draggonlaady

This is a more recent article by the same lady who wrote the one I recently posted about gay marriage. I cannot help but love the way she phrases things, and be amazed by how similar her statements are to my own opinions. Much better written than anything of mine, of course.

At the Left Hand of God

By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek, March 8, 2004

Recently, a man who was enraged by my column sent an e-mail with an exultant sign-off line. He said that in closing he was not only going to mention God, he was going to capitalize the G because he knew it made liberals like me crazy.

Five of the seven sacraments (they won't give me holy orders, and I'm not ready for last rites), 10 years with the nuns, a church wedding, three baptized babies, endless fights as they grew over why they had to go to mass on Sunday and a fair amount of prayer, and it's all wiped out in a single assumption about the nexus between left-leaning politics and atheism. A widespread assumption, too, and one that has come to color, even poison, American political discourse. It was inevitable that the opposite of the religious right would become the irreligious left. It just doesn't happen to be accurate.

When did it first become gospel that only conservatives knew God? It sure wasn't true 40 years ago for a Roman Catholic kid in a Catholic neighborhood, when the knock on John F. Kennedy was that religion was likely to be too much a part of his politics and he'd be on the phone to the Holy See so often, the pope would be a de facto cabinet member. Jimmy Carter's faith was as much a part of his persona as that Chiclets smile, and I'd like to meet the guy who could go head to head with Mario Cuomo on theology and not cry for mercy by the end of the exercise.

All that made perfect sense to me because I had long ago concluded that I had become a liberal largely through religion. Loving your neighbor as yourself, giving your cloak to the man who had none, blessed are the peacemakers: taken together, all of it seemed a clarion call to social justice and the obligation of individuals and institutions to help those who needed help. Jesus was the first radical rabble-rouser I'd ever read about in school, and the best.

Yet the other night I listened to Bill O'Reilly speak of "secularists" on Fox News, and as I tried to parse out who those secularists might be, I discovered to my surprise that they would be me. From same-sex marriage to Mel Gibson's gory cinematic take on the Crucifixion, the new wedge issue is religiosity, not to be confused with faith. This was fomented by the widely ballyhooed "worship gap" of the 2000 presidential election. The poll results seemed decisive, even damning: if you went to church more than once a week, you were likely to support President George Bush by a 2-1 margin. If you never went, you supported Al Gore in the same proportions. "Capital G" and "small g" voters: there was the divide, as clear—and perhaps along the same lines—as the one between heaven and hell.

The problem with that easy equation is that like so much else in American politics, it worked the margins and muted the majority. Most voters neither go to church several times a week nor never set foot in one. American life takes place somewhere in the middle, and there the worship gap narrowed, if not downright disappeared. In fact, those who described themselves as churchgoers "a few times a month" were more likely to support the liberal Democrat than the conservative Republican.

But once the dichotomy at the far margins was combined with the positions we liberals hold on certain social issues, especially those related to the separation of church and state, what emerged was the knee-jerk assumption that those with left leanings were never people of faith. This was also complicated by the fact that many of us not only lack a simplistic way to talk about the subject but also resent even being asked to do it, to slap the contents of our soul down to establish the bona fides of our political positions. Those positions are the product of the ability humans have been given to reason, to interpret and to understand, not some literal textual interpretation that makes dialogue or disagreement unnecessary or subversive. It is astonishing to me to hear preachers of various stripes take to the television pulpit and take positions based on their direct line to the Lord with none of the empathy, humility or compassion Christ modeled in the New Testament. That is not my faith. I like this verse from Hebrews: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Even saying that much makes me uneasy. Democratic politicians have had this problem, and the new conventional wisdom is that to overcome it they need to be doing a lot more public God talk. Forget that. Any time I hear a guy going on and on about how his road to the statehouse or the White House was paved with prayer (not to mention a good bit of soft money), I get the uncomfortable feeling he's doing what Mel Gibson has done with his movie: trading on God for personal gain. The modern version of 30 pieces of silver.

The connection between politics and religion for me lies in the motto of Cornelia Connelly, the Philadelphia wife and mother who founded the order of nuns by whom I was lucky enough to be educated. Actions, not words. Touch the sick, the poor, the children, the powerless, as Christ did, and never mind quoting Leviticus. For the record, I have never written the name of God without capitalizing the G. But that is the letter. What truly matters is the spirit.

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

I’m posting this article because it is the best I’ve read on this topic so far, from either side of the debate. By best, I mean most logically presented, and least inflammatory/fanatic/jerk-your-emotions. Also because I think she’s right, of course.

Gay couples are being held to a standard the denizens of Vegas chapels and divorce courts never had to meet to legally come together
By Anna Quindlen

Newsweek, Feb. 23 2004

And now for a short quiz:
• How many amendments are there in the Constitution?
• How many times may a senator be re-elected?
• Which president was the first commander in chief of the U.S. military?
• What do the stripes on the flag stand for?

You got the flag one, didn't you? But what about the other three? These are just a few of the questions people may be asked to answer if they are taking the test to become citizens of the United States. That's a good thing. A working knowledge of the governing processes and the history of our country can be reasonably expected of those who want to share in the benefits and responsibilities of being American.
The problem is that most native-born citizens probably can't pass the test. Americans are remarkably casual about their citizenship, not voting in sufficient numbers, not following the critical political issues. Those of us to the Star-Spangled Banner born aren't tested in the same way converts are. In fact, the United States seems to have a bad case of what you might call natalism, privilege conferred by accident of birth, high or low. (Although there is still no privilege like the privilege of wealth. Who knew that National Guard service was so flexible that you could duck out nearly a year early because, as President Bush said in his ill-advised interview with Tim Russert, "I was going to Harvard Business School and worked it out with the military.")
The latest citizens to be required to perform, as gadfly feminist politico Charlotte Whitton once said of women, twice as well to be thought half as good are gay men and lesbians. All these people want is what we hetero types take for granted: the opportunity to drop to one knee in a white-tablecloth restaurant and pledge eternal fealty in the eyes of the waiters and the world. But if gay people persist in this wild-eyed determination to marry, it's clear they will be held to that higher standard that outsiders have learned to expect.

In a recent sermon, Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, who somehow managed for a long time to contain his public outrage at pedophiles in the priestly ranks, decried the notion of same-sex marriage and referred to "the desecration of something sacred." The marriages we're talking about are civil marriages, which are so short of being sanctified in the eyes of the church that it will scarcely recognize their existence if you are Roman Catholic. And in a secular nation, why should church leaders be required to acknowledge civil marriage or, for that matter, be attended to when they pass judgment on what they will not acknowledge? Let them police the rites they have the right to regulate.
One of the chief arguments opponents have against same-sex marriage is that marriage is designed first and foremost to produce and shelter children. Naturally, we straight people don't have to conform to that standard. Infertile people, people who don't want to have kids, women who are past childbearing age: all of us get married as a matter of course, no questions asked. Unfortunately for those who rely on that argument, the barrenness of gay unions isn't accurate. In a soon-to-be-published book, "Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America," Jonathan Rauch reports that the most recent Census found 28 percent of gay couples had kids. And that's probably an undercount. Opponents might also argue that the children of gay couples are not the sort of biological fruit of marriage to which we are accustomed. They might try telling that to straight people who have used IVF or a sperm bank, who are stepparents or adoptive parents.
Comedians have made jokes about the gay-marriage controversy along predictable lines: why shouldn't they have the same right to be miserable that the rest of us have? Rauch's book turns that offhanded ridicule of the institution on its head. In few books about matrimony will you read descriptions that so powerfully evoke the married state as a blessing for human beings. It is the yearning of the exile, the hunger of the disenfranchised. Even the dedication packs a wallop: "For Michael. Marry me, when we can." To characterize this sort of devotion as desecration is reprehensible. Anyone who defines marriage largely in terms of what happens in bed has never been married. Which may explain the Catholic Church's official reaction.
Like the naturalized citizens who are expected to know more about America than those of us born here, gay couples are being held to a standard the denizens of Vegas chapels and divorce courts have never had to meet: to justify the simple human urge, so taken for granted by the rest of us, to fully and legally come together. Just as it's common to see an immigrant take the oath and then kiss the ground, the result of all this enforced soul-searching may well be a fervor that will honor an embattled institution. Gay people are being asked to form a more perfect union. In the process, perhaps they can teach us something that we casual citizens and spouses badly need to learn.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.