Equality protest promoted right issue, used wrong methods

Similar gay rights protest outside church in Oklahoma (photo: dustout via Flickr.com)

[COMMENTARY] Last week’s election contained a lot of bad news for those who advocate legal equality for gays and lesbians. California voters passed an amendment to the state’s constitution that overturned a state supreme court ruling allowing same-sex marriage. Voters in Florida and Arizona passed similar measures, while Arkansas voters passed a referendum prohibiting gays and lesbians from adopting children.

Those events have prompted a good deal of entirely understandable anger and led to many protests around the country. Many of those protests have been against the Mormon church in Utah, which spent millions of dollars in favor of the California ban amendment, but there are others as well. Unfortunately, some of those protests have gone too far, including here in Michigan.

A group calling itself Lansing Bash Back held protests at Mt. Hope Church, a Lansing-area mega-church during its Sunday morning services last weekend. According to the City Pulse, the protest involved two different groups of protesters, an inside team and an outside team. The outside team held a legitimate protest, holding signs and chanting; the inside team, according to the report, dressed to blend in so they could disrupt the service:

A gay anarchist group infiltrated the Mt. Hope Church in Eaton County Sunday morning, disrupting a service by pulling a fire alarm, dropping leaflets and yelling at parishioners, a pastor said.

The group, Bash Back, was simultaneously picketing outside the church, beating on buckets and using a megaphone to shout “Jesus was a homo” and other slogans as confused churchgoers continued to enter the building.

Members of Bash Back issued a press release Tuesday saying that it targeted Mt. Hope, a church that claims a flock of around 5,000, because it is, “complicit in the repression of queers in Michigan and beyond.”

No one was arrested. Had they stopped at protesting outside, I would happily cheer them on. They would be exercising their own right to speak out in protest without violating the law or violating the rights of others. But by pulling a fire alarm and infiltrating a church service to disrupt it, they crossed a line that should not be crossed.

Perhaps they should have followed the example of a group that protested outside a Baptist church in Dallas the same morning.

About 100 people stood in front of First Baptist Church of Dallas on Sunday morning to protest Dr. Robert Jeffress’ sermon, “Why Gay Is Not O.K.”

Carrying signs bearing the words “I’m Gay and It’s OK” and “Christ Taught Love Not Hate,” the protesters lined both sides of San Jacinto Street in front of the downtown church.

They sang “Jesus Loves Me” and cheered when passing motorists honked their horns and waved in support.

“Most of the people here are Christians, and they’re taking offense at the Baptist Church trying to say how Christ’s love should be interpreted,” said Patrick Hancock, who attended the peaceful protest. It was organized earlier this week when someone noticed the sermon topic on the church marquee.

A peaceful protest that does not violate the rights of others or violate the law is a far better idea for several reasons. Engaging in more extreme forms of protest undermines the credibility of your message and allows your opponents to define you as radicals who need not be listened to. Your anger, even if entirely justified, should not be used to justify taking actions that will inhibit your ability to achieve meaningful change.

Unfortunately, even legitimate, peaceful protest is too much for some on the other side. Even the peaceful protests will provoke outrage and false claims of persecution. One prominent conservative blog, Rhymes With Right, responded to the Dallas protests with precisely such claims:

When one boils down the argument of the protesters, it is essentially that not only may Christians not seek to have their moral values on the issue written into law, but they also may not preach them from the pulpit, teach them in a Sunday School class, or in any way disseminate them. I’d have to argue that theirs is a pretty crabbed view of religious tolerance, given that they were doing nothing less than protesting a religious service.

But in reality, the blogger expresses an absurd view of religious tolerance. He makes the common mistake of equating protest with censorship, but there is an obvious difference between condemning or criticizing what was being preached and declaring that it may not be preached. The group did nothing to censor the sermon, they criticized the content. In doing so, they were exercising their own rights without violating the rights of the pastor or the congregation.

Religious ideas are no different than any other type of ideas. All ideas are open to criticism, including religious ideas. To draw a line around religious ideas and claim that protesting those ideas amounts to censoring them is irrational and unjustified.

We must respect the right to express one’s beliefs regardless of whether we agree with them. Ministers have an absolutely protected right to preach their beliefs, and parishioners have every right to hear them. The same principle defends the freedom of others to condemn and criticize those beliefs, as long as they do so in a manner that respects the rights of those they oppose.