[PLUG-TALK] Racism

Michael M. Moore michael at writemoore.net
Thu Jan 8 03:08:21 UTC 2009


> Folks,
>
> I wouldn't worry too much about it. He's revealing his hand w/r/t what
> would be next on the agenda of his type if the gay marriage ban isn't
> overturned.
>
> The next steps for radicals like him would be to go after:
> 1) Marriages of those of us who are intentionally childless
> 2) Vegans
> 3) People who live together before marriage (perhaps they'll propose a
> ban on unrelated people who buy or rent property together).
>
> Yeah, its a strange sounding agenda, but there's a lot which is strange
> about people like him. The more he digresses, the more he reveals about
> the breadth of the agenda of the religious wrong.
>
> In any case, most of his argument is irrelevant w/r/t public policy, as
> the USA is not a theocracy. Last I checked, the only nations with even
> semi-official theocratic elements are Israel, Iran, and Ireland. There
> are a few others with vestigial theocratic bits.


That, at long last (not that I've read *everything* sent to the list
lately), gets to the heart of the matter.  MR has tried to turn this
into a debate about homosexuality and human (and animal!) sexuality in
general, even though I'd venture to guess that there is not a single
person on this list with the scientific background to opine on those
things with any degree of authority or insight.

What it is really about, though, is what kind of country we live in,
or want to live in.  This all started when MR said porn should be
banned.  And as he's made clear, porn isn't the only thing that would
be banned or prohibited or punished if the country was remade to MR's
liking.  Iran, from what I've read, is probably the closest existing
example of the type of country MR and his ilk would like the U.S. to
become.

Reasonable people can easily disagree about a whole host of issues,
but you either accept the basic premises on which this country was
founded -- that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights,
that we all have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness -- or you don't.  MR and people like him don't; they believe
that any rights people have must be filtered through someone or
another's particular interepretation of some ancient text or another.
There is disagreement among them about which text (The Bible, the
Koran, the Talmud, whatever) and there are widely varying
interepretations of each text to argue over, but the method is the
same.  Anything that contradicts the interpretations to which they
ascribe is wrong, and freedom, life, liberty and the rest of it go out
the window.  In my view, that position isn't reasonable precisely
because freedom, life, liberty, and the rest of it go out the window.

The majority of religious people in this country have come to accept
that a plurality of viewpoints is right and natural, even if their own
viewpoints are more circumscribed (as in, "I'm not a vegan, but I
don't have a problem with you being a vegan"), so much so that a
recent Pew poll on religious attitudes found that 70% of Americans
believe that religions other than their own can lead to "eternal
life," and 57% of people describing themselves as evangelical
Christians share this view.  But as the outcry from a subset of
evangelicals shows, there is still a significant minority who believe
"it's my way or the highway."  From Time:

"The problem, says Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary, is that "'the cultural context and the reality
of pluralism has pulled many away from historic Christianity.'"

Reasonable people can agree or disagree with Mr. Mohler about whether
this is really a "problem."  Certainly, it poses a problem for some,
but it also makes life a lot easier for others.  Unreasonable people,
however, will batten down the hatches and become even more shrill than
they already are, accuse the open-minded of being phony Christians (as
MR has already done in this discussion), yada, yada, yada.  This has
all happened before -- the Protestant Reformation, the Muslim schisms
(Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, etc.), and so on -- and no doubt it will happen
again, hopefully with less of the attendant violence and bloodshed.

The founding of the U.S. was, in part, an attempt to give people the
opportunity to believe (or not) as they will without persecution. or
violence, or bloodshed.  Despite the obvious shortcomings in our
history, I think it has succeeded reasonably well in that regard.
(Again, reasonable people can agree or disagree.)  One measure of that
success is that 92% of Americans say they believe in God (71%
convinced, 21% less certain).  The principle of maintaining a
separation between church and state was adopted more to protect church
than to protect state, and it has.  Likewise, it has provided a beacon
to all people who seek those rights, much to our benefit.  I just read
a review of Steven Johnson's new book, "The Invention of Air," about
Joseph Priestly, who came to the U.S. in 1791 after a Birmingham,
England, mob burned down his house and laboratory.  This was after
Priestly discovered oxygen (and soda water!), as well as several other
gasses, and helped found Unitarianism.  Why did they do this?
Because, of course, he held unorthodox religious views.  He wrote, a
few days before he died in 1804, "Tell Mr. [Thomas] Jefferson that I
think myself happy to have lived so long under his excellent
administration; and that I have a prospect of dying in it. It is, I am
confident, the best on the face of the earth, and yet I hope to rise
to some thing more excellent."

The question is, will it continue to be "the best on the face of the
earth," or will it become the kind of place where a mob will burn down
your house because you don't ascribe to a particular religious
orthodoxy?  People of MR's ilk want it to become the latter, at least
figuratively.  I don't.

(FYI, I highly recommend Steven Johnson's "The Ghost Map," about a
cholera outbreak in London's Soho neighborhood in 1854, and how a
doctor and a minister figured out what really happened.)

The Pew survey:
http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

The Time magazine article on the Pew survey:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1817217,00.html

Steven Johnson's website:
http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/

>
> Due to this thread, I am quite a bit more likely to join with GLBT
> activism to overturn the Oregon marriage amendment.
>
> If you are as offended by his opinions as I am, please consider signing
> up at
> http://freedomtomarry.org/get_involved/freedom_to_marry_week_2009.php .


Again, FYI, did you hear about the UCC ministers in Ashland who will
no longer sign marriage licenses until same-sex couples marriages are
recognized by the state?

ttp://www.kgw.com/lifestyle/stories/kgw_010609_lifestyle_church_marriage_license.43a9143f.html

Pretty neat!

Michael M.


--
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within
limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add
'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's
will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
--Thomas Jefferson



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