Mormons, Catholics, and Evangelicals Against Proposition 8

I’m against Proposition 8.  I also support the recent protests against the constitutional ban on gay marriage.  I’m not, however, a supporter of the tactic of some gay rights supporters of attacking Mormon, Catholic, and Evangelical churches, because I think it is a tactic that’ll backfire and cause more harm than good for their cause.  A small group of Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals support gay rights and gay marriages and they need all the support they can get to raise their voices within their churches and counter the church hierarchy and the more conservative parishioners who champion Proposition 8. 

Andrew Callahan is a Mormon who is risking excommunication from his church for speaking out against Proposition 8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzXsl7rPV0c) and (http://signingforsomething.org/blog/?page_id=770).  His blog states that he is a high priest in good standing and he wrote:

I want you to know, that regardless of any action the church takes or doesn’t take. I will NOT cease my actions to stop them from supporting Proposition 8, and I will work as hard as I can to defeat Prop 8 and all similar measures. Bigotry in any form is wrong, and disguising it as “love” as the church leadership is now doing is especially distasteful.

Barbara Young is another Mormon who has gone out against a ban on gay marriage (http://angryxer.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/steve-youngs-household-comes-out-against-prop-8/).

Various Mormon sites are around that argue against Proposition 8.  Among them are http://www.lds4gaymarriage.org/ and http://www.gaysandthegospel.org/.  In one website, they state:

While other Pro Same-Sex Marriage sites examine the various issues surrounding Civil Same-Sex Marriage (logical, legal and emotional), and address the issues raised by those opposing Civil Same-Sex Marriage, our main objection is doctrinal, from a Latter-day Saint perspective. Our contention is that Civil Same-Sex Marriage is in no way contrary to the Constitution or official LDS doctrine (or the Bible). The efforts of those opposing Civil Same-Sex Marriage, however, are contrary to the above. Like those other sites, we too try address the questions and concerns of those, mostly active LDS members, who disagree with our stance.

In a Roman Catholic Church in Fresno, a priest went out of the closet and decried Proposition 8 in the pulpit in early October, causing controversy in his parish. The Reverand Geoffrey Farrow said,

“How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives? I am morally compelled to vote no on Proposition 8…. I know these words of truth will cost me dearly. But to withhold them… I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian people not only of their civil rights, but of their human dignity as well.”

Frank Cocozelli is a liberal Catholic blogger for the Progressive Christian website Crossleft.  He wrote a recent blog (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6651) that commended Call to Action, a liberal Catholic lay group that went against Proposition 8.  They put out a petition that stated:

As Catholics and citizens of California, we believe the right of each person to freedom of religion is based on respect for the dignity of each person. Without that basis, we would all stand in danger of being subjugated to beliefs or practices to which we do not subscribe. Fairness and equality must be living truths in a just society; therefore we oppose the proposal to amend the California Constitution to ban same-gender marriage.

 

As well as:

Civil marriage of same-gender couples does not coerce anyone to change his or her religious beliefs; nor does it coerce any religious organization to change its own teachings or beliefs.

In the November 22, 2008 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, Matthai Kuruvila wrote an article about Catholics in the Bay Area who went against their church leadership and voted against the Proposition.  Exit polls showed that 64 percent of Catholic voters in California supported the measure, with church leaders like San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer urging their parishioners to support the ballot measure.  Catholics in the Bay Area, though, went against the trend, and a majority voted against Proposition 8.  These Bay Area Catholics were especially chagrined that Archbishop Niederauer, the former bishop of Salt Lake City, was instrumental in bringing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into the Proposition 8 battle.   Kuruvila quotes Kathleen Courtney, at 63 a lifelong Catholic and a member of St. Dominic’s parish in San Francisco, who explains her opposition of Proposition 8 in spite of her denomination’s support of the measure:

“My institutional church has human frailties…  It’s my responsibility to help my institutional church move forward.  The people of God lead the way.”

Within the Evangelical community, I didn’t find anyone who made a public statement against Proposition 8, but I found some websites of gay and lesbian Evangelical Christians.  Soulforce is a group founded by Mel White, a former a former seminary professor and ghostwriter for the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and his partner Gary Nixon to fight homophobia within the Evangelical church.  In their vision statement (http://www.soulforce.org/article/7), Soulforce states:

“The mission of Soulforce is to cut off homophobia at its source — religious bigotry. Soulforce uses a dynamic “take it to the streets” style of activism to connect the dots between anti-gay religious dogma and the resulting attacks on the lives and civil liberties of LGBT Americans. We apply the creative direct action principles taught by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. to peacefully resist injustice and demand full equality for LGBT citizens and same-gender families.”

A New York Times web article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/us/12evangelical.html) talks of other Evangelical gay groups like Evangelicals Concerned, founded in 1975 by a therapist from New York, Ralph Blair, and websites like Christianlesbians.com and gaychristian.net.

I have close gay and lesbian friends, but I also have close Mormon, Catholic and Evangelical friends as well.   In spite of the dominance of conservative voices, I know that these 3 denominations are a lot more politically diverse than the general public assume.  I attended an evangelical church for 8 years and found people who were either gay or supported gay rights but were quiet about it because they didn’t want to rock the boat.  I’ve witnessed what happens when people challenge their church, the ostracism and group harassment that an individual has to endure.   So I admire the courage of a Barbara Young or an Andrew Callahan or a Frank Cocozelli when they speak out because I know the consequences of their actions.  When gay rights activists make disparaging remarks against the Mormon, Catholic, or Evangelical church, they give conservative Christians ammunition to further marginalize those progressive Christians who dare to speak out.

Though I support gay marriages and protests against Proposition 8, I am against protests that degenerate into antiMormon, antiCatholic or antiEvangelical diatribes.   A better way would be for gay rights activists reach out to progressive Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals and ask their advice on how to best convince those Christians who may be sympathetic to their cause.  Since conservative Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals were successful in banding together to support Proposition 8, perhaps a coalition of progressive Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals would be an effective alternative voice for gay marriage within these 3 churches.   Conservative Christians have every right to stand up for their convictions.  They don’t have a right though to silence voices in their churches that have differing views.   Though the costs of lost friendships and possible conflict may be high, Christians who are either gay or support gay rights need to speak out within their congregations.  If the only Christian voices that people hear are conservative Christian voices, then people will assume these are the only Christian voices there are.

 

 

 

 

Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII and Two Different Responses to Hitler’s Anti-Jewish Laws

Recently I watched Amen, a Costa-Gavras film about an SS officer and a Jesuit priest trying to get the Vatican to denounce the Holocaust.  It was very critical of the Pope for his feeble response to the atrocities being committed against millions of Jewish lives.  How fair is that criticism?  I decided to research the actions of the two popes during the 1930s and 1940s and see how they reacted to Adolph Hitler and his policy against the Jews.  Pope Pius XI, the pope during most of the 1930s, was increasingly confrontational of Hitler and the Nazis as their actions began to affect more people.  Pope Pius XII, the wartime pope, privately approved of sheltering Jewish refugees in church property, but he never publicly condemned the shipping of Jews in concentration camps and the killing of Jewish lives.  The two different reactions of the two popes offers a microcosm of the way religion has dealt with authoritarian governments and atrocities against its citizens.

Pope Pius XI was formerly Achille Ratti, a scholarly clergyman and librarian who spent 45 years of his life presiding over two great scholarly collections, the Ambrosian Library in Milan and the Vatican Library in Rome.  He was a great lover of books, and he held great faith in the power of knowledge that good books endowed upon the reader.  Ratti presided in Poland after World War I and was selected as cardinal of Milan soon afterwards.  In 1922, he was elected as pope as a compromise candidate in a divided conclave.

Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky chronicled Pope Pius XIs interactions with Hitler in a good book titled The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI.  At first Pope Pius XI signed concordants with Mussolini and Hitler in the late 1920s and early 1930s the hopes that these agreements would help maintain religious autonomy in churches and catholic schools.  To get Hitler and Mussolini to agree to this, Pius had to sacrifice the influence of Catholic political parties in the two dictators countries, and this severely weakened any political opposition to Hitler and Mussolini. 

Pius’s hopes that the concordants would allow the church to run without interference from the Nazis was dashed as Hitler broke promise after promise.    Pope Pius XI reacted in kind, increasing his criticisms of Hitler and the Nazi racial policies.  In 1937 he asked Cardinal Faulhaber to draw up an encyclical that would criticize Hitler’s nonadherence to the concordants and had his secretary of state Eugene Pacelli  secretly sent to the German churches to have them read from the pulpits and published in small local presses.  This encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge or “With Burning Dismay”  (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge_en.html), denounced the Nazi intimidation of Catholic schools and the hostility of the Nazis towards free religious activity.  In one passage, the encyclical states: 

“Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds. “

With this statement, Pius XI began to increasingly criticize Hitler’s racial policies to different groups.  In a 1938 address to Belgian pilgrims, the pope said that “we are the spiritual offspring of Abraham…  We are spiritually Semites.”   Four months earlier, he had commissioned an American priest named John LeFarge to write an encyclical titled Humani Generis Unitas to more explicitly denounce the Nazi policy against the Jews.  LeFarge was chosen because of his work in the Catholic Interracial Council and the Catholic Rural Life Movement and his 1937 book Interracial Justice, which attacked the segregation laws of the southern states of the U.S.  Before LeFarge could finish the encyclical, however, Pope Pius XI died in 1939 and his successor shelved the project.

Eugenio Pacelli succeeded Pope Pius XI and became Pope Pius XII in 1939.  While Pius XI was becoming increasingly confrontational with Hitler and his policies, Pius XII preferred to work behind the scenes and use diplomacy to get things done.  This was due, in part, to his previous experience as a Vatican diplomat and Secretary of State.  Dan Kurzman’s book A Special Mission:  Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII makes clear that in spite of his more circumspect approach towards Hitler, Pope Pius XII deeply disliked the dictator and the Nazi idealogy.  In the early part of his papacy, Pius XII had been involved in a plot to oust the Fuhrer.  When Pius first became Pope, he created a special department for the Jews in the German section of the Vatican information office to make it easier to protect them.  Pope Pius XII allowed convents and monasteries to shelter Jewish refugees in Rome when the Nazis were rounding up people to ship to concentration camps.  In March 1940 Pope Pius XII privately protested the persecution of Poles and Jews to German foreign minister Ribbentrop when he visited Rome.  The pope arranged for several thousand to escape to countries that would accept them.  Kurzman notes that after the war, notable Jewish leaders like Golda Meir and historian Martin Gilbert commended the pope for his efforts.

In spite of these efforts, critics ask if Pope Pius XII should’ve made an explicit denunciation of Hitler’s policies towards the Jews and especially the Holocaust, as his predecessor Pope Pius XI was going to with his encyclical Humani Generis Unitas?   Two reasons are given in Kurzman’s book for the pope’s decision not to make that denunciation.  One is that Pius worried about persecution against Catholics that would result from such a denunciation.  He also worried that an explicit statement against the Holocaust would worsen the persecution against the Jews.  Kurzman wrote:

“The strongest justification offered for Pius’s public silence was that any papal protest would provoke Hitler into drastic retaliation.  The pope’s supporters argue that because Dutch prelates protested vehemently against Hitler’s deportations in Holland, several hundred additional victims, mostly Jewish converts, including Edith Stein, the philosopher, were dragged out of Church institutions to their death.  And the supporters further note that about 80 percent of Holland’s Jews were ultimately deported, a higher percentage than in any other Nazi-occupied country.”

When Pius XII made statements critical of the Nazis or in reference to the plight of the Jews, he often couched them in vague language.  His most explicit address was his Christmas address of 1942 (http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P12CH42.HTM) where he stated: 

“Mankind owes that vow to the countless dead who lie buried on the field of battle: The sacrifice of their lives in the fulfillment of their duty is a holocaust offered for a new and better social order. Mankind owes that vow to the innumerable sorrowing host of mothers, widows and orphans who have seen the light, the solace and the support of their lives wrenched from them. Mankind owes that vow to those numberless exiles whom the hurricane of war has torn from their native land and scattered in the land of the stranger; who can make their own the lament of the Prophet: “Our inheritance is turned to aliens; our house to strangers.” Mankind owes that vow to the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline.”

Though I empathize with the quandary that Pope Pius XII was in, I tend to agree with critics that he should’ve followed his predecessors example and made an explicit statement against the Holocaust.   Costa-Gavras noted in his movie Amen that the Catholic Church took a stand to stop the Nazi policy of euthanasia of the mentally ill.  At another time, gentile wives of Jewish men protested as a group the roundup of their husbands and the Nazis released them.   Though there would be consequences to taking such a public stand, the enormity of the Holocaust made it an imperative that any spiritual leader should’ve spoken out against it.   Though Pius XII probably felt that his diplomatic skills were what was needed to save the thousands of lives sheltered in Catholic churches, the millions that died in concentration camps demanded more of an explicit stand.

Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII offered two different responses to a great moral evil.  Pius XI was more confrontational of the racial policies of Adolph Hitler, and at the time of his death, he was moving towards making more explicit condemnations.  Pius XII was more circumspect, making a front of being neutral, but working behind the scenes to try to shelter Jewish refugees in monastaries and convents and move them to safer countries.   A case can be made for either approach for a church to use in dealing with difficult moral decisions.  During the time of slavery, the Quakers and Evangelicals made strong moral condemnations of the institution of slavery.  The Anglican Church founded the idea of Via Media as an effective diplomatic way to make peace between the Catholic and Protestant believers in Elizabethan England.   These two examples show that some times call for the confrontational style of a Pius XI, while other times call for the more diplomatic style of a Pius XII.   Though I commend Pius XII for secretly saving many Jewish lives, I think he was the wrong leader for a time that needed a more forceful pope like Pius XI.

Costa-Gavras and the Political Thriller

A short while ago I checked out from the library and watched Missing, a movie starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.  It’s an intense political thriller by director Costa-Gavras.   I did not know anything of Costa-Gavras, so I decided to do a little research on him.  Costa-Gavras is one of the most respected directors today, the creator of political thrillers that expose government corruption and deceit.

Here is some information on Costa-Gavras from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Gavras).   Constantinos Gavras was born on February 13, 1933 to a poor family in the village of Loutra Iraias, Greece.  His father had been a member of the left-wing branch of the Greek Resistance during World War II, and was imprisoned after the war as a suspected communist.  Costa-Gavras went to France to study of law in 1951, and in 1956 he studied film.  In his early years he worked with the famed French directors Yves Allegret,  Jean Giono and Rene Clair.  He directed his first film in 1965.

Costa-Gavras is reknowned as a master of the political thriller.   Michael Wood, a teacher of English and comparative literature in Princeton, wrote in the booklet accompanying the DVD of Missing:

“The films of Constantin Costa-Gavras are often described as political thrillers, and the phrase is helpful as long as we pause over it a little.  There is always a strongly personal element to his stories, a human factor, and the thrills are in the politics rather than set against a political background.  The corpses and the cover-ups, whether in Europe or in Latin America, are intimate features of actual historical situations-an assasination in Greece, an execution in Chile, genocide in Germany- rather than fictional elements woven into a political context, as in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), say, or Salvador (1986) or In The Line Of Fire (1993).”

I’ve watched 3 Costa-Gavras movies that are available at the library:  Missing, Amen, and Z.  The 3 films have what Michael Wood talks about, stories of likable people who are affected by the corruption of the society around them.  The drama in these movies comes as the corruption of the society gradually reveals itself and threatens to envelope the main characters and destroy their integrity.  In two of the movies the heroes become disillusioned with an institution with which they had believed to be honest and virtuous, as they see the institutions collaborating with evil to preserve their own interests.  When I watch these films, I keep getting a sense of outrage at the injustices inflicted on innocent people and a sense of helplessness that large people have against the actions of their government.

My favorite of the films is Missing.  Missing is about the disappearance of Charlie Horman in the Chile of General Augusto Pinochet and the efforts of Horman’s father and wife to find him.  Charlie Horman was a filmmaker and journalist who had been asking questions of American involvement in the coup that toppled democratically elected socialist Salvadore Allende from the Presidency and put General Augusto Pinochet in power.    The early part of the film shows the growing fear that grips the population as the military harasses its citizens and makes them afraid to speak freely.  Charlie, his wife Beth, and his friend Terry are afraid of coming out after curfew, for fear of what the military will do to them.  In one scene, a group of soldiers randomly takes people from a line waiting for a bus to interrogate them.  Blood and corpses are everywhere, a reminder to Charlie and the viewers of the consequences of defying the soldiers.  When Charlie disappears, his father and wife go around to first the American embassy and then to Charlie’s friends in an effort to find out what happened to Charlie.  At first, the father is a firm believer in the American government and is skeptical of Charlie’s wife’s assertions that the American embassy and Chilean military are corrupt.  Gradually though, he finds out that the United States secretly were aiding in the military takeover and the truth of Charlie’s disappearance would expose the extent of the United States involvement.  Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek are the main actors and both do a good job of expressing the outrage and disillusionment of two people who had blind faith in the American government and the goodness of American intentions.  I like this film the best of the 3 Costa-Gavras films because of the appeal that John Shea, Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek bring to the roles of Charlie, his father and his wife. 

Z is the film that made Costa-Gavras famous.  In this film, a leader of a peace movement is clubbed in the head by some demonstrators after speaking in a peace rally and dies from brain damage.  At first the military and the police tell the public that the leader was an accidental death. As a newspaper photographer and a magistrate investigate, however, they find out that the men who clubbed the leader were part of a right wing organization called the Christian Royalist Organization Against Communism with ties to the military.  They also found that the police were in the crowd of demonstrators and did nothing to protect the peace leader from any harm.  As I watched this film, I was appalled at the lengths that the police went through to keep any different views from coming out.  The film begins with a general likening the military to an antibody and any differences of opinions as being like germs to be extinguished by the antibodies.  I liked the film, but I didn’t find the characters as appealing as Jack Lemmon or Sissy Spacek was in Missing.   I looked up Pauline Kael’s review of this movie ( http://www.geocities.com/paulinekaelreviews/z.html) and she wrote:

“How a political murder is made to look like an accident. Costa-Gavras’s extraordinary thriller–one of the fastest, most exciting melodramas ever made–was based on contemporary events in Greece. The picture never loses emotional contact with the audience; it derives from the traditions of the American gangster movies and prison pictures and anti-Fascist melodramas of the 40s.”

The end of the movie lists the things that the military banned from the country and that represented dissent:   peace movements, strikes, labor unions, long hair on men, modern and popular music, Sophocles, Leo Tolstoy, Aeschylus, Socrates , Eugène Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anton Chekhov, Mark Twain, Samuel Beckett, , international encyclopedias, free press, new math and the letter Z, which in Greek means “to live”.

Amen is a film about Kurt Gerstein, a chemist and SS officer in Nazi Germany, who is repulsed when he finds out that the chemicals he creates are being used to kill Jews in concentration camps.  After witnessing how the German Catholic bishop stood up to the Nazis to stop the euthanasia of mentally ill people, he makes an effort to contact the Vatican in the hopes that they would make a similar effort to stop the slaughter of Jewish people.  In this effort, he is aided by a Jesuit priest whose family has connections to the upper echelon of the Vatican hierarchy.  As in Missing and Z, the two men are gradually disillusioned as they see the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy as compromising their Christian duty to publicly denounce the Holocaust because they felt that Stalin’s communism was an even greater evil than Naziism.  As someone who has been interested in the issues of Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, I felt that Costa-Gavras was fair in his depiction of the Vatican and its dealings with the Holocaust.  In one scene, the Pope allows the Vatican to take up Jewish and nonJewish refugees and hide them in churches to help them escape a Nazi roundup in Rome.   I think Costa-Gavras depicts the Jesuit priest as being the Roman Catholic Church at its best, and contrasts that with the worst aspects of the Catholic hierarchy.  In Amen, the two main characters ask important questions.  Why was the Catholic Church able to take a courageous stand against the euthanasia of the mentally ill and not take a similar stand against Jews being shipped into concentration camps?  Though the Pope secretly sheltered some Jews in churches to protect them from Nazi persecution, why couldn’t he have made a public statement condemning the Nazi policies towards the Jews?    While in Missing Costa-Gavras condemns the United States government’s complicity in the actions of the Chilen military, he is more ambigious in his criticism of the Catholic Church.  While he acknowledges the Pope’s hatred of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi ideology, Costa-Gavras also condemns Pope Pius’s feeble response to the enormity of the Holocaust.

Costa-Gavras is a recent discovery for me.  I found his films have opened the eyes of many people of the corruption of fascist government and the ease in which institutions can betray its high ideals.  Z Magazine, an activist magazine based in Boston, was named by its founders after the Costa-Gavras film Z.  Filmmakers like Oliver Stone have been influenced by Costa-Gavras’ films.  My own personal take on the Costa-Gavras films is the necessity of each person to vigilantly guard his or her own personal liberty and to keep our governments and religious institutions accountable.   Involved and courageous citizens are necessary to make sure our institutions, whether they be our government or our churches, do not stray from its highest ideals.  I end this post with another excerpt from Michael Woods’ essay:

“The hero of Missing, like the hero of Z, like the two heroes of Amen, is a good man who changes his (comformist) politics, or more preciscely abandons his old political assumptions,  for the sake of justice and what he learns of the truth.  In Z, the man is a judge who at first can’t believe that the police and the army have organized a group of thugs to disrupt an antinuclear demonstration and kill a man;  in Amen, an SS officer and an Italian priest testify, against their professional class and to their cost, to what is happening to the Jews in Europe in 1936 and after.  Ed Horman doesn’t become less American than he was, and he has  no interest in the coup or indeed in the possibility or the extent of the involvement of the United States.  But he recognizes when he is being lied to, and he finds out how little he knows about what his government is doing- what it feels it has the right to do in his name.”

Christians Against Proposition 8

Though I am opposed to Proposition 8, it bothers me to see antiMormon, antiCatholic and antiEvangelical signs among the protests that have occurred since the passage of the ballot measure.  Many Christians from each denomination have quietly opposed this measure against gay marriage.  Though the more conservative elements from each denomination have dominated the religious dialogue, there have been more progressive Christian voices who have fought for gay rights and gay marriage.  I worry that in their anger over the support of Proposition 8 by Mormon, Catholic and Evangelical churches, it may create a prejudice by gay rights supporters against all Christians.  The Christian community is more politically diverse than the Religious Right let on and many progressive Christians, among them Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals, are struggling within their denominations to fight to change attitudes.

Barbara Young*, a prominent Mormon, is against Propostion 8 for its discrimination against gays and lesbians.  St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco had been marshalling opposition against Proposition 8, mainly through individuals working at phone banks.  St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco, which chose lesbian priests to lead it two decades ago and gave up its membershilp in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, had fragmented efforts to make a liberal opposition.  In a Roman Catholic Church in Fresno, a priest went out of the closet and decried Proposition 8 in the pulpit in early October, causing controversy in his parish.  The Reverand Geoffrey Farrow said, “How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives?  I am morally compelled to vote no on Proposition 8….   I know these words of truth will cost me dearly.  But to withhold them… I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian people not only of their civil rights, but of their human dignity as well.”

Prominent Seventh Day Adventists like Julius Nam (Associate Professor of Religion Loma Linda University),  Lawrence T. Geraty (President Emeritus, La Sierra University), and Gary Chartier (Associate Professor of Law and Business Ethics, La Sierra University) have gone against their Seventh-day Adventist Church State Council’s public support of California Proposition 8.  The Episcopal Bishops of California issued a statement in opposition of Proposition 8 (http://www.diocal.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=303&Itemid=215).

In the October 31, 2008 edition of the San Jose Mercury News, the Council of Churches of Santa Clara County (http://www.councilofchurches-scc.org/marriage) had an advertisement against Proposition 8 and it was sponsored by the following churches:

Almaden Hills United Methodist Church, San Jose
Alum Rock United Methodist Church, San Jose
Campbell United Church of Christ Council
Campbell United Methodist Church
Celebration of Faith Church, San Jose
Center for Spiritual Living, San Jose
College Heights United Church of Christ, San Mateo
First Congregational Church of Palo Alto  (UCC), Peace and Justice Task Force
First Congregational Church of San Jose, United Church of Christ
First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto
First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto
First Christian Church, San Jose
First Unitarian Church of San Jose
Grace Baptist Church, San Jose
Holy Redeemer Church, San Jose
Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church of San Jose
Metropolitan Community Church of San Jose
Morgan Hill United Methodist Church
New Community of Faith, San Jose (UCC and American Baptist)
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Santa Clara
St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, San Jose
St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Sunnyvale
Stone Church of Willow Glen (Presbyterian), San Jose
Trinity Episcopal Church, San Jose
Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto Board
St. Jude’s Episcopal Church, Social Justice/Outread Committee, Cupertino

As Barbara Young and Reverand Geoffrey Farrow  are showing, there are Mormons, Catholics, Evangelicals, and other Christians who support gay marriage and are willing to stand up for it.  In the pews of Mormon, Catholic, and Evangelical churches are parishioners who are either gay or support gay rights yet are quiet about it out of fear of their more conservative churchgoers and clergy.   Supporters of gay marriage need to read out to these people within these churches and encourage them to stand up and talk.

*I made a correction.  My original post mentioned Steve Young being against Proposition 8.  I have been informed that it is his wife and not him who is against Proposition 8.  Steve Young made this statement:  “Barb and I love each other very much. It is that love of each other and the Savior that helps us come to the decisions we do. For Barb, who has a remarkable and enviable compassion for others, those political activities are far more public than mine. Those who know me, know I chose long ago not to be publicly active in the political process. I do have strong opinions. I do vote and will vote on Tuesday, but those matters are private.”

The Good Joe Lieberman, The Bad Joe Lieberman

One of the big conversations that have been making the rounds in these past couple of weeks after the elections has been the fate of Joe Lieberman after the victory of the Democrats in the executive branch and the Congress.  Lieberman was a Democrat until 2006 when he ran as an independent and defeated the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Connecticut.  During the 2008 elections, he had spoken in the Republican convention and campaigned for the Republican nominee John McCain.  There has been talk since then of stripping Lieberman of the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is responsible for assuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal Government, and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Air Land Forces.

I used to be a big supporter of Joe Lieberman because of his strong liberal positions for the environment, for labor and civil rights issues.  Over the past few years though, I found myself disagreeing with his support of Bush’s war in Iraq.  I had supported Lieberman’s run for the Presidency in 2004 in spite of his position in Iraq, I think because I had hoped that he would see how badly the Iraqi situation was deterioirating since the invasion and would change his mind, as Hillary Clinton and John Edwards had done.  Though he hasn’t changed his opinions, I still respect him for being willing to think independently.  When I look at Joe Lieberman, I personally think there is a Good Joe Lieberman and a Bad Joe Lieberman.

The Good Joe Lieberman is very liberal in domestic issues. Lieberman has consistently scored over 90% in the National Environmental Scorecard from the League of Conservation Voters for the course of his Senate career, over 95% from NARAL for protecting a women’s right to choose, over 90% from the Human Rights Campaign for his senate career in opposing discrimination against gays and lesbians, a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood. In 2005 the liberal activist organization Americans for Democratic Action gave Lieberman a liberal quotient of 80 out of 100 in 2005; a 75 in 2004; a 70 in 2003; an 85 in 2002; and a 95 in 2001. He’s led the effort to prevent oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, fought attempts to weaken the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. He’s fought to protect a woman’s right to choose and he’s fought to protect affirmative action laws. He’s fought for laws to ban discrimination in employment and housing based on sexual orientation. He’s fought to prevent hate crimes against gays, to provide the same benefits for domestic partners that are enjoyed by straight spouses. He’s fought to ensure collective bargaining rights and to safeguard worker’s rights. He’s fought for laws to protect striking workers from losing their jobs to scabs. He voted against Alito for the Supreme Court. On these issues Lieberman has been very good.

The Bad Joe Lieberman is very bad in foreign affair issues and in loyalty to the Democrats. In spite of the fact that the Democrats haven’t stripped him of his chairmanship and have gone out of their way to treat him well, he still went to talk in the Republican convention and attack Obama. His support of the war in Iraq is uncritical of George Bush. He did an article in the New York Times telling Democrats to squash dissent on Bush’s policies in Iraq and to just unquestioningly support him when Bush’s Iraq policies were going so badly and criticism was justified. I think he was insane to suggest that we should invade Iran when our troops are already stretched in both Iraq and Afganistan. On foreign policy he’s been dead wrong.

Joe is not really a Democrat, but he’s too liberal in social issues to be a Republican either. He’s just Joe Lieberman. On domestic issues, we should seem him as an ally. But on foreign policy we should expect him to be opposed to Obama and the Democrats.

Against Prop 8 But Not Against Mormons, Catholics, Evangelicals

I am against California’s Proposition 8, which puts a ban in the California constitution on gay marriages.  When the ballot measure passed, I was disappointed, but I also thought that over time, people’s attitudes would change.  So when I saw protests against the change in the California constitution, I was generally supportive.  One of the things that bothered me about the protests, though, is the criticisms I see in some of the protest signs against Mormons, Catholics, and Evangelicals.  I think that is a big mistake, for not all Mormons, Catholics or Evangelicals supported Proposition 8.  A better way would be to appeal to the more liberal and moderate Christians that belong to each denomination to support the cause of gay marriage.

A common misconception among some progressives is that Christians are all conservative Republicans.  Yet a quick glance at the pews of the churches will find a diversity of political views.    Within the Mormon, Catholic, and Evangelical churches are more liberal views that do not agree with the conservative elements in their respective denominations.  If opponents of Proposition 8 begin to view a fight for gay marriage as also being a fight against these churches, it’ll backfire for several reasons.  It’ll galvanize moderate Christians who are in the fence about this issue to defend their church.  This will also gives more ammunition to conservative Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals to marginalize their more liberal parishioners. 

Jasmyne A. Cannick, an African American lesbian activist, wrote an article called The Gay/Black Divide for the November 8, 2008 edition of the Los Angeles Times.  She commented:

“White gays often wonder aloud why blacks, of all people, won’t support their civil rights.  There is a real misunderstanding by the white gay community about the term.  Proponents of gay marriage fling it around as if it is a one-size-fits-all catchphrase for issues of fairness.
But the black civil rights movement was essentially born out of and driven by the black church;  social justice and religion are inextricably intertwined in the black community.  To many blacks, civil rights are grounded in Christianity- not something separate and apart from religion but synonymous with it.  To the extent that the issue of gay marriage seemed to be pitted against the church, it was going to be a losing battle in my community.”

Cannick makes a good point that there is a strong progressive tradition within the Christian church, especially within the Catholic and Evangelical movement.  The anti-slavery movement and the Social Gospel movement both had adherents within the Evangelical churches.  The Catholic Church has always taken up the cause of the poor and the marginalized, and since Vatican II has also take up anti-war positions.   Though the past 30 years have seen the rise of the Religious Right, there are still progressives within those two denominations and I’m sure that is true of the Mormon Church as well.

So what should supporters of gay marriage do with their Christian foes?  We should protest and go in the streets, as people have done these past couple of days.  But we should refrain from making our protests into antiMormon,antiEvangelical or antiCatholic protests and instead encourage liberals and gays within those denominations to speak out.  And we should try to persuade moderates and even sympathetic conservatives within those churches of the prejudice that arises from a ban in the constitution.  In my time at an evangelical church, I found two types of people who were against homosexuality: one group thought homosexuality was a sin and hated gays and lesbians; and the other group thought homosexuality was a sin but had close family members or friends who were gay and lesbian and sincerely struggled with loving their gay friends and family while holding on to their belief. Trying to talk to the first group is a waste of time, but I think it’s possible to talk to the second group. The people in the second group do not see gays and lesbians as two dimensional stereotypes: they are their brothers, sisters, relatives, close friends. Though it may be futile to try to convince them that homosexuality is not a sin, I think it’s possible to convince them that even if they believe homosexuality is a sin, homophobia is an even worse sin. Homophobia is like racism and sexism in that they have the effect of dehumanizing and marginalizing a group of people, making them vulnerable to a whole range of cruel treatment. Jesus went out of his way to reach out to marginalized people, to make people see the humanity in prostitutes, demon possessed people, taxcollectors and outcasts.

If we demonize Catholics, Mormons and Evangelicals, the road to gay marriage will become much harder than it already is.  If we instead reach out to the liberals within those churches, we may find support where we least expect.

Opus: An Appreciation

A few weeks ago Berke Breathed stopped doing his comic strip Opus. So this means from now on we won’t be seeing the wonderful penguin that Berke Breathed created almost 30 years ago in his comic strip Bloom County and continued in his subsequent strips Outland and Opus. It’s a loss for comic fans, as Opus was one of the funniest comic creations to ever grace the newspaper page. And it has been one of the most humorous commentators on the cultural and political landscape of America, continuing a tradition of social commentary in comic strips that includes Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Al Capp’s Lil Abner, and Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury.

Berke Breathed first began his career as a part time political cartoonist for the Austin American-Statesman. While he was a student of the University of Texas, he did a comic strip called The Academia Waltz for their school newspaper the Daily Texan, and the characters of Steve Dallas and Cutter John were born. The Washington Post picked up Breathed’s strip and on December 1, 1980, Bloom County debuted in the local newspapers. Though in the beginning, the strip was heavily influenced by Gary Trudeau’s comic Doonesbury, it eventually evolved into it’s own style, and in 1987 Bloom County won a Pulitzer Prize for Best Editorial Cartooning. Bloom County eventually ran in 1,200 newspapers until it retired in 1989. This comic was replace by Outland and it retained Opus the penguin and Bill the Cat, until Outland retired in 1995. In 2003 Breathed created the comic Opus, once again starring his cartoon penguin. You can learn more about Berke Breathed in http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/pages/About.asp.

In whatever strip Opus was in, this funny penguin had a penchant for making silly comments about pop culture and politics. Opus indulged in gentle satire and not hard hitting political commentary, and this caused some controversy among editorial cartoonists when Bloom County won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. Pat Oliphant, one of the great editorial cartoonists in our time, said of Bloom County‘s prize,

“From now on, the quickest ticket to winning a Pulitzer is to be light, be funny, be vacuous, be inane, take it easy. Don’t offend anybody or any institution, don’t take a stand.”

I always thought that it was an unfair criticism, as Bloom County never pretended to be a hard hitting satire. And I always wonder, what’s so bad about gentle satire? In the October 1988 issue of the Comics Journal, Berke Breathed talked in an interview about his philosophy about political subject matter in comic strips:

“One of the things I find dismaying about being a conventional political cartoonist- I don’t want to be that critical all the time. I mean, I’m normally a pretty happy guy, and I’m not that preoccupied with, really the transient nature of politics. Things that we’re so concerned about today that I’ll be drawing a cartoon about, no one could care less about next week. And those aren’t the things that I’d want to write about. But that’s your job as a political cartoonist: to write to the moment… These things seemed so important at the time, but the issues that really stay with you are just a few every year. The ones that stick to the bones, as I say, are few… Oh, when I finally come across something… there’s no way to really stretch and call Bloom County a political strip, even occassionally. Pure politics rarely get into the strip. Sometimes I make suble digs at Bush, maybe not so subtle digs at other politicians I think are acting silly. But those are easy… It’s the other commentary, it’s the other editorializing. I think social commentary is just as editorial. There’s nothing political about the word ‘editorial’. That’s what Al Capp did so well, as well as political cartooning. Pogo and others. It’s a commentary on the mores of the times. I think they are the things that people do remember and are more personally affected by than an of the crap that’s going on in Washington D.C. And that’s fun to comment on. it seems to be what strikes people much more personally than anything political.”

I was a big fan of Bloom County when I was young and what I loved about it was its sheer silliness. It seemed more like Mad Magazine or the Marx Brothers in the sense that it made fun of everything. I have to admit that I didn’t read Outland or Opus as much, but when I did read them, Opus still made me smile.

Berke Breathed decided to stop doing Opus because of the declining readership in newspapers and the increasingly hostile tone of the political landscape. Amy Lago, the comics editor of the Washington Post Writers Group, noted that in it’s heyday, Bloom County appeared in over 2,500 newspapers while today Opus is in just under 200 newspapers. In a Regan McMahon article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Breathed commented on the worsening political climate:

“People are angry and frightened, and teh things that they’re saying are only going to get worse, because the problems are going to get worse. The election will not stop it. And I don’t want opus to succumb to it. I’m wanting to kill the penguin in order to save it. Although I’m not killing him. He’s becoming part of the ages.”

Though I haven’t read much of Opus lately, I’ll be sad to see Opus go. I’ll take some time to look at the web to catch up on past Opus comics that I haven’t read, and hopefully smile and laugh at politics from the eyes of a penguin. 

A Year In Crossleft

I’ve been a member of Crossleft, a Progressive Christian website, for over a year now. In that span of time I’ve learned a lot about an alternative more progressive view of Christianity from reading the posts of the regular bloggers. During this past year, Crossleft has had insightful and sometimes heated discussions on the election season, the religious right, cultural issues, poverty issues, and the responsibility of christians to take on the social issues of this country. Every morning after preparing some oatmeal and feeding the cats, I turn on the computer and one of the first sites I start reading is Crossleft. My wife thinks I’m addicted.

Stephen Rockwell and Ketty Esquivel founded Crossleft a few years ago to offer an alternative for Progressive Christians for progressive thought and avenues for activism for progressive Christian causes. In the course of the year, Steve has posted various newspoints on ways to participate in various social causes, among them the collaboration of Catholic Democrats and pastors in Ohio (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6555), petitions to stop Congress from giving Bush a blank check on the financial crisis (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6516), pushing for bills like the Responsible Education About Life Act (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6429) and Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Debt Cancellation (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6381), and for ways to join grassroots movements like the Health Care for America NOW (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6371). Kety has spoken at CNN about important latin issues (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6409) and has informed Crossleft readers of forums like the recent feminist forum in http://www.crossleft.org/node/6627 and grassroots organizations like National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA) in http://www.crossleft.org/node/6467 and she has kept us informed of issues important to the Hispanic community. Both have emphasized the various opportunities that are open for Progressive Christians to partipate to help stop the American government to stop torture, to help illegal immigrants from being exploited and find fair solutions to the immigration problem, to protest the wars in Iraq. One of the things that has given the Religious Right influence in these past 30 years has been the fervent activism and organization of its followers, and Steve and Kety realize that for Progressive Christians to offer an alternative Christian voice, they need to be involved in soical activism as well.

One thing that one notices about Crossleft is the diversity of opinions of the various bloggers and visitors. I’m learning that “Progressive Christianity” is not just a monolithic way of thinking. It’s made up of political and theological progressives, political progressives and theological conservatives, mainstream liberal Democrats, more radical Green Party Progressives, Libertarians and perhaps even Anarchists. For the most part people seem to agree on the dangers of too much power concentrated in corporations and the ill effects of an unregulated free market economy, but differences do occur. We’ve had debates on whether capitalism is worth reforming (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6384 and http://www.crossleft.org/node/6372, ), on whether Hugo Chavez is good or bad (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6421, http://www.crossleft.org/node/5565, and http://www.crossleft.org/node/5559) and even the relevance of Ralph Nader (http://www.crossleft.org/node/5806). Over the course of the year, we’ve also has debates over cultural issues like homosexuality and abortion, and in political issues like finding a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli issue. I think that the free flow of ideas and the debates are a healthy aspect of Crossleft. One of the things that I found dangerous about the Religious Right is the stifling of debate within its ranks and the forcing of conformity of thought. Jim Ramelis wrote a good post on the dangers of doctrinal purity (http://www.crossleft.org/node/5510) and the diversity of opinions in Crossleft is one of its strongest features.

The Catholic Left has been ably represented by the posts of Frank Cocozzelli. I’ve learned a lot about Catholic Social Thinking and its effect on American liberalism from reading his posts, especially Frank’s informative posts on liberal economist Monsignor John A. Ryan and his ideas of distributive justice (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6616). He has written a series of post warning of the excesses of the Catholic Right in http://www.crossleft.org/?q=blog/314, especially of their attempts to control the Catholic vote and to stifle a strand of progressive Catholic tradition. Boyd Collins wrote a series of posts of Catholic economics based on the ideas of Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6411 and http://www.crossleft.org/node/6397). The history of modern progressive Catholicism has its roots in the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII called Rerum Novarum and it has inspired many Catholics to take up the cause of the poor, to fight for economic justice.

Other Christians have offered their views on social justice based on their own traditions and outlooks. Rich Warden wrote about an economics of reciprocity in these posts http://www.crossleft.org/node/6401 and http://www.crossleft.org/node/6414 that is based on the Golden Rule and addresses basic human needs. Kristof Haavik wrote a good post based on his book “The Socialist Christian” in which he advocates a stronger government role to insure that the poor are not exploited or left to starve (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6372). Bill Peltz wrote about a post capitalist economy in one of his responses to a Boyd Collins post (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6384) that describes an economy where the workers profit from the means of production, there are worker cooperatives and the hierarchical system is eliminated or severely reduced. Jim Ramelis wrote a post about capitalism and cooperation (http://www.crossleft.org/node/5576), about his experiences in a Kibbutz and the need for cooperation in an economic system so that everyone shares in the fruits of the economy and no one is left behind to suffer in poverty. David Stefan, who has sadly not been able to post lately because of work, offered an economic system based on the philosopher Rawls that talked of putting a cap on the income of the upper echeleon http://www.crossleft.org/node/6274.

As befits a Christian site, theological debates are often a feature of Crossleft. Gary Vance is a respected voice of a politically progressive and traditional theological point of view and he has created several posts that point to a grounded Biblical view of various Crossleft issues (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6509, http://www.crossleft.org/node/6296, http://www.crossleft.org/node/6269, and http://www.crossleft.org/node/6231). I was especially interested in a debate that he had with Rich Warden about Origen, Pelegius, Augustine and the early chuch fathers (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6227) because of my own relative lack of knowledge in that area. Gary makes a good point that the Biblical ideas are very progressive ideas and they have inspired such theologically conservative people as Dorothy Day, Reinhold Neibur, and the Social Gospel movement. Rich Warden has written from a more personal theological view based on his studies of the early church fathers and outside philosophers such as Plato, and the debates on reincarnation that occurred during the summer were a real eye opener for me on the intellectual ferment of those early Christians. I’ve tended to just read and not participate in the theological debates in Crossleft and I’ve learned the most when Rich, Gary, Steve, and the others had to respond to the debate points of the other.

With all these interesting people who’ve posted in Crossleft, it was interesting to learn how these bloggers became Progressive Christians in the first place. I wrote a blog asking that question and got several responses http://www.crossleft.org/node/5586. Steve Rockwell was influence by his Grandmother and Mother, Dr. James Turner and Don Barr, and his work in a Philedelphia inner city school with an African American minister. Jim Ramelis wrote that his disagreements with George Bush’s policies pushed him to be a Progressive. Janet Margul wrote in response to another of my posts (http://www.crossleft.org/node/5680) of the positive influence of the Great Society on her political consciousness. Bill Peltz wrote in response to a post (http://www.crossleft.org/node/6365) about his experiences organizing in Mississippi, the influence of Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers, and the effect that Joe Louis had on his childhood. One thing that almost everyone in Crossleft share is a deep admiration for Bobby Kennedy.

In my year reading and posting in Crossleft, I’ve learned a lot from reading other people’s posts and I’ve learned to find my own voice and to articulate my own point of view of things. I’m not afraid of having a difference of opinion in Crossleft, and I feel I’ve made some internet friends. Before I write a post I usually check out some books and magazines from the library to research, and it’s been a lot of fun for me to write these posts. I discovered Howard Zinn from reading this site and Bill Peltz recommeded the book “Douglass and Lincoln : how a revolutionary black leader and a reluctant liberator struggled to end slavery and save the Union” by Paul Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick that turned out to be one of my favorite books of last summer. Politically I’ve moved slowly farther left, seeing the positive influence that the mainstream liberal and more radical progressive have had on each other in terms of ideas and philosphy. Spiritually, Crossleft has been important to me just to let me know that I’m not alone. As new people, like Jerseyguy and Reverand Roger McClellan and others offer their own insights in God and politics and the world, I look forward to my next year reading and posting in Crossleft.

Studs Terkel- Chronicler of America

Yesterday I read in the papers that Studs Terkel, oral historian and radio disc jockey, died last Friday.  He was 96 years old.  When I read about it, I had a sad feeling.  I first started reading his books when I was in college and these books helped me to learn about the way Americans thought about race, class, and the way they thought about the times they were living.  I enjoyed reading the stories of individual Americans, their experiences and insights and their resilience in the face of hard times. 

First, some facts.  Louis “Studs” Terkel was born May 16, 1912 in New York City.  His family moved to Chicago while he was young and he met the workers and activists who shaped his world view.  He got the nickname “Studs” from the character Studs Lonigan in the James T. Farrells trilogy of books about an Irish American man in Chicago’s South Side.  Terkel graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932, studying law and philosophy.  He worked briefly as a federal statistician and found employment in radio through the WPA Writers Project acting in soap operas.  In the 1940s, he worked fulltime in radio as a disc jockey and hosted an early t.v. show “Studs Place” set in a fictional bar in Chicago.

Terkel wrote his first oral history Division Street: America about a series of conversations of race with Chicago residents in 1967.  A series of oral histories followed that tackled various subjects:  Hard Times tackled the experiences of the Great Depression;  Working chronicled the thoughts of workers and their jobs;  Race:  How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About The American Obsession talked about race relations.  Terkel won a 1985 Pulitzer Prize for The Good War, a series of remembrances of World War II.  His book Working was listed number 54 by the Modern Library publishers as one of the century’s 100 best English language works of nonfiction.

Terkel was a liberal who was a big fan of FDR’s New Deal programs from the Great Depression.  They influenced him to see things from the average person’s point of view and his oral histories celebrate the experience of the average everyday American.  In a 1992 interview Terkel advocated political changes that came from “pressure from below, from the grassroots.  That means the people who live and work in cities-  that used to be called the working class, although now everyone says middle class.”

I own a copy of Terkel’s American Dreams:  Lost and Found and it’s one of my favorite books.    In this book Terkel asks people their thoughts on the American dream and their thoughts offer a wide view of the hopes and frustrations of Americans in every part of the country.  In the introduction, Terkel writes,

“In The Uses of the Past, Herbert Muller writes:  ‘In the incessant din of the mediocre, mean and fraudulent activities of a commercial mass society, we are apt to forget the genuine idealism of democracy, of the long painful struggle for liberty and equality…  The modern world is as revolutionary as everybody says it is.  Because the paradoxes of our age are so violent, men have been violently oversimplifying them.  If we want to save our world, we might try to keep and use our heads.’
In this book are a hundred American voices, captured by hunch, circumstances, and a rough idea.  There is no pretense at statistical ‘truth’ nor consensus.  There is, in the manner of a jazz work, an attempt, of theme and improvisation, to recount dreams, lost and found, and a recognition of possibility.”

For my own tribute to Studs Terkel, I’ll just take excerpts of some of the interviews from my favorite book, American Dreams.

Emma Knight, Miss USA, 1973:
“Several times during my year as what’s-her-face I had seen the movie The Sting.  There’s a gesture the characters use which means the con is on:  they rub their nose.  In my last fleeting moments as Miss U.S.A., as they were playing that silly farewell speech and I walked down the aisle and stood by the throne, I looked right into the camera and rubbed my finger aross my nose.  The next day, the pageant people spent all their time telling people that I hadn’t done it.  I spent the time telling that, of course, I had.  I simply meant:  the con is on (laughs).
Miss U.S.A. is in the same graveyard that Emma Knight the twelve-year-old is.  Where the sixteen-year-old is.  All the past selves.  There comes a time when you have to bury those selves because you’ve grown into another one.  You don’t keep exhuming the corpses.
If I could sit down with every young girl in America for the next fifty years, I could tell them what I liked about the pageant, I could tell them what I hated.  It wouldn’t make any difference.  There’re always gonna be girls who want to enter the beauty pageant.  That’s the fantasy:  the American Dream.”

Wallace Rasmussen, winner of the Horatio Alger Award:
“I think hardship is necessary for life to be good, for you to enjoy it.  If you don’t know hardship, you don’t know when you have it good.  Today, the father and mother don’t want their children to go through the same hardships.  I don’t look at it that way.  I have two children.  One is forty and one is thirty-six.  I can still say,’This is what you do,’ and that’s what they do.  I’m a firm believer that they had to know things weren’t always that easy.  There’s a price you pay for everything.”

C.P. Ellis, member of the Durham Human Relations Council 1977, former Ku Klux Klan member:
“The same thing is happening in this country today.  People are being used by those in control, those who have all the wealth.  I’m not espousing communism.  We got the greatest system of government in the world.  But those who have it simply don’t want those who don’t have it to have any part of it.  Black and white.  When it comes to money, the green, the other colors make no difference.  (Laughs)
I spent a lot of sleepless nights.  I stil didn’t like blacks.  I didn’t want to associate with ‘em.  Blacks, Jews, or Catholics.  My father said:  ‘Don’t have anything to do with them.’  I didn’t until I met a black person and talked with him, eyeball to eyeball, and met a jewish person and talked to him, eyeball to eyeball.  I found out they’re people just like me.  They cried, they cussed, they prayed, they had desires.  Thanks god, I got to the point where I can look past labels.  But at the time my mind was closed.”

Rafael Rosa, bellhop:
“What’s going on these days with all the violence, a person’s gotta think twice of walking down the street.  one time I got mugged in the South Bronx.  Three guys jumped me as I was walking down this dark street.  One guy stops me for a cigarette, and as I go to give him one, two guys grab me from behind.  They just started beatin’ on me and took all my money and left me on the floor and fled.  I recovered, and now I think twice about it.  Before I was mugged, I walked down any street.  I’d rather walk around a dark street than go through it, no matter how much time it’s gonna take me to get there.  If people call ya, I just keep on walking if I don’t know the person.  I look back and just keep walking.
I suggest:  Don’t walk alone at night.  Walk with a stick to protect yourself.  Don’t get too high because it slows down your reflexes.  You gotta keep your head clear.  They say:  Never look back.  In real life, you gotta look back.”

Jessie De La Cruz, small farmer and migrant worker activist:
I was given a shot in the arm by Cesar Chavez.  (Laughs)  All of the things I always felt, like I wanted t say, I helf back because of fear of losing a job, of being thought not a very good woman, or some kind of fear inside me that had been intelled in me by my grandmother, who always warned us whenever we did something, the police would come.  Always being scared  by a neighbor:  I’m gonna call the police and take you to juvenile.  We always heard these.  So when Cesar Chavez started talking to us and sayin’ women have to become involved, they have to speak, they’re farm workers, too , then, I just, oh, had a good feeling.  I said:  ‘Boy, now!’”

Pat and Tom Gish, editors and publishers of The Mountain Eagle:
“The flood of 1957 came that just about wiped our everything in eastern Kentucky.  the coal industry entered into a state of almost total collapse.  the mines that had been working three, four days a week were working one day a week or none at all.  Many mines closed.  In ’61 we had what amounted to mass starvation.  Nothing was being done.  We were broke ourselves.
People were walking the streets of Whitesburg, begging for food, begging for clothes, begging for money to see a doctor, begging for money to buy medicine.  I don’t think the rest of the country recognized what was happening.  the turning point for me came when a women appeared, stinking, with an awful odor of dead and decaying flesh, with a not from a doctor saying she much have surgery if she was to live.  She was diabetic and had to have her legs amputated.  She was walking the streets of Whitesburg, begging enough money to get to a hospital.
We realized something had to be done.  The rest of the world must know something about what the heck was going on in eastern Kentucky.  We spent all our spare moments for the next several years showing around visiting reporters, writers, and government officials by the dozen.  This in itself was an almost criminal thing to do.  The pride of the area has been so enormous that it became a cardinal sin to suggest that anything might be wrong.” 

Linda Haas, high school student:
“I learned all the whitewash things.  I didn’t learn about America in school.  I learned what they wanted me to learn.  What I feel about America, I learned on my own.  In school, everything was just great:  We never did anything wrong.  Everything was justified.  Up until I was thirteen, I believed that.  After that, I turned myself off, and from then on it was my own opinion.
I like living here.  I should appreciate it more.  We have so much freedom and stuff.  We take a lot for granted.  I don’t know if it’s the greatest place to live, because I’ve never been enywhere else.  So I’m not gonna say it’s the greatest until I know.  I know it’s a good place.  At the moment, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

The Evolution of the Institution of Marriage

Groucho Marx once said, “Marriage is a wonderful institution.  But who wants to live in an institution.”

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about that quote a lot during these past couple of weeks hearing arguments about Proposition 8.  Proposition 8 is in the California ballot that will ban gay marriages in the state and overturn a California State Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.   Right now conservative Christians in the Mormon, Catholic, and Evangelical churches are leading the fight to support Proposition 8 and their main argument is that this goes against the institution of marriage as it has been defined for several centuries as being between a man and a woman.  This got me thinking about history of the institution of marriage.  Has the institution of marriage always been the same over the course of human history and the course of Christian history?  Or has it been an institution that has evolved over time, as the understanding of human relations evolved?

First let’s how marriage is defined from the traditions of the main supporters of Proposition 8.  A detailed description of marriage from the points of view of the Mormon, Catholic and Evangelical churches can be found in these websites:  http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/mormon/marriage/, http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm, and http://www.pursuingthetruth.org/studies/files/marriage1.htm.   In the understanding of marriage from these three Christian denominations, marriage is an instititute ordained by God and is found in the Bible in Genesis 2:22-24, Matthew 19:4-6, and Ephesians 5:22-33.   In this belief, marriage is more than just a human institution, but is the center of Christian and human community and is a reflection of God’s relationship with human beings.    The Christian view of marriage is more than just a partnership;  it emphasizes the ability of a heterosexual couple to procreate.  The Catholic Bishops of California and the National Association of Evangelicals offers more detailed arguments in these sites:  http://www.catholicvoiceoakland.org/08-08-04/inthisissue7.htm and http://www.nae.net/index.cfm?FUSEACTION=editor.page&pageID=303&IDCategory=8.

Not all Christians hold this view.  Steve Young, the former San Francisco 49er quarterback and prominent Mormon, is against Propostion 8 for its discrimination against gays and lesbians.  Father Geoffrey Farrow recently went out of the closet and took a stand against the measure.  St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church and St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco have lead efforts to oppose Proposition 8.  Prominent Seventh Day Adventists like Julius Nam (Associate Professor of Religion Loma Linda University),  Lawrence T. Geraty (President Emeritus, La Sierra University), and Gary Chartier (Associate Professor of Law and Business Ethics, La Sierra University) have gone against their Seventh-day Adventist Church State Council’s public support of California Proposition 8.  The Episcopal Bishops of California issued a statement in opposition of Proposition 8 (http://www.diocal.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=303&Itemid=215).

I checked out two books for this weekend to read about the history of marriage.  Stephanie Coontz, the Director of Research and Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families, wrote the book Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Marriage or How Love Conquered Marriage.  Marilyn Yalom, a senior scholar at the Institute for Women and Gender at Stanford University, wrote the book A History of the Wife.   Both books agree that for many centuries, the primary role of marriage was not for the fulfillment of a loving relationship, but to secure a dowry and cement political alliances with prominent families, to increase one’s family labor force through the producing of children, and even to secure peace treaties.   Marriage since the times of Rome and Greece was primarily an economic and political institution and for any commoner who was not a slave, marriage was essential for the individual’s survival within that society.  In ancient societies, women needed men for the plowing;  men needed women to preserve food, spin wool, grind grain and provide children to work in the fields.   When choosing a mate, the individual was looking for a strong worker than a mate that one had love for.  Proverbs 31:10-20 and 24-27 gives a description of what a man looked for in a wife in ancient society:

Who can find a virtuous woman?  For her price is far above rubies.
The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.
She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
She is like the merchants’ ships;  she bringeth her food from afar.
She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
She considereth a field, and buyeth it:  with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.
She girdeth her lins with strength, and strengthen her arms.
She perceiveth that her merchandise is good:  her candle goeth not out by night.
She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.
She stetcheth out her hand to the poor;  yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy…
She maketh fine linen, and selleth it;  and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.
Strength and honour are her clothing:  and she shall rejoice in time to come.
She openeth her mouth with wisdom;  and in her tongue is the law of kindness
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.

It is true that through most of history, a primary role of marriage was to produce children.  That tradition, however, was very cruel to women who were barren.  Marilyn Yalom wrote, “Throughout the ancient world, the primary obligation of the wife was to produce offspring.  Woe to the barren wife of biblical times- not only would she be enveloped in shame, but often replaced by a second (or third) wife.  Well into modern times, wives could be disposed of for not producing children- especially among royalty and the aristocracy, where the necessity for a male heir placed even greater pressure on the wife.”   There was much physical abuse in these marriages, as women often had few legal rights and were dependent on their husbands for economic security.   Battering was an accepted practice that was sanctioned by law amd custom as a way to allow husbands to enforce authority over their wives.

Many early Christians had ambivalent feelings about marriage, believing as St. Paul did in 1 Conrinthians 7:32-34 that marriage undermined the self control needed to achieve spiritual salvation.   They thought of marriage as being the best alternative to satiating the temptation of lust.  This attitude changed over time as Christians grew in number and as the Roman Empire gradually accepted Christianity under the reigns of Constantine and Theodosius. 

As the Roman Empire fell, the Catholic Church slowly began to take over the institution of marriage.  In the sixth and seventh centuries, the Church began to define laws of incest as they began to preside over marriages of the aristocracy.  They condemned the Old Testament practice of marrying a brother’s widow, and then they condemned the marriage of first and second cousins, stepmothers or stepdaughters, and the widows of uncles.  Since many kings and nobles used marriage to consolidate wealth and social status, this gave the church much power if it chose to enforce these rules.   In the twelfth century, the church pressured individuals to marry in the presence of a priest and to marry inside a church.  It downplayed the need for parental consent, and made marriage the mututal will of the intended spouses a criterion.  Marriage became a sacrament of the church, meaning that God’s grace was received during the ceremony, and this made divorce unacceptable.   Women gradually lost the right to inherit and own property as the idea of primogeniture, of the right of the firstborn son to inherit the family wealth, began taking root.

One of the great influences of marriage was from Martin Luther, the famous Protestant dissident.  He opposed the Catholic Church’s opposition to priestly celibacy by marrying the former nun Katherina von Bora in 1525.  He had found no tenet in the Bible specifically stating that priests shouldn’t marry, and believed that the apostles and Jesus himself might have been married at some point in their lives.  Since many priests had concubines anyways, Luther felt that it was better for priests to get married rather than to live in sin.

In the 16th and 17th century, the growth of a market economy and the ideas of the Enlightenment changed attitudes towards marriage.  Personal choice of spouses replaced arranged marriages as a social ideal and individuals were encouraged to marry for love.  Stephanie Coontz explains the cause of the changes:

“Two seismic social changes spurred these changes in marriage norms.  First, the spread of wage labor made young people less dependent on their parents for a start in life.  A man didn’t have to delay marriage until he inherited land or took over a busines from his father.  A woman could more readily earn her won dowry…  They could marry as soon as they were able to earn sufficient funds.
Second, the freedoms afforde by the market economy had their parallel in new political and philosophical ideas.  Starting in the mid-seventeenth century, some political theorists began to challenge the ideas of absolutism.  Such ideas gained more adherents durig the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, when influential thinkers across Europe championed individual rights and insisted that social relationships, including those between men and women, be organized on the basis of reason and justice rather than force.  Believing the pursuit of happiness to be a legitimate goal, they advocated marrying for love rather than wealth or status.”

These ideas uprooted centuries of belief about marriage and caused much worry.  Critics claimed that marrying for love would undermine the social and moral order of society.    Among the criticisms that Coontz found were these:  “If wives and husbands were intimates, wouldn’t women demand to share decisions equally?  If women possessed the same faculties of reason as men, shy would they confine themselves to domesticity?  Would men still financially support women and children if they lost control over their wives’ and childrens’ labor and could not even discipline them properly?  If parents, church, and state no longer dictated people’s private lives, how could society make sure the right people married and had children or stop the wrong ones from doing so?”

Anthony Giddens had called a marriage based on love “the intrinsically subversive character of the romantic love complex” and he was right.    As husbands and wives began to see each other as equals in intimacy, it was the start of a long fight to gain women more equal rights in the marital sphere and the outside society.   Women had a long road to fight.   Women were once considered inferior beings, whose main purpose was to serve their men and be their helpers.  Once they were married women lost the rights of their property and were subject to their husbands’ authority.  Often they suffered abuse, and they had no means of recourse in the courts system.  Society made it difficult to divorce and most women felt trapped.  Records of the early seventeenth century physician Robert Napier showed that more than a thousand female patients treated for mental illness concluded that they were especially troubled by oppression they experienced as daughters and wives.  British writer Mary Wollstonecraft in her 1792 treatise Vindication of the Rights of Women saw the existing intitution of marriage as being similar to the institution of slavery.  

Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte were inspired by the idea of love in marriage to create headstrong and intelligent women characters in their books that went against social norms.  Their writings inspired Sarah Grimke, who wrote Letters on the Equability of the Sexes in 1837 about the need to educate both the husbands and the wives see themselves as equals.    Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony fought for women’s equality and were proud of the passage in 1860 of the Married Women’s Property Act in New York, which gave wives the right to own their own property and earnings. 

Along with the fight for gender equality was the fight for racial equality.  Laws against interracial marriage were in place in America to seperate whites from blacks and other races that were deemed inferior to the majority race.  In an internet post (http://hnn.us/articles/4708.html), Peggy Pascoe, an Associate Professor and Beekman Chair of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon, found four reason often given to support a ban on interracial marriage: first, judges claimed that marriage belonged under the control of the states rather than the federal government; second, they began to define and label all interracial relationships (even longstanding, deeply committed ones) as illicit sex rather than marriage; third, they insisted that interracial marriage was contrary to God’s will; fourth, they declared that interracial marriage was somehow “unnatural.” In the 1883 Supreme Court case Pace versus Alabama, the Court ruled that the Alabama miscegenation laws did not violate the fourteenth amendment because both parties suffered under interracial marriages and interracial sex.  it wasn’t until 1967 and the Loving versus Virginia case when the Supreme Court made laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional.

As the twentieth century dawned, more attitudes changes about the institution of marriage.   The early twentieth century was a time of great turmoil for married couples going through two world wars, a great depression, and new ideas of sexuality coming from Freud and the roaring 1920s.  In the 1950s, the view that many people see as traditional marriage became common, as the two parent family with the single male wage earner took hold in most of America.  But that time hid many stresses on that model of marriage.   Many men felt that being the sole breadwinner was a burden and they were often tired and stressed.  Women felt isolated at home while trying to rear their children.  The coming of the Women’s Liberation movement and the economic realities that brought on the two income marriage brought more changes to the way marriage is viewed. 

When I look at the history of marriage, I do not see an institution that has been unchanging over time.  Marriage as an institution that has constantly evolved to the changing economic, political and social changes that have affected people.   The Enlightenment ideas of equality, the fight for women’s rights, the fight for civil rights, and now the fight for gay rights have changed our views on the roles that men and women play.  I respect the rights of conservative Christians to hold a different view from mine.  I do not think churches should be forced by the government to perform same sex marriages if it goes against their creeds.  But I also think it is wrong for those churches to ban gay marriages for people who do not share their beliefs or who do not belong to their churches.   I am against Proposition 8 for this reason.