Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press… First Amendment, US Constitution
Wedge Issues
We are living in an era of political divisions. While there have always been disagreements and differences among voters; today we have refined the art of “wedge politics”. Candidates, parties and interest groups profit and grow by finding ways to divide people. Those divisions motivate their supporters to vote, and more importantly, donate.
So we find that the rural impoverished in our nation somehow choose to support the political party that officially represents the wealthy. It’s not about the money, or the growth in the stock market; those folks never see any of that. No, it’s about the “moral” issues: the artificial divisions created to encourage citizens to see each other as “them and us”.
Divide and Conquer
Those groups use the explosive issues of our time: guns, faith, gender, race. It isn’t random chance that Fox News, both local and national, with mind numbing frequency, show story after story of “regular people” being attacked. Who ever heard of the term “home invasion” twenty years ago. But today, we are told “be armed” to protect ourselves, be prepared for the “stranger” (probably of a different race) coming through the broken window or smashed front door. Be scared, of strangers who look or act differently and be armed for defense, we are told.
We are told that progress for “others” must be at the expense of “us”. Our population has almost doubled in sixty years, but we are told that our world is a “zero sum” game. What we’ve got someone else wants to take, and we should use every legal and social trick to keep it.
It makes it so easy to give into the fear within us, the dread of something different. So many forces in our society are saying “it’s OK”.
Identity
I spent forty years of my life as a high school track coach. For forty seasons, I had the privilege of working with young athletes, helping them improve, teaching them the techniques to maximize their efforts, and supporting them through success and failure. Today in my former profession, there is great unrest over the concept of “gender”.
When I was a young man, homosexuality was barely discussed. It was literally placed in the closet. It took immense courage for a gay person to live in the open, in some places in the United States it was still illegal. “Straight” folks couldn’t imagine why a person would be gay. For me it took the willingness of gay friends to talk and explain that just because I was “straight” didn’t mean that I was “right”. Normal for them was gay; that was their life, even if it wasn’t mine.
Now we know that identity isn’t just gay or straight. We know that there are folks who are born physically one gender, but are mentally the other. “Normal” for them is the gender in their brain, to live any other way is to masquerade a lie. How we can demand of those “trans” folks to live that lie, so that “we other people” can feel “comfortable”?
The Trans Athlete
In track and field today there is controversy of what to do with “trans” athletes. To some it’s all about competition and “advantages”. How can an athlete born physically a male dare identify and compete as a female? “It’s not fair” they say, and in three states, Tennessee, Georgia and Washington, laws have been proposed that would require athletes to compete as their birth gender, or not participate at all.
They never bring up the other side, the athlete who identifies as a male. They don’t have the inherent “advantage”, I guess, so they can compete without the same threat. But the laws don’t make that exception. There are ways to “balance” the differences, the advantages, so that competition can be “fair”. If athletics is education, not just competition, shouldn’t it be about encouraging all instead of banning some?
Essentially those proposals tell transgendered kids that they are not welcome in athletics. All of the benefits of being on a “team”, the very real lessons in learning and life, are denied, even by public schools that are governed by the First Amendment prohibition against establishing “religion” or abridging free expression. Denied because adults are “threatened” by the concept of the transgendered. Since their mind can’t conceive it, they don’t believe it.
And this is a larger lesson in our current society. Americans are being told that “our” culture is threatened by these changes. They are encouraged to take steps to protect “our right” to maintain our own beliefs and prejudices.
WE, THEY and US
WE are allowed to believe what WE want, and to see others as WE wish. But what WE don’t have the right to do, is tell them how THEY should believe, and how THEY should act. WE have the right to our own religion, but not the right to enforce that religion on THEM. In fact “WE and THEY” is the problem.
It should be US. WE should have our own beliefs, but recognize that differing beliefs aren’t wrong, just different. WE need to accept US, a diverse population, differing in religion and gender and race, as all part of a WHOLE.
Why? Because we are seeing what division does to our country. Because we know what we can do as a diverse people who are whole. And because we face crisis upon crisis, that will take ALL of US to solve them.
