Religion and The Left - Halting Progress

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading Lisa Miller’s recent Newsweek piece about the religious case for gay marriage. It is a prime example of a troubling movement in the progressive sphere towards reclaiming religion – and religious argument – for the left. Ms. Miller articulates (with notable skill) the amazing and totally controversial point that the Bible plus gay marriage does not necessarily equal the horrific ascent of extra-spicy Satan. She states that “the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history.” I agree. It’s true. But where does this get us?

Well… nowhere… So the Bible “lives,” so what? The very “life” that makes the Good Book so adaptable to new and changing times also makes it a ready tool for bigotry and exclusion. (Ms. Miller dismisses the passages in Leviticus that condemn the act of love between two men as “an abomination,” as though they don’t really have that much value. They do. They’re written in the Bible.) Yet still, members of the progressive movement try to apprehend Biblical authority, to wrest it from the manicured hands of televangelists and talking heads that preach a conservative message, as if one day every pious, God-terrified puritan will get the liberal point. It’s infuriating to watch.

The difficulty with faith based arguments is they’re inherently cyclical. They have no resolution. Religious scholars have spent millennia, literally, arguing over the meaning of the Bible. Is God angry or merciful, is Jesus actually The Lord or just a divine arm of His will, Trinity or Unity, is there sex in heaven, the list goes on… These arguments have spawned wars and inquisitions. Christianity has splintered countless times into various sects, with mutually exclusive messages and rituals, because Churches couldn’t find One Good Answer. In religious debate, you cannot win and you cannot compromise, you can only run to your corner and prepare to spend infinity defending your cause. For this very reason, arguments of faith have no place in the democratic sphere. (Keen cynics have argued that democracy has never found One Good Answer. I disagree – we’ve found many good answers. We then accept that they are not, and cannot be, final, and move to the next problem. At least, when democracy functions... which is kinda hit or miss…)

Progressives must pull themselves from this field and take a position of debaters and thinkers, not believers. The religious right will claim they are being victimized, as is their wont. (He died on the cross, His apostles were martyrs, He is under-represented in Bio textbooks…) They’ll cry foul and ring church bells and preach the demise of Man. Let them. Just because they fight from the church does not mean we have to meet them at the pulpit.

There’s a logical argument to be made here, a position couched in reason, not belief. It must be emphasized above all else: Gay Marriage in no way infringes upon the rights of straight members of society, religious or not. (Sorry if gay marriage disgusts you, it is not your right to be free from disgust. And – actually – I’m really not sorry at all.) The rest is just discrimination.