Stepping Through the Mirror

Salon exclusive: How Maggie Gallagher’s college pregnancy made her a single mom, and a traditional marriage zealot

BY MARK OPPENHEIMER

From an op-ed in yesterday’s NY Times by Rabbi Dov Linzer, which demonstrates how religions can be/have been/are perverted into a fervor for controlling women’s bodies:

IS it possible for a religious demand for modesty to be about anything other than men controlling women’s bodies? … 

This is not a problem unique to Judaism. But the Talmud, the basis for Jewish law, offers a perhaps surprising answer: It places the responsibility for controlling men’s licentious thoughts about women squarely on the men.

Put more plainly, the Talmud says: It’s your problem, sir; not hers.

The ultra-Orthodox men in Israel who are exerting control over women claim that they are honoring women. In effect they are saying: We do not treat women as sex objects as you in Western society do. Our women are about more than their bodies, and that is why their bodies must be fully covered.

In fact, though, their actions objectify and hyper-sexualize women. Think about it: By saying that all women must hide their bodies, they are saying that every woman is an object who can stir a man’s sexual thoughts. Thus, every woman who passes their field of vision is sized up on the basis of how much of her body is covered. She is not seen as a complete person, only as a potential inducement to sin. …

The Talmud tells the religious man, in effect: If you have a problem, you deal with it. It is the male gaze — the way men look at women — that needs to be desexualized, not women in public. The power to make sure men don’t see women as objects of sexual gratification lies within men’s — and only men’s — control. …

You speak of poverty as if it is something “outside,” something “other.” It is never “us.” “We” are upwardly mobile, well-educated people who grew up in the suburbs.

You insist on praying for people like me, but you haven’t the slightest idea that I walk among you. … I am unlucky, but I don’t think “downtrodden” describes me very well. I’m not downtrodden. I’m pissed off. So, no, I do not want your prayers. I do not want an invitation to your church, and I’m not interested in discussing “the poor” as if they are some kind of abstract concept.

ScienceDaily (June 15, 2010) — Researchers at the University of Amsterdam provide first-time evidence for a neurobiological cause of intergroup conflict. They show that oxytocin, a neuropeptide produced in the brain that functions as hormone and neurotransmitter, leads humans to self-sacrifice to benefit their own group and to show aggression against threatening out-groups. This finding qualifies the wide-spread belief that oxytocin promotes general trust and benevolence.

Gay rights in developing countries

Gays are under attack in poor countries—and not just because of “local culture”

May 27th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

“In many former colonies, denouncing homosexuality as an “unAfrican” Western import has become an easy way for politicians to boost both their popularity and their nationalist credentials. But Peter Tatchell, a veteran gay-rights campaigner, says the real import into Africa is not homosexuality but politicised homophobia.

This has, he argues, coincided with an influx of conservative Christians, mainly from America, who are eager to engage African clergy in their own domestic battle against homosexuality. David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who proposed its horrid bill, is a member of the Fellowship, a conservative American religious and political organisation. “Africa must seem an exciting place for evangelical Christians from places like America,” says Marc Epprecht, a Canadian academic who studies homosexuality in Africa. “They can make much bigger gains in their culture wars there than they can in their own countries.” Their ideas have found fertile ground. In May this year, George Kunda, Zambia’s vice-president, lambasted gay people, saying they undermined the country’s Christian values and that sadism and Satanism could be the result.”

Thomas Wolfe famously wrote, “You can’t go home again.” Well, perhaps Wolfe was only half right. You can never go home again, but you can never leave completely, either. …

As a gay man, I have several versions of my story, depending on what the occasion might call for. There is the political “I pay taxes, too,” version, and the religiously challenging “Jesus never mentioned it” version. I have an aggrieved “Look how you’ve oppressed me” presentation, and a militant “I’m queer and get over it” one. But Betsy was suggesting something different: that I get beyond the urge to use my story as a strategy. Instead, as writer John Cournos advises, I should relate my personal truth to a more universal one, what theologian Miroslav Volf calls “a moral obligation to remember truthfully.” That means telling my story without embellishing it, tidying it up, or turning it into a morality play with clear-cut villains, victims, and saints. It meant including unresolved tensions and all, even if my doubts and mistakes would give others ammunition to use against me.

COMING HOME: A GAY CHRISTIAN SPEAKS TO FUNDAMENTALISTS

Jonathan Odell

January 15, 2010