When is Discrimination not Discrimination?
Many people have been raising an eyebrow at how odd-sounding are some of the arguments that The [Catholic] Church has been using in Great Britain to obtain an exemption from a new equality law concerning adoption by gays and lesbians. Now they have moved from arguing that being allowed to discriminate is central to their religious freedom to the idea that being told not to discriminate is discrimination against their god-given right to discriminate. Or something like that.
But the argument that gays and lesbians should sympathize with the situation of devout Christians as victims of discrimination signals a remarkable –if perhaps unwitting– evolution in religious thought about homosexuality. The ironic, and quite promising, outcome is that social conservatives are now expressing parity between the feelings of Christians and the feelings of gays and lesbians.
What might come of this newfound sympathy? Religious faith and practice have properly enjoyed special status in Western culture as a protected sphere. When John Locke and Thomas Jefferson articulated their influential theories of political liberty during the Enlightenment, freedom of conscience was fundamental‹the only way to give any real meaning to the period's new understanding of the relationship between the state and the individual. In a free society, any effort to dictate the shape of the human heart is considered not only inhumane, but impossible –as meaningless as squaring a circle. What people believe or feel inside is regarded as a matter of individual conscience, and cannot be mandated by a tribe, a King or a state.
In this light, it is not hard to grasp the parallels between sexual orientation and religious faith that embattled Christians are now expressing. Religious individuals often speak of feeling a surge of emotion from deep within them, of hearing a calling from something outside of themselves, and of struggling to follow the dictates of their conscience in secular surroundings. Likewise, gays and lesbians frequently describe the undeniable force of their emotional attractions, the need to respect a commanding feeling that seems to come from something greater than individual whim, and the challenge of honoring their convictions despite social stigma.
[excerpt from Nathanial Frank, "Britain's Gay Adoption Debate", Huffington Post, 30 January 2007.]
In: All, Current Events, Raised Eyebrows Dept.