folks like Tenable Belief and Barack Obama seem to be fighting back against that myth.”
As long as they don’t tacitly buy into atheism/agnosticism bening bad things in and of themselves — it’s not as though the presence of believers among gay rights advocates makes their cause more valid. It does not. Gays rights are right because they are right, not because of who proposes them.
I do detect that tone in Obama’s speeches on this subject — and it disgusts me.