We all know what a “white supremacist” is. He or she believes the white race is superior and should, therefore, be favored above the other, “lesser” races. White supremacists believe laws and customs should support their elite status. They fiercely resist efforts, legal or societal, that would grant equal status to those they see as inferior. They would reign “supreme.”
To most Americans, the term “white supremacist” conjures images of ignorance and bigotry. There is a general consensus that white supremacists are culturally extreme and that their efforts to relegate other races to second class status are repugnant. In America, it is generally felt that “freedom and equality” are the core of our national identity and that “equal justice under the law” is the real-world manifestation of those ideals.
Which brings us to the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, and the gaggle of Evangelical Protestant churches which continue to wage a “supremacist” war against GLBT citizens. I don’t draw the parallel just to be clever. I draw it because it is time to stop beating around the bush linguistically and call a spade a spade.
There is absolutely no difference --none-- between a white supremacist and a religious supremacist. Driven by ignorance and fear, both believe they are superior to those whose rights they seek to deny. Both actively try to impose their world view on the rest of society. Both believe that the law should be used to keep their respective targets “in their place” as second class citizens with fewer legal rights and, as importantly, as “lesser people.”
Just as not every white person today is a white supremacist, not every Catholic is a Catholic Supremacist; not every Mormon, a Mormon Supremacist, and so on. But those religious people, particularly church leaders, who actively seek to use the law to hold down those they view as morally inferior, are --literally-- “supremacists”. We should start to call them exactly what they are at every opportunity.
As Frank Luntz, the right-wing marketing linguist, has taught us so well, it’s the “Words That Work.” The rest of his book title reads, “It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear”. It was Luntz, brilliant miscreant that he is, who coined the term “death tax” to reframe the the estate tax, because death tax sounded more ominous and worth fighting. He also reframed “global warming” as “climate change” because it sounded less ominous and not worth fighting. “Oil drilling” became “energy exploration” and so on. Luntz is a genius at manipulating the gut response of the public in the direction he wants it to go by using words that no one has to think about to understand the meaning of.
As we all know, conservatives have been the masters of winning the “framing” wars on issue after issue by using powerful, emotional language. Progressives, on the other hand, tend to rely on long, rational, fact-laden arguments that often have no gut-level resonance and are easily muddied to the point of impotence by the other side. As we have learned so painfully, a brilliant dissertation is no match for a ten-second smear. We live in America, land of sound bites. We need to identify words that redefine issues instantly, without long arguments that leave the average American glassy-eyed and dismissive.
Hence, “Catholic Supremacist”. It is a perfect label. First, and most importantly, it tells the truth in a way that people instantly “get.” It is not a “smear” and certainly not a smear of Catholics in general any more than “white supremacist” is a smear of whites in general. A supremacist seeks to set his group over those groups he sees as inferior. Anti-gay rights Catholics can’t stop talking about the superiority of their religious beliefs and wanting to maintain one set of rights for themselves and another, lesser set for the gay community.
Second, the term instantly associates such Catholics with “white supremacists” and all the negative connotations that go with it. It instantly redefines the “pro-family activist protecting marriage” as an unfair bigot seeking to deny the rights of an abused minority, which is exactly what he is.
When Bill Donohue fires off his inevitable screed decrying the attack on Catholics, we should have pro-gay rights Catholics ready to answer him on blogs and talk shows, explaining the difference using the “not-all-whites-are-white-supremacists” analogy.
The goal is to use the term so often and with such clarity of meaning that it enters the lexicon of the political debate around gay rights. The same way health care reform advocates have been turned into “socialists” by the right, anti-gay activists should be transformed into “supremacists” by progressives.
I use Catholic Supremacists as my first example only because the Catholic Church took the lead in Maine. In California, the term “Mormon Supremacists” should become ubiquitous. “Evangelical Supremacists”, too. In short, any group which uses its identity to try and deny the civil rights of any other group has rightfully earned the name “supremacist”.
I put this (my first diary) up because -- for it to work -- the tactic must be employed by the progressive community at large and in great numbers, so that it shows up on the national media radar and, hopefully, becomes a topic of discussion. It is a purposely provocative approach, because the very questioning of the use of the word “supremacist” in this new context invites a teachable moment and a chance to redefine this fight with surgical accuracy. Ideally, pro-gay marriage Catholics, Mormons and Evangelicals, of which there are many, would lead the reframing fight from within. It is far more effective for whites themselves to call out white supremacists.
This is my only vehicle for trying to make that happen. I hope others agree with the sense and value of this approach and, if you do, will do everything in your power to spread this campaign far and wide as soon as possible. Comments and additional thoughts, of course, are more than welcome.
Thanks.