Clergy oppose same-sex marriage ban, saying it has “the smell and feel of Salem”

Once again, we need to call your attention to the fact that the headline is right. Clergy are working against the GOP’s attempt to write a ban on same-sex marriage into the U.S. Constitution. The outrage of the new group -- called Clergy for Fairness -- mirrors the fury we saw in Kansas from mainstream ministers when a similar proposal was passed here.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention: This is relevant today because a Senate vote on the ban is expected during the week of June 5.

Although the New York Times covered the new organization’s press conference, the conservative Cybercast News Service had the most complete coverage. They report:

Rev. Paul Simmons, director of the Center for Ethics at the University of Louisville, called the amendment "misguided, prejudicial and unwarranted legislation."
…

Simmons added that the measure reflects "the thunder of the religious right," which he argued "represents neither the majority of religious voices nor of the American people." He also labeled the FMA "an effort to deprive a certain group of people in the United States, who are citizens, rights guaranteed" in the U.S. Constitution.

"The FMA (Federal Marriage Amendment) has the smell and feel of Salem" -- the Massachusetts town where witchcraft trials held in the late 1600s led to the deaths of 24 people -- "and the Puritan experiment in America," he stated, which "never seems to die."

Although the amendment isn’t expected to have enough support in the Senate to pass, the emergence Clergy for Fairness is significant. For too long moderate and progressive clergy have either been silent in the face of the onslaught of the radical religious right, or they have been ignored by the news media.

Journalists still seem tend to define religious leaders as being solely of an evangelical or ultra-conservative Catholic bent. The smattering of coverage of yesterday’s news conference, though, is a sign that some of that is changing.

Out here in the reddest of red states, last year’s campaign to ban same-sex marriage became a rallying cry for mainstream clergy who had simply had enough. The Kansas campaign led to the formation of two groups that have already begun to be active.

There are signs that the moderate and progressive religious community is finally finding its voice. Last week more than 1,000 people met in Washington, D.C., in a conference held by the new Network of Spiritual Progressives. Beliefnet.com reports:

"We're talking about first, baby steps here," said Rabbi Michael Lerner, head of the Network of Spiritual Progressives and editor of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun.

Let us hope that the formation of Clergy for Fairness and the “baby steps” of the Network of Spiritual Progressives are signaling the arrival of a new force in American politics. At the very least, it is time that the news media and politicians realized that people of faith are represented by more than one, narrow brand of Christianity.

The political problem with ridiculing people of faith

Bruce Wilson has an interesting critique of Michael Lerner over at Talk 2 Action. I agree with some of what he says and disagree with other things, and I’ve engaged in a tiny bit of debate with him. In my most recent post, I noted:

I never feel attacked by the ACLU. I don't feel attacked by Americans United for Separation of Church and State or any of the other good organizations working so hard to keep that wall up between religion and government. What I feel is a personal attack that tends to blindside a person at dinner parties, on Internet forums and postings, and in a variety of other personal ways.

Some (not all) folks walking a secular path look down on and denigrate anyone of any sort of faith. The ridicule is real, and it can be pretty nasty. If I feel this as a very Leftist, very liberal person of faith, then anyone of a traditionally Christian and even a politically moderate bent might feel it even more. And if I am not just hallucinating this, then we in the anti-theocratic movement need to understand that this kind of anti-religion ridicule is hurting us politically.

In other words, the secular Left cannot expect to be able to make common cause with and work with people of faith, even those who agree with them, if individual secularists continue to make fun of people with a spiritual life.

Some of my other comments on Lerner can be found at:

Love and Fred Phelps

While the Left Abdicates...

While the Left abdicates, real pain drives voters into the arms of the Religious Right

Given the fact that you folks – all couple hundred of you – read me because I am totally brilliant (note sarcasm), it pains me to have to admit that another author has figured out something I’ve been fumbling with for months now.

Please click over to AlterNet and read Finding Spirit Among the Dems and then run out and buy Michael Lerner’s new book “The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back From the Religious Right.” (HarperSF 2006). Lerner is the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synogogue and editor of TIKKUN magazine: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society.

The writer at AlterNet called Lerner’s new book a paradigm-shifting work that “doesn't just change the view so much as it changes our way of viewing.” From what I can tell from reading the story, I think that writer may well be right.

First, Lerner clearly identifies the chasm that separates the two sides in what I suspect is the real cultural struggle going on in the world right now. That war isn’t necessarily between political ideologies, but between approaches to life. Lerner says:

The Left Hand of God means looking at the universe through the perception that love, kindness, generosity and caring for others are the central ontological realities of life, and that when they do not manifest in the world in which we live, the world is distorted and needs to be healed. The Right Hand of God, conversely, means looking at the universe through the perception that life is a struggle of all against all, and that the only path to security is through domination of others.

I find those words compelling because they match my spiritual approach to life. However, Lerner also has ideas for the secular and the political. He explains that the reason the Religious Right is drawing people is not because those folks are brainwashed or idiots. It’s because they are in real pain, suffering from the flaws in our society, and the Religious Right is not only talking about that pain but claiming to have a cure.

This is the point I was fumbling to make in my piece, The Lesbian and the Fundamentalists, when I talked about a “hole” in society.

Lerner says it so much better and clearer than I did.

[M]any of the millions of people who get attracted to the Religious Right are not motivated by excitement for their political program, but by the experience of community, caring for others, and its ability to recognize and address the deep distortions in life that are caused by a societal ethos of materialism and selfishness.

Unless Democrats and the political Left understand this, they will never succeed at the ballot box again, Lerner argues.

By its tone-deafness to the spiritual suffering of the American people, the Left continues to miss the fundamental crisis that demands a social transformation, and in so missing this reality, it clears the path for reactionary forces to enter the spiritual arena and manipulate that crisis in destructive and potentially fascistic directions.

Amen to that.

Now that Lerner has defined the problem, what are we going to do about it?