Let us now consider the second grenade that lies fizzling at our feet. The Reform rabbi charged that when we oppose homosexual marriage because the Bible views homosexuality as a sin, we use faith merely to advance a political agenda. That’s like saying that because he quoted Scripture while fighting segregation, Reverend Martin Luther King used faith to advance a political agenda. Civil rights was not any more a “political agenda” than is protecting the traditional family. They are both deep moral values. They may not be everybody’s moral values, but they are ours.
Politics is nothing more than a society applying its deepest moral values in a practical way. Without politics, citizens who disagreed with one another would resort to guns and knives. The political system does, however, depend upon treating with respect even those with whom we disagree. Labeling us as prejudiced bigots is not respectful. You may disagree with us, but we are as entitled to our beliefs as you are to yours. America grants freedom of belief to Bible-believing Jews and Christians as well as to secular fundamentalists.
Our drawing upon the Bible as a source for our deepest moral values, as we both do, does not give you the right to demean our values. We do not insult those who gain their moral compass from John Locke, Karl Marx, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, or the Readers Digest. We may disagree with some of those values but we disagree on the merits of the morality not by demeaning the source.
To us, the Bible is not a dried-up, desiccated, dusty old volume devoid of all passion and practicality. On the contrary, to us and to millions of our fellow citizens, it is a vibrant source of life-affirming guidance, as relevant today as it was a thousand years ago. Encouraging our fellow citizens to apply these biblical values to society through the blessed mechanism of democratic politics honors the Bible. Doing so certainly does not sully it.
The rabbi’s third grenade is not even fizzling. It merely rolls across the floor looking ridiculously impotent. He charged that the past suffering of Jews and blacks provides the two of us with the “ethnic bona fides to minimize the rights pursued by others.” He betrays himself by suggesting that the merits of our argument depend upon skin pigmentation or upon tribal affiliation. No, rabbi, you are just plain wrong.
We feel confident opposing homosexual marriage not because one of us is descended from slaves in America while the other is descended from slaves in Egypt, but because the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob opposes homosexual marriage. Frankly, what baffles us both is how someone calling him self a rabbi can completely ignore that book which G-d presented to the Jews at Mount Sinai 3,317 years ago.
But even if the rabbi chooses to ignore the Torah and its guidance on homosexual behavior, millions of Americans do not. They are entitled to hold their beliefs and even vote their beliefs without earning his antagonism.
This attack upon us has revealed the real difference between medieval Europe and modern America. Long ago, Europe’s sinister theocracies made secularism look benign. Today, here in the United States, secular fundamentalism has become sinister in how it demonizes Orthodox Jews and serious Christians. Secular fundamentalism has become its own stern faith with its own harsh doctrines, practicing intolerance for dissent and administering punishment to heretics.
Thanks, rabbi; your attack on us has shown that the real canyon cutting through our culture is not between Jew and Christian. It is not even between black and white. It separates those of us who regard the Torah as divine and binding from those who don’t. It is as simple as that. There are Jews and Christians on both sides of that canyon, just as there are blacks and whites.
