May 2009 Archives

In a statement issued through Tiller's lawyers, his family -- a wife, four children and 10 grandchildren -- said their loss "is also a loss for the City of Wichita and women across America."

"George dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality health care despite frequent threats and violence," his family said in a written statement. "We ask that he be remembered as a good husband, father and grandfather and a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women everywhere."

"George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches."

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness....

These values are enshrined in our Declaration of Independence as inalienable rights of every American.

Generation after generation, people have fought to get rid of the "....except for"s: except for blacks, except for women, etc.  Today, we challenge the latest prejudice to raise its ugly head and seek to repudiate the fundamental American dedication to freedom and equality for all. The idea that there should be God-given life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness "except for gays" is unworthy of our national character.
      

If someone thinks homosexuality is immoral, they have a right to believe that. But they do not have the right to change our fundamental freedoms. For many, many people, getting married is one of the most important things they will ever do in the pursuit of happiness. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the Constitution of the United States that suggests any group of people has the right to limit another, no matter how many referendums or propositions they put onto a ballot. The U. S. Constitution reigns supreme.
      

I do not feel the upset I would have expected to feel about the recent ruling by California's Supreme Court. I don't feel the upset because it seems so clear to me that this issue is already decided in the hearts and minds of Americans. We have a new generation of citizens who can't even believe we're having this argument; for whom the inalienable rights of all people - yes, all people - is such a no-brainer that they are stymied by the fact we're even discussing this. They don't see gays as second-class people, and they don't think they should be treated as second-class citizens. In my heart, I believe that the Supreme Court of the United States is going to agree with them. God loves gay people every bit as much as He loves the rest of us, and the idea that "God shall not be mocked" means that He isn't. God is limitless in His love, and asks that we at least make the effort to be limitless in ours.

Additionally, Sotomayor's critics are up in arms over the fact that she has admitted that her ethnic background has an affect on her decision making process. Who does she think she is? Well, as it turns out, she probably thinks she's being very similar to Justice Sam Alito:

ALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point. ... And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position. [...]

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

My young daughter is a dedicated fan of the TLC program Jon and Kate Plus Eight, a reality show of a wholesome family with a set of twins and a set of sextuplets.  Over the weekend, TLC ran a marathon of four seasons of the show leading up to the beginning of its fifth season on Monday night.  I confess--I spent a good number of hours watching the reruns with her. 

Rather unbelievably, the fourth season ended with parents Jon and Kate Gosselin renewing their wedding vows and--within just a few weeks--a tabloid explosion of scandalous rumors of the couple's marriage failing apart amid allegations of affairs.  In the world of reality TV, news doesn't get much bigger than this.  For months, fans, bloggers, and the tabloid press have been speculating:  How would season five open?  Would Jon and Kate stay together?  Would they get divorced? 

The scandal is exacerbated by the fact that Jon and Kate are evangelical Christians.  The Gosselins are folk heroes in the evangelical community--their sextuplets were the result of infertility treatments during which they refused selective abortion and carried all six babies to term.  TLC downplays the religious aspects of the show, but legions of conservative church-going fans delighted in Kate's stern discipline, cheered Jon wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Bible verses, and devoured the couple's Christian parenting books.  The show is something strangely compelling--the cute little kids and the endlessly cranky parents trying hard to make a good Christian family. 

The new season's opening episode recorded a familial train wreck.  Indeed, Jon barely participated in his sextuplet's fifth birthday while an emotionally drained Kate struggled alone to pull of the party.   In individual interviews, the couple talked about how hard their relationship is--how they've become "different" people--and how divorce was a distinct possibility.

As I watched, I recalled another show--An American Family--the original family reality show that PBS aired in 1973.  Conceived as a video diary of a liberal middle-class American family, the Louds of Santa Barbara, the program quickly devolved into the chronicle of crisis--complete with boundary-pushing teens and the wife confronting her philandering husband and demanding a divorce.  The Louds made big news--including the cover of Newsweek on the breakdown of the American family.

Which, of course, brings us back to Jon and Kate.  If the Loud saga depicted the crisis of the liberal 1970s family, what does Jon and Kate's tale reveal about the state of the evangelical family?  Is this where their politics of "family values" have taken conservative evangelicals?  Are the Gosselins the Louds of the Christian right?  

In Jon and Kate's case, evangelical gender expectations seem to be the root of their troubles: they reversed the parental roles.  After a couple of seasons, Jon decided to stay at home and Kate went on the road to promote the show and their books.  The choice made Jon increasingly sullen and Kate happier and began to wear at their relationship.   For evangelicals, this is an unusual arrangement that leaves the husband open to charges of "feminization" and the wife of being difficult.  The Gosselin's tensions demonstrate how unsuccessfully conservative religious groups have been dealing with gender--and how when a woman like Kate Gosselin breaks with tradition in order to pursue what she loves--even when her business is family and motherhood--she gets both blamed and punished for problems in her relationships. 

Kate kept saying, "it is so complex; it is so difficult," unable to stop her tears.  In a way, she embodies many evangelical women who struggle between the role of homemaker that their churches assign them and of finding interesting and creative work in the world.   Kate, despite all her pretentions to tradition, is actually a very contemporary woman with feminist inclinations--one who is figuring out that her theology is at odds with the way life works out.  She often violates the mores of a nice evangelical mom (which I think is part of the appeal; she is, in many ways, an evangelical fantasy mother).  She clearly likes travel, Oprah interviews, and book signings.  Staying at home with eight kids can be a drag, so she left her husband with them only to find out that there may have been a girlfriend, too.  Success, good children, happy marriage--are they all possible within her theological framework?  "I have a lot of anger," she said on Monday's program.  I bet. 

How dreary it is to watch a relationship implode on national television.  In some measure, the failure is theirs.  But the conservative evangelical community shares some of that failure, too.  The religious world to which Jon and Kate belong never successfully navigated the gender changes of the last three decades, insisting that happiness can still be found in hierarchical roles of male superiority and female submission.  Having rejected feminist theology, evangelicals can't really navigate contemporary marriage issues like those facing Jon and Kate.  They made celebrities of the Gosselins for being traditionalists, yet that success eroded the very basis of the traditionalism on which their family was based.  Now, the woman is criticized for that same success by an increasingly cruel media and tabloid press.   I just wonder if all those church people will turn on you next.   

You are right, Kate.  It is complex and difficult.  It makes me angry for you.

Rev. Carol Howard Merritt is the Pastor at Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. and the author of Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation.

I walk through the shiny car salesroom, down the hall, into my comfortable business manager office, and find a file waiting on my desk. I thumb through the forms that I see regularly, but notice that the numbers that are filled in are quite unusual. The cost of the car is well above the Blue Book recommendation, the interest rate is twenty-two percent, and to top it all off, there's a high-priced warranty attached. I enter my boss' office with the papers in hand and ask, "What is this?" She continues looking down and shuffling papers as she answers, "The deal's done, Carol. You just need to have them sign." "It's done?" I say, closing my eyes and letting out a weary breath. "Yup." "What bank would do this? It's way above Blue Book and the rate's too high. And what about the warranty? What company covers a seven-year-old Yugo, with so many miles on it? We all know this is going to be repossessed in a couple of months." "It's done," She emphatically puts down her newly stacked files and finally looks up at my worried face. "Listen, Carol, with their income, they're lucky to be getting a car at all. Now go do your job."