Boycotting Boycotts

Consider the following boycott scenarios.

• I boycott my local Catholic church for covering up priest pedophiles. I didn’t previously go to church nor did I contribute to their collections. It doesn’t hurt me, but neither does it hurt the church.
• I boycott Chick-Fil-A for their CEO’s stance on gays and for their contributions to like-minded organizations. I really like Chick-Fil-A and spent money at their restaurants on a weekly basis. It hurts the company in losing one of their regular customers, but it also hurts me in that I am losing a favorite lunch spot.

The first boycott is not effective while the second is effective because an effective boycott must hurt both the boycotter and the boycottee. From the point of view of the boycotter, the choice to punish a brand for a distasteful policy is a desirable statement that outweighs the undesirable personal consequence. However, when a potential boycott is the hardest to make, and necessarily the most effective, the potential boycotter may opt out of boycotting. In these cases, I’ve thought about another option.

When Ender’s Game comes out in theaters, I will buy a ticket. I’m a big enough fan of the source material that I obviously hope it’s good, but even if it’s bad I’ll be curious to see just how bad it is. Since the author, Orson Scott Card, is a vocal Mormon with ideas and contributions of which I don’t agree, I have some desire to boycott it, just the principle. I recognize that in this case I could pirate Ender’s Game so that Card doesn’t get to put my good money to bad use. At the same time, I feel he deserves to be paid for work that I recognize has value. This leads me to my boycott alternative: I will enjoy a night at the movies and then contributing the ticket price to an organization that works toward goals opposite that of Card’s charities. Instead of this boycott hurting me recreationally, it will only hurt me financially because I will basically be paying twice the ticket price in “protest” of Card’s views.

Card’s primary boycott-worthy view in my opinion is being against gay marriage, so I will likely give to a LGBT charity. In the end, I think this will be more effective than a traditional boycott on a personal level since very little of the cost of my ticket will go to Card’s bank account and again only a fraction of that will go to his causes while the entirety of my extra nine bucks will go against his cause. On a public level, it isn’t quite as effective because I won’t be participating in the inevitable organized boycott of the movie which can only be measured as a factor in the movie’s failure (which I feel is unfair because it punishes everyone else involved in the movie in addition to Card.) In the end, every boycott is a personal boycott and this option is the best for me and might work for you whether you apply it to Ender’s Game, Chick-Fil-A or whatever.

Additional boycott tip: If you do decide to boycott something, it probably won’t be noticeable unless it is part of a large-scale and successfully organized boycott. To make your personal boycott efforts noticable, write to the business or brand you are boycotting and tell them why you are doing it. If you were previously a regular customer, be sure to say so. I’ve done this before with advertisers of particularly harmful radio hosts and heard back from some of the companies. Whether they do anything about it or not, they’ll at least know, and that matters.

The Hypothetical Progressive Pope

I’ve been trying out hypothetical as a way to show believers where their beliefs originate. The best example I’ve worked out is directed specifically toward Catholics. I ask:

If a future Pope reversed the Church’s position on gay marriage, would you also reverse your position on gay marriage?

The word Pope could be substituted for “religious leader” to make this less Catholicism-centric, but the Catholic Church is fairly unique in that it’s doctrine trumps even the Bible in the eyes of its congregation. Seeing how the Pope is the infallible spokesperson for the Church, his word matters immensely.

Now, let’s look at what the possible answers mean. If a believer who opposes gay marriage answers in the affirmative, they show that their assessment of morality and their opinions of what is or isn’t discriminatory are based solely on authority. Whatever the Church thinks is how they think. The Pope is the Borg Queen in this scenario. If the believer instead says they would maintain their opposition of gay marriage against the Church, then we can know for sure that their belief is in fact a product of their own reasoning--at the cost of being a "bad Catholic."

Neither option is at all palatable to the believer, so if you pose the question, expect a refusal to answer. Most often I get, “the Church would never change their position so the question is moot.” That may be, but claiming certain knowledge of the future is a childish dodge for people with a distaste for hypothetical. Nevertheless we can’t force an answer out of them. This isn’t the Inquisition. (Speaking of which, poor Galileo would say that the Church sometimes, eventually, changes their position.) Simply posing the question is enough for the believer to formulate an answer, even if they see the trap set for verbalization. Consider the point made.

The Twofold Problem of Fairness

Christians believe, by definition, that there is but one way into heaven and that is the acceptance of Jesus Christ. From here, there are as many disagreements as there are churches. I picture a sliding scale with “live according to Christ’s teachings” on one side and “have complete faith that Jesus died for our, and, more importantly, Adam and Eve’s sins” on the other. Most Christian traditions value both ends of the spectrum, but all seem to implicitly or explicitly place more weight on one more than the other. I’d argue both premises for the most widely distributed religion in the world are flawed by something I call the problem of fairness. In fact, I will argue it, right now.

Let’s look first at “live according to Christ’s teachings.” This is already ambiguous in that the biblical carpenter sends mixed (if not contradictory) messages about how to live. While a problem in it’s own right, it doesn’t factor into my argument from fairness, so let’s imagine Christ’s message is wholly positive and consistent with modern values.

The problem of fairness lies in the fact that not every person has the same opportunity to be good. A poor child without a positive role model--say with a deadbeat dad and an alcoholic mother--statistically has a much higher likelihood to sin than an upper-class kid with an intact family. I’m talking about the BIG sins here--theft, rape, murder--harmful deeds rather than the less-than-honorable thoughts some theists claim are their equal.

Ask yourself, why would God judge someone born into a culture that doesn’t value ethics and must sin to survive as harshly as someone who wants for nothing and was raised into a compatible moral code? As the world is, the Almighty needs to grade on a curve. If He was truly fair, we’d all be put on the same playing field and terms like “the cycle of violence” would have no meaning.

On the other end of the spectrum we are more concerned with belief and less with sin, yet the problem of fairness is still in full effect. For a child born into the “correct” faith of such-and-such flavor of Christianity, indoctrination makes acceptance of Christ natural, but consider a Indian kid who dies before he is ever exposed to religion outside Hinduism. Consider people of a different place and time isolated from evangelization. Consider someone like me who has a skeptical disposition and seeks truth in the form of evidence and logical consistency. If, in fact, it’s Christ’s way or the highway to hell, God has screwed us all with a scarcity of or an aversion to the one true God.

Atheists often cite the problem of evil as a defeater of a benevolent God, but I tend to opt out of this cliche despite it’s obvious truth for two reasons. First, Christians often have a response chambered from their apologetic source of choice--usually placing the responsibility of evil on man, citing free will or the fall from Eden. While neither avenue is valid (considering that God’s omnipotence in regards to the future implies a lack of free will and the fall was preceded by evil serpents) the chambered response shows they’ve heard it all before and have defended their mind against conflicting input. Second, an atheist admitting that evil exists at all will prompt some Christian debaters to detour the conversation to the argument from morality because they only define “evil” in terms of their religion. I’d rather the debate stay on topic. Replacing “evil” with “fairness” is both more specific and more accurate for my biggest problems with religious dogma.

Sadly, the world isn’t fair. This leaves two options: the universe is unguided and shit just happens, or the universe is guided by a force unlike what the Abrahamic religions have to offer.