Conservatives vs. Executing Gay People
| Thu Jan. 7, 2010 9:41 AM PST
Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan linked to this blog post by John Mark Reynolds, who blogs for First Things, the conservative ("theoconservative," according to some) Catholic magazine founded by the late Richard John Neuhaus. Sullivan praised Reynolds' "brilliant evisceration" of Uganda's proposed "execute gay people" law "from both a Christian and secular perspective." Here's how Reynolds launches his attack:
Uganda may pass a law that could lead to the death penalty for homosexual behavior.
The proposed law is odious.
Due to the legacy of colonialism, Western people should be sensitive about interfering in sub-Saharan African politics and modest in making moral pronouncements regarding Africa, but this law deserves universal condemnation. Uganda experienced many evils under colonialism, including the loss of basic liberties.
Experiencing evil does not give a free pass to do evil and this bill is wicked.
It is not a close call.
No good can come of this bill and great harm will be done if it is passed.
The rest is here. I want to draw your attention to the comments section of Reynolds' post, which is pretty unique. It's not full of idiots or trolls, per se. The commenters make long, often well-reasoned arguments and show basic respect for each other. But the subjects they're arguing about are well outside mainstream political discourse. For example:
I have a friend who defends slavery on the grounds that the Bible does. No amount of quoting texts like Titus have helped. I have tried to show him the changing standards of morality that God holds us to while remaining faithful to the idea. I have hit a brick wall with him, but fell any time spent trying to talk someone out of ever saying in public that Christianity is okay with slavery is time well spent. Have you expounded on these ideas elsewhere in a fuller form that I might hopefully change his mind. Oh one other thing, what is the best introductory work on the Orthodox church, though I am Reformed, and not likely to change. I do feel there is a gap in my knowledge when I don’t know anything about a 1/3 of Christendom.
Reynolds responds—not to say that slavery is obviously wrong but instead to point to his work on the Bible's approach to slavery in a new Christian apologetic.
It's all well and good, I suppose, to offer lengthy attacks on the Ugandan law. But at this point in human history, given the experience of the twentieth century, some things should really be part of a broad moral consensus. The immorality of slavery or of executing minorities shouldn't really require long arguments.
I suspect this is why it's been hard for Sullivan to find examples of the National Review or the Weekly Standard or the American Conservative or Commentary denouncing the Ugandan law. The writers at those magazines may disagree with Sullivan on a lot of things, but I suspect they think it's pretty obvious to most Americans that executing gay people is wrong. The problem for conservatives is that it's inconvenient for them to defend any sort of gay rights—even the right not to be executed—because doing so brings up awkward questions about why conservatives want to deny other rights to gay people.
When you have to make long arguments to convince your audience to accept the basic moral consensus—slavery is wrong, executing gay people is abhorrent—it makes you (and your audience) look radical. After all, how many of us have friends who argue that slavery is okay? How many of us hang around with folks who think it would be great if gay people were executed for their "crimes"? It's fine that John Mark Reynolds spent hundreds of words attacking the murder of minorities and a chapter explaining why slavery is wrong. But he shouldn't have to do it. A quick note of opposition ("executing gay people is obviously wrong") should suffice. If that's not more than enough to convince you, you had better be ready to explain your position. When it comes to easy moral questions like enslaving people or slaughtering homosexuals, the burden of proof falls overwhelmingly on those who would buck the modern consensus.
Kevin is traveling today.
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Comments
Consider the source.
Submitted by jhm on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 10:36 AM PST.
The problem here isn't that [insert biblically sanctioned nonsense here] is obviously wrong, or even that some people require convincing that it is wrong, but that we're trying to mesh bronze age mores with modern day ones solely because the former are preserved in writing that some insist is sacred.
Furthermore, since those same
Submitted by Art Eclectic on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 1:24 PM PST.
Furthermore, since those same sacred writings state that the punishment for adultery is death, there's a whole lot of politicians of all political strips who should be taken out and executed. That is ...if we are going by the book.
Why shouldn't the case be
Submitted by Boronx2 (not verified) on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 10:50 AM PST.
Why shouldn't the case be hard to make? Modern war is hardly better than slavery or genocide, yet it's still highly desired just for it's own sake.
I would have thought, circa
Submitted by Snarki, child of Loki (not verified) on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 10:57 AM PST.
I would have thought, circa 2000, that a similar short statement would suffice:
"torture is obviously wrong"
But somehow it wasn't enough.
I was going to mention that.....
Submitted by Nick Baumann on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 12:04 PM PST.
And now I regret not doing so. But I think the part of the problem there is that the consensus changed. Most Americans now support torture.
"The problem for
Submitted by M. (not verified) on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 11:28 AM PST.
"The problem for conservatives is that it's inconvenient for them to defend any sort of gay rights—even the right not to be executed—because doing so brings up awkward questions about why conservatives want to deny other rights to gay people."
This sounds like someone who has no real idea of how a conservative actually thinks. This is not the "problem". You got it right the first time -- summary execution, even for something perceived as a "sin" (presuming the hypothetical "conservative" in question believes this), is beyond the pale, outside of tasteless jokes, in modern society. Beyond that, you enter the realm of debate over what should or should not constitute a "right" (where does "marriage" fall on that scale?), and more complex questions of that sort.
Another world, right next door to you
Submitted by nolo (not verified) on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 11:28 AM PST.
I read the comments to that article when Sullivan first linked to it, and had all sorts of reactions. First, you're right -- the comments and discourse are civil, but the ideas and fundamental (no pun intended) presumptions that underlie them are so far from what I'd like to consider mainstream that it boggled my mind. And yet, there clearly are people who think that way, and they clearly talk to each other within this framework that, quite frankly, I consider to be completely bizarre. I guess I really shouldn't be surprised, though. If you truly believe in biblical literalism, if you truly believe the bible to be the word of god, how could you NOT end up having these sorts of bizarre conversations? And don't forget -- there are a lot of people in the U.S. who subscribe to some form or another of biblical literalism. So the scary thing for me, I guess, was realizing that there are a lot more people having conversations of this type (civilly or no) than I might care to believe. A lot more. And if they don't make sense to me, I don't make much sense to them either. So the fundamental (again, the pun is not intended) question is, is it really possible for those of us who grapple with these issues from a secular perspective to engage in any meaningful way with people who feel constrained to frame their debate in terms of Old Testament dictates and whether some aspect of the Pauline epistles changes whether they are applicable or not? And if so, how the heck do you do it?
literalists
Submitted by keith on Fri Jan. 8, 2010 2:49 AM PST.
Yes, there are plenty who will trot out a particular Old Testament condemnation of this-or-that act (usually selectively chosen; eating of shellfish never seems to get much airtime), but it is usually just that -- an Old Testament reference. For such Christians, the Jesus of the Gospels is almost conspicuously absent, which is an extremely odd way for people who call themselves Christians to operate. Jesus was often pretty specific on the morals he wished to promote, and identified the most important commandment(s).
Ignoring all this, in the name of Christianity, is sort of like someone who claims to revere the Founding Fathers ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and instead focusing on Roman Law.
And M, if you think that hostility to homosexuality is just a fringe of the conservative movement (as social mores "conserved" by past generations so often become "fringe" ideas to the next), how do you explain the hostility to gays on message boards, the ongoing fear-mongering about the "homosexual agenda," the fears of predation of teens (which ought by all rights to be a far greater concern for heterosexual teachers and coaches, for example)? When I lived in Oregon back in the late 1990s, a Republican candidate for governor wanted to amend the law so that homosexuals could be fired from public school teaching positions simply for being homosexuals. This wasn't some far-right fringe candidate, Bill Sizemore was a movement conservative who carried the GOP banner in the general election. And that's not to mention anti-sodomy laws, which are somehow almost never applied to heterosexual sodomy.
Perhaps you believe the GOP has passed some evolutionary threshold in the past decade. But I think the burden of proof is on you to show that there isn't significant support for the idea that homosexuality ought to be proscribed, whether that means criminalization of sexual behavior or simple identity, or overt social disapproval, or mere moral suasion.
If only it were so simple
Submitted by nerd on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 11:29 AM PST.
A quick note of opposition ("executing gay people is obviously wrong") should suffice. If that's not more than enough to convince you, you had better be ready to explain your position.
I wish this were so. The person who feels that something (torture, execution of gays) is ok is missing a fundamental concept:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Without this concept it is perfectly acceptable to believe whatever you want to believe with respect to others. You don't have to respect them, you don't have to accept that they may have rights, etc. As long as you are able to disregard others as people deserving of respect you have no reason to listen to arguments that imply otherwise.
On other basic truths I was raised to believe that all wars are a waste of people and resources. Yes war was sometimes inevitable but should be avoided if at all possible. I was taught this by my father who was a WWII veteran. It simply did not occur to me that the son of another WWII veteran would have been taught anything else. But we are in Iraq.
A primary reason why most
Submitted by K in VA (not verified) on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 11:41 AM PST.
A primary reason why most conservatives won't come forth and say "executing gay people is wrong," even if they believe that's so:
They would then have to answer the question, "Okay, how about life in prison?"
If they say that, too, would be excessive and therefore wrong, then they have to answer the question, "Okay, how about 20 years? 10 years? 5 years?"
If they say, for example, that 20 years would be too long, but 10 would be okay, then they have to answer the question, "So you believe active homosexuals should go free in a few years to molest our children and destroy civilization as we know it?"
In short, anything that appears "soft" on gays is instant trouble for a conservative from hardliner anti-gay conservatives. That's why they'd rather look the other way and try to ignore what's happening in Uganda ... just as, in recent years, conservatives and liberals have ignored executions of gays in Iran and elsewhere.
This comment
Submitted by Nick Baumann on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 12:06 PM PST.
This comment seems like a good response to M.'s objection above.
Not really. It is possible
Submitted by M. (not verified) on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 1:36 PM PST.
Not really. It is possible to find the same level of approbation directed at adulterers (in fact, from a strictly "Biblical" standpoint, the major part of the "sin" of homosexuality is that it by definition involves acts that occur outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage). Not many conservatives, even of the fire-and-brimstone variety, are so impractical as to propose that we so much as jail Tiger Woods. But even the most tepid of conservatives are hesitant to propose that society extend some sort of official sanction to his behavior.
In short, you are looking for an inconsistency that is not present in conservative argument, unless you wish to concentrate your attention on the utmost fringe.
I'd like to turn this
Submitted by rbe1 (not verified) on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 1:15 PM PST.
I'd like to turn this argument against the Israelis and say that being subjected to the horror of the holocaust doesn't justify maintenance of an open air prison for more than one million people.
Globalized Fundamentalism
Submitted by Ted Frier (not verified) on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 1:56 PM PST.
Great article Nick. It helped me put flesh on the bones of a comment I made to my wife yesterday while watching Rachel Maddow interview/grill a "fellow" of the secretive Christian group "The Family."
The Family has extended its reach and influence into the highest levels of the Ugandan governing hierarchy, which is all part of its plan to create a network of the elite in business and government across the globe united by certain conservative Christian beliefs. Like several other Family representatives, the individual Maddow interviewed was both embarassed and alarmed by Uganda's preliminary support for a proposed law, seen as extremist, at least in the West, that would execute gays.
The point I made to my wife is that Family members in the US must see this Ugandan situation as a PR catastrophe because it shows what happens when you take their traditionalist beliefs out of a culture like ours where its predatory nature is held in check by legally-protected civil liberties and long-standing traditions of individual rights and put it in a very traditional, religious culture where it has no competition.
The result is a theocracy that produces the sorts of extreme punishments for violations of ancient Biblical crimes which we in the more "advanced" West associate with such dark chapters in our own history as the Spanish Inquisition.
I take the representative of the Family on good faith that he is genuinely apalled that Uganda would make homosexuality a capital crime. But I also suspect that he and the Family recognize others will rightly draw the conclusion that draconian laws against gays are precisely the logical result whenever you allow political power to mingle too closely with ecclesiastical power. And that would surely throw a monkey wrench into the Family's plans of a New World Order where members of this right wing Christian "Fellowship" are free to pull the strings behind the scenes.
I also watched that Maddow
Submitted by john sherman (not verified) on Thu Jan. 7, 2010 2:28 PM PST.
I also watched that Maddow show, and the question I was waiting for her to ask is, "If murdering gays is too much bigotry, how much is just enough?"
One should hate the sin but
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri Jan. 8, 2010 11:30 AM PST.
One should hate the sin but love the sinner. If one loves the sinner, in this case homosexuals, one does not execute them no matter how odious their sin may be because their sin only affects them. This logic does not apply to murderers whose sin, also odious, affects others.
"If your not going to think
Submitted by Camille Dillard (not verified) on Sat Jan. 9, 2010 1:33 AM PST.
"If your not going to think and want to make the right choice follow the two or three people going in the opposite direction of the crowd (paraphrase modern consensus)." -Bob Proctor, The Science of Getting Rich
Double Standard
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat Jan. 9, 2010 6:17 AM PST.
Why aren’t members of “The Family” (U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI), etc.) treated as terrorists for conspiring to kill innocent foreign nationals according to a radical interpretation of Christian law?, while Al-Qaeda essentially does the same according to a radical interpretation of Islamic law?
Although the methods of the two organizations - “The Family” and Al-Qaeda – may differ, I question whether the illegal methods of Al-Qaeda are, in substance and outcome, any different than the “legal” methods of “The Family” when they are done pursuant to a scarcely legal Ugandan regime that is clearly violating basic international human rights standards.
Senators and Congresspersons should not be passing their time conspiring to murder innocent foreign nationals in the name of their religion. (For heaven's sake don't let Job creation distract you!?) “The Family’s” conduct should raise many questions. For instance, how can the U.S. wage a righteous war on terror when our own high ranking government officials are executing their own brand of terrorist acts in other countries? As Senators and Congresspersons aren't the actions of these members of “The Family” not representing the United States of America? Is the reason Al-Qaeda chose to attack over Detroit, Michigan because of Congressman Bart Stupak’s membership in “The Family”? Why did Al-Qaeda chose to attack on Christmas day? Why should allied nations assist the U.S. in its War on Terror when our own renegade politicians are surely antagonizing Al-Qaeda with their unnecessary acts (imperialism, etc.)? Does “The Family’s” existence help Al-Qaeda recruit?
And what about “The Family’s” National Prayer Breakfast that President O’bama is scheduled to attend in February 2010. This is the same National Prayer Breakfast that “The Family’s” genocidal Ugandan co-conspirators will be attending. Despite the Presidents condemnation of the law, couldn’t his attending also be construed as some sort of tacit approval of “The Family’s” actions?
Please declare "The Family" a Terrorist organization and remove its members from public office immediately.
Thank you
Note, "The Family" on C
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat Jan. 9, 2010 6:27 AM PST.
Note, "The Family" on C Street has been linked to the Ugandan "Kill-The-Gay's" legislation
It's a known fact that
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat Jan. 9, 2010 7:44 PM PST.
It's a known fact that Conservitism/Fundamentalism is rife with closet homosexuals and pedophiles.
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