The changing LGBT political landscape and the 'Church'

In an earlier post, our own Chris Sanders applauded the endorsment of LGBT-inclusive workplace protections by the Mormons (Latter Day Saints) in Salt Lake City, Utah. Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish finds there is a model for churches and the LGBT community to embrace:

What the LDS church has done in Utah is an immensely important and positive step and places the Mormon church in a far more positive and pro-gay position than any other religious group broadly allied with the Christianist right. They have made a distinction - and it is an admirable, intellectually honest distinction - between respecting the equal rights of other citizens in core civil respects, while insisting - with total justification - on the integrity of one's own religious doctrines, and on a religious institution's right to discriminate in any way with respect to its own rites and traditions.

In the Midsouth, more evangelicals are "coming out" for LGBT equality in measured ways. In a Nov. 11 Letter to the Editor of the Memphis Flyer, two evangelical Christians wrote in support of legislation establishing LGBT-inclusive workplace protections:

We wish to register our support for the proposed amendment to Memphis Ordinance 9, which is intended to establish a nondiscrimination provision regarding sexual orientation or gender identity.

As Christians belonging to Bible-believing churches in Memphis, we feel obligated to note that the dominant evangelical voices heard in the Memphis media do not reflect the views of many evangelicals in our community. We are in agreement with evangelical opponents of this amendment on many issues, including the uniqueness of Jesus and the nonnegotiable nature of biblical ethics. But we believe that the protection of economic rights for all our fellow Memphians is an important part of showing love and support for the dignity of people created in the image of God, their Creator.

Our hope is that this amendment not only discourages discrimination but fosters relationships among diverse segments of our community.

The landscape for dialogue and acceptance of basic rights is changing. Can you imagine these sorts of positions expressed by faith leaders 5, 10, or 20 years ago?

Who were you expecting? Gene Robinson maybe?

All Hell has broken loose in GLBT quarters about the choice of Rick Warren to pray at the Inauguration. I completely get and agree with the opposition. I'm surprised by the surprise, though. Barack Obama has been doing a lot of, depending on how you look at it, reconciling with or coopting foes from the campaign. Look at how many of his Democratic primary opponents are going to be in the Administration. While Rick Warren calls Obama a friend, Evangelicals have symbolically represented the other for Democrats for quite some time.

There's a lot of back and forth inside baseball on whether a congressional committee made the decision or whether Obama had the final say even if the committee did suggest Warren. I don't think that's the point.

We have a president-elect who will not be scripted by the divisions in the culture war. For those of us on either side, that's not going to be pleasant. It's going to be a constant effort at interpreting what Obama's choices mean. We may be guessing for quite some time if we try to follow the semiotics of the words and events surrounding him.

Public presentation and rhetoric matter. And I think a president's rhetoric has to try to stretch to include every group. Obama could take the clear and easy road by either picking one side or speaking in such generalities that what he says is meaningless. Instead, he may be charting a new course of simultanteously embracing aspects of the two sides in the culture war. That will provide plenty of occasion for both sides to be insulted.

I admit I'm not quite sure what to make of the pattern that is emerging. And while necessary from the point of view of GLBT advocacy, the condemnations do not begin to explain what is at work in these paradoxical choices that Obama is making.

Evangelical leaders attack Newsweek piece, but they say they really aren't worried about it.

Politico quotes a number of Evangelical leaders who express their dismay with the recent Newsweek cover story about the religious case for same-sex marriage.

“It doesn’t surprise me. Newsweek has been so far in the tank on the homosexual issue, for so long, they need scuba gear and breathing apparatus,” said Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “I don’t think it’s going to change the minds of anyone who takes biblical teachings seriously.”

Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative Family Research Council, agreed, calling Newsweek’s cover story “yet another attack on orthodox Christianity.”

“I hardly think that Newsweek is a credible venue for theological discussion,” said Perkins. “I mean, I thought it was just full of holes.”

Of course, they really are worried about the piece. It bypasses their pronouncements and lands in the mailboxes of hundreds of thousands of people around the country. It will spend a week in waiting areas of barber shops and doctors' offices for anyone to pick up. You won't be able to browse the magazine section of Kroger without seeing it. And it hits them where they believe they're strongest--religious authority. It adds another jolt of momentum in public opinion that is gradually shifting in favor of some kind of state sanction for same-sex relationships.

And best of all, it highlights the irony of the names of the organizations opposing same-sex marriage that include the words "liberty" and "research."

The problem that the Religious Right has is that it has no end game, except holding onto the status quo. While there can be little doubt that their hardcore adherents would like to see a return to sodomy laws, there is almost no chance of that happening. So we're in the purgatorial situation of not being able to go backwards. The GLBT genie is out of the bottle. More and more people are going to live their lives openly and lawfully and form relationships, and they have straight friends and family members who love them. So if we're not going to go back to sodomy laws and we've got hundreds of thousands of people forming relationships, doesn't the state have an interest in recognizing and ordering those relationships in order to secure the status of children and protect the partners involved? If that is the case, the only solution is a state sanctioned means of entering and dissolving committed relationships. The arrangement society knows best is marriage.

Dobson says "Yes!" to Palin

It's no secret that John McCain and Focus on the Family's James Dobson have some verbal hostilities in their past. But McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate is enough to close the gap for Dobson.

Dobson: But I can tell you that if I had to go into the studio, I mean the voting booth today, I would pull that lever.

I'll try not to dwell on the fact that Dr. Dobson subconsciously thinks he ought to get to cast his vote in a studio instead of a voting booth like the rest of us. But his remarks are significant. Comments like these could build into a chorus. I do wonder whether it's too late to light a fire in the Evangelical base, though. Some Evangelicals are moving to a less political stance and a few have been moving to the left. But the choice of Palin is an element in helping McCain address their ambivalence.

Update: More conservative love for Sarah Palin in the Tennessean. Quotations from Dr. Richard Land, more from James Dobson, and others.

Evangelicals taking their time

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has released a survey on religion and opinion in the presidential race that shows that John McCain has less of a lead among Evangelicals than President Bush did in either of the previous two elections.

But Evangelicals don't appear to be flocking to Senator Obama. Despite being comfortable with the languages of Evangelicalism, Obama is nevertheless a little behind John Kerry and Al Gore's performance with this group.

Why? Is it because of the steadily rising profile of center and left-leaning Evangelicals like those associated with Sojourners? I don't think so, although that may be a factor in allowing Obama to hold a quarter of the group. Is it the fact that McCain has had trouble with Evangelical leaders like James Dobson and the late Jerry Falwell? That is obviously relevant.

But what the results may be showing are the effects of a process of soul searching and identity clarification. In particular, some Evangelicals are increasingly uncomfortable with the movement being popularly identified with politics and the culture wars.

If McCain loses the Evangelicals, Dobson and company won't be able to take all the credit. A growing fatigue with politics might be the silent killer. At this point, it is difficult to imagine John McCain getting 79% of their votes, as President Bush reportedly did in 2004. Bush picked up 10 points among them from June to November. What would it take for John McCain to pick up 18 points to reach that same mark? A miracle.

Change brewing among younger Evangelicals

The New York Times profiles the Journey, a St. Louis area Southern Baptist mega-Church full of younger Evangelicals who seem ready to move beyond the culture wars. They even have gatherings in brew pubs.

They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.

But...

None of that means younger evangelicals have abandoned the core tenets of their faith, including a belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus and the literal truth of the Bible. They think abortion and homosexuality are sins.

Very much akin to the position outlined in An Evangelical Manifesto, these younger Evangelicals really haven't abandoned their sense of the truth. They have importantly changed the emphasis, though.

But this comment was the most provocative in the piece:

“The easy thing is to fight, but the hard thing is to put your gloves down and work together towards a common cause,” said the Rev. Scott Thomas, director of the Acts 29 Network, which helps pastors start churches. “Our generation would like to put our gloves down. We don’t want to be out there picketing. We want to be out there serving.”

Evangelicals, by virtue of a long history and a textual tradition that emphasizes being for others rather than for self have the tools to make this transition. Whether the will is there is another question. That made me wonder whether the GLBT community can do the same. Until we are safe from hate crimes and until we have fundamental rights like marriage, we will continue to fight. But how can we at the same time show that we are for others and not merely for ourselves? Of course, as individuals, millions of members of our community are and have been involved in all kinds of movements that do not directly benefit us in terms of our sexual orientation and gender identity. But I don't think that is the image of our movement. The overwhelming image of our movement is that we are out for number one. I don't apologize for that because we can't expect anyone else to take our rights seriously if we don't do stand up for ourselves. But we will erode our basic humanness if we can't make the transition to a movement that both is and is perceived to be in the service of others.

Identity Politics: Reactions to an Evangelical Manifesto--Part 2

Though only 20 pages long, An Evangelical Manifesto http://www.evangelicalmanifesto.com/docs/Evangelical_Manifesto.pdf summarizes a wealth of cultural, political, and religious conflicts in its effort to offer a way forward. The sub-topics are endless. One of particular interest to the GLBT community will be the discussion of identity politics, which is named explicitly as a concern.

There are grave dangers in identity politics, but we insist that we ourselves, and not scholars, the press, or public opinion, have the right to say who we understand ourselves to be. We are who we say we are, and we resist all attempts to explain us in terms of our “true” motives and our “real” agenda. (p. 4)

My first thought when I read those sentences was that it could have been written by a GLBT activist responding to anyone in the mainstream culture and especially to those opposed to the equality movement, particularly with respect to the word “agenda.” How many times have we heard others scream about the “homosexual agenda?”

I think the parallels are instructive. Just as the public is no doubt baffled any time a group renames itself—in our case with at least the four letters G, L, B, and T in some order, the wider public is confused about the meaning of Evangelical. And I think Evangelicals are on the right track in taking a moment to define themselves. The media in Tennessee, for example, have been quick to adopt "GLBT" coupled with the more familiar and general word “gay.” If Evangelicals continue to press their point, they may achieve some public clarity about who they are.

Evangelicals see the way through the problematic aspects of identity politics by affirming a particular allegiance with a transcendent quality.

In a society divided by identity and gender politics, Christians must witness by their lives to the way their identity in Jesus transcends all such differences. (p. 13)

So the question that the GLBT community will be asking is, Does that mean you’re going to declare a truce in your legislative initiatives against our community? The authors give a clue to a maybe.

We have no desire to coerce anyone or to impose on anyone beliefs and behavior that we have not persuaded them to adopt freely, and that we do not demonstrate in our own lives, above all by love. (p. 16)

I take that to mean at bare minimum that there would be no attempt by these kinds of Evangelicals to reinstitute sodomy laws. But what about active opposition to the existing and emerging rights of GLBT people? Will Churches and individual Evangelicals begin to urge the Family Action Council of Tennessee to stop trying to restrict our adoption rights in the Legislature? Will they stop serving as the organizers of efforts to put same-sex marriage bans on the ballot of states across the country? And will they stop opposing hate crimes laws that cover sexual orientation and gender identity?

Reactions to An Evangelical Manifesto--Part 1

A group of leading Evangelicals released a document this week called An Evangelical Manifesto. It is addressed not only to other Evangelicals, but to all American citizens for their consideration. Although I didn't notice anyone from Tennessee among the leaders, the document is worthy of discussion in our state since over 50% of the people identify themselves as Evangelical Protestants.

"The two-fold purpose of this declaration is first to address the confusions and corruptions that attend the term Evangelical in the United States and much of the Western world today, and second to clarify where we stand on issues that have caused consternation over Evangelicals in public life."

An important signal of a shift comes in their list of what Evangelicalism means. Biblical authority is listed fourth and not first as is often the case in historic Evangelical statements of faith. The leaders are drawing a clearer line between themselves and Fundamentalists.

The document underscores this shift by calling for Evangelicalism to be "defined theologically and not politically." The authors concede that they "cannot back away from our biblically rooted commitment to the sanctity of every human life, including those unborn, nor can we deny the holiness of marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman..." But they express the desire to move "beyond single-issue politics..." They call for "engaging the global giants of conflict, racism, corruption, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, and spiritual emptiness..."

Those who are more political than theological in their interests should still consider reading the theological rationale in the document. I think it presents an honest effort at struggling with a long, distinguished tradition of Christianity that has influenced our public life. Driving every sentence are theological reflection and the negative reaction from outsiders. It shows that this group of Evangelicals have taken seriously their own roots and the broader conversation in which they find themselves today.

While there is little movement on the marriage issue that is so important to America's GLBT community, An Evangelical Manifesto moves the marriage issue away from the center of concern. Or perhaps I should say a host of other basic issues have joined marriage and abortion at the center with the effect of putting those concerns in a broader mix. The laser-focus on so-called family values is gone.

Some evangelicals shifting attention from gay marriage to other issues

A piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution mentions a recent Pew Forum poll on the views of evangelical voters in Tennessee: http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/03/23/evanvote_0324.html .