Kristallnacht Nicht
I recall reading one of the top Nazis in 1930s Germany describing the problem of transfering the people's abstract hatred of Jews into action against specific Jews, in a country where "Everybody has his favorite Jew," as a neighbor, shopkeeper, etc. Germany devoted most of the 1930s to breaking the connections between Germans and Jews in daily life. After that, anything was possible.
Christopher Hitchens, in Bush's Secularist Triumph, takes "strong exception to one strain in the general moaning" on the left and in the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) following John Kerry's defeat.
It's not just from the left, of course. Here's Paul Weyrich from the hard right:
Meanwhile, as Larry Kramer put it in a speech to the gay community in Manhattan Sunday night, "I hope we all realize that, as of November 2nd, gay rights are officially dead. And that from here on we are going to be led even closer to the guillotine."
So on this 66th anniversary of Kristallnacht, are we really on the road to being the Evangelical Third Reich, as so many people seem to fear? In spite of the exit poll numbers last week about "values" (of questionable accuracy, and capable of broad interpretation), I don't think so.
According to a Pew Research Center poll this fall, while a whopping 60 percent or so of Americans still oppose gay marriage, more Americans now favor "allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements with each other that would give them many of the same rights as married couples" than oppose it.
Other polls show similar tendencies. While a solid 40 percent of Americans opposes any sort of legal recognition of gay relationships, about half or more support either marriage or civil unions. The trend over time has been toward acceptance: in 1996 only 27 percent approved of gay marriage, and during 2003, when the newspapers and networks were full of pictures of obviously loving and un-flamboyant gay couples getting married, the number climbed as high as 39 percent
In none of the polls I've seen does a majority register for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. I'd like to think that reflects not so much people's attitude toward homosexuality, as their respect for the Constitution and what it was meant to do and not do. Just as I like to think a lot of the objection against last year's Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling was not over gay marriage per se, but over the idea that four judges in a little state could re-define a basic personal institution for the entire nation.
This is one of those areas where America's religious urges and its laissez-faire attitude and knee-jerk secularism live in comfortable dissonance.
Theoretically, it would be possible for the Republicans to use their power now to turn America hard against homosexuals, by re-focusing the popular vision on some shadowy "homosexual agenda" rather than the happy couple of New Paltz, New York. But that is not us. And that is not even them. Rove and Bush are in favor of letting states decide on the question of civil unions. That seems to me a "reality-based" position, and actually one slightly ahead of the curve of the mass of public opinion in this country as registered by the pollsters. It is not the new Nuremberg Laws.
Just like most military people know that there are gays in uniform. Most of them don't mind that, and will judge a soldier under fire by how well he or she covers your ass, not covets it. But don't make it explicit; don't advertise it. The compromise makes no sense, logically, but so what? It's comfortable. America is a tower of compromises.
In his column, Hitchens invokes my man Robert G. Ingersoll as an example of a hero of agnosticism who would certainly know which side he stood on in the modern war against Islamism.
He doesn't quote him directly, but I will:
[More Ingersoll at my mini-shrine, here]
Ingersoll, like many modern secularists, spent his adult life fighting religious bigotry in America. But unlike many modern secularists, he was liked and admired by many devout Christians, and he understood them.
[In early versions of the column, Hitchens had it as "Ralph Ingersoll," who is a failed newspaperman of the 1908s, from the East Coast branch of the family. I met Ralph Ingersoll. I used to work for him. Ralph is no Robert.]
Christopher Hitchens, in Bush's Secularist Triumph, takes "strong exception to one strain in the general moaning" on the left and in the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) following John Kerry's defeat.
It seems that anyone fool enough to favor the re-election of the president is by definition a God-bothering, pulpit-pounding Armageddon-artist, enslaved by ancient texts and prophecies and committed to theocratic rule. I was instructed in last week's New York Times that this was the case, and that the Enlightenment had come to an end, by no less an expert than Garry Wills, who makes at least one of his many livings by being an Augustinian Roman Catholic.
It's not just from the left, of course. Here's Paul Weyrich from the hard right:
"God gave this President and this President's Party one more chance ... God heard the fervent prayers of millions of values voters to keep His hand on America one more time despite our national sins of denying the right to life, despite ignoring the Biblical injunction against acts which are 'an abomination unto the Lord' and despite the blatant attempt to remove God from the public square."
Meanwhile, as Larry Kramer put it in a speech to the gay community in Manhattan Sunday night, "I hope we all realize that, as of November 2nd, gay rights are officially dead. And that from here on we are going to be led even closer to the guillotine."
So on this 66th anniversary of Kristallnacht, are we really on the road to being the Evangelical Third Reich, as so many people seem to fear? In spite of the exit poll numbers last week about "values" (of questionable accuracy, and capable of broad interpretation), I don't think so.
According to a Pew Research Center poll this fall, while a whopping 60 percent or so of Americans still oppose gay marriage, more Americans now favor "allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements with each other that would give them many of the same rights as married couples" than oppose it.
Other polls show similar tendencies. While a solid 40 percent of Americans opposes any sort of legal recognition of gay relationships, about half or more support either marriage or civil unions. The trend over time has been toward acceptance: in 1996 only 27 percent approved of gay marriage, and during 2003, when the newspapers and networks were full of pictures of obviously loving and un-flamboyant gay couples getting married, the number climbed as high as 39 percent
In none of the polls I've seen does a majority register for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. I'd like to think that reflects not so much people's attitude toward homosexuality, as their respect for the Constitution and what it was meant to do and not do. Just as I like to think a lot of the objection against last year's Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling was not over gay marriage per se, but over the idea that four judges in a little state could re-define a basic personal institution for the entire nation.
This is one of those areas where America's religious urges and its laissez-faire attitude and knee-jerk secularism live in comfortable dissonance.
Theoretically, it would be possible for the Republicans to use their power now to turn America hard against homosexuals, by re-focusing the popular vision on some shadowy "homosexual agenda" rather than the happy couple of New Paltz, New York. But that is not us. And that is not even them. Rove and Bush are in favor of letting states decide on the question of civil unions. That seems to me a "reality-based" position, and actually one slightly ahead of the curve of the mass of public opinion in this country as registered by the pollsters. It is not the new Nuremberg Laws.
Just like most military people know that there are gays in uniform. Most of them don't mind that, and will judge a soldier under fire by how well he or she covers your ass, not covets it. But don't make it explicit; don't advertise it. The compromise makes no sense, logically, but so what? It's comfortable. America is a tower of compromises.
In his column, Hitchens invokes my man Robert G. Ingersoll as an example of a hero of agnosticism who would certainly know which side he stood on in the modern war against Islamism.
He doesn't quote him directly, but I will:
I have many objections to the philosophy of Christ. I do not believe in returning good for evil. I believe in returning justice for evil. I do not believe that I can put a man under a moral obligation to do me a favor by doing him a wrong. The doctrine of non-resistance is to me absurd. The right should be defended and the wrong resisted. Goodness should have the right to protect itself.
[More Ingersoll at my mini-shrine, here]
Ingersoll, like many modern secularists, spent his adult life fighting religious bigotry in America. But unlike many modern secularists, he was liked and admired by many devout Christians, and he understood them.
"The truth is, most Christians are better than their creeds; most creeds are better than the Bible, and most men are better than their God."
[In early versions of the column, Hitchens had it as "Ralph Ingersoll," who is a failed newspaperman of the 1908s, from the East Coast branch of the family. I met Ralph Ingersoll. I used to work for him. Ralph is no Robert.]
Labels: America, Christianity, religion
