So--skimming over my news sites today, I ran into this blog post. The nitty-gritty? This picture:
Apparently, the woman with the "Homosexuality is a sin" sign showed up at Syracuse U (in New York), and one gay student responded with a sign of his own. The originating site quotes him:
"I decided that because this woman thought it was okay to make me feel uncomfortable in my home, I would retaliate and make her feel just as uncomfortable, if not more."He reports getting tons of support from passersby.
I hope it's no secret to people who read this blog that I oppose the theology behind the woman's sign. Aside from the basic issues of the sinfulness and (presumed) curability of homosexuality, the sign is just an awful witness--bad activism. I wonder just what the lone protester hopes to accomplish.
There's actually a wide range of rationales behind demonstrations of this sort. For some, like Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps, demonstrations are entirely mechanisms of conviction. Christians, in Phelps's theology, are called to be God's pointing finger of judgment, condemning the world (well, specific parts of it) for its sin and thus giving the reprobates "no excuse" for their sin when they inevitably face the Final Judgment. After all, they were told: God hates fags.
Alternately, other demonstrators really believe that signs such as the one in the picture might have some kind of transformative effect--if not immediately than cumulatively. A gay person might see that sign, consciously dismiss it, but unconsciously that message might join with any of a hundred other messages great and small, opening the door of their heart even a crack wider to the possibility that homosexuality is a sin and that Christ might have a better way. Eventually (goes this line of thinking), the Holy Spirit might enter in and begin working to help that person cease their sin, repent, and/or seek professional (read: pastoral) help in battling their sin.
Of course I disagree hotly with both of these possible rationales, both theologically and practically. The former is hyper-Calvinist, loveless fundamentalism that I have difficulty imagining as Christianity at all (Phelps thinks the same about people like me--well, really about everyone outside of his own enclave). The latter rationale's failure mirrors the empty activism I've criticized on the left; holding up a sign reassures the protester that they're "doing something" for their faith, but that affect of "doing something" outweighs the basic question of efficacy. If you believe homosexuals need to internalize the message of sin and redemption, is holding up a sign on a college campus the best way to do that? I suspect not.
Based on her sign, I wager she aligns more with the non-Phelpsian view. I'm only guessing, though; the piece from which I got the pic is silent as to her reasoning. For all I know she's an uber-liberal doing some kind of performance art or social experiment to see how people react to offensive messages. (If so, then experiment Win!)
I'm struck, though, by her expression. At a guess: Resigned. Used to this. Inured to abuse. Not even embarrassed at the fashion slight. After all, Christ said to expect abuse. The sign next to her confirms everything she's been taught about how homosexuals act, just as her sign apparently confirms everything that the counter-protester expects from conservative, anti-gay Christians.
It's worth pointing out, though, that the woman's sign here is not of the "God Hates Fags" variety. It is, as fundamentalist expressions go, fairly outreachy. The "Christ can set you free" message bespeaks a theology that pictures gay people as sinners, yes, but redeemable sinners caught by an addiction or disorder rather than (as is the case for Phelps) filthy animals beyond all hope of redemption, animals that--if the US knew what it was doing--would be rounded up and shot. In the extremely limited context of fundamentalist anti-gay-sign-protests, the woman's sign actually qualifies as being on the loving end of the spectrum. I would be surprised, in other words, if the woman didn't imagine herself as acting out of love for homosexual people.
Again, the fact that to most eyes the sign is manifestly unloving is a failure of activism; the message she means to send (at least, the one I imagine her meaning) isn't the one she's actually sending.
But I'm hardly more impressed by the counter-sign. Yes, on one level it's a clever turning (queering, perhaps) of the woman's sign, swapping the doctrine of church of Project Runway for the woman's fundamentalist beliefs. You give me offensive sincerity? I respond with surface glibness and ridicule. But, like most comic reversals, the counter-sign responds to one form of dehumanization with another, one that plays on tensions of socioeconomic class ("see how backward/white trash she is?") rather than sexuality. In that, the counter-sign is extremely effective activism. It gets the job done.
But, to be frank, the counter-protester's stated rationale ("I'll make her feel even more unwelcome") doesn't exactly rank well when compared to the protesters--which (as an educated guess) I'd say is something like "I'd like for gay people to be in heaven" (mixed, to be fair, with a bit of "I want to prove how good a Christian I am by witnessing to the gays").
I know this won't be a popular interpretation, but I read more loving intention in the woman's badly calibrated, unloving message/activism than I do in the guy's quippy, effective sign. He's not interested--so far as I can tell--in the other woman's well-being, eternal or otherwise. She attacked him, so he's hitting back and getting real and virtual kudos for doing so. Will his activism convince her that gays aren't hopeless addicts mired in their own fleshly desires? Nope. Is it even trying to do so? Nope. It wins by virtue of being the cleverer put-down.
It depresses me, this scene. There's so much distance between the two points of view, and so little hope of anything like meaningful interaction.
Can't we do any better?
More tomorrow,
JF
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