SOULFULLY GAY
By JOE PEREZ
"The most pressing political issue of the day, both in America and abroad, is a way to integrate the tradition of liberalism with a genuine spirituality."
-- KEN WILBER
Historically, liberalism and spirituality have been bitter enemies. In fact, since the Enlightenment, modern liberalism has come into being preeminently as a force of reaction against religion. Because many liberals left God to the conservatives, today our politics is dominated by secular liberals and conservative religionists.
Nowhere is the spiritual divide between liberals and conservatives more apparent than in the arguments waged in the battle over gay marriage.
Liberalism has its weaknesses. By and large, liberals identify marriage as a vehicle strictly for advancing the material and economic security of individuals. While talking about economic issues is not a bad thing, unfortunately it comes at the expense of acknowledging a sacred character and communal context to marriage. Liberalism sees only convenience and material gain where sacramentality used to be.
And yet much good has come from liberalism. Liberalism has brought fundamental reforms to patriarchal traditions that regarded women as mere property. As Jonathan Rauch explains in the new book "Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America," liberalism produced greater equality between the sexes in marriage. It did this in part by imposing monogamy on a tradition that had historically been stacked against women.
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state bans on interracial marriage, it relied on liberal principles. In the 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, the Court said that states were not free to define marriage in a way that violated core constitutional freedoms.
Liberalism wants to strengthen marriage by extending it to people (such as gays) where it is currently denied, but liberals are embarrassed by any hint that the institution may have a sacred aspect or civic role. Can we not find a way to keep the liberal emphasis on individual freedoms, but scrap liberalism's denial of spirituality?
Across the aisle from the liberals, we have the conservatives. They are wedded to republican and religious traditions that define marriage according to communal standards and values, especially those of orthodox Judeo-Christianity.
Ironically, the very religionists who think all pagans will burn in hell forever are more than happy to invoke the laws of Buddhism or Hinduism when it’s convenient. Rauch gives an example of such an argument. He puts it into these words: "For the entire history of civilization, marriage has been between men and women. In every religion, every culture, every society--maybe with some minor and rare exceptions, none of them part of our own heritage--marriage has been reserved for the union of male and female..."
Rauch must have something like this argument in mind when he explains what he's up against in making the case for gay marriage: "Advocates of gay marriage are trying to change the way things have been – well, forever. I accept that the burden of proof is on my shoulders."
So Rauch gives himself the burden of defending gay marriage, but he acknowledges that the God of every religion, every culture, and every society in history is on the other side. Against such a formidable foe, it is not surprising that he falls short.
Rauch rejects the liberalism of those who defend gay marriage on the basis of immutable human rights. Unlike liberals (and some conservatives) who believe that the precepts of Roe v. Wade and subsequent Court decisions such as Lawrence v. Texas may have located a right of gay marriage in the Constitution itself, Rauch finds no such right. Instead, he presents a case based primarily on civic republican virtues and incremental reforms.
Rauch's argument is well-intentioned, but it ultimately fails. The problem isn't that he's wrong about gay marriage being a good thing (he isn't). The problem is that when Almighty God Himself is supposedly an enemy of gay marriage, then it doesn't matter if gay marriage is a good thing. Because it's been condemned by God. Thus, Rauch's arguments (with their appeals to tradition) do not meet the awesome burden of proof he himself has identified.
By Rauch's own admission, every religion, culture, and society in history is against him. To win his case, I believe he must explain not only why tradition is wrong. He must also argue (and he doesn't) that there is an immutable right for gays to marry, and he must explain why rights trump tradition.
A liberal argument for gay marriage makes the best and strongest case for change, because it contains a critical theory that explains why this innovative social reform is good and the prejudice of the ages is evil. At its best, liberalism can speak the truth: the conservatives are wrong about God and, therefore, they’re wrong about gay marriage.
Liberalism need not, and should not, abandon God or moral principles to conservatives. Conservatives aren't wrong because they affirm universal values or hold marriage sacred. They're wrong because they locate the sacred in the wrong place.
The challenge for a liberal spirituality is to locate Spirit in the right place: in the midst of the evolution of nature and culture, in the thick of multicultural diversity, as the ground for liberal freedoms and all authentic liberation.
Liberals must make the case that gay marriage is objectively good, because it is part of the unfolding emergence of Spirit in our midst. We must find a way to open our eyes to see God's footprints in modern history. Then we can begin to see Spirit as a presence in the victories of the Enlightenment over mythic-membership tyrannies, abolitionists over slavery, and the best and noblest parts of the women's and men's and gay liberation movements.
In the short-term, the goal of a liberal spirituality must be to extend individual freedoms where their denial persists and is most inhumane, such as the struggle for gay marriage. And in the future, spiritual liberalism can go beyond affirming individual rights.
As Ken Wilber envisions in "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality," the ultimate aim of spiritual politics is "a liberation not just of peoples but of life, of all sentient beings, not as having equal rights, but as worthy of care and respect and honor, cherished as manifestations of Spirit."
"Soulfully Gay" is a bi-weekly column that explores spirituality and religion from a gay man’s perspective. Joe Perez has studied comparative religion and philosophy at Harvard University and currently works as a writer in Seattle. Send feedback to joe@writingwolf.com. Visit Joe’s blog on spirituality at joe-perez.com/weblog.htm.
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