St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, down the block from me, has a sign that says “Respecting the dignity of every human being.” So I want to talk about this “dignity” concept.
Lots of the more liberal Christian sects talk about dignity. The Catholics do too, but I don’t believe them. When it comes to gays, the Catholics still seem unable to accept the fact that if there has been no gay people, there would be no Catholic Church!.
But these liberal Christian churches are big on respecting dignity, and that’s fine, I guess. At least they’re not getting the fiery crosses ready for all the gays, Muslims, Jews and atheists that, we’re told, will go straight to hell when the Rapture comes and all the “good” Christians go to heaven.
What, exactly, does “dignity” mean, to these Christians? I love the fact that they’re prepared to accept all of us errant sinners who don’t subscribe precisely to their theology. It’s one of the nicer qualities of liberal or moderate Christians. They don’t have that fire-and-brimstone madness that the evangelicals do. I will defer to no one when it comes to giving dignity to all human beings. Everybody, in my opinion, is a child of God, and that includes the horrible, violent scumbags who make Oakland so much less than it would be without them.
Yet dignity isn’t everything. I can give dignity to some sleazeball who mugs an old Chinese lady or beats the shit out of a fag or drives a stolen car into an ATM machine. The Oakland Police give dignity to these human mutations every time they arrest them. But that doesn’t mean I have to like them, or let them off the hook when it comes to the criminal justice system. And I think this is where the moderate Christians run into a contradiction. They bend over backwards to support the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, the criminal, and it’s all in the name of Jesus, but I don’t think Jesus would be in favor of defunding the police, or reducing the charges against thugs to misdemeanors the way Pamela Price did (and will again, if she’s re-elected, which she won’t be), or abolishing the prisons and sending all the murderers and killers to “therapists” who have an M.A. in counseling.
Now I don’t mean to get embroiled in the WWJD debate; I don’t have the slightest idea what Jesus would do if he ever came back, which I don’t think he will because he’s dead. All I mean is that this dignity thing is sweet, as far as it goes, but we need to realize that just because we invest dignity in someone doesn’t mean we give him a get out of jail free card. Nope, doesn’t work like that. And we won’t let it work like that. So my advice to the Episcopalians (not that they asked for it, but it’s free) is: keep the dignity flowing. We need more of it, especially with this current U.S. administration that doesn’t know the meaning of dignity, unless it’s for some poor, washed up old MAGA slime bag like Kid Rock.
I’m not knocking Episcopalians. Lovely people. If you have to be Christian, Episcopalian is the way to go; even the Anglicans are coming around when it comes to gay folk. And I’ll say another thing in favor of Episcopalians: they’re not trying to take over the U.S. government, the way these rightwing neo-nazi fundamentalists are. As a matter of fact, I personally wouldn’t mind another schism in the Christian denominations. Let the moderate-liberals, who are sane, separate from the psycho Bible-thumping literalists, who aren’t. As a non-observant Jew who is not an atheist and happens to be gay, I’d like that very much.
Meanwhile, dignity, yes. Letting criminals off the hook, never!
Steve Heimoff