CAP report on faith and the politics of equality in Tennessee

Last week the Center for American Progress came out with a report that has so far been little noticed in Tennessee called Keeping the Faith: Faith Organizing for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Moral and Civil Rights in a Southern State. Written by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite and Marta Cook, the document examines the ways in which faith communities play a role in the debates over equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in Tennessee.

What they found might surprise you:

• LGBT activists and faith allies in Tennessee have attained a remarkable level of success in a state with a high level of religious affiliation. Despite faith-based opposition that is well-organized and well funded, LGBT advocates have devel- oped creative strategies and messages regarding LGBT equality rooted in faith.
• Tennessee exhibits less of a religious/secular divide between faith groups and LGBT activists than exists in other states. Many LGBT advocates are themselves faith leaders, and many LGBT organizations recognize that effective faith alliances and targeted faith messaging are critical to success.
• Despite these efforts, serious challenges remain within key faith communities, including white evangelicals, Catholics, and African-American churches. Key to increasing the success of LGBT organizing work in Tennessee is expanding faith alliances. In some cases that means crafting outreach strategies and collaborative efforts to meet communities where they are.
• LGBT policy activism has been remarkably effective in the state, securing state- wide hate crimes legislation that includes sexual orientation as a protected cat- egory, and in securing the passage of three local non-discrimination ordinances that address employment issues.
• While certain African-American faith allies are doing brave and significant work in Tennessee to support LGBT moral and civil equality, most do not come from historic African-American churches. African-American and white faith allies agree on the need for more reciprocity in raising issues of social and economic justice for African Americans alongside issues of equal legal rights for LGBT citizens of Tennessee. They see this as indispensible to having more African Americans become a part of the LGBT movement in the state.
• HIV awareness/prevention campaigns have provided critical opportunities for concrete work between LGBT groups and African-American churches. This work tends to be below the radar and involves broader issues of health and sexuality education. Some African-American faith allies, white faith allies, and LGBT activists, however, see this issue area as a way for collaborative work to go forward between these communities.
• Creative faith collaborations, targeted faith messaging, and efforts to expand faith support for equality should not obscure the enormous obstacles that LGBT advocates and allies face in Tennessee. Opposition from religious and political conservatives has increased political support for intolerance and pro- duced negative effects within the LGBT community, where some distrust the validity of any faith activism.
• In addition to cultivating faith allies and making a faith case for equality in Tennessee, growing the organizational and technological sophistication of the LGBT movement in Tennessee is essential to more effectively compete with well-funded and organized opposition.

-Chris Sanders

Sarah Palin's Church and GLBT issues

The Associated Press is reporting that Sarah Palin's Church is promoting Focus on the Family's Love Won Out conference that advocates for gays and lesbians to change their sexual orientation. The campaign has not commented on whether Palin supports the conference or the concept behind it.

It's the rare American who agrees 100 percent with everything his or her house of worship says or does. I despised the way people drove a wedge between the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama and I don't think we should automatically assume guilt by association with the Palins. I don't think Joe Biden is answerable for every encyclical that comes from Pope Benedict XVI.

What the press and what activists ought to focus on are policy questions that are within the purview of the federal government--Don't Ask/Don't Tell, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Matthew Shepard Act, etc. No politician and no citizen should have to give a detailed account of his or her faith tradition for the public. So what if she's advancing faith and family in her campaign? It doesn't mean we have to enable that kind of politics by attacking her on those grounds. If you believe that there are no religious tests for office in this country, then act like it and go after her on policy.

Asking Palin how she might break a tie vote in the Senate on hate crimes legislation, for example, is entirely appropriate. There is no need to pit her against her Church or explain her in terms of her Church. The tough questions about the issues must not be lost in the cheap shots. My own guess is that she either won't answer them or won't answer them in a way that affirms the basic rights of GLBT Americans.

A focus on Palin's policy positions would also help avoid the sexist and anti-Pentecostal bigotry that we're already seeing in the blogosphere. If you're trying to attack her politics as bigoted by spewing comments about her Church or through references to her hair or her family, guess what, you're a bigot and a hypocrite.

Swain says Dems will have to convince voters that God is pro-choice and pro-gay

Vanderbilt Professor Carol Swain's work is often ground-breaking on issues of race and politics and always provocative. But her thoughts on the uphill task Democrats may have in addressing "Bible-believing Christians" are off the mark:

Democrats must convince evangelical Christians that God is pro-choice on abortion and gay marriage. This will be a harder sell for Bible-believing Christians who have rejected the liberal theocratic [sic, perhaps she means theological] notion that God's word changes to meet the needs of a more enlightened society. The Republicans will portray Obama and the Democrats as lightweights on biblical knowledge and practice.

Saints preserve us! First of all, even if that were true from a descriptive or even strategic point of view, it is not commendable. Unless they happen to be someone like former Senator John Danforth, most politicians aren't experts in biblical interpretation. For a party or a presidential candidate to be channeling the voice of God is, from a certain religious point of view, presumptuous and probably idolatrous. In a softer sort of way, candidates shouldn't have any qualms about drawing on large biblical themes because they are part of the culture. But to assume the pulpit or the teaching office of the Church or another religious body is an improper encroachment upon the role of religious leaders. Faith may, indeed, inform the moral angle of policy on both sides of the aisle, but there must nevertheless be a public rationale based on a sense of the common good.

But I also think Swain is wrong from a descriptive and strategic point of view. She oversimplifies what is going on in Evangelicalism today. While it is true that John McCain is likely to get the majority of this voting bloc, Evangelicals are beginning to reexamine their engagement with politics with some moving away from being one or two-issue voters (if they ever were!). Furthermore, in the case of marriage, the differences between McCain and Obama are not so vast that they loom large in the average voter's mind. Both seem to believe marriage is between one man and one woman and that it's a question for the states.

The issue that Swain doesn't address strategically is what effect a more pronounced biblicism in the Obama campaign would have among Democratic voters. The more secular voters and those whose faith is not Christian may balk. I think the same may be true of Catholic voters whose faith is grounded in a more complex interplay between Bible and Sacred Tradition. At a time when the Obama campaign is being pressed for policy specifics, devoting more time to playing catch up on the Bible might send the message that he is out of touch and that he is pandering.

Golden Rule Politics this Sunday Night

I had never even heard of the relatively new DVD Golden Rule Politics: Reclaiming the Rightful Role of Faith in Politics until the local chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State asked me yesterday if I would be on a panel about the issues addressed in it this coming Sunday. I'm not sure about the logic of having the event on a holiday weekend and a Sunday night (when most Church people who go to churchy things are at...Church), but the organizers must figure that most Church people won't be going to OutLoud! or, um, any event sponsored by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Not sure. But that's a shame because we actually ought to be going to discussions where the deck isn't stacked in our favor.

Back to the film. You can see clips of it here. And there's a nifty study guide here. Tennessee's own Senator Roy Herron (D-Dresden), who has an M.Div. from Vanderbilt Divinity School, is interviewed. The DVD is produced by the Baptist Center for Ethics, which is the moderate foil to the more conservative Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Event Details: Sunday, May 25 at 7:00 p.m. Central at OutLoud! located at 1703 Church Street in Nashville. Film followed by discussion.