Regarding the "Equality Riders"

The ongoing discussion on this blog about the repeated arrests of Soulforce's "Equality Riders" is exceptionally important.  We must continue to explore and MEASURE what kinds of activism are MOST EFFECTIVE.  My partner and I participated in a Soulforce direct action in 2000, so I know firsthand how good it feels to stand up for yourself in that way, and how...satisfying, in a way, it is to suffer for what you believe in.  And yet something still didn't seem quite right about this activism practice of "Voluntary Redemptive Suffering."

After that experience, I conducted months of research and concluded that "Voluntary Redemptive Suffering" is probably NOT a key to our liberation.  My results are published in Shirt of Flame: The Secret Gay Art of War (Goko Media, 2003), which, incidently, was endorsed by, among others, Arun Gandhi, with whom I was arrested at the Soulforce action.

What follows is a (hopefully not TOO long) excerpt from the final chapter of the book that may (or may not) help further our discussion:

FOUR QUESTIONS

Now that we’ve established the moral principles of a Shirt of Flame
movement and committed to creating change with other, like-minded
same-gender-loving and transgender people through Sidhe circles, we still
face the monumental task of enumerating precisely what kinds of resistance
can emerge from these principles. Because our credibility is only
maintained as long as our conduct unconditionally adheres to the moral
principles we’ve outlined, the forms of our activism must always meet
several criteria:

1. Our activism must take no form that debilitates our potential
for Power.
So all forms of physical, verbal and psychological attack, and all
manipulative and disingenuous actions, must be dismissed.
2. No just laws may be broken during the conduct of our
resistance.
Maintaining our commitment to Law as the future guarantor of our rights
and liberties is an important component of the trust we seek to build with
society. If we disrespect Law, we disrespect society.
3. Every act of resistance must be focused on “taking whole.”
The pure intention behind our every act of resistance must be to help self or
others achieve happiness or avoid suffering, with the secondary knowledge
that such actions develop communion and increase our genuine Power.
Such activity will be called Collective Cultivation.
4. One’s activism must be personally motivated, not engineered by
others.
An individual’s Shirt of Flame activism must arise naturally from a deeply
personal desire to help self and others achieve happiness and avoid
suffering. The individual activist takes action based on knowledge of their
own purity of intention and what they are passionate about. The individual
activist’s resistance can be inspired or suggested by, but not dictated by,
their Sidhe circle or movement leaders.

So, based on those criteria, when considering an action, we must first
ask ourselves these Four Questions:

1. Is it Ahimsa (non-harming)?
2. Is it congruous?
3. Is it Collective Cultivation?
4. Is it personal?

...

OPPROBRIUM
A cursory look at traditional nonviolent resistance reveals two basic
forms: Noncooperation and Direct Action. Acts of Noncooperation are
individuals refusing to support or participate in what they see as wrong. For
example, this could mean refusing to pay the portion of your income tax that
supports excessive military spending, refusing to register for the draft, union
strikes or sweatshop boycotts. Direct Actions include anything that
addresses the actual cause of your concern—whether that’s fighting hunger
by feeding someone or protecting an old-growth forest by living in a
redwood tree. For our purposes, Direct Actions also include symbolic
protest actions, for example, civil disobedience. Symbolic protest actions
are public protests that seek to call attention to an issue, such as pouring
blood onto missiles, or that break unjust laws—like Black folks sitting at
“Whites Only” lunch counters during the African-American civil rights
movement.

Direct Actions often involve the willingness of the activist to suffer
during or because of the Direct Action (i.e. to perhaps be spat on, slandered,
beaten, arrested, fired, etc.). This suffering is called voluntary redemptive
suffering: “voluntary” because each activist that participates in the direct
action has consciously decided that breaking the unjust law is more
important than her or his safety, and that she or he will not flee from the
repercussions nor retaliate; and “redemptive” because the activist hopes that
his or her suffering will liberate the oppressors and lead to freedom and
justice for both oppressed and oppressor.

Voluntary redemptive suffering was justifiable during the Indian
Independence movement and the African-American civil rights movement
because the violation of unjust laws with the goal of reform and redemption
was a central purpose of those movements. Moreover, those oppressed
people had no other outlet to express outrage or effect change—they could
not, for example, organize to vote their oppressors out of office.
The unjust laws and policies that discriminate against LGBT people
do not lend themselves to similar voluntary redemptive suffering. Today’s
nonviolent gay activists who choose voluntary redemptive suffering (usually
arrest) do so as an entirely symbolic action—the laws they break are
trespassing or unlawful-assembly statutes and not unjust laws or policies
which directly discriminate against LGBT people. Instead of breaking
unjust laws in the name of justice like Gandhi and King, their voluntary
redemptive suffering has three goals:

1. To demonstrate the protesters’ commitment to non-retaliation even when
directly confronted by suffering, hatred and violence;
2. To induce pity in those who witness it. Pity, you remember, is the near enemy
of compassion;
3. And finally, their voluntary redemptive suffering is intended to promote
opprobrium in their oppressors—“the shame and disgrace attached to improper conduct.”
Ideally, this afflictive emotion is so intense that the oppressor realizes that his or her
actions, opinions, or laws must be unjust because he or she feels so badly about the
activists’ suffering as a direct result of those actions/opinions/laws.

These activists sincerely believe that the opprobrium their voluntary
redemptive suffering engenders is a natural and appropriate afflictive
emotion for their oppressors to feel. They believe that by inducing negatives
(suffering, shame and disgrace, and pity) they are able to achieve their
desired end: an awakening of new moral awareness in some of the
oppressors that amends their unjust beliefs and behavior. This approach
ignores the basic tenet upon which all nonviolence is based: the means are
inherent in the end. The science of social alchemy is not magnetic—a
negative does not attract a positive.

While voices should be raised to ‘speak truth to power’ in protest
against injustice, the effort to make change must not pass the boundary into
intentionally causing suffering. The first Question, “Is it Ahimsa?” must be
carefully considered regarding modern voluntary redemptive suffering and
its unique method of violence—that it intentionally causes the activists to
suffer and induces opprobrium and/or pity in others. Indeed, imitating the
traditional technique of voluntary redemptive suffering only adds to the level
of pain and violence in the world instead of relieving suffering and reducing
violence. To approach creating a society based on cultivation, we must
pursue a purer nonviolence. To pursue a purer nonviolence, we must use the
“deliberate and incremental” means of Collective Cultivation available to us
that cause no suffering of any kind intentionally, however justifiable the end.

LGBT activists cannot participate in proper civil disobedience by
mimicking the techniques that worked for Gandhi and King, that is, by
readily and en masse risking voluntary redemptive suffering by breaking
laws that do not discriminate against us, because the truest civil
disobedience breaks unjust laws in the name of justice. There’s an inherent
contradiction in breaking just laws in the name of justice. To do so shows
fundamental disrespect for Law as the means by which our republic
functions and damages public perception of our commitment to Justice. If
we cannot tell good laws from bad, how can we be trusted to suggest good
ones? Pursuing voluntary redemptive suffering is incongruous with our
ultimate goals, and does not increase our genuine Power. With so much
suffering, opprobrium and pity, there are just too many negatives involved to
ultimately create a positive. If “the end is inherent in the means,” then this is
not the pure nonviolence to which we must aspire in order to manifest a
purely nonviolent society. We have better options.

...

Comments

[DSH]

What a trip! Acid, ecstasy, or meth? Whatever induced this bizare frame of mind, peyote?, I'll stick with normal brain function without the added "power."

[Julie]

Recently Soulforce went to my campus, BYU, were many equity riders were arrested. One their website they stated “It was truly remarkable," said Equality Rider Jonathan Awtrey, "I don't think we've had crowds like this at any other school where we weren't openly welcome on campus. Many of the students wanted to know what they could do to make LGBT people feel safe and welcome at their school. Several of them were concerned that their church's message of love was being diluted by its anti-gay stance."

Mormons are all too familiar with protest, we receive protesters every semi-annual conference and every temple dedication. Often we are being protested by anti-abortions groups and pro-abortion groups on the same day at the same time. We receive protesters by varies groups about a wide range of subjects. Some are nice, but most just yell and tells us we are sinners. It doesn't take long before you just smile, nod and walk right past them without even noticing what they are protesting about.

At first Soulforce seemed different from these groups, they wanted to speak to us, not yell at us. They wanted to help us understand the struggles of individuals who are LGBT. They wanted to educated students, not put us down.

When soulforce decided to intentionally go beyond policies of conduct on campus, a private campus mind you, students turned away from them. The policies they were asked to abide by were not developed for there visit but apply to all visitors to the campus. There was a ralley off campus scheduled that would not have such restrictions. The arrest actually hurt them, for they become just another group trying to provoke the Church to get on the news. They became one more group that hates us. Wither truly their motives or not, that is what students felt.

[Sacramento Pete]

Julie,

Thanks for your perspective in this discussion. Your opinion is one not often heard on a sight such as this. You sound familiar with the issues at hand, i.e. the effectiveness of Direct Actions such as those taken by Soulforce. Specifically, does the breaking of nondiscriminatory laws, such as trespassing, hurt the group’s effectiveness and their message? This is relevant to most direct actions these days. It certainly is to someone such as Cindy Sheehan.

I remember the crucial role religious leaders played in civil rights struggles of the past. In addition, Christian sects that were thought of as little more than cults were discriminated against. For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses went to prison during WWII for their pacifism. This is in part where some of my frustration comes from when dealing with religious organizations today. Am I only naïve to expect these organizations to see and understand the civil rights struggles of LGBT people today?

As you point out these are private religious organizations, and no one in America would advocate the suppression of religious belief or expression. Yet these organizations are highly affluent and influential. They own radio stations, broadcast television stations, and other media with a reach and power that the LGBT community cannot match. They use their media to influence politics in ways that affect my civil rights. How are we to gain their attention to petition our grievances? Soulforce was impatient in wanting to gain the attention of these organizations. Perhaps they thought to go to the source to try to influence the next generation within these religious organizations.

Perhaps the better course is to work within cooperative churches to gain support for our rights one congregation at a time as The Institute for Welcoming Resources is doing.
http://www.welcomingresources.org/

Many American churches split over slavery in the 1850’s. Similar schisms are occurring today over the acceptance of LGBT people, and will continue to occur.

[Lemon Jizz]

A VERY interesting , thought provoking and intelligent site, unlike mine !