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06/10/2011
Maggie's latest: Progressives trade Noah's ark for history's arc
Maggie Gallagher doesn't think we cull our inevitability arguments from court cases that put discrimination to an actual legal test, polls that show increasingly favorable numbers for marriage equality, or a culture that is more and more realizing how much time and energy the faith-motivated religious right has forced our nation to waste on this non-issue. No, no -- Maggie says we hold on to such beliefs because we need religion and Gallup is our God:
"Let me put it this way - progressives who do not have a religious foundation,
the inevitability of the future is a substitute for God. It's, you know, the idea that we know
what's going to happen in the future. That history has an arc. It made sense for
the Reverend Martin Luther King to say that, because he believed that in the end, the
universe is governed by a just and merciful God. But in my
experience, this rhetoric of inevitability is a replacement
for a lot of people these days for the idea that there is an
overarching purpose to the universe and a direction in which we're all headed.
I take from my faith -- not everyone who agrees with me shares my faith -- but one
of the things I do take from it is that we know who wins this in the end."
Or, you know: We are confident because read the writing on the wall. Shocking, I know. But here in a world where countless gay couples have legally married without incident and even a majority share of George W. Bush's nuclear family stands on the side of civil fairness, simply noting actually can feel like a revelation.
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