Culture WAR! Who gets to decide the culture of a nation?

I was a teenage culture warrior. I grew up in a fairly conservative social group that believed that the root of the nation's problems was moral depravity. We needed to bring prayer back to school, protect our guns, and make abortion illegal again. I sat in more than one Sunday school class where the teacher drew two parallel lines moving in the downward direction. The higher line was “The Church” - followers of Jesus. The lower line was “the world”. We were then admonished to keep God’s standards as written rather than settling for being just a little bit more righteous than those around us. The world was going to hell in a handbasket, and it was my responsibility to preserve and honor the values my parents taught me. Righteousness was under attack, and it was my duty as a priesthood holder to defend righteousness on a societal level. 

The primary cultural conflict of my teen and young adult years was marriage rights for “the gays”. I was an enthusiastic cultural warrior who tirelessly campaigned against other people's marriage rights. I once justified this by saying, “I know that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. I also know that someday I will have to account for my actions. On that day, I do not want to have to explain why I stood idly by and allowed it to happen.” I believed I was fighting an impossible fight. I also believed that fighting that fight made me righteous and worthy. This political action crescendoed to the point that I was living in California, actively campaigning for Proposition 8. The bill that would make “gay marriage” illegal in California. 

This was an exciting and scary time to be a culture warrior. General authorities and other religious leaders high up in the LDS church preached sermons in special meetings called to rally support for Proposition 8. They instructed us on how to campaign and motivated us by reviewing all the bad things that would happen if marriage between two people of the same sex were permitted. The biggest consequences talked about were the state forcing LDS people to perform “gay” marriages in their temples. The leverage they cited was the LDS Church's tax-exempt status. The refrain went “the church will be forced to marry gays, or they will stop being a tax-exempt religion.” The other reason to fight “gay marriage” was ideological. Legally allowing homosexual people to marry and have a family would defile the sacred institution of marriage and redefine “family”. This was Satan’s grand ruse to destroy the morality of the nation. 

Now we have the benefit of hindsight to verify the actual outcome. The Supreme Court legalized marriage between people of the same sex in its 2015 decision in the Obergefell v. Hodges case. This means we have had a decade of gays marrying. In that time, the national government has moved in a much more conservative direction, largely due to two non-consecutive Trump presidencies. In the last decade, I have not seen a single LDS Bishop forced to marry gay members of their congregation. Furthermore, the church’s tax-exempt status has not been threatened in any meaningful way. In fact, I am unaware of any way the legalization has impacted the LDS church and its ability to teach that heterosexual marriage is the only kind of marriage sanctioned by God. In 2015, I was still a faithful Latter Day Saint and serving in a leadership position in my local LDS ward. The court’s decision had a negligible impact on my day-to-day life. My “way of life” remained unaltered. This was, for me, a significant sticking point. I had been indoctrinated to believe that other people making choices I didn’t agree with somehow threatened my very way of life. My personal lifestyle and the morality of the rising generation were at stake. “Sin” openly practiced in a manner that good, faithful people were aware of supposedly represented an existential threat to my faith and the morality of my children. 

This is largely the primary concern I hear from people fighting against the rights of trans people. The primary narrative seems to be that perverse and sinful transes are “grooming” good innocent children and infecting them with “gender confusion.” As best I can understand, the reasoning is that the decisions of others will tempt righteous youth to experiment with sin and eventually lead them away from the truth. It seems to me that this is one of the driving motivations for regulating the medical choices parents can make for their children. “Righteous” children should not see this perversion in their peers, lest they too become perverted.  

Over time, I came to feel like my cultural war theology was limiting me. This realization came to me when I was still a true believing Latter Day Saint and actively involved in LDS recruitment efforts as a ward mission leader. I started asking myself, “How can I be an effective therapist to people I believe are missionaries for Satan?” As I came to know my gay patients, I saw them as ethically “good” people who simply behaved in ways I didn’t agree with. Eventually, my contact with people who were not conservative Latter Day Saints showed me that “sinners” can be safe people. People with whom I shared more commonality than divergence. Perhaps equally as important, I learned that I could actively love my gay neighbor as a friend without altering my religious practices or way of life.

Since leaving the LDS church, I have struggled to understand how other people’s actions affect someone else’s way of life. The answer that makes the most sense to me is that “normalizing” sin (read that homosexuality or better yet “other people's choices contrary to my religious teachings”) would corrupt the rising generation by giving them permission to sin like everyone around them. This struggle is literally timeless. The Old Testament is replete with Israelites adopting Canaanite idolatry and prophets striving to keep Israel pure in their faith. In its extreme, this fear morphs into the belief that the outsider is actively corrupting faithful children. Something like “the gays/transes are out to get our kids.” The accusation of "grooming," or more politely “recruiting,” children has always struck me as a very strange (read that hypocritical) accusation coming from people who literally send young people all over the world with the express purpose of converting the locals to their faith. I guess it is only human to assume everyone behaves the way you do. For what it is worth, the general perspective I hear in the LGBT community is that  being trans/gay is an innate characteristic, NOT a choice. From that perspective, grooming and recruitment make no sense. You cannot recruit someone to something inborn. As the saying goes, “we don’t want to make cis kids trans, we want trans kids to live to become adults.”    

 

As a trans person, it feels like nails on a chalkboard every time I hear a religious person talk about their “way of life” being under attack. I think of the legislature dictating trans people's medical choices,  what public spaces they are safe in, and what sports they can play. I also think of the trans children forced to experience the wrong puberty, something they will spend the rest of their life and a small fortune working to reverse, because strangers didn’t believe that their parents and medical doctors were capable of making well-informed, thoughtful medical decisions.  Other people felt they knew better than the child, the child's parents, and board-certified physicians. These things are what I think of as a personal “way of life.” It is composed of everyday actions and choices that one is allowed or prohibited from engaging in. Anti trans legislation deeply impacts the way the trans community lives daily. It inarguably places our way of life at risk. Anti-trans legislation represents a clear and present existential threat to the trans way of life. Anti-trans lobbying literally represents trans genocide. If you disagree with me about this point, please go read my blog entry titled “Processes of Oppression."

To my understanding, what religious people mean when they say “way of life” is something less personal and more ideological. What I like to call a public way of life. This is more about the community one lives in. As best as I can tell, it means one's ability to live in a community that reflects one's values back to oneself. 

This way of life seems best represented by sitcoms from the 50’s and 60’s. Shows like “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, “The Andy Griffith Show,” and "Father Knows Best.” Growing up, I loved the imaginary town of Mayberry, where everyone knew their neighbors, and the biggest trouble kids got into was stealing a piece of gum. This fictional past is what I think of when I hear about “making America great again” or bringing back the “traditional values.” The problem is that Mayberry was never real. It was always an idealized, nostalgic fiction. The “other people” have always existed, whether that be “the gays,” “the transes,” or “the blacks.” They were just put in their place through forced legal segregation.  Whether that was literal segregation like Jim Crow or other laws that simply made it impossible to exist in public, such as so-called public decency laws or anti-cross-dressing laws. The reality is that the societies of that time didn’t have gay or black people because Barney Fife’s city counterparts were busy ensuring “those people” stayed in their place. It was ok to read about Christine Jorgensen in the papers, but an entirely different thing to have one of those “perverted deviants” living in your neighborhood. 

It is interesting to study the history of desegregation. After Brown v. Board of Education, southerners complained that their “way of life” was being threatened. Forcing their children to attend school with black children was going to lead to the moral degradation of white children and ultimately the elimination of the southern way of life. A few southern states went so far as to eliminate state-run public schools. Homeschooling was preferable to exposing “good righteous children” to “those people.” People from the south still feel very strongly about their way of life. They wave Confederate flags and talk about “the South will rise again.” At this point, most people associate the Confederate flag and Southern culture with racism and slavery. It has been said that  “History doesn’t repeat itself but does rhyme.” It would appear that xenophobia is a natural part of the human condition, as are the religious and moral justifications for it. There seems to be a long-standing tradition of “God’s Chosen People ™” being convinced that contact with people who live and believe differently will lead to the moral degradation of "righteous youth” and elimination of “God’s prescribed ‘way of life ™ .” It seems to be the same rhetoric whether we are talking about Canaanites, so-called “inferior races,” or the LGBT community. The ingroup has been given a revelation that tells them, with certainty, how everyone on the planet should live. Oddly enough, this “correct lifestyle” seems to be so fragile that contact with alternatives will undoubtedly corrupt God's supposedly “chosen people.” 

At present, the trans community is asking to be allowed to exist in public. Note I didn’t say safely exist in public. The ask really is - please don't limit my ability to be in public and interact with the general population. It appears that the majority of folks cry out, “What about my children?” or “But my way of life.” I have come to view Mayberry as a toxic fiction that perpetuates the myth of an America that never was. The cost for this kind of “wholesome lifestyle”  is the exclusion or "management" of anyone who does not meet your definition of wholesome. The intent of anti trans laws is to force trans people out of the public eye, ostensibly in the name of “the children” and/or the “righteous/wholesome” way of life.  I believe there is a viable alternative to this sort of zero-sum thinking. 

Early LDS scholar James E. Talmage, Phd, once shared a modern-day parable generally referred to as “The Parable of Two Lamps.” Dr. Talmage tells of an encounter he had as a college student with a lamp salesman. After a pleasant conversation, the salesman stated that he had a lamp he believed Dr. Talmage would like. Dr. Talamage replied, “My friend, I have a lamp, one that has been tested and proven.”  Dr. Talmage then took the salesman inside to see his lamp. The wise salesman let Dr. Talmage show him his lamp and even complimented it. He then requested Dr. Talmage's permission to light his own lamp.  With Dr. Talmage’s permission, the salesman lights his lamp, which is much brighter and has better features. Impressed by the lamp's obvious superiority, Dr. Talmage immediately purchased it. This illustrates what I like to call the “fighting for” vs “fighting against” principle. When it comes to defending one’s lifestyle, there are two major approaches. Lambast and curtail any different lifestyles or actively put your energy into living your best life, allowing others to come to you. I believe this is what Jesus meant when he talked about being “a light unto the world”. The Old Testament prophet Jonah did not succeed in his task by tearing down sinful people. In fact, he was ultimately punished for wishing ill on those he saw as sinners. One thing I take away from the Old Testament is that for every wayward, idolatrous Aaron, there is a faithful Joshua. Living in Sodom and Gomorrah was hard for Lot and his family. Yet despite the sin all around them, Lot and his family remained faithful enough to God that God spared them. Lot was able to practice his “way of life” despite being surrounded by people so sinful that they became the example of sinners throughout the ages. 

True faith does not require a war with those you disagree with. Rather, it is the foundation for your life. “The Rock” upon which you build and style your life. If your “way of life” is the capital “T” True Way of Life, then all you need to do is live it, and people will be drawn to you. If you are afraid that your children will be corrupted, inoculate them with the word of God and lead by example. Let them see the fruits of your lifestyle choices. If your lifestyle really is the one true lifestyle, your children will see that and live it. How true is an ideology if it cannot withstand the existence of alternatives? 

May public spaces be rich and full of differences. 

May different ways of knowing coexist as much as different kinds of people.

So mote it be!

MJ