The recession hit when we were deployed, so we heard a lot about it. We didn't see much, for all US Servicemembers deployed overseas are employed, but we watched as the news anchors and commentators waxed poetic about the economic doom upon us. President Obama was elected when we were deployed, and we watched the jubilant news coverage and the partially media-fostered and quite spiteful relief that President Bush was out of office. And I don't know what we all expected to see in regards to these events, but I think I vaguely expected an optimistic America with a lot of closed stores and low prices.
Unfortunately, my distractions from work and the aforementioned pleasures of San Diego are bitter and acrimonious debate between ideologically-driving news talk shows. They also include actual hate towards congressmen, journalists, and others who question the quite questionable solutions offered by congress and the new administration toward the economic downturn and the continuing conflicts overseas. Recently, trivially, a Miss America contestant confessed to believing that marriage should be only between a man and a woman, and cruel attacks and indignant defenses followed. Even more recently, a student at a Christian school was threatened with suspension for breaking school rules against certain kinds of dancing and music after he declared his intent to take his public-school girlfriend to her Prom. Rhetorically I ask, whence all this hate? and when did we collectively lose both our perspective and our backbone?
On the issue of same-sex marriage, I will practically and reasonably point out that believing marriage is excluded to a union between a man and a woman is hardly an unpopular view. Noted luminaries like our current, liberal President and Secretary of State, along with a majority of California voters (to judge first by the passed referendum to define marriage as between a man and a woman, followed by the passed proposition to change the state constitution to so define marriage), hold that view. That doesn't make it right, however, for our democracy protects the hypothetical minority from the hypothetically harmful tyranny of the majority. But reserving marriage to heterosexual couples hardly qualifies as "harmful" or "tyrannous." Gay couples are not put in jail. They are not prevented from being together. Under "Civil Union" laws they are even mostly afforded the same preferential tax treatment as married couples, despite their offering society no natural way to procreate.
But the poor Miss America contestant has been quite persecuted for her view, though it was expressed in as inoffensive manner as possible. She has been vilified, called a "homophobe" and a bigot, excoriated in network broadcasts. Semi-nude photographs taken when she was younger were leaked to the public in an apparent attempt to take from her the "Miss California" crown. This is is spiteful. This is hateful. She makes a handy target, sure--being beautiful, her and her travails are titillating. Misogynists everywhere can insinuate that she's a whore and call her a hypocrite. It only makes it better that she's a self-professed evangelical Christian. Everybody likes to call those people hypocrites.
Which brings me to the little renegade who wants to take his girlfriend to the forbidden Prom. Call me old-fashioned, but the rules are the rules. They are not illegal rules because (as is the case with disallowing same-sex marriage) they are not hurting anyone. There is no right to listen to rock'n'roll, nor to attend prom, nor even to marry (if it comes to that). For the latter, you have to obtain a license. And back in the bad old days before sex, drugs, or rock'n'roll, the marriage license was there to prevent people from marrying minors, or family members, or marrying without proper preparation. What an infringement upon freedom! Of course, we all give up a little freedom for a functioning society--we can't drive however we want, for one thing (you have to get a government license to do that, too), nor can we take stuff without paying for it. But I digress. Because after all, the young man in question attends the Christian School, and while he is still enrolled there he is subject to their rules. End of discussion. Yet instead of holding that young man responsible for his obligations, and telling him to either conform to the rules and not bother us any more, or leave his school and not bother us any more, the entire media is decrying indignantly the abusive Christian school that would prevent this boy from attending the Prom. They're an easy target because, again, they are Christian. Like the Miss America contestant. Like me.
One thing that has become evident in these disparate discussions is the amount of judgment occurring. Journalists and interviewees snicker at the backwards Christians and their wrong-headed views, or else call them bigots and dividers. How dare, the collective culture asks, how dare these other people oppose our zeitgeist? How dare, the question follows, how dare they judge me or my lifestyle? Well the thing is, really, that unless "they" are Anne Coulter or Bill O'Reilly, often they are not judging anyone. They are stating their values. And perhaps their disagreement with a certain piece of legislation. And they are probably content to let their statement stand, because if they are really a Christian, then they believe that as part of our creation God endowed humanity with Freedom (the capital f is no accident). Furthermore (if they are really Christian), they also believe that they are not perfect and need Christ to redeem them. So while it might be reprehensible that they, oh, I don't know, posed semi-nude for photographs, or something like that, it doesn't make them a hypocrite. It just means they are in more need of God's grace, and it ought to make them more humble. I simply don't understand why Christianity is the subject of so much contempt and hatred.
Yet whether or not you think Christianity a good or bad thing, if you live in this country you should at least acknowledge that it belongs. One of our rights is the freedom of religion, defined as the government's absolute limitation from "prohibiting the free exercise thereof." And nobody can deny that conservatives--including the Miss America contestant and the authorities at that Christian school--are Americans like all the rest, and their opinion counts. And while there is no governmental "thought police" (freedom of speech still exists, thank God), the vociferous entities which have so inappropriately attacked their fellow citizens through the media (conservative, Christian, liberal, or gay) ought to have some decency and respect and stop their thought vigilante-ism. For though they certainly have the right to say whatever they want, often what they say is cruel and useless, by which I mean it doesn't contribute much to our culture, our society, or our nation.
