The Religious Violence of "Defending Marriage" -- Sightings

Proposition 8 was recently passed in California. Although the proposition simply defines marriage in heterosexual terms, the point was to exclude from the rights and responsibilities that go with marriage to homosexuals. Church historian Jon Pahl writes, in today's edition of Sightings, about the federal "Defense of Marriage Act" (established in 1996 and signed into law by Bill Clinton) and the 37 other state acts that have also defined marriage in terms of a man and a woman. Pahl suggests that these acts are nothing less than acts of "religious violence." They are acts that have religious roots and are intended to impose these values on society in a coercive way.

I found this brief essay extremely compelling. Perhaps you will as well. Consider:

********************************************************

Sightings 3/12/09

The Religious Violence of "Defending Marriage"

-- Jon Pahl

A recent article in The Atlantic and recently released Lutheran documents give good reasons to revisit the status of gays and lesbians across American society. Unfortunately, few commentators to date have addressed the most troubling development of the past few years: the growth of DOMA Laws, or "Defense of Marriage Acts." These laws are forms of religious violence.

The Federal Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, stipulates that for the purpose of federal laws and operations, "the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." According to domawatch.org – a website sponsored by supporters of these laws – thirty-seven states now have some form of DOMA Laws on the books. The rationales for such defensive laws are often couched in neutral, "secular", or "naturalist" language. But the move to establish such laws came from religious groups, notably conservative Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons. And the logic and appeal of these laws also originates in religion, and functions as a form of violence. Six theses can clarify the contours of the religious violence embedded in these laws.

1) DOMA Laws violate sacred texts. Many of the arguments against gay and lesbian civil unions or marriage appeal to biblical texts from Genesis, Leviticus, Romans, or I Corinthians. But such arguments impose upon the texts a twentieth century understanding of sexual identity alien to the Jewish or Hellenistic cultures in which these texts arose.

2) DOMA Laws elevate heterosexual marriage to idolatrous status. In some communities of faith, defending "marriage" has become all but an item of confessional status (it is absent from any historic Christian Confessions). This arrogates to a majority – heterosexuals – special privileges (economic, social, and spiritual) not available to sexual minorities.

3) DOMA Laws scapegoat gays and lesbians. As Rene Girard argues, scapegoating is a chief manifestation of religious violence. It is difficult to see what real threat is posed to heterosexual intimacy, much less to civil society, by the desire of homosexuals for similar rights. It is easy to see how DOMA laws organize consent over and against a relatively voiceless and powerless group.

4) DOMA Laws sacrifice homosexual rights, and damage civil society, in the interest of religious purity. One measure of the justice in any society is how well it cares for vulnerable members. Sexual difference marks individuals as both vulnerable and "dangerous." And as Mary Douglass showed, any "danger" against which a law must defend is invariably constructed around some purity interest. DOMA Laws require gays and lesbians to sacrifice rights others take for granted, and render them subject to legalized forms of exclusion and discrimination. They damage the deep trust that is the most important social practice in civil society.

5) DOMA Laws confuse legislation with religion, and violate the First Amendment, as Ann Pellegrini and Janet Jakobsen have argued. It is entirely permissible (although ethically subject to scrutiny) for private communities to shape the boundaries of association in whatever ways members agree upon. It is a violation of the First Amendment's protection of free association to inhibit by law some forms of association that pose no harm to the common good, and a violation of the freedom from an established religion when religiously-inspired exclusions are written into law.

6) DOMA Laws perpetuate an association of sex with power, and thereby do damage to any sacramental sensibility that might remain in association with even heterosexual marriage. As Hendrik Hartog and other historians have shown, marriages have shifted in the modern era from patriarchal patterns of coverture to social contracts in which couples seek mutual fulfillment. Such contracts might be compatible with a sacramental sensibility, since they entail pledges of sexual fidelity and commitments to share social resources and responsibilities, along with (one might argue) other gifts of God. DOMA Laws associate sexual fidelity with legislated forms of coercive power, and inhibit the deep trust and mutuality intrinsic to modern (and sacramental) marriage. They establish hierarchies of relationships, and associate heterosexual unions (and sexual practices) with dominance.

DOMA Laws have been passed with the support and lobbying of religious groups. Such laws point, unfortunately, to a deep tendency of religions to consolidate power through exclusion, as Miroslav Volf has so cogently shown; these laws have no rationale for their existence apart from that exclusion. People who wish to "defend" corrosive influences on marriage – and I count myself as one – might actually find allies among gays and lesbians who desire public recognition for their pledges of fidelity and their commitments to share resources and responsibilities with one another. A true defense of marriage would not involve mean-spirited exclusions, but would embrace practical policies that strengthen deep trust and support families facing economic challenges.

References:

Paul Elie’s article in The Atlantic,"God, Grace, and Sex," is online as "The Velvet Reformation" at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903/archbishop-canterbury/2.

The Social Statement "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" and the ECLA’s recommendations on ministry practices are online at http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements-in-Process/JTF-Human-Sexuality.aspx.

Jon Pahl is Professor of the History of Christianity in North America at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. He recently edited and published An American Teacher: Coming of Age and Coming Out, the Memoirs of Loretta Coller (Infinity Publishing, 2009).
----------
In conjunction with the upcoming conference, “Culturing Theologies, Theologizing Cultures: Exploring the Worlds of Religion,” April 22 and 23 at the Divinity School, this month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum features conference participant Alain Epp Weaver’s exploration of “how the arboreal imagination animates Israeli and Palestinian mappings of space and landscapes of return.” Trees are at once contested political and religious symbols and concrete means of claiming the land. Via a close reading of Palestinian theologian Elias Chacour’s writings, Weaver examines the rhetorical role and weight of trees in Israeli and Palestinian thought. “Is the arboreal imagination necessarily bound up with exclusivist mappings of erasure only, mappings which encode given spaces as either Palestinian or Israeli Jewish?” Weaver asks, or, “might the arboreal imagination animating the imagined landscapes of Palestinian refugees also produce cartographies of mutuality which accept, even embrace, the complex character of shared space?”

Visit the Religion and Culture Web Forum:
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/index.shtml
----------

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The author, Jon Pahl, is a Biblical ignoramous, and a damned fool. He pretends that the Bible says things it does not say, and pretends that it does not say things it does say.

Those who promote, defend, and seek to legitimize homosexuality are a menace to society. There is no right even to be homosexual, let alone to same-sex marriage, or civil unions. Those who claim rights that do not exist are either mentally ill, or are lying in order to achieve a sinister purpose.

Those who are even marginally moral in their thinking and behavior will immediately recognize Pahl's ideas for the immoral manure they are. Those whose moral compass is malfunctioning will view them differently.
roy said…
well Gary... I guess my moral compass must be malfunctioning because I found the article helpful.

thanks for posting it Bob
Jon Pahl said…
Hi Gary:

Which Bible do you think I'm ignorant of? I read the one where God is love, and try to make that the foundation of my moral decisions. You?

Jon Pahl
Anonymous said…
Pahl,

You are ignorant of the Bible that God inspired and in which is recorded "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." Leviticus 20:13. And Romans 1:27 "And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."

You are an infidel. Not only do you not know God, you don't even know anything about Him. That sissy puke you call god and claim to believe in is a figment of your perverted imagination, and is certainly not the holy God of the Bible.
Anonymous said…
I found this helpful and mostly correct also.

I'm not at all convinced that a homosexual is especially sinful even if he or she acts on their nature. As long as the union is honest and pure of heart. I think they should be allowed equal unions under the law at least.

How is it a menace to society anyway? The best thing we can do is stop being so fruitful. These unions are seldom fruitful.

Abomination = a sin?

http://knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Abomination/

I think the writer(s) protesteth too much. And Gary's mean.

David Mc
John said…
The overt intent of DOMA's is to target homosexuals, by interfering with if not prohibiting them from obtaining political and social benefits freely available to everyone else, and ultimately from obtaining the mercies and graces of the love and happiness that God created each one of us to expect and to receive.

As Christians it is shameful that some among us understand the Great Commandment so poorly that they could condone such attacks on individuals and classes of individuals in our society. If these people shared any other characteristic, we would be shouting from the rooftops against the social injustices which is bing inflicted upon them in the name of a misguided attempt to accomplish a improperly discerned religious agenda.

Those who pursue such an agenda are no better than, and in fact no different than the Ku Klux Klan - vile merchants of hate and oppression and violence.

John
Anonymous said…
John,

You're a fool, you're wicked, and certainly NOT a Christian. And that explains why I did not answer your phony questions about Genesis.
John said…
Gary,

Your attack on me is no reason not to answer fair questions; you didn't answer those questions because you couldn't, and more importantly, because you couldn't honestly face up to the answers.

John
Anonymous said…
Well, I know two things for sure. 1. Gay's not contagious.
2. Hate spreads like a stink.

Ever hear of free will Gary?
Your speach in a public forum seems to be abusing the right more than other posters here.

Who gave you the right to declare my (christian or otherwise) rights?

We're in difficult times. Let's not start lining up the scape goats. Hate's the worst way to approach this subject.

Are you assuming you'll get credit for resisting temptation? Look what it's doing to you!

David Mc
John said…
Gary, out of curiosity how would you define a "phoney" question? Being well versed in such things I should think this question should not make you too uncomfortable to answer.

David, Gary is just an abusive, controlling personality, and I think he is this way in good times and bad.

Nevertheless, it is fascinating to see how he addresses debates, boldly proclaiming his truths, and personally attacking those who don't agree, reserving some of his most venomous assaults for those who challenge him to critically analyze the issues.

But I pray for him; it means something that he keeps coming back to the well - maybe someday he will drink from the water.

John
Jon Pahl said…
I reiterate: God is LOVE--the most powerful force on the planet! And gay love is good; it does good--helps build up social trust. Violence (like Gary's), or like the kinds of "abominations" against which Levitical laws or Paul's prohibitions were directed (all forms of rape, basically) is not. So--love builds up; violence destroys. Choose love(life!)

Jon
Robert Cornwall said…
Jon,

thanks for stopping by and contributing to the conversation (one that's not so pleasant at times) that you have set up with your essay!

I'm in agreement.

Popular Posts