Where is the moral movement to stop the religious right

Great Debates
1

Not to pick on the religious right but I feel bothered everytime I hear them talk about morality. To me, opposing the religious right is the moral thing to do (I realize that on this board opposing the religious takes almost as much moral courage as opposing George Bush but hear me out). Why isn’t there a legitimate message out there that opposing the religious right is a moral duty? I have never heard anyone in the mainstream come out and say ‘the moral thing to do is to stop the religious right’. Never. Maybe I’m just watching the wrong TV shows. I guess reruns of King of the Hill, Roseanne and the History channel are not a good place to get a view of modern culture.

The religious right is opposed to gay marriage. Homosexuals suffer from disproportionally high rates of suicide, depression and substance abuse.

http://www.soulforce.org/article/653

Researchers found these students were 3.41 times as likely to report a suicide attempt within the previous year as were heterosexual students
I’ve heard gays make up to 50% of all suicide attempts, even though they make up a tiny percent of the population.

So by banning gay marriage they are actually increasing the risk of suicide, alcoholism and depression in gays by making them feel even less wanted and desired by society at large. The moral thing to do is to make gays feel welcome so their rates of depression, suicide and substance abuse go down.

Another problem is condom usage. The religious right endorses abstinence, but they tend to promote it by telling people that ‘condoms don’t work’ or by opposing condoms in general. However when these people stop being abstinence they don’t use condoms as much. Plus getting in the way of condom usage is never a good idea, it puts people at risk of disease. Their opposition to things like needle exchange programs is the same. People are being put at unnecessary risk from these ideals.

The religious right is also generally in favor of low taxes, which equates into less money for education, healthcare and social security. They are also in my experience anti-welfare and more in favor of state and federal controls over what people can do and watch. They also come across as more intolerant for human failings (ie, they are more brutal on criminals).
So even though there is outrage against the religious right, I have never seen anyone claim a moral grounds to opposing them. I have seen a handful of liberal christians oppose them but never with the steam that the religious right has.

2

The Religious Right is like the crazy, rich, connected uncle in the Republican family. Sure, its embarrassing to have around but when you need to get something done, that money and influence are right there to serve you. Its really as simple as that for the Republicans. The leadership doesn’t want to start a counter movement top one of its most important sects.

Democrats - there is a group as fragmented as they come. Many of the subgroups want nothing to do with talk of morality or responsibility. There are some Democrats who do feel that way though. Senator Joe Lieberman (D. CT) comes to mind.

That leaves the independents. If you could come up with a strong movement like that for independents to flock to, then they wouldn’t really be independents anymore. They would be a third party and that hasn’t turned out so great as of late.

The basic answer to your question is that the usual suspects are already tied up with different things and aren’t available to start sending out that type of message.

3

I fully sympathise with Wesley Clark. However, I would rephrase the question to “How do we stop religious extremists misappropriating terms such as ‘morality’.”

Why the opposition don’t claim a ‘moral ground’? Well, you obviously will need to ask them, because I can’t answer on their behalf. But guesses include the idea that the decisions to be made are rational ones, in the situation in question, and that any moral concerns are in the eye of the beholder.

4

I liked the line the always used when the Moral Majority was high profile: They aren’t the majority, and they aren’t moral either.

What used to work, and should work again, is people who combat vague moral stands with humanistic or simply material stands. Doesn’t sound all that opposite, but maybe that’s why it works when it does. These groups have down to earth here and now objectives, like consumerism (Ralph Nader), protectionism (Ross Perot), or social issues like health care and retirement protections (unions).

5

I think part of the answer is the common perception that to oppose anyone with religious views is to oppose religion per se, and very few people in the public eye would be willing to do that.

So the only ones willing to take such a stand publicly would be marginalized and not taken seriously by the media, on a par with Madelyn Murray O’Hair or Ayn Rand.

That said, I agree with the desire expressed by the OP and GorillaMan. I wish someone like Jimmy Carter would lead this charge, someone with impeccable piety credentials. Or else a really gutsy atheist who can articulate the case for a rational morality.

6

Logically weak argument. The RR argument would be homosexual behavior leads to suicide because sin leads to suicide. Banning homosexual marriage hardly prohibits engaging in homosexuality. Gays can still have gay sex behind closed doors. And it could be that depression is a mental illness that the same root causes leads people to be gay. Correlation doesn’t prove causation.

7

That is a logicially weak argument itself though. Sin doesn’t lead to suicide, if it did then all of us who work on sunday or say ‘god dammit’ would have high suicide rates.

Banning homosexual marriage implies that there is something offensive about homosexuality. The mentally ill are allowed to marry, so are the physically handicapped. What do you think would happen to the psychological state of the mentally ill if people fought to keep them from marrying?

It is hard to say if the depression homosexuals face is due to social stigma or something biological about homosexuals as there are no cultures that I know of where homosexuality is totally and completely tolerated and accepted as normal as controls. However it is fairly easy to say that possessing a sexually related trait that many people find weird or disgusting would damage a person psychologically. I remember reading a book a while back that found blacks used to suffer from higher rates of psychological distress than whites in the rural south in the 1920s even when things like economics or family relationships were factored out. To assume that the social stigma of always being treated like a disgusting outsider has no role in mental health is extremely unrealistic. Any psychologist can tell you that having it implied that you are a weird, offensive outsider can damage a person’s mind. It has some role, but what role exactly? I don’t know.

8

It is indeed a logically weak argument. I merely offered it as an argument that also seems possible.

Have any good evidence in the historic past that the inability to marry caused them to be suicidal?

A lot of cultures have ignored homosexuality so long as the person didn’t flaunt it. It was just assumed if a person didn’t broadcast it, they were straight.

9

I agree with Roderick. It’s hard to take a stand against people who claim to be motivated by altruism. Anyone with opposing views must have a solid platform of moral reasoning to able to counter the perception of being the bad guy. The public loves to classify the two sides as Good Vs Evil and if they’re claiming good right fromthe start where does that leave you?.

Also, it’s hard to be heard when your side is trying to be rational while the other side is screaming it’s collective head off. And that’s the real problem. Gorillaman is right about religious extremists being the problem rather than religion per se. Many of the Extremists have a crusader mentality that lets them rationalize any action for the greater good. That same mentality often excludes any kind of open mind or willingness to grant different (therefore “wrong”) views any credence whatsoever.

10

I recall years ago reading a history of the various Russian spy services. Mentioned in passing. during discussion of the Soviets recruiting of westerners, was that they spent much effort in uncovering homosexuals, not because they could be blackmailed due to their homosexuality but because homosexuals have character traits that make them much more amenable to enlisting as spies. However their was no discussion of what these traits were, it was simply offered as a fact of life.

11

Wesley, have you honestly never heard of People for the American Way? It was founded by Norman Lear soon after the Moral Majority to be exactly what you want.

12

That would be because they were well trained in keeping very important stuff a secret, having a secret life and not spilling the beans to anybody, close family included. :wink:

13

:rolleyes:

14

The above factoid is the sort of thing on the reverse side that makes me dubious of claims banning gay marriage tends to make gays suicidal. “Look at what kind of bad people gays are. Gayness makes people Commies eager to sell out the US to Russian spymasters.” There may be no causation between being gay and a traitor just like there is no causation between attitudes about gays by straights and them being suicidal. It may just be because the Russians presumed gays would be much more amenable to enlisting as spies, they disproportionately tried to recruit gays as spies. If the US population is just 5% gay, yet the Russian spy recruitment efforts were targeted at gays mostly, then it wouldn’t surprise me 50% of all Russian spies were gay. This is only due to the Russians heavily targeting gay recruits.

15

I think, in answer to the OP, there is no movement against them because no one really takes them seriously… yet.
The real majority of Americans are (sorry to say) lazy when it comes to taking up a cause. If things aren’t threatening them on their doorsteps they are all too willing to go with the flow.
Now… if push comes to shove and the RR really attempt to force something down our throats, you may see some fast and furious resistance pop up out of nowhere.

16

Wrong. The OP was on the mark. The one area the RR has suceeded is their anti-homosexual agenda. IIRC last November in every state referenda, anti-gay marriage proposals passed by solid margins. Gays really do have reason the fear the RR.

It is more no group that is politically significant takes the RR seriously. Gays are already solidly Dem, and the Pubs don’t care if they piss off gays. Now if say the RR starts getting somewhere stopping legal abortions for financially well of women, THEN the Pubs will be in deep shit. Why Ronald Reagan played the RR like a harp from hell. While he sang their tune, he never really risked any political capital to deliver on their agenda.

17

Follow my deductive reasoning if you will:

Shame and feeling like an outcast leads to psychological problems.

Banning homosexual marriage (as opposed to letting say those in wheelchairs, those with physical disabilities or those who make under 30k a year) encourages feelings of shame and outcastness. What would it do to the mental health of all those who made under 30k a year or all of those in wheelchairs if the state decided they couldn’t marry?

Therefor banning homosexual marriage and promoting the idea that ‘God doesn’t want Gays to have equal social/legal rights’ leads to psychological problems as it promotes shame and feeling of being an outcast.

Tada

18

That is a hypothesis, not evidence to an argument. Has suicide by gays fallen, stayed the same, or increased in the last 100 years? If the latter, this points against gay marriage being illegal is a factor, as gays have never been allowed to marry.

Note that opposing gay marriage doesn’t mean one believes thinks ‘God doesn’t want Gays to have equal social/legal rights’. I’ve heard few people supporting keeping pot illegal argue doing so is “because the Bible tells me so.”

19

A bit about suicide and homosexuality:

Among adolescents, homosexual males are at about 10-15x the risk for a suicide attempt than heterosexual males. The high rate of suicide attempts also correlate with effeminacy, gender identity and social support. In other words, if you’re a manly-man homosexual, you’re at less risk than an easily identifed (and therefore easily harrassed) homosexual male. It’s pretty clear from this research that the origins of the attempts that suicidal behavior is not linked to homosexuality per se, but rather to the level of conformity of a young homosexual male to his straight peers (eg, be in the closet, fake having a girlfriend, etc).

BTW, adolescent females in general have a higher risk than heterosexual males, and but statistically significance difference between lesbians and straight female adolescents is smaller than gay men (in one study, there was a 20% risk for lesbians and a 14% risk for heterosexual female adolescents.)

So the biggest correlates for risk? Peer harrassment, family pressures, early onset of sexual behavior (you see this in depressed heterosexual females too) and a non-conforming gender identity.

So how would marriage play into this? It’s a very highly publicized issue, and the message in general is that same-sex partnerships are highly devalued in society in general, except in a few locations. However, it’s those few locations that could perhaps give queer kids hope that there are places where they are fully accepted. In fact, studies have indeed shown that long-term same-sex relationships are more stable in areas where homosexuality is accepted/tolerated than in areas where it is stigmatized.

Cites:

G Remafedi et al. The relationship between suicide risk and sexual orientation: results of a population-based study. American Journal of Public Health, Vol 88, Issue 1 57-60.

Gary Remafedi, MD, MPH. Sexual Orientation and Youth Suicide JAMA. 1999;282:1291-1292.

R Mackey et al. Gay and Lesbian Couples: Voices from Lasting Relationships. Praeger/Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997.

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20

Any of these papers online? Those stats look all kinds of dubious. In particular, they are about adolescents. Given the relatively late age amongst heteros in the US first getting married, it doesn’t seem at all odd if a teenager has never married. Now if a guy or gal makes it to age 30 w/o ever getting married, people WILL start wondering. However, a 19 year old that has never married just is normal.

Thus all a male or female adolescent who is gay has to do is find a gay of the opposite gender, and they both tell tales of making wild monkey love with each other. No problems with peer pressure.