I applaud the recent speech by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, concerning the seizure of the centers of power by representatives of the religious right in America. In particular, I applaud his observations concerning the homophobia of the rightwing and the Religious Right.
Rabbi Yoffie is correct that the homophobia intensifying in America does evoke Nazism. But it also evokes what I think of as a sort of medievalism, something that seizes upon a Great Irrelevancy, in this case same-sex sexual relationships between consenting adults, and elevates it to moral--even seemingly cosmic--importance.
What is more, the Religious Right and the rightwing follow this medieval illogic to its final conclusion by actually legislating based on their homophobia.
What else was slavery in America but the same manner of thing: formal codification (alongside informal codification by way of received tradition) of discrimination based on irrational emphasis on skin color?
Skin color, hair color, handedness, and also gender--they are all Great Irrelevancies that have prompted human civilizations at points in history to waste immeasurable time and energy playing deadly political games. Exemplary evidence from the Middle Ages themselves include the many stained-glass images in European cathedrals showing an ever-perfidious Judas with red hair--red becase red hair was a characteristic associated with Satan, as was left-handedness.
Sexual orientation is another of the Great Irrelevancies, much to the dismay of Democratic politicians who justifiably would prefer that issues like gay marriage disappear so they can more easily win elections.
The securing of full and equal civil rights and opportunities for gay Americas is the horizon line now for anyone claiming to be a citizen soldier of the civil rights movement of the twenty-first century. This is a simple truth still unrecognized by not only most Americans, but almost certainly a majority of self-proclaimed progressives. So variously demonized or trivialized has been the issue that progressives, particularly heterosexual ones, run to fight for almost any other issue they can.
