[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[david buchanan]

Steve said:
While Rorty has responded to Stout's anti-essentialist critique of Rorty as opposing religion as _essentially_ a conversation stopper, he has fallen back into arguing something similar, that ecclesiastical organizations are _essentially_ disposed to fuel bigotry rather than to promote freedom and justice.


dmb says:

I don't know how Stout lays out his case but it seems to me that the essentialist charge against Rorty is actually broader than just saying religion is essentially this or that. As I understand it, it's not so much that Rorty thinks religion is a conversation stopper but the larger view of conversation in general. His critics will point out that there is something essentialist about saying that there is nothing outside the text, that it's text all the way down. His ideas about ethnocentrism and final vocabularies follow from this basic linguistic starting point. I talked to Hildebrand about this a little bit yesterday and he pointed out that this text-all-the-way-down point of view is so totalizing that it constitutes a metaphysics. According to such a critic Rorty holds an essentialist position but not just with respect to religion.




Steve said:
While Rorty is right that some people quoting Leviticus are homophobes who are merely "hiding sadistic grins behind sanctimonious masks," others are making a sincere effort to take the Bible seriously and to understand what the Bible teaches about homosexuality. ... Like anyone who we hope to convince of anything, we will have to meet them where they now stand and accept at least some of their premises for the sake of argument. But if we don't allow religious premises to ever be expressed, then we never get to challenge them.


dmb says:

As luck would have it, we are presently having a national conversation about religious freedom and the legal battles over gay marriage in California constitute a kind of public conversation too. It's interesting that one of the charges made by "ProtectMarriage" against the judge's ruling was that it depicted their supporters as a bunch of bigoted homophobes. In the case of the New York city mosque, the other day I highlighted the gap between the principle and the polls. On one hand there are the Obama quotes in which he says that religious freedom is essential to who we are and then there is the polling data that says nearly 70% of Americans oppose the plan. There was a similarly gap in an article about the court case in California.
The anti-gay marriage group ("ProtectMarriage", I think.) filed many pages of complaints against the judge and his decision. On top of their complaints about being slandered as homophobes, they also claimed that the judge simply ignored mountains of evidence. They claimed he was being wildly unreasonable about the evidence. The whole thrust of their complaints was directed at the judge's intellectual honesty and their language seemed to express genuine outrage. The article devoted several paragraphs to these complaints, quoting their spokesman and such. Then there was a paragraph devoted to the facts of the case. As it turns out, the winning side brought in nine expert witnesses that disproved all of the claims of the anti-gay group and the anti-gay group brought in two expert witnesses, and both of them ran into serious trouble in the process of testifying so that their credibility was undermined. 

More broadly speaking, it seems there is a very real communication break down between these two sides and this gap shows up in all kinds of debates. The ProtectMarriage people are shocked and outraged that they're being portrayed as homophobes and those who oppose the mosque project will also insist that they're in favor of religious freedom. There is a gap between their view and mine that makes me wonder if we're even living in the same reality. I mean, this gap is so stark that it sometimes freaks me out. It's not just that they have different beliefs, but I'm also amazed at the WAY they think. Why should there be a gap between a core American principle and the opinion of the vast majority of Americans? How can the anti-gay marriage group possibly be surprised if others think they are prejudiced against gays? 

Hey, did you hear they passed a new law in Arizona? Now it's a crime to fry beans more than once.


Sometimes I think I understand what this gap is about. My step-dad was a preacher and that means my momma was a preacher's wife. My dad is sorta old-school in a less bible-thumpy way, but still. I grew up resisting the religious right. It's not just something I see on TV, you know? But what you see playing out in all these issues is the Republican "southern strategy" and they've been doing throughout my entire lifetime. They pander to prejudice but in such a way that it makes the bigots feel that they are the victims of unAmerican or even demonic forces. They don't see themselves as perpetrators of prejudice. They see themselves as protectors of marriage, as protectors of hallowed ground, as protectors of the nation's boarder and cultural integrity. They see themselves as the good guys who are standing up for all that is right and good and true. But I also think they are standing up for social level values and some of the worst ones at that. I think all these particular real-life debates can be understood better with the MOQ's analysis than with Rorty's.


The good news is that such pandering rarely works within the legal system. If a case has no real evidence or intellectual merit, it can be laughed out of court. When Rush Limbaugh sued Al Franken for calling him a big, fat idiot, Limbaugh's case was quite literally laughed out of court.