Radical Cleric Links Same-Sex Marriage with Mass Murder

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 12:19 PM on April 23, 2009.

This is anything but new, but still surprises me when I stumble across it:

On April 4 the NY Times ran adjacent front-page articles on the Iowa Supreme Court decision legalizing 'gay marriage' and the gunman who murdered 13 people in New York. That day the Times also ran an op ed article by Charles M. Blow who expressed concern about the negative impact that conservative media's "talk of revolution" could have on "weak minds."

Commenting on this is Morality in Media President Bob Peters:

I know when you read that Times front page, the first thought that came to you was, 'I wonder what some obscure right-wing moral scold thinks about all of this?' Hey, I'm here to serve.

"The underlying problem is that increasingly we live in a 'post-Christian' society, where Judeo-Christian faith and values have less and less influence. Among other things, Judaism and Christianity taught that murder was wrong and that included murder motivated by anger, hatred and revenge. Both religions also taught that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves and to forgive others.

"For many citizens, what has replaced Judeo-Christian faith and values is the secular value system that is reflected in films, rap/music lyrics, and videogames and on TV and now the Internet, where the taking of human life for just about any reason is commonplace and is often portrayed in an appealing manner and in realistic detail. Murder motivated by hatred and revenge is also justified.

"This secular value system is also reflected in the 'sexual revolution,' which is the driving force behind the push for 'gay marriage;' and the Iowa Supreme Court decision is another indication that despite all the damage this revolution has caused to children, adults, family life and society (think abortion, divorce, pornography, rape, sexual abuse of children, sexually transmitted diseases, trafficking in women and children, unwed teen mothers and more), it continues to advance relentlessly.

"It most certainly is not my intention to blame the epidemic of mass murders on the gay rights movement!

Certainly not! Except of course it is. Peters is one simple-minded voice among many who insist that there's a connection between our lack of fealty to "Judeo-Christian values" and all the manifestations of our supposedly declining society -- gay rights fits neatly into that framework. The title of this missive, by the way: "Connecting the Dots: The Link Between Gay Marriage and Mass Murders."

And did I mention that Peters has also argued in the past that dirty words uttered on TV causes violence?

It is my intention to point out that the success of the sexual revolution is inversely proportional to the decline in morality; and it is the decline of morality (and the faith that so often under girds it) that is the underlying cause of our modern day epidemic of mass murders.

Forget about the fact that the moralistic America of days past for which these people pine was more an invention of 1950s television writers than an era that ever really existed. Let's set aside the fact that the United States is both overwhelmingly religious --- and mostly Judeo-Christian -- and also the country with the most mass murder sprees. Let's also set aside the fact that all of the world's major religions teach their followers to love and respect their neighbor, but also to spill that neighbor's blood with all the righteous fury they can summon if he doesn't adhere to their beliefs. And forget about pederast priests and Christian fundies trying to turn the U.S. military into a vengeful hand of God that will slay the infidels.

The real problem with this argument (and related arguments about various cultures' supposed depravities) is that there are core human values, divorced from religious beliefs or social customs, and while cultures vary significantly, those core values are universal across all societies.

And mass murder ain't one of them.

That's the take-away from research done by Catherine Burke (a former professor of mine), Ian MacDonald and Karl Stewart, who found that all human societies hold a set of six "core values":  love, honesty, trust respect for human dignity, courage and fairness.

That's not to say that there aren't wide differences between cultures, but that those differences arise from different experiences -- varying interpretations of how those same core values inform our social expectations. They wrote*, "we have tested these core values in different societies including with indigenous groups [and] in different continents," and they found them to be universally embraced.

Contrary to the idea that our morals are informed by our Judeo-Christian heritage -- rather bizarre, when you consider how young Christianity, and to a lesser degree Judaism, are relative to human society -- Burke, MacDonald and Stewart argue that values like 'you shouldn't grab an AK-47 and kill as many people as you can before the cops shoot you' are informe a product of behavioral evolution. "It is our argument," they write, "that core values form the deep bonds that connect human beings one to another."

When we examine our evolutionary history, it is obvious that humans would not have survived as a species had they not been able to form and maintain social groups. The other species which co-existed with our earliest ancestors all had sharper teeth, longer claws, were faster, could jump higher and in general physically outmatched the earliest humans.... Therefore, we believe, that to survive humans had to evolve as social animals. As social animals we needed (and still need today) a methodology to allow us to function as productive members of a social group. This is true of all social species."

Of course, that's an argument that won't go far with Young Earth Creationists. But for you and I, it should be enough to dispel any notion that how often we attend a church or whether we let gay and lesbian couples marry has a connection to the basic issue of valuing human life.

* This stuff is from their book, Systems Leadership.

PS: As far as I know, Peters isn't even a member of the clergy -- the title is a little joke playing off of the ubiqiutous "radical cleric" tag hung on any Muslim religious leader who makes similar arguments about the supposed dangers of secularism. 

Tagged as: religious right, insanity, marriage equality

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.