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In 2016, the tragedy at Pulse (a gay nightclub in Orlando) painfully reminded us that religious intolerance is alive and well, and we must be mindful of its many guises.
Far from ending the cycle of hate, the 2015 Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage has drawn a line in the sand. While equal rights have been mandated, respect and tolerance has not become ‘the law of the land.’ (Think of the Emancipation Proclamation, or Civil Rights Act of 1964: both drew battle lines, and signaled the start of the ‘real fight’). Undoubtedly—as Marjorie Ramos recently told a Unitarian Universalist congregation—the landmark ruling has changed lives—but the Supreme Court decision is, first and foremost, a financial ruling. In securing the right to marry, it affords LGBT couples the fiscal benefits that accrue to heterosexual couples, including the ability to file joint income-tax returns, claim medical benefits, claim Government Benefits (including Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits for spouses, as well Veterans' and military benefits for them), claim inheritance and death benefits, and claim legal privileges (such as spousal privilege).
Despite this new equality under the law, the struggle for acceptance and respect is far from over. Not only are members of the LGBT community still confronted with degrading innuendoes and insidious aggressions, they are now at the center of new legal battles. Prior to the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, a dozen states still had sodomy laws on the books. These laws, ostensibly upholding ‘family values,’ defined same-sex relationships as perverse and sinful. Those who were drawn to such relationships were officially judged to be morally bankrupt, or at best, mentally defective.
The government’s retreat from demonizing same-sex relationships has prompted the conservative religious vanguard to launch a new assault. And, not unlike resistances to racial integration in the schools in Little Rock, resistance to marriage equality had its standoff. Last September, Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses in Kentucky. Public support of her defiance alerted us to the festering dis-ease underlying the Supreme Court ruling, and the challenges that still lie ahead.
Her actions were a call to arms—on both sides of the debate.
Leaders of the religious right regrouped, and doubled down on efforts to undermine the Supreme Court decision with litigation that would provide legal protection for those who oppose same-sex marriage. The so-called “First Amendment Defense Act” would ensure that the Federal Government does not take "any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes, speaks, or acts in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage, and for other purposes."
In essence, it claims that enfranchising the LGBT community tramples on their rights to act toward members of that community in ways that are in keeping with sincerely held religious beliefs. “Equality” is inverted, such that those who do not believe it should be extended to members of the LGBT community claim that they are being discriminated against by this ruling.
This thinking calls to mind Andrew Sullivan’s observation that
“when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are despised and full license is established to do “whatever one wants,” you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy. There is no kowtowing to authority here...”
Ironically, by grounding their opposition in religious freedoms, the moral rallying cry against the LGBT community has finally found its rightful place—within the scope of religion.
How far that scope extends will be the linchpin of new legal battles.
The legal foothold for religious fundamentalism was laid as early as 2004, when James Nixon wore a t-shirt to school with the words “Homosexuality is a sin, Islam is a lie, abortion is murder. Some issues are just black and white!” Nixon was sent home / told to change his shirt, and his parents sued the school—not on the basis of First Amendment ‘freedom of speech’ guarantees (which do not include ‘hate-speech’), but on the basis of the ‘religious clause’ added to the first Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting the free exercise (of religion).”
And shunning the LGBT community, denying them services is now construed as “the free exercise of religion.”
Needless to say, activists and pundits alike have addressed the hypocrisy of rejection and intolerance in the name of religion.
These new challenges are a wake-up call, reminding us that intolerance cannot simply be ‘legislated away.’ Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the bullying and harassment of the LGBT community has gotten worse over the past year.
As a sociologist, I understand this backlash as a need for the religious right to establish boundaries, now that the Supreme Court decision erased many of them.
What I failed to recognize was that many heterosexual LGBT activists, believing the war won— or simply having no tangible field on which to wage further battle—have turned to other causes.
No longer focused on the rights of the LGBT community has equated to no longer seeing the injustices that continue to be propagated.
The slaughter at the Pulse nightclub reminds us that many civil liberties are difficult to guarantee, and prompts us to continue to look for thinly veiled injustices, and to protest against them.
It calls on us to renew our efforts to be vigilant against the many guises of bigotry and harassment. We must be on guard against those who would refuse respect, champion discrimination, and denigrate the value of other human beings.
Marjorie Ramos, in her address to Unitarians, closed her remarks in the most fitting of ways: with the quote by Pastor Martin Niemoller that is displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak for me.
