The Warrior Queen: Marry The Night, Trauma, Regression, and Recovery

Update 6:31pm 12/23/11: This is now PUBLISHED on Gaga Stigmata. Thanks so very much to Meghan Vicks for her amazing editorial skills and dedication to this piece and the site in general. 


Here's an excerpt from my piece:

"To say she glorifies sexuality and mortality, or trauma and sex, would be a mistake. The desire to combine those two aspects of life is so normal as to be quaint, in terms of an analytic reading of basic human psychodynamics. To label what Lady Gaga is doing with trauma, sex, death, and invention “bizarre” misses, I believe, how essentially basic and deeply human her themes are. 

What I find perhaps most pleasing about Gaga’s self-transformation in the “Marry The Night” video, which I will explore in more detail below, is that she is bringing to the fore an innocent reveling, often childlike, in fundamental and common intra-psychic processes. Not only is she a gorgeously unhinged libido and aggression, but she is also imaginative, she makes of herself and her world the imaginary, arguably engaging in something akin to pop music play therapy. She aligns herself with her internal complexes and makes art with them. She is pleasure-seeking, even through pain, perhaps particularly through pain. She is polymorphously perverse, but rather than being ashamed of it, she is proud of it."

Please read, comment, and share. :) Thanks, Gaga fans, the world over!

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Update 3:50pm 12/9/11: Text removed because guess what! It will be published tonight on Gaga Stigmata, the pre-eminent site for scholarly works about Lady Gaga. Stay tuned for the link to the publication of my piece! Thanks to all who have read so far!


-K.M. Zwick

Superhuman Gay Parents! Or: The Problem With "Two Lesbians Raised a Baby and This Is What They Got"

By K.M. Zwick 

See this video for reference, in which 19 year-old "sixth generation Iowan" Zach Wahls describes his awesome life as a son raised by two married lesbian parents in a speech promoting gay marriage.

I have no problem with Mr. Wahls' message. In fact, I applaud it and him, as well as his parents and their whole family. What he had to say moved me to tears.

The video has gone viral, is now featured on MoveOn.org's website, and I've seen it posted no less than 22 times in my Facebook news feed.

My problem is not with the video itself, but rather with the possible meaning behind its wild popularity.

On the one hand, we need white men to say things like this because we live in a country that listens to white men and is predominantly run by white men. We need white men to be allies to minorities of all kinds. And I'm glad this man is an ally.

On the other hand, it is ALSO normal (normative; ok; acceptable) for there to be kids who were raised by gay people and are not white and do not have such a platform from which to speak; it is normal for there to be folks who were raised by gay people and turned out just as dysfunctional as other folks raised by straight people; it is normal for there to be kids who were raised by gay couples who got divorced; it is normal for kids to be raised by gay people and not excel on the ACT or become an Eagle Scout or a motivational speaker in a suit; it is normal for kids to be raised by gay people and be gay or straight or trans or bi or otherly queer themselves; it is normal for kids to be raised by gay people and hate their parents just as much as so many kids raised by straight people hate their parents; it is normal for kids raised by gay people to struggle with poverty, addiction, family quarrels, oppression, live with excellence, wealth, getting along, live in urban or rural settings, deal with discrimination or less discrimination, speak English or not English or be multi-lingual.

In short, let this young man - inspiring though he is - not be considered a poster child for gay marriage and the rearing of children by gay couples. To say, "Oh, phew, it's ok for gays to marry and raise children because they can turn out like this" denies the basic human reality that gay people are just like straight people. Gay people will raise all kinds of children, not just clean-cut white male do-gooders like this lovely young man.

And that is their right. Just like it is my right, as a straight person, to raise a child and do the best I can, knowing I may unintentionally totally mess up all along the way. My parents messed up. And all of them (six in total over my lifetime, including all my stepparents), identify as straight. They also were all doing the best they could do.

No one would look at me or my would-be potentially messed up child of the future and say, "She's messed up because her mom was straight."

So, yes, bravo,  this video definitely hit me on an emotional level; Wahls is a great speaker and what he is saying is true. "Family values" do not simply belong to the heteronormative right wingers; they belong to anyone who believes family is important and invests in that importance. I teared up and got goose bumps watching this video, like so many others who have helped it go viral.

But let's remember that gay people - just like straight people - have a right to the freedom to be HUMANS as parents, not superhumans who are required to churn out model citizens - according to hegemonic norms - to therefore prove gay people should be allowed to participate in all the myriad activities related to family that straights are allowed to participate in. Gay couples should have the right to marry and raise children because they want to. Not because they have to prove they "deserve to" based on impossibly high (double) standards that deny the reality that gay people are just people. As just people (just like me), they should have all the rights I, as a straight person, have. Those "rights" include marrying, if I want to, and having children with my spouse if I want to; as well as the  broader "right," which is more human than legal, to be an imperfect person and/or parent who will unwittingly make mistakes or fall into hardship or find myself getting a divorce, or not, or remarrying, or not, or being a good enough parent or a great parent, or (hopefully not) not, because, hey, that's what people, gay or straight, do. Live, as humans, doing the best we can.

We all live in glass houses. No one should be throwing stones. Even at the non-sixth-generation-Iowan non-white non-male non-Eagle Scout non-excelling offspring of gay parents.

From the PopUp Annals: Knocked Up: A Comedy From the Pro-life, Relationship-Hating Hellmouth.

By K. M. Zwick

(Note: Mature content and sarcasm warning) (Originally appeared in The Weekly Digest in October 2011)

Back in 2007, at the beginning of the aughts bromance comedy era, this was one of the most enjoyable mainstream comedies I’d seen in a long time. Having not been familiar with Apatow’s Freaks and Geeks ensemble yet, I was impressed with my introductions to Seth Rogen, especially, and his motley crew of degenerate man-children roommates with their impeccable comedic timing and bizarre roundtable-flavored banter. Additionally, having had no exposure to Ms. Katherine Heigl via Grey’s Anatomy, I considered her adept in her role as the albeit one-dimensional and gorgeous shrew. I laughed big belly laughs the whole way through this film, knowing all the while I was going to wax finger-wagging as soon as I left the theatre. Hey, I’m multi-dimensional.

Until Bridesmaids this summer, Knocked Up was Apatow’s top-grossing film. This movie was successful enough to become a household name over the past few years, and with all its subtle and not-so-subtle messages about contraception, family planning, motherhood and heterosexual relationships, I am compelled to highlight what seems so problematic to me about it in hopes to remind viewers – and myself - to be ever-mindful of the harmful messages present in our most gut-busting and commercially successful entertainment. Knocked Up grossed nearly a quarter of a billion dollars worldwide. We are the ones who pay Hollywood to keep certain messages going. After all, this film spawned many babies: I Love You, Man; Superbad; Pineapple Express; Hot Tub Time Machine and the like. For this Motherhood issue, editor Brandie Rae Madrid asked me to dust off my 2007 review and re-tool it for this issue. As I do so, I remind myself and readers what we’re not only consuming but also promoting with our entertainment dollars. 

Contraception: Woman’s Responsibility/Unsexy.

During the one-night stand and film-premise-kick-off scene between black-out-drunk Ben (Rogen) and Alison (Heigl), Ben decides to discard his condom right when he's putting it on in preparation to have sex with Alison because he interprets what Alison's saying - "Just do it already"- as her meaning "Forget the condom, let's go for it."

Message: It's the woman's responsibility to bring contraception into sex, because a man will bone anything in sight and not consider the consequences. Not only is this insulting to women, it is also insulting to men and their ability to take care of themselves (STDs? STIs? Paternity suits?). Beyond that, the scene supports that old adage that condoms are annoying nuisances, difficult to manage, and potentially ruin the enjoyment of sex. In an ongoing era when health-promoting sex education and family planning is actually a plausible aspect of a child's upbringing, do we really need a wildly popular film that promotes these stereotypical and ultimately damaging ideas about responsible engagement in sexual intercourse? Meh.

Rich People Can/Should Have Kids, Not Choices.

So, surely, the film would approach the options available to Alison when she discovers she is pregnant – due to this two-person sex gaff - maturely, if hilariously, right? But no. What we see of Alison’s decision-making is precisely a lack of her decision-making process.

We see a tearful cry from Alison to Ben letting him know she's decided to keep the baby and she just wanted him to know; we do not see any of the thoughts or reasoning she had that led to that weighty decision. I suppose as we see her sitting in her plush guest-house bedroom at her sister’s enormous bungalow-cum-mansion, a white gal with great looks and uncomplicated blonde hair, with a fancy star-laden job at E!, we perhaps are to assume “Well, her family is rich enough for her to have a kid, so, it’s probably a good idea.” With its lack of transparency about such a critical and life-altering decision, the film gives us no other option but to assume the reasons Alison decides to keep the baby. to suspend our disbelief and just accept that that is what she wants to do for illusory and unstated good reasons.

Pro-Choicers Are Uptight/Eugenicists.

Right before we see this phone call from Alison to Ben, there’s the scene in which Harold Ramis's character (Ben's dad) gives a little speech to Ben amounting to this: "you never know where life will take you, you just have to go with it," which, for all its hippy dippy feel-good vibes has the underlying tone of "She doesn't need to get an abortion, man. She just needs to go with the flow, man. And so do you: have a kid.” Apparently Ben was a "mistake," but mistakes are cool, man because Ben is the proclaimed best thing that ever happened to his dad. Hooray for mistakes!! Let's all throw our condoms out our apartment windows and make lots of life-changing mistakes!!

The pro-kid voices in this film – Ben’s dad and Canadian patriot Jay Baruchel - are the cool and lovable ones.

Prior to The Phone Call, we also meet Alison's mother (played by Joanna Kerns) -- the Pro-Choice Hellbitch. The one potentially rational voice in the film supporting the mere option to have an abortion – besides morose and cynical Jonah (Hill), the most unlikable character in the film – comes across as an evil heartless wealthy a-hole who believes in eugenics. She and Alison are having lunch, and Alison's mother dictates that Alison has to "take care of it" (translation: get an abortion). Mom then gives an example of a friend/family member who had an abortion earlier in her life and now is married and "has a real baby" (translation: only married people have real babies). Way to fairly portray the mind of the pro-choicer: "Abort the fake babies that you don't want and give birth to the real babies later!! Kill the fake babies!!! Hooray!!!"

Men Only Have One Choice/No Choice.

This film seems to forget that men have choices, too. Ben is not given the option from anyone in his life giving him advice that he might want to consider getting a job and helping Alison solely (and importantly) financially while continuing to live his own life. Or, he might want to be an ongoing friend to Alison and a helpful, present male figure in the baby’s life. After all, during Alison’s tearful cry to Ben, she does not invite him to participate in the pregnancy and rearing of the child. We are to assume, though, that that is Ben’s only choice since she decided to keep the baby. The options available to Ben in the film are extreme, black and white, and frankly sort of terrifying psychologically: either Alison gets an abortion and Ben is absolved of involvement with her, she goes her way and he goes his (the film made it abundantly clear that Alison would not “lower herself” to date Ben if she were not keeping the baby), or she keeps the baby and Ben therefore must attempt to date her, be a romantic partner and full-fledged father to this child. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for men taking equal responsibility for their involvement in sex and its consequences; at the same time, there are a number of viable and healthy options for what that responsibility might look like. Knocked Up posits that the only option available to the man is to go along with whatever the woman is doing, like he is a hostage to the entire situation, not a fellow adult with choices of his own. While Alison’s options are somewhat fleshed-out in this film, we do not even get a taste of the idea that an adult man has choices of his own in this situation. 

Men Are Distant Slackers And Need To Change. Women Are Bitches And Don’t.
 

The film attempts to highlight “real-life crap” that can occur in romantic relationships by giving us snippets of Debbie (Alison’s sister, played by Leslie Mann) and Pete’s (Paul Rudd) marriage, but instead it offers us an incredibly harsh view of partnerships that is, again, psychologically terrifying. It veers far afield of healthy dynamics with an albeit hilarious in-the-dog-housed Pete and Ben weekend trip to Vegas and a heartfelt male-bonding mushrooming experience that culminates in Pete realizing he doesn't need alone time or his own activities, he just needs to accept the smothering love of Debbie and adhere to her whims. Simultaneously, Debbie and Alison engage in a girls' weekend which leads to the realization that they, as women, are too old and/or pregnant to be single, so they might as well face facts and deal with their (in their minds) fuck-up male sig o's.

Debbie and Pete’s relationship is a nightmare. He’s a charming but secretive, lying avoider who honestly could probably use some time to himself, but he tells himself his wife is too controlling and reactive to be honest with her. She’s a cloying harpy who wants to affix herself to his flesh and make him into a female version of herself. Neither of them appear to know how to talk to each other honestly and kindly. My guess is they could both use time to themselves, nurturing their own interests and interdependence. But the film’s solution? Pete crawls back to his cloying harpy and surrenders his back-flesh to Debbie, and she’s happy. And as long as you can keep a woman happy, your relationship will work out fine. Thanks, Knocked Up, for priming us for Mad Men.

In the film, it's the men who are positioned as fuck-ups, who are dishonest, who are difficult, who are immature, who have to change. A very tangible subplot in this film is the journey Ben has to go on to become ready to be a decent boyfriend and dad. And Pete has to be more willing to be fawned over and ordered around by Debbie in order for their marriage to work. The women need to do nothing but tolerate the men.

While Alison’s emotional outbursts and fear-filled rejections of Ben, as well as her unstated invitation to Ben to be involved in the baby’s life, encourage Ben to look deeply at his goals and decisions, there is no counterpart in the film that forces Alison to change from being a selfish, lying, underearning control freak into an insightful, nurturing, honest, compassionate, more independent good listener. Did she read the baby books she nags Ben to read? Are we supposed to assume she did because she's a woman? Or that she doesn’t need to read the baby books because she’s a woman? And are we supposed to assume that even though we do not see her mature emotionally even one iota in the film that as soon as her baby is born, she'll suddenly become a more decent human being, capable of listening to her partner and nurturing her daughter without letting her arrogant narcissistic issues get in the way? Why are we to assume that?

Because women are biologically manufactured to be good mothers, and this makes them good people. They don't need training. They just "know."

Layered into the idea that only these men need to change in order to make their relationships work (while the women have to do nothing) is the duly offensive idea that women are childlike in their inability to alter their own behavior. They need to whine and throw fits and fly off the handle and smother their partners in affection all the time, and, boys, you better just tolerate it, because women have no capacity to grow up or receive feedback. This infantilization of the female characters in the film wouldn't have been bothersome to me if the women underwent intense self-reflection and growth and made a commitment to understand the needs of their partners in order to maturely address the kinks in their relationships. But Debbie and Alison were relatively unlikeable, whiny, needy women from start to finish. Alison got a free pass for much of the film because she was pregnant. Maybe that's fair? But, newsflash, women aren't all hormones all the time during pregnancy. They are still thinking, feeling, working, productive beings in society who take responsibility for their behavior. Not Alison, though. She was just hormonal. The film wants us to cheer for Ben, whom we give big props to for taking all the heavy things weighing down that relationship (including Alison's juvenile reactions to many things) onto his own back and being a remarkably stand-up dude, capable of learning selflessness, compassion, and all the way through offering an unbeatable wit.

Katherine Heigl was certainly right when she said the film is “a little sexist.” But it is not just anti-woman; it’s also anti-man. Ben and Pete may be fun-loving and sweet, with adorable smiles, but they’re also totally whipped. And the film posits that men being whipped is the only way for relationships to work, because women are incapable of changing.  

Parenthood Is What You Need to Be A Real Adult.

Fast forward to the birth. We're at the hospital. Ben and Alison have made up, after a 2-month long break-up, in 5 minutes, because Ben has proven that he "read the Baby Books!!!" (again, he changed, she did not) and because Alison has no one else to help her while she's in labor. Fast forward through the birth (most of us know by now about the most sterile and unrealistic shorn prosthetic vagina-with-crowning-baby-head shot by this point, yes?) to Ben, holding his newborn baby girl. Ben is sweetly describing to the baby how she was conceived and says something like, "So Mommy said, 'Just do it already,' which was really confusing for Daddy...But I'm really glad I didn't put that condom on."

Don't we all wish our infantile 20-somethings would get their shit together and grow up already? Well, this film has the answer: accidental pregnancy! Hooray! Boys will become men. Girls will become...if not women, then mothers, at the very least. Boys will get jobs and stop smoking pot. Girls will...become mommies. Boys will get their own apartments finally and stop hanging out with all their pink-eye-infested loser pot head friends. Girls will...become mamas. Boys will stop talking about blowjobs and big titties all the time and bond with upwardly mobile 30-something dudes who have real jobs and families. Girls will...only get knocked up.

 

Errol Morris' Tabloid: A study in one-dimensional editorializing
By K. M. Zwick 

(Originally appeared in The Weekly Digest in September 2011)

It is July 30^th. I just came from a screening of Tabloid at Chicago's Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema.

Here's the very-short gist: In 1977, Joyce McKinney, a young 20-something American former beauty pageant queen, traveled to England with a bodyguard, a pilot, and a male friend to help her (this next part is up for debate) kidnap a Mormon man - Kirk Anderson - with whom she professed being in love, take him to a "love cottage" in Devon, tie him to a bed and rape (or have consensual sex with) him. Then, Mr. Anderson escaped (or was let go as he wished), went to the police, reported he'd been kidnapped and raped, and Ms. McKinney was arrested, as was her male friend accomplice. The British tabloids - most notably The Daily Express and The Daily Mirror - had a field day with this odd tale, and Ms. McKinney, apparently, lapped it all up and fanned the flame of the tabloid passion for her sad and bizarre story, becoming an overnight celebrity for a brief period of time. She was released on bail, fled the country back to the U.S. and has been living in the U.S. ever since.

I should mention that just as one tabloid built her up by printing a story “in her own words,” another tabloid tore her down, exposing her as an alleged call girl/dominatrix and plastering its widely read pages with partially and totally nude "found" photos of Ms. McKinney. It was after this unrepentantly scathing series that Ms. McKinney's life appeared to be essentially beyond repair.

Mr. Morris' film relies heavily on the talking head of Ms. McKinney herself – now in her fifties - as well as those of Kent Gavin and Peter Tory, the two then-tabloidists from the British papers mentioned above, one of her unknowing accomplices Jackson Shaw (who quit the gig before the kidnapping actually occurred), and one contemporary young ex-Mormon radio host, to tell the details of this complicated and titillating tale.

However, despite the engrossing first-hand accounts, this film should decidedly not be thought of as a well-rounded 'documentary' plumbing an interesting subject and a strange series of events in the '70s. Morris editorializes all along the way, openly mocking Mormonism and McKinney herself while positioning Gevin and Tory as the ultimate in trustworthy sources of truth-seeking. Morris consistently uses these two men to shed light on McKinney's outlandish behavior and her supposed history of sexual advertising, juxtaposing their stories with McKinney's tearful rendering of her albeit crazed love for Anderson.

That Morris chose to use only these tabloidists to counter McKinney's story reveals a fundamental flaw of this film: it utterly lacks context. 

Ms. McKinney's decision to chase Kirk Anderson across the world to kidnap (or "rescue," by her account) him, with wedding bands already engraved and an accomplice - only to tie him up in a cottage for three days engaging in sexual acts that were potentially not consensual - did not erupt fully formed from within a social, familial, and psychological vacuum. Yet Morris feeds the audience the line that it mostly did.

The context that Morris does offer is lackluster and one-dimensional. He lets the viewer know McKinney was a beauty pageant queen in a flimsy attempt to suggest that her self-obsession and good looks are the major explanations for her deranged behavior. He leaves out any potentially relevant social context of the times. There were many fascinating things happening in mid-'70s America that might have been related to Ms. McKinney's story. But one of these is the sexual revolution and its aftermath, the budding confusion and glee around women's sexual liberty progressing in America, and the impact that may have had on women McKinney's age straddling the divide between their parents' more repressed generation and this new one of an albeit somewhat flawed invitation to open sexual exploration, radical public exhibitionism, and self-empowerment through sexual agency. There is an incredible amount of social context to draw on to at least partially unpack the climate in which Ms. McKinney grew up, to make no mention here of race, class, and the part of the country she was raised in, all of which may have had an impact on the choices that McKinney was making as a 20-something stalker. In the film, there were no sociologists, media impact experts, psychologists or feminists remarking on an understanding of Ms. McKinney in her time, leaving the viewer to believe that this allegedly crazy sex-obsessed woman was an individual without community, culture, family or status to influence any of her choices.

Morris leaves out any exploration of McKinney’s childhood and how she was raised. A woman as possessive singularly obsessed and as pathologically anxiety-free about it as Ms. McKinney appeared to be did not come out of the womb that way. There was no mention in the film of how she may have been treated in her home, what her relationship with her parents was like, and no information provided that the three primary subjects (all subjectively involved in the events in question) did not tell.

Don't get me wrong - it is not my desire to excuse what is apparently very unhealthy, harmful and potentially criminal behavior on the part of Ms. McKinney by seeking to contextualize her. However, the lack of any serious consideration of contextualization from a seasoned documentarian like Errol Morris gives me pregnant pause regarding Mr. Morris' agenda in the making of this film.

No doubt, Morris is an exceptional story teller with his editing, directing and multi-media choices, slicing in photos of times gone by, cutesy vintage pics of darling deco damsels, and clips from old films to illustrate what is essentially one woman telling her story and three guys making fun of her. Morris seems like the fourth.

Morris' title - Tabloid - suggested to me I might get a taste of a critical exposé of tabloid culture, which includes the readership as much as it includes the tabloidists, and how it ruined one woman's life (not to mention Mr. Anderson's).

Instead, this film is itself an extension of that tabloid culture: it takes every shot it can at Ms. McKinney, at her expense. That Morris spends the last 20 minutes of the film showing us how much she loves her dog and how she had him cloned again seemed to suggest a "laughability" about her character, further dehumanizing her rather than contextualizing her. By that point in the film, I was so fed up with the sensationalist, one-dimensional style of Morris' conveyance, I felt incredible sympathy for a woman who appeared quite sad and likely had been from a very early time in her life. Women who are healthy, self-possessed, happy and believe they have viable choices in life for fulfillment do not kidnap Mormons in England and then gleefully create a tell-all of their entire sad and confusing lives to become one-hit celebrity wonders who are discarded just as quickly as they are clung to by the media and total strangers soliciting them for sexual favors.

Morris' other major failing in this film is the dismissive manner in which he approaches the alleged rape of Mr. Anderson. Besides a one-liner from McKinney in which she claims you cannot rape a man, Mr. Morris does not touch that incredibly painful topic with a ten-foot boom mic pole. The fact that the possible reality of this story - that Ms. McKinney seems a disturbed individual, who may actually have kidnapped an unassuming man she was obsessed with, tied him to a bed, and raped him for three days - became a mere backdrop to the tabloid-esque laugh fest at Ms. McKinney's retelling that Mr. Morris chose his film to be is perhaps the gravest of missteps. In this, Mr. Morris is no better than the men at The Express and The Mirror. He is feeding his viewers the lines they want to hear to make them laugh, drop jaws, point fingers and snicker at a woman we will never know personally and about whom we know nothing deep, nuanced or intimate, because Mr. Morris chose to turn his head the other way and give his wink aside to his audience instead.

Thank you to Marjorie Jolles, PhD, for her contributions to the discussion on this topic.

Why I Don’t Care Where Michele Bachmann Spends Her Sundays.

By K.M. Zwick 

(Originally appeared in The Weekly Digest in September 2011, when Bachmann was still a front-runner in the Republican race to the bid for nomination)

Recently, I was listening to a podcast called DoubleX Gabfest, which is hosted by the women from The XX Factor blog on Slate.com’s online magazine. This blog consists primarily of commentaries on current events that involve issues of gender. The particular podcast I was listening to aired on August 11, 2011 and was hosted by Jessica Grose, Nina Shen Rastogi, and Hanna Rosin. The podcast began with a conversation about Michele Bachmann’s religious views and how those are or are not related to other American’s Christian views. This conversation seemed to be sparked in reaction to the August 7 Newsweek cover story on Bachmann titled “The Queen of Rage" and the recent New Yorker profile on Bachmann.

At first, I was interested to hear if Bachmann’s alleged views are aligned with a majority or minority population of Christians in America. The more I listened to the podcast, however, the less I cared about this and the more incensed I became with how many times the word “crazy” was used to describe Bachmann’s supposed religious beliefs. The word “crazy” was also used to describe the entire Mormon faith, when one of the hosts off-handedly mentioned Mitt Romney. Other words used to describe her religious beliefs and Mormon beliefs: "wrong," "freaky," and "nuts."

The more so-called left wingers and liberals dogmatically insult the religious dogma of another human being (usually a conservative Republican), the less inclined I am to listen to anything they have to say in the political arena.

We need to stop engaging in this conversation, fellow liberals. Insulting people of faith, because they are people of faith, and daring to assert that anyone knows what is crazy faith and what is sane faith is the exact same kind of egotistical absolutism the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs of the world have been lobbing at non-Christians for decades. Democratic political platforms such as the pro-choice movement and the movement to secure national gay marriage rights center on the notion that religious beliefs – that homosexuality is a sin, for example, or that abortion is murder in the eyes of someone’s version of God - should not dictate laws that govern civil rights.

If we follow the concept of the separation of Church and State to its most logical conclusion, we find that liberals similarly have no place insulting a politician’s religious views as a valid argument to not vote for a politician.

I do not care as much WHY some politicians may be against gay marriage or believe in laws that limit or ban a woman’s right to choose abortion. I care THAT they have those political beliefs. And the information that they will use their political power to work against civil rights that are meaningful to me is the information that influences my vote against them. 

All I hear when I hear anyone – on my side of the political spectrum or not – labeling someone else’s faith as “crazy” is intolerant dogmatic mud-slinging and a lack of political focus.

The more liberals engage in this kind of egoism and intolerance about politicians of faith – condescending to certain beliefs but giving other more mainstream or “acceptable” beliefs an honorable mention – the more they fail to uphold their very desire to separate Church and State.

I will point out where the conversation about religion and politics seems relevant to me. When a politician herself brings her religious rhetoric into her discussion of political decision-making and/or makes it clear she lacks intellectual and emotional boundaries between her religion and her politics, we as voters need to inquire about her political beliefs in light of the personal and private religious beliefs she herself has interwoven with her public and political ones. It seemed the hosts of DoubleX started to discuss this matter, but kept falling back into the gutter of calling Ms. Bachmann "nutsoid."

I might ask these questions of a politician who brings a private personal religious belief such as, say, Christian Dominionism into her public political agenda: What is your approach to foreign affairs with nations that are non-Christian? What is your view on the peace process in Israel and how do you intend to engage with the Palestinians and work to ensure their safety and rights? What is your view on the civil rights of non-Christians in the United States?

I refer you now to a quotation from Ms. Bachmann from February of 2010 in front of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Los Angeles. This is excerpted from her response to a question regarding her view on the United States’ connection to Israel:

I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States . . . [W]e have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play. And my husband and I are both Christians, and we believe very strongly the verse from Genesis [Genesis 12:3], we believe very strongly that nations also receive blessings as they bless Israel. It is a strong and beautiful principle. 

Pay attention to the answers to these types of questions and judge the merit of her policy; but reserve your judgment about the merit of her religion.

If a politician continues to bring her private, personal religious rhetoric into her answers to questions about matters of State, don’t waste your time judging her religious views. Recognize that she is apparently incapable of separating Church and State in her approach to government, and if you believe in such a separation, don’t vote for her. Stay on message, fellow liberals. Don’t get derailed by the patches of mud on the stump speech trail that you could sling.

We need not evaluate politicians based on the plausibility of their religious beliefs. In reaction to Ms. Bachmann’s quotation above, I do not judge her brand of Christianity; I judge her inability to separate her religious beliefs from her approach to foreign policy with Israel. And I furthermore disagree with her “bond” with Israel, to the apparent exclusion of consideration of the concerns and rights of Palestinians.

Fellow liberals, we need to be the bigger people in this conversation about politics and faith and find ways to remain ever-vigilant about the separation of Church and State. We can successfully support our causes by engaging in discussions about the causes, not by judging what kind of God someone prays to. If we are going to claim that someone’s religious beliefs should have no bearing on gay rights, we cannot in the next breath lower ourselves to label a politician’s religious beliefs crazy, as though that’s a valid political debate.

Let us not find ourselves two steps away from an argument about the existence of God; let us be tolerant of religion while we are incisive about civil and legal matters of State.

Barack Obama has claimed to be a Christian. This typically would mean he believes Jesus is the Son of God. Who is to say where the line of “crazy” stops and starts, and who gets to decide?  If it were up to an Atheist, maybe Obama’s crazy. If it were up to a Jew, maybe the Atheist and Obama are both crazy. If it were up to a Muslim, maybe all of the above are crazy. Assuming religious intolerance is doled out equally, of course.

If Obama prays to God every night and believes that those prayers help him fight for women’s rights, more power to him. But I don’t care what he does in his private life, on his knees or not. I care what decisions he makes in his public one, on his feet; because that is what actually affects me as a citizen during his administration.

Similarly, I don’t care what Bachmann does on Sundays. 

I care that in 2003, as a Minnesota State Senator, she proposed a constitutional amendment in Minnesota to bar the state from legally recognizing gay marriage. I care that she supports state and federal constitutional amendments barring gay marriage and legal equivalents. I care that as a U.S. Congresswoman, she voted yes to prohibit the use of federal funds for Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio.

I care that in 2008 she co-sponsored the Credit and Debit Card Receipt Clarification Act. I care that she voted against the federal financial sector bailout in 2008. I care that she voted no on regulating the sub-prime mortgage industry in 2007. I care that in 2011 she voted no to raising the debt ceiling.

I care that in 2008 she supported more exploration of oil and natural gas in ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf. I care that she voted yes on barring the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases in 2011. I care that she voted no on enforcing limits on carbon dioxide global warming pollution in 2009.  

I care that she wants to eliminate the federal minimum wage. I care that she wants to phase out Social Security and Medicare. I care that she co-sponsored the Right to Life Act, seeking to grant the “pre-born” equal protection as persons under the 14th Amendment. I care that she wanted to keep Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell in 2010.

I care that in 2007 she voted no on prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation. I care that she voted yes to expand the Patriot Act. I care that she voted no on the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. I care that she voted no on the Stem Cell Research Act of 2007.

And I care that she appears incapable of separating her religious beliefs from her political decision-making. The two seem so deeply intertwined when she speaks – especially when she speaks candidly. I see a great failure in the separation of Church and State in Michele Bachmann. 

That is not the fault of her religion; that is the fault of her mind.

There is plenty the American people need to know and understand about Michele Bachmann. Where she spends her Sundays is not on the list of Bachmann’s political decisions that I need to know about. Focusing on labeling what kind of God she prays to, what Church she attends, how often, and what the intricacies are of her brand of faith detracts from the major political issues that should matter to voters. Anyone could make the same political decisions she has made believing in a totally different religion or none at all.

What I care about is how she has and will represent the United States of America as a governing politician. And because I disagree with most of the choices she has made, both in her State Senate position and as a Congresswoman in the U.S. House, she will likely never have my support at any level of government. At the end of the day, all that matters to me is what she does in political office. If that seems unjust, illegal or unconstitutional to me – as, for example, her boundary management around her religious beliefs certainly seems to me - that is why she does not get my vote, why I’ll speak out against her, and why I hope you will, too.