Newsom and Newdow

On my running theme here I think this election is an indicator that the US is showing signs of sliding back into a pre-Enlightenment mentality. The Founding Fathers were children of the Enlightenment and thus set this goverment up to guard against the irrational forces that had governed the world for centuries during the Dark Ages, where personal human misery existed inside a caste system, a monarchy, and enforced sectarianism. Our first leaders saw this new nation in the context of the Enlightenment and understood that America was founded by people who had fled religious presecution in Europe so they fashioned our governement to be explicitely unbiased with regard to faith. In other words, America was not founded as a christian nation as some would have you believe. To say this is to completely missunderstand what Madison, Jefferson, and Franklin were all about as well as to miss one of the greatest things about America, it's openness and freedom. America was founded as a place of religious freedom, where the state could not favor or impose any doctrine on its people, that much is clear from both history and from the Constitution itself. Amy Goodman alluded to this recently with respect to the current election on Demoracy Now! radio:

"This is a continuing theme throughout American history. I mean, if you go back to -- from going back to the battles between the -- those who were more followers of puritanism among the founding fathers over the role of the church within -- within our government versus the Jeffersonians, Madison and Franklin and those who were more of the Enlightenment strain; but it seems to have definitely grabbed hold at this particular time again, because there have been periods in American history where the fundamentalist vote has arisen."

And yes it has arisen, although I don't really believe they have any kind of real majority. This year we simply awakened the beast with our gay marriage and "under God" discussions, drawing in those who were otherwise willing to cast their vote rationally. My title points to Gavin Newsom (the mayor of San Franciso who started the gay marriage controversy) and Michael Newdow (the athiest who took "under God" to the Supreme court), two men who generated a lot of animosity in the minds of the religious-leaning, although I don't blame Newsom and Newdow personally. Both were absolutely correct in my opinion, but their cases inserted a new dynamic into the political discussion and indeed the election itself (does anyone doubt that voters came out just to vote anti-gay and also threw in a vote for Bush?). This in an America that appeared to be making progress on such issues, especially during the 90's.

Ask youself for a moment, what do you think the status of gays will be in 100 years? Do you think they will still be repressed by the government? Does anyone really hope we are still that small-minded a hundred years from now? Can anyone imagine our successors being so mean-spirited and un-enlightened? I certainly hope not.

So why do this to them in the first place? We have a known history of this kind of stuff and I thought we had learned the lessons of intolerance. Besides, mere tolerance is nothing to brag about, people. Tolerance is the absolute lowest form of acceptance, miles away from understanding and light years from love. Does the religious right really believe that if Jesus were here he would be "tolerating" or ,to be more like contemporary christians, taunting gays and discarding their rights and dignity, or do you think he just might be there comforting the persecuted with genuine empathy? (As an aside, in the war in Iraq, does the religious right really think Jesus would be flying co-pilot in one of our bombers, or would he be there on the ground with those innocent Iraqi women and children dying a needles death?)

One group should not have power over another in this country, that is what's called the tryanny of the majority (sometimes referred to positively as the "moral majority" by Pat Roberts). And at the bottom of all of this is this dilemma: the president of the United States should not have personal constituencies, he has no constituency except the people of America as a whole. And if this President doesn't understand that (I believe he doesn't) then we are in for some very tough times, some very divided times. I for one am living in the 21st century and will continue to do so regardless of the 17th Century mentality that seems to be making its last stand. So begins the next great "civil war" (though I sincerely believe it will remain "civil" and not lead to any actual violence!!), apparently we're going to refight the intellectual battles of the 18th Century. Which side are you on?

"This is what really divides the U.S. from other industrial democracies: Gods, gays and guns, if you will. If you were to take a sampling of public opinion in countries all around the world (the Pew foundation), you'd find that the United States on most of the core cultural issues is much closer to Nigeria and Saudi Arabia than to Europe and Japan."
- Fareed Zakaria on ABC news