Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Is it socially acceptable to hire an opponent of SSM to write a comic book?

By Rob Vischer

I've been intrigued by the protests targeting DC Comics for the company's decision to permit an anti-SSM advocate to write part of the Superman series.  This represents part of a troubling trend not just to challenge anti-SSM advocates on the merits of the issue in the public square, but to push them to the margins of society.  But here are my questions: is the problem with these protests that they're seeking to deny a publicly prominent employment opportunity to an individual based on his political views, or that they're seeking to deny a publicly prominent employment opportunity to an individual based on his opposition to SSM?  In other words, would the protestors be on firmer ground if they were seeking to organize a boycott of DC Comics for hiring an outspoken opponent of interracial marriage to write for the Superman series?  As SSM becomes more widely accepted, do we need to be prepared to defend the social inclusion of a wider variety of unpopular views?

https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2013/02/is-it-socially-acceptable-to-hire-an-opponent-of-ssm-to-write-a-comic-book.html

Vischer, Rob | Permalink

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I think if Orson Scott Card were an outspoken opponent of interracial marriage, he wouldn't have been offered the job in the first place, or if he had, few would be disturbed by a protest. R. R. Reno over on First Things writes about "the Selma analogy," and he is very much opposed to making an analogy between the rights of black people and the rights of gay people.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/04/the-selma-analogy

As I understand Reno (and I urge people to read the essay for themselves rather than accept my interpretation), the civil rights movement of the 1960s was such a terrible intrusion by the government into personal freedom that we can sympathize with conservatives like Goldwater and Buckley who opposed it. They did, though, came to see that they were wrong. Civil rights legislation, horrific as it was, was necessary. "Fighting the evil of racial discrimination really did require something like a government takeover of our racist culture," says Reno. But such a thing can never be allowed to happen again—certainly not over the "rights" of gay people. And of course Reno's position is the position of the Catholic Church. There must be no "rights" granted to gay people—no legislation that recognizes them as a protected category.

Of course it is *possible* that at some point in the future, many who oppose same-sex marriage and prohibitions based on sexual orientation will—like Buckley and Goldwater—realize that the unthinkable is thinkable. George Wallace famously said in 1963, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," but ten or fifteen years later he reversed his position. I think Reno and many other opponents of same-sex marriage are looking down the road ten or twenty years and are convinced they will never accept it. Maybe they are right and maybe they are wrong, but unless the tide turns (which is, of course, possible) they will be a minority and may very well be looked upon with some of the same disdain people now have for racists.