A couple weeks back, I wrote a post suggesting that conservative Christian “rights” arguments are largely dishonest, in that they usually assert illiberal claims disguised in liberal language. In particular, I was referring to Andrew Lewis’ suggestion that same-sex marriage opponents should grant every child a “right to a mother and father.”
Some political scientist friends took me to task for this, arguing that such claims are at least reasonable, and that audiences are free to take or leave them. They noted further that convenient framing is standard procedure in public advocacy, and not limited to the Christian Right.
While I do concede those points, I can’t shake the culture war frame, or the suspicion that rights claims are simply diversionary—and thus dishonest. And given that the Christian tradition does generally affiliate itself with Truth, dishonesty is a problem.
So my ears perked up when yesterday, on his “Daily Briefing” podcast, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler spoke directly about honesty. “Christians,” he said, “cannot dodge socially difficult questions for the sake of political expediency.” He continued:
Christians understand that it is our responsibility to give an answer, an honest answer, and we hope a winsome and a capable answer when we are asked a direct question. It may be possible for a governor or a President or any number of candidates for whatever office to avoid answering such questions and to avoid the evitable fallout. But Christians cannot avoid the fallout, we cannot avoid the judgment, we cannot avoid the responsibility. When we are asked a crucial question we need to let our yea be yea and our nay be nay. We need to be very clear on these issues.
I completely agree with Mohler here, which is why I am so confounded by much of the discourse coming out of his denomination. At Canon and Culture, the publication of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, rights-grievance is always the soupe du jour. Here, more than most venues, conservative writers routinely insist that they are besieged and mistreated, watching helplessly as their rights are trampled.
This week, managing editor Andrew Walker posted a piece that demands to be quoted at some length:
Those of us who believe that marriage is the exclusive, unalterable union of a man and woman were promised that all that the LGBT community wanted was equal treatment like everybody else. They advertised a “live and let live” mentality that would supposedly allow for difference in viewpoint.
We were told a lie, many of which knew was a lie to begin with. As the LGBT activist wing reveals its true intentions, there can apparently be no grand bargain where religious conservatives who disagree, civilly, on important matters of sexuality can co-exist alongside gay persons who desire to live free lives as well.
History reveals that when one group gains cultural favor over another, it typically overreaches, going to extremes to mercilessly subjugate their enemies to whatever table scraps are left over. That’s the phase we’re in now. In these circumstances, détente is discarded. Instead, embattlement and entrenchment passes on to the next generation.
It is the activist wing of the LGBT community that has settled the terms of the current debate, pitting the gay community against religious conservatives, wishing to extract every last pound of flesh they can from who they view as their troglodytic oppressors.
Religious conservatives don’t desire this. We want freedom for all. We desire magnanimity, tolerance, and compromise. That means, under reasonable standards, allowing all persons, religious or not, the freedom to live according to their sincerest convictions. It means instead of filing suit against a Christian florist, allowing for the free market to solve the problems of needing a floral arrangement for a gay wedding.
Here Walker is careful not to malign the LGBT community writ large, but limits himself to “the activist wing,” which, he insists, is hell-bent on oppressing its fellow citizens – citizens, it should noted, who want nothing more than “freedom for all.”
But let’s be honest. The SBC does not want freedom for the LGBT community. As I’ve argued before, there is simply no way for conservative Christian advocates to make this claim unless they erase about 45 years of anti-gay antagonism.
The issue does not exist in a vacuum; the slate is not blank.
I tweeted this point to Walker, who didn’t take the bait. Still, I would very much appreciate it if someone would explain to me how this rhetorical posture is not essentially dishonest. The insistence that it is conservative Christians who are besieged by gays—and not vice versa—is not founded in fact. At best, it distracts audiences from four decades of anti-gay antagonism, relying always on a handful of aggrieved wedding-vendors to make its dubious case.
I’m even willing to grant Walker et al that their arguments are, in a sense, reasonable. But I can’t call them honest. I believe they constitute, in Mohler’s words, an effort to dodge socially difficult questions for the sake of political expediency.
