Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyMay 11th, 2009
I sometimes wonder how anti-gay activists can knowingly and purposefully say things that simply are not true. I wonder how they can see the decency and normalcy of gay people and yet ascribe to them the most evil intentions and agenda.
Somehow these folks have created a world in which the evidence before their eyes is far less important than a blind faith in the opposite. They choose to believe that all that they see in front of them or hear from those who know is to be discounted, dismissed, and argued away unless it fits with their pre-conceived view of existence.
I believe that a faith that cannot subject itself to scrutiny is not a faith at all; rather it is based in fear – a fear that it we look too closely and see too clearly that what have always believed may disappear leaving us without a foundation or protection, alone. So those whose faith is fear must seek self-blindness, willfully.
Today I ran across an example, a truly tragic story. Cherie Rowe, a volunteer for ex-gay group Exodus International, tells of her struggle over the past 13 years to deal with her daughter’s homosexuality.
Now this is not a tale of “that dangerous lifestyle”. The daughter has a “sweet partner”, wonderful friends who have become family to her, and still tries to keep a relationship with her mother. But despite recognizing that her daughter has a blessed life, Cherie still longs that God work a miracle and remove all that goodness from her daughter.
I do confess that seeing their demonstrations of affection to one another is sometimes difficult, but God\’s amazing grace allows me to accept them and love them without approving of their lifestyle.
I am so aware of how I might have been swayed by the tides of emotion in favor of these same sex relationships, had I not been rooted and grounded in the infallible Word of God.
The extent to which Cherie Rowe’s self-absorption is present on the page is astonishing. And no doubt that ability to see the world only in terms of herself has given her certainty that she and her faith are absolute, steadfast in the face of all evidence to the contrary – so she is careful not to see it.
She is so “rooted and grounded” that she can see love and think that it is evil. She is so “rooted and grounded” that she thinks that her own selfish desire to control her daughter is a passion to see God glorified.
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David C.
May 11th, 2009
missed the /a part of that a tag, bud.
Dawn
May 11th, 2009
I see more and more evidence of evangelical christians loosing touch with the true gospel and it concerns me.
The reason it concerns me is that my own parents are of this same blinded faith and though I don’t talk to them about anything other than shallow talk, I am seeing how their faith is changing by the things they say in a round about way to me and what I hear from sister.
It is all very sad to see this.
AJD
May 11th, 2009
I think they have a mindset in which obedience to authority trumps reality, and any time they encounter facts that get in the way, they discount them.
That’s why I’ve always thought the religious right is a fundamentally authoritarian political movement. I won’t make a direct comparison to fascism, but both derive from the same kind of mentality.
David C.
May 11th, 2009
Well, if you won’t, I will at least make the indirect connection by directing the readers’ attention here.
homer
May 11th, 2009
Nobody wants to say this out loud, but blind servitude towards religion seems like a form of mental illness. When faced with the real world (e.g., her daughter’s happy relationship with her partner), the mother enters a delusional state where if she just prays hard enough, the Gay Will Go Away.
David C.
May 11th, 2009
Blind servitude to anyone or anything is a form of mental illness.
There, I said it.
Abandonment of our reason is the surest way to hell, if there is one, and even if there isn’t a hell, abdication of independent will is a denial of our humanity and all that is good in mankind.
Richard W. Fitch
May 11th, 2009
[homer: blind servitude towards religion seems like a form of mental illness.] As an Episcopalian I have to agree. The concept of the three-legged stool – Scripture, tradition and reason – is the compass of faith for EC_USA. If there is any discordance among the three in relationship to an issue, each of the three must be weighed against the others. Since EC_USA seems to appeal to ‘better educated’ believers, reason is generally the one that wins out. “Blind faith” is really not faith at all, it is merely the unquestioning submission to someone else’s unchallengeable authority.
Ben
May 11th, 2009
Faith: “believing something you know isn’t true.” (Mark Twain) The churches (all the churches) have dumbed down to the lowest denominator, the bigots. If these bigots (anyone who sets foot in a church)have to pull their heads out of their asses and look around them then they have to take responsibility for what they have done. They(anyone who sets foot in a church)are responsible for putting the Bush administration in the White House and thereby responsible for all it accomplished. There is such a thing as collective guilt, the German people in the 1930s supported the NAZI party and gave them the mandate to go to war and all that entailed, and then tried to back out of it when it went wrong. All the American churches supported the Bush administration, and still do, and ALL their members share the responsibility for the deeds of that administration. There are NO exceptions. ANYONE who sets foot in a church belongs to that group. Josef Goebbels must be spinning in his grave to see how spectacularly well the churches have adopted his teachings. Wir bezüglich verlorenen! Sieg Heil!!
Patrick C.
May 12th, 2009
Thank you, Ben, for Godwin-ing the comments with that ridiculous broad generalization.
Duncan
May 12th, 2009
This might be my own agnostic perception, but to me faith that subjects itself to scrutiny is not faith, it is an assumption not yet tested. Faith can only concern itself with the unknowable.
Jason D
May 12th, 2009
I think it also has to do with the line of dominoes they’ve set up mentally. God – Church – Pastor – Parents. If one of these dominoes falls, then the rest go, too. If the pastor is mistaken, then the bible is mistaken, then God is wrong. I think this is how people get disenchanted with faith.
It reminds me of the War on Drugs. People thought you could dream up any lie to scare kids away from drugs. Tell them that everyone who tries drugs becomes an addicted loser burn-out with no friends or prospects. Tell them this is what ALWAYS happens. Only problem is, those kids grow up and in High School and or College meet a A-Student, captain of a sports team, president of this or that club, succesful, attractive, and friendly who also happens to get stoned from time to time. The lie is revealed, and it leads to the question “What else did they lie about so that they could control me?”
AJD
May 12th, 2009
David C.:
I’m definitely with you on the Big Lie. But that’s why I said that the religious right and fascism (or Nazism, to be more specific) derive from the same mentality: a strict obedience to authority that ignores or seeks to destroy anything that gets in authority’s way.
I don’t like to make direct comparisons to “fascism” (and I should have used “Nazism” in the first place) because it’s such a loaded term and differed in practice as a political system from place to place (e.g. it wasn’t always anti-Semitic and was often more authoritarian than purely totalitarian).
Christopher Waldrop
May 12th, 2009
As disturbing as the mother’s view is, I do find some hope in the fact that she is, at least to some degree, accepting of her daughter and her daughter’s partner. Yes, it’s intolerance, and, yes, I’m opposed to intolerance in any form, but there are degrees of it. She hasn’t rejected her daughter entirely, and she’s even willing to accept that her daughter’s partner is a good, loving person.
What I hope for here is that Cherie Rowe will eventually realize she’s really not intolerant. She’s a closeted tolerant person, and, hopefully, she’ll come out of the closet and be a proud parent who doesn’t have to keep hoping her daughter will someday change.
Ben in Oakland
May 12th, 2009
Ben– I’m a thorough going agnostic atheist pantheist, all of which means that I’m fairly certain the the ultimate answers to ultimate questions ultimately don’t matter.
but even I have to disagree with your statement. Religion as a metaphor for what ones seeks in life, even if it is not, shall we say, reality based, I have no problem with. It’s a metaphor, after all.
Religion used as a weapon, as a crutch, as a reification of the spiritual experience, as a justification for authoritarianism, I do object to. Either My way=G’s way, or the highway is the problem. I’ve known plenty of good religious people who are absolutely appalled at what is done in the name of religion.
Duncan: As for faith concerning itself with the unknowable, well, that is an easy out for its failure to have anything to do with reality. Yet, religionists claim that they are describing the Ultimate, Capital R, Reality. You just can’t have it both ways. That is why when you subtract and atheist from a fundamentalist, you are left with a remainder of 1.
1 religion.
A religionist who understands that his religion is his own particular metaphor, as opposed to an authoritarian winner-takes-all reality, is someone I can live with.
Priya Lynn
May 12th, 2009
Richard said “Blind faith†is really not faith at all, it is merely the unquestioning submission to someone else’s unchallengeable authority.”.
Isn’t that what religion is all about – unquestioning submission to an unchallengeable god?
While anti-gay activists are often blatant in their stating things they must know to be lies I don’t know a religious person who didn’t do this to at least some degree at some point in time.
Timothy (TRiG)
May 12th, 2009
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2008/05/13/stop/
http://www.twainquotes.com/Faith.html
http://www.stupidwish.net/religion.html
TRiG.
Clancy
May 12th, 2009
Christopher,
I think you have an excellent point. My mother would rather I met a nice girl and married her, but she doesn’t say that to me. She pretends to really care about my partner and I pretend not to notice the little slights. Now, she also doesn’t work for an organization that would like to change me, and I think this is my issue with the problem.
If my mother worked with an organization like that, I would have to say something to her about it, because that is crossing a line in terms of “tolerance”. I hope Cherie’s daughter can convince her mother to accept her as she is, but continuing to be around these people may only lead to more difficult confrontations in the future. Apropos of nothing, I wonder what Regina Griggs or Phyllis Schlafly’s relationships with their sons are like.
Ben in Oakland
May 12th, 2009
thanks, trig, beautiful.
Jarred
May 12th, 2009
No. I question and challenge my gods all the time. I’ve even gotten into heated arguments with them.
“Christianity” and “religion” are not synonyms, folks. And not even all Christians are fundamentalists. Try talking to some Quakers or Episcopalians. (Heck, there’s a reason the term “Epsicopagan” caught on in some circles.)
GaySolomon
May 12th, 2009
As a former religionist, I cannot understate how easy it is to discount view points and facts that disagree with my own, and how seductively simple it was to overweight those views and facts that agreed with my own. Throw in a caring community of likeminded individuals with reinforcing ideas of superiority and victimhood, and you have the perfect environment for sustained delusional thinking.
Having said that, I think such selection bias is inherently human and not exclusively the purview of the religious.
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