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Menstuff® has compiled information and books on Gay, Bi, and Transgender issues. This section is Robert N. Minor's weekly column featured daily on our homepage. Robert is the author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He may be reached through www.fairnessproject.org or at E-Mail. 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 Resolve Now to Make 2024 the Year
We Take Back the Language It shouldn't be a new idea for us because for a quarter of a century, well-known linguist George Lakoff has been crusading for its importance and explaining scientifically why it's crucial. Why it hasn't caught on among people with progressive agendas is beyond me. Yet the right-wing continues to use it to commandeer the mainstream media into enforcing its frame of reference as it has for generations now. Think of how they like to call the Democratic Party "the Democrat Party" in what seems to be only a silly but intentional misnomer. But you hear the right-wing's ideals enforced anytime anyone uses words like "tax relief," "pro-life." "entitlements," "school choice," "parental rights," "the homosexuals," "the gay lifestyle," "sexual preference," and numerous others that they (and this too is important) repeat over and over no matter what the objections to their use or their accuracy are. As Lakoff warned us based on his extensive research on how brains really work, such usages enforce the right-wing's way of thinking unconsciously in human brains even when they're used by others to deny the truth of them. Their very use triggers the right-wing frame within the mind of the hearer. A recent online discussion reminded me of this. It was the defense of the word "entitlements" for Social Security and Medicare benefits. The poster argued accurately that those who receive them are "entitled" to them because they had paid into the system and were now collecting on their own payments. But accurate arguments about language usurped by the right-wing do not enforce the frame of reference of the progressive side if we use the language (no matter how really appropriate it is logically) of the right-wing. In this example, the right-wing has instilled deep in the discourse with the help of the mainstream media that to be "entitled" is a feeling people have ("They feel they're so entitled") whether they have earned what they are entitled to or not. Think of the criticism: "Oh, they think they're so entitled." To counter this, references to Social Security and Medicare must be referred to again and again - as "earned benefits." No matter what the other side calls them, we must say "earned benefits" over and over again until the media has to explain to their audience what we are referring to by our designation. A successful example is the progressive designation used for bills passed in Florida forbidding references to LGBTQ people in public education. Calling them "Don't Say Gay" bills, and using that terminology for them consistently, took over the discourse. There were objections about that from both the proponents of those bills and even our allies who were afraid that there was too much generalization in that designation. But - and here's when you know you are successful - "Don't Say Gay Bills" is still being used (no matter how the right-wing objects) and the media is reenforcing that use when it says to its audiences: "the so-called 'Don't Say Gay Bills' or "what opponents call 'the Don't Say Gay Bills.'" Yet another successful example was renaming "same-sex marriage" (Any phrase that has the word "sex" in it in our culture is loaded with all the distress people have about any sexual activity.) by replacing it with "marriage equality." In searching for alternatives, words like "equality," "fair," and "freedom" always resonate with people's deep emotions in our culture. And we should use them not just because they are a tactic but because they speak in terms of our values. So, let's resolve to do a small but powerful (and simple) thing as we face a new year. This involves:
Resolve, for example to:
There are many more examples of how we can take back the discourse in our cultures and change its direction. But we have to do it by being aware of their affect, of how things are already being framed for us, and by reframing, renaming, repeating, and not conceding, to their language even if we're denying it. And finally, did I recommend repetition enough? Could It Be Dangerous to
Argue that Religion Is Responsible for Discrimination? There certainly must be something emotionally satisfying, though, for many people in arguments about religion - whether they’re for “it” or against “it.” Beyond the strategies of politicians who prey on religious prejudices, people argue passionately, existentially, and obsessively about whether religion or Christianity, Islam, or another ism, does, causes, or even “is” one thing or another. These arguments have sharpened and become more mainstream through the 24-hour cable news cycle that exploits terrorist attacks committed by people hiding behind religion and the fear-based politics of the right-wing politicians who dominate one of the American political parties. Talk radio and religious bigotry have also found renewed energy. Trying to insert rationality into these arguments can be an exercise in futility for either side. There’s something deeper being defended within the arguers that’s psychologically crucial to them, even more than just the need to win an argument. The historical reality is that religion or any of the isms never do anything. But if we were to admit that that’s true, then we’d have to conclude that most religious arguments we’re in can only produce heat, not light. People as individuals and in groups and institutions do things, but not religion or religions. People and institutions use religious ideas, symbols, scriptures, and traditions in ways that sanctify their goals, actions, and psychological conditions. The abstract reification we call “religion” isn’t responsible for either the good or the bad for which “it” is given credit. The same scriptures, traditions, and dogmas can be used by a Martin Luther King or a Pat Robertson, a Mahatma Gandhi or a Nathuram Godse, the “Hindu” who assassinated Gandhi in the name of “Hinduism.” How they’re used and what they’re used for is the responsibility of the user or group of users. And “religion” must not be allowed to let them off the hook. Take the Bible or the Quran. People will argue futilely about what these collections of writings “teach.” Since no one, I repeat no one, takes everything in either book completely literally, no matter what they claim to do, what believers choose to use is their responsibility. And their interpretive schemes to get their scriptures to agree with their views are many. Arguing that their sacred scriptures say this or that gets nowhere. Calling someone a literalist about their scriptures ignores their interpretive tactics and enforces their belief that they’re literally correct. Both activities actually encourage religious fervor. Of course, each believer will claim that their interpretation, their selections from the smorgasbords that are scriptures, traditions, and respected religious thinkers, are the true versions of their faith. Those claims are what believers fight over among themselves. Their internal fights are so heated and brutal, and often over what looks to outsiders as so trivial, because a true believer doesn’t want to admit that there might be any other way to understand their scriptures or their religion than the version on which they’ve bet their soul. Believers cannot admit alternatives because doing so would undermine the comfort of their hope of settled faith with doubts that their beliefs are possibly not true. We never know with certainty what personal psychological issues, positive or negative, cause people to use religions the way they do. But we do know that there are a variety of emotional problems, family of origin hurts, prejudices, abusive upbringings, societal dynamics, and other factors that impel belief and explain why someone identifies with some beliefs and institutions but not others. That’s why the most common predictor of one’s own faith, or the faith one is more likely to spend the most time fighting against, is the religion of one’s family. And since the vast majority of people in the world have never dealt with issues of their upbringing, those issues still propel both belief and unbelief. Religion, then, is a popular choice to be the cover for these unhealed issues. While still others can use religion to uncover their issues and promote emotional healing. But think of the emotional high that religion can provide when it’s used as the basis for the actions one takes. One is no longer just acting out of personal sickness, anger, problems, insecurities, and fears when one attacks a women’s clinic, bashes LGBTQ people, or massacres colleagues in a workplace. Using religious beliefs, one can feel instead that they’re doing their god’s work, that theirs are actions sanctified by the divine. In that name many horrors can take place as if they aren’t just the very sick murders and brutalities that they are. And they can now define the victims of such atrocities not as fellow human beings who disagree but as evil, demonic, and satanic. How much handier for believers is that? This means that by blaming religion there’s no need for them to confront their own issues, seek therapy, or face their doubts, depressions, inadequacies, and failures. The feeling of righteousness takes over. For the believer, then, blaming religion enables them not to have to face themselves and their own emotional lack. God is responsible for all that happens, not them. And when others blame religion, they play into that same trap. When we claim that it’s religion’s fault, we let the individuals, groups, and institutions go free. We become their enablers. We enable whatever happens because we too argue with the believer that it wasn’t actually a believer’s fault - it was their religion that’s responsible. And we thereby encourage others to continue their heinous acts in the name of religion without them feeling their own problems are responsible. The better solution is holding people, groups, and institutions responsible for how they use religion. It’s to stop colluding with them as they blame anything other than themselves. This means refusing to argue about religion and instead calling believers, religious leaders, and institutions to account. And it means facing our own issues about why we want to argue religion in the first place. So, what are we ourselves getting by continuing such
arguments? If we answer that we’re just trying to
reveal or defend the truth, then we’re arguing exactly
what religious people are. Remember, they believe
they’re defending the truth, too. Should the
Religiously Abused Just Leave It Now? For some it’s LGBTQ people. The United Methodist Church, for example, continues to lose congregations for which anti-LGBTQ discrimination is as comfortable as sitting in the same pew every Sunday morning. For others, such as the Roman Catholic Church or the Southern Baptist Convention, it’s not only their affirmations of continued bigotry toward LGBTQ people but their refusal to allow women to be equal partners in the leadership of their well-ensconced patriarchies. The Southern Baptists just reaffirmed their historic male-dominated hierarchy. The Catholic Church is under pressure from its membership to do something about both. Some denominations, such as the Christian Reformed Church or conservative Lutheran groups such as the Missouri Synod, have just kept their anti-LGBTQ stands. A breakaway American right-wing group of Episcopal churches calling itself the Anglican Church of North America has aligned with African Anglicans to call for a crackdown on progressive moves by the Anglican Church in these matters. Meanwhile, the rise in popularity of nondenominational evangelical churches including those hipster churches seeking to appeal to younger people, might include more than organ and piano music, but often hides the same bigotry toward LGBTQ people beneath well-curated veneers only to be discovered only after one is hooked on their vibe. With too many examples to list here, churches around the country who take public stands against all this bigotry are finding themselves vandalized for doing so. All of this continues to beg a larger, on-going question that religious people must work through in their own lives: Which is more important, a stand for human rights or the unity of some church body? This continues to be a life or death question for LGBTQ people in a society where open bigotry and violence against them has become popular again due to right-wing politicians who’ve made anything that is progressive in the field of equal rights as fodder for their culture-war themed political ambitions. Anyone who is a victim is often still counseled by well-meaning allies to put up with it, realize that the time isn’t right, or have patience and understanding of those condemning believers. But, how long should they hold on and support these institutions through their membership and financial donations? As an outsider to the denominations, from the Mormons to the Methodists and beyond, it’s not my question to answer, though it’s always a question to ask people to think about consciously. Answering for religious people isn’t as easy for them as it looks to outsiders. It calls church members to search their own souls, their relationships, and their familiar life-styles. I’ve seldom heard any response to this larger question that doesn’t assume the answer before the question is asked. If one believes that the unity of an institution is a transcendent value, then women, all people of color, and LGBTQ members, will just have to be the ones to accept it, suck up the resulting tragedies in their own lives, and make guilt-ridden choices about leaving their familiar religious communities. In 1847, the Baptist Convention split over the question of slavery. The new Northern Baptist Convention (now the American Baptists) opposed slavery while the Southern Baptists supported it under the familiar and now well-worn and selectively-used “states’ rights” catchphrase for retaining bigotry. Back then each side, of course, believed that it possessed the true understanding of the Bible. The pro-slavery pastors argued correctly that they were supporting the traditional understanding and that abolitionist interpretations were a revisionist reading of their scriptures. There, in fact, is no command to free slaves in the New Testament, after all, while there are many cases where slaves are advised that the Christian thing to do is obey their masters even if they’re abusive to them. Reinterpretation of their texts was for Christians to fight over while the dominant interpretation supported the status quo. After the spilt, the Southern Baptist Convention became the largest Protestant denomination in the US. In spite of its beginning in supporting slavery, it continued to have the nerve to claim it is a moral voice for the whole country by rejecting civil rights, women’s leadership, and LGBTQ acceptance. Finally, in 1997 - 150 years later! - its annual convention apologized for its stance on slavery. In the meantime, how many human beings had suffered and died while waiting for change? Both sides in that fissure had to face whether their ethical stance was worth the split. The unity of the entire nation would then be maintained through a bloody civil war that claimed to have religion behind it on both sides. President Lincoln might have hit the nail on the head when he responded to a question of whether God was on the side of the North in the war with: “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side….” Then, as now, the conservative side always thinks that their values are actually worth a breakup. It’s usually the liberals who opt for unity rather than immediate progress in human rights in the belief that they will eventually change any holdouts. But the question remains: who should suffer until change takes place? Today, for example, should an LGBTQ person remain in a currently abusive institution to work to change it or should they move their support to the many and variant alternatives that aren’t abusive and go on with their lives in the limited days they have on the planet? Are the people who are repressed by churches responsible for changing them? Should they even feel responsible? Should they be made to feel responsible by anyone else? Should they be willing to be studied further like specimens in a laboratory? Should they be willing to be thought of as the problem rather than it being the larger homophobia, transphobia, gender role sickness, toxic masculinity, or other issues of those who think it still needs further study. Are the abused making excuses for these institutions similar to those abused spouses make for their abusers? These are major questions. They ought to be asked. And choices must be made. But in the meantime, those who remain to fight, and maybe
eventually win, should be careful not to condemn those whose
spiritual paths say: leave now. Don’t Believe Anything
You Hear When Someone Says “The Bible Says It” It’s saying something like: “The books in the library say,” for the Bible is historically a collection of stories composed by different authors from different cultures in three different languages written over thousands of years. Yet the claim is commonly brandished about and indicates that the person who touts it has already decided what the whole collection must say. There are religious assumptions, of course, to justify doing this. There are those who believe that their god was the author of all of those books, and therefore they must somehow - no matter how hard it is to make the variety of its claims sync - make it all agree. It’s why no one takes all of what’s there literally. They instead come up with some inventive methods to interpret passages that don’t literally agree with their beliefs - and over which they continually argue among themselves. No wonder there are hundreds of different denominations and non-denominational churches fighting with each other over who’s finally getting the Bible right. Of course, different sects and theologians have been arguing over their choice verses for millennia. And many of today’s arguments between the current contenders are still the same old ones, only with updated vocabularies. There even seems to be a real psychological need for them to argue about it. It’s notable that the idea that anyone, no matter how wrong, can quote scripture is, frankly, just taken for granted in the Bible itself. In a Gospel of Matthew (4:5-7) story, Jesus, it says, is taken aside by “the Devil” (tou diabolou) to experience temptations that sound like an oral final exam before he heads out on a “real world” ministry. That the Devil during the exam quotes the Bible, as he does, isn’t even a main point of that passage though. It’s just casually assumed that people would know, without the writer seeming to be surprised at all, that part of the temptation includes the Devil quoting Psalm 91:11-12 to argue his point: “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike even your foot against a stone.’” So yes, using “the Bible says” is something even Satan does according to the very “Bible” people who also use it are referencing. The Matthew tale clearly assumes the idea that “the Bible” can be a tool of the Devil. Shakespeare in Act One, Scene III of “The Merchant of Venice" indicates that he also understands that quoting “the Bible” can be a meaningless façade covering rotten ideas: “Mark you this, Bassanio, the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart." There’s so much in that huge Biblical collection that is never highlighted by those who quote it. It’s hidden away, and when people ask about those passages that they’d rather not face, “Bible believers” use mental gymnastics to get back to the point they want it to endorse as quickly as possible - if they even know how to respond. This includes all the violence, commands to do violence, killing, raping, and plundering by both its god and his followers. Take one example Psalm 137:9 – “How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock.” – among hundreds of other violent verses. “The Bible.” for example, says nothing as a whole about slavery. There are parts that clearly support such owning of others as property. For example, I Peter 2:18 (NIV): “Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.” On the other hand, though there’s never a call in the New Testament to free the slaves, there are passages by other Biblical authors that provide a basis for doing so if people who want to choose to use them, such as: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 5:28) There’s a passage in Leviticus that tells priests how and when to use abortion as a test of a pregnant woman’s faithfulness to her husband that’s explained away with difficulty by those against women’s control of their bodies: Numbers 5:11-31. But there’s no passage in the whole collection literally against abortion no matter what they say “the Bible” says. There’s a passage in Genesis that says that God performed the first transgender surgery by taking a man’s rib and turning it into a woman: Genesis 2:21-23. There are passages in Matthew and Luke where Jesus not only heals a Roman centurion’s male lover but highly praises the centurion’s faith for asking. One could go on and on, but the reality is that because the collection of books that is now officially included in “the Bible” is so diverse, “the Bible” is like a smorgasbord of options to choose from. One can pick and choose whatever suits ones fancy, and that picking and choosing has been used down through history to justify the prejudices and cruelties LGBTQ people and others have suffered. But prejudiced people also need “the Bible” to speak for them so they can act as if what is a personal prejudice is based on something bigger. Then they don’t have to search their own souls for where their ideas really come from. And they’ll use “the Bible” even if there’s actually nothing in it to support their point. In my college days, I often visited a variety of religious services. During a visit to a midweek prayer meeting in a very conservative church, an older woman whom a number of people there referred to with great reverence and awe as a “prayer warrior” started a long prayer. She concluded what seemed to turn into a sermon all in King James English, with: “And, as Thou hast said: ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Of course, it wasn’t the place to point out that if we’re looking for the “Thou” that said that, he’s not in the Bible. And maybe she meant by “Thou” Ben Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac. But who was going to question a “prayer
warrior” after all? A World Religions Professor Faces
Mortality You’d think after studying religions around the world that I’d have formed some definite ideas about the after-life. But, alas, I haven’t. And I know that I’m in good company – some of the religious leaders that I admire and talk with who are attached to certain traditions seem to be just as vague about it all as I am. Whatever the afterlife is like, I don’t live my life because it is some motivation to do better, be more benevolent, love others more, cherish the planet, or try to live more in the present. Those are things I’ve come to want to do without thinking about what they qualify me for later. And, after looking at all the hells that different religions have claimed could await people who don’t follow whatever formula they assert would allow them to avoid these sadistic fantasies, I just think they’re all conceived to manipulate people into conforming to notions that promote insecure personal or institutional agendas, often political and economic ones. But at my stage in life, I am confronted more frequently than I want, it seems, by the reality of mortality. Though I know my own time, like everyone else’s, is limited, what I’m really facing is more the reminder of the morality of those around me – friends, family, colleagues, mentors, and heroes. Their deaths seem to stare me in the face pretty regularly these days. To be clear, I definitely and emphatically don’t like the idea of death. I think it’s unnecessary and that if there is Someone who has created all this, there could be better alternatives. If it did any good to stand on a picket line against death, I’d do it. I just don’t want any more of the people I care about to leave the planet I’m on. I cherish those who are still with us. But there they go without my permission anyway – family members, former students, best friends, people I thought of as being around forever (as if they’d outlive me). And I miss them and think about them often. It’s not a morbid thing at all, but a warm, cozy, set of memories and appreciations that I think help make me a kinder, caring person. I think it has convinced me that after letting people know where I am and whose side I’m on in the fight for justice and human rights, personally winning an argument to show I’m right is less important than being compassionate and patient with everyone’s journey of growth. I think those memories soften my stubborn hard edges a bit and remind me, when I need the reminder, of the importance of those in my life who’ve not left yet. I think these musings represent what is really important to me about being here now since I‘ve already had years of building a career and doing everything that makes one a “success” by some cultural standard for my profession. I’d love to talk with all of those who have gone ahead, spend time with them, hug them, and tell them again what they mean to me, as I, fortunately, learned to do somewhat while they were around. And all of those thoughts add up to what is crucial in my idea of what I’d like the afterlife to be. I’m clear about that. I’m less interested in whether or not my idea is provable, philosophically sound, or better than someone else’s or even those of the majority of religions. I’m not impressed that something is better because it’s considered ”traditional.” So I don’t spend any time trying to find out if mine is. My idea has no validity other than it’s the way I want it to be. And I’m uninterested in arguing about it. That would be a waste of time here. I have my ideas and you can have yours. And both have as much “proof” as any other. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and maybe someone else has got it right. I want the hereafter first and foremost to be something like a place, a dimension that has some of the reality of this one. I want it to be an existence without the problems of this one – I don’t consider any of those problems necessary. I don’t believe you have to experience evil to really know good. I don’t want it to be a loss of individual consciousness where any of us becomes some drop of water indistinguishable from some larger ocean. I want to be able to recognize those I want to spend time with there without the worries of here. Their individualities have been important to my joy with them in this life. Assuming that time is no problem there, I want to be able to leisurely commune with all those people I know and care about, for spending time with those I love and cherish has always been more like heaven to me on earth. I could see myself have long leisurely lunch engagements - without worrying about calories or the health benefit of what we do or don’t eat. I want to hear them tell me how they are doing, what they are learning, and what has brought them, and now brings them, joy and passion. I want those I’ve met along the way in the various causes I have supported or just through serendipity, many who I haven’t seen for so long because they are geographically distant or too soon - in my reckoning - off of this planet, to tell me about their lives before and after. I want to catch up on their existence, their loves, and their victories. All of this takes me, not surprisingly I guess, back to my thoughts of the present life – what has become important to me and what brings me joy now. Wherever they are or whatever is after this, it’s not their problem of missing me. “Missing” is something in my wheelhouse. I am the one missing them. That problem will be solved eventually. If there’s nothing after this, it will certainly solve that problem for me. But there is something about human beings that makes me think there is more, that death is not a complete end. I know there will be those who can explain it away and I’ll let them do that. That something is that human beings seem to be more extravagant than they would have to be just to evolve to this point on the planet. They ponder love, art and music, morality and ethics, philosophy, and science in ways that are much more than survival strategies. We might think of it as just some further evolutionary progress of brains beyond other species, but even that discussion in itself seems to me to reveal the extravagance that goes beyond issues of survival. In the end, I might be wrong about all this, but I know
that if I had my way, I’d be spending an afterlife with
those I know and love – and, I guess, that’s
because that’s exactly what I’ve learned to love
about the present. What Should a
“Beautiful” Person Look Like? This judgement not only affects how many critique cisgender people but also those who’ve chosen to present themselves as nonbinary, or who have realized that to be themselves they must identify as transgender in the variety of ways that people identify with that reality. Such judgements of who is good looking go beyond just saying that the looks of that person are not my personal idea of beauty by becoming absolute statements that those people ARE not beautiful or pretty or handsome in the way the critic thinks someone should be. With the coming out of some as transgender, these ideas of “beauty” can also be challenged by new presentations, but they’re ideas that should be challenged anyway because of the usually unhealthy cultural gender roles they represent. Definitions and their accompanying images of “beauty” are taught to us by the culture around us practically from birth - and those definitions reveal that “beauty” is not merely “in the eye of the beholder,” but actually in the eye of what makes more money for a consumer society. It's unlikely, for example, that you’ve heard that millennia old saying: “There’s nothing as beautiful as gray hair and a long beard.” That’s because it comes from traditional China, not twenty-first century America. And it’s obviously not an expression popular in American pop culture. In the US, our view of what is beautiful, especially for women, is a twenty-something-year-old or a “young-looking” thirty-something. Imagine those thirty-somethings worried that they don’t look young anymore! We’re conditioned to be attracted to youthful looks from our first exposure to contemporary culture, and to criticize ourselves as we show the natural results of aging. If we’ve been thoroughly conditioned, we even feel that wrinkles, gray hair, “age spots,” sagging, and drooping are like diseases to fight. That’s good news for the bottom-line of so many of the distributors of the products and services they want to sell us. Like most views of beauty that have existed in history, definitions of what is attractive are dominated by the economics of their times. Queen Elizabeth I, tried her best to keep her skin as white as possible. A tan was a symbol of those pitiful working people who were required to labor in the towns and fields, of slaves, and servants, not of those who were upper-class, the lords and ladies. When a tan came to indicate that people had the money and time to afford to dally at (“to escape to”) the seaside or some other resort, a “healthy,” “brown as a berry” tan became a desired mark of beauty. It was proof to others that you had taken a luxurious vacation at some glamorous and expensive Riviera or south-sea paradise. Then, with the growing recognition of the consequences of sunning, with skin cancers and sun-damaged skin, a dark tan began to fade out of definitions of beauty. And hundreds of products were marketed to “protect” the skin. Today, we’re so economically committed to selling and buying anti-aging products and services, that it would be hard to convince us consumers that old age makes one more beautiful. We’ll know when that day finally does arrive when there’s a new skin cream that encourages and increases wrinkles: “Apply this and you’ll look years older.” No, old age just doesn’t sell. The fact is, we’re all going to show the effects of aging without spending a thing. There’s nothing one has to do but hang around long enough. Much of what we do, buy, breathe, and ingest, probably encourages the signs of age. So, there’s no money to be made by the cosmetic industry in promoting the beauty of aging. We’re going to get there without the use of creams, nips, tucks, or other chemicals and surgery. But there’s a lot of money to be made if we’re all convinced that to “look young” is beautiful. Youth is always sellable because it’s guaranteed to be fleeting no matter what we buy. And most anyone can do youth, All that involves aging requires courage to experience. It’s unfair that the different way we treat gender allows some leeway for men. Our idea of a “successful man” is a business-type who shows some evidence of age. It’s the mark of a man who has beaten, or at least mastered, the economic system, a man who therefore can protect his women. That’s different than the idea of a beautiful woman we’re expected to have absorbed. She’s supposed to look as if she were a trophy, a jewel, hanging around to prove a man is successful enough to get one. She’s not someone who fits the popular stereotype we’re supposed to accept of what a career woman who is independent of men looks like. She must fit the current ideas of feminine beauty. But men are not immune as they age. There are three ages of men – youth, middle age, and “you look good.” It’s still considered a compliment to tell a man that he doesn’t look his age. And we wouldn’t consider that positively if we knew it meant he looks older than he is. In the middle of all this pressure of what is supposed to be considered “beaufiful,” when we start to break through and are attracted to the look of someone who exhibits the fact that she or he is wise, experienced, and weathered, we’ve gone far in rejecting a dominant idea of beauty that, in reality, represents nothing at all that is important in the world. We break through it when “beauty” to us is more than skin deep, when we see the difference between an attractive person and a “pretty” one by the consumer-based cultural standards we’ve absorbed, when we find a person’s attractiveness in the comfort they find in their own looks, in the satisfaction they have in being who they are (cisgender or transgender), in the absence of the need to judge others or to value others who fit any outwardly imposed ideas of beauty, in the fact that they can unapologetically be themselves. Except for the current consumer-dominated dating game, “beauty” is actually a worthless characteristic anyway. It won’t help discover a cure for diabetes, heart disease, or cancer. It won’t help someone run faster, jump higher, write a great novel, improve the educational system for future generations, make our laws fairer, have compassion for others, or even become a billionaire. And when looking for someone to share our life, it
won’t make someone more compassionate and
companionable. For the current popular definition won’t
last, so it’s guaranteed not to be what enriches or
promotes a long-term, loving relationship. Sexual Sickness Remains Central
to the Right-Wing’s Self--Destructive Addictions The weekly examples of hypocrisy in these matters make any new revelations hardly surprising and even predictable. And now they’re using gay slurs against each other in the Republican Party’s internal battles. In a 2019 expose by University of Oklahoma sociology of religion professor Samuel L. Perry entitled Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants he goes beyond the usual unsurprising studies that show that anti-porn red states use more porn than blue ones. He explores how pornography messes up the lives of those caught up in right-wing Christian ideology. Without making any moral claims about pornography in general, Perry concludes that pornographic use “seems to be uniquely harmful to conservative Protestants’ mental health, their sense of self, their own identities — certainly their intimate relationships — in ways that don’t tend to be as harmful for people who don’t have that kind of moral problem with it.” Can we say cognitive/emotional/religious dissonance? And the problem here isn’t in the pornography itself. It becomes manifest in conservative Christians’ hypocrisy which is rooted in the poor self images its ideology thrives upon. Perry: “What I’m able to show is that a lot of that negative association between your porn use and your relationship quality hinges on whether or not you think it’s morally wrong. Or whether you think the Bible is the word of God. Or how often you attend church.” Right-wing Christian ideology, remember, begins with the lowest of what therapists might call low self-images. You, because you’re a human being are thoroughly sinful and lost – you’re so inherently bad that the model of righteousness and love in the universe (not surprisingly a Heavenly Father) thinks you deserve unimaginable and eternal punishment. As a reliably common activity, sexual actions have been easily used for generations to preach that this is true. Canonized sexual obsession goes as far back as the so-called father of Christian theology, Saint Augustine, who basically recommended repression. This repression and demonization of sexual activity is a major reason why what many call sexual addiction, or at least the inability to be comfortable with one’s sexuality beyond denial and suppression, is tied to people substituting another process addiction – religion - to cover over any resulting issues. The fact that this is just not healthy and the belief that it evidences how bad one is, lead to obsession with sex under the cover of a divinely-required moral purity. No wonder why those who are most critical of other people’s sexual lives are often exposed as overly-obsessed themselves with the very sex they condemn. And hypocrisy that condemns others so as not to face the inner demons that plague much of the right-wing is well-known. Harvard Business School’s Benjamin Edelman spoke of this in a 2009 study of pornography users: “Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by.” The real surprise is that anyone is surprised by that. Edelman’s study looked at credit card data from 2006-2007 that tracked online purchases of pornography. Thus, it measured not merely those who consume porn online but those who actually subscribe to it, the more dedicated users. Eight of the top ten pornography subscribing states voted for Republican presidential candidates. Six of the lowest ten voted for the Democrat. Residents of Mormon-dominated Utah were the largest per capita subscribers to porn. Residents of twenty-seven states that had LGBTQ marriage bans back then had 11% more pornography subscribers than those that didn’t. States where the majority of residents agreed with the statement: “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage” were higher subscribers than those where the majority disagreed. Edelman tied those results to previous studies of attitudes toward religion. It was almost humorous to hear that “church-goers” bought less online porn on Sundays whereas their expenditures on other days of the week were in line with everyone else. It’s not hard to find explanations for the hypocrisy displayed in these and other more recent studies, such as those surveying which states have the highest divorce rates. Edelman speculated: “One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you’re told you can’t have this, then you want it more.” Bingo! As addiction specialists know: “repression leads to obsession.” In the middle of a culture that’s sick about sexual activity, and a dominant right-wing religious message that sex is dirty (So: “Save it for the one you love.”), there’s much more involved. Railing against sex is popular. It’s proven religiously lucrative as a result. The cultural sexual anxiety fomented by the right-wing also provides the guilt and shame it needs to recruit its victims. Religion addiction leads the right-wing to fantasize against all evidence, including their sexual experiences, that abstinence-only education promotes their sectarian values and discourages sex. Then again, projection of one’s sexual insecurities and shame on others such as LGBTQI people is a time-tested way to suppress ones own issues. Note the simultaneous fundamentalist condemnation of and obsession with same-sex sexual activity. Religion addiction is also a standard way to repress (not heal) sexual anxiety, guilt, shame, and addiction. Then it labels the sexual activity of those without sexual anxieties sick and sinful. Amanda Marcotte, in her witty classic It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments, underlined another issue - the main selling-point of straight pornography is its basis in gender stereotyping. It’s geared toward men, not women, and the right-wing’s own worldview tells men to marry a “good girl.” You know she’s “good” because she’s not enthused about sex, especially sexual experimentation. But males, the gender stereotype continues, are obsessed with sex and experimental sexual behaviors. You can’t do that with your “good” wife. So, you’ve got to turn to the “bad” women online. For some it goes further, Marcottte notes, with the appeal of porn that shows men insulting, spitting upon, raping, or coercing women. A sexually liberated, feminist culture, she argues, would have less need for huge amounts of porn. Before that happens, what we’ll continue to see and, I hope, be non-enabling enough to call out, is the scapegoating of everyone else for the sexual sickness of the right-wing. The more miserable they are, the more their denial must, and will, produce lies and hypocrisy. Now we’re reminded that to confront them as an
intervention, rather than being enablers, would be the best
thing we could do for the right-wing’s own health. What’s the Most Crucial
Preparation for a Challenging Confrontation? There are two responsible people in all such conversations. So, what do we need to do to take responsibility for our part in them with the realization that they are responsible for their own reactions, attitudes, openness or closed-mindedness, and, yes, their prejudices? We’ve written about such encounters and their pitfalls before, but, more than ever, thinking about what we can do in challenging conversations to keep our side gentle, understanding, and self-nurturing needs renewed reflection because it’s easy to lose track of ourselves in these days of renewed and more open and even threatening anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. We know that most of the prejudice we encounter isn’t based on facts or corrected by agreement on the facts of the matter. But once we’ve chosen to engage with someone, what can we do and say even if they will reject our overtures? The most challenging element for us is that no matter how calm, cool, and collected we try to look on the outside, we’re dealing not with “those people” in the abstract, as they might see LGBTQ people, but participating in the defense of those we love, maybe ourselves. These conversations are not set in the coolness of abstraction but are existentially personal. This means that we’re going to feel, we’re not going to be objective and theoretical. It means that we’re likely to make mistakes along the way, get triggered by what is said, become frustrated with what we consider bogus points, and maybe even lose our cool. Of course. We’re talking about the people we care about, and that should matter. So this crucial difficulty is perfectly understandable. It means that we must give up trying to do any of this perfectly or feeling guilty when we don’t meet any standards we’ve set for ourselves. On the other hand, when we seek to do it perfectly, we put too much pressure on ourselves or anyone and that in itself will actually stifle our own thinking. It will hinder our presence in the conversation. Kindness for ourselves means we need to be the first one forgiving our inevitable mistakes. In preparation for these conversations, we’ll need, therefore, to explore what triggers us. Because these arguments are personal, we’d be an unusual and uncaring human being if we weren’t triggered. Because so many have been hurt by religious people and their religious arguments, for example, is that something that when brought up actually prevents us from not reacting out of our hurts around religion? If so, we’ll need to take time to reconcile ourselves to our religious backgrounds even if we’ve rejected them. So many who say they’ve given up religion still seem to react as if it’s still there down deep enough that they just have to keep proving it wrong. We’ll need to recognize that “religion” is not the real reason people argue against LGBTQ people. It’s the excuse that covers up the real reasons. Understanding this in itself will help us focus on the person in front of us rather than the smokescreen their religious views have become for them. No matter what religious arguments we might choose to make in response (or none at all), the key is to focus on the human being in front of us and what is being said behind and beneath the religious rhetoric. So, how can we keep the focus on the human element of the human being right there in front of us with all their problems and even vitriol? First, we must give up the idea of trying to win an argument. If not, it’s become a contest of egos. Actually, winning is hard to measure anyway even if the person walks from our conversation away unconvinced. Second, we must maintain the focus on our personal story. We don’t respond with our own excuses for what we believe but speak out of our own humanity even when the other person constantly continues to want to draw us into other arguments. In other words, we take full responsibility for our position and we speak as one who knows our position and how it affects those we argue for, including ourselves. This is done no matter how the other person rejects our position. For example: if someone says they have a child who is LGBTQ and are rejecting them, we might answer: “If I couldn’t accept my child as they are it would be very hard on me, it would tear me up inside.” If someone says that they cannot accept their LGBTQ child because of their religious beliefs, we might respond: “That would be so difficult for me. I am glad that my beliefs don’t put me in such a hard spot because I love my child too much and that would get in the way.” If someone continues to use religious arguments, we might respond: “I know that there are many people who believe what you do, but I don’t.” Or: “I just don’t have those religious beliefs.” Or: “I know some people interpret the Bible that way, but I don’t.” Any of these can be repeated over and over. Good teaching always requires lots and lots of repetition. They keep us fully responsible and human in our position. And doing this will help us not to get caught up in all the arguments they want to use to keep their responses from hitting home personally with them. What human beings need, then is another human being
standing right there in front of them saying: “This is
what I believe is true.” Just as we talk about people
experiencing out LGBTQ people as a way to change society, so
what people most need are people who will appear confident
in their positions and who take full responsibility for
those positions with no excuses. It’s Not You. Translating
What Right-Winger’s Say to Trigger You We think that explaining ourselves over and over again and spending a lot of energy to understand the right-wing and their beliefs (religious or not) will help us get along. We might even be invested in the idea that showing them how much we care about their views – even claiming we “respect” their irrational and bigoted views – will win them over. And when these things don’t work, we blame ourselves, our lack of listening skills, our lack of empathy, our neglect to spend enough time, or our failure to articulate clearly what we mean. We treat ourselves as the guilty party in the debates and actually, though we’d never admit it to ourselves, end up looking down on right-wingers and their dupes in our explanations - as if they’re helpless victims of ignorance, misinformation or illogic, not capable actors who make choices and cling to their prejudices no matter how we argue. It’s no wonder that the right-wing thinks “liberals” look down on them. Even in our divided nation, there’s still somewhat a moveable middle that wants to see unwavering initiatives by progressives who stand clearly, powerfully, and convincingly as real believers in what they say. Wishy-washy - acting uncertain - won’t work with that middle anymore, and certainly it won’t if we’re progressive people working out of some guilt that it’s somehow our fault. The right-wing knows how to respond so that people will feel that their problem is actually their antagonist’s fault. And people’s backgrounds, childhood upbringings, and unhealed issues feed into how much it triggers them to blame themselves. So, there are certain strategies that the right-wing (and others) will use – words and phrases that say one thing but are meant to make their liberal enemies fall into guilt, internalizing that liberals are the problem and need to put even more energy into useless arguments. If we’ve not done it by now, then, it’s time to translate what they’re saying into its actual meaning so that we’ll act positively and compassionately out of creative power and not take responsibility for right-wingers’ failure to respond as we think. (1) “You aren’t spending enough time figuring out what we mean and thus should listen forever to our sources.” Baloney. There’s no need to listen more closely to right-wingers (especially members of the extremist anti-LGBTQ cult). You should know what they believe by now; they have nothing new to say. If anyone finds something new and unpredictable, that would be a surprise, but I'll bet we've heard it all before. FOX “News” and right-wing hate radio and podcasts will only keep you angry and upset (“Look what they’re doing now!”). They know that, and their goal is to do exactly that to you. This means that hardly any new mean, self-centered, hypocritical thing they do should surprise us anymore. Hypocrisy is built into their lifestyle to keep it going. We’ve got to be ready for the hell they’re willing for the rest of us to experience. Their misery loves company – it makes them feel that they’re ultimately right when they’re actually full of doubt about it. (2) “You’re not listening to me.” “You don’t understand me.” They hope this will cause you to try harder because you’ll believe the continued disagreement is your fault. Again: baloney. When right-wingers claim liberals don't listen or don't understand them, they're saying that until you agree with them they’ll not accept that you’re giving them a fair listen or understanding. You must change your opinion to satisfy them. Understanding does not mean agreement. That’s a liberal fantasy - if we just understood each other, we’d all be singing “Kumbaya.” The Israelis and Palestinians do understand each other. I, in fact, disagree vehemently with the right-wing on most issues,because I understand them. So, don't expect more indulgence to change their argument that you don’t get them. What they’ll only accept is when you change your position to agree fully with their view. (3) “You liberals talk down to us.” We are if we think the problem is their ignorance of facts that we know. But again: baloney. When they say liberals talk down to them, right-wingers mean that liberals keep using facts and careful, peaceful language. Liberals will be accused of talking down to them until liberals agree completely and take on their anger. And, by the way, no one talks down more to those they disagree with than right-wingers – ex. “We patriots.” “We true Americans.” “We Moral Majority.” “We Christians.” (4) “You don’t get the logic in our positions.” Baloney. The current right-wing mindset isn’t based on rationality and logic. It's about supporting prejudices by any means possible. The more liberals argue as if cool rationality will work, the more they’ll be accused of talking down to them. Remember, right-wingers are not caught up in their
ideology because they’re stupid or just don't
understand something you have to tell them. They’re
caught up in something like the comfort of a cult that has
teachings that support their prejudices and fears –
what
linguist George Lakoff calls the conservative frame. Do We Also Promote Those LGBTQI
Stereotypes? They’re the stereotypes, the popular definitions, the expectations, the images of what a lesbian, gay man, bisexual person, transgender person, queer person, or any of the others in that alphabet are supposed to be. They’ve been used against LGBTQI people to portray them as useful caricatures that eliminate LGBTQI peoples’ individuality, even their humanity, so they aren’t seen as individuals but something alien to the mainstream, something deviant, something scary. Discrimination needs to do that in order to justify the victimization of any group of human beings and soothe the consciences of the bigots. What Pride parades often attempted to accomplish was to show the world instead the variety of what it means to be an LGBTQI person. None of the stereotypes used against LGBTQI people fit everyone or even most people that paraded past us. And that’s the reality. But so much is built on the idea that there is a stereotype, a way to be LGBTQI that identifies people who are. Those religionists who fight against LGBTQI human rights love to push and play on those stereotypes. They enable the religionists to define LGBTQI people as others, as those people, and even inhuman by touting restricted, stuck, gender-rigid, patriarchal, sectarian dogmas. Yet even those who identify so can begin to think that if I have come out as LGBTQI or whatever, there is some sort of way that I must perform that identity. Even though every coming out story is an individual one with no set formula, and no manual as to how one should have come out, there’s a danger in believing that when one does, there must be something real in the picture we’ve been given by our culture. And if I don’t meet up to the expectations, there must be something wrong with me. Others of my own group might even criticize me for not meeting some of those expectations as well. And then I’d be an outsider to them too. As a number of very supportive mothers of gay men, some even active in groups doggedly fighting for LGBTQI rights, have said to me: “I knew my son was gay early because he was so gentle, kind, caring, and uninterested in the usual boy things.” But there it is, you see. There’s an assumption there about what a gay man should be like as if no heterosexual man would be gentle, kind, caring, and uninterested in the accoutrements of conditioned straight masculinity. And that’s an example of how certain characteristics conditioned to be thought of as “gay” stick even among those who don’t use them negatively. I want to ask, then: Do we who are supportive, unconsciously pressure youth (or adults) who come out as LGBTQI or others to be, to perform, to come to their identity in a certain pattern? Do those who come out feel pressured to come out a certain way and express themselves a certain way when they do? This is a delicate subject, for there are those who will find themselves fitting the stereotype in one way or another. That’s one of the very human possibilities for anyone who has thrown off the restrictions of the “straight role.” TV, movies, and life itself, have shown us heterosexual people dressed in drag. But are we somehow giving people the message that if you really are LGBTQI, etc., there are conditions expected of you if you so identify? Are we ourselves not comfortable letting each one explore, discover, make mistakes at, revise, or redefine what their coming out means? And if in that process they don’t end up “where they’re supposed to” as someone else defines them, are we just has happy for them? We know that there is something personal to any coming out story. Each one involves an individual journey with ups and downs, mistakes and successes. No one ever does it perfectly. We know that the word “transgender” covers such a variety of manifestations of that identity that recent attempts to legalize discrimination against those who so identify use mostly false images to characterize what all “transgender” people are supposed to be like. It’s easier to discriminate when a whole group is painted with the same brush, especially one that also misrepresents them. But there is no tried and true transgender recipe, no owner’s manual, no simple set formula, for the realization, the process of coming out, or even how a person who rejects the rigid gender binaries or maybe accepts them and comes to terms with them, defines themselves in the context of their own heart. It’s just not for us to tell other human beings how they must be to fit into our definitions. It is for us to recognize that there is nothing that one has to do, or be, or perform, to come, or be, out. And we need to speak up about that as people, young and old, struggle to find their own place in LGBTQI communities against the odds. We need to say: there is no way you have to be, nothing to which you have to conform, to be LGBTQI. We also must face the fact that coming out as any of these identities does not guarantee that we have dealt with our emotional and psychological issues. It’s just one thing to check off our list on the way to a healthier humanity. On top of the emotional baggage that millennia of oppression have heaped on LGBTQI people, we also have the same emotional and psychological issues of anyone brought up in a society that continues to emphasize profits over people, consumption over contentment, and judgement over justice. When someone has rejected so much that society expects of
everyone, we need to celebrate their journey and let them
know that theirs is their path and we support it. It is a
journey, not a tour pre-planned by anyone, any institution
or any community, even by those in LGBTQI communities
themselves. Are We Still as Confused
About Love and Sex on Valentine’s Day 2023? Valentine’s Day is a patterned American written and oral exam testing whether you really do love someone, and whether you’re really loved by someone. If they truly love you, they’ll show it through the Day’s products. It’s not all bad. If it is a reminder to take the time in a busy life to express love, how can that in itself hurt? Yes, yes, someone shouldn’t need a special day to do this, but the commercialism that defines the Day also highlights feelings of how seldom we get the space to lavishly celebrate love. The problem is that instead of celebrating love between two people just as they are as human beings, the Day is more a celebration of culturally defined patterns that are not only meant to sell products and services but to define for us how and what love should be. Confusing? Yes. There are even religious people who claim that the Model of perfect love in the universe includes allowing the children whom this Divine Model is supposed to love to suffer eternal child abuse, lovingly teaching that his children actually deserve the most despicable and endless suffering this Model can come up with unless they follow some formula the religion prescribes to save them from it. All along, their claim preaches that that should be seen as real love. As a part of all our culture’s confusion, a lot of other words that could relate to love have been usurped by our society to instead mean sex, because sex sells even better than patterned love. We’d expect that - we’re a society that’s very sick about both. For example, we use words that do not mean sex but could designate more, to mean sex: Are you two intimate? Have you slept together? Are you two close? Have you made love? Are you two lovers? What do you think of polyamory? All societies fall when they practice immorality? Did you hear that she lost her virtue? Though none of the above words means sex, we’ve been conditioned to spontaneously take them to refer to it. And that too reflects this cultural confusion over sex as well as love, intimacy, closeness, immorality, and virtue. Then in our confused discussions of “love,” we talk about different kinds of it. One’s love for one’s children “is not the same” as one’s love for one’s lover or one’s love for one’s pet or country as if we are clear about what the nature of love is and as if we are not talking about whether or not we are having sex with someone or something. It was actually among a bunch of progressive theologians years ago before the Supreme Court allowed marriage equality that I suggested that the government should have no business telling an adult who or what they can or cannot love. “Oh,” the response came back, “then it would be okay for someone to fall in love with their horse.” I frankly don’t care whether someone loves their pets, but that response expressed the problem. They had assumed that “love” equaled performing a sexual act. And imagine if we actually spoke of someone “sleeping with their horse” as cowpokes did in the old West why someone would jump to the conclusion that that meant sexual activity was involved? Yet, that’s the kind of leaps we make when we haven’t reconciled ourselves either to love or sex culturally. Sometimes that’s done for the best of reasons and sometimes not. In the Hebrew Scriptures, David and Jonathan have a close, intimate, same-sex relationship. It even involves a same-sex covenant between them. And when Jonathan dies, David publicly mourns, saying: “Oh, Jonathan, my love for you was more wonderful than for women.” Now, there’s nothing in all that that clarifies that their close same-sex friendship involved sexual activity. The fact is, we just don’t know either way. And in a less homophobic culture than ours, such same-sex friendships were almost expected and could have involved sexual activity to express them. But to argue either that they must have been sexual or that they couldn’t have been sexual, as people also do over the same-sex love of Ruth and Naomi, represents a confusion about intimacy and sex that was depicted in another form in the 1989 classic romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. Harry’s thoroughly culturally patterned claim was that a man and woman can’t have a close friendship without sexual activity being involved. And the film concluded that Harry was right. But was he? Or is this just the confusion of being brought up in a culture that says sex is the means to express close, intimate love. If that is so, then Will could not have loved Grace in that old TV series. Then we will not be able to understand the intimate bonds that can exist between a gay man and a heterosexual woman (who we might even demean with the words “fag hag” and all that that connotes), or between a lesbian and a gay man. If love is really understood as an unconditional relationship, then sex cannot be made necessary for it. That would add a condition, just as any statement such as “If you love me, then…” indicates that there are really conditions and expectations attached to what we are calling love. If love is a commitment to the best of another, and a decision to stand by and with that other in life, then that love is as true for a father and his son, a mother and her daughter, friends, or any other mutually agreed upon human relationship. But, even more, unconditional love cannot have as a condition the requirement that the other will love one back. And that’s an emotionally difficult idea to live while protecting oneself, deciding what such a relationship will look like, and setting one’s own boundaries. And how that love is expressed will differ in any loving relationship for that very reason. Sex, then, can become one of the ways to express love that does so if mutually agreed upon. But it can also be a means of communicating something else for better or worse. But, let’s remember that there are hundreds of other ways to express love, closeness, and intimacy. And all of them are choices human beings can make. And to do so, we need to address the hang-ups we’ve
been conditioned to attach to both words, hang-ups that are
often taken out on those who don’t love the way or the
people we think they should. As Religion Addicts
Battle in Their “Culture War,” Here Are Rules of
Engagement Begin with right-wing religion’s teaching that people are basically so evil and lost that they deserve eternal, abusive Divine Parental punishment. Add its effectiveness at convincing people of this innate evil because they’ve been prepared to do so through child-rearing methods that punish inherently bad children. Enforce such messages by promoting political leaders whose solution to problems is more punishment. The result: these adults have a desperate need for a fix to provide relief from self-denigrating, self-abusive feelings. That’s what makes a high of feeling righteous so addictive. And with the past (and present) political successes of the right-wing, its framing their crusade as a war to be fought to the death, and the enabling of FOX news and most mainstream political outfits, these people who use religion as an addiction can’t give up their fix: their user activity for so long now has been the high of winning politically that to them proves they’re righteous. For our part, then, we cannot continue to respond in ways that make us their enablers. Those old responses actually function for them to enable their addiction. This is especially so given these last decades where the religious right-wing has turned LGBTQ people and others into an opposing army who is out to destroy all they have. But we can respond to them in ways that are more like interventions than family enabling: (1) Stop arguing about religion and religions. Religion is not the problem. The same texts, stories and institutions are used by other non-addicts for purposes of liberation, understanding, inclusivity, and liberal causes. Everyone interprets these things. It’s one thing if people want to educate themselves (religion does not have to be used addictively – see my final chapter in When Religion Is an Addiction for how to tell addictive from non-addictive religion), but the loudest culture warriors are using religion to hide from the real personal reasons for their prejudices. It’s too traumatic for them to face these realities. They like arguing religion because it keeps them from facing those real issues. In fact, arguing religion with them is a relief. It’s a way for them to blame God for their own issues. And therefore it reenforces their position. (2) Stop wasting time looking for the logic in their position. Addictions are not logical, and looking for rationality in them, Al-Anon members know, is a waste of time. What drives their need for winning is the high they experience: political victories as the proof of their righteousness. So, are we still trying to find the logic in what they do? Are we wasting time trying to make sense out of their “real” motives and intentions? It’s important to understand that logical thinking is not the problem. This is more about feeling the righteous validation of power and the fear of losing it. (3) Forget the idea that calling them “hypocrites” is an argument against them. Labeling them hypocrites actually lets their religious views, and most of the people who endorse them, off the hook. Any right-wing religionist can agree that someone didn’t live up to the standards they blame on divinity. “We’re all sinners,” after all. But if these sinners are willing to seek some kind of forgiveness, to the right-wing it really doesn’t matter what they did. Their slate is cleansed and right-wing religion is thereby reaffirmed. Hypocrites to them are only not an anomaly but merely human beings who’ve back-slidden and are easily forgiven, while the beat goes on. What the term hypocrites doesn’t do is stick to them long enough to affirm what it is that’s inherent in right-wing religion itself that not only spawns hypocrites but drives right-wing religion’s judgmental meanness. (4) Realize that trying to meet them halfway actually affirms their extreme position. Be aware that a willingness to negotiate and compromise our positions on equality, justice, fairness, and acceptance is interpreted by the addicted as evidence that we don’t really believe what we claim. When people aren’t in the ever-shrinking moveable middle, movement toward that middle is seen as proof that we don’t value anything enough to fight for it. Sadly, many addicts never come to until they’ve hit bottom and destroyed their lives and the lives of their families and acquaintances. Yes, some do go into forms of recovery when they see that they need to for their own sakes. (5) Face our own issues around relating to these religious people and religion itself. Without doing so, our own issues - our need to be loved or validated by them, our need to win arguments, our liberal guilt, our feeling that their addiction is somehow our fault for not doing or being enough - will prevent us from acting resolutely, lovingly, creatively, and effectively. Are we emotionally unable or unwilling to speak truth to the addict, saying the addiction is wrong, sick, and destructive? Are we unable to separate from the addiction ourselves? Are we unwilling to envision the equivalent of support groups like Al-Anon or to form Mothers Against Abusive Religion or Fundamentalists Anonymous? Do we ourselves have a positive enough self-image to refuse to be abused by others who won’t face the addiction -- such as politicians who treat us like crazy but rich relatives whom they come to for support but hide out of the way in the closet when people want to know who those relatives are? (6) Remember that dealing with addictions requires saving oneself first, not the addict. Are we willing to face the fact that we’ll still be affected by the addiction and, therefore, must live our lives in the light of that fact, that we have to protect ourselves and our safety? Are we able to affirm that they, not we, are the problem? This often involves the sadness of watching the addict crash and burn. Sadly, many addicts never change until they’ve hit bottom and destroyed their lives and the lives of their families and acquaintances. Some do, I repeat, go into recovery - there, after all, have even been support groups to do so. And it’s going to take a while for addictive religion to hit bottom. It’s still on its drug with user activities such as protests and angry, even violent, armed confrontations, and it has most of mainstream media as enablers. But are we also enablers? Are we still making excuses for the addict? Once we’ve named an addiction, it’s our choice how we live with an addict. It’s our choice about whether we seek an addict’s love and support or walk away and mourn our choice. And it’s also our choice, knowing that addictions can be hard to overcome, whether or not we’re thinking in terms of the long haul because, in the end, we want to effectively work to stop addictions from hurting everyone. © 2023 Robert N. Minor Other Issues, Books, Resources Robert N. Minor, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas, is author of When Religion Is an Addiction; Scared Straight: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It’s So Hard to Be Human; and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society. Contact him at www.FairnessProject.org
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