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This blog ran for more than two years with no graphics--and it received about 50 page views. I was advised to add graphics; after seeing the huge public that followed blogs dedicated to homoerotic images, I decided to use that kind. The result was a dramatically increased number of monthly page views, and the number has remained fairly steady. Most of the images were found on the internet; although they are assumed to be in the public domain, they are identified as far as possible. They are exhibited under the Fair Use protections of United States copyright law: their function is simply to attract readers to the poems--I receive no economic benefit from them or from the blog. Nevertheless, they will be removed if they are copyrighted and the owner so desires. 1260 x 290

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Friday, July 3, 2015

HOMOPHOBIC RESISTANCE TO THE U. S. SUPREME COURT’S DECISION PROTECTING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE





The recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, to strike down State legislation outlawing same-sex marriage, was met with a spate of calls for resistance from politicians, clergymen, and civil servants—and produced a flurry of expressions of defiance and anti-gay sentiment from a number of florists, bakers, and hardware-store owners, most of them smallin some ways very smallbusinessmen. 

Much of this little controversy is based on an exaggerated sense of Us (good guys) versus Them (bad guys), something that appears to be evolutionary-instinctive, and in my experience correlates with the level of academic achievement: the less educated the person, the more rigid and narrow the identification with Us, and the more suspicion of, and hostility to, Them.

The fact that these people raise the false issue of freedom of expression shows their irrationality:

Their expressions of hatred and bigotry, the insulting labels like abomination, “deviant,” and pervert and faggot empower and encourage violence (even murder), marginalization, and denial of civil rights. If these expressions are not a threat to all civil rights, including the right to life itself, then how can the mere identification and condemnation of that hatred and bigotry be a threat to freedom of speech?

The so-called threat to freedom of religion is equally specious. Those who claim that their freedom of religion is threatened have one of two bases. First, the more confused think that if the civil rights of GLBT people are respected, then somehow, as if by magic, the “religious” rights of heterosexuals will disappear. This is patently absurd: no heterosexual marriages will fall apart as a result of a same-sex marriage, not even if the gay couple moves into the same neighborhood. The marriage of a same-sex couple will not invalidate Christian “Holy Matrimony” for anyone, anywhere.  (Nor will serving a gay customer cause heterosexual customers to be denied service.) This is the Chicken Little syndrome: In a traditional popular fable, Chicken Little ran around screaming that the sky was falling; he psychologically contaminated the entire community without being able to point to a single event. Maybe this was the inspiration for Chick-fil-A.  

The second group of religious objectors fears prosecution and fines and possibly even jail terms as a result of refusing service to GLBT. This fundamentalist Christian fear of prosecution/persecution is undoubtedly reinforced by the traditional stories, lovingly retold, of the persecution of the primitive Christians under the Roman Empire, and of the early Protestants by the Roman Catholic Church. So these people, who would persecute or even kill GLBT people, cast themselves (!) as the martyrs.

Today, their fears are apparently based on the penalties for the violation of the civil-rights legislation of the 1960's and '70's, which itself violated some fundamentalist Christians' belief in white supremacy. In case you don't believe me, here are some examples of racist theology: The Southern Baptist Convention, a large Christian denomination, was created on the eve of the American Civil War specifically in order to defend, biblically, the enslavement of Africans; and for more than a century after the war, it defended white supremacy and the oppression of African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan (which has many sympathizers to this day) is a perfect example of the religious belief in white supremacy and racial oppression, just as the Black Muslim belief that Allah created the Black Race (good guys), whereas Satan created the white race (bad guys, demons), is a perfect example of the contrary theology.

If the protection of GLBT people violates the religious freedom of fundamentalist Christians, then the civil-rights legislation of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations clearly violated white-supremacist religious freedom. And yet obedience to civil-rights legislation was enforced, through the courts and even through the deployment of the National Guard and the United States Marshals. But as far as I know at this time, only a handful of States have legislation that prescribes penalties for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Certainly no such national legislation exists. So the threat of persecution—so deeply feared, so widely proclaimed by fundamentalist Christians—is illusory, a delusion.   

It will be difficult to root out the prejudice and hatred, mainly because their roots are so irrational and confused, so unrelated to any specific factual evidence. Our best hope is to continue the struggle with the passing of time and the coming of a new generation. 




Followers