I spent a lot of time yesterday anxious about my post. Though realistically, I don't think very many people read my blog, I do think that there are specific people who might, who might find it hurtful. And while I think that hurting people is inevitable sometimes -- as when they are doing something or supporting something that is hurting others, and you believe that this is wrong -- I don't like it when I do.
Also: over dinner last night, my husband, who is genius, pointed out the number of people he knows who are good people, who take their faith seriously, and who feel radically different about this subject than I do. And while I still think those people are wrong, and hope they continue to really think about how this kind of attitude plays into their faith, I also think it's important not to allow one set of actions-- however infuriating and painful those actions are -- dominate my perception of the person who is carrying them out.
To wit: here are 5 vocal anti-gay public figures who I actually really admire for specific reasons (that don't relate to their endorsement of laws like Amendment One):
Sarah Palin: I'm not joking. Her politics make me mad, but no more than most other people in her party. I don't love her position on abortion, but I do love the fact that she kept, and celebrates, her son, who has Down Syndrome. I think one of the unfortunate consequences of Roe v. Wade has been the normalization of abortion as a solution to pregnancies that are unwanted for any reason, including disability, and I think a society that legitimizes the elimination of potential babies because of their potential disabilities is an ugly one.
I'm also a fan of her keeping her pregnant daughter visible; any double standard of which she can be accused is less frustrating to me than the one that aggressively sexualizes teenage girls as an image and then shames actual human teenagers for having sex and getting pregnant. I also don't think it's wrong to tell your own child that if she gets pregnant, she have a responsibility beyond just making it go away. Moreover, having gone through my own D/C in an abortion clinic, alongside women who were having abortions, I wouldn't want my kid to have one. No one in that clinic was happy about being there.
I do wish Palin would either stop trying to legislate other people's kids' sex lives, or else show other pregnant teenagers and disabled people the kind of support she extends to her own children -- but the fact that she doesn't, doesn't detract from the fact that she's handled these particular difficult situations with grace.
Rick Santorum: See above. Trisomy 18 is a whole different thing from Down Syndrome, as I know from my own foray into genetic testing with my pregnancy. Kids with Trisomy 18 most often don't live to birth, or to their first week, and those who live beyond that time often have a limited quality of life and a considerable amount of suffering.
Of course, as far as I know, Santorum hasn't articulated a plan for a health care system that would care for such kids should they be born to middle- or working- class parents. He's able to care for his daughter at home, to give her an actual life. Again, the fact that his efforts to force parents without the resources to do that to carry to term babies who they can't care for in this way, doesn't detract from the fact that, since he could, he did. I admire that.
Mel Gibson: So, less lovey-dovey parenting stuff here, it's true. But I think this guy is pretty easy to criticize for someone who, despite his often-hateful rantings, apparently loves sick kids enough to give them $10 million. He's actually ranked one of the biggest charity-donating celebrities, giving to a hospital, to rainforests, and to the aforementioned truly awesome charity that flies kids from developing countries to hospitals in developed countries, allowing them to have live-saving surgery.
Also: you know, the guy is mentally ill. I think it's unfair to consider his hateful rantings on par with the more considered and deliberate ones that are expressed by other people who aren't trying to live in the public eye with a mental illness.
Tim Keller: Now, I don't love this guy enough to stay in his church, which was sad, because I really liked Redeemer. I think he's wrong about gay marriage and wrong about women's ordination, and both of those things frustrate me, because unlike the other people on this list, the guy makes a living studying the Bible and his faith. He should know better.
But I do think (1) that his books are consistently helpful to me, (2) that his church does offer a lot of opportunities to serve others in New York, to a population that seems disinclined to do so, and (3) that I can recall at least one sermon of his in which he pointed out to said New Yorkers their need to think about something besides themselves and advancing their careers.
Also to his credit: I didn't know Redeemer was anti-gay-marriage until I started attending leadership training there, so while Tim presumably believes there's a problem with gay people (ie, with their "lifestyle", which involves "being gay", which is what they are), he doesn't identify it as a cornerstone of the gospel.
Dian Matlock: I actually know Dian, which makes me a little reluctant to include her -- but since I know her, and have gotten to hear about and see how her faith plays out in her life, and since she really is the one who consistently reminds me that a person can hold a belief with which I disagree, but still provide a role model for me in other ways, I don't feel right leaving her out. She recently wrote a book -- Come Walk with Me to Glory -- that talks only a little about her beliefs about God and homosexuality, and a lot about her life simultaneously caring for her son as he died of AIDS and her husband as he died of Alzheimer's. She also is pretty direct about her belief that homosexuality is a sin like any other sin -- and while I don't agree that its a sin, that attitude makes considerably more sense to me than the the one that presumably allows Christians in North Carolina to divorce and remarry/ have sex outside of marriage/ swear/ lie/ neglect the poor/ whatever, and believe that the sin that they need to be "wiping out" is someone else's monogamous, committed relationship.
Anyway, the thing I try to keep sight of when I regret being vocal about this issue is that laws like Amendment One hurt people. Given the choice between someone blogging that I was wrong, and being told that loveless, adulterous, and polygamous relationships could all be sanctioned, but not mine, no matter how deeply I loved my wife and how committed I was to her -- well, it seems pretty evident to me that there's a lesser and a greater of two evils here.
But both evils are the actions that are being carried out -- not the people carrying them out, not even the beliefs that enable those actions. I don't need to be told not to oppress gay people -- but I do need to remember that fact.
No comments:
Post a Comment