Fairness - The Commentary

There must be something emotionally satisfying 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 seem to have sharpened and become more mainstream with the 24-hour cable news cycle that exploits terrorist attacks committed by people hiding behind religion and the fear-based politics of the Republican primary election gang. Talk radio and religious bigotry have also found renewed energy. Trying to insert rationality into this argument can be an exercise in futility for either side. There’s something deeper being defended within the arguers that’s psychologically crucial to them, not just the need to win an argument. The historical reality is that religion or any of the isms  never  d...

Fred Phelps and his tiny, no-account, insignificant Westboro Baptist Church perfected it in the field of religious bigotry. But attracting attention when you’re a nobody to the rest of the world is now an established strategy. It’s fueled and enabled by the mainstream media since they changed to make everything they follow provide moneymaking entertainment. There are no more money-losing news bureaus maintained for the public good. Instead, 24-hour cable news channels compete for public attention so they can deliver eyeballs to their advertisers. They’ve made a perfect publicity manipulating enemy of ISIS and the perfect politician of a talentless businessman/entertainer named Trump. The Donald’s TV ego and its outrageousness, which he’s displaying in his joyride of a presidential race reality show, are branded in the entertainment catchphrase: “You’re fired.” And media have created a presidential race ideal for Newt Gingrich’s advice: “If you want to sell books, run for presid...

Before we settle down with families to eat this Thanksgiving Day, let’s take the time on November 20 th  to remember those who’ve been killed as a result of what we’ve come to call  transphobia --  the fear and resulting violence about gender nonconformity that is directed at transgender and gender non-conforming people. The Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in 1998 by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, a transgender woman, graphic designer, columnist, and activist, to memorialize the murder of Rita Hester in Allston, Massachusetts because Rita didn’t conform to culturally-conditioned gender expectations. Now we remember all those human beings harassed, abused and killed because of gender nonconformity. This year’s reported murders have hit an all time high: 24 deaths in the U.S. alone as of October 15. Something is very wrong above and beyond the tragic suffering that people who identify as transgender or otherwise gender non-conforming experience. And, as in most such fe...

In October we observe, among other things, Gay and Lesbian History Month. And in the past weeks a new movie about an iconic event in that history hit the theaters. Director Roland Emmerich’s film  Stonewall , a fictional story based upon real events of the Stonewall uprising in 1969, drew criticism as soon as its trailer appeared as “whitewashing” because it portrays white men led by Jeremy Irvine’s character, Danny, as central characters in inciting the fight against police brutality in those early morning hours of June 28, 1969. On-line petitions multiplied, one saying: “Do not support a film that erases out history. Do not watch Stonewall.” Though the events of those early morning hours in June 1969 outside a Greenwich Village gay bar called the Stonewall Inn are often called the “beginnings of the Gay Rights Movement,” we know that’s historically inaccurate. Organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis, ONE, Inc., and the Mattachine Society were founded back in the 1950...

When the Supreme Court decided on June 26th in  Obergefell v. Hodges  that marriage could not constitutionally depend upon the gender of the partners in a married couple, it also affirmed that the gender of parents no longer legally matters. Children do not need both a father and a mother to be a part of an American family. Here’s another reality that drives the right-wing nuts about marriage equality. And notice that this too has to do with gender and gender roles, an issue that transcends the fight for equality for transgender people while transgender people remain the lightning rods for the broader issue of cultural gender limitations for everyone. The presumption that children need both a father and a mother for their health is widespread and has been used to argue against same-sex adoption as well as marriage equality all the way up though the judiciary to this Supreme Court decision. Right-wing religious organizations repeat this belief, manipulate data to claim ...

The right-wing has gone crazy since the Supreme Court sanctioned marriage equality in late June. What they’d been praying for didn’t come to pass – their angry, righteous, warrior deity didn’t intervene with fire and brimstone or floods and pestilence. Neither Pat Robertson’s senile predictions nor the other threats of impending Armageddon materialized. Chaos did not ensue and the heterosexual divorce rate has yet to spike. The American legal system moved on as if right-wing objections no longer mattered. And, believe me, that had to hurt the religious right-wing that’s been working for a generation to be taken seriously. Right-wingers responded as if not knowing what to say. But clearly  their responses  play to their bases, frightening them about everything that will now victimize them, including claiming that anti-gay pastors will be  punished for not marrying LGBT people . It was such a good issue to rile up the base for fund-raising and voter turnout. It w...

From  the Duggars  to the weekly examples of the latest clergy or legislator who has professed “Family Values” – which everyone knows is code for anti-LGBT equality - it has become routine, even expected, to find that the more someone righteously protests, the greater the likelihood that they have related skeletons in their closets struggling to burst out. It’s been a psychologist’s expectation for generations that the louder people object, the more likely it is that they’re covering up their own guilt. They’re easily, and rightly, labeled hypocrites. And preaching moral outrage against others while living and doing what they object to is a necessary part of legalistic, moralistic right-wing religions. But labeling them hypocrites is too easy. It actually lets the 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 a...

Social and mainstream media are abuzz about the rise of the “nones” and the decline of people identifying with religious institutions. A lot of the discussion reflects quite a bit about each writer’s hopes and dreams about religion’s future. Atheist and progressive writers are excited that more people are questioning religious beliefs while conservative Christians gleefully respond that the figures show only a rejection of liberal Christian alternatives. The lessons people are taking from the recent release of the  Pew Research Center’s second U.S. Religious Landscape Study , a follow-up to its first study of religion in America in 2007, are more enlightening than the actual poll results. That bastion of Evangelical Christianity, the magazine  Christianity Today , headlined  its analysis : “Evangelicals Stay Strong as Christianity Crumbles in America,” while  another headline  read: “Christianity in Decline and Atheism on The Rise in America.” The report...