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.

Why the Church Fears Gay Marriage

I’ve been thinking about the repercussions of legal gay marriage. We’ll have happier gays, obviously, with the longstanding joke that this will swiftly be followed by unhappier gays. Many of the religious say it will be followed by a drive for legalized bestiality, cat and dogs living together, and mass hysteria...but I think they’re just saying that. I bet they know that the much more likely consequence is that it will lead to a more secular America--an even scarier thought from their point of view.

In the not-so-distant future, gays will be able to marry in any courthouse and many progressive churches across the land. Hold outs, like the Catholics, we be able to deny gay ceremonies within their church. The gay rights wave will likely have enough momentum to brand this as the kind of discrimination that is no longer allowed outside of the umbrella of religious freedom. While a popular reception hall owned by a Catholic businessman will not be able to turn away paying homosexual newlyweds anymore than an office can stop a woman’s progress up the corporate ladder on account of her gender, a church can refuse to wed gays as easily as they can prohibit women from going into the priesthood. Religious freedom trumps discrimination in the eyes of the law, but in public opinion? That’s a different story. As the exceptions for the Church’s otherwise illegal actions continue to mount, I see their congregations continuing to shrink and their leadership continuing to bend. Eventually, a Pope will finally agree to give his blessing to gay marriage, overruling biblical text as they’ve done in the past.

At this point, the church will be two-fold weaker. The delay in their decision will have diluted their numbers and the decision itself will have diluted their relevance. There will be the usual sects that break off to maintain their conservative (read backward) views, but they will become the mocked fringe in a culture that has moved on. Outside of the self-hatred of closeted religious homosexuals, I think fear of this scenario is the central cause of the disproportionate outrage over gay marriage. They don’t fear for the souls of gay sinners so much as for their own lost legitimacy.

Gay Marriage Opponents are Bigots

It’s no secret that the religion fueled, hot button issue of the day is gay marriage. Like it's religion-fueled issue of abortion, gay marriage one of those nasty debates where generalized accusations fly based solely on one’s stance. Gay marriage supporters are endorsing immoral behavior. Gay marriage opponents are bigots on the wrong side of history. Both sides not only deny the accusations, but frame them in such a way that they no longer makes sense. I’ll argue that only one side of the issue has internally consistency.

Gay marriage supporters deny the claims by refuting the authoritative worth and/or truth of the bible, which is the only possible reason homosexual behavior can be seen as immoral. This makes me happy on a few levels. Since the America is pretty evenly divided on the morality of homosexuality, that means roughly half the population refute the authoritative worth and/or truth of the bible. Considering how many people belong to Bible-centric religions in the US, this means that most of them aren’t nearly as sold on their faith as survey data shows. They are my favorite kind of Christians--those that are Christian in name only. The most secular gay marriage supports make the accusations against them nonsensical in their warranted rejection of “sin” as a concept.

The opponents of gay marriage originally pushed that homosexuality was a choice, but this argument didn't hold up. First, there was a problem calling the majority of those who are an authority on homosexuality, gays themselves, liars. Second, there was a problem that if homosexuality is a choice, then so should heterosexuality be a choice. The straight opponents refused to accept this. Now, opponents deny claims of bigotry with their “hate the sin, not the sinner” rhetoric. Denying a person rights and branding them immoral for who they fundamentally are is the definition of bigotry, but focusing their intolerance on the one action that separates the gays from the breeders (that is, homosexual sex) is a loophole in the bigotry label--at least in their eyes.

This loophole is many things, but internally consistent isn’t one of them. Since the only way to see gay sex as immoral is by appealing to Abrahamic religious traditions, then we should measure their entire argument by the same standard. The bible repeatedly states that sins of the heart and mind are just as damning as sinful actions. Hell, it’s even in the commandments. Thou shalt not covet is an entirely separate command from thou shalt not steal. When using the bible as their guide, the unavoidable and internal homosexual attraction is just as sinful as the active and external homosexual sex act. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that gay marriage opponents are, in fact, bigots.