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Originally Posted by Textcritic
This sounds good, but I fear that it fails to adress the reality of the current situation, in which the religiously motivated lobby is so strong and so dedicated as to have the opposite effect. In actual fact, Chik-Fil-A (I can't believe I accidently called it "Chik-A-Flik" in a previous post!) is likely to benefit from their very public apparent opposition to gay marriage. As many as the boycotters may number, you can be absolutely certain that there will be at least as many patrons who will go out of their way to support this establishment, precisely because of its owner's social views.
We are talking about a Christian sub-culture that builds their own schools, hospitals— even neighbourhoods— produces their own radio, television, and film. Hell, this is a movement that goes so far as to publish their own one-stop inventory of businesses, so as to protect their members from ever having one of those unnecessary and unpleasant encounters with some one or some establishment that might happen to fall "outside the Kingdom" ( http://www.shepherdsguide.ca/). I happen to live within this sub-culture, and I can readily attest that the insider/outsider construct—while in many respects implicit—is fiercely and consistently operative. I can't tell you how many times a celebrity, a business, or an organization is glowingly identified as "Christian" or "Evangelical" by my peers, as if to suggest that it belongs on a higher plane: Filma produced by "Christian filmmakers" are better because they self-identify as Christians. Food in "Christian" owned and operated restaurants is better precisely because they self-identify as Christians. When Justin Bieber publicly proclaimed his own faith, it suddenly became inappropriate in my social circles to criticize his music.
Ideally, we could let the market dictate the fate of openly outspoken bigots, but I fear that in our own religiously fragmented society, the market's true power is usurped by dangerous ideologies. |
I think that moving forward there are a lot of interesting applications of liberal theory to the current reality.
As a "political theorist," I would argue that the souls or psyche's of human beings are reflected in the regimes they live in. That is, I follow Aristotle or even Plato by saying that the city is the soul writ large. So, that is my level of analysis, and it applies to liberal societies insofar as the philosophers who essentially wrote our souls into our regimes had a very specific idea about what they were doing to the human soul that would make it particularly amenable to liberalism.
So, in regards to what you are talking about, I believe that you feel that the power of the religious lobby (no doubt, true) has somehow created a faction that significantly differs from what could be considered the "Good," or the "Just" way of doing things. The reality of liberalism is that there is no objective standard beyond safety, stability, or order, right? We don't have the divine right of monarchical authority, and we have abandoned the classical rationalism, which attempted to logically explain political orders.
So, there is really no convincing means to disrupt or legislate against these religious groups. We have to simply live and let live. Conversely, this standard applies to them as well, which is why the gay marriage has been so convoluted, particularly in the American context. The state, simply, should not be involved, and the logical next-step is to remove all federal, and state legislation on the governance of marriage.
If you look at say John Locke's discussion of the family in the 2nd Treatise, you will find no reference to morality, other than the simple fact that parents must treat their children like any other investment. From the liberal perspective, marriage is a financial, not a moral contract, and thus, it should (note the normative language) be freely accessed by all consenting individuals.
Political realities are always different, but they can be accessed by an inquiring mind somewhat beyond the realm of partisan opinion.