A group of Christian leaders today issued a declaration restating already enunciated positions opposing marriage equality and abortion and supporting religious liberties.
The strident tone in the document, which the called the Manhattan Declaration, however, clearly was aimed at getting attention for those priorities, as were the nearly 150 signatories to the document.
Attention they got, unsurprisingly, with lines like:
Marriage is not a “social construction,” but is rather an objective reality—the covenantal union of husband and wife—that it is the duty of the law to recognize, honor, and protect.
Disagreement about “objective reality” aside, the conclusion to the document shows that all that preceded it is propoganda and journalist bait drawing attention to the declaration itself. Its conclusion, the only active part of the document, states:
Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.
Nothing is being done to alter any of these rights clearly held by the religious entities represented by the signatories. No one is making churches perform abortions, no one is making religious faiths conduct marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples and no one is preventing those faith leaders who wish to oppose either reproductive rights or marriage equality from expressing such opposition.
All talk in the declaration of “civil disobedience” is quite possibly made in good-faith, but only would need to be acted upon if an amendment was made to the First Amendment in this country.
In fact, the declaration, if taken at its word and with its incendiary language removed, shows how our nation and laws can and do respect and protect religious liberty while able to do the same for reproductive rights and LGBT equality. I disagree with many of the thoughts and beliefs espoused in the body of the declaration, but I agree with the active conclusion it reaches and believe that our country’s past does as well. It is, in fact, nothing more than a declaration of the continuing importance of the First Amendment.
It is only through, as Chai Feldblum said on Thursday, an understanding of and a respect for “the values and principles of pluralism and tolerance” that our country’s aims, as espoused in the First Amendment, will be met. Religious leaders of certain faith traditions can express opposition to certain developments just as other faiths express their support for those developments. And our constitutional protections ensure that all religious adherents can do so, and that religious entities will not be forced to support those developments, should they happen.
That does not, however, mean that they won’t happen. Or that the happening of those developments are somehow illegitimate just because some religious traditions disagree. That is the mirror of those “values and principles of pluralism and tolerance” at work in our nation.
So, despite all the rhetoric being made of this declaration on both sides of the “culture wars,” it’s not actually all that extreme of a document. It expresses a belief and demands a continued right to express that belief.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Chris Geidner is a lawyer in Washington, D.C., who writes at Law Dork, contributes regularly to Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications. An extended biography can be found
I agree. The conclusion of their document does reflect the laws that are already in place. It isn’t anything revolutionary, or facilitates any new ideas; however, the religious loonies seek to violate the laws to impose their religious views into our private lives. For example, a constitutional amendment to ban abortions, weather it passes or not, isn’t the act itself a violation of the “mirror of values” that you illustrated? Another example, did the religious zealots responsible for the passage of proposition 8 violate these values the moment they began gathering signatures to put proposition 8 on the ballot? We would be barred by the law if we sought to ban religion from California, right?
Conversely, it looks like the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial will unfold on it’s scheduled date: 1-11-2010 @ 8:30 AM. The proponents had threatened to withhold essential documents from the plaintiffs until the 9th Circuit ruled on their appeal, but Walker ordered them, again, to produce the documents, immediately, and on a “rolling basis,” and must be completed by the already established deadline on the 11-30 -09 discovery deadline. The next step after that is for the plaintiffs to depose 5 key proponent campaign managers, but they must do this between 12-01, and 12-11, because the proponents have threatened that they will not allow their clients to be deposed within 30 days of the scheduled trial date, but Walker will be speaking with both parties on Monday, 11-23 at noon. I’m assuming that he will check in with the discovery process, and facilitate an efficient deposition schedule. The plaintiffs only have one shot at deposing the campaign managers, and this deposition, along with the requested discovery documents, are “central to the plaintiffs claims,” said Walker.
I agree entirely with the main points you make here, but I think it’s oversimplifying the situation to say that none of there’s no element of civil disobedience because none of the developments they deplore is actually requiring them to do anything. On same-sex marriage, that’s the case, but as to abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, etc., there are religiously affiliated institutions such as hospitals and universities and religious individuals such as pharmacists and doctors and students who may find themselves in a position of having to do things they disagree with (or break the law). I disagree with their views, and I think it’s important that (for example) people be able to fill prescriptions for “immoral” medications without worrying that a pharmacist will refuse them.
Even marriage equality may come to have a more than symbolic relevance for these people and the institutions with which they’re associated. If we ever manage to get federal law to recognize same-sex marriage, for instance, “Christian” employers may find themselves having to accord the same treatment to married gay employees when it comes to payroll taxes that they accord to straight couples. This shouldn’t be a big deal, you’d think, but I’m sure someone will say it would violate his religious beliefs to take an action that implicitly recognizes the equality or existence of same-sex marriages.
But thank God for the First Amendment! However much I disagree with this rhetoric, and however hateful I find it, these people have a right to believe what they believe and to tell the rest of us what they think.
I think you are stretching ‘freedom of conscience’ a bit too far here — though I applaud both your and Chris’ support of the 1st Amendment. And it is ‘freedom of conscience’ not just ‘freedom of religion.’ All of us get tested that way at times. The Muslim cabdriver ‘forced’ to transport alcohol, the Muslim — or ultra-Orthodox Jewish — sales clerk who has to ring up a pork roast. The person like myself who values honesty — but has to *ahem* bend the truth as to why a delivery is late, or someone who despises quackery but has to sell a homeopathic remedy. Yes, it’s a battle, and we all have to make that sort of decision — even the athlete who wants to come out, but is afraid that it will cost him millions in future contracts or endorsements. Easy answers? No, but the ‘easy answer that the person has a right to discriminate under any circumstances doesn’t work either.
‘Marriage is not a “social construction,” but is rather an objective reality — the covenantal union of husband and wife — that it is the duty of the law to recognize, honor, and protect.’
What a bizarre notion. If my church is willing to marry a 13-year-old girl to a 20-year-old man, the law must recognize that marriage (and suspend the prohibition on statutory rape) even if it contravenes public policy that opposes making girls into wives and mothers before they’ve even started high school?
That sentence reveals just how disturbing these people’s ideas about the law actually are. They see the law as a servant to their beliefs, rather than as something that exists independently of their beliefs. And if the law refuses to be a servant, these people feel justified in “civil disobedience.” I just hope that in their attempts to invoke the legacy of the civil rights movement, they’re as nonviolent and accepting of the penalties for violating the law as MLK and other civil rights protesters were.
It would be nice to think this mindset could be dismissed with “Silly fundamentalists, don’t they know about the First Amendment?” But there’s serious threats lurking. One religious group, protesting the passage of hate crimes legislation that would include sexual orientation, said they were considering making a “test case” for the constitutionality of the law. That means they’re thinking about having someone COMMIT A CRIME against another human being — whether it’s robbery, assault, harassment or threats — in order to “test” the law. There’s no way to test a hate crimes law without committing a crime. That’s how low they’re willing to go.
I continue to be surprised at how rarely ‘Christians’ either actually read the Bible or think about what they read. If you go down the whole list in Leviticus, it is irrefutable that these regulations were made for a polygamous — technically polygynist — society. (Even the condemnation of a man marrying a woman and her daughter condemns him for the relationship between them, not for the ’second marriage.’)
The fragment of autobiography from Josephus shows that this was still acceptable among at least the Jerusalem aristocracy as well, and I cannot read I Timothy or Titus and their ’special regulation’ for Church leaders that requires a leader to be the ‘husband of one wife’ as anything but demonstrating that this was not a regulation for the Church as a whole.
Even Jesus’ condemnation of divorce does not necessarily imply that a man can’t have more than one wife, just that he can’t divorce one he has.