There is no alternative for gay males in the mass media. According to the “opiate of the masses,” (television) we are super skinny or we are Adonis clones. We listen to Divas and shop at chic stores. We have the wit of Tennessee Williams, and we’re culture vultures that other men and women need to imitate. We club every night, cruise every weekend, and show up protesting when our rights are being tampered with. As I watch television shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Will & Grace, I can’t help but shake my head at the messages they are sending to people across the nation: Everyone thinks I am just like these men. For entertainment purposes, let’s take a look at my “normal” attire:

Jacket: Brown with red and yellow stripes — color clash is a major violation from the fashion police.

Shirt: Blue- and white-striped Kroger bagger shirt — Kroger is not a designer label.

Pants: Light brown with a dark brown stripe in the middle — They look like something a mailman would wear back in the 1980s.

Socks — Multicolored — Wrong.

Shoes — Vans Skateboard Brand Tennis Shoes – Gay men don’t wear tennis shoes unless they are actually going to play tennis. Gay guys don’t skate either.

Shop at chic malls? According to my choice of apparel, I’ll take Salvation Army over Diesel anytime. To break some other myths of stereotypical gay men, I have the wit of a soap dish. Sure, I can be funny, but wit wasn’t a trait I acquired. I don’t do clubs either. I have an aversion to techno music and dancing. I prefer staying at home and reading a good book on left-wing politics. Cruise every weekend? I’ve been single for four years and my boyfriend back then dumped me because I wouldn’t “put out.” As far as I am concerned, I’m probably celibate. Sex just seems to irk me right now. On the topic of protesting, I don’t mind doing my part on Internet forums, but frankly I don’t feel like waving a poster and screaming at the opposition. If it doesn’t look like I’ve received an invitation for absolute ostracization from the gay community, I don’t know how I can make it any clearer.

My body is no better in the grand scheme of things. For one thing, I’m black, and affirmative action doesn’t exist in the gay community. When I go on personals sites like XY (for gay youth) or PlanetOut, black models are an endangered species if it exists at all anymore. I’ll go out on a limb here and say if you’re not white, no need to apply. The reason I say that is because most profiles contain this message:

Latino may be added, but that is a rarity. Black men are never a sought out for companionship, or at least tolerated. The reason is because of the images the media feeds the nation. For instance, big butts are all the rage these days because J. Lo is incessantly being shoved into our eye-sockets. Getting an Asian girl is “hip” because Lucy Liu is the hottest lady in Hollywood. Can you name a black actor who plays a gay male, besides the guy from HBO’s Six Feet Under? I don’t think you can, and neither can I. A lot of people don’t realize that mass media influence exists in the gay community; we’re not the “open minds” kind of people that are portrayed during nationally televised protests. We are just like everybody else. Sometimes I feel the color of my skin has been the main factor for why I am the knight of unrequited interest. On more occasions than I can remember, I’ve had many great discussions with people online chatting for the first time. When they ask for my picture and I send it, the chatting ceases to continue. Five years ago when I first came out in eighth grade, I wanted to be white just because I thought it would make it easier being gay and finding love, which my mother in reply lectured me against. “Someone should love me for who I am and not the color of my skin.” Sure, that may be morally sound, but in the real world, it’s still difficult to take that in consideration, especially when it seems like the world doesn’t want you for a life partner.

The models of XY and PlanetOut, among other websites that cater to the gay community, not only display one race of people exclusively but also a body type: Extremely skinny and attractive. With these “flawless” clones that pop on my computer screen daily, these sites set a standard that each visitor is measured by. While Heterosexual America has very few icons with girth to stand idly by like famed former Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole, Gay America (for males) has none. With shows like Queer as Folk, Will & Grace, and Boy Meets Boy, it seems that the gay media stigmatizes anyone beyond a 34-inch waist. Each and every main character of these television shows differs very little when it comes to body type. Very much like race, a narrow-mind is installed into our brains:

The major concern for women during Third Wave feminism is battling body issues presented to us by America’s pop culture. However, with the increasing popularity in “metrosexuals” and the new mainstream limelight for gays, men are facing them more than ever before, and not just athletes as it was in the past. Gay men, in my opinion, are having a tougher time trying to meet the needs of their future boyfriends. There are masculine and feminine traits in both men and women alike despite sexuality, but in the stereotypical images of gay males, there are two traits and a specified body type for each. If you are a masculine gay male (others dare to label “straight-acting”), then you must don the body of a cover-man for Flex Magazine. If you are a feminine gay male, you have to wear 28-inch pants and be blessed with a boyish/androgynous face. With these unreachable (and unnecessary) extremes, what are all of us that fall in-between supposed to do? Why are we pigeonholed into such absurd restrictions? It’s bad enough realizing you are a gay person in a straight world, but it’s worse when the world can’t accept your love handles.

Throughout high school, I fought relentlessly to trash my identity because I knew no one would love me for what I looked like. A little overweight for my stunted height, I joined my wrestling team to help aid my cause of losing this little extra weight. After two years of running around the block and becoming an iron-loving gym bunny, it was pretty much done in vain. I got in much better shape and realized the importance of nutrition, but I was still without a boyfriend. With all of my attempts to become a card-carrying member of the gay community, I failed.

By the end of my senior year in high school, once my wrestling season ended, I decided to exhume my identity back and stop worrying about it. I came to the conclusion that for one, I shouldn’t be worrying about getting a life-partner at the time because I needed to obtain an education first; nobody likes a dummy anyway. Second, my mother’s advice came to revisit my conscience because Hollywood lied to me. Beauty and the absence of a belly don’t equate happiness. “Someone will love me for me and not my weight.”

Now that I am in college, my body weight is no longer a concern for me. Frankly, I don’t have the time for excessive burnouts in the gym and carb-Nazi Atkins diets because my European history papers are more significant to get done. I maintain my proper health, but I don’t put in the unnecessary effort to have the frame of a soccer jock because I just simply lack the motivation. For wrestling, I was at 135, and I now I sit at 154 pounds and more comfortable than ever. I suppose six-packs aren’t for everybody. Slowly but surely, I’m going through my withdrawal from the weight room from five days a week to two. I have just become exhausted at gaining muscle mass and now I just want to ride my bike for necessary exercise.

I feel more than blessed that I found the error of my ways much more quickly than my peers who let body issues take over most of their lives. Now in college I have goals and finding a guy isn’t a top priority as it was in the past. Sure, I have wishes to meet my waiting prince, but now I want to get my English and Japan Studies degrees. I want to go to Louisiana and learn Creole for graduate studies. I want to write columns about social and political issues for alternative magazines.

Instead of abandoning these gay websites, I decided to spread my ideals on the negative visual imagery these sites show to other members. Just as Third Wave feminists are fighting against mainstream body image, we gay men need to follow their example and do the same. We should be sending letters and emails to gay websites, protesting against these mainstream body images. We need to create awareness of what the typical gay culture is doing and challenge its standards.    

And somebody will love me; black, love handles, and all. Besides, we don’t call them love handles for nothing; your lover needs something to hold onto.

AirplaneRadio

Anyone who has ever applied to graduate school, or found an apartment, a car, a job, a good article (ahem), or even his or her soul mate online knows the Internet is something we can no longer live without. And single mothers, many of whom can barely support themselves and their children, are discovering that the Internet just may offer them opportunities that allow them to survive and provide a makeshift family support network for their children.

Co-Abode.com, the latest in online “matchmaking services,” is helping single mothers meet their match — other single mothers. That is, through the site, single mothers can find other single mothers who want to share their homes, reduce their expenses, and alleviate some of the burdens of raising children without a second parent.

Sure, this matchmaking system is fraught with many of the same risks and uncertainties associated with meeting a prospective significant other or friend online. In fact, the stakes are even higher since there are children, homes, and responsibilities (even some division of labor) involved. But if you’re willing to look past that, to look past the fact that the Internet, for better or for worse, has become one of our primary means for connecting with other people in this day and age, it’s a pretty good idea as it gives single mothers and their children a chance to defray some of the burdens of their lifestyle and, significantly, an easy way to network with other women who may be experiencing similar burdens. And the ability to find someone to talk to, someone to confide in, someone to learn from just might be one of the most important steps in empowering these women — and their children, many of whom are “latch-key kids” — and enabling them to secure a sense of belonging as they forge their own new little communities and family units.

One, of course, can’t help but wonder what the right thinks about this — I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before comments are made about how Co-Abode.com promotes lesbiansim because — gasp — it encourages two women to live together and about how it undermines what President Bush terms “that sacred institution between a man and a woman.” But if that’s what critics end up saying, one can only hope that they recognize that Co-Abode.com isn’t the cause of the dissolution of traditional heterosexual coupling. It’s a solution, a means to ensure that children whom might otherwise be raised by just one parent have more stable home lives and have other adults who care for them and to look out for them. Yes, they’re other women. But perhaps that just begs the question of why it is that the right believes that the institution of heterosexual marriage is so fundamental to the definition of family.

The shape of families is changing in the U.S. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a change for the worse. It just has to be a change that adapts to changing times. And for now, that seems to be exactly what Co-Abode.com is trying to do.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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We live in a time when every image seems to be political. I’m not just talking about images of torture emanating from Abu Ghraib or Janet Jackson’s breast from her half-time performance at the Super Bowl either. No, these days, simply going to the movies is a political act, a statement about whether you’re “with [Bush] or with the [Democratic] terrorists.”

Act one: The Passion of the Christ

Mel Gibson’s highly controversial — and highly politicized — film The Passion of the Christ kicked off a year of moviegoing that could be construed as anything but non-partisan. In an election year where the sitting president has made no secret of the relevance of his Christian faith to his political project, Gibson’s film seemed to offer what a friend of mine called “free advertising” for the Bush/Cheney 2004 ticket. As film critic Jay Bliznick noted, Mel Gibson’s film is “for Christian followers who haven’t really read their scripture … those who have been preached to and forced to memorize verse out of context.” Needless to say, this cultural rebirth seemed to feed right into the Bush team’s plans to secure the president’s base and ensure that the estimated four million evangelical Christians who weren’t inspired enough to vote in 2000 don’t stay home again this November. By reminding evangelical Christians that Jesus died for their sins and that they must lead “moral” Christian lives to be saved, The Passion encouraged viewers to distance themselves from the immoral behaviors of Janet Jackson and all those gays and lesbians who had the nerve to demand the right to get married in San Francisco this past February. After all, says Richard Goldstein of The Village Voice, “Religious beliefs and biblical teachings are the most common reason people give for opposing same-sex marriage.” So by claiming the war on immorality as its territory, the GOP got to cast the Democratic alternative as the harbinger of immorality, obscenity, and dissolution of what Bush termed the “sacred institution between a man and a woman.”

I don’t recall the day the media stopped covering The Passion so religiously, though I’ll admit that I thought that day might never come. All I know is that fateful day came sometime after Easter (when The Passion did wonders for the box offices) and sometime shortly before that fateful day when we learned about the torture occuring in Iraq.

Act two: “The Passion of the Election”

Enter the countdown to the election and the films that are as political as they come — with or without a spin. Filmmakers and artists have long been some of the more liberal elements of their respective societies. It’s no coincidence that writers and artists were subjected to many a McCarthy hearing during the 1950s and purged from the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Writers and artists, after all, are often the ones who are the most willing to openly criticize, though there are always some who say that their work is simply art and thus apolitical. But the filmmakers who have made the political films of 2004 don’t hide their agenda. They don’t make any pretenses about being apolitical. Rather, they seek to reject the passivity that has overcome the American electorate and explicitly (or implicitly) question the Bush administration’s failure to hold itself accountable to the interests of the American people.

It’s no coincidence that most of these films are the product of the independent film industry. This may be partially because big corporate film companies such as Miramax don’t think political films can sell given the political apathy of so many Americans. And, of course, as Michael Moore’s run-in with Disney/Miramax over his contentious film Fahrenheit 911 has taught us, even movie corporations don’t want to anger the hand that feeds them in D.C.

Consider Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential (based on the book by James Moore and Wayne Slater). Completed just months before the election, and it’s no coincidence that the producers of Bush’s Brain are struggling to find a distributor. As Slater revealed in a panel discussion concerning the making of the film at the South-by-Southwest (SXSW) film festival in Austin, Texas, this past March, the fact that the film exposed the whisper campaigns and political manipulation of Bush and his right-hand man, Karl Rove, caused many potential interview subjects to back out of scheduled interviews for the film for fear of losing their jobs. Similarly, many film distribution companies have been reticent to pick up the film — at least before the election — since they’ve seen the damage the Rove can do to those who interfere with his political schemes or challenge his authority.

Why did the filmmakers make this film? As Elizabeth Reeder, one of the film’s producers, suggested, the goal of film is to demonstrate that “Rove is out of control and is playing a dangerous game that is destroying democracy.” Do Reeder and her colleagues want to get their film distributed before the election? Absolutely. As Reeder, Slater, and Moore emphasized, Bush’s Brain “makes people think and brings to light stuff we normally don’t hear about because of the White House’s tight ship.”

Die-hard Republicans might dismiss the film — and the book — as propaganda, but the producers insist: “We made a valiant effort to show all sides, and if [certain] perspectives (including Rove’s own) aren’t present, that’s the fault of those people and of Karl” (who threatened prospective interviewees for the film). And while many of the people whom the filmmakers were unable to interview were interviewed in the book, the reason for their presence in the latter and absence from the former can be attributed to the fact that Rove and Bush had initially written off the book, thinking it wouldn’t be very successful. By the time the film project came around, they’d learned better — and feared the power of the silver screen. “Unfortunately,” noted Slater, “not participating in [the film] becomes a way to dismiss it as liberal propaganda.”

As one person who was fortunate to see the film at SXSW and the strong reaction it inspired (what one woman I met termed ”rock concert meets political rally”), it’s not at all surprising that the Bush administration might not want people to see the film. Some people who traditionally vote Republican walked out of the theater after seeking the film in shock, questioning whether they could really justify voting for Team Bush/Rove for another four years. But there were only 1200 people in that theater — enough to decide the election in Florida, but certainly not enough to change the outcome in the Republican stranglehold that is Texas.

Bush’s Brain hasn’t received all of the press that Fahrenheit 911 has, however. That’s likely because, to the best of my knowledge, no major distributor has even tentatively struck a deal with the producers. If one had done so, the story would most certainly be making headlines. But the attention given to Michael Moore’s film is a good indicator of the fate Bush’s Brain might have (minus the attention-grabbing that Michael Moore typically brings with him).

When I was watching some news show on TV last week, the commentators were debating about whether Fahrenheit 911 should be distributed at all — by Disney or anyone else. There were several commentators — not all of whom are Bush fans — who suggested Moore simply didn’t have the right to make such a film and that it wasn’t in the best interest of filmgoers to be inundated with stories of “conspiracy” regarding 9/11. But that was a cop-out. Do these people seriously think that moviegoers just take everything they see at face-value? Are we not intelligent enough to form our own opinions — not just about the cinematography, the acting, the directing, but about what we’re told and how we’re told it? More significantly, if we are going to vote, if democracy is going to be representative and represent a wide array of opinions, then shouldn’t films like these be distributed so that people can make more informed choices, so that a wider array of perspectives can be represented? That doesn’t mean people have to go see such movies. If moviegoers and voters believe they’ve already made up their minds, if they find movies of a particular political persuasion offensive, then they can choose not to see them. But by the same account, shouldn’t the undecided, those who want to see a good movie, and those who are interested in seeing films that are consistent with their own views get to choose to see those movies?

All of this is not to say that the media hype over Fahrenheit 911, like that over The Passion of the Christ, is uncalled for. In many ways, such debates can be productive; they can promote discussion not just of the limits to freedom of speech and expression at a time when civil liberties are being curbed but also about the qualifications of our leaders and their political agendas (overt and covert). But, ironically, while The Passion may have been political as a result of its context — the Bush administration’s religio-political agenda and the election year timing — no one questioned whether Gibson had the right to make his film and the right to distrubute it. Sure, there was outrage about his characterization of the Jews and the violence that saturated the film. But no one seemed to question his right to make the film. Why is it that when the content of a film is explicitly political (as is the case with Bush’s Brain and Fahrenheit 911), we start to question whether filmmakers have the right to criticize our leaders? Perhaps it has something to do with Gibson’s reknown as a filmmaker compared to the relatively smaller political and film clout of the independent filmmakers who made the films about Bush’s agenda. But that cannot possibly suffice as the explanation. The context/content distinction must mean something. Whatever it is, my fear is that by boiling these debates over films with overtly political content down to “this filmmaker has/does not have the right to have this film” distributed, the more important debates don’t get had, undermining the political and creative potential of such films and their filmmakers. And in the process, they just might undermine the creative potential of democracy that Hollywood tends to pride itself on.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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A film that has been harshly condemned as anti-Semitic has now been altered, in the hands of Hezbollah, to make it unequivocally anti-American. Al-Manar, the Hezbollah-backed satellite television channel that is based in Lebanon, has recently begun broadcasts of an altered version of the trailer for Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ; the piece is titled The Passion of the Iraqis.

Al-Manar has changed the trailer for The Passion of the Christ to highlight the recent events at Abu Ghraib prison, and according to the BBC:

As the portentous music plays, a blood-stained hand flexes in pain. The screen fades to black as the words “No Mercy” fade up in white. A nail is seen being driven into the hand. The words “No Compromise” appear … as the music reaches its crescendo, the words “The Passion of the Christ” are replaced by “The Passion of the Iraqis.” Then one of the images of alleged American abuse of Iraqi prisoners that shocked the world flashes up on screen. It is the picture of a hooded Iraqi prisoner, arms outstretched, standing on a box in a mock electrocution.

Al-Manar — popular, political, and available in the Middle East where there is a satellite dish — constantly and effectively combines an unwavering political stance with entertainment and a strong reliance on a sense of pan-Arab suffering and solidarity. According to the BBC, al-Manar “has attracted a growing audience in the Arab world partly because of the emotional pull of its video edits of Palestinian and Iraqi suffering set to mournful music.”

Last year, al-Manar broadcast a 26-part mini-series, aired during the month of Ramadan, titled “al-Shatat” — the Diaspora — a highly controversial series which critics denounced as virulently anti-Semitic. “Al-Shatat” depicts the development of the Zionist movement between 1812 and 1948 and the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, and features segments about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document which asserts that there is a Jewish conspiracy for world domination; scholars consider the document to be a forgery, created in czarist Russia, the purpose of which was to justify persecution of the Jews.  

Horrified at the content of the series, coupled with al-Manar’s rising popularity across the Arab world, Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman, stated: “We view these programs as unacceptable.”

Equally unpalatable for many but successful for al-Manar is “The Mission,” a quiz show in which contestants who successfully answer questions advance on a virtual map, step by step, towards Jerusalem. If a contestant accomplishes his mission and steps on Jerusalem, the producers of the show play a Hezbollah song, the lyrics of which unsurprisingly proclaim “Jerusalem is ours and we are coming to it.”

The United States government considers Hezbollah — a movement that appeared in the early 1980s — to be a terrorist organization. It is now also a recognized, even mainstream, Lebanese political party; there are nine members of Hezbollah in the Lebanese parliament.  

Not only do we now have an unapologetically jingoist Fox to an unapologetically political al-Manar and wildly popular al-Jazeera, we also have the American ventures into Arabic language media, such as Hi, a lifestyle magazine targeted at the 18- to 35-year-old age bracket for both men and women, and the U.S.-run Arabic language television network, al-Hurra, and Radio Sawa. In recent months, the dividing line between physical and propaganda warfare has become increasingly blurred, as evidenced by the violence that erupted after the Coalition Provisional Authority shut down al-Hawzah, a weekly newspaper run by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric in Iraq. Such violence should serve as a warning and a reminder that media organizations must be cognizant of the fact that what is flashed across their screens and what is pawned off as news may have direct and violent repercussions.  

Mimi Hanaoka

In a sad recycling of historical patterns, a statement that Philip K. Hitti made regarding the Christian-Muslim exchange during the period of the crusades resonates with today’s events: “The Christian military venture left Islam more militant, less tolerant, and more self-centered.” Ironic that, at a time when some members of the American government are pooh-poohing Islam as retrograde and anti-democratic, it is precisely the religious rhetoric and religio-political discourse of “evil,” that is Christianizing the American-led venture into Iraq and is creating such strong and popular Islamist responses and retaliations that are at least couched in religious terms.
  
When we speak about an Islamist — or somehow Islamically oriented — movement, it is important to note that it would be a mischaracterization to necessarily absorb an Islamist movement exclusively into the religious sphere. It would be incorrect to understand a movement such as al-Qaeda, for example, as a strictly or even primarily religious movement. While al-Qaeda recruitment tapes are couched in religious language and utilize religious sympathies, the primary argument of al-Qaeda is a political one. Al-Qaeda makes an internationalist jihadist argument; an excellent source for information on this topic is the project that was undertaken by the Columbia International Affairs Online site that provides excerpts from and analyses of the Osama bin Laden recruitment tapes.  

In so adamantly adding a religious glaze to political topics and by consistently employing  religious and moral language — such as the “axis of evil,” and the consistent description of the insurgency movements in Iraq as “evil,” — the current administration, the media, commentators, and ordinary citizens who utilize such language are, it seems, making Christians more Christian, Muslims more Muslim, and all parties involved more extreme and uncompromising. Language is being actualized in politics and pushing religion to its extremes. In Hitti’s terms, “The Christian military venture left Islam more militant, less tolerant, and more self-centered.”  

The horrendous acts we have seen in the media lately — the brutal and inhumane beheading of an American civilian recorded on videotape, the naked Iraqi prisoners of Abu Ghraib jail being taunted and dehumanized — are shocking, vile, and horrifying. There is no question that what has been done is wrong. The question is, rather, is there anything positive to be gained by posing political questions in the religious and moral language of good versus evil?

We must understand the current state of affairs in Iraq as a situation that is beyond good and evil; to transpose political questions into the religious and moral sphere is to make all camps involved “more militant, less tolerant, and more self-centered.”

Mimi Hanaoka

On Monday morning, when municipal buildings across Massachusetts open at nine o’clock, hundreds of couples will already be standing in line with blood tests, state identification, and 50 bucks in cash. Despite conservative efforts to petition the Supreme Court for intervention, on May 17, the pilgrims’ state will become the first in the nation to marry same-sex couples.

We learned in elementary school that the pilgrims founded Massachusetts in order to find religious freedom, and so in a way it’s fitting that the former colony now resume its position as a civil liberties trailblazer. Its governor is not so happy with this honor. Mitt Romney’s orders for municipal employees to block out-of-state residents from marrying surely pleases the protestors who line up outside Faneuil Hall to protest sexual sin.

But do those protestors support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage? As Sunday’s New York Times reports, maybe not. The amendment, now dead in Congress, isn’t gaining the kind of support hoped for among conservative Christians. Groups such as the Alliance for Marriage are getting nervous and hoping that the sight of the Massachusetts marriages prompts a greater outcry.

When President Bush called for the amendment back in February, he stated that ”On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard.“ But perhaps Bush and Romney and their fellow conservatives are mishearing. Perhaps the people are more concerned with other issues. It’s hard to believe that the sight of men and women in wedding dresses will stir up greater wrath or sorrow than the pictures we’ve seen these past weeks in our newspapers. To condemn commitments made out of love seems almost petty in comparison. The conservative mission to stop gay marriage is far from over, but maybe it’s getting old, and a little hard of hearing.

llouison

Can an attempt to promote tolerance actually be based on intolerance? This is the question many people must be asking after the Vatican warned Catholic women not to marry Muslim men because such men don’t respect women.

While there is much to be said for encouraging other religions to be more tolerant of their own people, the Vatican’s proclamation is indeed troubling. Not only is the Pope’s announcement based on a stereotype that isn’t true of all Muslim men, but by universalizing what it means to be Muslim (and male), the Vatican risks widening the rift between Judeo-Christian ethics and those of other religions. In fact, the Vatican’s proclamation sounds an awful lot like the rhetoric we heard the Bush administration use immediately after 9/11 as it sought to justify the invasion of Afghanistan in the name of liberation of, amongst other things, Afghani women from their “backward” traditions.

Am I saying that oppression of women is a good thing, or that no Muslim sects (or Jewish sects, or Christian sects, or almost every other religion imaginable) do oppress women? No. But you wouldn’t know that by listening to the Vatican’s proclamation, and that is what is so frightening about it.

Remember the intense ethnic profiling experienced by Arabs in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001? Remember the hate crimes that befell men and women with brown skin — regardless of their beliefs and origins — because the media and American politicans somehow convinced many people that it was in fact Islam that led 19 (or was it 21?) men to fly planes into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and a field in Pennsylvania? The logic was remarkably similar for it too was a logic based on stereotyping an entire religion based on the actions of a small group of men who did indeed claim to be Muslim, but whose beliefs were not consistent with or representative of all — or even most — people of the Muslim faith.

I also find the Vatican’s paternalism toward women in this statement to be a bit intriguing. If the Vatican does in fact believe that Islam is an oppressive religion and that its followers are raised to be intolerant, then why just instruct Catholic women not to marry Muslim men? Sure, the Vatican may assert that if a Catholic man were to marry a Muslim woman, he would afford her the respect that men of her own religion don’t. But he would still be marrying into her family, which likely includes Muslim men. And if he and she were to have children together, how would they raise them so that they wouldn’t practice alleged intolerance? In other words, why is it that Catholic men can “save” Muslim women, while Catholic women need to be “saved” by the Vatican? And who is to say that someone of the Muslim faith couldn’t provide a stable relationship, a sense of belonging even, for a Catholic woman?

Finally, what is also intriguing about the Vatican’s statement is that it relies on the assumption that Catholicism doesn’t oppress women and that Catholicism is tolerant of difference. But I’ve had friends who couldn’t be married by a Catholic priest unless they vowed not to ever use birth control, which many — even most — progressives consider a product of the cultural revolution of the 1960s that was essential to women’s liberation. Do all Catholics favor abstinence and oppose abortion? No. But by the same rationale, perhaps the Vatican should recognize that tolerance cannot be bred by stereotyping the beliefs and practices of an entire class of people based upon the beliefs and practices of a mere segment of that population.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:

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