Seyi Omooba is a British actress whose Christian criticism of homosexuality came back to bite her. (Part 1 here.)

Who hurt whom?

Let’s review to see who hurt whom and if injury could’ve been prevented. This is my evaluation (and the more I write, the more subtleties appear), so feel free to add comments with corrections or different approaches.

Seyi Omooba put up a Christian anti-gay Facebook post five years ago. This year, someone uncovered it and showed it to the world. Though she said that she regretted making her thoughts public, she wouldn’t retract them, and she lost her job. Worse, this incident may rain on future work opportunities in the theater.

Omooba’s actions. There may have been something that she could’ve said by way of apology after her comments were outed. Maybe she could’ve acknowledged that Christianity is a big tent and that her interpretation wasn’t the only one. Or she could’ve promised to broaden her perspective by visiting gay-affirming congregations. Or she could’ve added a caveat saying, “This is just one interpretation” or “I’m not claiming to be the last word on the subject” or even (h/t commenter NS Alito) “[It would be] the ultimate hubris for me to act as either a communicator or an enforcer for my omnipotent God.”

With a conservative pastor as a father, this might have been difficult, but she is 25 years old and should now be able to take responsibility for her own worldview.

The theater’s actions. The theater hurt Omooba by firing her, but they would say in turn that she injured them by forcing them to find a replacement. I see no free-speech violation. From their standpoint, Omooba could say whatever she wanted up to and including discrediting the show. And they had a contract with her so they could terminate her if she became a liability.

The whistleblower’s actions. He indirectly caused Omooba’s firing with his tweet, but I think his actions were justifiable. (Some commenters have disagreed.) Whether you call them Omooba’s ideas or Christianity’s, neither source deserves a pass for hateful ideas. “But this comes from the Bible!” counts for nothing. If it’s stupid and indefensible, that’s true no matter where it comes from.

The public’s actions. The theater-going public didn’t get a chance to vote with their ticket purchases, but there was enough blowback in response to the tweet to make clear to the theater that there was negative publicity. The public is entitled to reward or punish productions if they feel it necessary. If you are outraged at where Omooba landed after this incident, you can probably think of a different politically charged arrangement where you, as a potential ticket buyer, would want to reward or punish a production with your purchase.

As Ricky Gervais put it, “You have the right to be offended, and I have the right to offend you.” That goes both ways. Seyi Omooba has offended with her Facebook post. That’s fine; that’s her right. But then she can’t get annoyed when she gets some free speech back.

This result doesn’t please me. I don’t look at Omooba and think that she got just what she deserved. She said some stupid, hateful nonsense based on her indoctrination into a religion that worships a Bronze Age god, but she didn’t materially hurt anyone. To paraphrase Jefferson, she neither picked anyone’s pocket nor broke anyone’s leg. She could’ve said Ricky Gervais’s line: “You have the right to be offended, and I have the right to offend you.”

This seems a little like the Tragedy of the Commons, where each rancher puts all their sheep into the town’s common land to graze, and the land becomes overgrazed and barren. Each party does what, to them, is the smart thing to do, but add that all up, and something’s wrong in the end.

More problems with Omooba’s position

I’ll get three more problems off my chest. First, there is no crime without a punishment. And—wouldn’t you know it?—the Bible gives us its stock punishment. In the case of homosexual sex, “[Both men] are to be put to death” (Leviticus 20:13). Is that what Omooba wants? Just to follow God’s word, both in defining the crime and specifying the punishment? If she has a hard time accepting that punishment, it should call into question the validity of the “crime.”

Second, why focus on the anti-gay verses? Old Testament law has loads of fun rules—you must stone to death “a stubborn and rebellious son” (Deuteronomy 21:18), brides discovered to not be virgins are also stoned (Deut. 22:20–21), sex slaves are war booty (Numbers 31:17–18), and more. If modern times has dimmed our appreciation for these old classics, why not bring them all back? The answer, of course, is that Christians like Omooba have an agenda.

If you want to dismiss these as being unnecessary or outdated, (1) show where the Old Testament said that dismissal was an option and (2) show why the anti-gay verses are in a different category.

Finally, and this returns to the point of the whistleblower, her taking the part is hypocritical. She feels that God unambiguously declares that homosexuality is wrong, and yet she will play a protagonist who has a lesbian relationship? She should see her loss of the part as God’s hand in action and be grateful.

Final thoughts

Let’s return to the original issue, free speech vs. Christian anti-gay ideas. The real issue may be that Omooba didn’t think, five years ago, that she would soon be a minor celebrity and that public critique of celebrities is often greater than that for ordinary citizens. It’s naive to imagine that an online discussion will never have consequences in the real world. On one hand, that’s a big burden on a young adult that most people will never have to deal with. On the other, Christian anti-gay ideas are hurtful and offensive. A celebrity will have a larger platform than most of us, so their statements are magnified, and they shouldn’t make a statement they can’t accept the consequences of.

It’s an easy mistake to make, but I put the blame on her. A provocative anti-gay statement, whether or not it is couched as biblical, is hurtful. If this is a surprise to her—either that social media can be dangerous or that conservative ideas about homosexuality can be hateful—she has only herself to blame. Especially as someone in the theater, with lots of gay coworkers, she should’ve known the impact.

She sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to the many thoughtful comments to the previous posts. This is a subject with (as I see it) no win-win resolution. Share your comments below.

.

(h/t commenters Milo C and NS Alito)

.
Image from Jordan McDonald, CC license

Seyi Omooba is a British actress who shouted “Gay!” in a crowded theater.

Actually, it was more “Gay is wrong!” She made a social media comment saying that the Bible is clear that being gay is wrong and you can’t be born gay. (Let’s leave aside the question of whether those claims can even co-exist.) As a result, she lost a part in a play. She’s now suing the theater and her agent.

The first part of this series (1) summarized the incident; (2) argued that it’s Christians who say things about homosexuality, not the Bible; and (3) explored the free speech issue. Let’s continue with a thought experiment to see the case from another angle.

Justification

The Christian Legal Centre tried to minimize Omooba’s insult with this example:

The presence of a homosexuality theme in the play is a very poor excuse for discriminating against a Christian actress. If we were talking about a lesbian actress playing a Christian character, nobody would dare to suggest that her sexual lifestyle would make her unsuitable, and that you could fire her without breaking the law.

Are you kidding? Imagine a play with an out lesbian as Mary Magdalene or Mary the mother of Jesus. I can imagine the same thing happening in reverse: with the target audience largely Christian, a single tweet could ignite Christian outrage, and that actress would get replaced to avoid a theatrical flop.

But notice the difference: a lesbian playing Mary Magdalene wouldn’t be criticizing Christians, straight people, or the memory of Mary Magdalene. By contrast, Omooba stated in her post that homosexuals should deny who they are (or else!) while putting no equivalent constraint on herself or her fellow straight Christians. She also said that no one is “born gay.” (Does she think that all people who identify as homosexual are taking on a new persona as if living in some sort of perpetual Halloween?)

I’m sure that she felt that her post was a generous and constructive statement—that we’re all in the same imperfect boat and God loves you and has provided a route to salvation—but I think I share the offense felt by the actor who outed that five-year-old post. “Hate the sin; love the sinner” may be as distasteful for the homosexual as “I love you, but you’re going to hell” aimed at the atheist. In either situation, being told that you deserve an eternity of torture in hell for living your life in a way that is honest to who you are and that hurts no one else is simply offensive.

In one of the news articles I read on this incident, one commenter asked, would it be acceptable for someone with public antisemitic views to have a leading role in Fiddler on the Roof, a play with a Jewish theme? If the response is that this comparison is unfair because antisemitic views are fringe while Christian views that gays deserve to be in hell are not, why should “it’s a religious belief” cover for a hateful view? Does Christianity deserve a fig leaf just because it’s a venerable tradition?

What the Bible says about homosexuality

There are six Bible passages that are typically used to make God’s anti-gay case. Understand them, and you’ll see that they don’t make an anti-gay case, at least not one that is relevant today.

I’ll list them below and give a brief response. Links are given to posts that discuss them in more detail.

• Genesis 19:4–25 is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The lesson of the Sodom and Gomorrah story isn’t that homosexuality is bad, it’s that rape is bad. More here and here.
• Leviticus 18:22 labels homosexual sex as an abomination. The problem is, this part of Leviticus lists lots of things as abominations—eating ham or shrimp, men wearing women’s clothes, sowing two kinds of seeds, tattooing, wearing cotton/polyester blends, and so on. These are ritual abominations, not actions that are objectively harmful to someone else. If Christians can dismiss the prohibition against pork because that’s an outdated custom, they can do the same for the rule against homosexuality. More here.
• The same treatment applies to Leviticus 20:13. We need to see Old Testament prohibitions against homosexuality in the context of the time. One of the understood categories of male-male homosexual sex in that uncertain time was as a fertility rite—a fertility rite that was traditional within the other tribes. The Hebrew religion described in Leviticus defined rules that set their tribe apart—no ham, no tattooing, and no fertility rites to another god. These are “abominations” because they’re religious offenses. More here.
• Romans 1:26–27 says, in part, “The men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts.” This passage imagines straight men who “abandon the natural function of the woman” and have sex with other men. Yes, that’s kinky, but it has nothing to do with homosexuals in loving relationships. More here.
• 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 lists categories of bad people, including those who engage in homosexual sex, who won’t “inherit the kingdom of God.” But the same book says, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says” (1 Cor. 14:34–5). If the latter is an outdated Old Testament custom, the same could be said for the former. More here.
• 1 Timothy 1:9–10 gives a similar list. It mixes ritual abominations like homosexuality and idolatry with actual crimes like theft and murder. And it has its own misogyny: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet” (2:11–14). Like the 1 Corinthians 6 passage, this references back to Old Testament laws that we’ve seen are irrelevant. More here.

Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan? The Pharisee and the Levite walked past an injured man because they didn’t want to become ritually unclean. The Torah didn’t forbid touching blood or a dead person, it simply said that you would need to ritually cleanse yourself afterwards. The moral of the story isn’t just that you must help people in need. In addition, it’s that if there is a rule or tradition that gets in the way of your helping people, violate that rule. Outdated Old Testament laws belong in the same bin as Bible rules supporting slavery, and Christians have no problem seeing that slavery has no place in modern society.

Jesus himself showed how the priority works when he said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Concluded in part 3.

.

Image from christian buehner, CC license
.

In 2015, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis decided that she would ignore the obligations of her job and pick what parts she would and wouldn’t perform. She imagined that the Bible makes a clear, relevant statement against homosexuality (it doesn’t) and refuse to issue marriage licenses because some of those would be for same-sex couples (more in part 1).

Let’s turn to a more famous church/state clash to see a different, less selfish way to approach public service.

We’ve seen this before

John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960. Some Americans were concerned that JFK, as a Catholic, would see the pope as a higher authority and answer to him rather than the Constitution or the American people. One radio evangelist of the time said, “Each person has the right to their own religious belief [but] the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical system demands the first allegiance of every true member and says in a conflict between church and state, the church must prevail.”

In other words, how did we know that JFK wouldn’t do a Kim Davis?

JFK famous responded to this challenge:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; [and] where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials. . . .

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

JFK explicitly rejected what Kim Davis embraced. That’s how it’s done.

The U.S. Constitution calls the tune

The bottom line is that the Bible isn’t the supreme law of the land—the Constitution is.

Be not confused: the United States doesn’t exist and run because God said so; instead, Christians can preach and worship because the Constitution says so. If the law offends you, you can argue that it’s unjust, you can work to have it changed, or you can leave. We have a 100% secular constitution that defines a 100% secular means for making, changing, and upholding laws.

I hear Pakistan puts God first in their law—maybe Kim Davis would like that better.

“The sky is falling!”

Conservatives were quick to tell us that this incident was the beginning of overt Christian persecution. A Christian Post columnist at the time said, “For years now I and others have been warning that committed Christians could soon face jail time in America for holding to our convictions.”

Not really. Christian county clerks can object to same-sex marriages, Christian pharmacists can object to emergency contraceptives, Muslim flight attendants can object to serving alcohol, and Christian bakers and photographers can object to same-sex weddings, but do your job. Don’t sign up, then claim oppression and refuse to do what you promised to do.

To anticipate some jobs that a devout Christian might belatedly realize conflict with biblical principles, Huffington Post has a list of jobs to avoid. You wouldn’t want to be a clerk selling mixed fabrics (which are explicitly prohibited by the Bible), fishing for shellfish (prohibited), or teaching as a woman (prohibited). Are these examples ridiculous? Then ditto a clerk who objects to same-sex marriage (not explicitly prohibited) but has no problem with marrying divorced people (prohibited).

Another Christian Post columnist said, “Every serious biblical Christian will have to consider what to do now—whether a baker being asked to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage against her conscience, a county clerk faced with issuing a marriage license to a homosexual couple, or a pastor being requested to perform a wedding between two women or two men.” Let me answer that for you: the baker is obliged to follow public accommodation laws that prohibit discrimination, county clerks must do their jobs, and the U.S. has laws protecting pastors.

This last one is always on the list, even though pastors are protected, both by the First Amendment and by Supreme Court precedent. Remember Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court decision that made mixed-race marriage legal? That is binding only on governments, not pastors. Pastors can and do refuse to perform mixed-race marriages. The same is true for same-sex marriages. Even the Family Research Council (a Christian organization) agrees. Hysteria about constraints on the clergy is popular because it rallies the troops, not because it’s realistic.

This reminds me of Glenn Beck’s hysteria on the eve of the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage. He declared that there were upwards of 10,000 pastors “that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death.”

Who did he imagine on the other side with the flaming torches?

Kim Davis: another Rosa Parks?

Rosa Parks was the African-American woman who refused to sit in the back of the bus in 1955. One of Kim Davis’s supporters finds much similarity between the two women. If Rosa Parks shouldn’t have to get off the bus, why should Kim Davis? He asks, “Will Kim Davis be the Rosa Parks of the movement?”

The difference, of course, is that Rosa Parks had her civil rights infringed upon, while Kim Davis is trying to infringe on the civil rights of others. If Kim Davis feels that the Bible has something to say about Obergefell, she can express that view, and every atheist I can think of will support her right to free speech. What she can’t do is impose that outside the law.

Will Kim Davis be the Rosa Parks of the conservative anti-same-sex marriage movement? A four-times-married person setting herself up as the arbiter of marriage might indeed be an appropriate saint for this ridiculous up-is-down and Ignorance-is-Strength movement.

Related post: “Being on the Wrong Side of History on Same-Sex Marriage? Worse than You Think.”

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/8/15.)

Image credit: Wikimedia
.

Kim Davis is the county clerk in Kentucky who, following the 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, prohibited her office from issuing any marriage licenses because, “To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage [by which she means straight marriage], with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience.”

That gave her fifteen minutes of fame as the darling of the Right. Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee welcomed her after her five-day stay in jail. She won a “Cost of Discipleship Award” at the 2015 Values Voter Summit.

Today, not so much. She ran for reelection as county clerk, but apparently her constituents had had enough of her shenanigans, and she lost last November. She’s also stuck with $220,000 in legal fees.

Kentucky’s GOP governor claims to still support her actions and yet threw her under the bus by declaring that the state shouldn’t have to pay.

Davis argued that Kentucky should pay, “because Davis acted as a state official for purposes of marriage licensing.” That’s right: Kim Davis the citizen isn’t liable for the bills because the state (in the form of Kim Davis the county clerk) caused the problem. Doing the right thing supposedly guided her actions at some point, but owning the costs she’s incurred is inconvenient right now.

In a further complication, a recent court decision allows Davis to be sued for damages as an individual, and two same-sex couples plan on doing just that.

Kim Davis’s selfish argument

Davis’s choice of God over country seems odd, because as a candidate she never admitted that she’d pick and choose the laws she’d follow. In fact, she promised to “follow the statutes of this office to the letter.”

Davis justified her reversal by arguing that the “So help me, God” tacked on to her oath of office meant that acting on her Christian beliefs was obligatory and trumped the laws she was promising to uphold.

This fails in many ways: that phrase is not part of the official oath (nor is the Bible you might put your hand on), and if she swore to God to uphold the law, she’s now breaking that oath. (A thoughtful analysis of this is by Noah Feldman.)

In addition, the Bible itself makes a clear statement about respecting the government.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves (Romans 13:1–2; see also 1 Timothy 2:2, Titus 3:1, and 1 Peter 2:13).

An easy solution leaps to mind: if your conscience says you can no longer perform your job then quit. You could even make a bold public statement by saying that a government job that pays $80,000 per year isn’t worth compromising one’s principles. But no, she wants it both ways. She imagines that she gets to apply her personal interpretation of Christianity to her job.

Does she imagine every other government official gets to apply their individual religious interpretations to their jobs? The Bible says all sorts of crazy stuff in favor of slavery, genocide, and polygamy; could any such religious belief be applied by any government employee? Are beliefs from Islam, Satanism, and other religions also valid?

I suspect that she wanted to reserve that privilege for herself. We certainly find hypocrisy in her own situation. She wanted to pick and choose which secular laws to follow, and incredibly, she did the same with God’s laws. Jesus said, “Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 5:32). Davis cast that one aside, since she’s been married four times. And she remarried her first husband, violating Deuteronomy 24:1–4.

Davis began her job in January, 2015, when she knew that same-sex marriage might become legal within months, but she swore her oath of office anyway. She’s like the pacifist who willingly joins the infantry, knowing that killing the enemy was a possibility. With her unit deployed to a war zone, then this soldier decides that she can’t do her job.

Continue with a famous example that shows how a public servant should act here.

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/8/15.)

Image from Robert Bejil, CC license

.

We’ve recently passed the four-year anniversary of the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States. Let’s revisit the conservative reaction after that decision to see if cats are now marrying dogs, or whatever it was that conservatives were sure would follow.

Consider another Supreme Court decision

Justice Alito dissented from the opinion:

I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and school. . . . By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas.

Well, yeah. If you hate the idea of either homosexuality or same-sex marriage, you can speak your mind, and I support you in that. Make your argument. Tell us why it’s bad for society rather than simply being something that doesn’t work for you personally. But where your opinion conflicts with others’, they may also speak their mind, and you may get your feelings hurt. Such is life as an adult. You think this is unique? You think Loving v. Virginia in 1967 wasn’t a bitter pill for those who supported laws against mixed-race marriage?

As public opinion in favor of same-sex marriage becomes even stronger, your views will be seen as increasingly marginalized and weird. You will be on the wrong side of history. No one’s forcing you either way, but don’t be surprised or outraged when fewer and fewer see you holding the moral high ground.

Politics—the tail wagging the dog

One straight-married woman, interviewed just after the Obergefell decision, said that it, “essentially ends marriage as we know it.” It threatens society because “marriage is the fundamental building block for the family and society to flourish.”

This is an impressive Machiavellian win for the conservative PR machine, but it refers to a reality that we don’t inhabit. This decision doesn’t threaten their marriage or my marriage or indeed any straight marriage at all.

Glenn Beck, always eager to throw gasoline on a fire, said that the civil disobedience necessary in response to same-sex marriage is now martyrdom—literal martyrdom.

The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000. That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man.

Who does he imagine will be on the other side, killing these pastors? And what would be pastors’ crime? Churches can already refuse to marry any couple—mixed-race, same-sex, whatever.

And, unsurprisingly, zero pastors were martyred, and no one came back to Beck demanding that he address his failure.

One pastor had to walk back a bold declaration made just before the decision was announced.

We are not going to bow. We are not going to bend, and if necessary we will burn. . . .

The preachers need to get out front, the leaders need to get out front, out front of these ordinary citizens and say, “Shoot me first!”

 Oops. Didn’t really happen.

Precedent in Loving v. Virginia

Conservatives always hate when the conversation comes back to the 1967 Loving decision, which threw out state laws against mixed-race marriage. They handwave that they’re not comparable.

To some extent they’re right, though not for the reasons they imagine. Let’s look at how the 1967 Loving decision is different from Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

Obergefell squeaked by with a 5-4 vote. Loving was 9-0.

Today, the public is strongly in favor of same-sex marriage—approval reached 50% in 2012. On the eve of Obergefell it was 60% for and 37% against (Gallup), and the favorable number increases at more than a percent per year. Today, all states but two have more citizens supporting same-sex marriage than opposing it.

But public opinion was very different at the time of Loving: just 20% in favor of mixed-race marriage and 73% against it in 1968, one year after the decision. Approval was even less in the white demographic. And remember that laws against mixed-race marriage had been dismissed in most of the country at that time.

Consider approval ratings from a few more years: 4% approved mixed-race marriage in 1958, 50% in 1995, and 87% in 2013.

I don’t know which is more shocking—that nationwide approval was so low in 1958, that it took almost three decades after Loving to reach 50%, or that it wasn’t 100% in 2013! (The cartoon xkcd has an excellent graph.)

Conservatives four years ago declared that they were going to hold their breath until they turn blue (or get jailed or executed by the thousands if Glenn Beck’s fantasy came true), and yet public opinion is strongly in favor of the Supreme Court decision. Think back to 1967 with the Loving decision, where the unanimous Supreme Court was way out in front of public opinion.

Public response to Loving

Given conservatives’ rending of garments about same-sex marriage four years ago, I wondered what the public reaction was after the mixed-race marriage decision 52 years ago. I burrowed through online newspapers of the time. I wanted to find Southern newspapers (Loving overturned laws against mixed-race marriage in 17 Southern states) full of outrage at a meddling, activist court “legislating from the bench.” I expected to find scandalized opinion pieces predicting God’s retribution on society, supported with Bible verses.

I didn’t find a single one. I found instead many copies of a few nationally syndicated articles soberly summarizing the Loving decision, but that was it—just a simple statement of the facts. People seemed ready to accept the decision and move on.

That things are so different today, with many conservatives refusing to move on, makes clear that this is not Christians standing up for what’s right but just politics. Christians, keep in mind politicians’ Chicken Little games. Citizens can ignore politics when things are fine, but if Christians are under attack, they must circle the wagons and support Christian politicians. If there’s no reason to circle the wagons, they’ll invent one.

Ignore politicians’ made up crises. Have you stopped to think how hardhearted you look when you stand in the way of two people who want to get married?

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/26/15.)

Image credit: Nate Steiner, flickr, CC
.