ASM026 The Supreme Court, Same Sex Marriage, and What Happens Next

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the supreme court same-sex marriage and what happens next all that and more on this week's episode of ask science mike

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welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life we've got a special episode this week i'm going to talk a little bit more about in a minute but first i want to let you know that i'll be in redlands california this week talking about cosmology and creation at redlands church and i'd love to see you and more events coming up after that but for now let's get it started [Music] we're gonna do the show a little different this week after the supreme court issued a ruling on same-sex marriage bans and declared them unconstitutional the ask sciencemic email inbox exploded i got so many questions coming in all on the same topic and you know i felt like we've kind of covered this issue in some detail on the liturgist podcast and some of you haven't heard that so the first thing i'd like to say is if you haven't heard our two hour episode called lgbtq it's episode 20. go to the liturgist.com podcast or go to asksciencemike.com and look at the show notes for this episode which is number 26 and i'll have a link to that episode i talk about the science of gender and orientation in that program that said there's still a ton of questions and i get afraid of talking too much about this issue not because i'm worried about controversy or people not liking me i understand that people disagree on this topic i have trouble calling it a topic or issue because i know too many real flesh and blood people that are affected by it but the fact is i am a straight guy i am comfortable in a gender binary i'm comfortably male and so i can study this issue i can study the science i can talk to people who it affects their life directly but all i am is an ally it's not my perspective so with as many emails as i got i know you have a lot of questions and i thought it would be fun and more interesting and more helpful if i put you in touch with the people i go to learn about these issues from so i found some guest answers they're going to bring you a more relevant and more direct perspective on this ruling and what it means we're going straight to the source as i said these are the people that i actually follow to learn about these issues and that lets us re-center this conversation on the voices that matter most and i think that's important although i think it's an important victory for justice and it benefits us all the fact is my marriage has been honored by society long before i've been around and so i hope you enjoy these voices and perspectives on your questions straight from the people driving these conversations our first question comes from the email inbox and it reads hello science mike my question may be more of a legal question but i believe it has moral implications as well i am still trying to reconcile my conservative evangelical views with my increasingly liberal views the u.s supreme court judged same-sex marriage is legal does this open the door for polygamy or say incest if two first cousins are in love and aware of risks associated with reproducing should they be allowed to marry because individuals are free to love who they want i only ask because i know this question will be asked by others and to respond to this question i've asked ryan kenji kuramitsu who is a student at the mccormick theological seminary and also blogs about faith at a realrattlesnake.com and works with the japanese american citizens league to respond with an answer and so take it away ryan so whenever these claims that same-sex marriage will open the door to a slippery slope of sexually devious behavior kind of crop up sexual ethicists tend to return to the issue of consent which i think is always very important when we're having these conversations and that's not an element that's available in relationships that are based on coercion which i think is often the case for many incestuous relationships and certainly for the other kinds of sexual acts and relationships that are described by alarmist opponents of same-sex marriage something that is not commonly known is that first cousin marriage is actually legal in around 15 states in the u.s it's legally grant others and in some it's actually a criminal act punishable by law so that state of affairs has been around for a long while and i'm not convinced that recent nationwide gains in same-sex marriage will suddenly galvanize the first cousin marriage population and cause them to advocate for sweeping changes to follow that open door in right so what happened in the supreme court a couple of fridays ago was that it was decided as far as the federal government is concerned you will not be treated differently based on the sex you were assigned at birth when you were applying for a marriage license so that's not just a gain for gay folks it's a gain for all members of the lgbtq community who are interested in marrying someone of the same sex or if not an opposite sex and it's also a big gain for the families of lgbtq people for the children and parents of gay and lesbian and bisexual couples so i think it's important to refocus those sort of questions that you get on the legislation and what it does and it doesn't mean in particular and what it does mean for families like mine you know that will now have recognition by their government growing up i was sort of taught to socially ostracize and shame my family and and having a gay mom and i felt like i had to hide the fact that she was openly partnered that i had another sibling as a product of a gay union and i experienced a lot of shame and sort of casual bullying because it was understood that that was a bad not okay not normal thing and so what this ruling does ensure is that now when teachers tell kids not to bully kids with lgbtq parents that the teachers actually have the backing from the system and they can lean back on that and it's not an alien conversation but that we are also recognized in some sense as legitimate so my family's always been legitimate but now it has sort of more of a grounding in the secular government which is good and it's bad in some ways this ruling also ensures that whatever i choose to do in the future in terms of my future life partner and whatever gender they happen to be however they identify i will be able to marry them regardless of the sex they were signed at birth and regardless of the gender which they identify with so i think that's a gain that should be celebrated what it doesn't mean and i would like to tell this to people who are sort of fearing the gains of same-sex marriage is that the government can suddenly dominate christian ethics or that we're on some inevitable march of forward progress and religion just needs to catch up with the times i think that's a really dangerous toxic way of thinking about this a lot of folks in my community are just celebrating sort of an unqualified way i think it's important we also talk about and continue conversations on the sky high rates of violence that are experienced by lgbtq people of color by trans black women by latina women who are held and abused in detention centers in the united states so yes it is important to celebrate this moment but at the same time we can't ultimately even be concerned with civil marriage as an end point i think it's similar to responding to these people who are asking you questions about polygamy and incest and how is this not opening the door to all these sorts of things well for christians in particular it's sure it's important to do the 101 work of allies when we can but if we're ultimately concerning ourselves with people who demand to know why same-sex marriage doesn't open the door to all these negative things i think we're really missing the point and by that i mean we can't center our lives and our activism and invest all of our energy and time and people uh professional trolls like kevin deyoung or clans and coalitions that try to safeguard the racial and sexual purity of the gospel in our nation right we don't need to focus on people who feel like their straight marriages are threatened by court decisions about same-sex couples that's taking key attention away from evils that are actively stealing the lives and dignity of lgbtq people so yeah these questions are important and the way that you're going to talk with people is going to be a witness for your faith but at the same time i don't want us to ultimately end up being trapped there and bogged down with people who are making really dehumanizing remarks and comparisons these alarmists who are sort of wanting to corner us in conversations while people are bleeding i have a lot of family who are unhappy with recent gains for lgbtq people and i have a lot of friends who were really thrilled with what happened a couple fridays ago what i would tell them is that as christians our job really hasn't changed in the past two weeks i think it's still to love the last the left out and the least of these at least as much as you love yourself [Music] our next question comes from the email inbox and it reads hi mike i guess i'm not a normal listener of your podcast i don't really have a lot of doubt about god or science i found your show after hearing the lgbt episode of the liturgists that program meant a lot to me i'm a black gay christian in the south my family goes to a very conservative ama church and i attend with him i have not told them i'm gay but i think my mom has an idea i just graduated high school and i still live at home my dad was really angry after the supreme court thing he says america is turning its back on god i'm torn i'm emailing you because you said that you don't think it's a sin to be gay on that podcast i want to believe that i really do but i feel like believing that is turning my back on god and what would it do to my family i'm afraid my dad would throw me out of the house this is not a science question at all but i've heard you just talk to people about their problems what can i do science mike i'm scared even just sending you this question well first i want to thank you for being brave enough to reach out it's always good to respond to fear and reach out so that you don't feel alone anymore and i do want to tell you you are not alone and i am absolutely thrilled to introduce you to the reverend broderick greer who's the curator at grace st luke's episcopal church in memphis tennessee and he's got a response to your question being gay does not is not in any way inconsistent with god or jesus christ or the holy spirit or christianity or scripture and lots of people have been vested in that idea unfortunately for quite a few years the word homosexual did not appear in scripture until the late 1800s the word homosexual did not even exist until the mid-1800s because of the work of a german sociologist it's important for people to realize that scripture is not a science book it's not a sociology book it's a collection of stories and poems about people's experiences with god over history it's not a prescription of how to live it's not a rule book it's not even a book at all it is a library of books with varying degrees of literature and scholarship and research and richness and when people reduce it to one book or one ideology or one genre of literature they are doing a great disservice to the broad interesting diverse perspectives that scripture within itself has it's a dynamic relationship between eras and prophets and poets so we would do well to respect scripture as such and to interpret scripture as such um in regards to your father thinking that the supreme court ruling that marriage can be opened up to same-sex couples as a as america turning its back on god that is i mean that is an unfortunate thing i think america turns its back on god when it doesn't remember the poor and it doesn't remember people on the margins and it forgets about people who are homeless that's america turning its back on god not when the u.s is respecting the rights of consenting adults to enter into marriage relationships what's one interesting one interesting thing to remember is that the church was not in the marriage business for the first thousand years in the common era that that is a rather recent evolution in church history the church was not really in the business of marrying people until around the year 1 000 in a formal setting so it's important for us to know that church and state have not always seen eye to eye about marriage that marriage is an evolve ever evolving institution even throughout scripture we see that there is room given for men who rape women to marry the women that they've raped that is almost a scriptural command to do such women have been understood as property of men throughout history and actually one of the gifts that same-sex couples bring to the institution of marriage is this kind of radical mutuality that has existed in some straight marriages throughout history but has not necessarily been the normative posture of heterosexual marriage relationships it's also i and and i say this as a person who is also black and gay and a christian in the south who is a pastor of a church in the south an associate pastor that your reality of being gay and black and the truth that that is the reality of your life is much more important than the comfort of the people around you i have known far too many queer people lesbians gay people transgender people bisexual people asexual name it i've known people who have hidden themselves for so long and in such profound ways that it has made them physically emotionally and mentally sick so if you have some sort of outlet and this is a good place to start if you have some outlet of disclosure that is safe that is foolproof and that is supportive i would urge you to find that outlet because keeping this to yourself may provide some momentary solace but in the long run it is better for you to be healthy and open on your own terms that is not my decision to make for you that is a decision that you have to make as a mature human being with your own interest in mind and not necessarily the interests of your family that's not always the first or best question for queer people of color to ask even though our families mean so much to us at the end of the day the comfort and non-embarrassment of our families is not as important as our personal health and wellness and wholeness as human beings created in the image of god um what's important also to know and i'll finish on this note is there is no fear and love perfect love casts out fear as saint john says and so any any feelings or affections from you that harvest fear or shame are not from god shame is saying i am a mistake guilt is saying i made a mistake being gay is neither of those it is neither a mistake at your core nor is it a mistake on the surface so there is nothing to be ashamed of there is nothing that you are guilty of god is love god is merciful and as saint james says in his letter mercy trumps judgment and god's justice is mercy and that is god's normative posture toward creation and god's normative posture toward you as an individual is that of love and of mercy forgiveness and that is the paschal mystery that is the life and death and burial resurrection and ascension of jesus that god is willing to go to great risk to embody love for creation and in that mystery the paschal mystery there is no judgment there is no second guessing about the extent to which god loves us and the extent to which god is willing to go to embody that love for us so please read the text of the incarnation the text of jesus's life the shape of his life and stop reading and listening to those voices those deeply sexist heterosexist racist white supremacist patriarchal capitalist voices that have a vested interest in your death not only psychologically and socially but physically as we are finding out every day that there are systems in place that are vested in the destruction of black life your life matters to god your life matters in this wonderful ecosystem that god is at the center of and for you to give the narrative of your life over to people who do not have your interest in mind is a great disservice to yourself and the beauty and complexity of the person that you are [Music] here we go with another email question it reads is there any scientific foundation to modern gender theory basically the difference between gender gender expression etc and that gender is a spectrum rather than a binary and what is the actual definition of man or woman when separated from biology i consider myself pretty liberal politically and theologically but this is one aspect of modern progressivism that i struggle with intellectually all i can know is that i'll never have the burden of feeling like i was born into the wrong body and my heart goes out to transgender individuals for that but i'm curious if there is any objective reality to their experiences beyond just a feeling well as i mentioned at the top of the show i want to remind you that i do cover some on gender and orientation in episode 20 of the liturgist podcast i also have an episode of ask science mike where i talk about intersex people people that very clearly don't fit a gender binary biologically and in that answer i also discuss the fact that we have biological traits that are typically associated with men and typically associated with women that overlap most of the time but in a statistically significant number of people do not and that we're learning more about potential neurological underpinnings for transgendered people so i would certainly say that there is a biological case to be made that gender binary is a very false assumption in the animal kingdom and certainly in humans as well but that's not even the most interesting part of your question and to get a better perspective on that amoria jones armstrong who's a phd student in theology at vanderbilt and also writes about race gender sexuality and faith would like to offer some additional insight so here we go when i was living in small town pennsylvania i needed to use the bathroom at a grocery store this sounds like a pretty normal urge however as a black lesbian who presents in what is considered a masculine way with short hair and wearing slightly oversized shirts deciding where to go to the bathroom is never an easy or normal choice do i want to go into the bathroom that is thought to match my biology or the bathroom that is thought to match my particular gender expression either way there's a level of risk in which bathroom i enter on this particular occasion i entered the woman's bathroom and proceeded to take care of business but an older white couple had seen me into the bathroom and was convinced i was a man and i'm sure their fear was even more accelerated because they thought i was a black man when i exited the stall the wife of this couple was waiting for me and verbally accosted me are you aware that this is the woman's bathroom in that moment i wasn't done gender theorist and philosopher judith butler is someone i turn to a lot in making sense of encounters like the one i just described in her book undoing gender she thinks about how heterosexual and cisgendered norms can undo people in daily encounters just like i was undone in that bathroom but also like the woman who approached me was undone by my appearance people often turn to biology to secure some idea that gender is natural and that we can work our way back from one's gender to their sex and have our assumptions about their body validated when gender norms are assumed to be natural it gives the appearance that some bodies have a level of coherence right their appearance matches with their gender which is assumed to match with their biology while other bodies take on the appearance of incoherence so in the bathroom my presentation to this woman as a man didn't match the coherence i experienced between my sex and self-identity i was an incoherent body to her for this woman there was something about my presentation that made her think it was okay to talk to me in the way that she did there's a way in which my gender presentation meant i was not recognized as a woman and so didn't deserve certain rights of privacy and decency extended to me in some sense then being a man or being a woman depends on being recognized as a man or a woman my parents spent a lot of time during high school telling me how i should dress put on some makeup have you thought about wearing this dress they wanted me to be recognized as a woman so that i could attract a certain kind of man and fulfill their desires for my heterosexuality to be proved in heterosexual marriage in this instance with my parents gender is not simply something we feel about ourselves in isolation from the various ways we are taught to be men and women and this teaching occurs based on the assumptions we draw between gender and biology if the doctor announces it's a girl instead of it's a boy there are a whole host of ways we decide to treat the child socially because our gender norms are already informing our interpretations of biology our gender norms are already tied to the announcement of a child as a girl or a boy but names can be contested or undone you can change your name altogether remix it prefix it with innovative pronouns or make additions to it like imperator furiosa still even our renamings require others to recognize and repeat these names back to us sometimes those who've known us by other names refuse to recognize us in the ways we've decided to be renamed sometimes people call us out of our names these can be experiences of being undone by gender norms but this being undone is also the occasion to recognize the restrictiveness of gender norms and work to undo those assumptions so in response to running up against restrictive gender norms and having myself undone i can respond to the lady in the bathroom with i am a woman i can work for gender-neutral bathrooms in public spaces i could also get together and organize with people who are working for universal access to health care especially certain operations that some transgender folks might need to increase the livability of their lives so the desire to contest heterosexist and cisgender norms is not simply about recognition it's about livability in my own life i'm very aware that recognition or misrecognition can be the difference between a normal experience of using the bathroom or some kind of violent encounter given that biological sciences are about studying life and living organisms recognizing how gender is tied to concerns about life and livability the livability of one's own or other people's lives that's how i make the connection to between gender and biology so in some sense gender and how i feel about my own gender it's never just a feeling in isolation or abstracted from some material reality gender is always deeply relational and it's not just transgender people who run into gender norms that restrict their ability to live lives free from violence and assault whether that's verbal physical or psychic all of the assumptions built around what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman shape the ways we exist in the world the ways we dress walk speak carry ourselves gender norms shape how we speak to one another and about each other but it is because gender is so deeply relational that we can begin to understand how undoing constrictive and violent gender norms is not simply something that benefits transgender or gender non-conforming people it benefits all people who are daily striving and failing to perform the ideals attached to the gender they identify as thanks for your question hope that was helpful this podcast exists one to create safe spaces for conversations that people don't usually get to have because they're too far out of whatever the cultural expectations that their community might hold but the second point actually is about providing helpful answers that provide insight and new information to new issues and issues that we're seeing in new light and i honestly could not be happier with the answers on this show this is the first episode of ask science mike where i haven't answered any questions but i have learned and i have listened so i want to thank ryan and broderick and amoria for taking time out of their very busy schedules and coming on the program to help us all learn i hope you'll go to asksciencemike.com and click on episode 26 to see the show notes for this episode because you can follow them on twitter you can follow their work and you can get a richer deeper understanding about other life perspectives than you have today i know it has been incredibly beneficial in my own life as i try to figure out not just macro big issues around orientation and gender but the way these things come to life every day in small moments and what decisions i can make that do the most good and help other people as much as i can we've been reminded that as people who are jesus followers or jesus curious or even just open to jesus in society we've been reminded that part of that is to remember the poor and the orphan and the widow so i hope you've enjoyed this episode we've gone a little different in format but i think this is probably my favorite episode of the show ever so i really appreciate these people coming and helping us out i do want to let you know this week i will be at redlands church in california talking about cosmology and how we can deal with the bible today as people who understand the world through new lenses i also want to let you know coming up i'll be in new york city uh at rob bell's everything is spiritual event just hanging out but i'd love to see you i'm gonna be at the collective church in fort worth after that i'm going to a place called the sandbox cooperative that's going to be an online event that you can check out and i'd love to come see you so if you go to ask sciencemike.com click on bookmic you can get information about bringing me to your church or college or conference or community event it's my favorite thing now we have a lot more lgbt questions in the inbox now many of these answers were great because they covered dozens of questions that are in the inbox keep sending those in if i can bring more people answer them on i will if they're science questions i haven't already answered related to gender and orientation and attraction all those things i'd be happy to go into the science specifically i'm not considering this subject closed but we do need questions of all kinds to keep the show going you can do that on ask sciencemic.com that's the easiest way our pre-production for this show was done by hayley hyde as always she does a great job greg nordin did our production and sound engineering he's a wizard it's ridiculous everybody tells me how great the show sounds and uh greg is the reason the show sounds so good and of course our theme song the one that's stuck in your head all week is by jed botiford he can do original music composition and recording for you you can find haley greg and jeb on ask sciencemike.com as well as resources for every question that has ever been asked in the history of the program it's worth a visit to ask sciencemike.com to check that out thanks for listening everybody and i'll see you next week [Music]