I don’t know many people with that much respect for god, but I’m kinda friends with a lot of creeps. Lord knows I don’t, even though I really do give it a sincere go. That has little to do with my own personal theologies, of which I rarely speak because that shit is sorta corny. It’s just that I see no place for it in the political sphere. Nonetheless, if all I want is for everyone to get the hell off my back, I can’t be climbing aboard anybody else’s.
There’s this blog I actually like called the Evangelical Outpost (I KNOW, RITE?). The other day there was a post called “Tolerance,” which then reposted an article about some sweet and good humored elderly lady getting assaulted in what was supposed to be a peaceful vigil in protest of Prop 8. She was carrying a big styrofoam cross through the crowd (I picture this looking similar to a giant styrofoam finger, which RULES).
I’m not even going to indulge in a discussion about violence and suffering committed in the name of God being like, the sun around which we all revolve, because I think that is sort of dismissive of how it just isn’t right to try and knock the wig off of some lil’ old bitty, or any similar moment of atheistic crusade. Even easier is simply to point out that tolerance is at the heart of justice, and justice means leaving space for total autonomy of those around you. Which means if there are six dudes, all nude but for a pair of leather chaps, standing at the alter waiting to slip gilded cock rings on one another as a token of their resplendent commitment, even if it makes your saccharine, holy heart skip a beat, it still ain’t none of your business.
There’s a new book that just came out on Drucilla Cornell, the feminist legal theorist who has pounded my brain into shape in a way that no other thinker could even touch, and it begins with a nice summary of her vision of justice:
While Cornell has a radical feminist’s sensitivity as to the harms done to the feminine sexed identity by patriarchy (thought in Lacanian terms by Cornell) and by apparently neutral legal categories, she takes a very different path, which, drawing heavily upon the liberal tradition dating from Kant, places strict constraints on the law. She critiques any reliance on the law that suggests it can or should offer the gift of freedom. Her liberalism shines through as she argues the limits of law in making us ‘be good,’ by positively identifying community norms and legislating accordingly. For Cornell, the law is there to prevent harm being done, not to promote the good. It is the subtle differences in Cornell’s argument that make all the difference, however, between her liberal legalism and a more mainstream liberal legalism. For example, quoting Kant, Cornell argues, ‘No one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else.’ Cornell will replace it with the more precise ‘degrade.’ As long as we do not degrade the rights of others to pursue their definition of happiness, the law should not intervene.
Yup. That’s why the passage of prop 8 was totally gay (and why the prospect of revoking the tax exempt status for places of worship who refused to preform same-sex marriages is also pretty gay, however real or inflated that threat might have been).
Update: serves me right for reading a “physical assault” allegation in a right wing context as something that, like, you know, meant somebody was actually physically assaulted. Video footage of the “assault” is quite frankly not enough shades away from the bitch who carved the backwards b in her face for my heart to start breaking. It’s ugly and those who advocate civil rights through nonviolent means should demand better of themselves, but it would be just too much of an insult to align this with the experiences of those who have truly suffered for existing on the margins, ‘mos and holy rolers alike.
