The politics of fear

In M. G. Miller's amazing book Bayou Jesus, we read about four characters on a deadly collision course in early 20th century southern Louisiana -- the young, unwed African American woman Miss Zassy, her saintly son Frank Potter, Miss Zassy's sadistic employer Samson Boudreaux, and his daughter Alice.  Throughout the book there is a sense of tragic inevitability, driven by Miller's elegant prose and his character Samson's pervasive fear of the dark-skinned race who were freed after what he calls "The War of Northern Aggression."

It's the fear that struck me, throughout my reading of this book.  What, exactly, was Samson so afraid of?  He phrases it in self-justifying platitudes: "Give them an inch, they'll take a mile."  "If you don't keep them in their place, they'll take over the whole world."  And despite my knowing that Miller's depiction is sadly accurate, and that there were people in the Deep South who believed this -- after all, Bayou Jesus is set only a stone's throw from where I spent most of the first twenty years of my life -- I couldn't help but think more than once, "how can Samson look around him, and honestly think that the poor, powerless, disadvantaged African Americans in his home town are any kind of threat?"

And yet he, and the real white supremacists who were all too common in the post-Civil-War South, did feel exactly that.  It had nothing to do with logic, facts, or even reality, and yet it drove them to harass, torture, and kill innocent people who weren't trying to do anything other than eke out a meager living in peace.

African Americans during the Civil War [photograph by Mathew Brady, 1864]

Which brings me to conservative columnist John Zmirak's claim that Christians in America are facing imminent genocide.

In an interview with radio talk show host Joe Miller, Zmirak made the following statement, which I quote here in its entirety:

When a dominant group wants to persecute a minority, the first thing they do is vilify them.  You had the dominant secularists in France before the French Revolution spend about twenty years vilifying the Christian clergy; the moment they took power in the French Revolution, they started killing the Christian clergy.  When the Turks decided that the Armenians were a dangerous minority almost 100 years ago to the day, they started out with a propaganda campaign saying that the Armenians were all traitors working for the Russian czar; within a few years, they were butchering in the streets and driving them into the desert to die of thirst.  Same thing happened in, of course, Nazi Germany, they vilified the Jews, preparing people for the Holocaust.  You saw it happen again in Rwanda, where the once-powerful Tutsi minority, they were declared on government radio stations for weeks and weeks, they were called cockroaches, ‘we must exterminate the cockroaches.’  It was repeated over and over and over again and it was followed, of course, by a genocide that in the course of a month or two, killed more than a million people. 

I think this vilification of faithful Christians could lead to violence in America.  I think the churches have been persecuted before, Christians are being persecuted all around the world by Islamists — and the U.S. government is doing nothing, of course — I could imagine Americans standing by while churches are padlocked and pastors are arrested for being hatemongers, while children are being taken away from their parents because they don’t want them to be taught their extremist views. 

It’s happened so many times before, and all the signs are there that the enemies of Christianity are seeing ‘how much can we get away with?  Can we close down a pizza parlor for even theoretically being willing to discriminate?  Can we get teachers from religious schools fired?  They’re going to keep pushing until they hit pushback.  And unless there’s powerful pushback from Christians now — not five years from now, when it will be too late, but now — we’re going to see ourselves reduced to the status of second-class citizens the way Christians are in countries like Egypt and Syria.

There are three takeaways I had from this:

1. 74% is a minority?  Even in the most secular parts of the United States, there are more Christians than any other group.  In some places, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who's not a Christian.
2. Saying that Christians (and anyone else, for that matter) can't discriminate is not "vilification."  In fact, it's kind of the opposite.  It's saying you can't use your religion to vilify someone else.
3. In Egypt and Syria, Christians comprise about 10% of the population, and the entire government, virtually all schools and public institutions, and even the legal system, is dominated by non-Christians.  How can you draw an analogy between the Middle East and the United States?  Unless... you know, you were to reverse it, to demonstrate that non-Christians might be a persecuted minority here in the United States?

But none of those facts matter.  Like the fictional Samson Boudreaux, who felt that wealthy, privileged Caucasians were in imminent danger from poor, downtrodden African Americans, John Zmirak thinks that the Christian majority -- whose members control virtually every level of government -- are about to be overthrown and oppressed by secularists.

And all because we're trying to make sure that pizza parlor owners can't refuse to serve people on the basis of their sexual orientation.  (And allow me to point out that the pizza shop owner who is the focal point of all of this is so far from an oppressed "second-class citizen" in the eyes of most Americans that she received over $840,000 in donations from like-minded Christians for her refusal to serve gays.)

It's amazing what fear will do, isn't it?  Because that's what drives the whole thing.  Fear of The Other, fear of losing your way of life, and worst of all -- fear that the people you hate will treat you the way you'd like to treat them.  When, of course, most of the members of the groups Zmirak and his ilk detest want only what everyone wants -- the freedom to live without being ridiculed, harassed, discriminated against, and (to use Zmirak's own word) vilified.

But this isn't about reality, and as has been said many times before, you can't logic yourself out of a position you didn't logic yourself into.  More to the point, I'd like to end with a quote from Ken Keyes: "A loving person lives in a loving world.  A hostile person lives in a hostile world.  Everyone you meet is your mirror."

The devil went down to Georgia

In a move that many are characterizing as the latest end-run past anti-discrimination laws by the extremely religious, Georgia's Senate has passed Bill 129, the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," by a vote of 37-15.

The legislation would "prevent the government from intruding or abridging faith-based beliefs," stating explicitly that "laws neutral toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise."

Opponents of the bill were well aware of its hidden agenda.

Senator Curt Thomas, who voted against the bill, said that he believed that the measure was a direct response to the spread of marriage equality laws in the United States.  "There’s no way anyone’s going to convince me that that’s not what’s happening now," Thomas said.   He made reference to similar measures that have been instituted in Alabama, where the state Supreme Court just ordered judges to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. "We don’t want to be the next Alabama and be the next circus that they are becoming."

He was not the only one who recognized the law's subtext.  Marty Rouse, National Field Director of the Human Rights Campaign, was even more blunt than Thomas.  "This bill is a reprehensible attack on LGBT people and their families in Georgia," Rouse said, in a statement released last Thursday. "It does not address any legitimate problem with current law and creates harmful consequences for businesses throughout the state.  It threatens not just the LGBT community, but women, members of minority faiths and other minority classes.  All Georgians deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and we need all fair-minded people in the state to help stop this bill."

It now goes to the Georgia House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass, and then be signed into law by Governor Nathan Deal.

The whole thing has LGBT advocates seething, for understandable reasons.  Religious rights have been cited more than once in the past few months as reasonable justification for denial of services to LGBT individuals, and the RFRA is expected to give the anti-LGBT crowd legal standing in doing so.  But given the wide support the bill has in the Georgia legislature, what can be done?

Just ask the Aquarian Tabernacle Wiccan Church.

In a statement that should go down in the Annals of the History of Bluff-Calling, the Aquarian Tabernacle Church thanked the Georgia policymakers for their "forward-thinking... dedication to religious freedom."  They then outlined their practices that would be protected under the RFRA, citing which lines of the legislation covered each of them.  These practices included:

• Polyamory.  "Marriage is a religious institution," the statement reads.  "A uniting of souls before the almighty...  Many Wiccans live in multi-partner households, and until now have been unable to realize their religious right to marry the partners they are in love with.  Many of these partnerships have children from multiple partners all living under the same roof.  SB 129 has now opened the way for those children to all be under family insurance/health plans, as outlined in lines [22-23].  And if lines [34-35] hold true to their intent, then the least restrictive means of enforcing this change, is a simple revision to existing policy."

• Ingestion of psychotropic plants.  "With the passing of GRFRA," says the statement, "the ATC will be informing all Wiccans within the state of GA that there are no longer restrictions on which plants they may grow, own, harvest, ingest, distribute, or refine into compounds that the practitioner finds need to use within their religious practice, so long as no other laws besides substance abuse are broken...  As Government's definition also includes lines [82-83] “authorities; [...] or other person acting under color of law” it should be a matter of course to inform all officials to begin their refrain from detaining the practitioners for, and impeding the lawful use of said plants and animal parts.  This includes, but is no way limited to this non-comprehensive list, all plants currently residing upon any list of banned substances, plus any and all animal parts that may be found on the property or in the possession of anyone practicing the faith of Wicca within Georgia State limits."

• Drug screening by employers, and other restrictions based on "bodily sanctity."  "[The RFRA] means that all Wiccans are to be free to choose to be exempt, at the individual’s discretion regarding the sanctity of their essence, with no repercussions from Government bodies [77-83] upon an employer adhering to these inalienable religious rights, from urinalysis, blood tests, hair follicle tests, breathalyzers, tattooing, rfid chipping, or anything else that adds to or removes parts of our essence."

To which I have only one thing to say:  BA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *falls off chair*

Man.  This should be good.  How many times do the clowns in elected office have to be shown that "freedom of religion" doesn't mean "freedom for the majority religion to do whatever it damn well pleases, and to hell with everyone else?"  Perhaps this will finally get it through their thick skulls that religious freedom (1) doesn't trump anti-discrimination laws, and (2) works best when the government just keeps its grimy paws off of religion entirely.  People should be free to practice whatever religion they want, in whatever way they want, unless such practice contravenes existing federal or state laws.  And that includes laws against discrimination.

How hard is that?

I certainly hope that the Aquarian Tabernacle Church pushes this as far as they can.  They seem to have done their homework, and although I can't say I buy their worldview, I applaud what they're doing, here.  And I don't know about you, but I'm really looking forward to seeing the legislators in Georgia backpedaling like mad to undo what they've done once they realize its implications.