Last week I saw the movie, V for Vendetta. It’s an exciting and thought provoking film. I recommend it to anyone. Without giving too much away I will say it takes place in a not-too-future London where an oppressive regime has taken over the government under the guise of Christian piety. The leaders of this “Christian” government don’t act very Christ-like as they cruelly torture and oppress the citizens. The use of Christian imagery and references is just a ruse for the claimant of power rather than any notion of personal spirituality. The citizens receiving the cruelest treatment are gays and lesbians. In the totalitarian-theocracy police come into your home at night, pull you from your bed and throw you in jail if you’re gay.
With no surprise the usual suspects of the “religious” right have gone into convulsions over this film. In his “review” titled V for Vile, Kevin Wilson calls V a, “cacophony of neo-Marxist, homosexual-promoting pagan gibberish,” and “the most blatant example of leftist cinematic bilge this side of Michael Moore.” He ends his review with a warning, “Unless this trend somehow reverses itself, more movies like "V" will serve only to confuse and dilute civilization and work ultimately to bring about its downfall.” In other words, Kevin thinks movies should be censored like they are under the theocratic oligarchy depicted in V lest they destroy civilization.
Ted Bahr, President of Christian Movie Guide called it, “a vile, pro-terrorist piece of neo-Marxist, left-wing propaganda filled with radical sexual politics and nasty attacks on religion and Christianity.” Never at a loss for hyperbole, Bahr describes the film’s importance saying, “America's education system, its government, its popular culture, its military, its business community, and its news media have been transformed by this insidious Fifth Column of "Cultural Marxism." We are now suffering the consequences of this quiet political correctness invasion. This is what the current Culture War in Hollywood and America is all about.”
The religious right hates this movie and they’ve commanded their sheep not to see it. I sincerely believe that they have forbidden their followers from viewing it not because it represents a mischaracterization of the current theo-poli trend but because it accurately hits a little too close to home.
One of the lynch-pins of the “religious” right is the repeated harping on the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas [Lawrence et al. v. Texas 539 US 558]. That decision, along with Roe v. Wade, is repetitiously referenced on all the “religious” right websites and used for all sorts of events. In explaining the horror of Lawrence, Phyllis Shafley concludes, “The best example of this trend came in the worst decision in recent years, Lawrence v. Texas—where the Court discovered a right to homosexual sodomy.”
They didn’t discover a “right” to homosexual sodomy but rather reiterated a right to privacy in the home and freedom of chosen association.
My favorite quote about Lawrence comes from Focus on the Family “If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is 'no legitimate state interest' for purposes of proscribing that conduct … what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexuals exercising 'the liberty protected by the constitution'?"
The question answers itself, FOTF. Moral disapproval is not significant basis to deny equal protection under the law. What justification indeed!
According to the religious right, Lawrence somehow created a right to sodomy not found in the text of the Constitution. But this is misleading. In reality no new right was created. The religious right examined the law in question and found it to be a good measure of ordered liberty while the Supreme Court did not.
To dissect the rhetoric of the religious right it is important to look at the plain text of the law in question in Lawrence v. Texas and the decision it overturned, Bowers v. Hardwick [Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986)].
In Bowers, Michael Hardwick was arrested on August 3, 1982 for having sexual relations with another male inside his home. He was charged with violating Georgia Code Ann. §16-6-2 which read:
(a) A person commits the offense of sodomy when he performs or submits to any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another.
(b) A person convicted of the offense of sodomy shall be punished with imprisonment for not less than one nor more than 20 years. [emphasis added]
In Lawrence, John Lawrence and his partner, Tyron Garner, were arrested in their home and charged with deviant sexual behavior under a Texas statute outlawing sexual contact between same sex partners that was similar the Georgia statute. In Bowers the law outlawed any non-reproductive sex act regardless of gender or marital status. Meaning, married men and women could technically be arrested for felatio. Although this law was only enforced against gay people in the privacy of their homes, when the Supreme Court evaluates a law they look at its text as is not just how it happens to be used during the incident in question. The law carried the harsh sentence of a minimum of a year in prison if police found two men together in their home. Lawrence only targeted gay people. Not only could gay people be arrested if found together in the privacy of their homes but for the rest of their life the law required them to register as sex offenders the same as child molesters and rapists and to inform future neighbors and employers of their sex offender status.
When these “religious” right people stand before crowds and “preach” about how the Supreme Court is out of control for daring to overturn these draconian laws they are explicitly saying that they think the law should require gay people to be arrested in their homes, jailed for a minimum of a year, and registered formally as sex offenders. They think when the highest court read the plain text of these laws and evaluated them against precedent and principle the conclusion they should have come to includes home arrests and the imprisonment of gays. For all their crap about opposing “special rights” for gay people, the simple truth is that the religious right advocates the jailing and registering of gay people.
I’ve watched two of the three broadcasts of Justice Sunday, the “evangelical” simulcasts used to rally supporters against the federal judiciary and in favor of far-right judicial nominees. They’re held at mega-churches with stadium seating but they’re beamed via satellite to sanctuaries around the country. I’ve watched as speaker after speaker screams to the audience about Lawrence as if it represents the greatest moral outrage of the new century while thousands of attendees jump up and down, whoop and holler, praise God, and scream back about so-called judicial tyranny. These well-intentioned people of faith are too easily whipped into a frenzy of righteousness and jihadist zeal while what they are cheering is for gay people to be ripped from their beds at night and thrown into jail.
The premise of V for Vendetta in which power craving politicians use fear and false piety to overtake the masses is not some frightening fictional plotline but an active reality advancing today. I have some faith that there are still enough level headed, reasonable people left to counter the agenda but I have to intentionally suppress the tinge of fear I feel when I hear them scream about Lawrence.
For all the kvetching about Christians being oppressed and claims of a War on Christianity it is important to note there is no group in the country that advocates arresting people for practicing Christianity. No one reads their Bibles or worships in secret. No one hides the fact that they are Christian out of fear of legal and professional retribution or violent thugs on the street. No one is denied a marriage license or adoption rights because they’re Christian. No one is denied health insurance, fired from their jobs, or kicked out of their rental property because they are Christian. And no one is under threat to be taken from their home in the night, jailed, and registered as a criminal for being Christian. All of these realities, however, are the bread and butter of what the “religious” right is trying to make the law of the land for people they deem unfit by their standards of Puritanism.
Few people ever stop to consider why religion is protected in the first place. Why is it illegal to arrest someone for their practice of faith or religious identity? Religion is not an innate characteristic like race. It is a choice. One chooses to be Methodist of Pentecostal. Once chooses which translation of scripture to read and how often to go to church. Religious liberty is protected not because one’s faith is immutable - people convert and alter their beliefs a lot through the course of a lifetime - but because one’s religious parameters are a core aspect of their identity. Freedom of conscience means protecting the right of people to define for themselves how their lives are to be ordered, what they believe, who they love, and who they are. Justice Kennedy said it best in the majority opinion in Lawrence:
"Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent decisions."
"These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State."
What is most important to understand is that the undermining of freedom of conscience is not the byproduct of otherwise harmless moralizing but the ultimate goal of these “religious” right leaders. In order for them to establish sectarianism rather than constitutionalism as the basis for legal review they have to somehow circumvent American’s belief in individualism including one’s power to control his destiny and definition of self. The movement is just as dangerous for gay people as it is for those whose faith, even Christian faith, differs from the politically approved religiosity of these power hungry leaders. V for Vendetta, while fictional, highlights possible outcomes when those seeking power hijack religious signifiers to achieve totalitarian control and suppress individualism including the freedom of conscience from which religious liberties are derived. What the theocrats did in the movie is a one-to-one exact match to what the theocrats demand now. No wonder James Dobson commanded his followers not to see it and called for its censorship.
