Enough with the excuses. Get up and do something about our problems.
There are a lot of things going on in the world right now that can be upsetting. The situation at Standing Rock seems to be coming to a head. Many are concerned about choices being made as the new presidential administration begins to take place and some are still trying to prevent it from happening at all.
At the same time, an East Congo militia kills 30 from a rival tribe. Militants kidnap six Pakistanis working for a Polish oil firm. Daesh appears to have used ‘chemical gas’ against Syrian rebels. Then, there’s the increasingly complex and anxiety-ridden situation with Russia.
If that’s not enough for you, there are still the omnipresent issues of hunger, homelessness, poverty, education, debt, and access to healthcare. Those have been with us my entire life and show absolutely no sign of going away no matter who is President or what new programs Congress might trot out.
What might be most disturbing, however, are situations like this one reported by Reuters this morning:
Hateful letters sent anonymously to three mosques in California with a warning that President-elect Donald Trump would “cleanse” the United States of Muslims have stirred fears among congregants, a community leader said on Saturday.
Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the letters were identical and were postmarked as being sent from Santa Clarita just north of Los Angeles.
Ayloush said his group is considering asking the Federal Bureau of Investigation to look into the letters, which he believes were sent to other mosques aside from the three that received them earlier this week.
The increasing number of events such as this one is extremely worrisome. What frustrates me to no end, however, is when I look at the comments below every last one of these stories and see comments such as, “Only God can resolve this problem,” or “Our prayers are with them,” or “Trusting God to keep us safe.”
I get it, your belief system places control of the world in the hands of a deity who, allegedly, cares about the outcome of these events. I won’t argue that particular point at the current time. That’s your decision. However, what I will argue is that even if there is such a caring and attentive deity, he/she/it is not going to suddenly reach down from the heavens and reset the chessboard! The work of your God has always been carried out by those who trust him the most. So, if there’s trouble anywhere in the world, stop waiting on God to do something. If he exists, he’s waiting on you.
Putting Feet To The Fire
For those of you just now joining us, my late father was a Southern Baptist pastor for over 45 years. As a result, I still have several of his sermons deeply engrained in my memory. The issue of what he called “religious buck-shifting” frustrated him 40 years ago as much as it does me now. From his perspective, he would say the problem stemmed from an Old Testament verse found in Psalm 27, verse 14:
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.
The issue, he would say, is that we misunderstand the intent of the verse. God did not mean for his people to sit on their hands until he passed out specific instructions. Rather, he was instructing those who are anxious to not get ahead of themselves, to wait until there is a plan and not go off tackling one’s enemies half-cocked.
Poppa would then follow with the story of a small-town congregation that was woefully worried about a bar that had opened up on the edge of town. Especially concerned were the women of the church whose husbands, they feared, might start sneaking out of the house at night to go drinking at the bar. The women started praying that God would burn the bar to the ground. They prayed, and prayed, and prayed, but nothing ever happened. Making matters worse, the women began to see their fears materialize as more men would find an excuse to slip out and have a drink. The women were terribly worried about the problem.
After a while, an older woman moved to the small town and joined the church. The other women immediately welcomed her and implored her to join them in praying that God would burn the bar to the ground. The older woman agreed that this was a most dire situation and promised that she would begin praying that very day.
That night, the bar burned to the ground.
The women in the church were astonished. “How did that happen?” they asked the older woman. “How is it that we’ve been praying for months that God would burn down that bar and nothing happened. You come along and on the first day, you prayed the bar actually burns to the ground! How come God listens to you and not all of us?”
The older woman answered, “It’s really rather easy. You see, I prayed that God would burn down that bar. Then, I got up off my knees and put feet to my prayer.”
Therein lies the problem. Too many of us expect God, or the government, or some other mysterious entity to do the very thing we should be doing. If we want the problems of society to go away, then we have to realize that we are society, we are government, and we are the hands of our deities. For anything to actually get done, we have to be the ones to do it.
Behaving Like An Atheist
While the issues we see are contemporary in nature, the problem of dealing with such social issues is neither new nor limited to Christians. There is a Jewish text, not scripture, mind you, but a book published by Martin Buber in 1947 called, Tales of the Hasidim. The book is an attempt to capture some of the oral history and folklore of the Hasidim, an orthodox sect that began in the third and second centuries. Specifically, the books focus on the teaching of a Ukranian rabbi, Baal Shem Tov, considered to be the founder of “modern” Hasidic Judaism. From that oral history comes this story:
The Master teaches the student that God created everything in the world to be appreciated, since everything is here to teach us a lesson.
One clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did God create them?”
The Master responds “God created atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that god commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality. And look at the kindness he can bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right.”
“This means,” the Master continued “that when someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say ‘I pray that God will help you.’ Instead for the moment, you should become an atheist, imagine that there is no God who can help, and say ‘I will help you.’”
Now, let’s give this a little perspective. This story is, at the very least, as old as the early 18th century, perhaps older. Social media had yet to be invented. For that matter, electricity was an unknown quantity at that point in time. However, even then, they still had a problem with people of faith, particularly, expecting their God to solve problems that were right in front of them and within their ability to address. As humans, we’ve been getting this wrong for a very long time.
What’s interesting about the story is that the rabbi’s reference to an atheist solving the problem is spot on. In general, those who profess no faith in a deity, or are at least agnostic on the subject, are more likely to give to charities, volunteer their time to community efforts and to respond with acts of compassion. Don’t take my word for it when there’s research to demonstrate the difference.
Robb Willer, University of California, Berkeley social psychologist, along with Laura R. Saslow, of the Osher Center at the University of California, San Francisco, published research in the journal, Social Psychological & Personality Science showing that compassion predicts generosity more among “less religious” people.
Three studies tested the hypothesis that, with fewer religious expectations of prosociality, less religious individuals’ levels of compassion will play a larger role in their prosocial tendencies. In Study 1, religiosity moderated the relationship between trait compassion and prosocial behavior such that compassion was more critical to the generosity of less religious people. In Study 2, a compassion induction increased generosity among less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals. In Study 3, state feelings of compassion predicted increased generosity across a variety of economic tasks for less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals. These results suggest that the prosociality of less religious individuals is driven to a greater extent by levels of compassion than is the prosociality of the more religious.
Stop and think about what this means. Flip it to another perspective and one can easily make the argument that one’s religion or belief system might actually be standing in the way of one doing any good or acting on their compassion. Again, if one is waiting on their deity to solve all the problems, they’re less likely to do anything themselves.
Zeroing In On The Problem
Religion has been a hot point in political conversations this year. The misinformation that we are or were ever a Christian nation has not only raged strong but has been the basis for an incredible amount of hate both before and after the election. While only a few might exhibit their hate in a public manner, be sure that there is hate sitting in the pews of every church gathering together this Sunday. Not everyone in the church hates, of course. Not even a majority. Still, the hate is there and everyone is expecting God to be the one to do something about it.
Take the letters sent to the mosques as an example. The person who wrote those letters is almost certainly sitting in a church somewhere this morning. They could even be teaching a Sunday School class. Their friends and neighbors may look at them as “fine Christians.” Yet, that hate still lurks. Fueled by a belief system that leads them to mistakenly think that God has given them permission to annihilate “those who serve false gods,” the president-elect’s rhetoric against Muslim people has emboldened them to bring their hate public.
Mind you, that hate has always been there. I saw it when I was little. The first time a black person attended one of our services, there were those among the church leadership who wanted her escorted out the door and off the property. As a teenager, I saw that hate directed toward a music director whose mannerisms led some to attempt to “out” the young man as gay and force him from the church. As a young adult, I saw that hate as those of a more moderate belief system, specifically those encouraged a cooperative attitude in working with Muslims and Jews in the community, were driven from the denomination in which I grew up, ruining the lives of pastors and others with false stories alleging heresy.
That hate is still there, right now, in churches all across this country. Fortunately, I’m not the only one who believes the hate has to end and that we can’t wait on someone’s deity to take specific action.
John Pavlovitz, a pastor at North Raliegh Community Church in North Carolina, is someone whose stance against hate within the church is one I’m quickly coming to admire. In a post on his website earlier this month, he made the following statement:
At times like these, Christians like to smile sweetly and say, “God is in control.”
No. God is not in control.
God didn’t vote for Donald Trump, you did.
Stop passing the buck to God.
God isn’t defacing prayer rooms.
God isn’t taunting gay teenagers.
God is not bullying kids on buses.
God isn’t threatening Muslim families.
White Christians are.
You are in control of this. You have pulpits and pews and a voice and influence and social media, so get to work.
In the same piece, he also instructs:
Your pastors need to speak clearly and explicitly into this, now.
Your church websites and social media pages need to address this harassment and bullying and terrorizing, now.
You need to talk to your white children and teach them how not [to] be horrible to other kids, and how to stand up to those who are being horrible, now.
You need to talk to your kid’s coaches and to your midweek Bible Study and to your co-workers and your church staff and your gun club—and you need to call this poison out, now.
White churches, this Sunday, your only sermon should be the one that reminds your white members what the parable of the Good Samaritan was compelling followers of Jesus to be: radically merciful when everyone else looked the other way.
You need to reach out to your neighbors and coworkers and classmates and social media friends who are part of marginalized communities and reassure them, listen to them, care for them, be Jesus to them.
Of course, those words don’t only belong to Christians, they can be said of anywhere there is any measure of hate. YOU have to fix this. YOU are the one who has to address the issues of hate that are growing by leaps and bounds across our country. YOU have to be the one who instructs your children how to respond to people who are different from them. Whether you believe in a deity or not, YOU are responsible for challenging the hate in our society.
It is up to us, you and I to speak out when we see hate, no matter where we see hate. There was a story earlier this week, whose link I can no longer find, of people coming to the rescue of a woman who was being berated in a store for wearing her hijab. There have been other similar incidents in the past two weeks where good people, kind people, people of reason and people of faith, have stepped up to fight against the hate. This is what we all need to be doing.
Of one thing I am sure: the skies are not going to suddenly open up with a great, thunderous voice like that or Morgan Freeman and give us instruction to love each other. All the relative deities have already done that through their respective books. That we are to love each other is a universal message through all the world’s dominant religions. The problem comes, across all religions, that we just don’t like to listen to the teachings of our deities.
Again, pastor Pavlovitz stated in a message earlier this week:
At some point silence becomes something else.
It becomes negligence.
It becomes compliance.
It becomes blessing.
It becomes participation.
And at times like this, it becomes fully sinful.
We can disagree on many things. We can disagree about sex and sexuality. We can disagree about marijuana. We can disagree about whether my pictures are appropriate for this message. What we must agree on is that hate has no place in our society. None. Our responsibility is to respond to each and every instance of hate that we see, defuse it if we can, and hold the person(s) accountable for their actions. We might not be able to do anything about the hate in someone’s heart, but we can do something about the hate that spills out into the public.
Don’t be silent. Don’t wait on God. Get your ass up, put feet to your prayers, and do something. Now.
Belief Systems That Need Challenging
Belief systems are personal constructions and some are just wrong
Take a careful look at the two pictures at the top of this page. What do you think you are seeing? How do they make you feel? What do you think they communicate?
The two photographs are part of a set we shot for a now L.A.-based designer and local jewelry designer. It’s the accessories that likely get your attention in these photos. While the designer originally intended the cuffs and collars to be worn by the same person, she decided on set that it might be interesting to give each model an element, essentially linking them together. Her intention was to emphasize how we are all linked together, connected across numerous chains without realizing it. No one on set at the time objected, so we went with it.
However, once we first showed the photos back in 2012, opinions changed. While the designer’s point of view is still credible, once one superimposes their own belief system and personal history, they tend to see something different, something not very positive. Are we connected or are we enslaved? Sometimes the difference is difficult to distinguish. The set was dropped from any additional publication. This is the only place you are likely to ever see the photos.
Belief systems alter how we see the world. They influence everything from how we view art to how we view each other. Our opinions regarding what we eat, what we read, what is acceptable entertainment, and sometimes who should be allowed to even exist are all matters determined by our belief system.
A current theme running through social media is that we should neither judge nor shame people for what they believe. I disagree. We should not judge or shame people for who they are, but belief systems definitely need to be challenged, especially when those belief systems are based on inaccuracies and ignorance. Let me give you five good examples.
Science Denial
So, have you been paying attention to the weather lately? How ’bout those fires that consumed Gatlinburg, Tennessee and a large portion of the Smokey Mountains? Did you see that? What caused that? Long-term drought, ladies and gentlemen. Regardless of how the fire actually started, the fact that it spread is directly because the land was so incredibly dry that forests burned hotter and faster than was anticipated. Firefighters couldn’t move fast enough to get in front of the fire.
Or how about those tornadoes in Alabama and Tennessee this week? Folks in the South are having a rough time of it. Yet those, too, are the result of changes in global climate patterns. Taking a look at the current statement made by the U.S. Drought Monitor regarding Southern states sounds horrifying:
Severe drought impacts continued to mount in this region and included parched soils, record to near-record low stream flows, and drying stock ponds. Impacts from southern Alabama, as submitted to the Drought Impacts Reporter, include shrinking aquifers, dried-up stock ponds, failed crops, and stressed feed for stock. In Lowndes County, Alabama, ranchers have been feeding hay reserved for winter since early September, and, except in a few places, pastures were absolutely bare. Soybean growers statewide have reported that soybean pods were shattering. Soybean pod shattering occurs as a result of hot and windy conditions and low humidity combining to dry the pod walls until they become brittle and break. As of mid-November, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs’ Office of Water Resources had declared most of the state in emergency drought status.
Oh, but climate isn’t the only place we’re not too excited about science. NPR is reporting that “Americans Don’t Trust Scientists’ Take On Food Issues.” The article is based on a just-released paper from the Pew Research Center. Among the details are nauseating tidbits such as:
39 percent of the survey participants believe that genetically modified foods are worse for your health than non-GM food. However, there’s essentially no scientific evidence to support that belief — a conclusion confirmed most recently by a National Academy of Sciences report.
And this:
Americans believe that there’s no scientific consensus on GMOs. Just over 50 percent of respondents believe that “about half or fewer” of scientists agree that GM foods are safe to eat. Only 14 percent’s beliefs match the reality — that “almost all” scientists agree that GM foods are safe to eat.
Then this:
Americans feel that research findings are influenced in equal measure by the following factors: the best available scientific evidence; desire to help their industries; and desire to advance their careers. In the view of the public, all of those factors are more important to scientists than concern for the public interest.
A distrust of science is a particularly dangerous thing because it leaves us open to myth, conjecture, and the overwhelming amount of false news permeating the Internet. The American public displays a particularly high ignorance regarding even the basic matters of science, such as the term “theory” and the stratification of “hypothesis.” Without even a basic understanding of science and a complete dismissal of its findings, we are left open to consequences we won’t see coming. The fires and tornadoes are just a start. The planet has no problems eliminating humans in order to reclaim itself.
Those who deny science on any level need to be challenged every time they open their mouths. There is no acceptable level of ignorance. Science is not only predictive, it also has the ability to provide remedies if we’ll just pay attention. The future of the entire human race depends on using whatever means necessary, whether through shaming or complete public humiliation or academic discretization of those who encourage the denial of science. Allowing such ignorance to grow dooms us all.
Anti-intellectualism
I was deeply disturbed when I saw a news story out of Virginia yesterday. Accomack County Public Schools have, at least temporarily, pulled To Kill A Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn from its shelves after one mother complained about the use of racial slurs in the books. The mother told the school board that her biracial son, who is in high school, “struggled” with getting through a page containing a racial slur.
Even more disturbing, however, might be the quote in the news story from a different mother of a 10-year-old: “It’s not right to put that in a book, let alone read that to a child,” she said.
Apparently, some of the folks in Virginia have forgotten the very purpose of literature. But then, such sentiments are not unusual anywhere across the United States. The American Library Association’s ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) compiles lists of challenged books as reported in the media and submitted by librarians and teachers across the country. Their most recent list from 2015 (because, in case you hadn’t noticed, 2016 isn’t over yet) includes the following books:
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group
Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”)
Reasons: inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group
Reasons: anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”)
Reasons: offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”)
Reasons: religious viewpoint
Reasons: violence and other (“graphic images”)
Reasons: nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group
Reasons: religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence
Reasons: homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”)
Find some of those titles surprising, do you? Would any of those books challenge your personal belief system? I really like what the ALA’s website has to say about banning books:
A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. As such, they are a threat to freedom of speech and choice.
“A threat to freedom of speech and choice.” Those words should send a chill down your spine. Book challenging and banning is one of the most visible and most emotional methods of anti-intellectualism, but it certainly isn’t the only one. Even worse, the problem is growing.
We’ve been hearing about the “dumbing down of America” for years. The truth is that there has always been a certain amount of anti-intellectualism throughout the United States since its founding. Not all the founding fathers believed that everyone deserved an education, or needed to know how to read and write. What’s disturbing is how that this belief system has spread and might even be considered at least partially responsible for the surprising outcome of this year’s presidential election. Smart people scare those who are ignorant.
Psychology Today has taken on the topic of increasing anti-intellectualism rather frequently. In looking back over an article from 2015, by David Niose, I was struck by this particular paragraph:
In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” where the chairman of a Senate environmental panel brought a snowball into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president, it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value. Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.
I cannot disagree with Mr. Niose. The increase in our national inability to reason is terrifying. What makes it difficult to stop this line of thinking, however, is that it is impossible to reason with an unreasonable person. For those who are willfully ignorant, especially, there is no argument that can permeate that thick helmet of absolute wrongness. When that anti-intellectualism is even further entrenched by eccentric religious beliefs, it is even more dangerous and more difficult to fight.
Yet, fight we must. We cannot let gross and rampant anti-intellectualism go unchecked. I don’t care if it is a part of someone’s core belief system, it is still wrong. That’s correct, I have no problem stating that anti-intellectualism is wrong. We have to challenge those mindsets and use whatever methods are necessary to push it back into some form of social submission. Ignorance has no place in the public discourse.
Issac Asminov rather famously said:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
We have erroneously allowed anti-intellectualism to grow throughout American in the name of some manner of freedom to be stupid. No, you do not have a freedom to be stupid. Ignorance puts everyone in danger and is a threat to our way of life. I can think of no circumstance in which ignorance is to be tolerated. I can think of no circumstance in which ignorance should be protected. We should fight it at every juncture with all our might. While we certainly won’t see its end, we must see its diminishment.
Racism
How many of you just scrolled quickly to get the above image off your screen? I wish I could know what was your motivation. Why are people offended by this picture? Is it the nudity, the fact that both models are female, or the most obvious element that one is black and the other isn’t? Chances are, for far too many Americans, it’s the latter.
Racism in America has, like anti-intellectualism, been a part of the American reality since its inception. The very first Europeans to set foot on think continent enjoyed slaughtering indigenous people so much that after each such event they would have a feast and call it Thanksgiving. That’s just how incredibly deep racism flows through the American culture. As a belief system, racism has frequently been a core issue, backed up by religion, reinforced through oppression. America’s racist history is shameful and something of which we’ve yet to repent.
What is most bothersome, however, is the degree to which those who are most ardently racists have taken the election of a new president as reason to glory in their racism and demonstrate such deplorable ideology in a public manner. NBC News made public research from the Southern Poverty Law Center this week showing over 900 incidents of hate, most of which have involved racism or sexuality, since the November election. Specifically, “900 separate incidents of bias and violence against immigrants, Latinos, African-Americans, women, LGBT people, Muslims and Jews in the ten days after Trump captured the White House.”
Can we possibly make this any worse? Yes, yes we can. Most of those incidents occurred in schools. Quoting now from the NBC News article:
In a related SPLC online survey of 10,000 teachers and school officials, eighty percent of the respondents reported a “negative impact on students’ mood and behavior following the election,” and eight in ten said they detected “heightened anxiety on the part of marginalized students, including immigrants, Muslims, African Americans and LGBT students.”
Bigotry takes a lot of forms, and every one of them is deplorable. However, the worst of them all is racism and the speed at which racist events have accelerated should make everyone of a more reasonable mind a bit nervous. Just in case you haven’t seen any of the nastiness that’s been caught on camera, here’s a sample from earlier this week:
The young black woman toward whom this particular rant was directed has received a tremendous amount of support after the incident, but the fact remains that the incident shouldn’t have happened at all! Nothing like this should ever happen.
Hold on, there’s more. This isn’t the only recent incident. Consider some of the following headlines that have cropped up recently:
Here’s the thing: we know that racism is a problem, yet we continue to tolerate it from people we know. How often have I heard someone excuse the racist behavior of another by saying, “Well, they have a right to their opinion.” No! Racism is not an opinion! Whether or not you want fries with that is an opinion. Which color you should paint your living room wall is an opinion. You do NOT get an opinion about the color of someone else’s skin!
There is no such thing as a racial supremacy in any direction because, guess what, race is just something we made up to divide ourselves. We have known at least since 1998 that, from a genetic standpoint, there is no such thing as race within the human species. The pigmentation of one’s skin is wholly irrelevant as to one’s humanity.
Furthermore, as genetic research continues, there is increasing evidence that a considerable number of people who think of themselves as white actually have at least one black ancestor in their family tree. So much for the concept of racial purity.
Anyone who has racism as part of their belief system needs to be confronted, shamed, and socially outcast at every opportunity. This increasing trend is not something we can tolerate a second longer. We must address racism aggressively before we end up in yet another pointless domestic war.
Sexuality
Why the hell did I choose this specific picture? Because I have a challenge for you: Guess the gender of the two persons standing with their back to the camera. My guess is you’ll look at body curves and general physiology and try to make a guess. One male, one female? Both male? Both female?
Here’s the answer: it doesn’t matter.
Discrimination based on gender and sexuality is a belief system that is more than 6,000 years old. We see it in all the Abrahamic religions and the societies built on those traditions. Therefore, the belief system is deeply entrenched not only in those religions but through the societies around them. No matter how deeply entrenched those beliefs may be, however, they need to be challenged. Women are not property. Homosexuality is not wrong. Gender is more than physiology.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation didn’t begin investigating crimes based on gender identity until 2013. When they did, they listed crimes against a person because of “sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity” as hate crimes. Hate itself, the FBI insists, is not a crime. How one behaves in response to that hate, however, can be. So, with the FBI on the case, incidents of sexual-based crimes has gone down, right?
Uhm, no.
2016 has seen some of the most alarming incidents of hate specifically against the LGBT community. Most notable was the shooting at an Orlando gay club that left 41 dead. However, as the New York Times reports, even before that event, people within the LGBT community were more likely to be the victims of hate crimes. As incredible as it may seem, LGBT people are twice as likely to be the victims of hate crimes than are black people. The number of incidents has risen so dramatically that hate against the LGBT community now outpaces hate against Jews, which has historically taken the top spot for hate crimes.
Oh, but it gets worse. Numerous sources have ran with the story this week that the president-elect has pledged to sign the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA). The bill was first introduced in 2015 but languished in the House of Representatives knowing that there was no way it could ever receive a presidential signature nor override a veto. However, given vice-president-elect Mike Pence’s history with anti-LGBT legislation here in Indiana, and given the president-elect’s campaign rhetoric, supporters of the legislation feel certain that they can now get the bill through Congress.
We simply cannot let this kind of thinking continue. More than just an anti-LGBT law, such legislation further codifies hate into the American system, hate that inevitably spreads from the LGBT community on to any other group that finds itself out of favor with ignorant society.
Here again, we are dealing with belief systems that are based almost wholly on a religion-facilitated ignorance. When one speaks up against the hate and bigotry and discrimination, one is quickly told that their Bible or Quran or the Talmud prohibits such relationships. Yet, there are plenty of well-studied religious scholars who disagree. The portion of scripture that spans all three of the major Abrahamic religions, placed in the Christian Bible as Genisis chapter 27, has been widely misinterpreted to be preaching against homosexuality. Many preachers stand and fume against the “sin of Sodom,” but analysis reveals that Sodom’s sin had absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality! Consider (from the linked article):
The classic instance of this is in Ezekiel 16:49-50 which castigates the people of Jerusalem:
“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
Another, Isaiah chapter 1, also enumerates the sins of Jerusalem, whom he addresses directly as Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 10):
Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom!
Listen to the teaching of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
Verse 17 implies what those sins are, by stating what the people should be doing:
… learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.
Not a word about homosexuality. As in Ezekiel, the sin is the abuse of the vulnerable.
Furthermore, not only did the alleged Christ or Prophet not address the matter, apologetics attempts to excuse that fact with, “you weren’t there so you don’t’ know for sure,” is as weak as some of the same apologeticisms’ denial of evolution.
Gender and sexual discrimination and hate as a belief system have to be confronted. Those clinging desperately to those beliefs need to have those beliefs condemned in very harsh terms because they are wrong and endanger the lives of others. There is no level of tolerance for such ignorance and hate. Shame on anyone who still holds to such antiquated beliefs.
Bullying
At this point, nearly 3,500 words into this missive, one might wonder exactly how bullying factors into the whole concept of challenging belief systems. The answer is that many beliefs, attitudes, and actions that we see demonstrated through society, regardless of their names, are nothing more than pure brutish bullying. Any attempt at intimidation in order to force the will of one onto the actions and behaviors of another is bullying, plain and simple. We see far too much of it, but perhaps it is difficult for you to recognize some issues as a matter of bullying. So, let me give you a few examples.
Abortion. Actually, this has very little to do with saving the life of a fetus and more to do with men, through their power in government, bullying women. Do men really care what women do with their bodies? No, not really. What men, in general with notable exceptions, care about is control. They like being bullies.
Unsurprisingly, we see this form of bullying in the results of this year’s presidential election. The president-elect has made it perfectly clear that he intends to use new legislation and judicial appointments in an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade. The president-elect’s choice for Health and Human Service secretary supports defunding Planned Parenthood, which would not reduce abortions but would significantly affect the healthcare of millions of women. Both are classic examples of bullying.
Or how about the president-elect’s threat to deport immigrants? Not only is the threat illogical and impractical, it is another case of bullying, using fear and intimidation against a specific group of people. While some are standing up and saying they will defy the president-elect’s orders, he has still been able to create an atmosphere of fear among the immigrant community at a time when the world needs us to be accepting more immigrants, not fewer.
That whole deal about a wall along the Mexican border? Bullying.
Wage discrimination? Bullying.
Threats against companies moving outside the US? More bullying.
In fact, there is a lot of what we see in this white-male dominated society that is nothing more than well-entrenched bullying. We’ve been doing it for so very long that we’ve come to expect it and think that it’s just the way things are done.
No, we refuse to accept that line of thinking. Bullying, no matter the form it takes or who is the target, is wrong. Forcing someone else to act upon your belief system rather than their own, is wrong. No matter how much power one thinks they have, resorting to intimidation factors and fear is always wrong. You do not have the right to be mean. You do not have the right to push others around.
What is most upsetting about these bullying tactics is that the bullies always think they’re in the right. The reason we’ve seen such a dramatic rise in the number of hate incidents across the US is because those who voted for the president-elect mistakenly believe that his election provides justification to their warped and improper belief systems. Since bullying is an underlying principle of their belief systems, they have joyously exercised that belief in some of the most frightening ways we’ve seen since the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
Bullying is not just a crime against a given set of people, it is a crime against all humanity and it is not limited to those in the US. A young woman in Riyadh posted a picture to social media of her standing outside, in public, without her hijab. The response was calls for her execution.
The world has no choice but to confront such belief systems. We must take a stand against the bullying. We must fight against the implementation of legislation that codifies bullying. If there’s one thing of which I’m certain it is the fact that standing up to a bully almost always causes them to back down. Now is the time we need to make that stand.
Belief systems are not infallible. Even well-considered and carefully thought out belief systems need to be challenged in some form or fashion. Those elements that are necessary and true will hold. Those that are false and unjustified we have to change. Unfortunately, not everyone sees that. So, where we see belief systems that exercise hate, where we see belief systems that put others in danger, where we see belief systems that spread ignorance and lies, we must challenge them. We need not always be aggressive. We need not always be forceful. But we must always challenge.
To be silent is the greatest mistake one can ever make.
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