Mine! Mine! Mine!
In case your eyes are as old as mine, the caption reads: "Territoriality: Peeing on it doesn't make it yours." The sentiment is useful, the idea behind it is illuminating. This comes from the article "Territoriality: Peeing on It Doesn't Make it Yours — Staking Out Territory by Appropriating Cultural, Political Institutions", by Austin Cline from his about.com topic "Agnosticism / Atheism".
The first paragraph of the accompanying essay lays out the argument:
Christians have claimed that Christmas, marriage, morality, and more are theirs to define and control. What unites these issues is an effort by conservative Christians to claim ownership over cultural or political institutions which should be open equally to all citizens. They don't want to be mere contributors to a larger whole, they want to be owners with a right to exclude others. This is basically and expression of tribalism and attempt to exercise territoriality, not unlike what dogs do.
The article questions the legitimacy of certain self-righteous religious groups' attempts to assert ownership over these abstract ideas, "marriage" and "morality" to name two. But, as Mr. Cline so aptly observes, peeing on it doesn't make make it theirs.
Atheists like me are sensitive to these issues of marking territory and perhaps more aware of them than the 90-or-so-percent of Americans who profess a belief in some monotheistic "god",* since we're fed their propaganda continually. I usually chuckle (otherwise it is to cry) at the notion that "Christians" in America are a persecuted population. I usually propose this experiment: following your usual routines, see if you can make it through an entire day without hearing something about Jesus or God. Go on, try it.
Humans have had morals (and ethics–"Christian" politicians and spokesmodels seem unusually adept at separating the ideas of "morality" and "ethics", professing the former while violating the latter) since long before the myth of Moses was invented and yet an alarming number of people seem utterly convinced that without their holy book of myths (whichever one they prefer) our civilization would not exist and humankind would be reduced to nothing more than…well, politicians and religious leaders, presumably.
But peeing on it doesn't make it theirs. Claiming that they hold the keys to morality seems to convince a number of people, but that doesn't make it true. But how can so many people be wrong? No problem — it's happened any number of times throughout history, especially when people refuse to think for themselves in preference to faith in their religions' spokesmodels.
And now there's all this excitement over "gay" marriage and who gets to "define" marriage. At this point I don't think I need to dwell on the issue, but peeing on it doesn't make it theirs.
And lately there seems to be a whole lot of peein' (pace Sarah Palin) going on. You've heard the escalation of hysteria by now from some spokesmodels about how the "gay mobs" are at least as bad as the Mumbai terrorists as we attack the mormon church and any other institution who has offended our desire for unbridled hedonistic pleasure and our urge to teach second-graders that they can gay-marry if they want to and that it's perfectly okay!
Well, I hear a whole orchestra of tiny violins as I ponder the "oppression" of the mormons who seem mostly upset and embarrassed that they got caught trying to buy "christian" legitimacy. Whole lot of peein' going on.
While we're on the subject, and since I have nothing further to say of an enlightening or persuasive nature about who owns morality and marriage, it's a good time to make a few links to some other articles I wanted to keep track of that try to counter the notion that the mormons are the poor, down-trodden, oppressed innocent victims in this fracas.
- Chino Blanco's "Why I'm (still) mad at the Mormon church: a timeline", Pam's House Blend, 8 December 2008; is an exceedingly clear collection of all the peein' the mormon church has been doing to try to keep teh homosexuals from getting any ownership of "marriage". I hope no one is surprised to find that it's a long list.
- Rick Jacobs' "Why we're mad at the Mormon church", Los Angeles Times, 8 December 2008.
Whole lot of peein' going on.
———-
* I write "some monotheistic god" in this this case that way not to cast aspersion on this notion of the all-powerful, all-disapproving but all-forgiving and all-creating mythical father figure, but to highlight my contention that all of those people who say they believe in "god" think it's the same one they all believe in, but that that's very unlikely to be true.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity, Feeling Peevish