June 1st 2009
Politics, same-sex marriage and “the Mormon bogey”
All weekend long John and I have been reflecting on Friday’s Washington Post piece, ‘The Mormons Are Coming!’ John found it almost funny (he comments below); I found it both fascinating and revealing. The reporter, Karl Vick, seems pretty clear-eyed about what is happening. For example, Vick notes that Proposition 8 likely would not have passed in California without the support provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He then matter-of-factly adds that some gay marriage advocates on the East Coast
are shouting that fact in the streets, calculating that on an issue that eventually comes down to comfort levels, more people harbor apprehensions about Mormons than about homosexuality. [Emphasis added.]
Well. That makes the point pretty clearly, doesn’t it? Playing on the electorate’s fears about a minority religious faith can help you win an election. It sure worked for Mike Huckabee in Iowa, but no one came right out and said that the way Karl Vick did here.
In a way this is helpful because the tactic is now out of the shadows:
“The Mormons are coming! The Mormons are coming!” warned ads placed on newspaper Web sites in three Eastern states last month. The ad was rejected by sites in three other states, including Maine, where the Kennebec Journal informed Californians Against Hate that the copy “borders on insulting and denigrating a whole set of people based on their religion.”
That language “borders on insulting and denigrating a whole set of people based on their religion.” You think?
Apply my favorite test for bigotry, which John and I have often used here: Insert “Jew” or “Muslim,” “Catholic,” or “gay” in the above-quoted ad language and ask yourself if the advertisers could ever get away with such a tactic.
Nope, they couldn’t, could they? Vick, to his credit, continues with a clear-eyed view of what is going on:
But the demographics tempt proponents of same-sex marriage: Mormons account for just 2 percent of the U.S. population, and they are scarce outside the West. Nearly eight in 10 Americans personally know or work with a gay person, according to a recent Newsweek survey. Only 48 percent, meanwhile, know a Mormon, according to a Pew Research Center poll. [Emphasis added.]
So now that we know what’s really happening, we get to the real question: Is that tactic legitimate? One political expert quoted in the article doesn’t address that question, but focuses on the tactic’s effectiveness:
“Is it fruitful to use the Mormon bogey?” said Mark Silk, a professor of religion and public life at Trinity College in Connecticut. “My sense is that there aren’t great risks to it. Once a religious institution is going to inject itself into a public fight, which the LDS did in a straight-up way, then I think people are prepared to say, ‘Well, okay, you’re on that side and we’re against you.’”
In other words, once a church takes a position on a public issue, and urges its members to exercise their political rights as voters and citizens to support that position, using that church as a bogey man can be very effective. No surprise there, and there’s nothing unlawful about such a tactic.
To me, however, the real questions are these: Should we as a society sit still for such behavior? Isn’t the Kennebeck Journal’s position more consistent with what we’ve come to call “the American Way?” And if we do not stand up against such bigoted political discourse, isn’t it a very short step to using any candidate’s religion against him or her?
And do we really want to go there as a nation and as a society?
Update by Lowell:
Our reader Carl H. has commented below, and we find his thoughts so useful that we are adding it to the post:
Mollie at GetReligion takes up Vick’s article–and the important issues–here, and considers the elephant in the room that only one side of the debate is willing to discuss:
I also find it fascinating that this entire story aims to support the notion that Americans will be less comfortable with Mormons than gays (if forced, somehow, to choose). We learn all sorts of things about the Mormon church in this story — much of it very fairly written. But we never explore whether it’s true that the more people know about gay activists, the more comfortable they’ll be with them.
Take, for instance, the woman who organized California’s “Meet in the Middle for Equality” march held Saturday in Fresno. Her name is Robin McGehee and she seems by all accounts to be a very nice and capable woman. Here’s an absolutely fawning profile of her in the San Francisco Chronicle from last fall. I sure hope it was written by her mother — it’s just that biased. Anyway, she is one of four partners in the raising of her children — two partnered women and two partnered men. I’m sure that what I’m about to write is considered shocking inside the Washington Post … but I bet quite a few people in America think that such a family arrangement is less than ideal. They might even feel more, dare I say, “comfortable” with the Mormon family next door (not that I, again, think this should matter regarding marriage policy). But we never really see any hard-hitting looks at why society considers families led by two parents of opposite sex to be best for children. It’s almost considered impolitic to discuss this reality.
Indeed. I have more thoughts about this, and an intriguing Gallup poll, at True North.
John comments: OK, it is serious, but come on - “The Mormons are Coming”? It conjures up some images of old, very funny movies.
I am reminded of July 2007 when we accused Jim Geraghty of being an “accomplice to bigotry” due to some argument he leveled against Romney at the time. Jim did not take it kindly. What Jim engaged in then was what this piece does now - some cold political calculation, and we leveled our accusation because sometimes decency demands that some political realities be denounced. There is a point at which winning is not the only thing.
The American way is nothing if not fair. That means that Lowell’s analysis is right. If this stands, then any other religion will be the next thing that can be attacked. But it won’t stop there, then we will attack on other things. Identity politics are just wrong.
Way back in 2005 I was on a jury in a criminal case. Jury deliberations came down to race. It was ugly. At the time I wrote:
High School Civics class, first day, first words:
Ours is a nation of laws not men.
Those words, that idea, that sentiment has made this nation great. It has, given time, undone the injustices that our society wrought early on.
There was a time, sadly, when the law did not apply equally to all people in our nation. It is our great national shame; fortunately, it is not true any more. More importantly; however, the solution to that former gross injustice lies not in changing what people group gets the benefits of that unequal application - it lies, rather, in assuring EQUAL application.
The pro same-sex marriage crowd feels justified in their discriminatory rants because they feel discriminated against. That is an arguable point, but discrimination begetting discrimination delegitimizes any argument they may have - at that point the discussion has shriveled to hatred, pure and simple. (related reading - Victor Davis Hansen - today)
As proof consider yesterday’s heinous murder of late term abortion provider George Tiller. This decidedly pro-life blog hereby denounces loudly and condemningly the murder of Tiller or any other abortion provider. Despite how wrong I think the actions of such doctors are, it does not justify “returning the favor.” In fact such is an imperative of the same source from which I have come to believe abortion is wrong.
But what I really do not understand in this situation is the press. Why can they not see the discrimination and denounce it? I am old enough (as the movie citation above proves) to remember the racial tensions of the late 1960’s and the press coverage of the same. As I have said before, I have much family in Mississippi and I remember wincing while watching the news thinking that the things they were saying they were saying about my family. And yet the press cannot seem to muster even one ounce of the outrage at this bigotry that they could raise at Mississippi in that time. The coverage of the Tiller murder leads with how awful acts of murder and terrorism are against abortion clinics (and they are!) with denial of sympathy for the murder by the vast majority of the pro-life community coming only late in the story. And yet the coverage of the issue of religious discrimination bears none of the same reporting style. Why are we not informed of the level of hatred for religious people that runs through the gay community? Agreed, it is not violence - yet - but with protests and demonstrations and civil disobedienced witnessed both ater the vote last fall and int he wake of last week’s court decision, one has to wonder about the potential.
But this is made all the worse because there really is no outrage involved in any direction - it’s just cold political manipulation.
Or was it? The Canadian press seems to think religious people in general are just a little nuts.
Bush, a born-again Christian since age 40, arrives for today’s paid speaking engagement at Metro Toronto Convention Centre with fellow former president Bill Clinton amid a series of stranger-than-fiction disclosures, one of which suggests that apocalyptic fervour may have held sway within the walls of his White House.
Read the rest of the story if you can stomach it, but let’s be serious here. Could someone as fanatical as they describe Bush to be even survive the election process? I don’t think so. Which is part of what makes the idea of “The Mormons are coming” funny. The Prop 8 campaign was highly skilled and learned political action. Religious fanatics of the type they seem to invoke here simply could not be that well organized, too much rationality is involved in the execution.
Finally, God help us all, they are talking Iowa ‘12 already. Personally, I think Iowa is done as a political bellweather. Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee are not winners that prove much in the way of reliability. Don’t be surprised to see the GOP, and perhaps the Dems make some moves towards either changing the rules in the early states (IA and NH) or moving towards a national primary day. Iowa did more than cost Romney the nomination last time - it split the party. We cannot afford that.
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