Universal Life Church is the only interfaith ministry worldwide that opens its doors to all who seek to become an ordained minister or wedding officiant. We enable all faiths; Christian, Jew, Mormon, Pagan, Baptists and Atheist to join our church. We are a non denominational congregation of children from the same universe.
By now most of us are familiar with the many unconventional ways ULC ministers have re-interpreted the traditional wedding ceremony. Often, this involves some form of performance art, from stand-up comedy routines to rock concerts. Now, one minister ordained online in the ULC will be performing wedding vow renewals for audience members during a musical comedy on the often amusing trials of married life. It’s just another example of the creative and innovative approach ULC clergy members take to performing wedding ceremonies, wedding vow renewals, and other special occasions.
The wedding vow renewals will be held during a performance of the musical play Let’s Pretend We’re Married, created and performed by Philadelphia comedians Jennifer Childs and Tony Braithwaite, at Act II Playhouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As hinted at in the title, the play will follow the domestic exploits of a number of famous married couples from film, television, and radio, including Edith and Archie Bunker, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, Sonny and Cher, and Burns and Allen, all of whom will be played by Childs and Braithwaite themselves. Sally Henry of Broadway World calls the play a “delightful, musical comedy celebration of the world’s greatest, and most complicated institution”.
Braithwaite, who decided to become ordained online in the ULC ministry, will be performing the wedding vow renewals, whilst Childs will be the flower-girl (albeit a grown-up version). Adding to the unconventionality of the occasion, the comedy duo will be offering different themes for each couple’s ceremony: a Las Vegas theme, a Hawaiian theme, and a traditional theme for those who wish to play it safe and stay “classic”. And apparently every couple is welcome. Braithwaite and Childs will also be offering wedding vow renewals to same-sex couples, as Henry notes: “All married couples are welcome (including visitors from New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Iowa!)”.
It’s quite an unusual combination, to be sure. Fans of both musical theatre, situation comedies, and alternative wedding and wedding vow renewal ceremonies should have plenty to look forward to. According to Henry, the score for the play will include selections from George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, and Tom Lehrer. So, not only will audience members have the chance to watch couples renew their vows of love and commitment to one another with the help of a ULC wedding officiant, but they will have the opportunity to revel in the sweeping soundscapes of classic musical scores, with each ceremony set to a different theme: gambling “glitz”, tropical “paradise”, or good, old-fashioned, whitebread traditional. Certainly not a performance to write off as boring, from whatever angle you look at it.
As Braithwaite and Childs show, alternative ceremony ideas aren’t limited to just weddings, but apply to wedding vow renewal and commitment ceremonies too. After all, to create truly lasting memories, sometimes it is necessary to buck the trend and do something a little bit off-the-wall. Perhaps we can apply the same principle to performing funerals, performing baptisms, or performing other sacerdotal rites. Of course, the trick is how to strike a balance between spontaneity and reverence. Of course, all that’s required is to get ordained online and do a little digging around about the do’s and don’ts of performing ceremonies as a minister in an online church. (But that’s what we’re here for.)
Tickets to Let’s Pretend We’re Married can be purchased by visiting http://www.act2.org, or by calling the Act II Box Office at 1 (215) 654-0200.
In other musical entertainment news, three time Tony award-winning music theatre legend Carol Channing gave a very warm and charming video message at Broadway Sings for Pride: the Winter Holiday Concert. The event is an organized effort by music theatre artists to show support for the LGBT community through the performing arts. As anybody who watches the video can tell, Channing’s support for the community is evident in her heartfelt message of love, solidarity, and inclusion, a message which nicely echoes the Universal Life Church Monastery‘s own motto, which is that, male or female, black or white, gay or straight, young or old, we are all children of the same universe.
A few days ago, Republican U.S. presidential hopeful Rick Perry released an advertisement criticizing liberals, gay rights, and secularism. In the bold, barefaced attack, the Texas governor claimed there was something wrong with the United States, because LGBT people could serve openly in the military, yet children couldn’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. He also vowed to defend America’s supposed “Christian heritage” against liberal “attacks”. The problem, though, is that none of Perry’s claims is actually based on solid fact or reason, but, of course, the veracity of a claim doesn’t matter for a Christian dominionist like Perry, who relies chiefly on appeals to emotion to persuade his audience.
The first problem is with Rick Perry’s claim that children are not allowed to celebrate Christmas or pray openly. The plain fact is, they are, and Perry is simply fabricating the “truth” to incite a reaction in a paranoid audience. Most likely, Perry’s claim about celebrating Christmas stems from efforts in American public schools to avoid explicit endorsement of religion during the Christmas season. But Perry is creating a straw man: nobody is restricting students’ right to celebrate openly their religious holiday of choice, nor are they restricting students’ right to pray; they are restricting teachers’ right to endorse religion in their capacity as government workers. So, Perry doesn’t actually prove that children aren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas or pray–he is simply stirring up hysteria by making outright bogus claims.
The second problem relates closely to the first, and it deals with the contrast Perry creates between gays serving openly in the military, and children being allowed to celebrate Christmas and pray openly. The former, he suggests, is the antithesis of the latter. In the video, he laments in his inarticulate drawl that “there’s something wrong with America when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” By contrasting this with gay serving openly in the military, he creates an artificial contradiction between the two that need not exist. It is not the case that gays serving openly in the military and letting children pray in school and celebrate Christmas represent two separate, mutually exclusive agendas–a liberal versus a conservative one. Liberals aren’t taking away children’s rights to do these things while letting gays serve openly in the military. As shown above, of course children can openly celebrate Christmas and pray in school if they want; meanwhile, gays are allowed to defend their country. But Perry doesn’t care, because he has his warm, inarticulate cowboy “charm” to work with.
But why, one wonders, should Perry so vociferously oppose gays openly defending their country in the first place? Let’s go back a few years to 1993, when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because law in the United States. Bill Clinton signed the bill into law despite the consensus in the scientific community that gays serving openly in the military does not compromise unit cohesion. Here are just a few statements by the American Psychological Association reflecting this consensus:
Empirical evidence fails to show that sexual orientation is germane to any aspect of military effectiveness including unit cohesion, morale, recruitment and retention (Belkin, 2003; Belkin & Bateman, 2003; Herek, Jobe, & Carney, 1996; MacCoun, 1996; National Defense Research Institute, 1993).
Comparative data from foreign militaries and domestic police and fire departments show that when lesbians, gay men and bisexuals are allowed to serve openly there is no evidence of disruption or loss of mission effectiveness (Belkin & McNichol, 2000–2001; Gade, Segal, & Johnson, 1996; Koegel, 1996).
When openly gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals have been allowed to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces (Cammermeyer v. Aspin, 1994; Watkins v. United States Army, 1989/1990), there has been no evidence of disruption or loss of mission effectiveness.
The U.S. military is capable of integrating members of groups historically excluded from its ranks, as demonstrated by its success in reducing both racial and gender discrimination (Binkin & Bach, 1977; Binkin, Eitelberg, Schexnider, & Smith, 1982; Kauth & Landis, 1996; Landis, Hope, & Day, 1984; Thomas & Thomas, 1996).
So, never mind that Perry falsely claims that children aren’t allowed to pray in school or openly celebrate Christmas, or creates a false dichotomy between religious expression on one hand, and gays serving openly in the military on the other (as if you have to choose between one or the other because they’re inherently mutually exclusive and belong to separate political agendas, which, as shown above, they aren’t); his argument is problematic because his opposition to gays serving openly in the military is empirically unfounded in the first place. But Perry needn’t worry about academic insight, because he has the raging fury of the masses on his side.
And, last but not least, Perry’s advertisement fails in the fact and reason department because he erroneously assumes that the strength of the United States rests on religious faith. He makes this clear near the end of his message, as he trudges up a hillside in a scene steeped in folksy masculine ruggedness: “Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.” In fact, the United States was founded by people who held a deep suspicion and wariness toward religion. Consider the following passages by a variety of figures who played a role in the country’s founding:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories [of the Bible], the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the Word of God.”
— Thomas Paine
“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
— Thomas Jefferson
“The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.”
— George Washington
“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion…has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”
— James Madison
“…the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion….”
— John Adams
Contrary to Perry’s claim that America’s strength lies in its Christian heritage, and that its foundation is essentially Christian, the founding fathers, who consisted more or less of agnostics and deists, openly criticized Christian beliefs, drawing largely from the principles of French Enlightenment philosophy to craft a secular government free of the strife and suffering caused by religion. America’s strength, then, lies in its roots in rationalist philosophy, not in religion, and its political heritage is defined by it. Now one might argue, “but most Americans are Christians, hence America is a Christian nation”. This is a bad argument, though, because there is a difference between the religion of the private population and the policy of secular government. That most Americans are Christian in private practice does not make their government Christian in public policy. And we know why–government religion just causes trouble. Again, though, Perry needn’t worry about this, because he’s just so darn folksy and charming, in that down-home kind of way. And that, sadly, proves sufficient to soothe his constituency.
To sum up, Perry makes a desperate stab at persuading the audience to adopt the view that Christians are being persecuted, and LGBT people, privileged. He does this by creating the false impression that Christian children are suffering from widespread religious oppression, that liberals are fighting for gay rights while neglecting children’s religious freedoms, and that gays serving in the military somehow threatens military effectiveness. But, as we’ve seen above, he fails to provide any convincing evidence, rational, empirical, or otherwise, to prove these points. Perhaps what we are seeing here is a last desperate attempt by Christian dominionists to maintain its diminishing social control by clinging to the vestiges of old-time religion and resurrecting old-fashioned attitudes about things like sex, sexuality, and social class. However, as the internet media backlash against Perry’s bilious ad shows, their plan doesn’t seem to be working very well; indeed, it has incensed even Christians, who criticize it as dividing people, misrepresenting the teachings of Jesus, and abusing religion as a political platform. So, let’s cross our fingers and hope to God they fail.
By now many of us are familiar with the right-wing argument that religion and government are inextricably intertwined, that the two have always mixed and can never be completely separated, and that the Constitution does not bar religious influence in governance. However, a group of legal experts at a recent forum have criticized this assumption as a myth, maintaining that secular civil government is critical for preserving civil liberties and American exceptionalism. The only problem is our reasoning for keeping church and state separate–what does America being “exceptional” have to do with it, anyway? As a ULC minister, do you find it relevant?
The forum was held on Tuesday, 8 November, at the U.S. National Press Club, a professional organization and private social club for journalists in Washington, DC. (Every U.S. president since Warren Harding has been a member of the club.) During the forum, experts from the fields of law, history, and political science addressed growing concerns about references to God and religion on the part of conservative Republican presidential hopefuls during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. The event was characterized by overwhelming support for separation of church and state as a vital component of American democracy, and suspicion toward how Republicans are disingenuously using God and religion to promote their political and social agendas.
Those in attendance gave a number of reasons for their concern over the growing attempt to blur the boundary between church and state. John Ragosta, author of Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped to Win the American Revolution & Secured Religious Liberty, said that the United States would not have received the respect and support of non-Christians if it were an unequivocally Christian nation, according to Shahid Ali Panhwer and Maha Mussadaq in a story in The Miami Herald. Meanwhile, Jamie Raskin, Maryland state senator and director of the Law and Government Program at American University’s School of Law, argued that while the U.S. Constitution allows people to practice the religion of their choice, government actions themselves should rely on logic and science. He also pointed out that while most Americans may be Christian in a demographic sense, the government itself is not Christian, and forcing right-wing fundamentalist Christianity on to constitutional law would topple two centuries of developments in secular government. The basic message seemed to be that America needs to remain politically secular in order to remain exceptional as a paragon of democracy.
There are many fantastic points being made by people like Raskin: there is an important difference between the majority of private citizens being Christian on one hand, and government being Christian on the other–while most Americans are Christian, the actions of government are not predicated on the majority religious belief, for such beliefs are a private and not a political exercise.
But supporters of church-state separation are still emphasizing exceptionalism as their motive. Why should our commitment to secular civil government be motivated by America being “exceptional”? Isn’t the preservation of civil liberties reason enough? To say that the American government should remain secular (and thus preserve civil liberties) in order to remain exceptional is like saying that it should remain secular in order to look good in front of everybody else. While exceptionalism can be defined as “setting an example”, it also connotes superiority, so protecting secular civil government in order to be exceptional suggests greater interest in looking “cool” than in protecting people’s rights; it suggests a mercenary, “might makes right” sort of attitude preoccupied more with recognition and personal interests than with principles themselves. But that smacks of egoism. Perhaps you’ve asked the same question as a minister ordained online: should the U.S. be protecting civil liberties in order to be “better” than other nations; or should it be protecting civil liberties for their own sake?
Besides, why shouldn’t other nations be expected to serve as examples of successful democracy? Why shouldn’t they be expected or encouraged to develop secular civil governments themselves, thereby preserving the civil liberties of their own people? Placing this expectation on the U.S. alone suggests either that Americans alone have the ability to develop democracy, or that only Americans deserve it. But, obviously, if the U.S. believes that non-Americans deserve the same rights as Americans, it follows that the U.S. should expect other nations to be exceptional too. It is not, in other words, the sole prerogative of the U.S. to embody and benefit from democracy.
We do see the U.S. helping other nations demonstrate this kind of initiative with movements like the Arab Spring, in which fledgling Middle-Eastern democracies are earning the admiration of the world for toppling their erstwhile tyrants. Hopefully we will see more examples of this sort of assistance to other nations seeking the same liberties.
There are many reasons why preserving secular civil government helps to nurture a healthy democracy (some nations, like the United Kingdom, manage to do this through organic secularization), but what should be our motive for doing so? To protect civil liberties for their own sake, or to make ourselves look like the cat’s meow, and the rest of the world chopped liver? If we wish for every citizen of every nation to enjoy the benefits of secular civil government, at the same time enjoying free exercise of religion, it should be the former. The U.S. needs to start fighting this cause because it benefits people, and not to get something out of it, like the sniveling, fawning admiration of weak and dependent foreign nations. That sort of attitude borders on nationalistic.
It’s almost impossible to believe that a lawmaker would try to insert a religious exemption into a proposed anti-bullying law, but that’s exactly what one Michigan senator tried to do. Now, however, it looks as though that exemption will be removed from the bill, allowing action to be taken against all forms of bullying, including bullying perpetrated in the name of religion. And good riddance to that exemption, too–because the free exercise of religion does not include the right to torment and harass people to the point of suicide. As a Universal Life Church minister, perhaps you have witnessed incidents of religiously motivated bullying. What do you think?
The Republican-backed bill, is known as “Matt’s Safe School Law”, after Matt Epling, a Michigan student who killed himself in 2002 after suffering from anti-gay bullying. Unlike its Democrat-backed counterpart, the bill, which was spearheaded by Senator Rick Jones, would have provided an exemption to bullying motivated by “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” against homosexuality, other religions, etc., in essence giving bullies license to harass and torment in the name of religion. Gay rights advocates are now applauding the senator’s decision to drop the religious exemption from the controversial bill, although many still think it will do little to protect youth.
Republicans like Jones had claimed that the exemption to permit bullying on religious grounds was necessary to protect religious liberty, but there are several flaws with this argument, and it is wise to point these out, even if it appears that the religious exemption will in fact be removed. It can be an extremely daunting task to expose the sophistry of religiously justified bullying, because the concept of “religious freedom” has such a powerful, intellectually paralyzing grip on the American psyche, and right-wing fundamentalist Christians have exploited it so craftily as a rhetorical tool to sway people’s emotions, that reason becomes obscured in hysteria. But in a recent issue of Time, editor Amy Sullivan makes several points which help to undermine the Republican position.
The first of these points addresses the concern over impingements on religious liberty resulting from prohibitions against harassment based on religious belief:
[The Republican belief] relies on a warped understanding of religious liberty. Freedom of religious expression doesn’t give someone the right to kick the crap out of a gay kid or to verbally torment her. It doesn’t give someone the right to fire a gay employee instead of dealing with the potential discomfort of working with him.
Put this way, the difference between free exercise of religion and religion-based oppression seems pretty straightforward here. What Sullivan is saying, and something which ministers ordained online should contemplate seriously, is that free exercise of religion does not include the right to torment another person: it only involves the right to practice one’s religion freely in peace, without impinging on the rights of others. Besides, even if bullying were part of somebody’s religious practice, so what? It still doesn’t mean that it should be protected a freedom: the Old Testament commands that we should execute adulteresses, but no civilized person in their right mind would argue that a person has the right to stone a woman to death because she cheated on her husband. So, no, an individual does not have the religious freedom to do whatever they want. And that includes bullying.
In addition to this distorted perception of religious freedom, Sullivan also points out the double standard of religious liberty endorsed by Christians who pick and choose only those freedoms which benefit themselves:
It’s also a highly selective conception of religious liberty. The same religious conservatives who applaud the religious exemption in Michigan’s anti-bullying bill would be appalled if it protected a Muslim student in Dearborn who defended bullying a Christian classmate by saying he considered her an infidel.
We all know Sullivan is right: if a follower of the Islamic faith bullied a Christian student for being an infidel, it is almost impossible to imagine the same conservatives who are backing the Matt’s Safe School Law defending that Muslim student. The law has to be all-or-nothing: if conservatives want to excuse Christian-based bullying, they have to defend all religion-based bullying in order to be fair. But this would be absurd, as it would allow anybody to use their religious beliefs as an excuse for bullying, so the only solution is to prohibit all religion-based bullying.
Sullivan also points out how the conservative focus on allowing religion-based bullying overlooks the real, pressing threats against religious freedom around the world. She points out that while Michigan Republicans spend their time fighting efforts to prohibit bullying on the basis of religion, a Christian pastor is facing execution in Iran for refusing to convert back to Islam, “China openly represses religious minorities like Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims”, “Christians in Syria and Egypt continue to be targets of violence”, and “Muslims in Europe face civil penalties for wearing religious garb in public”. A person has to have a large “persecution complex”, she says, to overlook these issues and fixate on the right to ridicule gay people. Indeed, put into this perspective, Michigan Republicans’ plight to protect the religious right to bully people who don’t fit into your religious model of the world seems egregiously petty and insulting toward religious liberty, which faces far more significant threats globally.
In addition to Sullivan’s points above, we might address the issue of free speech. A lot of people have defended the bill by invoking the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Lines 1-4 of page 6 of the Matt’s Safe School Law describe an exemption for statements based on religious or moral conviction, and it might be argued that this language, taken in context, protects the free speech rights of students: students would be permitted to express moral objections to homosexuality, Islam, etc. But free speech isn’t the same as bullying. The First Amendment protects a person’s right to express his or her personal opinions, not to harass or torment others based on those opinions. So, even if lines 1-4 were to be included in the final draft of the bill, they could only be used to defend the expression of personal beliefs, not harassment based on those beliefs.
Sen. Jones’s bill and its ominous implications were blasted in a censorious speech by Democratic senator Gretchen Whitmer:
There could not be a more trenchant and concise critique of the bill than Sen. Whitmer’s.
It’s a relief to know that Sen. Jones has agreed to remove the religious exemption in Matt’s Safe School Law. At first glance, the measure appears to protect bullying victims, but on closer inspection, it might do more to protect bullies themselves: if the exemption is taken to refer to anything other than a mere statement of personal opinion, it just grants students the religious freedom to cause others mental and emotional distress, and lost educational opportunities. But, as stated, it is not a religious freedom to torment another person and drive them to suicide just because you disagree with their perceived sexuality. And even if the bully’s “rights” did matter, whose rights matters more? The bully’s right to ridicule another person because that person’s hobbies, mannerisms, or perceived sexual preference offend the bully’s religious scruples, or the victim’s right to study safely in school and obtain an education peacefully, free of the dread of daily torment which, through the endless wearing down of mind and spirit, drives one to embrace the oblivion of death? If we have our priorities in the right place, and we know where our sympathy belongs, it seems pretty obvious that the psychologically tormented victim deserves our loyalty over the religiously offended bigot.
So, we at the ULC Monastery have our fingers crossed that the Michigan legislature will do the right thing and throw out the religious exemption from the Matt’s Safe School Law, or at least make it crystal clear that only free speech, and not harassment, will be tolerated.
Conan O’Brien may be better known for the occasional good-humored gay joke he cracks for his audience, but the ULC Monastery’s newest celebrity minister has proved to be a true supporter of social justice cause. On Thursday, O’Brien took advantage of New York State’s Marriage Equality Act to officiate a same-sex wedding in New York. The ULC Monastery couldn’t be happier with O’Brien’s clear public support for marriage equality.
The host of TBS’s Conan recently revealed to TheWashington Post his reason for deciding to get ordained online and take his show to New York City’s Beacon Theater was to officiate the wedding–but it remained unclear who the lucky couple was. Now the Post reports, America’s beloved ginger comic will be marrying the show’s long time costume designer, Scott Cronick, to his partner David Gorshein on air during the show. The ceremony will be the first of its kind as well: O’Brien told The Post, “[t]his will be the first, I believe, same-sex wedding performed on late night television”. So, people have yet another good reason to tune in to the lightheartedly self-deprecating comic’s late night show.
It was originally rumored that the flame-haired comic decided to become a minister and perform the ceremony as part of a publicity stunt to boost the show’s ratings, which have fallen since he left NBC. However, it is wise not to jump to that conclusion, according to the Web site Vulture, show sources have suggested that the event is actually a quite serious and meaningful affair. His intentions should be taken seriously not only because the ceremony is being held in New York (and is therefore legal), but also because Cronick is a longtime staffer of the show. For those reasons it seems fair to treat the Conan ceremony as a genuine validation of same-sex affection.
And for that we are grateful. The ULC Monastery would like to congratulate Cronick and Gorshein on their new life together and to thank O’Brien for showing so much support for the gay and lesbian community. We hope to see many more quirky, offbeat ceremonies from the inimitable humorist for years to come–and a boost to those ratings, to boot.
Upon its release, Lady Gaga’s dance hit “Born This Way” instantly became a brazen vindication of homosexuality’s biological basis. The LGBTQ community revelled in the message that homosexuality was immutable and therefore deserved society’s approval. The problem, though, is that the song’s message is founded on the principles of biological determinism, a philosophy which reinforces the social inequities that the LGBTQ community and other minorities are struggling to eliminate. In other words, the song’s message relies on a socially damaging cop-out about human nature. Perhaps what we need to do is take a fresh approach on gay and lesbian apologetics by critically examining the consequences of biological determinist thinking for oppressed groups.
Essentially, biological determinism states that people are born with certain immutable biological characteristics, and that these characteristics help explain the social inequities we see in society. By contrast, social determinism (a seemingly non-canonical term) posits that the behavior of the individual is determined by social mores and institutions. Since they are both forms of determinism, biological and social determinism are the opposite of free will, a philosophy which states that human beings ultimately possess agency and volition over their actions. Finally, compatibilism states that free will and determinism are not incompatible, and that both simultaneously influence the behavior of the individual. And then there is epigenetics, which is relevant but lies outside the scope of this article.
One might think that, ostensibly, biological determinism would serve gays and lesbians, because it transfers responsibility for homosexual behavior from the person to the person’s biology, thereby exonerating that person of any claims of moral turpitude. According to this view, if homosexuality is biologically predetermined, gays and lesbians are not sinning against God, because they are blameless. A person’s sexual and romantic affection for members of the same sex is driven by the neurochemistry of his or her brain (which happens to be created by God, as Christians themselves would argue), and it is unfair to blame a person for the neurobiological processes they cannot control, hence it is unfair to blame a person for his or her same-sex affection. In short, the idea is, “You can’t blame a person for something they can’t control.”
It seems like a triumphant final “hurrah” in defense of homosexuality, but is it really a good philosophy for human beings in general? Maybe not so much.
Using biological determinism as an excuse for our behavior might inadvertently hamper efforts at achieving gender equity. The biological determinist model posits that boys are inherently more aggressive, lustful, and dominating than girls, and girls, more passive, emotional, and nurturing than boys, because of some genetically-influenced cocktail of hormones which shaped their brains in the womb. But is this philosophy scientifically sound, and does it serve boys and girls? As Cordelia Fine points out in her book Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, scientists do believe that testosterone determines which set of genitals a baby will develop, but it is much less certain how it determines which toys children like to play with, let alone which types of careers they wish to pursue later in life. The neuroscience used to support the hardwired sex differences which result in gender inequity, Fine shows again and again, is methodologically flawed, misinterpreted, or simply nonexistent. If we think about it, we can see the slippery slope of excuses which might be used if we embrace biologically determined sex inequity: for example, when a man rapes a woman, it isn’t really his fault, because he was being controlled by testosterone. In effect, rapists get off the hook because “boys will be boys”. But bio-determinism is dehumanizing for another important reason: empathy is something that defines us as human beings (or as mammals at least), and we need as much of it as we can get, but bio-determinism posits that boys are inherently less empathetic than girls, so, essentially, what it is suggesting is that half of the human race should be crueller than the other half. This is absurd if our greatest goal is to encourage as much empathy as possible. Does the LGBTQ community really want to promote such destructive self-limitation?
Biological determinism could even be used to justify certain racist assumptions. As bio-determinists, we might argue that black people are inherently more violent than white people in order to explain the disproportionately high number of black people in American prisons. We might also invoke bio-determinism to explain the higher mortality rate of black people, and why they need this-or-that medicine (the commercialization of race for the purpose of lining the pockets of drug companies). This racialization of social issues is roundly criticized by Dorothy Parker in her book Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century. When we embrace bio-deterministic explanations for racial inequity in health and crime rates, we are automatically enabling such inequity to persist. Clearly it is not beneficial for us, though, so we should probably stop making excuses, show some volition, and pick up the slack, no? For this reason, the LGBTQ community might wish to be cautious about how they use the bio-determinist explanation for homosexuality.
Ironically, the “Born This Way” maxim might not just hurt women and racial minorities–it might actually end up hurting the LGBTQ community, too. By using biological innateness to justify their desires, gays and lesbians are simply giving power to the oppressor, because they are sort of implying that they “can’t help doing something that is wrong.” In other words, they suggest, homosexuality shouldn’t be accepted because it is inherently good; it should be accepted because gay people can’t help being gay. It’s kind of like saying, “congenital heart disease is bad because it kills people, but it should be accepted because it’s biological.” That’s just ludicrous. Of course it shouldn’t be accepted just because it’s biologically-based; it should be eliminated because it kills people. What is taking place here is an “appeal to nature” fallacy, which states that a thing is good because it is natural, and bad because it is unnatural. But a thing is not good because it is natural, or bad because it is unnatural. So, what gays and lesbians should be doing is saying, “Even if homosexuality weren’t natural, that doesn’t make it wrong. It is also your choice to be a Christian, but I don’t discriminate against you because of that.” Thus, to deny power to the oppressor, the LGBTQ community might focus on critiquing the appeal to nature fallacy rather than affirming it.
As we can see, Lady Gaga’s widely adored anthem ostensibly vindicates same-sex desire, but in many ways it actually reinforces damaging social inequities for women and racial minorities. It is even self-sabotaging for the LGBTQ community itself, given how it requires homosexuality to be natural in order to be justifiable. Certainly, the body does play a role in how we behave as human beings, but it does not necessarily control our behavior in every way from birth. Absolute social determinism and absolute biological determinism both seem a little implausible, so perhaps we should consider paying more heed to compatibilism–the philosophy that allows for a complex interaction between the mind, the body, and society. We might even argue that we have more free will, more agency and autonomy, than we give ourselves credit for. Maybe we weren’t strictly “born this way” after all, and maybe there’s a bigger “socio-biological” picture to why we do what we do, but that doesn’t make homosexuality wrong any more than it makes Christianity wrong. Maybe what we should be doing is defending minority sexual identities for their own sake, not for their basis in biology.
Of course, at the end of the day, it just so happens that there is a mounting heap of evidence defending at least the partial innateness of homosexuality, but, alas, it is exceedingly difficult to teach a religious fundamentalist new tricks, isn’t it?
Frequent Bible-reading can make people more liberal, posits a Baylor University doctoral candidate in his master’s thesis, contradicting commonly-held stereotypes about liberals and conservatives. (That is something for ULC wedding officiants to ponder, given their need to identify potential adversaries of online ordination.) People who read the Bible frequently, the thesis suggests, tend to have a more left-leaning attitude about issues like economic equality, criminal justice, and the role of science. However, frequent Bible reading does not make people more liberal on other issues, suggesting that the growth in liberalism among Bible-readers is very much selective.
Analyzing data from the 2007 Baylor Religion Survey, Aaron Franzen, the study’s author, showed how Bible readers’ attitudes changed in very specific areas of political and social significance. Franzen found that frequent reading of Scripture and Bible verses resulted in greater opposition to the Patriot Act (a U.S. law curtailing civil liberties under the pretext of national security), expanded government authority to fight terrorism, and harsher punishments for criminals, including the death penalty. Additionally, frequent Bible readers were 27 per cent more likely to believe it important to consume less energy to be a good human being and 22 per cent less likely to see a conflict between science and religion.
These liberal views, though, were balanced out by more conservative views in other areas. (It would be interesting to know their thoughts about people who get ordained online.) While frequent Bible readers showed greater apprehension toward things like jingoism, capital punishment, unbridled energy consumption, and anti-scientific attitudes (all trademarks of a twenty-first century American conservative), they were also critical of abortion and same-sex marriage. Franzen found that almost half of people who read the Bible less than once a year support same-sex marriage, but only 6 per cent of frequent Bible readers did, and there was also a statistically significant negative correlation between frequent Bible reading and support for abortion services.
What could be the reason for this unexpected divergence in attitude between terrorism, environmentalism, and criminal justice on one hand, and abortion and same-sex marriage on the other? One possible explanation is that the Bible treats criminals and the poor as generic sinners deserving of forgiveness, but does not necessarily treat sexual “deviants” like homosexuals and women who seek abortion services by the same standard. The Bible is full of parables teaching the reader to forgive generic miscreants, but where homosexuality is mentioned, right-wing, evangelical Christians overwhelmingly treat the text as condemning the act, and abortion does not seem to be mentioned at all, which tempts frequent Bible readers to fill in the gaps with their own personal preference, or with what the Bible says elsewhere about the sanctity of life. Another explanation could be that the frequent readers’ choice in liberal values reflects a generational difference: perhaps frequent Bible-readers tend to be older, and for older people, helping the poor, forgiving criminals, and caring for nature may be traditionally acceptable forms of charity, but allowing consenting adults of the same sex to marry one another, or a woman to terminate a pregnancy, may not. Interestingly, the frequent Bible readers tend to reject the values which place more importance on the idea of adult consent, suggesting that this fundamental humanist principle figures little in the minds of such individuals. Of course, these are only explanations, and there are plenty of others to consider.
So, habitual Bible readers seem to be a bit inconsistent in their liberalism. All explanations as to why frequent Bible-readers pick some liberal values and dismiss others are mere speculation until we do more research into the subject and dig up more answers. Nevertheless, it serves as a starting point to imagine why habitual Bible reading leads to a consolidation of both liberal and conservative beliefs. Perhaps the Bible paints a prettier, more sympathetic picture of criminals, the poor, and even nature (often viewed by Christians as subordinate to man) than of people who deviate from sexual norms. Perhaps people who spend a lot of time reading the Bible tend to be older, and older people have a harder time accepting same-sex marriage and abortion than younger people because these practices redefine traditional institutions with which older people are familiar. Again, though, these are just hypotheses.
As a Universal Life Church minister, what do you think? Why do people who frequently read the Bible show more liberal attitudes about criminal justice, poverty, and the environment than they do about same-sex marriage and abortion?
For many brides-and-grooms-to-be, the image of a young woman in a fluffy white dress being led by her father down the aisle to say “I do” to a stern man in a sober black suit has grown stale, and a trifle generic. Nowadays, more people want to have an alternative wedding ceremony which reflect their unique tastes as a couple, and sometimes this means reinventing age-old traditions and, quite literally, throwing a little dirt on things. Below are a few ideas that are catching the wedding industry by storm might inspire a more creative and personalized wedding for the reader.
A lot of trends have focussed on re-defining what it means to be a bride or groom, and one of these is the “little black bridesmaid’s dress”, something even a lot of ULC wedding officiants haven’t seen at the altar yet. Traditionally, as we all know, black has been reserved for the groom and his men while the bride has donned and her bridesmaids, a vibrant blue, magenta, purple, or other similar color. But never black. Nowadays, though, bridesmaids and even brides themselves are wearing black because they like it, and it fits with the sartorial concept they had in mind (i.e. “Maybe I want my bridesmaids in black silk to resemble the night sky”, or something similarly inspired). For modern couples, white is no longer a symbol of purity, and black opens up countless creative opportunities.
But the change in symbolism goes a little deeper than wearing black instead of white, and sex roles based on specious notions about intrinsic biological differences are beginning to crumble with the emergence of more egalitarian wedding and engagement trends like the “man-gagement” ring. Historically engagement rings symbolized a woman’s bondage to a man, and while engagement rings no longer bear this connotation, it is a wonder why a symbol of engagement should grace the woman’s finger, but not the man’s. After all, they’re both getting engaged, right? In response to consumers questioning this odd double standard, retailers are now selling engagement rings, albeit usually less ornate than the typical engagement ring, for grooms. Finally, we have arrived at the point where both women and men feel obliged to signal their commitment to another person.
Things like rings and dresses are just objects, though, and the wedding ritual itself is undergoing a transformation too. Fewer brides are comfortable with the idea of walking down the aisle clinging to their fathers’ arms as if they are property being given away to the men who, in real life, they’re marrying out of love and mutual respect. For this reason, more brides and grooms are choosing to walk down the aisle together. (As children, some us might have assumed that this is the way it had always been done, only to be surprised by the revelation that the groom had traditionally received the bride from her father.) As Lori Stephenson, co-founder of the wedding planning and design firm Lola Event Productions, tells Joe Mont of The Street, “They are coming together to the altar as equals and there is none of this old-fashioned idea of leaving your family”. In addition, more women are proposing to their fiances, and more grooms have groomswomen while more brides have bridesmen. As marriage evolves into an equal economic partnership between two stable individuals, and as the larger society echoes this egalitarianism, the wedding ceremony is increasingly being re-conceived to reflect this social development.
These are all somewhat solemn and philosophical considerations, but the modern wedding ceremony can be fun and quirky, too, reflecting the eccentricities of bride and groom, which is why photography shoots–those precious moments captured in time–are taking on a new twist, too. The pressure placed on brides to “play the part” and act like flawless beauty queens permanently embalmed in wedding photograph albums for decades to come can be truly nerve-wracking. As a way of alleviating some of this stress, and to create memories which reflect their off-the-wall side, brides are creating the perfect antithesis to the typical prim, proper, composed wedding photo shoot by deliberately . In some photo shoots, brides are dumping chocolate syrup on themselves, rolling around in the dirt, or running down the street in the rain–all in that expensive white, fluffy gown. (Usually the dresses go to the dry-cleaners afterward.) With the pressure to perform the part of the white-clad princess finally past her, the bride can now let loose and make a statement about who she really is (and still keep that heirloom dress, too).
And, of course, it has to be mentioned that more people are choosing get ordained online so that they can marry their loved ones. More and more, however, couples are double-checking with their local clerk to confirm the legal status of their wedding officiant and have low-key weddings ahead of time to avoid any surprises later on. It is a smart decision to make, but it’s also a relief to know that wedding performed by ULC ministers are legal in always every jurisdiction in the U.S.
These ideas aren’t for everyone–some people will still want to retain the more traditional elements of the wedding ceremony–but such quirky new customs wouldn’t be catching on like wildfire if there weren’t a substantial number of people who wanted to try them out. People are waiting until they’re older to marry, women no longer belong to men, marriage requires less approval from society to be considered valid, and when people do marry they tend to do so after much waiting and deliberation, making for a big, painstakingly planned out affair. Consequently, marriage requires a little tweaking for the modern couple, and maybe a way for stressed-out brides to let off some steam. The Universal Life Church Monastery thinks it’s a good thing that we’re taking a critical look at what the wedding ceremony means for us today and redefining it, without any lingering sense of shame, to suit our modern-day needs and desires.
As a minister ordained online, or as an individual who recently married or hopes to do so in future, what do you think about the changing face of this cherished tradition? Do you like the creative, sometimes odd, ways in which weddings are being reinvented to reflect personal tastes and changing social attitudes?
As Halloween approaches, many families are preparing for fun parties, trick-or-treating, apple-bobbing, and pumpkin-carving, but one pastor is waging a spiritual “battle” against the “evils” of the holiday through a process of Christianization. The new, Christian version of the co-opted holiday is known as “JesusWeen”. But is Halloween reallysuch an evil holiday? If we think hard and take a closer look at this mysterious time of year, we will see that the Christian campaign of fear against Halloween is unjustified. And we want to know what our ministers ordained online think.
The brainchild of JesusWeen (also known as “JesusWin”), is Pastor Paul Ade of Christ Embassy Church in Calgary. According to the Web site, JesusWeen is a non-profit organization dedicated to “helping people live better lives through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ“. For “JesusWeeners”, as the organization’s members might affectionately be called, October 31st is “a day to expect a gift of salvation and re-think receiving Jesus”, states the Web site. On that day, children are allowed to go from house to house asking for candy, but they must say “Jesus loves you!” instead of “Trick or treat!” and portray “positive” images like Superman or Spiderman instead of monsters. In addition, JesusWeen families would hand out Bibles instead of candy to trick-or-treaters visiting their home, or they could still hand out candy, but Ade recommends donating that money to an organization they support instead.
But this seemingly benign effort to preach the gospel to non-believers in a friendly way harbors a secretly critical attitude toward the Halloween tradition. This is evident in the words of Ade himself, who claims that Halloween is incompatible with Christianity: “I think it’s an activity that doesn’t have anything to do with Christians,” he tells Seth Abramovitch of Gawker. “And I think many Christian families are not knowledgeable to what it’s all about”, he says, adding that “Halloween is not consistent with the Christian faith. Many people say they feel uncomfortable on that day. We think people should choose an alternative activity.” (Certainly, a similar attitude of reproach and isolation is directed at people who choose to get ordained online.) Most North Americans are familiar with the traditions of both Christianity and Halloween, so what Ade seems to be saying is that Christianity is incompatible with activities which most people–including Christians–see as harmless, like trick-or-treating, bobbing for apples, etc.
But are these activities really evil? To answer this question, it might help to compare Halloween with Hollywood. Our current conception of the holiday–from zombies, vampires, and werewolves to witches, demons, ghosts, and haunted houses–is influenced enormously by the engines of contemporary popular culture. Horror film studios cash in on seasonal features, and giant candy manufacturers, on the trick-or-treating sensation. Somehow, Halloween evolved into a corporate money-making machine. But it has far different origins. Halloween, or “All Hallow’s Even”, is the evening preceding the Christian holiday “All Saints Day“, which was celebrated to commemorate all of the saints recognized by the Christian churches. This holiday was the Christianized version of a much more ancient pagan Celtic holiday called Samhain (pronounced “SOW-in”). Samhain was a fire festival, the last of three annual harvests, which marked a day when the veil between the mortal and spirit worlds became thinner, allowing spirits to walk among mortals and celebrants to communicate with the souls of deceased loved ones, as well as to seek the earth’s protection through the long winter. Sometimes, tricksters would dress up as those spirits and go from household to household, asking for a treat lest they should pull a prank on the household, and families would leave food out to appease the fairies and earn their goodwill for the rest of the year. To ward off more mischievous spirits, families would carve a foreboding face into a turnip and use it as a lantern. But the Celts did not believe in Satan or demons, and the fairies they believed in were morally very similar to humans–imperfect–so it makes little sense to label Samhain as “satanic” or “demonic”. Thus, it is important to distinguish between the historical and commercialized versions of Halloween, and not to blame the former for the crass horror-imagery of the latter, making money as it does off people’s fears.
But it isn’t enough just to question the way Hollywood has dominated and distorted our perception of Halloween; we ULC wedding officiants also need to question how much the past informs the present. To say that contemporary Halloween activities are evil because they derive from evil activities is a genetic fallacy. A thing is not good or bad because of its original meaning and context; it is good or bad because of its current meaning and context. Children dressed as witches, ghosts, and vampires in contemporary Halloween festivities are a pale shadow of the holiday’s earliest tricksters (if indeed such tricksters were malevolent to begin with). Indeed, the sight of such children is so trite and adorable as to be virtually devoid of any trace of evil origin. So, one wonder what threat JesusWeen followers, or anybody else for that matter, see in a child in a mass-manufactured witch’s hat and poorly-applied make-up from the local pharmacy. It turns out to be just another harmless frissonof unearthly mystery and wonder about the supernatural world.
Last but perhaps most importantly, the assumption that Halloween is rooted in evil and barbaric customs is perhaps the greatest motivator for movements like JesusWeen, yet similar customs are found in the beliefs of JesusWeeners themselves. It is true that in ancient times the Celts slaughtered animals during festivals like Samhain in order to propitiate the gods and ensure survival through the winter; experts are much more divided, though, on whether they routinely practiced human sacrifice. However, the Judeo-Christian faith tradition requires human and animal sacrifice, too. Judaism required the ancient Hebrews to slaughter animals to propitiate God and be redeemed, while Christianity went a step further and required humans to accept a human blood-sacrifice (the crucifixion of Jesus) to propitiate God and be redeemed. These rituals hardly sound less barbaric than those of the ancient Celts; in fact, if anything, the Christian one sounds even more barbaric since we know that it did require a human sacrifice. Meanwhile, modern pagans require no sacrifice whatsoever to propitiate their gods. So it is perhaps ironic that JesusWeeners should criticize the barbarism of Halloween, but not that of their own religion. One would think that if anything perverts or corrupts a child with its evil, it is the celebration of human sacrifice for the purpose of redemption.
To summarize, movements like JesusWeen are intended to co-opt Halloween and overshadow its supposedly malevolent origins with the celebration of life and goodness. There are several reasons why this is misguided. First, much of the imagery attributed to Halloween has more to do with concepts popularized by the media than with the original holiday itself; second, even if Halloween did have some unsavory elements, contemporary festivities are merely a pale, harmless reflection of these; and, third, the Judeo-Christian tradition recognizes human and animal sacrifice too, so if Christians are to criticize Halloween for its basis in this practice, it is only fair for them to do the same with their own religion. We see Halloween as evil because it is shrouded in mystery, but that view merely reflects a fear of the unknown, not of any actual evil; there is little, if any, intrinsic “evil” in Halloween for us to conquer, and only mysteries for us to explore. So, at this time of year, it would behove us as nondenominational priests and ministers to become better acquainted with the actual origins and customs of Halloween and reflect on what it means for us in modern-day life.
Digging Up Dinosaurs
Have you ever heard anyone exclaim, “It’s biology!” when confronted with the problem of male promiscuity, or the disproportionately high number of black people in American prisons? Perhaps their wording was “It’s genetic!” Either way, it shows just how convenient it is to attribute social inequalities to biologically hard-wired differences. As the figurehead of this trend, the emerging New Traditionalist movement has been pining for a return to a bygone era characterized by old-fashioned racial and sexual roles, but a new host of critics are raising their voices in dissent, pointing out the danger of this deceptively appealing retrogressiveness. And Universal Life Church ministers have a vested interest in this debate.
“It Must Be Because They’re Black!”
Hard-wired biological differences have been used to excuse racial inequalities in some of the most disturbing and questionable ways. As Lisa C. Ilkemoto of Ms Magazine explains, U.S. president Bill Clinton, along with the two leaders of the effort to map the human genome, announced in 2000 that racialization was all but dead. Biologist Craig Venter had proclaimed that “race has no genetic or scientific basis”, she notes, and this opinion was widely accepted in the scientific community.
Since then, however, efforts have been made by powerful institutions to re-introduce race as an explanation for human social inequalities. In her book Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century, social critic Dorothy Roberts examines and attempts to discredit this trend. She points out how scientists, governments, and big business are using recent findings in genetics to render racial differentiation “neutral” and “factual”, and to justify racially-based explanations of health inequities such as the lower breast cancer rate but higher mortality rate among black American women.
Roberts also critiques how the commerce and justice systems use “genetic race” to justify bias in government as well as in personalized medicine–to make a profit. The commercialization of race-based drug sales, Ilkemoto paraphrases her as saying, “may impose a norm of genetic self-regulation that will fall most negatively on those deemed the source of genetic risk”, and these will too often be women of color. The genetic race hypothesis is also being employed in the U.S. government’s rapidly-growing DNA database. Roberts also notes how blacks represent a disproportionately large sample of offenders in the DNA databases due to racial profiling, racism in prosecutions and convictions, and assumptions about biologically hard-wired race differences which stem from a renewed interest in pseudoscientific, race-based explanations for violent tendencies.
Responding to this glut of seemingly uncontroversial, benevolent attention to race, Roberts critiques the motives driving supporters of racial science. In particular, she points out the ideological motives behind the effort to preserve genetically race-based explanations for social inequity:
What links racial science from one generation to the next is the quest to update the theories and methods for dividing human beings into a handful of groups to provide a biological explanation for their differences—from health outcomes to intelligence to incarceration rates.
In other words, Roberts argues, racial science becomes a meme which keeps humans neatly classified and reinforces biological explanations for social inequity. This is critical in the effort to pawn off violence, disease, and traits generally regarded as inferior on less privileged groups, without having to think critically about how our minds and society influence this process. Every ULC wedding officiant and nondenominational priest should treat this pseudoscientific trend with suspicion.
“Men Are Like This, and Women Are Like That”
But the biology excuse does not end with race–it is also used to excuse sexual inequity. Consider the new gender-education movement, which is founded on the premise that boys and girls should be educated separately because they possess immutable biological sex differences. This hypothesis, which is supported by family physician and psychologist Leonard Sax and author and consultant Michael Gurian, posits that boys should trained to be leaders and competitors because they are naturally more aggressive and disciplinarian, and that girls should be trained to be followers and cooperators because they are naturally more passive and nurturing.
But Caryl Rivers and Rosalind C. Barnett, in their book The Truth about Boys and Girls: Challenging Toxic Stereotypes about Our Children, challenge these assumptions and attempt to refute the pseudoscientific claims made by people like Sax and Gurian. One case in point, argue Rivers and Barnett, is the lack of empirical evidence showing that girls should be taught in whispers because their hearing is so much more acute than that of boys, and the assumption that boys need to expend more energy than girls is also refuted by evidence showing that there is a positive correlation between exercise and learning in both boys and girls. As J Goodrich of Ms explains, chapter after chapter Rivers and Barnett refute the evidence used to support the Sax-Gurian principle that boys are dominators, and girls, doormats. This is important work, because it reminds us as ULC ministers how harmful, oppressive, and tyrannical sex roles based on bad science can be.
River and Barnett are not the only voices speaking out against pseudoscientific biological excuses for sex discrimination. Another prominent critic of New Traditionalism is psychologist Cordelia Fine, a senior research associate at the Centre for Agency, Velues and Ethics at Macquarie University and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Department of Psychology. In her book Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, Fine critiques the commonly-held belief that men are hard-wired to systematize, and women, to empathize, is damaging to ourselves and society. She shows how our minds feed into, interact with, and influence observable sex differences, which in turn reinforce our assumptions in a vicious cycle. At one point she critiques Dr John Gray (author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus) for excusing the greater domestic workload of women by suggesting women need to do more housework because it produces the oxytocin which facilitates social bonds. She points out how Gray’s hypothesis is not empirically tested and that there are more satisfying sociological explanations for this double standard.
In addition to providing sociological and psychological insight, Fine combs through the neuroscientific studies justifying sex discrimination and debunks them, pointing out their methodological flaws and misguided interpretations of the data. For example, she points out, even in species in which adult males do not normally care for the young, such as rats, the males consistently show an uncanny knack for nurturing the young when females are absent, proving that nurturing abilities are not hard-wired and suggesting that if adult male rats can do it, well, so can adult male humans. Breaking down such paradigms is partly what people get ordained online to do. It is exactly this kind of nuanced, sophisticated, uncompromising scrutiny of simplistic, convenient, reductive belief systems that we should be taking more seriously.
Challenging Beliefs
We can basically see how powerful social institutions and systems perpetuate myths about hard-wired biological differences in order to justify racial and sexual inequity, using misleading or poorly-supported scientific studies as a crutch. Why? Because it benefits privileged groups like white, males, and heterosexuals while treating everyone else like chopped liver. It’s no longer clever to spout the platitude “It’s biology!” and expect people to take these words for granted. The consequences are foreboding: a return to the nineteenth-century, when blacks were enslaved because they were seen as intrinsically subhuman, or even further back to the prehistoric savanna when males hunted and waged war while females cooked the meat and popped out babies. Conceivably, biological determinism might also provide a justification for eugenics and racial cleansing.
Every period of history has its own pretty, pseudoscientific ideas about race and sex differences, which attract non-critical thinkers like a shiny metallic bauble, and only when the next generation arrives do we observe how preposterously subjective and sentimental our forbears’ “evidence” really was. Perhaps we perpetuate these myths because they make us feel safe and secure, and because they’re easy and convenient to believe in, but this doesn’t mean that they are good for us. The Universal Life Church Monastery takes a cautious, skeptical position on biological determinism, always emphasizing that we should challenge long-held, comforting beliefs, especially those which divide rather than unite us, for, after all, we are all children of the same universe.
By now most of us are familiar with the many unconventional ways ULC ministers have re-interpreted the traditional wedding ceremony. Often, this involves some form of performance art, from stand-up comedy routines to rock concerts. Now, one minister ordained online in the ULC will be performing wedding vow renewals for audience members during a musical comedy on the often amusing trials of married life. It’s just another example of the creative and innovative approach ULC clergy members take to performing wedding ceremonies, wedding vow renewals, and other special occasions.
As Braithwaite and Childs show, alternative ceremony ideas aren’t limited to just weddings, but apply to wedding vow renewal and commitment ceremonies too. After all, to create truly lasting memories, sometimes it is necessary to buck the trend and do something a little bit off-the-wall. Perhaps we can apply the same principle to performing funerals, performing baptisms, or performing other sacerdotal rites. Of course, the trick is how to strike a balance between spontaneity and reverence. Of course, all that’s required is to get ordained online and do a little digging around about the do’s and don’ts of performing ceremonies as a minister in an online church. (But that’s what we’re here for.)
