By Mona Charen
Friday, April 03, 2015
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to
political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable support.
— George Washington
Until almost literally the day before yesterday, it was
universally acknowledged that religious faith and expression were bedrock
American freedoms — enshrined in the Constitution, protected in law, and
honored in custom. But now, because the Left has been victorious in convincing
the elites that upholding traditional marriage is low bigotry, religious
freedom will have to yield.
Not all religious freedom, though. Just last month the
Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Elauf v. Abercrombie, which
concerned a young Muslim woman who was denied employment because she wore a
headscarf. Abercrombie has a policy against headwear. The argument turned, as
it should in our republic, on how Abercrombie and others should handle the
delicate matter of religious garb. Should the employer ask, and possibly commit
ethnic and racial profiling, or should the employee be under an obligation to
volunteer that his or her appearance was dictated by religion? Such are the
cases we navigate in a nation that respects individual conscience and also
seeks to avoid the appearance or reality of religious discrimination.
Conservatives would probably side with Ms. Elauf because
they respect religious liberty. Progressives would favor her too, but for a
different reason — because Muslims are among the groups that can (at least in
the liberal imagination) be defined as victims. Victim status alone determines
the equities in every dispute. If a halal caterer declined to service a gay
wedding (which they almost certainly would, if asked), progressives would
spiral into confusion and doubt. Which victim group is superior?
Victim status is the only prism through which progressives
see American life. Their intellectually stunted thinking goes like this: In the
beginning there was discrimination against blacks, and we saw that it was bad.
And then there was discrimination against women, and we said, “Just as it is
wrong to discriminate against blacks, it is wrong to discriminate against
women.” And then there was discrimination against Asians, Native Americans,
LGBTs, and the “undocumented.” In each case, and God (excuse the expression)
knows how many to come, the argument is that the analogy holds.
But it doesn’t. There is no analogy in American history
to the treatment of blacks. No other group was the victim of centuries of
slavery, abuse, rape, displacement, cheating, denigration, and legalized
second-class status. As the New York Times’s Ross Douthat noted, “both Jim Crow
and the means we used to destroy it are, well, legally and culturally
extraordinary.” That’s exactly right. There is no analogizing the black
experience to that of other groups. To extirpate the anti-black virus, we had
to give enormous and even dangerous power to the federal government, trample
upon people’s rights, regulate voting in all of the southern states, and much
more.
The power we gave the state to fight anti-black
discrimination should have been seen as a necessary evil to cope with a unique
malice. Instead, for progressives, it was like sharks getting a scent of blood.
With victimhood comes power!
And so they argued, ludicrously, that women were just
like American blacks, persecuted for centuries by “sexism,” and needing
affirmative action, unlimited abortion, set-asides, lawsuits, and a school
curriculum designed to remake the male sex in a new image to repair the damage.
Sex roles changed due to technology (the Pill and
labor-saving devices) and increasing wealth (which permitted smaller families).
We can cheer or lament these changes, but in no reasonable universe is it
possible to compare relations between men and women with the black experience —
a victim class and a victimizer, discrimination and contempt on one side and
suffering and humiliation on the other.
And so it went with every new victim group, though none
of them were comparable to blacks. The Left decides who is a sympathetic victim
(transgenders yes, Ayaan Hirsi Ali no), and in every case the opposition must
be not just defeated but also crushed, silenced, and exorcized.
On university campuses, “victims” are using their status,
i.e., their power, to silence the expression of differing views. Dozens of
religious groups are losing their university accreditation because they choose
leaders based on belief. A Marquette professor was suspended and may have his
tenure revoked for criticizing a same-sex-marriage advocate’s quashing of
dissent. An Oxford debate on abortion was shut down because feminists
complained that two humans “without uteruses” were discussing it. Besides, they
said, hearing opposing views would threaten the “mental safety” of the ladies.
The racism analogy is a loose cannon crashing around the
deck of America and threatening the mainmast.
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