Noah Baron opines on exclusivity divine rights versus the rights that can be governed, and the hypocrisy of the religious right

Noah Baron, Associate Editor
Ideology:  Religious progressive | Writing From: Philadelphia, PA

The American right-wing has been cultivating a fear and hatred of government since its beginnings. The complaints about “big government” taking away our rights stretch back long before what we now know as “liberalism” and “conservatism” – their descendants can be glimpsed in the Dred Scott decision, in which the institution of slavery was upheld in the name of the right to “private property”; the cry of “states’ rights!” can be found in the respondents to the indictments of Southern society by the abolitionists – as the South closed ranks to protect their “peculiar institution” as it came to be known, and the North rallied against it.

The arguments against gay rights touted so boldly by today’s Jerry Falwell and other bigots are echoes of his father’s rage against the Civil Rights movement. Yesterday’s “activist courts” were the Warren and Burger courts; the people “redefining marriage” from a man and a woman of the same race to two people who loved each other were on the same “liberal Jew courts”.

Today, many former conservatives have recognized the bigoted attitudes latent in so much of the rhetoric of the Republican Party. Increasingly, instead, they have moved towards an ideology which asserts that it is different in kind – libertarianism. Claiming their heritage in Mill, they proclaim, “In the part, which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute,” – presuming economics to involve no more than one; ignoring the next sentence of Mill himself, “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign”; pretending Mill’s objections applied to government alone, when in fact they extended far beyond to encompass society as well.

In reality, however, the failed economic policies proposed by the Republican Party, fiscal conservatives, and libertarians alike have been tried before: these are the same tired policy proposals first introduced by John Locke hundreds of years ago, only reapplied through the centuries. Though industrialization has passed, though famines have ravished nations, though people have suffered and starved, though economies have collapsed, that incorrect presumption has remained the same: that economics affects only the individual, the sale of my property has no affect on you, my employment of you has no influence on you.

It is time, finally, for a new formulation of rights. I do not pretend to be the originator of any doctrine – greater minds than mine have preceded me, and will come after me – rather, I differ only in the extent of its application.

Long ago, Martin Luther, having observed brutal religious wars in which tens of thousands were slaughtered, wrote a great truth: there are two realms of this world: the Divine and the Worldly. Over the Divine, no earthly government may have dominion. Our religious texts, as Galileo also noted, are a guide for our spirit, not our politics.

As he wrote many hundreds of years ago, “how can a mere man see, know, judge, condemn, and change hearts? That is reserved for God alone.” Religious conservatives, seemingly the very people to whom Luther referred, do very much the same thing in their crusades. Though no harm is done through my love for another, though my marriage might be between myself, my beloved and God, though my prayers might be for His ears only, they insist upon foisting the state upon Him: they say, “I know that homosexuality is wrong, I judge your marriage unequal to mine, I condemn the way you express your love, and I intend to change your heart”.

And as Luther also pointed out – in words echoed by Mill, and misinterpreted by economic right – the conscience of the individual is sovereign and holy. No government – nor Church, nor individual – has the right to violate that. My right to speak it, too, is holy, and as such may not be violated by either Church or government.

Love, addressed again and again in the Bible and the holy works of nearly every religion, is no place for the government. It is sacred, to be consummated by two loving individuals and sanctified by a Priest or a Rabbi, and its regulation ought not to be countenanced: “for no matter how harshly they lay down the law,” wrote Luther, “they can do no more than force an outward compliance of the mouth and the hand; the heart they cannot compel, though they work themselves to a frazzle.”

For a government to choose which marriages to recognize and which to not is a sullying of the religious institution of marriage; a violation of religious expression and equality. That a government on this Earth might recognize a marriage which lasts for only a few hours yet refuse to recognize one that has already lasted for years in the eyes of God based solely on the genders of its participants is a true debasement of that institution indeed.

But our daily matters – what our citizens buy, how our corporations run, the safety of the products those corporations sell: these are Earthly matters, for regulation by Earthly institutions. Over these, a government may have dominion. Such pursuits are frequently done in search of a means by which to save human life or prevent human suffering: these purposes are among the noblest, yet not holy. Let government regulate our wages, our stock market, the quality of goods, the stuff of our daily outward lives; but let not its tendrils intrude into my home, altar, or conscience.

In my prayers and in my beliefs, in what I say and to whom I say “I do”, in the workings of my family and in whom I wish to include in that family, in my Church and in my synagogue, my government has no legitimate purpose – for, indeed, these are the holiest of human experiences, and government has no right to touch the face of God.