The Christian Right often likes to portray itself as standing up for religious liberty on the one hand and traditional religious values on the other. The means by which they expect to advance these, things, though, is through the elimination of full civil equality of those groups which are regarded as morally and spiritually inferior.

In Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s, Chris Bull and John Gallagher explain that discrimination, in particular discrimination against gays, is a core feature of the Christian Right’s agenda:

Ultimately, the religious right’s antigay crusade boils down to reasserting the right not to associate with homosexuals in diverse areas of American life, from the military to the workplace, a right they do not apply nor dare advocate with regard to any other minority group. Such reckless arguments, going far beyond recognizing the right of religious people to make up their minds on matters of morality, improperly establish discrimination as a theological imperative, thus rendering gay activists’ suspicion of religious arguments in public policy all the more well-founded and driving the wedge between the groups still deeper.

Similarly, antidiscrimination protections, which have also come under attack from gay conservatives, embody, for the religious right, the federal government’s propensity to force homosexuality on an unwilling citizenry. But the logical extension of that argument is that gays and lesbians should be denied a roof over their heads and the ability to earn a living.

That position is not only cruel, but represents an abdication of the responsibility all Americans share to learn and live and work with one another.

No other minority would be treated like this in America today without a serious backlash against the bigots attempting it. This more than anything is what drives the efforts to deny that civil equality for gays is the least bit analogous to civil equality for blacks and Jews. Such an analogy, if accepted, would incline people to not just see gays as being “like” various other minorities, but also as being “like” other citizens of the community — and that’s even worse.

If you examine the rhetoric of the Christian Right closely, you will see a constant push to drive a wedge between gays and other Americans. So long as gays are “different” and “other,” it is easier to imagine that civil equality in various areas must not really apply to them. As soon as gays are seen as “like” other citizens, denying them full civil equality is revealed as the loathsome, bigoted, hateful, and unAmerican position that it really is.

On some level, the Christian Right probably realizes just how offensive their position is, but since they regard it as a “theological imperative,” they are locked into it no matter what. It is no wonder that they persistently try to reorient Americans’ views on the nature of liberty and equality. They define religious freedom as the freedom to discriminate while using government money to administer government programs, for example, thus masking the fact that by denying the full liberty and humanity of others they are abusing their positions.

Christian conservatives may not like gays, but their religious objections to homosexuality do not create a basis for avoiding associating with gays at work, in the military, or anywhere else gays may happen to be. Gay Americans should enjoy the full benefits of citizenship that are accorded to everyone else because they share the same humanity as everyone else — a humanity which is not defined according to any religious group’s narrow theological terms.

 

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