Fruits of the same tree

The ideological battle lines are beginning to form in advance of November’s presidential election, and it’s clear that a lot of America will have to stand up and make choices as never before.

In the early ’60s, the battleground was civil rights. One of the key issues in November 2012 will most likely be gay rights, and those at the center of the earlier civil-rights struggle are facing tough choices.

The civil-rights movement was, at its core, a function of Southern black churches and Northern white churches. Of the Mississippi Three, only James Chaney was black and from the South. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were white, Jewish and from New York. Statistically, that one of those three was gay is a possibility. Regardless, they all died together in the name of civil rights, murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in the summer of 1964.

The opponents of Barack Obama are now pushing very hard at Christians to renounce the president for his recent endorsement of gay marriage. In the coming months, much of that effort will be directed at black churches in the South, the same churches that gave impetus to a voter-rights drive initially predicted to fail.

The challenge from the president’s opponents is clear: They claim that the Bible condemns any marriage that is not between a man and a woman. In other words, if you support the Bible, you cannot support the re-election of the president.

Either/or. In this debate, there will be no shades of gray. The battleground will include the pulpits of the Catholic Church, evangelical congregations in the Midwest, and Baptist churches in the South.

Blacks and Hispanics will be asked to ignore the advances of the many civil-, social-, and worker-rights movements that brought both segments into the mainstream of today’s society.

Faith leaders will be called upon to offer great pronouncements, most often via mass media. Billy Graham, the aging dean of everything evangelical, has even been brought up to the plate, issuing a statement in support of North Carolina’s anti-gay-marriage referendum that won easily.

For some of us, civil rights, human rights and gay rights are fruits of the same tree of human dignity. The real issue of this year’s election may become: Are some people more deserving of rights than others?

It reminds me of the comment in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”