To religious folks themselves this may seem obvious, but to the media—apparently it’s an epiphany.
Dr. Marc Swerdloff is a proud Jewish Republican.
Wendy Bourgault is a Catholic who has no problem with same-sex unions.
Marcus Davis, an evangelical Christian, calls himself pro-choice on abortion.
Amar Mehta says that if he heard an official at his Hindu temple endorse a candidate, he’d walk out.
For all the talk about red and blue, and who leans which way politically, many believers are coloring outside the lines.
It’s interesting to note that those “lines” have mainly been drawn by the media over the years. Unless you were a frothing…
fundamentalist or loony lefty, the media weren’t interested in your opinion.
The simple truth is religious people have always been far more complex in their beliefs than the media has ever given them credit for. The media is obsessed with the fighters on both sides—pitting Barry Lynn against Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson for years and years—never giving any thought to the vast middle ground where most religious people live and move and have their being.
More and more we’re seeing increased appearances by Jim Wallis and Brian McLaren on the television talk shows—men who tend to hold more complex religious views than the media is wont to talk about.
But, the media is way behind the times on this issue. I suspect most people understand that religious views are far more complex than the left and the right want to portray it. I know plenty of gay and lesbian people who are Republican and intend to vote for John McCain, despite his record on LGBT issues. I know plenty of these same gay and lesbian Republicans who are pro-choice and attend church every week—two things many on the religious right would frown upon and the media frame as an impossibility: a gay Christian Republican. Horrors! (What a great Halloween costume, now that I think about it.)
I learned several years ago, while manning a booth for the South Carolina Equality Coalition at the state fair ahead of a vote in 2006 to put an anti-same-sex marriage amendment into the state constitution, not to judge a book by its cover. I met many deeply religious people, like Wendy Bourgault—quoted in this story, who viewed same-sex marriage as a civil right, separate from religion.
Wendy Bourgault attends St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church in Pompano Beach and works with Food for the Poor. But she sees same-sex unions as a “human rights issue,” despite Catholic teachings against them.
“I’ll probably make every Catholic angry at me,” she says. “But it’s like the sacrament of matrimony vs. a marriage license. One is a faith-based relationship. The other is a matter of civil rights. You shouldn’t make churches recognize it. But you shouldn’t deny civil rights to any human being.”
For too long, people of faith have been portrayed in the media as thoughtless monoliths, simply following whatever the loudest extremist was allowed to say over and over again in the media. The media’s discovery of the complexity of religious belief in our country is long overdue, but welcome. I hope to read more stories like this one in the future.
