MSW: May the renewed religious left avoid the religious right's mistakes

MSW: May the renewed religious left avoid the religious right's mistakes.
I had not known we had gone anywhere. We just worked with less publicity (except the Berrigan brothers, the Maryknolls, Catholic Near East, et al). I first floated a radio show in 1998 and eventually started a show on Blog Talk Radio 12 years ago yesterday, keeping it going for 6 years in a regular basis. The web page on Geocities and the Blog have been up in one form another since 2002. This blog is an offshoot of the first, which is still going strong. I am not the new kid on the block by any means. What is more important. Truth or sponsorship?

This period even included a run for the White House in 2012 in Americans Elect until the organizers pulled the plug on their goal to duplicate the Lincoln-Johnson ticket. Presidential politics is not new to the movement. There is even a set of online YouTube videos, including this one. There are 15 more answering questions in a virtual debate from taxes to education to energy and trade. More than one of my answers had a Christian Left spin.

The Christian Left goes way beyond politics. While I do have a Christian Left tax reform plan that has, as its core a living wage tax credit large enough to discourage abortion, I do not give the Catholic bishops or the Right to Life Movement a pass for their Republican affiliations. The concept of rights have precise legal meanings. The unborn have the same constitutional right to not be killed by the state as anyone else. What they don't have and could never enforce is a right to life at the expense of their mothers. Attempting to do so in the first trimester is simply not possible and is not a question of theology. The role of the movement is to educate the Church, not fall in line. That WOULD be identity politics.

Education on gay rights to marriage, from the hospital to the courthouse to the Altar (as both priests of either gender or married couples), is as much our obligation to the Church as in the public space. This does not take a theology degree. Knowing the history of Hellenistic sexuality in the Church, from Augustine to John Paul does not take a theology degree. Indeed, it is more the subject of sociology.

The Church does not get a pass for bigotry from either the pulpit or the pews. Indeed, it is likely that the pews will change first as the parents of gay children or the children of gay parents demand religious weddings.

The theology of marriage is that it is self executing, the union of two families, is independent of fertility and is an adult right to create a new family under law and in faith.

The Church has employer has no leg to stand on if it will employ civilly married heterosexuals, even though these marriages are not considered sacramental (which is a fable), while firing or refusing to hire gay married. This just does not pass the smell test and we won't pander to those who think it does. Especially not right-wing bishops an clergy.

We don't give a pass to Catholic neocons on their unwillingness to recognize the basic human rights of Palestinians and Arab Israelis to either their own state or full citizenship, regardless of the demographic implications. Torah is clear on the treatment of the alien, especially if they were already there.