This diary provides an attempt to analyze why attacks on gay and lesbian people resonate so profoundly with the fundamentalist community. It is written from the standpoint of a gay person living in a state very much dominated by fundamentalist political views. This is an update of an essay I wrote for a website for gay Christians some years ago.
This diary may not be particularly topical (it is not about the "ridiculousness and danger" of anything, which seems to be today's obsession). It is intended to be the kind of diary that held my attention on Kos, one about ideas with political and social implications.
I don't offer any particular prescriptons here, just thoughts on why this particular campaign seems to succeed year after year for the far right.
There are three aspects of religious fundamentalism which, when taken together, cause this belief system to be especially menacing to gay and lesbian people. Fundamentalism is an authoritarian belief system; fundamentalism is sexist, that is, it endorses a male-dominant social order; and fundamentalism regards our physical bodies as inherently sinful and is thus anti-sexual.
These three aspects taken together make adherents of fundamentalism especially resistant to reasoned, balanced discussion of issues pertaining to human sexuality. While these three characteristics are not the only factors causing the vigorous attacks by fundamentalists against gay and lesbian people, they are essential to understanding the malevolence and extreme vehemence of these attacks. The mere existence of gay and lesbian people constitutes a serious assualt on these three foundations of religious fundamentalism. The "culture war" between the fundamentalists and gay and lesbian people is a fact not because of any "choice" of gay and lesbian people (other than our "choice" to exist) but rather because this war is implicit in the very nature of fundamentalism. We will argue that it is because the mere existence of gay and lesbian people contradicts the fundamentalist worldview we necessarily constitute a revolutionary challenge to the fundamentalists whether we like it or not. Understanding this is essential to preserving and protecting our right to exist, to say nothing of gaining the basic civil, economic, and social liberties other citizens take for granted.
Fundamentalism is Authoritarian
"Creation science’ has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage—good teaching—than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?"
Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12
There can be no doubt that fundamentalism is authoritarian. The fundamentalist regards certain doctrines to be matters of divinely "revealed truth." The fundamentalists may differ on the actual source of divine authority, but an absolutely essential foundation of all fundamentalist religions is a total reliance on "revealed truth." Fundamentalism demands believers, not thinkers.
Indeed, the constant battle between fundamentalists and science over (non-)"issues" such as evolution reveals clearly that fundamentalists not only rely on "revealed truth" but hate and fear the very concept of "discovered truth" embodied in the scientific method. Science is acceptable only when it confirms the revealed doctrines of the fundamentalists, or at least does not conflict with those doctrines. When the scientific method is applied to anything pertaining to a "revealed truth" of the fundamentalists science is suspect.
The scientist, recognizing the imperfection of all human knowledge, is skeptical of all things. This healthy skepticism is ruthlessly exploited by the fundamentalists: if any scientist anywhere questions the established scientific position on, say, global warming, this is used to argue scientists "don’t all agree" and hence that all scientific evidence on global warming is unreliable. After all, there is no similar dissension in the ranks of the fundamentalists!
Because fundamentalism relies on "revealed truth" ordinary argument not only fails but is irrelevant when applied to fundamentalist dogma. Any evidence, no matter how conclusive, must be rejected if it conflicts with the "revealed truth" of the fundamentalist. No evidence, no logic, no personal experience, nothing can change the fundamentalist’s mind about "revealed truth." Questioning "revealed truth" in any way, even hypothetically, not only is foreign to the fundamentalist’s world, it directly challenges the fundamentalist belief system at its core. "Revealed truth" may not be questioned, may not be investigated, may not be doubted by anyone, for to do so threatens all that the fundamentalist believes. The more successfully any "revealed truth" is challenged, the more vehemently the challenge must be rejected.
A challenge to any "revealed truth" challenges the divine authority underlying all "revealed truth." This is because the fundamentalist doctrines, rather than being a rationally constructed and consistently thought out system of beliefs, are based on a relatively incoherent and contradictory collection of historical legacies. The importance of these historical legacies is not in the doctrines themselves but in their common status as "revealed truth." The fundamentalist world derives its coherence and consistency not from the fundamentalist doctrines but from the commonality of these doctrines as "revealed truth."
Because fundamentalism is a worldview made coherent only by "revealed truth" self-discovery is also foreign to the fundamentalism. Because the fundamentalist’s world relies utterly on "revealed truth," the fundamentalist’s place in that world must be "revealed," not discovered. The fundamentalist finds his or her place by being "born again," which is not seen as a liberating act born of self-realization but as an act disolving individuality to a divine being, a form of psychic and spiritual suicide.
This reliance on "revealed truth" is what makes fundamentalism so rigid and resistant to evidence and argument. Indeed, the more convincing the evidence, the more cogent the argument, the more adamantly fundamentalism must cling to "revealed truth." Fundamentalism is not a based on evidence, reasoning, or systematic discovery but instead is based on faith, on "revealed truth." Fundamentalism cannot accept a challenge to even the most minor article of faith, for then the entire structure of "revealed truth" collapses. To challenge any article of faith is to challenge the entire epistemological method of understanding the world through "revealed truth" and hence to challenge fundamentalism at its foundation. Gay and lesbian people in particular must understand this or risk continued oppression and even genocide.
There is a cluster of "revealed truths" the fundamentalists commonly misname "family values" which are inherently sexist in character. Another "revealed truth" for fundamentalism is that sex is inherently evil. In the next two sections we will argue that the mere existence of gay and lesbian people challenges both of these "revealed truths" of fundamentalism in basic ways.
Fundamentalism is Sexist
"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians." Pat Robertson at the 1992 Republican National Convention
"Most of these feminists are radical, frustrated lesbians, many of them, and man-haters, and failures in their relationships with men, and who have declared war on the male gender. The Biblical condemnation of feminism has to do with its radical philosophy and goals. That’s the bottom line." Jerry Falwell
"Men in the pro-choice movement are either men trapped in women’s bodies...or younger guys who are like camp followers looking for easy sex." Rep. Bob Dornan (R-CA)
Sexism means assigning superiority or inferiority, unsupported by objective evidence, in traits, abilities, social value, personal worth, and other characteristics to males or females as a group. For the fundamentalist, females are both perceived and treated as if they are categorically inferior, while males are both perceived and treated as if they are categorically superior. The basis for the relative positioning is usually scripture, "family values," tradition, or some other historical legacy embedded in the fundamentalist culture.
Evidence abounds of the inherent sexist bias in fundamentalist thought. For even liberal Protestant denominations, ordination of women remains controversial -- for example, the Presbyterian Bishop in Houston refuses to ordain women despite official church position to the contrary. The "family values" cultists have a monolithic and patriarchal view of the family that relegates women to the role of homemakers subservient to their husbands. Fundamentalist opposition to abortion restricts a woman’s control of her own body and relegates her to a reproductive engine.
The fundamentalist reliance on literal Biblical models for social order and interpersonal relationships reinforces the dominant role of men. In the ancient cultures described in the Bible males were ascendant, women were relegated to positions of property and servitude to the male-dominated families. For evidence, one need only look at the story of Sodom: when Lot is confronted with a mob threatening gang rape, he offers the mob his virgin daughters to spare his angelic (and male) guests. This sexist culture continued in the time of the Apostles, and is explicit in the writings of Paul. (For example see Paul's first letter to the Church at Corinth [1 Cor, 11:3.20]: "But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God." Paul's ordering places women at the bottom of the heap, then men, then Christ, then God.) Fundamentalist sexism is further exacerbated by the fact that the translators of the modern English Bible have incorporated the sexist views and values of the dominant culture in their translations and interpretations of the ancient words.
Because fundamentalism values males more than females (and implicitly thereby devalues females) the existence of gay men constitutes a profound challenge to sexist fundamentalist doctrine. This is due to the inability of fundamentalism to imagine interpersonal relationships outside of a patriarchal family. This failure of imagination leads fundamentalism to conclude that gay and lesbian relationships devalue the male gender.
In families, fundamentalist doctrine accounts only for a dominant male husband and a subservient female spouse. Consequently, the fundamentalist sees gay and lesbian relationships exclusively through the lens of heterosexuality. No other relationship model is possible since the heterosexual model is "divinely revealed" to the fundamentalist as the only possible one. Thus for the fundamentalist one partner in a gay or lesbian relationship must be the "male" and the other must be the "female." Every gay or lesbian couple has been asked the phenomenally stupid question "which one of you is the woman?"
Seen through the warped and sexist lens of "divinely revealed" fundamentalist, male-dominated heterosexual relationships, relationships between gay men are thus viewed as devaluing the more important male gender because fundamentalist doctrine demands that one of the partners become the "woman." Fundamentalists perceive gay relationships as demeaning to all men because in the fundamentalist view gay men must turn a man into a woman. Consequently these relationships threaten the privileged position of the male in the fundamentalist world.
Lesbian relationships also threaten the sexism implicit in fundamentalism. The threat, however, is often seen as more of a parody (a woman "playing at being a man") rather than as a direct assault on the more important male gender. In addition, women are generally less important to the fundamentalist, so relationships between women are less important than relationships between men.
Because fundamentalists see all relationships in terms of the doctrinally correct heterosexual model, they reject any possibility that gay or lesbian relationships could have any spiritual, emotional, affectionate or romantic component. Any evidence that such a component exists is seen as an assault on the "family values" doctrines of the fundamentalists. Gay and lesbian people living in open,productive and supportive relationships are the most compelling evidence of the error of the "revealed truth" of the fundamentalist doctrine and thereby, by their mere existence, constitute a profound threat to fundamentalism.
These comments apply equally to male and to female fundamentalists. Fundamentalists define all gender roles exclusively in terms of the fundamentalist "revealed truth" of heterosexual marriage and in the context of the higher value fundamentalism places on males. The existence of gay and lesbian people contradicts this dual doctrine. E. M. Forster in the afterword to his novel Maurice pointed out that if civil rights for gays and lesbians could be passed late at night as a footnote to some unnoticed bill, there would be no objection at all. Bruce Bawer in A Place at the Table perceptively notes that closeted gay and lesbian people are not a threat to fundamentalism. It is only when we are open and so force fundamentalists to think about us that we become targets of oppression. The more convincingly gays and lesbians demonstrate the value and success of our relationships, the more threatening gays and lesbians become to fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is Anti-Sexual
One of the distinguishing characteristics early Christianity was an anti-sexual stance. This characteristic carries forward to the fundametalists today. Sex is seen as a necessary evil, as evidence of an animal nature, as something to be held in check, as something dirty, as something exclusively for procreation. Sex is seen as the enemy of the spiritual, as something to be kept furtive and secret and at all costs repressed. Sex can only be accepted if it is purified by taking place the doctrinally correct context of a heterosexual marriage. Some fundamentalists would go even further and accept sex only in the additional context of procreation. Of course, the fundamentalist sect which forbade all sex (the Shakers) has died out. Anti-sexual campaigns are so pervasive in North America one is tempted to conclude that the fundamentalists consider sex the root of all evil.
Persons in Biblical times had no clear understanding of reproduction. It is clear even from a casual reading of the Bible that it was believed that males planted their "seed" in women, much the way wheat is planted in a field. This notion that the women are merely vessels in which the male seed grows rather than partners in reproduction is, of course, another manifestation of the sexist character of the Biblical societies. Moreover this view of reproduction casts the act of sex as an instrument of exploitation of women in the ancient societies.
In ancient times, the sex act was often used as an act of domination and violence. It was common for the victors on the battlefield to rape their vanquished foes. This rape was done less for pleasure than to degrade the opponents by making them into women – women being property and less valued.
In short, in the world of the Bible – and hence in the world of the fundamentalist – sex is seen as an instrument for exploitation, domination, and violence. It is little wonder then that sex for the fundamentalist is regarded as evil, something to be controlled rather than celebrated.
Early Christianity was a minority religion, surrounded by hostile peoples and religions. Often these exogenous religions had as a major element a celebration of either fertility or sexual congress or both. A way in which Christianity (and to some extent Judaism) could be distinguished from the competing religions was by rejecting the values and rites of the surrounding religions. Indeed, the Holiness Codes in Leviticus could be seen as a vehicle to differentiate the Levites in specific ways relating to sexual practice from the cults surrounding them. This sort of differentiation continued through the early Christian era. (Again, to refer to Paul's first letter to the the Church at Corinth [1Cor 7:1.20] "Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.") Once Christians became ascendant in a region the temples of the competing cults were usually desecrated, which often meant removal of phallic images. Thus Christianity absorbed and expanded upon the Levitical codes. Eventually this sexual phobia came to be codified as part of the fundamentalist "revealed truth."
Because of sexism, the fundamentalist sees gay and lesbian relationships exclusively in heterosexist terms. These heterosexist terms deny that there can be any emotional, spiritual, romantic or affectionate component to a same-gender relationship. Thus all that is left for the fundamentalist to see in same-gender relationships is the sexual component. For the fundamentalist, sex is inherently evil. The evil the fundamentalist sees in sex can only be neutralized if sex occurs in the context of a heterosexual, male-dominated, marriage. Consequently, the fundamentalist sees gay and lesbian people exclusively in terms of sex, and an irredeemably evil brand of sex at that. This drives the fundamentalist to stereoptying and scapegoating, equating all gay and lesbian persons with sex criminals.
Conclusions
There is a profound conflict between fundamentalism and gay and lesbian people. The previous two sections argue that the mere existence of gay and lesbian people is a threat to fundamentalism. Productive and happy gay and lesbian people in successful and nurturing relationships are a profound threat to fundamentalist doctrine. Because fundamentalism derives its legitamcy, coherence and consistency exclusively from the authority of its doctrines, a threat to any doctrine is seen as a threat to all doctrines. Since the existence of gay and lesbian persons is an assault on two basic fundamentalist doctrines, the fundamentalists are driven to annihilate gay and lesbian people. We ignore this grim conclusion only at great risk.
Fundamentalism cannot compromise without collapsing. Gay and lesbian people cannot compromise and survive. Because gay and lesbian people will always be in the minority, our position is especially grim when confronted with the relentless and ruthless attacks on our existence. Worse, we misunderstand the foundation for these attacks and attempt to counter them with reason, evidence, and political discourse.
Traditionally, a major criterion for mental disorder is the judgement that the person is so irrational and emotionally out of control as to be dangerous to self or to others. The phobic fundamentalist response to gay and lesbian people can surely be seen to be irrational, emotionally out of control and dangerous to gay and lesbian people. Fundamentalism, at least as it pertains to gay and lesbian people, should be understood not as a political or religious movement but as a mass mental disorder. Mental disorders are cured by therapy, not by reason, not by evidence and most assuredly not by pretending they are not there.
It is pointless to argue with the alcoholic, for example, that substance abuse is self-destructive and irrational. The alcoholic must reach this conclusion on his or her own and be self-motivated to change. A cure cannot be imposed from without but only discovered from within. The alcoholic is not motivated to even seek this cure until "striking bottom" – until the self-destructive character of the disorder is so obvious that it can no longer be denied.
One of the major conclusions of this essay is that reason and evidence are pointless responses to fundamentalists. Indeed, arguing with fundamentalists simiply gives credence to their delusional and disordered emotional state. Thus not only does argument fail, it is counterproductive.
This essay has concentrated on three characteristics of fundamentalism and their relationship to gay and lesbian people. These characteristics are seen to drive fundamentalism necessarily toward the destruction of gay and lesbian people. The sexist and anti-sexual doctrines of fundamentalism assault gay and lesbian people directly and indeed are destructive to all people. But the core of fundamentalism is its authoritarian character. Fundamentalism rejects discovery and relies exclusively on revelation to understand the world. This epistemology of revelation is fatally flawed. It is in our nature to both believe and discover, but of the two discovery is paramount.
Of course, it is essential that the lies and misrepresentations of fundamentalism be constantly rebutted since not all people are fundamentalists. However, these rebuttals will not change the mind of a single fundamentalist. To change the mind of the fundamentalist it is essential that he or she first cease being a fundamentalist. It is a truism that one cannot argue about evolution with someone who believes the world was created 6,000 years ago. No more can one argue about homosexuality with someone who accepts fundamentalist doctrines regarding gender roles and the innate evilness of sex. The way to counter doctrine is not with evidence but to counter the underlying epistemology of revelation.
The inherent contradiction in fundamentalism is that humans have been created with intelligence and curiosity and the will to use them. Fundamentalists must be driven to escape the bonds of their disordered worldview. Fundamentalists have the capacity and desire for discovery just as all humans do. Only when the fundamentalist sees that the epistemology of revelation is destructive to self and others can we begin to have made progress against these disordered, delusional and dangerous doctrines.
The problem then, is to open to the fundamentalist curiosity and discovery. This is, of course, no easy problem, especially when fundamentalism is openly and malevolently assaulting our right to personal existence. However disordered, dangerous and hateful fundamentalism might be, fundamentalists are still human beings. Human beings have a capacity to laugh, a capacity for compassion, a desire to share joys and sorrows. Most of all, human beings have the capacity to love. These positive human capacities are valued by fundamentalism and fundamentalists but contradict both fundamentalist doctrine and the epistemology of revelation.
Interestingly, there is little scientific research into laughter. (It turns out there is a lot of research on laughter -- an EBSCO search revealed over 50 articles...thanks to TarHeelDem for telling me!) The science fiction author Larry Niven describes humor as an interrupted defense mechanism and then asks what sane being would interrupt a defense mechanism? We see in a humorous situation a potential threat; the grimace of our smile bares our teeth in an atavistic aggressive response. Then, instead of conflict, we laugh in surprise at the discovery that conflict and aggression are not required. Laughter interrupts an aggressive defense mechanism and gives time for discovery and reflection. All humor involves hesitation, surprise and discovery, and so laughter and humor are especially potent weapons against fundamentalism.
Likewise all people have a natural tendency to compassion and a strong desire to share joys and sorrows. I recall seeing the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral in a suburban movie theater with a mostly heterosexual audience. Yet people all around me were crying during the eulogy delivered by the gay man for his lost lover. It is certainly true that fundamentalism is often a mass disorder and frequently leads to cruel and cold rejection, even of cherished children, when homosexuality is revealed. However it is equally true that this is not a universal response.
What is needed is a new paradigm for societal change, one founded less on dialectics, power and conflict and more community, compassion and humane principles of justice and understanding. This will be a difficult and long struggle. But it is a struggle in which we must engage if we are to survive.
I am a mathematician. Perhaps more than any other discipline mathematicians believe in the power of discovery. Mathematics is an enormously complex and beautiful creation of the human intellect. New mathematics is constantly being created, new discoveries wait around each corner. For those who study it, mathematics is a breathtaking human achievement. But, as anyone familiar with Godel’s now famous theorem knows, mathematics is also an enormous act of faith, for the entire structure cannot even be shown to be self-consistent. Nor can mathematics be shown to have any "real" connection with the physical world; mathematics is at best a simplified abstraction of the enormously complex and wonderful Universe in which we reside.
Mathematics is born of both faith and discovery. So too our lives must be born in faith, discovery, compassion, and love. Our gifts to the fundamentalists are our community, our joys and our sorrows, our laughter and our tears.