A Taste of Their Own Medicine

In case you hadn't heard about it, there's a ballot initiative on its way to voters in San Francisco that would outlaw the practice of circumcision on newborns. The proposition does not allow for any religious exemption, and that has Jews and Muslims up in arms because circumcising male infants is part of their religious traditions.

I have no dog in the debate about whether circumcision is medically sound and culturally valid versus being an abhorrent mutilation imposed on helpless infants who cannot express their own desires in the matter. If I'd been allowed to choose for myself, I probably would have opted to go au naturel, but on the other hand I can't say that being circumcised has been a trauma or represented a major loss. I know others are much more passionate about this than I am.

But what does fascinate me about the issue is how readily Jewish and Muslim groups made common cause to oppose the ballot initiative and try to scrub it from next year's ballot. People of faith in California worked so hard three years ago to punish gay and lesbian families by passing Prop 8 and depriving them of their right to marry. Now people of faith in that same state are facing the indignity and the outrage of having their rights put up to a popular vote. We can see how they feel about that: They've gone to court to prevent it.

They seem, in other words, to have a pronounced aversion to taking a swallow of their own medicine. I can't say I blame them. It's a bitter thing indeed when a ballot initiative that intrudes on your homes and your families, and threatens to take your rights away at the behest of the majority. But on the other hand, now they know how it feels. Maybe they'll think twice about voting on the rights and freedoms and families of others.

I don't agree with putting rights up to a vote, but in this case I think it might be educational to give true believers a taste of what they dole out all too casually, and all too frequently, to gays. It's too bad that an even more comprehensive ballot initiative isn't slated to appear on the ballot -- something that would let a solid majority know what it feels like to have your personal freedoms ransacked and stolen.

I'd have preferred to have seen voters weigh in on the freedom of heterosexuals to divorce, because I think that's the only equitable response, the only thing that's going to infuriate and offend heterosexuals as much as anti-gay ballot initiatives infuriate and offend GLBTs. But maybe the circumcision issue will touch the lives of enough people to get the point across: It's wrong to vote on rights.

Do I believe that religious traditions should be respected by the law? Yes, I do. I do not, however, believe that religious traditions should dictate our laws to us. For one thing, civil law applies to everyone; it's not optional, and one's deep-seated convictions (or lack thereof) have no bearing on the question of who is, and who is not, obliged to obey the law. Everybody is.

Faith-based rules and laws, though, should be kept to the ranks of the religious. I don't really want to be informed that I am now expected to abide by Mormon, Baptist, Scientologist, or Seventh Day Adventist rules because people of some particular faith took it upon themselves to translate their beliefs into civil law. If a non-believing parent wants to take a sick child to the hospital for medical treatment, instead of relying on prayer, that should be their right. I can't imagine that a plurality of Americans would agree to have a "faith-based" approach to pediatric health as their only option.

By the same token, I can't take it seriously that organizers of the San Francisco ballot initiative expect their measure to pass -- or, if it does, that they don't know full well that it will be struck down, just as Prop. 8 has already been struck down, as unconstitutional. It is unconstitutional to try and tell people of a religious persuasion that they may no longer practice long-standing religious traditions.

But to me, that's not really the point here. To me, the point is something much larger and pervasive: The very fact that ballot initiatives can target and then take away the rights of minorities simply because it's "the will of the people" is a terrifying thing that should never have been allowed, and certainly not under the guise of democracy.

But there are some things that you simply can't explain to people. There are some things that can only be made clear through example. I hope that every single person who voted to take away the rights of California families in 2008 now feels a chill down their spine and understands that the precedent they set -- stripping the rights of minorities by plebiscite -- could very easily give rise to other, similar ballot initiatives, and they are not immune.

We all belong to a minority of some sort, after all. The rights of gays are no more and no less at risk when rights are up for grabs at the ballot box. Imagine for a moment the outcry and furore that would break out if there were a ballot initiative to outlaw vegetarianism. It's not that you couldn't make moral, religious, and even scientific arguments against vegetarianism: After all, the design of human teeth, a mixture of incisors and molars, clearly indicates that our species is omnivorous. A religious person could argue that human physiology itself is a statement from God that we should eat meat. (That is, after all, one of the arguments that the anti-gay crowd made in 2008, and continue to cling to.)

Or how about southpaws? Isn't it obvious that God intended all of us to be right-handed and those damn lefties are simply choosing to dwell in deviance? Why should honest, hard-working, God-fearing Americans put up with it? Or the way diabetics jam needles into their flesh in public restrooms? (Maybe undercover cops should do something about this.) Or how about people who wear patchouli oil? Are they not a menace to children and moral fiber? Why should we permit their malodorous behavior to continue?

Well, I'll tell you why: Because we're honest, hard-working Americans. We live in a land founded on the concept that human beings can make their own decisions. We don't need monarchs -- that is to say, representatives of God's will on Earth -- to guide our every decision, and it doesn't matter if the monarch is a king, a queen, or an executive officer with NOM.

That's the theory, anyway. Those who cast votes based on religious beliefs -- beliefs that insist that everyone must believe the same way and follow the same theocratic mandates -- don't always seem to remember that.

Maybe one little taste of how it feels to have your personal life, your liberty, and your status as a first-class citizen dangled before the masses, and your fate left in their hands when they have no true stake in preserving your most precious individual freedoms, will do what words have not. Maybe seeing their rights up for a vote will give Californians a pause. Maybe they'll remember how they put a whole class of people, men and women and their families, through this very same thing in 2008.

Maybe they'll learn something about sympathy, empathy, and walking in someone else's shoes -- if, that is, they have to sip their own medicine and actually walk in the shoes of the people whose families they harmed and whose freedoms they injured.

Or maybe not. Maybe the lawsuit that's been filed to stop the ballot measure from going to voters will result in the initiative being pulled. In which case, all I can say is: When will it be our turn to seek relief in the courts and stop an anti-gay law from going on the ballot?

Because this is America, you know, and the so-called majority, the "people" who are the touchstone of those who cry out for votes on rights, simply can't -- they cannot -- keep on giving to the faith community with one hand while taking from the GLBT community with the other. Not forever. Not in the land of the free.