Rod Dreher: Public Christianity Requires Anti-Gay Bigotry

More and more it seems that we're seeing religious believers treating "freedom of religion" as if it included a right to be able to say or sometimes do anything they want without consequences, so long as their religion is involved. In some cases this extends all the way to having a right to be free from criticism or dissent. In others, this simply means an absence of social censure or being held to generally applicable performance standards.

Much of the time, these conflicts are found along the fault lines between traditional religion and modernity. There are, for example, cases of pharmacists demanding exemptions from normal standards of their jobs and professions so that they can exercise a faith-based objection to dispensing prescribed medications. There may be now a growing concern among Christians with their ability to express homophobic bigotry and engage in homophobic discrimination without fear of censure or other consequences.

Rod Dreher, the "Crunchy Conservative" who supposedly has the ability to appeal to moderates and liberals, reacts to the Iowa Supreme Court decision to strike down marriage laws that discriminate against gays:

This morning, I had breakfast with some guys, including a lawyer. We weren't aware of this decision, but we talked about this issue. The lawyer said that as soon as homosexuality receives constitutionally protected status equivalent to race, then "it will be very hard to be a public Christian."

By which he meant to voice support, no matter how muted, for traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and marriage. To do so would be to set yourself up for hostile work environment challenges, including dismissal from your job, and generally all the legal sanctions that now apply to people who openly express racist views.

Source: BeliefNet

The first thing that strikes me about Rod Dreher's comments is how he seems to take for granted that being a "public Christian" and expressions of hostility towards gays and equality for gays are intertwined. It's not enough to simply disapprove of homosexuality; instead, it's necessary to express that disapproval in a manner hostile enough to elicit strong counter-reactions.

And what about all the Christians in America who aren't hostile either towards gays or equality for gays? Are they simply not being "public Christians"? What about all the other things that Christians might do in public, everything from going to church to helping out in a soup kitchen — is none of that more important to being a "public Christian" than hating gays?

The second thing that strikes me here is the comparison to racism. Usually comparisons between homophobia and racism are made by the opponents of bigotry rather than the supporters, and I'm not sure if Dreher realizes the degree to which it undermines his own point. He presumably agrees with the sorts of consequences generally experienced by people who are openly racist, even if they are racist for religious reasons, so why draw people's attention to the fact that he's simply trying to preserve some measure of respectability for his own bigotry?

To put it another way, why does he think he should be exempt from the sorts of consequences he accepts as valid when it comes to others? Maybe he has a very good reason, but it's curious that he doesn't spend even a moment on explaining it, never mind defending it.

The third thing that stands out to me about Dreher and his friend is just how pathetic such whining is given how much hostility has been endured and continues to be endured by gays who are public about their sexual orientation. Dreher can't lose his job or apartment simply for being a Christian, but no such protections exist for gays in many if not most areas of America. This is a common and important sign of privilege: the real suffering of others is ignored in favor of the pseudo-suffering one imagines they will endure when they are forced to treat an oppressed class as equals.

Whine, whine, whine. My heart just bleeds.

Anonymous Liberal comments:

Maybe Dreher should try being a "public homosexual" for a while and compare the experience. If I had a Quantum Leap machine, I'd be tempted to zap Dreher into the life of a gay high school student or maybe a gay man in a small Southern town and see how easy he finds it to publicly be himself. I wonder if Dreyer has any clue how much harder that would be than anything he's ever had to deal with as a straight white christian male.

In effect, Dreher and his friend are whining about the vague possibility of perhaps having deal with a minute fraction of what Christians have visited upon gays for decades. Not only am I not sympathetic, but such self-centered, egotistical whining actually elicits the opposite reaction in me. When people are so blind to the suffering of others and so concerned only with preserving their own privileges, I have trouble not hoping that their fall be lot harder than it needs to be.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the fact that there are no "legal sanctions" for expressing racist views — at least, not outside the workplace (and it's arguably a stretch to call them "legal" consequences, at least for the racist as opposed to the employer). A racist can go to any street corner and express all the bigoted, intolerant, and racist ideas they want. There are no laws against it. Restrictions exist in the workplace, though, because employers have a duty not to let racist employees bully minorities through various sorts of racist attacks.

So what this means is that Rod Dreher and his bigoted friend aren't really moaning about possible legal sanctions for being a "public Christian" (which somehow can't be separated from anti-gay bigotry), but rather they are moaning about possible workplace sanctions for being a "public Christian" where they work and which can't be separated from bullying and harassing other employees with anti-gay bigotry.

It's not just that they want to be public advocates for bigotry in public streets, but they also want to be public advocates for bigotry in their offices as well. It's not just enough that they want to express their bigotry to their co-workers, but they want to be able to do it enough and with strong enough language that people feel harassed or bullied, causing them to complain or even to file a lawsuit.

This goes back to my reference above to privilege: only a very privileged person would imagine that they have a "right" to harass or bully others which is more important than others' right to not be harassed or bullied. Privilege of this sort causes a blindness to the suffering and experiences of others — all that matters is one's own situation and whether one is able to maintain basic privileges over other classes.

You can say or believe whatever you want. It's a free country. But that doesn't mean everyone has to go out of their way to make you feel comfortable expressing whatever you might happen to believe whenever you want. If I want to go around expressing my moral disapproval of people who use contraception or who eat pork, I'm free to do so, but I'm not entitled to live in a world where there are no social repercussions for doing so.

When you boil everything else away, what this really comes down to is that people like Dreher and McCain are struggling to come to grips with the reality that their views (which were once majority views) are now the views of a shrinking minority. They feel threatened by that realization and long for a world in which they can express their views without fear of their colleagues thinking less of them. That's understandable. But it's also not a legitimate complaint, nor a legitimate reason to deny people basic rights.

When people are blinded by their own privileges, the idea that others might have a legitimate interest in being treated as full political and social equals simply won't occur to them. A racist is more concerned with their "right" to pummel others with racism than they are with the ability of racial minorities to live as equals. A misogynist is more concerned with their "right" to force themselves in various ways on women than they are in women's right to be free of sexual harassment.

I put "right" in scare quotes because they aren't real rights, they are simply the traditional privileges which a dominant class has been able to exercise over oppressed classes. It's a privilege which they have enjoyed so long, and which they are so blind to as a privilege, that they now regard it as a right or even as an inherent aspect of the natural ordering of society. The defense of traditional privileges is thus the defense of oppression, and efforts to retain those privileges are attempts to continue oppressing others. That's what Dreher and his friend are ultimately trying to do: justify and defend the continued faith-based oppression of gays.