Blind Prophecy

I’ll say this much, my experiences with Mormonism never approached the level of outright abuse and torture leveled on Eric Norwood, whose story “Trapped in a Mormon Gulag” is a painful and unsurprising story. His tale is one of many from the Utah Boys Ranch – a sort of private education/prison facility run by professional howler monkey Chris Buttars.

Although I remember having a few battles with my family over seminary and church attendance, I’m grateful that they never shipped me or any of my siblings off to this kind of forced religiosity.

Lately, there has been a dramatic rise in the right-wing use of the “freedom of conscience” argument. The argument goes like this: by passing laws to protect women’s choice/queer rights/psychoactive drugs/brown people, you are violating our first amendment right to freedom of religion by forcing us to professionally and respectfully coexist in a pluralistic society.

“Freedom of conscience” is, of course, the rationale-du-jour for all sorts of hateful and abusive behavior. Bush cited it in passing a regulation that will allow medical service providers to refuse service that violates any aspect of their faith (examples: doctors can refuse to perform abortions or fertility treatments, pharmacists can refuse to fill hormone prescriptions for transgender people, Scientologist home care nurses can refuse doctor’s orders to give their patients anti-psychotic medications). In Kalamazoo, MI, paid homobigot Gary Glenn argues that the newly passed nondiscrimination law may force some people to base decisions that run counter to their religious convictions, passing around a flier that claims “This ordinance violates the First Amendment rights of religion and free speech of those who oppose cross-dressing and homosexual behavior.”

It’s nonsense, of course. The laws and protections that would seemingly violate this “right of conscience” exist to ensure that all people are equal and have equal access to the privileges and institutions of citizenship. Freedom of religion depends on freedom from religion in the public sector. Although I recognize “slippery slope” arguments as inherently faulty, one must still wonder where it ends? Will I soon discover that my bank teller cannot, in good conscience, take money from an atheist? Will I be forced to walk to work because my bus driver finds it offensive to her faith that I wear a white knot in support of marriage equality? Will I die in the streets because an EMT refuses to treat anyone hit by a car after coming out of Unitarian Universalist church building?

Combine this right-wing trope with the other great right-wing talking point, parental rights, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. “Parental rights” are another favorite of Chris Buttars. Parents have the right to decide if their underage child can have an abortion. Parents have the right to excuse their children from scientific education on evolution or human reproduction. Parents have the right to make deadly medical decisions about their children.

Examples, the AIDS-denialist whose 3-year-old child died of AIDS-related pneumonia because she refused to allow doctors to give her baby retroviral drugs. The questions surrounding a Hollywood star’s culpability in his son’s recent death because of religious views that don’t allow certain types of medication. Parents who send their children to ex-gay facilities that engage in harmful aversion therapy practices. States passing laws that make child amnesty difficult and require parental consent (and/or consent of the father of the fetus) for abortion services to women under 18.

It all makes me more convinced then ever that Richard Dawkins was right in claiming that the indoctrination of children into religious systems is a form of child abuse. As psychologist Nicholas Humphrey [pdf link] argues:

No human being, in any other circumstances, is credited with having rights over any one else. No one is entitled, as of right, to control, use or direct the life-course of another person – even for objectively good ends. It’s true that in the past slave-owners had such legal rights over their slaves. And it’s true too that, until comparatively recently, the anomaly persisted of husbands having certain such rights over their wives – the right to have sex with them, for instance. But neither of these exceptions provides a good model for regulating parent-child relationships.
Children, to repeat, have to be considered as having interests independent of their parents. They cannot be subsumed as if they were part of the same person. At least so it should be. …
I think we should stop talking of “parental rights” at all. In so far as they compromise the child’s rights as an individual, parents’ rights have no status in ethics and should have none in law.

The “right of conscience” and “parental rights” combo serves one primary purpose: to maintain and enforce a dominance of white, Christian, conservative mores. Secondary effects of these arguments cast the dominant institutions in our society as victims, mask power as powerlessness, and invent rights that contradict the progressive values and fundamental building blocks of the great American story.

For the time being, however, can we all agree that the Utah Boys Ranch–and institutions like it–are horrible examples of the consequences of unchecked religious fundamentalism?

Join me in calling for the Utah Attorney General and Legislature to investigate these claims about Chris Buttars’ culpability in criminal child abuse and not just oust him from his seat, but throw him in jail!

Filed under: atheism, queer rights, utah by Jere Keys