Bigotry

In 1989, at my father-in-law’s 50th birthday party, something happened that permanently attached itself to my memory and shaped the code of conduct I hoped to follow.

At a pause in the celebration, I sat down at a small table with three men I didn’t know, contemporaries of my father-in-law, although perhaps older. At my age of 27, I thought that everyone fifty or older was impossibly ancient.

Conversation stalled, and then one of the men told a joke that was flat-out racist. Immediately, another man said in a soft but firm voice, “I don’t approve of that type of humor.”  It was an exceptional remark, a rare rebuke of one white man by another at an all-white gathering. I remember feeling both surprise and awe. Silence now reigned among the four of us. Soon we all rose from the little table and went our separate ways as if leaving the scene of an accident, or, perhaps of a fight in which one party had thrashed the other. And in moral terms, that’s exactly what had been done.

I like to think that the man’s rebuke that day was not exceptional, that he travelled in circles where he had ample authority and opportunity to call out bigoted comments about blacks, gays, and Jews. 1989 was a different time when looser and inferior standards of what was acceptable prevailed, and this man was doing his part to shift that window of acceptability. A vigilante against bigotry.

After that day, I wondered whether I’d show the same courage if someone said something bigoted in my presence. I can recall a singular instance. Circa 2000, a business associate, older than I was but equivalent in seniority, repeated a particularly ugly racist phrase she’d found amusing. I pounced and told her that the phrase was completely unacceptable and asked her never to repeat it. This was low stakes, however, as there was no risk, social or otherwise, to me speaking up. Rather, there was far more risk remaining silent and having to live with the memory of my moral failing.

On the other hand, a few years later, I was at a small business meeting with people far more senior than me. We were paying court to a powerful and famous political man who had credible presidential aspirations. He made a joke about “ the gays.” I said nothing. A rebuke from me  would certainly have been risky and may have had serious negative consequences for my career. But it was bigotry, and I stayed silent.

As for bigotry directed at me, I am aware of only one anti-Semitic remark in my own history. At my Manhattan elementary school, there were twenty boys to a class and four of us were Jewish. We four were able to miss school on two Jewish holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I remember the teacher called out our names in advance as being excused from school on those two holidays. Cries of “no fair” arose and then one boy said, “Kill the Jews.” I thought little of it at the time, and I don’t know whether anyone else did either.

These few recollections indicates that I live a life among people where expressions of bigotry are exceptionally rare. I think that’s due to my Manhattan bubble and having the freedom to choose who I spend time with.

Of course there’s plenty of bigotry to be found online and not just on fringe sites. I subscribe to many other substacks and when I see a bigoted post, I’ll call it out. I know that making an online comment cannot compare to the bravery or the effect of calling out bigotry in the flesh.

Yet, I find it necessary.

As a guy writing a sub stack with the title “Let Me Challenge Your Thinking,” I’m particularly vulnerable to being accused of hypocrisy when I do call out another author. But most of the time, I can tell  the difference between bigotry and an unorthodox view that challenges my thinking.

An example: the writer of a substack I find generally interesting recently wrote twice that he considers gender transition to be equivalent to self-slaughter and should be treated as such. I found that comment to be deeply offensive, reflecting an outlook I could not countenance. So in addition to expressing my view, I unsubscribed. Some other subscribers mocked me in the comments section and wrote they were glad to see me go.

But it made me think about bigotry, hence this post.

The overturning of Roe, like a recurring nightmare, has been rattling around in my mind. And I’ve concluded that one of the many reasons it offends me deeply is that I consider it to be anti-American religious bigotry.  Abortion and religion are inextricably tied together. Religious beliefs influence and often determine views on when life begins and when the well-being, physical and mental, of a mother must take priority over the unborn child she carries in her womb.

America’s Founders knew well the horrors of European religious wars fought chiefly between different sects of Christianity for over a thousand years. Therefore, a central premise of the American Experiment was and is freedom of religion with two central tenets. One tenet is that America is to have no official religion or to make laws in any jurisdiction that favor one religion over another. The other tenet is that Americans have to be given the liberty to practice the religion of their choice. Otherwise, freedom of religion and freedom of speech would be rendered inoperable.

Sometimes, these two tenets conflict and the Supreme Court must decide. The most recent example was whether a football coach at a public high school could hold a prayer service on the football field after the game, the conflict being the tension between the Coach’s right to freely express his religion vs. the fact that he was doing so, not in private, but as a government employee on public grounds. This Court has tended to favor the tenet of freedom of religious expression over keeping government and religion strictly separate. And as a concept properly applied, I have no problem with that. ¹

But what I cannot fathom, cannot tolerate, cannot resist calling out is the fundamental religious bigotry of the abortion decision. It violates both the tenet against government favoring one set of religions over others and at the same time violates the idea that Americans are free to put into practice their religious beliefs as they see fit.

The draconian laws restricting abortion in effect now in many states are religious laws that favor the religious practices and views of certain Christian sects, most notably Evangelical Christians. Of course they should be free to practice their faith as they see fit. But they should not be free to impose their faith upon others and thereby obviate the religious freedom and privacy of others. That imposition is a form of zealotry I find to be evil.

I call out that imposition as bigotry writ large and as fundamentally at odds with the sacred secular creed of America: the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

And when and if I meet someone who has worked to deny an abortion to a woman raped or whose life is in danger or for other reasons of her private choosing, I hope that I will not hesitate to call that person what they are: a bigot. I believe the brave gentleman at my father-in-law’s party back in 1989 would agree.

1. The facts of this case, however, indicate that this particular football coach was very far from the ideal of the fictional, great Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights with all his attendant wisdom and heart. I loved that character!