The campaign for equal marriage has called on the LGBT
community to do a lot of deep and analytical thinking, as our right to social
and legal equality has been challenged by a very large and well resourced pool
of religious adherents. Among them are some very clever people, capable of
finding numerous specious reasons to back up preposterous arguments. And when I
call these people “clever”, I mean the kind of “cleverness” involved in the
smoke and mirrors, the subterfuge, the red herrings and the straw men of an accomplished
and articulate lawyer who tries to get a guilty client off the hook.
For people who are supposed to be devout religionists,
there has been a great deal of dishonesty in the brittle arguments they have
advanced to deny us equality. Some of it, I believe, has been deliberate
dishonesty. Some of it has been largely unconscious dishonesty, caused by years
of religious indoctrination, but where some deep part of their psyche has still
known that what they were saying was untrue. Some of it has been a mixture of
both.
Quite often, the arguments they offered seemed to carry
some weight at first glance, and only yielded the full spectacle of their
hollowness when the scalpel of close examination was applied. One such
argument, in my view, was the claim that religious adherents are a minority
group too, and that their right to treat our relationships as inferior was at
least as valid as our claim to equality. This conflict of claims came up again and
again during the equal marriage campaign, with dogmatic Christians in
particular claiming that equal marriage was yet another layer of discrimination
against them by the state.
If there is any moral consensus in the emerging
post-fundamentalist world, it seems to be that the good life consists in the
promotion of happiness and the alleviation of suffering. But determining what
resolution of conflicting rights claims is most conducive to the good life is a
complex domain, where we have to use every intuitive, rational and evidential
tool at our disposal. To mention just one of the dilemmas, sometimes a right
granted to one group of people will increase their happiness, whilst at the
same time diminishing the happiness of another group of people. This is the
territory we are in when it comes to the legalisation of equal marriage. (And
yes: the unhappiness that our equality is causing is mainly the unhappiness of
those frustrated at seeing us flourish.)
As a rule of thumb, good moral judgments must promote the
alleviation or avoidance of suffering, and promote opportunities for happiness.
Even then, religious dogmatists might interject that this ethical philosophy
should lead us to accept the rules of their God, so that we maximise our
chances of a happy afterlife. Our response to this is simple: if we do not
believe in the god they worship, it is not acceptable for his followers to
impose their beliefs on us.
Many religious fundamentalists believe not only that God
commands hatred of homosexuality, but also that they – and indeed everyone in
society - will suffer personal harm as a result of it, including the respect
accorded to it by same-sex marriage. Some hard-line evangelicals believe that
God is punishing countries with liberal attitudes towards homosexuality in the good
old Sodom and Gomorrah tradition, and that this punishment will increase in
severity as new LGBT rights are granted. Other, less fanatical (but still
seriously deluded) religionists have written about how equal marriage will
bring about the destruction of the family and of western civilisation. It is
not that far from Emperor Constantine’s claim that homosexuality caused
earthquakes.
Dogmatic religionists are on shaky ground when they argue
that their religious rights trump the rights of LGBT people, given that their religious
beliefs are not only demonstrably absurd, but have also been the cause of a
great deal of appalling human misery throughout history. Indeed, these beliefs
continue to be so. Those whose lives have been blighted by the imposition of
dogmatic religion include the many children who are forced by their parents to
attend places where fundamentalists worship, who are made to feel guilty and
ashamed about their developing sexual feelings, and who are programmed to
believe they will be tortured for eternity unless they obey instructions from a
holy book. All of these amount to child abuse.
As we all know, there are plenty of hypocrites and
opportunists who don’t really believe what they preach, and who are merely in
it for the social power or the money. Yet there are many who sincerely believe
the tenets of their faith and have become trapped in a very menacing set of
delusional convictions. For instance, fundamentalist religionists believe that making
serious moral mistakes could result in their eternal damnation, which means the
horror of torture by being burned alive for eternity. Understandably, this is
not a risk they are willing to take lightly.
Well-balanced, intelligent people in the modern world
realise that eternal hell fire is a false belief: but for people who do not, it
is a terrifying one. In Tudor times, when people were challenged with menaces
to abjure their faith, they often faced a harrowing choice between being burnt
at the stake, and expecting to be burnt in hell for eternity. Many religious
fundamentalists today similarly perceive that giving any quarter to same-sex
marriage would mean succumbing to Satan’s deception, and putting at risk their
own eternal salvation. This is why no religious institution, and no individual
cleric, should ever be expected by the law to conduct same-sex marriages
against their conscience. Fundamentalists whose beliefs are as sincere and
genuine as they can be given the absurdity of those beliefs, are themselves
victims of a cruel belief system that threatens eternal torment for
disobedience. Whatever caused them to get caught up in that deranged and evil belief
system, and whatever personal responsibility they hold for the process, I would
hope we can perhaps find some compassion for their dilemma. Anxiety and dread,
even if based on false beliefs, are nonetheless still anxiety and dread.
The moral authority for asserting LGBT rights as usually superior
to religious rights derives from the far greater harm to LGBT people caused by
the presence of those claimed religious rights than the harm caused to
religious adherents by the absence of those claimed rights. There is no
comparable harm caused to dogmatic religionists by the absence of most of the
religious “rights” that are claimed to conflict with LGBT rights. Very great
suffering has been caused to LGBT people by the absence of equality, and by the
presence of discrimination and persecution: suffering that can be particularly
intense for the isolated, confused, anxious and shame-ridden child who has
realised she or he is lesbian or gay, and who must often cope with this great
burden alone, and in a homophobic school environment, without adequate
information or opportunities for social development. The frequency of
depression, anxiety, substance and behavioural addictions, suicidal ideation
and difficulties forming relationships among LGBT people, are hardly surprising,
given the widespread homophobic discrimination that still exists, and the harm
caused to LGBT people when we were vulnerable children. Equal marriage is a
very strong gesture of normality, legitimacy and visibility. It will lead to
same-sex couples appearing in school text books, and it is high time this
happened.
Religious dogmatists have the right to practise their faith,
so long as they do not try to force it on their children, or on non-believers.
They also have a right not to ordain LGBT people or marry LGBT people, if their
religion is bigoted enough to demand this. But they have no right to damage the
psychological health of LGBT children and adults by imposing harmful religious
doctrines on other people’s children, on their own children, or on society as a
whole. The right to practise their faith but without causing harm to others,
must be the criterion that resolves all dilemmas where religious rights and
LGBT rights seem to come into conflict.
Let them have their grotesque fundamentalist religions
that demonise our love. But they must keep them off our bodies, out of our
psyches, and out of our relationships. Because far too many of us know the
damage they cause, and the scars they leave behind forever.
© Gary Powell, 2013
