More Squeamish than Thou

A new Fields poll shows that Californians tilt toward allowing gay marriage. This will be seen as bad news by religious conservatives who believe they are doing the Lord's work in upholding traditional views of marriage.

As someone who has gay friends and friends on the religious right, I find all this to be a puzzlingly high-schoolish issue.

Those who are exemplars of monogamous commitment and who detest promiscuity are trying to keep one community from practicing fully sanctioned monogamy. Those who should be celebrating their freedom from traditional rules are demanding, "I want a ball and chain too." As a single person who is ambivalent about marriage, I imagine that one solution to all the political fighting would be to allow gay marriage but to outlaw divorce. That would make many gays say, sensibly, "who needs marriage?"

As for religious conservatives who believe that they must ensure that marriage is a sacred, lifelong union of one man and one woman in order to raise a stable family, I am not sure why they put more importance in protesting gay weddings than in protesting Brangelina, who has done much to popularize infidelity, divorce and shacking up within the straight community. I believe the answer is that the former is, at this point, still an easier target. But this will inevitably change.

Traditional morality and the "clear" teachings of Scripture meant that conservative churches frowned on divorce and remarriage just a generation ago. Now, pastors themselves can divorce and remarry while pontificating about how gay marriage undermines Biblical authority. A conservative friend, commenting on the ongoing battle among Presbyterians on gay ordination, complained to me last night about how his church allows practicing gays into membership. I told him that his church doesn't bar from membership or even leadership those who engage in various forbidden activities such as gossip, slander, gluttonous materialism, hatred toward others, and so on.

The difference is that, in such religiously conservative communities, there is great empathy for such persons -- they are "sinners like myself." But to them, gays are "sinners totally unlike myself." The reaction is a more visceral, "Ew, how can anyone do that?" That's why they have come to accept divorce but not homosexuality, even though divorce was more expressly forbidden by Jesus and even though divorce has far greater ramifications for the majority of society.

I suppose that religious conservatives' visceral reaction to "others" is something like my reaction to "saggers," who are now being banned in Flint, Michigan. Ban the butts! But I also understand that some "sins" are a matter of taste, and that we are better off dealing with more substantive issues such as how to pay for a half-trillion dollar war.

Ultimately, until religious conservatives convince the rest of society that the yoke that they seek to place on others is no heavier than the one they place on themselves -- and that it is not based on a matter of visceral personal taste -- will lose political battles inside and outside their churches.