Bad Christians

The lead story for two weeks running in The Smoky Mountain News has been about a dude* in a bikini. Nobody knows who this dude is, or what sex/gender the person is, or what pronouns are preferred (SMN is at pains to point that out, but then assumes 'she' is correct in their coverage). These were accompanied by an editorial against the "dangerous vigilante fantasies" of country music, which must "end."

Coverage by the local paper has been painfully sanctimonious. Now SMN is a good paper in spite of its clear liberal editorial bias; they produce well-researched journalism on the drug trafficking situation in the region, on local politics, on internal Cherokee Nation affairs, and also on arts and literature in the area (the latter being why I read it; I often find out about good bands and live shows through them). I've been genuinely impressed by their straight journalism work. Even here, they went to some trouble to get the facts straight and to file appropriate public records requests, etc. That's not the issue.

I'm also willing to give an argument against interest in opposing the sanctimony. The coverage demonstrates that people were passing rumors that are not supported by the video of the incident. That's dangerous, as they say; and we can reasonably agree that a hundred years ago a similar kind of rumor about possible sexual predation by a hated minority might have led to a lynching. The absence of lynchings marks real progress, and I am prepared to acknowledge that these sort of irritating liberal responses are presumably partly to be credited for that progress. (Certainly not wholly to be credited for it, but I can see the argument that they are assisting in providing a helpful social immunity to such mob violence).

All the same, I have a problem with the preaching. I do mean preaching literally:  two of the section headers in their first piece are unelaborated Biblical references, whose clear intention is to suggest that their social opponents are bad Christians as well as bad people (as well as wrong on the facts). 

This is not necessary, and in fact is very risky, for their preferred arrangement. Their basic argument is captured in their headline: "The mere existence of trans people is not a crime." (Again, whether or not the wholly anonymous dude in the bikini is in fact trans, or just a David Lee Roth impersonator, is not clear from the facts.) Now that's true as a matter of fact, but it's accidentally true: and if you put it to a clean vote, democratically speaking, I don't know that it would continue to be true. Still, the best argument is that there is official toleration of this violation of local mores that the population is legally bound to accept regardless of whatever they or their church think about it.

Shifting it to a religious ground opens the question of whether this kind of behavior is in fact something that ought to be tolerated as a matter of ethics and morals, and it turns out religion has a lot to say about that. St. Augustine and Aquinas have a lot to say, as does the official doctrine of many churches, as do many preachers and priests who might rise of a Sunday morning to speak to the matter if asked to do so.

The liberal project to a large degree depends on disallowing that entire line of argument. The liberal project no longer attempts -- as it did in the era of Immanuel Kant** -- to universalize religious philosophy as an exercise of practical reason. It has long since simply declared that religion belongs in the private sphere. Because freedom of religion is a basic right, anyone may accept or refuse to accept any religious doctrine. Thus, positive laws cannot enshrine religious doctrines without violating the right of people to reject the doctrines those rules are based upon. 

If you want to argue religion, you have to admit religion to the debate. If you want to exclude religion from public life, you don't get to preach either. 

As for country music, I haven't ever heard the song and thus don't know if I consider it actual country, which is a more vicious debate even than these already described.  The tradition of vigilante fantasies in music is very old and broad, though; it's not just Merle Haggard and Charlie Daniels but traditional Irish and Scottish music, and English, and, well, all such music. You're just going to have to learn to live with that one, SMN. Freedom of artistic expression is a basic right on the liberal model too. 

* Dude is a gender-neutral term, they say.

** Kant's universalized philosophy of practical reason was hotly against alternative sexualities, by the way.