More Happy News: The Post

There has been a sort of theme on the blog this week, it just so happens. As we tend to focus here on the rights of sexual minorities, we have had a lot of good news recently. States are deciding to recognize same-sex marriages. State and local governments are considering and adopting nondiscrimination policies and laws regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. Public opinion in general has shifted in a positive direction.

Not every step is a step forward, but there are lots of steps forward these days. There are still a lot of states that have laws defining marriage in narrow terms, and the federal government has some turning-around to do, but all in all it is clear that the tide has turned.

It is an amazing revolution, really. Not that many years ago the public image of gay and lesbian people was that they were weird, strange, laughable. The Stonewall riots of 1969 are considered the turning point, where the gay community came together and began to organize to work for recognition by the straight public as ordinary, respectable people deserving all the rights that everybody else got. Paranoid heterosexuals, especially ones with some tendencies they were struggling to suppress, saw the campaign for equal rights as "the gay agenda," a kind of conspiracy of evil people to take over the world and convert adults and children alike to some weird and scary sexual lifestyle. The revolution has been rough at times, the backlash has often been severe, but gays and lesbians and their straight allies pushed constantly and would not accept second-class treatment.

The campaign has been extraordinarily successful. Though a vastly larger percentage of the population is straight, gays and lesbians have been successful at getting the majority to "get over it." It's not just that straight people bite their tongue and accept something they don't like, there has been a more profound change, as the heterosexual community has realized there really is nothing unusually dangerous or scary about gay people.

This morning the Washington Post has a good story about the rapidly-changing tide of public opinion. Before I quote this piece, I want to complain about the headline: Faith Groups Increasingly Lose Gay Rights Fights. Look, they could just as easily have said Faith Groups Increasingly Win Gay Rights Fights. "Faith" has nothing to do with gay rights. There are many religious people -- the majority, I would guess -- who have faith that God loves his creations, each and every one of us, gay as well as straight. There is a small minority of people who believe that loving someone of your own sex, or failing to conform to your society's gender-role expectations, is sinful, and that those kinds of sinners should be shunned and punished. This isn't about "faith," unless by "faith" you mean "faith as an alternative to reason." That might work. Faith, in my experience, more generally leads to tolerance, acceptance, and love than to hatred and rejection of the soul of another pilgrim in this harsh world.

Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.

The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Those laws have created a clash between the right to be free from discrimination and the right to freedom of religion, religious groups said, with faith losing. They point to what they say are ominous recent examples:

-- A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney's costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple's commitment ceremony.

-- A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship.

-- Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.

-- A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.

"It really is all about religious liberty for us," said Scott Hoffman, chief administrative officer of a New Jersey Methodist group, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, which lost a property tax exemption after it declined to allow its beachside pavilion to be used for a same-sex union ceremony. "The protection to not be forced to do something that is against deeply held religious principles."

But gay groups and liberal legal scholars say they are prevailing because an individual's religious views about homosexuality cannot be used to violate gays' right to equal treatment under the law.

"We are not required to pay the price for other people's religious views about us," said Jennifer Pizer, director of the Marriage Project for Lambda Legal, a gay rights legal advocacy group.

Twelve states now offer some form of same-sex marriage or same-sex partner recognition. Twenty states -- including Maryland -- and more than 180 cities and counties, including the District, ban discrimination against gays, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group. Virginia bans it against state employees. Faith Groups Increasingly Lose Gay Rights Fights

See, this is what I have been calling a "good news" story, and there have been a lot of them lately. I think this is a cat that won't be put back into the bag, gay people have been successful in integrating themselves into a society that is predominantly heterosexual, they have largely overcome the stereotypes and prejudice through constant struggle and insistence on fair treatment. And I don't think it will go back.

In this post I have avoided use of the acronym LBGT, or GLBT. This article is about rights for gay and lesbian people, the "G" and the "L," and I doubt that bisexual people -- the "B" -- have ever had a big problem, except as they are identified as homosexual. But the transgender population, the "T's," have a long way to go. Progress has been made, and many liberal communities have recognized that it is fair and kind to protect that vulnerable population from discrimination, but public acceptance, it appears to me, is still a long way off.

Again, I want to complain about The Post's careless use of the word "faith" here, it really is unconscionable. There are people who use their religion to hurt others, but they do not in any way represent "people of faith." If you want to kill religion in the twenty-first century, then you would do well to frame it in opposition to reason, kindness, and fairness. I happen to think that religion is an important component of life among any community, and would like to see it persist. In an enlightened society, that can only happen if "faith" is understood in a positive way, as faith that the force that brings light to the world is intelligent, loving, and creative.