LGBTQ Civil Rights (A Lenten Lesson in Law and Grace)

Law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

Romans 5:20

Through the mysterious algorithms of Facebook I was reminded of a blog post I wrote six years ago after testifying in favor of Marriage Equality at a State House hearing.

It had been in many ways the perfect Lenten experience.

I was at the State House for almost six hours before it was my turn to testify.

I spoke briefly (but passionately, I hope) about how I believed that God is always calling us forward as Abraham and Sarah were called to leave home and journey toward "the land that I will show you." We are working toward the Kingdom of God and we are impatient with the present because we look for a future that will be more just. And I believe that Marriage Equality is part of a more just future.

While I waited and watched, I had a lot of time to reflect and meditate. (A good Lenten discipline.)

As a Christian it hurts to hear the Bible (and Jesus!) misused to promote an unholy trinity of tradition, fear and ignorance. One woman lamented the fact that until her testimony, no one had mentioned “the sin of sodomy.” She assured us that a same sex couple cannot really teach children about sin because their lives are immersed in sin. She told us that “it grieves our Lord and Savior, and his Blessed Mother in heaven.”

The Bible has over 30,000 verses, and there are, in fact, six brief passages that condemn homosexuality. None of them are in the Gospels. Oddly, they only condemn male homosexuality. Each of the passages is problematic in one way or another. And not one of them is addressed toward a faithful, committed, monogamous same sex relationship. But listening to some of these folks one would think that everything from Genesis to Revelation was written just to condemn homosexuality.

At times I felt like I had fallen into the Bible Study from hell. No wonder that to many people outside the church it looks like Christianity is fundamentally about self-righteousness and condemnation. This was a weaponized Gospel. Devoid of grace. Abounding in judgment. It was painful.

In a post last month I spoke of ours as "a time when so many Christians seem to hate immigrants (and LGBTQ people, and people of color, and poor people) so much more than they love Jesus." That statement drew immediate and fervent response from several traditionalists. Just because they believed something was sinful, they argued, that did not make them haters.

As an intellectual argument, it sounds plausible. But in practice it does not work. Expressing the belief that homosexuality, or "the practice of homosexuality," is sinful is experienced as hateful.

And that night at the State House there were many Christians who seemed to hate gay people a lot more than they loved Jesus.

“But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

There were wonderful grace-filled stories told by parents about their gay children and by children about their gay parents. 

Partners told of their struggles to build a life together. 

A neuro-scientist talked clinically about studies of sexuality and the brain, and then introduced his brother, who is a pediatrician and cannot marry his partner.

Altogether it presented a very vivid illustration of Paul’s argument about law and grace in Romans. The more the traditionalists invoked the Law (Natural and Religious), the more “the trespass multiplied” by them against their sisters and brothers.

The Law was used as a club; in the apparent belief that if they could pound home their point with sufficient force, then they could make same sex relationships go away.

They are against Same Sex Marriage because they are against homosexuality, and they are against homosexuality, at least in part, because they do not believe that the Bible is a living Word. For them it is a dead letter. As Paul argued in his second letter to Corinth, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The dead letter of the Law can be used to wound, but it cannot heal and it cannot bring life.

We need to remind ourselves that we are called to be “ministers of a new covenant, not of letter, but of spirit: for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (II Corinthians 3:6)

Healthcare Is a Universal Human Right

Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them.

Ezekiel 34:2-4

Healthcare is a universal human right.

The libertarians will disagree, but from a Christian perspective there is broad consensus that the conclusion is unmistakable.

Healthcare is a universal human right and most Christian denominations would agree with the United Methodists that, “it is a governmental responsibility to provide all citizens with health care.”

The United Methodist Discipline states:

“Providing the care needed to maintain health, prevent disease, and restore health after injury or illness is a responsibility each person owes others and government owes to all . . . Like police and fire protection, health care is best funded through the government’s ability to tax each person equitably and directly fund the provider entities.”

In case you missed the meaning of that statement, we are talking about single payer insurance.

On the other side of the argument, writing for Freedomworks, Julie Borowski makes the libertarian case against the Affordable Care Act. “The dangerous philosophy behind the law,” she argues, “is that too many Americans now see health care as a human right rather than a good.”

“The Declaration of Independence states that we have an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That doesn’t mean that other people should be forced to sustain our life or make us happy,” she writes. “These legitimate rights do not place obligations on anyone except to not infringe on the rights of others.”

Of course, when you boil it all down, the issue is money.

On Vox.com, Matthew Iglesias characterizes critics of the ACA this way:

“They think it taxes rich people too much, and coddles Americans with excessively generous, excessively subsidized health insurance plans. They want a world of lower taxes on millionaires while millions of Americans put ‘skin in the game’ in the form of higher deductibles and copayments. Exactly the opposite, in other words, of what Republican politicians have been promising.”

“What they fundamentally did not like is that the basic framework of the law is to redistribute money by taxing high-income families and giving insurance subsidies to needy ones.”

This, they believe, is immoral. The ACA, they argue, was never about healthcare, it was about the redistribution of income.

Whether intended or not, the ACA does redistribute income as this chart from Gary Burtless and Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution shows, the Affordable Care Act enacts substantial income redistribution in the United States.

For those who care about economic justice and narrowing the gap between rich and poor, the redistribution does benefit the bottom two-tenths on the income chart. The bad news is first that it does not help a great deal. And second that as a percentage of annual income, the gains at the bottom come at the expense of the middle class. In raw dollars, of course, those at the top contribute the most, but the highest percentage is borne by those at the lower end of the middle class.

The ACA made some real gains in healthcare by making health insurance available to more than twenty million Americans who previously were uninsured. And it did modestly affect the distribution of income.

The plan presently being considered in congress will decrease Medicaid funding, throw millions of people off of insurance plans, make insurance more costly for those who are least able to afford it, and give tax breaks to those who need them least.

We can do better.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

Making Vulnerable Kids More Vulnerable

People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. But Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs."
Luke 18:15-16

Recently the Trump administration rescinded the guidelines given by the Department of Justice and the Department of Education requiring that public schools allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and facilities corresponding to their gender identity.

This means that the students most vulnerable to bullying and harassment are given less protection.

Those already most vulnerable are made even more vulnerable.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, called it “a mean-spirited attack on hundreds of thousands of students who simply want to be their true selves and be treated with dignity while attending school,".

For decades, maybe centuries, transgender adults have been using the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity. Most transgender folks dress and look like the gender with which they identify. And the rest of us don’t think very much about it.

The situation for transgender kids is more difficult. Before they understood their gender identity as different from their biology at birth, classmates may have known them as a different gender. The trans male may have been known previously as female, or vice versa. This makes them uniquely vulnerable to bullying and harassment.

The goal of the original guidelines, put forth last year, was to give kids protection at this very vulnerable time in their lives.

In rescinding those protections, the Trump administration presented the actions of the Justice and Education departments as simply affirming the rights of the states to develop their own guidelines.

"As President Trump has clearly stated, he believes policy regarding transgender bathrooms should be decided at the state level," the White House said in a statement. "The joint decision made today by the Department of Justice and the Department of Education returning power to the states paves the way for an open and inclusive process to take place at the local level with input from parents, students, teachers and administrators."

Although the directive was presented as the shared product of Justice and Education, the
initiative came from Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Publicly, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was in agreement, but she was a reluctant participant.

She told Sessions about her reservations, but she was called in to the White House for a meeting with Sessions and Mr. Trump and was told to get on board.

"It was the President's decision," a source told CNN. "When the President tells you to do something you don't want to do, that is a hard spot to be in."

CNN reported that “DeVos reminded Trump that both of them had publicly promised to protect all students, and she felt that withdrawing the guidance ran counter to those promises. She was concerned that some people may interpret the action as removing protections.”

DeVos asked for clarification in the directive affirming that the rights of students would continue to be protected and assuring them that the Office of Civil Rights of the Education Department would investigate any complaints.

After the directive was released, Devos reaffirmed the Education Department’s responsibility "to protect every student in America and ensure that they have the freedom to learn and thrive in a safe and trusted environment.”

"This is not merely a federal mandate, but a moral obligation no individual, school, district or state can abdicate," she said in a statement. "At my direction, the department's Office for Civil Rights remains committed to investigating all claims of discrimination, bullying and harassment against those who are most vulnerable in our schools."

According to the Trump administration the guidelines protecting transgender students were withdrawn because the president believes that “policy regarding transgender bathrooms should be decided at the state level.”

In other words, the administration is claiming neutrality, which is another way of saying that they side with the bullies. 

As Bishop Tutu observed, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.