It’s On Us

Early last Sunday morning, a Muslim walked into a gay bar and murdered 49 people because the Christian and Jewish bibles commanded him to do so.

That’s not necessarily how the incident has been reported, but that doesn’t make it any less true.  As any half-literate scholar of the Old Testament knows, the book of Leviticus contains the following injunction:  “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.  They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

In other words, according to the Old Testament—which, rumor has it, is the literal word of God—wherever active homosexuality exists, it is the duty of society to snuff it out.  As we know, the Old Testament constitutes the entirety of God’s revelation to Jews, one-half of the same to Christians, and is substantially the basis for the sacred text of Islam.

Accordingly, whenever an individual takes it upon himself to murder gay people because of their sexuality, he is only following orders from the one guy you’re not allowed to disobey.  In so doing, he is guilty merely of taking the Bible literally—as an enormous chunk of Jews, Christians and Muslims are clearly instructed to do, particularly with regards to prohibitions on certain personal behavior.  To this day, virtually every preacher on Earth intones that homosexuality is inherently a sin—and not for any greater reason than “the Bible says so”—and who’s going to argue with the infallible wisdom of God himself?

The man who massacred 49 men and women at a gay nightclub in Orlando certainly didn’t.  Like so many insecure young men before him, he became consumed with hatred for the gay community—inflamed, it has been suggested, by his own suppressed homosexuality—which he then justified and acted upon through the language of religious fundamentalism—language that (to repeat ourselves) is readily available for anyone to use without changing a single word.

In this respect, congressional Republicans are absolutely right that the shooting at Pulse was a function of religious extremism.  The big mystery, however, is why anyone would single out Islam at the expense of all other religions.  While the Quran undoubtedly looks upon homosexuality with contempt, it has merely borrowed ideas originally conceived by Christians and Jews.  As far as prescribed treatment of gay people is concerned, to condemn one monotheism is to condemn them all.

So why are we pretending that one religion is more guilty than the others on this subject?

Politically, the reason Christianity and Judaism are getting a free pass is so obvious we need hardly mention it.  For both demographic and cultural reasons, a U.S. public official cannot say an unkind word about either faith any more than he can boycott the NFL or burn an American flag.  For all the talk about the separation of church and state, we still regard ourselves as a faith-based people guided by so-called “Judeo-Christian values.”

On the whole, Americans view religion—at least their own—as a force for good in society, which becomes problematic when the very dictates of said religion produce unconscionable evil.  Since we cannot bear to think of ourselves as complicit in such behavior as we saw last weekend, we simply deflect blame onto some foreign entity that we can happily (and ludicrously) profess not to understand nor know nothing about.  Hence the scapegoating of Islam for a disease—homophobia—that is still so prevalent in the country at large that most Republican congressmen can’t even bring themselves to speak its name in public.

The truth is that Jews and Christians who continue to stigmatize gay people are complicit when others take the logic of their arguments to their natural conclusion through acts of extreme violence.  While we non-Muslims comfort ourselves by insisting that our religious figureheads, however anti-gay, do not literally call for homosexuals to be executed—it does, after all, conflict with that business about “thou stalt not kill”—occasionally some self-appointed Christian spokesman will do exactly that, and sometimes major Republican presidential candidates will speak at that person’s conferences, thereby tacitly endorsing such views as legitimate.

So long as a large minority of Americans—enabled by their leaders—continues to treat homosexuals as perpetrators of social unrest, rather than as victims thereof, we cannot guarantee that crazy people won’t continue to go on killing sprees to eradicate what they have been told is an existential threat to civilization.

To be sure, we cannot guarantee such a thing in any event.  Not all hatreds are borne from religion, and homophobia in some people is as ineradicable as racism or antisemitism are in others.  Plus—despite what virtually every professional and amateur opinionator has said—we do not know for sure where the Orlando killer got his own hateful ideas (not that we don’t have plenty of material from which to speculate).

Here’s what we do know for sure:  Human beings do not exist in vacuums.  While each of us is ultimately responsible for what we think and how we behave, our thoughts and actions are the product of our environment—the people and places that shape us during our adolescence, as well as those with which we choose to associate once we are old enough to chart our own course.  Just as America’s closet racists have been empowered into action through the rise of Donald Trump, so do closet homophobes find refuge in the rhetoric of anti-gay demagogues who may well not understand the carnage they are allowing to be inflicted on their watch.

As a society, our choice is as follows:  Either we foster an environment in which gay people—and particularly gay relationships—are so thoroughly integrated into mainstream society that even a lunatic will be unable to find a reason to harm them, or we keep our heads in the sand by pretending violence against the gay community is not America’s problem and being shocked—shocked!—whenever a natural-born American citizen proves our assumption wrong.

It may not be in our power to prevent all future atrocities against vulnerable citizens from happening.  What is in our power is to effect a society that—as George Washington famously wrote in 1790—“gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

In the meantime, a bit of gun control probably wouldn’t hurt.

Bigotry By Any Other Name

Is homophobia a choice, or are people just born that way?

Amongst all the silliness and bombast at the most recent Republican primary debate, there was the following statement from Ben Carson, who was asked to clarify his position on same-sex marriage:

“I believe that the Constitution protects everybody, regardless of their sexual orientation or any other aspect.  I also believe that marriage is between one man and one woman.  There is no reason that you can’t be perfectly fair to the gay community.  They shouldn’t automatically assume that because you believe that marriage is between one man and one woman that you are a homophobe.”

In a strong field, that might rank as the most incoherent thing that any candidate has said about any issue.  It would be easy enough to ignore or dismiss it—most media outlets have done just that—except that a) it came from the highest-polling candidate in the race (more or less), and b) it forces us to confront the issues of marriage and homophobia in a manner that is just too interesting to pass up.

Getting right to the point, then:  Is it possible to oppose same-sex marriage without being homophobic?  Can you believe that gay people are morally and legally equal to straight people while also believing that only the latter are entitled to marriage?

I’ll be honest:  I do not find these to be difficult questions.

No, you cannot oppose gay marriage—or any other gay right—without the disease of homophobia coursing through your veins.  Thinking that gays are beneath the institution of marriage is precisely to think that heterosexuals are a superior human species—a view otherwise known as homophobia.

“Defending” traditional marriage is homophobic by definition.  You can’t have one without the other.  To say that these two people can receive a marriage license but those two people cannot is axiomatically to think that the former are more deserving of the American dream than the latter.

Hence the absurdity of Carson’s statement.  He wants to have it both ways, but how could this be?  If you believe—as Carson apparently does—that gay people are entitled to equal protection under the law, how could that protection not include the right to get married?

Officially, marriage is nothing more than a legal contract between two consenting adults.  It’s a secular institution whose broader meaning is determined by those who enter into it.  Conservatives can bang on and on about what marriage is “for”—commitment, sacrifice, procreation, serving God—but the truth is that marriage is whatever each individual couple makes of it.  It is neither possible nor desirable for the government to make those decisions for them.

If you truly thought that all men and women are created equal, then the notion of withholding marriage from gay people wouldn’t even occur to you—just as prohibiting marriage between interracial couples wouldn’t make sense to anyone who believes in equality of black and white.

The reality is that most Americans are adept at holding utterly contradictory views in their heads, and most of the time they don’t even realize they’re doing it.  This has been true since the founding of the republic (see:  Jefferson and slavery) and we can expect it to continue until long after we’re all dead.

The far more interesting trend—and a welcome one at that—is the degree to which homophobia itself has fallen out of fashion.

Even as the country remains fairly divided on same-sex marriage—the current split is 60 percent in favor, 37 percent opposed—very few people today are comfortable with being viewed as anti-gay.  Even as they espouse policies that are obviously and deliberately discriminatory toward gay folks, they are very careful to launch into a “some of my best friends are gay” routine, insisting that their opposition to gay rights should not be construed as opposition to gay people.

It’s a ridiculous and hypocritical stance—an insult to the intelligence of anyone who made it through kindergarten—but it’s also indicative of how thoroughly gay people have been integrated into polite society.

Remember:  It was as recently as the 1980s that gay people were so marginalized by their leaders that, when Ronald Reagan’s press secretary was asked if the administration was aware of a “gay plague” known as AIDS, the entire press room erupted in laughter.

In the 1990s, anti-gay animus was so strong that Bill Clinton—a Democrat!—was able to sign the Defense of Marriage Act and institute “Don’t ask, don’t tell” without experiencing any real pushback from the gay community because, hey, what other option did they have?

The difference between then and now in enough to give you whiplash.  Not only is same-sex marriage legal from coast to coast, but gay people are so visible in every walk of life—including positions of power—that the straight community has no choice but to treat them like human beings.

Or at least to give lip service to that effect.  A chunk of Americans remains opposed to affording gays equal protection under the law, but—as if taking a cue from Pope Francis—they are far less cavalier than they’ve ever been before, concealing their true feelings behind inclusive and compassionate rhetoric.

Today, you can’t even be a Democrat unless you offer full-throated support for every plank of the dreaded “gay agenda,” and you can’t run for president as a Republican without at least pretending to have a few gay acquaintances and acknowledging that homosexuality is, in fact, a real thing.  (I wish we could say the same for climate change.)

But let’s not be cute about it by letting opponents of gay equality off the hook.

Yes, I am aware of many good people who support “traditional” marriage and, by all outward appearances, harbor no prejudice toward their gay colleagues and treat everyone with respect.  They regard their views on marriage as an honest disagreement—invariably informed by their religious faith—and not, in any case, as an expression of bigotry, intolerance or blind hatred.

Well, of course that’s how they feel.  In any great debate about civil rights, everyone wants to view themselves as the hero—the person on the “right side of history.”  Being several generations removed from when, say, George Wallace could proudly stand at a podium and bellow, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” we no longer allow ourselves to hold prejudicial views without performing an elaborate sleight of hand to convince ourselves and others that we are not the villain in this story.

Sorry, but it won’t wash.

In this era of equality, you can no longer get away with threading this particular needle without looking like a disingenuous nincompoop.

If you’re going to support anti-gay legislation, then you have to own the fact that—whether you realize it or not—you, yourself, are anti-gay.

If you don’t want to be tarred and feathered as an intolerant prude, then quit advocating for a society that withholds basic rights from an entire group of citizens on the basis of their emotional attractions.  That, after all, is exactly what an intolerant prude would do.

If you truly believe, à la Ben Carson, that “the Constitution protects everybody” and “there is no reason that you can’t be perfectly fair to the gay community,” then join the rest of us in effecting a system of laws that actually are perfectly fair to the gay community—namely, laws that don’t care whether your significant other is a man or a woman, because why on Earth should that make a difference?

Show, don’t tell.  Either you believe that we’re all equal before the law, or you don’t.  Sooner or later, you have to pick a side.

Plight at the Museum

The home of Boston’s greatest art collection experienced a small but interesting kerfuffle the other day.

The Museum of Fine Arts, upon reinstalling Claude Monet’s marvelous 1876 work La Japonaise, began a recurring series called “Kimono Wednesdays,” held once a week in the institution’s Impressionist gallery.  The painting depicts the artist’s wife, Camille, donning the iconic Japanese garment, and the program would allow visitors to pose alongside her while wearing a museum-supplied kimono of their own.

It never quite got that far.  Although similar exhibits proved popular in Japan when La Japonaise went on tour, the Boston iteration of “Kimono Wednesdays” faced immediate pushback in the form of several young Bostonians of Japanese (and non-Japanese) descent who charged the MFA with racism.

I popped into the museum last Wednesday night, and there they were:  A trio of conscientious objectors, silently wielding hand-written signs with messages like, “This is Orientalism,” and gamely posing for photographs.

(Let us observe a moment of irony at how a group of Japanese folks chose to protest the promulgation of ethnic stereotypes by gathering at a famed American landmark and snapping a bunch of pictures.)

As it turned out, the gambit paid off:  As the righteous agitators gained support online, the MFA cancelled the dress-up portion of “Kimono Wednesdays” and apologized for causing offense.  (The museum’s director, to his credit, observed that “a little controversy never did any harm.”)

The kimonos will remain on display for visitors’ sensory pleasure, as will the great portrait that started this whole mess.  Nonetheless, it was quite an achievement to get a massive art institution to alter its programming—even just a smidgen—simply because it made a few people uncomfortable.

The question now is whether they were right to be offended in the first place.

Was “Kimono Wednesdays” insensitive, if not outright racist, or are its detractors being a tad oversensitive themselves?  Does inviting a throng of mostly white museumgoers to assume a quintessentially Japanese look constitute crass appropriation or a loving attempt to bridge a cultural divide?

It seems clear—to me, at least—that the MFA truly meant no harm in jazzing up one of its most beloved works.  Indeed, the reason Monet painted his wife in a kimono was to underline and lampoon how French society had become obsessed with all things Japanese at that point in the late 19^th century.  What is more, the MFA itself is currently bursting at the seams with exceptional Japanese art, including a massive retrospective of Katsushika Hokusai—arguably the country’s most revered painter and printmaker—and an arresting multimedia exhibition, “In the Wake,” which surveys Japanese artists’ responses to the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that plagued the country in March of 2011.

That said, if recent events have taught us anything, it’s that racism does not always perceive its own presence but can cause enormous damage nonetheless.  A person, organization or society can exhibit prejudicial attitudes and practices without even realizing it, but that doesn’t make them any less toxic.  As with sexual harassment in the workplace, racism exists from the moment it is perceived, regardless of whether it was actually intended.

Kimono-gate is a solid test case for this theory, if only due to its comparatively low stakes.  (To wit:  No unarmed black men were murdered by white police officers in the making of this exhibit.)

If we are now afflicted by an epidemic of latent societal racism in America, we are equally enjoying a veritable golden age of full-throated offense-taking—an environment in which every man, woman and child is compelled to cry foul whenever anyone says or does anything with even a whiff of political incorrectness.  A world without edge, without context and without nuance.

In fairness, things like context and historical prospective are precisely what the MFA’s antagonists are demanding, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t get it.  Their principal gripe is that “Kimono Wednesdays” reduces the famous robe—and, in turn, its country of origin—into an exotic cultural caricature, without bothering to truly understand anything about either.  In their view, Americans dressing in kimonos and mimicking actual Japanese people is little better than white people performing in blackface.

Then there is the small matter of the history of Orientalism in general, which is inseparable from the history of Western imperialism, itself predicated on the notion that the West is inherently more civilized than the East.  One way for the conquerors to demonstrate this was to prance around in the wardrobe of the conquered.

I can’t imagine that the MFA thought all of this through before green-lighting their whimsical summertime activity, but then again, I guess that’s the point.

In today’s culture, no one is allowed to say or do anything without assuming responsibility for everything their words or actions have ever meant to anybody.  You can’t wave a Confederate battle flag without being perceived as a racist (which, let’s face it, you probably are), nor can you say someone “runs like a girl” (or whatever) without coming off as sexist, homophobic or both.

On one hand, this is welcome news, as it suggests that respecting the basic dignity of fellow human beings is suddenly becoming a thing.

However, it also means there is no longer any margin for error, nor any benefit of the doubt.  We are all in danger of becoming Justine Sacco, the woman who tweeted a mildly offensive joke about AIDS in Africa and, within hours, became one of the most hated people in America.

This is the compromise we have negotiated with ourselves:  Everyone gets to be treated equally, but no one can think for themselves or dare to play around with the old prejudices and stereotypes we have so rightfully, if belatedly, shaken off.

Which means the Museum of Fine Arts cannot simply plead ignorance on the matter of the kimonos.  Au contraire:  Ignorance is the whole problem.  The museum needed to anticipate how the most sensitive Japanese person might react to “Kimono Wednesdays” and be prepared to respond accordingly.

I think the MFA responded admirably under the circumstances, cancelling the most controversial component of its program while retaining everything else.

Then again, why should a judgment call like that be left to a honky like me?

Petty Prejudice

Ignorance and bigotry are never good things.  But at what point should we stop concerning ourselves with every last occurrence of them and, instead, just carry on with our lives?

In our attempts to rid society of all manner of cultural and ethnic prejudice, is it possible to go too far?  Does every instance of insensitivity merit a national conversation and a formal condemnation by the Anti-Defamation League or the ACLU?

In a world with far more racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia than any of us would like—but also with more multiculturalism and legal equality than at any point in history—should we not simply ignore those who insist on living in a backward dystopia, instead of dignifying their stupidity by including it in the daily news cycle?

Of course, I could be referring to anything here—what with the religiously and racially-charged events of the past few months, to say nothing of the 400 years before that—but in this particular week I am struck by the coverage of a bizarre little episode in Lynn, Massachusetts.  There, residents are in a tizzy following an act of anti-Semitic vandalism in an old town cemetery.

What sort of vandalism, you ask?  Were headstones knocked over and broken?  Were swastikas or other graffiti sprayed onto sacred family plots?  Did members of the Westboro Baptist Church turn up with their hateful placards and promises of God’s eternal wrath?

None of the above, thankfully.

What happened at the Pride of Lynn Cemetery, rather, is that a woman walked past the grounds’ Holocaust memorial—a modestly-sized obelisk—and noticed that a pile of raw pork had been laid at its base.

Pork, of course, is regarded in Jewish tradition as treif and unclean.  Jewish dietary laws forbid the consumption of all pig-based products, and anti-Semites enjoy nothing so much as referring to Jews themselves as “swine.”

As such, to purposefully dump several chunks of the unholy protein at the foot of a memorial to six million murdered Jews is a sign of profound and unmistakable disrespect—crude, obvious, offensive.  Contemptuous and contemptible.

But that’s all it is:  A callous prank by some anonymous anti-Jewish jerk.  A person so clueless and fanatical that he sacrificed a perfectly good dinner just so he could let everyone know what a terrible person he is.

In point of fact, this drive-by porking does not signal the end of civilization as we know it.  It is not an act of cultural warfare that should disrupt our sleep or cause us to worry about an imminent surge in anti-Semitism on Boston’s North Shore.

Make no mistake:  Violent provocations against Jews in the West are a real threat, with slaughters and beatings and protests arising from one end of so-called civilized society to the other.  In some areas—particularly in Europe—the situation is only getting worse.

As far as crimes against world Jewry go, planting raw pork in a cemetery is not a first-order concern.  Not even close.  Indeed, strictly speaking, it’s not even a crime, insomuch as no property was damaged and no persons were harmed.  (Not physically, at least.)

But you’d never know that from the reaction, which was not only swift but completely over-the-top.

The woman who first spotted the offending meat reported becoming “physically ill” at the sight of it, adding that the perpetrator(s) “wanted to cause pain and they did.”  Rabbi Yossi Lipsker, director of a local Chabad, said, “It’s beyond belief that in today’s day and age, right here, right now we could see something that I can only characterize as vile.”

No, it’s not.  It’s completely believable that some idiot would do this in any day and age.  That’s what idiots do:  They think of the most noxious transgressions against good taste and social harmony and see how much trouble they can cause.

The only question is how the rest of us—fine, upstanding citizens that we are—respond to such delinquency.

My humble advice:  Don’t respond at all.  Don’t be provoked.  Don’t engage.  Don’t give civilization’s lowest-hanging fruit the idea that their dumb opinions are worth airing, because they’re not.

It’s like most parents say about dealing with schoolyard bullies:  Just ignore them, and eventually they’ll go away.  Or, if you prefer, the way we constantly console ourselves about terrorism:  The only way the bad guys win is if they force us to change how we live our lives.

If you’re an observant Jew with a well-calibrated moral compass, you have every reason to be repulsed by such a frontal assault on your belief system.  At the same time, however, your faith ought to be strong enough—and your skin thick enough—to be able to dismiss such cretinism as a regrettable byproduct of living in a free society in which certain people get a rush from emotionally wounding others.

By totally flipping out every time it happens, you only encourage copycats to try something even worse.

Don’t give them that chance.  Don’t elevate their rotten ideas into a full-blown threat to society—not when there are so many actual menaces to be dealt with.

Regarding public prejudice, we have to learn to distinguish between the serious and the petty, to know which indecencies are worth worrying about and which are merely indecent.  There aren’t enough hours in the day to stomp out every last manifestation of individual bias, nor can we afford to be so naïve as to believe such a thing were possible, even with all the time in the world.

In response to Porkgate, the good people of Lynn held a rally in support of their Jewish brethren, and local police are investigating the incident as a possible “hate crime.”

Really?  We’re raising hell and expending precious law enforcement resources for what was, ultimately, a tasteless joke?

I don’t pretend to understand the mind of a person who sneaks into a cemetery with a sack of raw meat, but my guess is that he’s pretty darned pleased with himself for all he has accomplished.  As the lady said, his object was to wreak psychological havoc, and damned if we didn’t oblige him.  He cast out his bait and we took it.

We didn’t need to make all that fuss.  Those who discovered the profane slabs could have picked them up, tossed them in the garbage and continued on their merry way.  No one would be the wiser, and the perpetrator would have nothing to show for his pointless stunt.

It’s easy to comprehend the desire not to let anything slide, and to affirm our country’s traditions of pluralism and religious tolerance at every opportunity.  It’s encouraging that the city of Lynn takes the scourge of anti-Semitism seriously and is prepared to use the full force of the law to put an end to it once and for all.

I just worry that such efforts will have precisely the opposite effect, and that by treating all anti-Semitism as equally harmful, we will become progressively less adept at recognizing the real thing.