Evangelical Christianity, Homosexuality and the Deeply Flawed "Tale of Two Bobs"

The other day I came across a blog post by Rod Dreher, in which he embraces a parable somebody wrote a couple of years ago about two neighbors, both named Bob, who get along even though the author assumes that they're not supposed to.

The opening of the parable could be this,

There once were two neighbors, both named Bob. One is a neo-Nazi, the other is Jewish. They've lived next to one another in a duplex for several years, and have been good neighbors: getting one another's mail when the other travels, hauling each other's garbage cans to and from the curb, and have occasionally had a cookout together. They are friends, but they've never really had a discussion about their differences.

Or this,

There once were two neighbors, both named Bob. One is a KKK member, the other is in an interracial marriage. They've lived next to one another in a duplex for several years, and have been good neighbors: getting one another's mail when the other travels, hauling each other's garbage cans to and from the curb, and have occasionally had a cookout together. They are friends, but they've never really had a discussion about their differences.

Or this,

There once were two neighbors, both named Bob. One is an evangelical Christian, the other is gay and agnostic. They've lived next to one another in a duplex for several years, and have been good neighbors: getting one another's mail when the other travels, hauling each other's garbage cans to and from the curb, and have occasionally had a cookout together. They are friends, but they've never really had a discussion about their differences.

The narrative continues,

One day, during March Madness, a stiff gust of wind knocked a tree limb into their power lines, and they found themselves without electricity, five minutes before the U of L game. They wandered out onto their respective porches and decided to go to a nearby pizzeria to watch the game.

Somewhere before the end of the game, this conversation began:

Bob 1: Isn’t it surprising that we've become friends?

Bob2: What do you mean?

1: Well, one of us has a [swastika / KKK emblem / rainbow sticker], and the other has a [Magen David / pro-diversity sticker / fish emblem]. According to most folks, we shouldn't get along.

2: Yeah, I'll admit it's crossed my mind once or twice. Does it bother you?

1: Does what bother me?

2: Well, that I am who I am?

1: Hmmm… I don't know how to answer that. Does it bother you that I am the way that I am?

The narrative continues,

Bob 2 scratches his chin, waits a moment.

2: I suppose there are two answers to that question. One is no, not at all. We've been good friends. You took my dog to the vet when it got into a fight with a possum. You share my hatred of the University of Kentucky. What's not to like? On the other hand, I think you've have committed your life to something that's toxic to our culture, and to yourself, and I wish for your sake, my sake, and the world's that you believed something different. So no. And also, I worry about you.

Bob 1 leans back a little, grinning.

2: Did I offend you?

1: No, not at all. In fact, I would probably give the same answer about you, though I'd phrase it a little differently.

2: How so?

1: Well first of all, I’d talk about your barbecue skills, and I’d admit that I like your smelly dog. Second, I’d say that I think who you are and who I am is more complex than beliefs and commitments… but I think that's true for myself too.

2: You don't think you chose to be that way?

1: Did you?

2: I guess I did and I didn't. Or maybe, I didn’t then I did. It was something I didn’t want, but eventually I had to admit it.

1: I guess I didn't and then I did.

2: That's a better way of putting it.

1: For both of us.

2: For both of us.

1: So all this simmers in the background while we see one another, day by day.

2: Yep.

1: But we just keep on being neighbors and sharing the occasional pizza.

2: Yep. Breathing the same air, trying to figure out how to get along.

The game got heated for a few moments and they drifted away from the conversation. Soon, it started up again.

1: Let me ask you something.

2: Shoot.

1: You're saying that you didn't choose to be the way you are, but then you did.

2: Yeah. It was a journey. I didn't want to believe it, but eventually, it became undeniable, and I had to accept it inwardly, and then I had to accept it outwardly.

1: How did your family react?

2: Well, they're more sympathetic to you than me… It wasn't easy. It still isn't. I get snarky comments occasionally, especially during election seasons.

1: Oh yeah… the worst.

2: The worst. Let me ask you something now.

1: Okay.

2: Has it caused trouble for you? Like, at work or anything?

1: Well, sometimes. Some folks just think it's awful, and you have to win them over by just being an ordinary person.

2: Because they think you're a monster?

1: Because they think you're a monster.

2: That's familiar.

1: Yep.

The game ends, the two walk back home, and their friendship resumes. Conversations return to this topic, and both try to convince the other of their errors… But thus far, not much has changed. They remain good friends and good neighbors.

The author argues,

This parable is meant to do two things. First, it’s sort of a Rorschach test. Which of the Bobs is a Christian, and which one is gay? In a culture that remains hostile to the LGBT community at one end of the spectrum, and at the other end, hostile to Christians who hold traditional beliefs, we will find folks like both Bobs: their social experiences are almost interchangeable.

Even within the context of "Which of the Bobs is a Christian, and which one is gay", the exchange is strange and contrived. When you recognize the fact that, perhaps with a slight adjustment for time and place, the exchange as easily "fits" contexts in which one person's views would be unacceptable by broadly held contemporary standards, the parable falls apart as a highly strained false equivalence. There is a difference between disliking somebody because of their beliefs, particularly when those beliefs cast you as somebody who is destined to Hell or inherently inferior, and disliking somebody over an aspect of their being that they cannot change -- such as their heritage, or their (or their spouse's, or their children's) skin color.

If you want to reduce it to a parable about mutual acceptance, to make it a song and dance number for a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, you don't need to bring religion or status into the discussion. ">The farmer and the cowman can be friends. You say tomato, and I say to-mah-to. You say goodbye, and I say hello. The exchange actually works better if you treat the disagreement as being over a triviality. Consider Dr. Suess's story of the star-bellied sneetches, creatures identical in all respects save for the presence of stars on their bellies, who come to realize the absurdity of using that distinction as the basis of a claim of superiority. That form of the narrative can still serve as an analogy for much more serious, real world, bigotry and discrimination, but without the need for a false analogy.

Secondly, I think this conversation is very real and true to life. It’s a conversation that I’ve had in one form or another with many friends over the years. I’ve also had conversations that were much less friendly. But the context here is, I think, the key: being neighborly, being a friend, creates space for conversations that are hard. And while that probably won’t resolve the growing public tension over these issues, it might help us to live at peace with our neighbors, and that is, in some ways, far more important.

Except the conversation is not real and is not true to life. I'm not going to rule out the possibility, for example, that a member of the Westboro Baptist Church gets along with his gay neighbor, but this is not the conversation such a person would be at all likely to have with that neighbor. Also, the author starts from the preconception that gay people "shouldn't get along" with evangelical Christians, and vice versa. While some evangelical Christian churches and movements do preach intolerance, that's not prerequisite to being an evangelical Christian. And while a gay person might not like getting the stink eye from somebody who is intolerant of his relationships, there's absolutely no reason to presuppose that being gay predisposes you to not "get along" with an evangelical Christian. For goodness sake, you can both be an evangelical Christian and be gay.

The parable seems to recognize the inherent weakness of trying to analogize the condemnation of a group of people based on status -- something they cannot change -- and criticism of people based upon their beliefs, even sincerely held religious beliefs. The Bobs are posited as having this interchangeable view of their realizing that they were gay, or their embracing a form of evangelical Christianity that regards homosexuality as a mortal sin,

2: You don't think you chose to be that way?

1: Did you?

2: I guess I did and I didn't. Or maybe, I didn’t then I did. It was something I didn’t want, but eventually I had to admit it.

1: I guess I didn't and then I did.

2: That's a better way of putting it.

1: For both of us.

2: For both of us.

The problem here is that "gay Bob" would be describing a process by which he recognized and accepted his homosexuality despite strong social pressure not to be gay. Accepting the fact that you are gay is not a "choice" as posited by the narrative. In contrast, if a person in fact struggles with whether to join a particular religious or social movement, and struggles with those portions of its beliefs that teach intolerance of others, their ultimate decision to remain within the movement and to embrace those beliefs comes as the result of an actual choice. Under the interchangeable narrative, "Christian Bob" describes himself as coming from a family that holds different views than his own, and is accepting of gay people ("they're more sympathetic to you than me"). While "Christian Bob" may believe that his religion dictates his attitudes toward gay people, under the narrative he chose the path that led to those beliefs.

Some try to draw a fine line between homosexual thoughts and homosexual practices -- the conception being that if a gay person doesn't accept his homosexuality, or if he does accept it but represses any action on his desires, that he is somehow elevated above a homosexual person who involves himself in a gay relationship. Under that thesis as it plays out in the real world, you're asking homosexual people to either live a lie, usually at the expense of another person (their heterosexual spouse), or to openly state that they are homosexuality and then to live a life of chastity. Even if the latter path were realistic, many evangelical communities would not be welcoming to such an individual. We can debate the extent to which that's the result of the teachings of their church, the result of larger social views, or some combination thereof, but it's a reality. There's a vast difference between not excluding a gay parishioner and welcoming them into your church as a full and equal member.

To the extent that the narrative reminds evangelical Christians of the teaching that you can love the sinner while hating the sin, that you can be accepting of others without compromising your Christian values, that you can be neighborly even toward people whose lifestyles you find to be sinful, great. The preconception of the narrative, that evangelical Christians "shouldn't get along" with gay people is not necessary -- you can be a devout Christian without hating anybody. Why does a contrary impression exist? Not only because of the antics of groups like the Westboro Baptist Church ("God Hates Fags"), but because of attitudes like those acknowledged here,

I can't look my gay brother in the eye anymore and say "I love the sinner but hate the sin." I can't keep drawing circles in the sand.

I thought I just needed to try harder. Maybe I needed to focus more on loving the sinner, and less on protesting the sin. But even if I was able to fully live up to that "ideal," I'd still be wrong. I'd still be viewing him as something other, something different.

Not human. Not friend. Not Christian. Not brother.

Sinner.

And despite all my theological disclaimers about how I'm just as much a sinner too, it's not the same. We don't use that phrase for everybody else. Only them. Only "the gays." That's the only place where we make "sinner" the all-encompassing identity....

The author clearly felt immense pressure within his religious community to reject homosexuals. He also speaks of how, upon reflection, he can continue to hold his religious beliefs without joining in with that type of condemnation of his literal and figurative brothers. The author of the "Bobs" narrative asserts,

Christians make space for others all the time; neighbors who are adulterers or gluttons, alcoholics or tax cheats. We have family members who are liars and Christians – at their best – love these folks because they know that they are no different but for the grace of God. And so, Bob can make space for Bob even while he lovingly extends the offer of grace in Jesus Christ. That offer includes a call to repent of Bob’s sins, and that’s a tough pill to swallow.

Save for the contrived assertion that "Gay Bob" is agnostic, "Gay Bob" could have been Christian who attends a church that is accepting of his homosexuality. I doubt that the same sort of emphasis on "the offer of grace in Jesus Christ" or repentance of sins would be asserted if this were "Evangelical Bob and Presbyterian Bob", yet save for the author's contrivance "Gay Bob" could a devout Presbyterian, perhaps even a minister.

But the truth is that the other Bob wants to convert Christian Bob too – not to being gay, of course, but to his own worldview.

As the "Two Bobs" narrative unfolds, there's no reason to believe that to be the case. That is, with "Christian Bob" being able to be friends with his gay neighbor, there's little more that "Gay Bob" could hope to accomplish -- and no reason to believe that "Gay Bob" would be particularly interested in trying to push "Christian Bob" into making further concessions. After all, if most or all evangelicals were as neighborly, the author would have felt no need to write his parable.

Dreher's take-away from the parable was this:

Cosper’s point is that Bob 1 can be the gay agnostic, or the traditional Christian, and the same moral would apply. If you can’t see how either one could play either role in the conversation, perhaps you need to work on your empathy.

For reasons I've already outlined, and which should be readily apparent from the applicability of the parable to other contexts in which it becomes instantly uncomfortable, Dreher's first take-away fails due to narrative's reliance upon a false equivalence.

The argument for empathy -- for mutual empathy -- is more interesting. While the narrative flounders when it attempts to draw a parallel between immutable aspects of a person and their social or religious beliefs, there is no question but that people can be friends with evangelical Christians without sharing or endorsing their beliefs. Sure, just as political discussions are off the table at a lot of family Thanksgiving dinners, there may be discussions that don't occur in the interest of good neighborly relations, but that's part of how we get along with others who don't fully share our views.

The false analogy makes the argument for empathy a bit awkward -- I'm hard pressed to think of any gay person I've ever known who held the sort of blanket views of evangelical Christians that the author seems to believe are prevalent -- but certainly, there's room for neighbors with different social, political and religious views to find common ground. (Nonetheless, if "Christian Bob" is marching with the Westboro Baptist Church or is actively protesting gay marriage and lobbying politicians for a ban on employee benefits for same-sex partners, he needs to take responsibility for the fact that his actions make it much less likely that he will find common ground with his gay neighbor.)

If There Were a Wage Gap, Women Would Want it to be Larger?

The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial by Carrie Lukas, executive director of the Independent Women's Forum, an organization seemingly devoted to finding women who are willing to advance anti-feminist viewpoints. There's nothing wrong with that, of itself, as women are entitled to hold a range of views and public debate can help clarify the facts and issues. But if this editorial is reflective of the quality of the organization's advocacy, it seems fair to state that they're not really interested in improving the public debate or understanding of the issues.

The article does include the following, valid point:

Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings.

Historically there was a lot of argument about "equal pay for work of equal value," in which two disparate occupations would be declared "equal" and with the women's occupation being noted to offer lower wages. It's classic "apples and oranges", with those on one side of the debate insisting that two jobs had "equal value" and the other arguing that the two jobs are nothing alike. It's not that there isn't a basis for the argument that certain jobs traditionally open to women were undervalued, but you quickly lose your audience when you start making purely subjective parallels between wholly unrelated occupations.

But that's about as charitable as I can be to Ms. Lukas. Her arguments are largely unsupported, illogical, and unrelated to her thesis. "The unemployment rate is consistently higher among men than among women." Well, yes, but the point of discussion is the "Male-Female Wage Gap", and to the extent that the unemployment rate is relevant to the wage gap it's in the opposite direction to what Ms. Lukas would have us infer. If we are to assume that men are drawn to one set of jobs and women are drawn to another, and the reason for men's higher rate of unemployment is that traditional male jobs are comparatively scarce and that they're not qualified for or not interested in applying for "women's work", you would expect that wages for male occupations would drop in the face of an oversupply of workers and that wages for women would rise in the face of relative scarcity. So why isn't that happening?

And about those work choices:

Men have been hit harder by this recession because they tend to work in fields like construction, manufacturing and trucking, which are disproportionately affected by bad economic conditions. Women cluster in more insulated occupations, such as teaching, health care and service industries.

Men "tend" to work in vocations that require little to no formal education and involve various forms of physical labor? In May, 2009, 0.70 percent of private sector employment was in the construction industries. 1.4% was in truck driving. 1.91% was for laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, .95% for maintenance and repair workers, .92 percent for team assemblers.... So this tendency among men is reflected in about 6% of private sector employment? And women... cluster? What an interesting choice of words.

When medical schools were overwhelmingly male-dominated, were men "clustering" in the health care industry, or would such a term be used only in relation to female-dominated nursing schools? Now that more than half of medical school students are women, with men who might otherwise have attended presumably ripping off their shirts and going to truck driving school, we can expand the term "cluster" across the entire health care industry? Does the same apply to law firms, with law practice having once been almost exclusively a male profession but with women now comprising more than half of enrolled law students? Again, if women are "clustering" in fields that require more education and that have lower rates of unemployment, some of which are quite well-paid and most of which are far more resistant to economic downturn than the @6% of jobs to which male workers "tend" to apply, why wouldn't we expect women to out-earn men by a substantial margin?

It would seem obvious that if you are going to take the reasonable position that you can't compare apples and oranges, that it is arbitrary to say "nursing home attendants are equal in value to society to hardscape installers, and thus should earn the same rate of pay," you should be able to understand the implication of your position - that to support your argument on this issue you should be looking at wage differentials within occupations, or between very similar occupations. Lukas wants it both ways - she wants to be able to talk about women voluntarily choosing to "cluster" in lower-paying fields while eschewing the "manly man" fields that attract men, so that there should be no surprise that women earn less. Except she constructs an argument that instead suggests that women should be earning more.

Then there's the reality of what men do. Lukas suggests that "Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility." Well, so are men, including those who start out performing manual labor but reach an age when their bodies can't keep up. Lukas suggests,

Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can earn more.

As a lawyer, I have had many discussions over the years with other lawyers and law students, often touching on the nature of work and compensation. Within the professional classes you will find no shortage of men who make lots of money but have never held a job that involves demanding physical labor. Sometimes you'll hear a comment from one who has, that "When you say you worked hard today, you have no idea what that means - you barely even got out of your chair." That's not to say that the speaker is inclined to quit legal practice and drive a long-haul truck - contrary to what Lukas suggests, cutting your pay by 2/3 or more in order to work long hours and be away from your family for days or weeks at a time isn't particularly attractive to your average man. Travel may be required, but if you take a look at the higher earning classes you'll discover that their on-the-job travel involves a much different level of comfort than the sleeper cab. It is to say that men and women who have worked physical labor and have found much greater financial reward and stability tend to have moved into the white collar fields and, as much as they appreciate what a hard day's work truly can entail, aren't inclined to go back to the literal trenches.

If you wanted to make a generalization based upon traditional employment, looking at outcome and not opportunity, you might conclude on that partial information "Women tend to work in jobs where they get to be around other women, and where they will have time to take care of their households, husbands and children, even though it means they earn less. Men work with men, and are driven to earn more money and work longer hours." It wouldn't be a particularly meaningful observation, but you can see how an alien visiting our planet might deem it reasonable. But even that alien, I think, would have difficulty with Lukas's willingness to overgeneralize in relation to the types of employment that attract men or women, and to completely ignore how those occupations and the qualifications for those occupations have shifted over time. For example, Lukas argues,

The Department of Labor's Time Use survey shows that full-time working women spend an average of 8.01 hours per day on the job, compared to 8.75 hours for full-time working men. One would expect that someone who works 9% more would also earn more. This one fact alone accounts for more than a third of the wage gap.

The alien might respond, "But you told us that choice of occupation plays an important role in earnings, and now you're completely ignoring both choice of occupation and wages paid. He works 8.75 hours per day as a long-haul trucker, earning $150, she works 8.01 hours per day in a 'health care cluster' as a nurse anesthesiologist, earning $350 - how does that explain anything about a wage gap?"

Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women's earnings are going up compared to men's.

True, but then why did Lukas spend so much time talking about how men earn more money because they "tend" to work in jobs that don't require educational attainment and are not knowledge-based, or involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions, if the path to a stable, well-paying job is in fact to obtain a college education and to work in a knowledge-based occupation or profession?

And now for the crocodile tears:

Should we celebrate the closing of the wage gap? Certainly it's good news that women are increasingly productive workers, but women whose husbands and sons are out of work or under-employed are likely to have a different perspective. After all, many American women wish they could work less, and that they weren't the primary earners for their families.

What woman, after all, wouldn't happily surrender part of her wages or her job stability in order that her husband could once again out-earn her, or that her (adult?) son could support his family with a manly man's vocational job instead of having to go to college. It may be anecdotal, but look at the compelling arguments to that effect from the many women Lukas quotes... Oh, I guess she didn't have room to support that claim with any evidence whatsoever. A hollow man. On the whole, though, that's in keeping with an editorial that supposedly debunks a wage gap but gets confused coming out of the starting blocks over how you would even define such a gap, and argues both that it doesn't exist and that it results from women's occupational choices. Every which way but loose.

Few Americans see the economy as a battle between the sexes. They want opportunity to abound so that men and women can find satisfying work situations that meet their unique needs.

Why am I thinking at this point, "The few, the proud, the Independent Women's Forum".

(Incidentally, where was the argument that women earn less than men because they take time off for birthin' their babies?)

The Harness Looked Like S&M Gear?

I suspect that the proprietors speak English as a second language, but still....

Woodville North man Ian Jolly, 57, was barred from dining at Grange restaurant Thai Spice in May last year after a staff member mistook his guide dog Nudge for a "gay dog", the tribunal heard this week.