In this elec­tion, reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives were able to craft a mes­sage mak­ing same-sex mar­riages look like an afront to apple pie and base­ball and of course peo­ple vot­ed against it. What if we could have some­how framed this elec­tion with the details of human suf­fer­ing that these laws suggest?
Now avail­able for the fash­ion­able Bush-era bumper. Pro­ceeds go to sup­port the Non​vi​o​lence​.org websites:
  

My pre­dictable post-election essay is over on Non​vi​o​lence​.org, “Four More Years”. Aside from the pol­i­tics, I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed how the elec­tion was final­ly framed in terms of “moral issues” and how this mea­sure­ment some­how trans­lat­ed to sup­port for Pres­i­dent Bush.
Friends and oth­er lefty Chris­tians need to take the “moral and faith issues” ques­tion as per­son­al and cor­po­rate queries. (As usu­al Beppe­blog has a good post about this, “Tough num­bers for a fag like me…”:http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2004/11/tough-numbers-for-fags-like-me.html). If some­one had come up to me after I vot­ed yes­ter­day and asked me what I thought was the most impor­tant issue in this elec­tion, I would have replied “the war”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_iraq_antiwar.php. The answer would mask the fact that for me war is a moral issue defined by a deep pas­sion­ate faith (a deep pas­sion­ate Chris­t­ian faith). It’s too easy for me to talk around my faith though, and to frame the debate in sec­u­lar lan­guage. I tell myself I’m being more inclu­sive when I use prag­mat­ic ratio­nales, but in real­i­ty I’m hid­ing from my lis­ten­ers my true under­stand­ing of Christ’s work in the world and our role in His covenant.
A major­i­ty of vot­ers are sus­pi­cious of us East Coast lib­er­als and they should be. I just talked to a Friend buy­ing a book for a Bush sup­port­er who, she explained, “does­n’t under­stand the com­plex­i­ty of life.” Talk about judge­men­tal! Would you sup­port some­one who thought you were a idiot if you did­n’t sup­port Ker­ry? The Democ­rats are start­ing to look at the turn-off of this form of elit­ism; from today’s _New York Times_ (of course, here _I_ am, quot­ing from the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion of elite America):
bq. “Bill Clin­ton and Jim­my Carter got elect­ed because they were com­fort­able with their faith,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Rahm Emanuel of Illi­nois, a for­mer Clin­ton aide. “What hap­pened was that a part of the elec­torate came open to what Clin­ton and Carter had to say on every­thing else – health care, the envi­ron­ment, what­ev­er – because they were very com­fort­able that Clin­ton and Carter did not dis­tain the way these peo­ple lived their lives, but respect­ed them.”
He added: “We need a nom­i­nee and a par­ty that is com­fort­able with faith and val­ues. And if we have one, then all the hard work we’ve done on Social Secu­ri­ty or Amer­i­ca’s place in the world or col­lege edu­ca­tion can be heard. But peo­ple aren’t going to hear what we say until they know that we don’t approach them as Mar­garet Mead would an anthro­po­log­i­cal experiment.”
h3. War and tol­er­ance as moral issues
Why am I not more explic­it about my faith and my pol­i­tics? Why don’t I say that I vot­ed against Bush because I ques­tion his moral judge­ment and his faith? Why don’t I say that war is a Chris­t­ian issue and that all Chris­tians should be against war? Why don’t I say that char­i­ty and love is a Chris­t­ian issue and that all Chris­tians should hon­or lov­ing same-sex relationships?
The Reveal­er has an arti­cle called Gay Mar­riage, GOP secret weapon. The author recent­ly wrote a book about reli­gion in Amer­i­ca and con­clud­ed that the “great­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor of Amer­i­can belief is anti-homosexuality.” But here’s a telling obser­va­tion from his inter­views of Christians:
bq.. Most of these peo­ple are sur­pris­ing­ly abstract in their think­ing. There may be a cer­tain disin­gen­u­ous­ness to the pop­u­lar anti-homosexuality mantra, “hate the sin, love the sin­ner,” but near­ly every­one we met real­ly did dis­tin­guish their hatred of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty from their deal­ings with homosexuals.
How do I know? Because many, if not most, thought that Peter and I were a gay cou­ple, by virtue of the facts that we�re writ­ers and had come from New York City. We�re nei­ther a cou­ple, nor gay, but there nev­er seemed to be a polite way to say that, so we didn�t, and still some of the great homosexual-haters of Amer­i­ca wel­comed us into their homes and their church­es and their temples.
p. This does mean the laws are abstract and we should­n’t wor­ry. I’m sure there were plen­ty of Ger­mans in the 1920s who could work them­selves into a lath­er against Jews but be good friends with actu­al Jews. This sort of casu­al big­otry grows can­cer­ous when gov­ern­ment gets involved. When Hitler took pow­er it was all too easy for them to pre­tend that the obvi­ous was­n’t happening.
In this elec­tion, reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives were able to craft a mes­sage mak­ing same-sex mar­riages look like an afront to apple pie and base­ball and of course peo­ple vot­ed against it. What if we could have some­how framed this elec­tion with the details of human suf­fer­ing that these laws suggest?
The most strik­ing moment of all three debates came when the top lieu­tenant of the most loyalty-obsessed admin­is­tra­tion in mod­ern his­to­ry said he dis­agreed with his pres­i­dent on the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment on mar­riage. Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney has a les­bian daugh­ter and that expe­ri­ence forced him to see the human con­se­quence of these otherwise-abstract laws. Both Cheney and his debate oppo­nent “John Edwards are Unit­ed Methodists”:http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week745/news.html. What if Edwards had bro­ken the debate rules, walked over to Cheney and asked that they use his nine­ty sec­ond response time as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer up a joint prayer on love and char­i­ty? They could have held hands (gasp!) and could have turned the issue around right then. What good is faith if we don’t wit­ness to it when it counts?
h3. Else­where on the Net
* “Gary Hart: Why the Per­son­al Should­n’t be Political”:http://nytimes.com/2004/11/08/opinion/08hart.html
Who would have thought that the Howard Dean of the 1980s would be so inci­sive about the issues of reli­gion? I did­n’t real­ize how reli­gious a man he is and he explains why: “As a can­di­date for pub­lic office, I chose not to place my beliefs in the cen­ter of my appeal for sup­port because I am also a Jef­fer­son­ian; that is to say, I believe that one’s reli­gious beliefs — though they will and should affect one’s out­look on pub­lic pol­i­cy and life — are per­son­al and that Amer­i­ca is a sec­u­lar, not a theo­crat­ic, repub­lic.… Dec­la­ra­tions of “faith” are abstrac­tions that per­mit both vot­ers and can­di­dates to fill in the blanks with their own reli­gious beliefs. There are two dan­gers here. One is the merg­ing of church and state. The oth­er is rank hypocrisy.” Found via “The Revealer”:http://www.therevealer.org/
* “Beppe­blogs’s roundup of post-election talk”:http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2004/11/inspiration-about-elections-beyond.html
* “Omri Elisha: God Save the Queen”:http://www.therevealer.org/archives/main_story_001162.php
An expla­na­tion of Chris­t­ian Evan­gel­i­cal appeal of Bush, and why for them qual­i­fi­ca­tions aren’t as impor­tant as faith­ful­ness (a prin­ci­ple any Quak­er should agree with). “The Esther sto­ry, and that pas­sage in par­tic­u­lar, is read by evan­gel­i­cals as a sign of the individual�s role in God�s sov­er­eign designs for human his­to­ry. They see it not as a sto­ry of hero­ism, but of instru­men­tal­ism; Esther is a vehi­cle, a tool. Mordecai�s state­ment (�Per­haps you have come to roy­al dig­ni­ty for just such a time as this�) sounds like grandeur, but for evan­gel­i­cals it is read as a rad­i­cal call to self-abnegation.” These are Quak­er themes too, and there are pos­si­bil­i­ties for “Lib­er­al Quak­ers and Evan­gel­i­cals to con­nect on these issus”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/emerging_church.php.
* The Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion has issued a “Minute on Moral Values”:http://www.fcnl.org/legpolcy/moral_109th_printer.htm. It’s kind of the pre­dictable press release you might expect but it’s good to see them weigh in.