Empty of Any Reality

In a news posting entitled, "Gay rights opponents' last argument," Paul Waldman notes that the opponents of full civil rights for the LGBT community have seen argument after argument punctured.  All they, except for hard core fringe types,  can really say now is that they are against gay rights because gays make them uncomfortable.  Waldman points out that this argument means LGBT Americans are supposed to be deprived of their full civil rights because of the personal feelings of one certain segment of the population—this in spite of the clear mandate of the Constitution, which protects the civil rights of all citizens in all cases except treason and terrorism.

Opponents of gay rights cannot say what they actually mean.  They cannot say, "We are prejudice, and we demand that the civil rights of others are abrogated so that we can maintain our prejudice.  We don't 'like' them, and so they should not be accorded the rights we enjoy."  Waldman concludes,"At this point, that's about all opponents of gay rights have left. They don't want to sound like bigots, so they've almost stopped talking about gay people entirely. It's not you, they say, it's us. Well, they're right about that. Just maybe not in the way they think."

Waldman also notes that the whole argument sounds ridiculous, which it is because prejudice is what the word says it is, a pre-judgment not based on reality.  Holders of this prejudice hope that if they repeat it often enough, forcefully enough, and act upon it often enough, the prejudice will create the reality.  And they have been successful in the past in turning their prejudice into a reality of sorts.  Their prejudice has branded homosexuals as "immoral," driven them underground, and thrown obstacles into the forming of stable homosexual relationships, which in the fashion of circular thinking "proves" to the prejudiced that gays are immoral.  Americans have used this same kind of circular thinking against people of color, women, people with physical disabilities, people of other ethnicities, and even people living in certain locations ("hicks" comes to mind) or under certain conditions.  The problem is, of course, that real people don't fit the stereotypes of prejudice—well, sometimes they do, but not nearly often enough and not with enough consistency to give substance to the prejudice.

In addition, American holders of prejudice face another obstacle to their prejudices, which is that one sentence in the Declaration of Independence that states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  We have been too often too slow in fulfilling the vision this sentence offers us of a citizenry that is truly equal and equally enjoys the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  But, for all of that, we are working our way out of the land of prejudice and into the land our nation's founders envisioned—slowly, painfully, and inconsistently, but still headed in the right direction.

It takes serious effort, in sum, to maintain the prejudice against LGBT Americans.  It has to be held in the face of reality and in the face of our national ideals.  Prejudice is powerful, to be sure, but it is ultimately built on the shifting sands of its own inconsistency and injustice.  Amen.

The Shadow of Slavery

Yesterday, January 21, 2013, President Obama delivered his second inaugural address to a crowd estimated at roughly one million souls.  Only time will tell whether or not it will become one of the better remembered inaugural addresses, but whether it stands the test of time or not it is a well-thought out testimony to enduring themes in our nation's life.  It is an articulate meditation on liberal values and a deft summary of the President's vision for the country and of his agenda for his second term.  It is worthy of our reflection and response—worthy of some quiet time reading and meditating.

Different ears will hear different things in the speech.  For me three words leapt from the text: equality, dignity, and change.  I could not but feel that the institution of chattel slavery cast its long, sad shadow across the speech and the day.  We are not shut of slavery nor of the racism that sustained it for more than two hundred brutal, bloody years.  The struggle for civil rights and economic justice suffuse nearly every paragraph of the President's speech, and undergirding them are three things that freedom-starved slaves longed for: equality, dignity, and change.  Racists of every generation including our own resist these same values, or rather reserve them for "their kind" and "their people."  The loathing that Mr. Obama has had to suffer through is a measure of the lingering voice of the slave holders who still, still, still cannot abide the freedom granted their former slaves by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  The echoes of Dr. King in his address is the lingering voice of the descendants of slaves who themselves were still not free.  In the last fifty years, we have come a long way, but the President is correct.  No achievement is final, no victory is forever, and our journey is not complete so long as people of color, women, and gays have not achieved full equality and dignity.  Until that day, we must continue to seek change.

Most of us have been intensely disappointed by the politics practiced on Capitol Hill and in many of our state capitals since the election of President Obama in 2008.  It is painful to watch one of our two major parties, a pillar of our democracy, taken hostage by absolutist ideologues.  It has been sad to witness the President's honest attempts to enter into dialogue and cooperation slapped away in a manner that dripped with disdain and disrespect.  Birtherism is a stain on our national conscience, a reminder that equality and dignity are still being contested in our time.  We really do need to change.

That being said, it is also remarkable that we re-elected a "person of color" to a second term of office in spite of the obstacles thrown in his way by those who calculated that they could bring him down by practicing the "politics of 'no'."  It is remarkable that a descendant of slaves stood before us yesterday and called on us to continue the journey.  Slavery still casts its long shadow across our nation, but it is a shadow.  And, as I think about it, perhaps in our generation we are more blessed than harmed by that shadow because it has forced us to see that equality is something that we must grant not just to light-skinned straight men.  Mr. Obama began his address by recalling the Declaration of Independence's bold proclamation that, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."  They are also the unalienable rights of women, gays, Muslim Americans, and immigrants from Latin America.  They are also the rights of children who suffer abuse and families that struggle to make ends meet.  Equality.  Dignity.  Change.

Perhaps, just perhaps, lurking within the shadow of slavery is the Spirit working, working, working for the Kingdom.  Our faith encourages us to believe it is so.  Amen.