Religious Freedom and Discrimination

 

    In a recent letter to the editor in the Washington Post, a professional wedding photographer complained that his religious freedom was being infringed on. The writer is a "Christian" who  (unlike many Christians I know) believes it is immoral to participate in same-sex unions while a Virginia anti-discrimination requires his business to make its services available to all citizens, regardless of race or gender identification. The photographer's repetitiously worded argument--long on claims, short on evidence--runs something like this. He is an artist who approaches every wedding as a personal expression. His art is to celebrate the holy joy of a heterosexual union, and Virginia law makes it illegal for him to practice this art. That's what he wrote. I find it nonsense. He remains perfectly free to celebrate traditional marriage. 

    Obviously, he could get a day job like most artists and photograph weddings pro bono, only the ones he approves of. As an amateur wedding artist, he could even elect to photograph only white couples, or only young and pretty ones. Or Jews or Muslims. He would have (as I have writing this blog) unrestricted freedom to express his private religious beliefs. Nothing in the Virginia law prohibits a photographer from "practicing his art." On his own dime anyway. 

     Even if he did, in his view, morally cave in and shoot gay weddings for cash, the photographer would retain the right to shoot and share lush celebrations of straight marriage on the Internet, even publish books of straight weddings, babies, baptisms, whatever. And, of course, if he did shoot gay weddings, he could go passive-aggressive and frame boring shots, withholding "art," hoping that same-sex spouses would get the point and hire other photographers. He could frame the same shots an unartistic Uncle Fred might have done for free. If he did this carefully, avoiding really awful pictures, he could still get paid. So, not only does the Virginia law allow the photographer to artistically express his love of heterosexual marriage, but it permits him to withhold his art from marriages he disapproves of and still make money as a small businessman. As far as I could tell, only the photographer's pride--not his religion--restricts his artistic expression.

    Of course, what the wedding photographer is asking for in his letter is not a positive right to express his religion (he has that in spades), but a negative right to avoid even the appearance of expressing another religion--a religion that performs same-weddings. He ineptly confuses his right to abstain with his right to practice, but he still may have a point--a right to operate a business while maintaining moral purity. There is such a thing as civil disobedience: obeying the laws of God by refusing to obey conflicting laws of men. In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King distinguishes between the two: "A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God." But what is the law of God? It can't be just anything a priest, rabbi, imam, guru, or pastor tells me or some pet doctrine I've always believed. Outside of an utterly egocentric world-view that disregards the rights of others, this would be chaos. There must be a standard outside of sectarian opinion to decide what kind of law the wedding photographer faces when he's required to serve gay and straight weddings equally.

    An experiment with kindergarten children suggests that the distinction between just and unjust law is clear at an early age. In the experiment, the teacher suggests that "just for today" she will change a rule and they don't have to raise their hands before speaking. What do they think? The children readily agree. It sounds like fun. But when the teacher suggests another rule change, that they can hit anybody they like without consequences, there is unanimous objection. In the words of King, "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." According to this standard, abolishing the hand-raising rule is morally neural--maybe even even uplifting if it encourages voluntarily taking of turns--but abolishing the hitting rule is degrading, a catalyst of the dark side, and the children know it. 

    The photographer may sincerely believe that intimacies associated with same-sex marriage are degrading, but this, I suggest, is not his concern. He is unlikely to promote or discourage such intimacies with his camera. The would-be spouses will make love at least as often in a state of unlicensed cohabitation as in a marriage (probably less often if they adopt children). People are celebrating the spiritual union of their lives, committing to life-long devotion, and the photographer might ask if condemning them on religious grounds--cursing their love as God's delegate--elevates or degrades human personality? The answer seems obvious. Even if he is theologically right, he is shaming brothers for being wrong. It is better to be good than to be right, especially if "right" is a matter of personal belief.

    I don't know if it would be a blessing or a curse to live in a religiously homogeneous society. Certainly, Jesus lived in no such society, and neither do most of us, especially Americans. Overarching values expressed in the Golden Rule call for us to respect people who believe differently, to treat them as we would want ourselves and our coreligionists to be treated. The law of reciprocity prevents me from using police powers to impose the moral theology of my church on non-members. I may believe that it is immoral for a woman to expose bare shoulders in public. Of course, any woman who agrees with me and exposes her shoulders should be ashamed. A delegation of her coreligionists may rightly chastise her. But it would be morally wrong for me to call the cops on her--morally wrong to vote for a law that wrote my sect's dress code into law, punishing non-believers for baring shoulders. If I know that my moral conviction is peculiar to my religious group and some others--not shared by citizens in general--it is unjust for me support it as a general law. That would be a violation of the higher law of reciprocity, the Golden Rule.

    This principle applies to same-sex marriage. A recent survey, in line with previous national polls, finds that 70 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage. Religious Americans support it by substantial majorities, including 79 percent of white mainstream Protestants, 67 percent of Catholics, and 57 percent of black Protestants. One third of white Evangelicals register support. So the wedding photographer's claim that shunning same-sex weddings is "Christian" expresses a minority opinion, and his shaming of same-sex grooms, even if short of police power, seems uncharitable and invites comparison with resistance to mixed-race marriages . . . I was about to add "in the past" but then read that 16 percent of Americans in 2017 agreed that "marriage should only be allowed between two people of the same race" (and another 14 percent had no opinion). Even though the word "racism" has a bad connotation, the fact of racism still infects America, and only those with short memories can forget the old religious defenses of it. Racists don't claim the "religious freedom" defense today because it failed in the past. They've been there, done that. They'd love, no doubt, a rematch.

    In last post, I remembered July 4, 1965, when, along with six other counter-demonstrators, I fled a mob at a "We the White People Rally" where John Rarick launched his successful run for Congress (1967-1975) by declaring that racial integration was sacrilegious  and blasphemous. Of course, he was a self-labeled Christian, supporting prayer in public schools under a banner: "You're white because your ancestors practiced segregation." This alluded to what was then a cliche among Southern whites, the last-ditch argument for segregation: "Would you want your daughter to marry a n---r?" The expected response: religious horror. This was a historic trope, piety in defense of injustice. What God has subjugated, let no man set free. 

      A search of old newspapers finds the May 26, 1858, Montgomery Advertiser declaring African slavery agreeable to "divine law." The December 9, 1858, Eufaula Express praises the Union Baptist Association for "Scriptural proof that the Bible does not condemn slavery" in a document assuming that "the negro is different and inferior to the white man" because of the curse of Ham (Genesis 9:20-27). The same religious arguments used against same-sex weddings would apply--and have been applied--with equal logic and force against interracial weddings, female suffrage, school integration, women in the workplace, and the emancipation of slaves.

    Our wedding photographer, in light of this history, might make another claim: the "gay lifestyle" is a choice, unlike being female or black. On the basis of at least forty years in amateur, college, and semi-professional theatre, I find this profoundly naive. Anybody with this view needs to get out more, have honest conversations with real people. Of course, sexuality as a species is programmed toward reproduction--persons capable of fertilizing eggs broadly attracted to persons capable of producing them--but the mechanism for programming this attraction is complex and fallible, probably a combination of genes, maternal hormones, and childhood development like the mechanism for adult height. Nature targets a species-wide optimal height and reproductive efficiency, but anomalies such as tall or gay people are not "mistakes," but normal variations produced by mechanisms that work on average. Most individuals encounter their sexual orientation, not as a choice, but as a given, and only a self-centered failure of the Golden Rule confuses the typical with the universal.

   I'm most familiar with the dawning of my own sexuality, that pubescent year when bosoms were suddenly charming. It had nothing to do with choice, and if it had been a bad thing, it would have been catastrophic. I was suddenly like one of Prince Charming's messengers wandering around with a slipper, looking for a Cinderella to fit it, falling in puppy love with any girl who smiled my way and finally pair-bonding in a fifty-year marriage. I am incorrigibly heterosexual, and the idea that I might have chosen to bond with one of those loud, muscular, flat-chested, infertile, hairy louts that girls found alluring is ludicrous. If same-sex marriage were the only form of marriage, I'd be a confirmed bachelor. I have old male friends are the inverse of this--bachelors because heterosexual marriage was until recently their only option and their own pubescent catastrophe was to fall in love with males. For them, romantic pair-bonding with a woman is impossible. Such is their God-given character that to deny them same-sex marriage is to say, "I, as a heterosexual (insert halo), enjoy the right to form a household based on a committed relationship with legal protections. I deny you that right. Be like me or be alone." In the words of a Catholic catechism, "Homosexuals are called to celibacy." But a more fundamental Christian text answers, "It is not good that man should be alone" (Genesis 2:18). 

    I find it hard to frame as Christian the kind of violation of the Great Commandment that would cherish a set of benefits for myself while denying them to millions of my brothers and sisters.

Links

The Marriage Poll. https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/support-gay-marriage-reaches-all-time-high-survey-finds-n1244143

The Racism Poll. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/antiquated-racial-views-pervade-america-1eac52a0b58b/ 

Religious Defense of Slavery. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/01/arts/from-noah-s-curse-to-slavery-s-rationale.html 

On Children's Sense of Fairness. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-moral-life-of-babies/