What’s TRULY driving your politics and beliefs about gay marriage?
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When this post goes live I will be at the San Francisco Pride Parade, standing behind a booth as a volunteer for GLAAD. I made a commitment to myself to never attend another Pride event after my first one in 2009. They simply weren’t for me. I was born and raised a conservative evangelical Christian Republican. A Pride Parade is no place for a good Christian boy like me to be, is it?
I’ve changed. Everything about me has changed and the process was simply excruciating.
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You see, when I came out as gay to my sister, many years later, she breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, I’ll tell you what I told my daughter,” she quipped, “I don’t care who you sleep with just don’t bring home a Democrat.” The political line in the sand from our conservative roots was clearly drawn. In fact, when I left the Republican Party nearly 15 years ago, it was because I thought they were too liberal. As a side note, my parents weren’t quite as relaxed about my coming out to them.
I was a fundamentalist Christian minister and a closeted gay man. I was married with two small children. My moral beliefs guided my fiscal ones when it came to politics. Honestly though, I didn’t pay much attention to fiscal anything because, unless it was obvious pork spending, I didn’t know what was going on. I mostly voted with my moral convictions.
We seldom think about why we believe what we believe; we simply believe that we are right.
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In reality, most of us not only vote with our deeply ingrained perception of right and wrong, but those beliefs consume nearly all of our decisions: where we live, how we spend our money, what we eat, if and where we go to church, who our friends are, and in some cases, even what we do for a living. The kicker here is that we don’t even know it. We seldom think about why we believe what we believe; we simply believe that we are right.
In a controversial study co-authored by Dr. John Hibbing, political beliefs and perceptions may be up to 56% biological. The research studied 682 fraternal and identical twins. It found that identical twins were more likely to share political beliefs than fraternal twins. Like growing up in my house where conservatism was the landscape, it’s easy to see how similar perception of that landscape, due to biological make up, could be easily shared. However, a family that shares beliefs unconsciously reinforces those beliefs in each other.
Gay Marriage isn’t for Everyone
Like most evangelical Christians, I was not a proponent of gay marriage. I grew up believing that marriage was always meant to be between one man and one woman. They fell in love with each other, had children and lived happily ever after. It was a belief grounded in “Biblical Authority,” as well as my own upbringing. I was raised to believe that’s the way it always was and I never had a reason to doubt it.
The cry of conservative churches over the last several years, as we’ve inched toward marriage equality, has mostly been a unified warning that if the definition of marriage changes, all hell will break lose. Literally. Their agreement verifies not only the inevitable outcome, but that their definition of traditional marriage is correct. With little to no outside input, (or historical research!), they have created a frenzy of catastrophic consequences while solidifying their position. Yet, as this tongue-in-cheek but thought provoking, video shows, “traditions” have been subject to change from the beginning of time.
Like-mindedness = Dogma and Division.
Paul and Peggy attended our little church in West Covina, California. He was a well-educated, well-to-do psychologist and she was a well-educated stay-at-home mom. Paul served on the church board and proudly wore his unusually liberal politics in this ultraconservative congregation.
While this could have easily become a distraction, or even a point of contention within the church family, just the opposite happened. Relationships were built around personality and character instead of ideologies and politics. Over time, Paul and Peggy’s politics became a point of friendly banter. But while some vehemently disagreed with their politics, they genuinely loved them as people.
Surrounding ourselves with like-minded people not only reinforces that what we believe is absolute truth, it drives us further left or right of those beliefs, often beyond reasoning.
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The problem with most of us, however, is that we surround ourselves with like-minded people. Doing so not only reinforces that what we believe is absolute truth, it drives us further left or right of those beliefs, often beyond reasoning.
Professor Jonathan Haidt noted that from the 1930s to around 1980 political parties worked fairly well together. “Before the 1980s, if you knew which party an American voted for, you couldn’t predict very well whether the person held liberal or conservative views,” he said. Then, when the Republicans took control of the house in 1995, after a 40-year reign by the Democrats, new rules were established. Most of the meetings were held during the week, allowing Democrats and Republicans to fly home on the weekends. Fewer congress men and women lived in the DC area, which ultimately meant less personal interaction between them. Less interaction led to fewer friendships and more groupthink, or like-mindedness, dogma and division.
Different Friends = Different Perceptions
As a former conservative Christian turned LGBT advocate, my social media is abuzz with people from all sides on this issue of gay marriage. I get private messages from friends asking me to block other friends. They so vehemently disagree with their arguments and defensive ramblings, they can only conclude, “They are stupid.”
Intrinsic beliefs and intelligence are not always mutually exclusive. In fact, most of the time they are not. Our political affiliations are more often about a confirmation of what we feel to be true than perhaps what is really true.
In our politically and racially divided country, we tend to choose political parties like we choose sports teams.
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In our politically and racially divided country, we tend to choose political parties like we choose sports teams. We don the colors, the signs, the slogans, even adopting icons and gravatars as our own on social media. The resulting consequence isn’t convincing others to join our team, but instead builds a dividing line between “us” and “them”. I know of no single incidence where someone was persuaded to change his or her ideology, political party, or even look at an issue differently when an opposing political signpost was flashed in his or her face.
Like the Confederate flag, political symbols only serve to divide some groups and unite others. They are not calls to discussion, but battlegrounds with drawn swords. Our virtual social worlds undergird the conflicts, allowing faceless wars of words with no responsibility, accountability, or relationships.
My friends are my inspiration for research, articles and more often than not, a good laugh. As a staunch independent, I try to sort through media directed sound bytes, network sweethearts and trivial arguments. Hearing how people feel, even if they are influenced by the former, is a good gauge for what they believe. This usually keeps me from flying into rants that support one political party or another. Still, I have to admit, that when a story strikes a nerve, I sometimes jump down the rabbit hole with more passion than perspective.
Reasoning in an Unreasonable Environment
Professor Jonathan Haidt talks about the elephant and rider effect in his book The Righteous Mind. Our reactions, mostly shaped by our environment, biology and social circles are the elephant. The elephant is difficult to tame. It generally goes where it wants to go, based on how it feels. The rider is the reasoning on top of the elephant, who tries to motivate, move and direct it.
Negative emotions about others, or feelings of victimization and persecution fuel our long-established beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.
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Once the elephant is in motion, it takes courage, drive and skill to change its course. It’s much easier to let the elephant continue to lead and guide than to confront the gut beliefs that may not be accurate. If those beliefs are motivated by anger, defensiveness and fear, all the better. Negative emotions about others, or feelings of victimization and persecution fuel our long-established beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.
Often, we need something to make us uncomfortable enough to confront the elephant. That usually involves some kind of conflict between what we believe to be true and what we are experiencing. In my case, it was the undeniable fact that, no matter what I did, how many decades I tried to change, or what I wanted to believe, I was gay.
The kind of conflict I experienced seldom happens when we’re in our own comfortable environments, free from opposing ideas and enveloped in like-mindedness. This kind of reasoning cannot happen in a vacuum. The reality is, many people will continue opposing marriage equality because their elephant tells them it is wrong. Period.
Unfortunately, reasoning and critical thinking is something we don’t do much of anymore in this country of media-antagonizing and polarized belief systems. What’s worse is that moderate views seldom make the headlines and the politicians who support them are virtually ignored. To make our votes count, we’re often forced to choose a side we only partially believe in.
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So, regardless of arguments, contention, media-hype and hysteria, gay marriage is now legal in the United States. Like the abolition of slavery, civil rights, and women’s suffrage, it will eventually be seen as the right thing to do. Our intuition will confirm it.
As I often tell my own children, I don’t care what religion or political party you choose, but at least be able to tell me why. Even then, we may not make the “right” decision, but at least we can make a thoughtful one.
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Photo – Flickr/DonkeyHotey
I’ve been declared a “bigot” because I dared to opine that we reached same-sex marriage by the wrong process: It should have been created by state legislatures rather than having been legislated into existence by the federal courts. But it seems that such procedural questions are taboo. You’re either with “us”, or against “us”.
We make good company
Your point about taking a position but being able to articulate why is one of the greatest losses this culture has experienced. Everything is mostly about belief, so you can’t prove me wrong. My best teacher of all, whom i had in junior college was a sociology teacher who for tests allowed you to write about any concept of sociology taught but you needed to explain your answer or he’d fail you in a heartbeat. His motto was say anything you want but support what you say. That was over 40 years ago and i have followed that since. I… Read more »