November 18, 2008

Rabbi Shmuley Has Something to Say Re: Teh Gay

You know Rabbi Shmuley Boteach — this year’s Oprah fave, who brings “Shalom in the Home” to married heterosexual couples on the brink of divorce.

In this op/ed, Rabbi Boteach takes a dim view of “atheists [who] make a financial killing by portraying religious people as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who swallow faith uncritically and send their money to charlatan televangelists who fly around in their gas-guzzling G5s” (well, of course he does; he’s “religious people”) — but then explains why religionists are portrayed as “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who swallow faith uncritically and send their money to charlatan televangelists who fly around in their gas-guzzling G5s”:

Gays as the new religious bogeymen

. . .

Indeed, great defenders of the faith would be forgiven if they were to conclude that in America, religion is losing its focus as well as its rational dimension.

Take the American religious obsession with homosexuals. Last week, This World: The Jewish Values Network, which I founded, hosted a debate between a leading evangelical scholar and myself on whether Judaism and Christianity are religions of peace. My opponent, a man of great learning and even greater decency, made it clear that in stating “Love your enemies,” Jesus included Osama bin Laden. Yet, when it came to gay men who want to get married, he seemed to concur that were this to happen the whole of American society would begin to unweave. Indeed, I have heard some of my evangelical brethren make it sound as if gays were a greater danger to America than terrorists.

I will not get into the arguments for and against gay marriage in this column. What I will say is that religion in America has made homosexuality into a false bogeyman, which has seriously distracted religion from giving real values to an increasingly valueless society. Is this really what religious values in America has come to, opposition to gay marriage?

What do you think would do more to save heterosexual marriage in America? Making sure gays can’t get hitched, or making marital counseling among heterosexual couples tax-deductible so that couples can afford the help they need? What should religion be devoting its energy to? Opposing gay marriage in California, or supporting an effective national campaign for school vouchers so that parents can afford to send their children to schools that teach religious values like male respect for women and the sanctity of a loving relationship?

Oh… G-d! You know how I feel about school vouchers: They’re the kudzu undermining the U.S. public school system, and just another excuse to force secular taxpayers like me to pay for the religious “education” of children who are then taught that people like me are the spawn of Satan. (And the good Rabbi doesn’t seem to understand that these “faith-based” vouchers fund the same teaching that “unconverted” Jews are going to roast in Hell right alongside us ‘mos — after the compulsory bloodbath, of course.)

Nevertheless…

I have devoted my entire life to saving marriage. I have counseled thousands of couples in crisis. I have authored 20 books on spirituality and relationships. Never once have I believed that by opposing homosexuality I was bringing a husband and wife closer together. Rather, by seeking to increase the desire between husband and wife and by fostering true emotional intimacy between them, I was working to ensure that fewer American children would end up like me, the product of a broken home. Homosexuality is nothing but a distraction.

America has serious social problems. Fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. Forty million married Americans are in platonic marriages. One out of three American women is on an anti-depressant. Innumerable men are deeply into pornography. Our teenagers have unacceptably high rates of sexuality and pregnancy. And yet, I cannot name a single religious initiative that appeared on a single ballot to combat any of these problems, save for Proposition 8 in California that sought to ban gay marriage.

Let’s be honest. Gays don’t have to kill off heterosexual marriage. We straight people have done a fine job already.

What religion suffers from, not just in our time but for all time, is its dualistic impulse. Simply stated, religion seems to need enemies. Many religious people thrive on an “us and them” mentality. The Godly and the godless. The righteous and the sinful. The forces of light battling the forces of darkness. …

The future of religion in America and abroad is one in which religion finds the good in others even as it maintains its standards and morals. Pastors may oppose gay marriage. But given the limited resources available to religion and the social rot that is all around us, can we not dedicate those resources to ends that unite and inspire instead of divide and alienate? …

An ancient Jewish legend says that when the whole world keeps just one Sabbath, the Messiah will come. For our time perhaps this means that when religion chooses to give the world something that unites rather than divides, redemption will finally come.

Rabbi Boteach’s take may not be your cup of tea (it’s certainly not mine), but (to mix metaphors) he slam-dunks a point I know that I, a happily religion-less agnostic, could never drive home with the same authority.

That is:

Couldn’t you (fanatical religionists) be doing something better with your time and money than attacking a made-up bogeyman who never posed any threat to you in the first place?

By the way: One thing that ups the Rabbi’s authority in my shamelessly heathen estimation is that he hits on something I keep repeating (but I think few people are grasping):

“Simply stated, religion seems to need enemies. Many religious people thrive on an ‘us and them’ mentality. The Godly and the godless. The righteous and the sinful. The forces of light battling the forces of darkness.”

And, to expand on that point: Today, it’s Teh Gays — tomorrow, it may be you.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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