There Comes A Time...

November 4 2005
Counterbias.com
Mel Seesholtz
 

And that time needs to come sooner rather than later. American politics and social civility have slid into a morass from which they must escape.

House majority leader Tom DeLay indicted, but still avidly supported by ultra-conservatives and the Christian Right. Senate majority leader Bill Frist, M.D., damned by the Christian Right and ultra-conservatives for his medical decision to support stem cell research.

A vice president who wants to legalize government-sponsored torture: “Mr. Cheney’s proposal … would give the president the power to allow government agencies outside the Defense Department (the administration has in mind the C.I.A.) to mistreat and torture prisoners as long as that behavior was part of ‘counterterrorism operations conducted abroad’ and they were not American citizens.”

A senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to the president who seems increasingly implicated in outing a CIA covert agent whose husband disagreed with the party line: “Lawyers involved in the case have said Mr. Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, face the possibility of indictment on perjury or other charges related to covering up their actions.” Libby was indicted “on five felony charges of lying to investigators and misleading the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case.” Karl Rove remains under investigation.

A president who surrounds himself only with yes-men – “Bush foreign policy has been undercut by the President’s unwillingness to listen to ideas that conflict with his convictions. It is a devastating portrait of a president cut off from contrary views” – and who believes “God” told him to wage a war that’s cost the lives of more than two thousand Americans and untold thousands of innocent civilian women, men, and children in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The latest fiasco was the Miers Supreme Court nomination. Despite James Dobson’s reassurances, the Christian Right was not persuaded. Miers had to go. She did, only to be replaced by arch-conservative Samuel Alito, affectionately referred to by some as “Scalito” or “Scalia-lite” because his judicial philosophy mirrors that of Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Alito once clerked.

Most Americans do not want persons who are openly engaged in homosexual conduct as partners in their businesses, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home.

-- US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in dissent of the Lawrence v. Texas decision, June 2003

On Halloween 2005, leaders of the evangelical Christian Right were falling over themselves with praise for Alito… and Bush. That alone should raise red flags.

“President Bush capitulated to the howling from the extreme, evangelical right and threw them red meat in the form of U.S. Circuit Court Judge Samuel Alito,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “The country will now be put through a wrenching, divisive and damaging confirmation process. One more travesty inflicted on this nation by the president and his right wing allies.”

Jon Davidson, legal director for Lambda Legal, was also duly concerned: “Judge Alito’s track record on reproductive freedom, enforcement of civil rights and federalism (respect for Congress’s power to enact important statutes like civil rights laws) raises potential red flags for Lambda Legal and merits particular scrutiny.”

One of Lambda’s concerns was an opinion written by Alito on behalf of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 2000 striking down the “anti-harassment” policy adopted by a school district in State College, PA, where Penn State University’s main campus is located. The policy banned harassment on the basis of “actual or perceived race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability or other personal characteristics.” Alito reasoned that the policy was unconstitutional because it could cover what he called “simple acts of teasing and name-calling.” A report by the nonprofit organization Advocates for Children documented just how devastating “teasing and name-calling” can be to children trying to learn in America’s public schools.

According to the Washington Blade, the State College policy was challenged by a member of the school board whose two children attended schools affected by the policy. He claimed their Christian faith would subject his children to punishment under the policy. “They believe, and their religion teaches, that homosexuality is a sin,” the plaintiffs alleged in the lawsuit. “[They] further believe that they have a right to speak out about the sinful nature and harmful effects of homosexuality.”

Do people have the right to speak out about what they perceive as “the sinful nature and harmful effects of homosexuality”? Yes, but in a public school may not be the appropriate place for such religious preaching. Moreover, one has to wonder why evangelicals feel so compelled to do so while they remain relatively silent about most other “sins” enumerated in the Bible and their “harmful effects.”

Waving banners citing Matthew 19:6 and that pesky commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” they don’t protest in front of courts that grant divorces or taunt those leaving with their decrees. Perhaps that has something to do with the facts in a Barna Group report entitled “Born Again Christians Just As Likely to Divorce As Are Non-Christians.” It documented that “among married born again Christians, 35% have experienced a divorce. That figure is identical to the outcome among married adults who are not born again: 35%.” Barna also documented that “nearly one-quarter of the married ‘born agains’ (23%) get divorced two or more times.” No doubt some of those divorces and multiple divorces among born-again Christians reported by the Barna Group involved adultery.

As if to underscore evangelicals’ singular attention to making sure gays and lesbian students continue to be at risk, the same day Bush announced the Alito nomination Advocate.com and the Washington Blade featured stories about a group of Iowa pastors and their objection to “anti-bullying” measures. Not only did the pastors object to the anti-bullying measures, they objected to an educational forum on the subject.

From the Blade:

A group of southeast Iowa pastors plan to launch an organized protest of a school-sponsored forum planned for Tuesday [November 1, 2005] focusing on bullying and its affect on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. …

 

The group of pastors said they are opposed to focusing the attention on school safety for that  specific group of students. “We’re just strongly against it,” said the Rev. Steve Perkins of St. John AME  Church, who attended a meeting of pastors Thursday to discuss strategy for opposing what some among them described as the gay agenda.

 

Perkins and his fellow ministers do not want to see GLBT students singled out as a specially protected class of student. If that happens, the ministers fear that proponents of the homosexual lifestyle will gain access to the hearts and minds of Burlington youth. “We do want safety for all kids,” Perkins said, “and for them to have an opportunity to learn on an even playing field.”

One has to wonder how Pastor Perkins defines “an even playing field,” considering how things play out in the schools of somewhat more liberal New York City:

about a third of the [LGBT] students [surveyed] reported being called names daily and 26 percent said they had been hurt or threatened. Others said schools did not investigate complaints.

 

“You have a climate that is hostile to LGBT in every school in this city, and when you have peer pressure enforced by an administration that’s hostile, it drives students to drop out of school,” said Pauline Park, chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy.

From Advocate.com:

School Board President Frosty Krummel, pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Burlington, would not elaborate  on his own opinion about the other ministers’ misgivings about the Burlington schools becoming involved in  GLBT issues. He did point out, however, that there are other Burlington churches listed among the forum’s sponsors, and noted the existence of a “wide diversity of legitimate Christian opinion.”

 

Within his own faith, Krummel said one could speak with five ministers and get five different  opinions on the subject of homosexuality. Krummel didn't seem to oppose the forum or the district’s participation in it. “It’s an educational forum,” he  said. “If you can’t have an educational forum within the educational system, where can you have them?”

Where indeed?

One place is in Gay-Straight Alliance clubs where students learn about each other, where they learn not to fear and hate. GSA clubs have been a favorite target of various powerful lobbying groups in the Christian Right. One more can be added to that list. Rev. Fred Phelps’ cult has targeted the GSA club formed by students at Port Charlotte High School in Florida:

The [GSA] club, a group of teenagers formed to stop bullying of gays, decided to ignore a protest threatened by the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., an anti-gay group best known for picketing the 1998 funeral of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay man beaten to death in Laramie, Wyo.

 

The anti-gay group faxed obscene fliers to the school announcing plans to protest Dec. 19 at Port Charlotte High.

 

The group is notorious for picketing against the gay community with signs that say such things as “God hates gays.” Led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, group members also have picketed the funerals of Americans killed in Iraq, claiming the troops are defending the United States, a country that Westboro says supports homosexuality.

Has the time come for America to separate religion from politics and affirm the need for an independent judiciary?

Has the time come to make sure all students feel safe in school?

Has the time come for America’s religious leaders to realize this is a secular nation that honors both religious freedom and freedom from religion, and where all citizens must be treated equally?

We’ll see…