Building is difficult. We all know the truth behind the phrase 'it's easier to destroy than to create'. Bridges are particularly difficult, those precarious efforts to span great chasms. But for a bridge that's needed, a successful span is quite the impressive accomplishment. Perhaps the most well known recent imagery evoked to this extent was Bill Clinton's 'Bridge to the 21st Century'.
There's another usage of that imagery that I think is important to Democratic politics, and that's bridging the divide between secular and religious perspectives. If you strip away the religious identification, the governable majority of Americans sides with us on almost every single policy issue. Yet, we tend toward more internal strife and vitriol than is found among religious and secular conservatives.
Abortion, naturally, is an area where emotions run particularly high. Single payer advocates or minimum wage advocates don't get blown up. They don't have websites devoted to destroying their families, their friends, their professional colleagues, their business partners. Reproductive healthcare providers are about the closest thing we have in the US today that compares to the more violent conditions labor and environmental and women's rights activists confront in many other countries.
The true crazies are outliers. They're extremists, criminals, terrorists. They don't represent mainstream perspectives that oppose abortion. They create a tremendous amount of destruction, emotionally and physically. Crime has a tendency to do that. That's precisely why we have a third party, objective legal system to act as intermediary between victim and perpetrator. Vigilance is required in making sure that we do not blame larger groups for the actions of such people. At some levels, we recognize this. We don't blame black people for crimes committed by people who happen to be black.
Or more precisely, our rational brains at least attempt to override what we know intellectually is absurd yet still feel a nagging gut feeling about. 'White flight' isn't just arch-conservatives, after all. Democrats have abandoned urban cores, too. Democrats have supported 'tough-on-crime' legislation that largely just imprisons poor and minorities, too. Democrats make sure their kids go to the 'right' schools and grow up in the 'right' neighborhoods, too.
What seems to be different about crimes by people who claim a religious affiliation is that the intellectual effort to combat our tendency to blame the larger group breaks down. We start getting sloppy. We make inaccurate claims (perhaps the best example of this is the notion that goes around from time to time about suicide bombing being a religious tactic).
I believe personally that this is unfortunate because secular and religious leftists are more closely matched in our priorities than are secular and religious rightists. There is more potential cohesion on our side than theirs. Yet, the opposite reality exists. Our efforts are more fractured, more splintered, more disjointed. It doesn't have to be that way. We're all on the same team.
There's an interesting factoid about Dr. Tiller that I would posit many people haven't heard.
Tiller and his wife were actively involved in the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, an ELCA affiliated congregation.
His Lutheranism is completely irrelevant. Or more precisely, for those of us who support separation of church and state, it should be irrelevant. It should be like noting his favorite sport or favorite color. But, there's a certain perspective that feels Christians have a unique obligation to confront the fundies. This is mistaken in two ways, and I want to briefly touch upon them.
First, this perspective isn't familiar with the fact that the people most directly confronting the fundies are other Christians. You've likely heard of another Kansan, Fred Phelps, infamous for that other wedge issue, homosexuality. One of his favorite targets is protesting religious organizations, like churches and religiously affiliated colleges, that refuse to participate in his campaign of hatred against gays. And it was Republicans that drove the effort to pass the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act.
I think it's worth taking a tangent here, too, to quote Barney Frank's remarks in voting against the act.
The American Constitution, the principle of free speech precisely protects the right of despicable people to be obnoxious,...In fact, the particular group of vicious people who have been disrupting the funerals have as their major goal getting rid of people like me, gay men and lesbians. They particularly hate us. But I will not allow their bigotry against me and the reaction against that to be used to reduce the protections of our Constitution.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State is an organization dedicated to the belief that separation of church and state is essential for religious liberty. I think the words of Reverend Barry Lynn, the Executive Director, summarize quite well the position that most Christians take with regard to Tiller's death.
"The murder of Dr. Tiller is an affront to every moral system imaginable," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. "He had worked relentlessly to preserve the guarantee that women could make their own medical and ethical decisions. Our deepest sympathies go to his family, friends and patients."
It's also worth exploring for a bit what exactly Tiller put up with in his practice in the heart of Kansas. This website is an excellent example. Right there at the top, in big, simple typeface, is this explanation:
This website takes a revealing look at "Tiller the Killer".
There's a whole page devoted to
Churches that Defend and Comfort Tiller
subtitled with the witty but straightforward Bushism-in-waiting
"The Unholy Alliance"
This isn't abstract, vague hate mongering. This is specific photographs, meeting times, names, associations, etc. This is what religious folks encounter when they do something that goes against the established orthodoxy of the far right.
Second, even if Christians were completely ignoring the fundamentalist fringes, it is not the role of religious groups to create political opposition. Religious beliefs certainly guide personal beliefs and how those beliefs affect our political involvement. But we should never confuse the two. Part of the foundation of our struggle is the belief that politics should remain separate from religion. The political consequences of religious organizing should certainly be countered. They should be countered the way Tiller countered them. Usher on Sunday. Leading medical practitioner on Monday.
Indeed, when it comes to abortion, another interesting aside is wondering why there aren't numerous clinics like his in New York and Boston and LA and San Francisco and Chicago and Philadelphia and DC, etc, etc. If he can do what he did in Wichita, what are we doing in less hostile environments? What are we doing to support efforts of people in more hostile environments? Will knowing about Tiller's work change attitudes the next time someone asks what's the matter with Kansas or refers to the heartland as flyover country? Don't get me wrong, as a next-door neighbor, I love Kansas jokes. What's important is to make sure that we understand that reality is more complex, more nuanced, than just the jokes.
At the end of the day, a churchgoing Lutheran was shot at his church. That's Christians dealing with the extremism that is the crazies of the religious right. I think that's useful to remember the next time we get too agitated about splitting up into pro- and anti-religious camps. We're all on the same team. We share the same values, the same priorities, the same objectives. We are much more unified than the Republican Party. And we don't gain anything by trying to associate Republicans or Christians in general with the violent extremes of a few outliers. It's okay for a minority of Americans to be pro-life, to believe that certain types of killings should be illegal. Our democracy can handle that. They are peaceful, responsible, non-violent citizens participating in our democracy the way we want people to participate, by protesting, writing letters, talking to their representatives, telling their friends, and so forth.
Terrorists are outliers because they're terrorists, not because they have religious beliefs. People of faith are not terrorists. They are not crazy. And many of them are great allies in the realm of politics, even on supposedly contentious wedge issues like abortion and stem cell research. Most religious people just want to engage the public sphere as citizens, not religious representatives.
Or to say it differently, that's what makes us Democrats. We prefer democracy to theocracy. We can live with a dissenting viewpoint so long as those dissenting do not associate with violent efforts to subvert the will of the majority. We will treat with respect those who engage civilly, and we will investigate and prosecute those who choose violence.
Specifically on abortion, we have enough support to make it safe, legal, and widely accessible. Pro-lifers do not really stand in our way. Religious folks, people of faith, Christians, do not really stand in our way. The GOP, after all, is controlled by the corporate right, not the religious right, and more broadly, the power of the religious right has been on the decline since about the mid-1990s. The major impediment to abortion access, and more broadly, most of our priorities, is lukewarm liberalism. It's lack of faith in our own beliefs and the understanding that a majority of the country is with us. There's no need to demonize people; we've won the battle of ideas, whatever exactly that was. The political task before us is making Democratic leaders see that their career future is best preserved by representing the wishes of their constituents. That's a task that Democrats who happen to be atheists and agnostics and Catholics and Methodists and Baptists and so forth share together.