The Mad Mullahs of Washington

Iran's not the only country being run by totalitarian religious fanatics

It’s becoming painfully evident that Congress and the President are mere window dressing. The country is actually being run by a shadowy council of religious and political extremists that you may have heard referred to as the “Supreme Court.”

Not unlike the unelected mullahs of Iran, they hand down rulings derived from their personal views (or those of their wealthy sponsors), with little regard for the wishes of the American public or its elected representatives. Their justification - though they are not required to give any, as their power is absolute - is based on arcane (some might also say cynical) interpretations of ancient texts, specifically the Constitution and the Christian Bible.

That being said, I have to admit being a little bewildered by the uproar over the same-sex wedding website case. I say “a little” because I’m well aware that the real issue is not websites nor weddings, but rather the signal from the State Council for the Inquisition (yes, I’m mixing metaphors and religions) that further assaults on the rights and personhood of gay people are almost certainly in the pipeline.

But getting back to my original point: why would you want someone who despises you, considers you less than fully human, to design your website or to be involved in any way with your wedding? Even if the law forced them to do so, wouldn’t you assume they’d do as lousy a job as they thought they could get away with, perhaps even using “mistakes” to sabotage and/or ridicule the occasion?

The homophobic wedding cake baker of a few years back was a slightly different issue. There may be regions out there in the sticks where only one person within a hundred miles is capable of baking a decent cake. But a website designer? That’s a job that can be done from anywhere in the world. Hiring someone from thousands of miles away could easily net you a better result than having to rely on Johnny’s One-Stop Internet Shop in a strip mall in East Podunk.

The crux of the issue is this: Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding, there are millions of people who are somewhere between moderately disquieted and utterly appalled and infuriated by the existence of gay people. No law, however well-intended, can change that. But while they can’t change attitudes, laws can change behaviour, and once people stop behaving in awful ways, attitudes often follow suit. I give the example of Singapore, where a mere 60 years ago, Chinese and Malay Singaporeans were literally hacking each other to death in the streets. On gaining independence, Lee Kuan Yew’s government made it illegal to abuse or insult a person based on their race or religion. Today Singapore is one of the most peaceful, safe, and multi-cultural countries in the world, and while I can’t promise you that all Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians, etc. love each other, they’re at the very least respectful. They can be arrested and go to jail if they’re not.

Could such a law work in the USA to protect gay people (or other racial, religious, or cultural minorities)? Not bloody likely. For that we can thank our obsession with “free speech” and the even more sacrosanct “freedom of religion” (although some speech is much freer than others, and if you’re a Satan worshiper or feel the need to sacrifice goats in your back yard, good luck getting your commandments or protocols honoured in the public schools of Texas or Florida).

But as long as you belong to one of the “respectable” religions, our current arbiters of morality have granted you the right to discriminate against gay people, and presumably against people of any race, religion, or culture who your belief system deems unworthy or “unclean.” As long as religions are permitted to spread such poisonous doctrines, it’s safe to say attitudes will never change, and may even worsen.

It would take a constitutional amendment to prevent religions from engaging in hate speech, never mind mildly disdainful “love the sinner, hate the sin” speech, and that’s not going to happen any time soon, if ever. While some countries enshrine freedom from religion alongside freedom of religion, the United States, which many of its citizens believe to be a “divinely ordained” republic, is not likely to become one of them.

What we can do - or could have done before our most powerful governmental institution was captured by religious extremists - is to stop subsidizing religions with tax exemptions. Not all religions are homophobic - in fact, many gay people are religious - nor are they all corrupt money laundering machines. Genuine charitable work - giving food or clothing or housing to the poor, for example - should continue to be tax-exempt, just as it is for non-religious people who make charitable donations. But the day-to-day operations of a church, let alone the cost of Lear jets and multiple mansions for silver-tongued “men of God”? That’s got to stop.

Some people worship by getting together in church; others show their regard for the divine by gathering together to listen to or play music, still others by traveling to tranquil places for solitary fasting or prayer. No doubt you’ve heard people speak of a concert as “a religious experience,” but did the performers or the patrons get a tax deduction for participating? Only if they donated some of the proceeds to charity, and the exact same should be true for churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, or backyard goat-sacrificers.

Stopping the mega-churches from accumulating vast amounts of taxpayer-subsidized money and power won’t immediately end their ability to circulate pernicious beliefs, but it’s a start. It will also weaken their ability to pressure politicians into passing laws that impose one religion’s commandments on everyone, regardless of their religion (or lack thereof). Unfortunately, even if we someday have a more representative Congress that is capable of limiting or eliminating religious tax exemptions, it wouldn’t matter, because there’s a higher authority, in the form of the mad mullahs of Washington, who can simply throw out any such law and impose new ones of their own. It’s just the kind of country we’re living in these days.