Ken Starr reminds me why I am a liberal

On Thursday, Hugo and I watched part of the oral arguments before the California Supreme Court about Prop 8. Ken Starr was in fine form—poised and smart and articulate. All the qualities that make the Book of Mormon look askance at lawyers. "Our side's" lawyers were something of a disappointment, especially the fellow who spoke just before Starr. I wondered if they had gone in so convinced of the moral rightness of their cause that they hadn't really appreciated what a hard sell they had to make, legally.

Anyway, I was struck by an irony. "Our side" was basically making an appeal to transcendent values: if, as the state supreme court had earlier ruled (albeit by a razor-thin majority, which is part of the problem here), gays and lesbians have an inalienable right to marriage, then that right should remain inviolable, even in the face of as potent an appeal in our system as popular vote. Starr's argument—and I'm not remembering exactly how he worded it, but he was explicit on this point—is that "inalienable" just means a right recognized by popular vote. Apart from the fact that Starr's position is an unabashed defense of tyrrany of the majority (which doesn't "strike" me as anything in some detached intellectual sense—rather, it scares the bejesus out of me), what struck me as ironic is that Starr, a religious conservative, was arguing for a purely procedural understanding of "inalienable rights." Of course, Starr's absolutely right that the way things work in practice, "inalienable" rights are simply the rights a particular social group recognizes as "inalienable." But considering how often I've heard religious conservatives in this country over the past couple of decades decry the loss of a working notion in American law that inalienable rights are transcendent—i.e., bestowed upon us by our Creator—I was surprised to hear Starr propounding a relativistic understanding of "inalienable rights."

And yet, of course, I shouldn't be surprised by it. I'm now going to make an irresponsibly sweeping generalization of the kind that I could never—and should never—get away with in my scholarly discourse; the kind of sweeping generalization, in fact, that my scholarship helps to bring under the curb of intellectual discipline. But I'm going to state the sweeping generalization anyway, because it reflects the subjective, emotive, experiential, blood-and-guts dimensions to my political commitments as they intersect with my spirituality, i.e., my most deeply rooted intuitions and passions about what's right and true.

The sweeping generalization is this: It shouldn't surprise me to see a religious conservative behave disingenuously, because after two decades of experience in LDS institutions dominated by religious conservatives, it's what I've come to expect. People who see themselves as defenders of orthodox truth and moral probity against sinister, even diabolical, foes, and who feel authorized by the cosmic nature of the struggle to pursue strategies they would denounce as dishonest or tyrranical or unjust if pursued by the people they see as their enemies. A crusading spirit without a conscience—that's my experience of religious conservatism. Religious liberalism, as I understand it and try to live it, is religion with a conscience. Often an ineffectively fastidious conscience, which can be extremely frustrating when you simply need to get something done. But I'd rather err in that direction than in the direction that brought us the Benson spy ring, or the Strengthening Church Members Committee, or the September Six, or the firing of professors during the BYU academic freedom controversy. Or Mountain Meadows. Or secret post-Manifesto polygamy. Or the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor. Mormons keep thinking those tactics will work out for them. Not only does religious conservativism lack a conscience; it also seems to have a slow learning curve.

Okay—that soapbox turned out to be more bitter than I'd anticipated.

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God of promise—

Your kingdom come.
Your justice and equity be established.
Your righteousness and truth sweep the earth as with a flood.

In Christ's name, amen.