35 Sermon Illustrations on Discrimination

You have heard of South Africa's "apartheid" policy. Here is how it began: in churches. In 1828, a Malaysian slave brought her dark-skinned husband to church there. The official teaching of the Dutch Reformed Church was that no one should be discriminated against concerning communion. But some of the whites were offended that this man would be sharing the Lord's Supper with them. The leaders of the church knew these whites were "weak" in knowledge, but quoted 1 Corinthians 8:13, and ordered the dark-skinned man to stay away.

The essential issue here was not discomfort during communion, but the exclusion of a person "for whom Christ died." Paul would never agree with what they did.

Racial harmony in the Church paints a living picture of the gospel.

1. The first step: admit racism exists.

a. It's not just a white thing.

2. The second step: submit to God.

3. The third step: commit.

a. Risk friendship.

b. Find a foxhole.

“I have a dream,” declared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he addressed a crowd of several hundred thousand gathered on the Mall around the Lincoln Memorial. The date was August 28, 1963, and America was a cauldron of social unrest.

Civil rights leaders had called for the March on Washington in order to force the nation to deal with the so-called “race problem.” As the event drew to a close, all eyes were on the final speaker. The crowd standing in Washington's sweltering heat waited for the man they knew would be the “closer” of the event.

Most Americans recognized the name, face, and voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. He had appeared on the nation's front pages and news broadcasts, having led major protests and movements in Montgomery, Birmingham, and other cities. And yet, King was an enigma to many white Americans. What would he say?

Interestingly, the most famous words of his speech were not included in his manuscript. King had arrived in Washington the day before and had prepared his speech in a room at the famous Willard Hotel. In “The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation,” author Drew D. Hansen provides a parallel text of Dr. King's manuscript and his actual words. When he reached the pinnacle of his oratory, King simply departed from his prepared text and launched his speech into history.

“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”

Dr. King spoke of a dream “that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.” More personally, “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

In the midst of a nation torn by racial strife and social unrest, Dr. King painted an indelible picture of America as it could be and should be. His oratory was soaring, his imagery was vivid, and his cause was right. His cadences, inflections, and biblical allusions gave the speech its memorable structure. His powerful argument gave the speech its moral weight. The speech is as much a part of our national memory as Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Speaking to a generation poised to reject the American dream as a lie, Dr. King challenged them to make it their own. He rejected claims that America could never be reformed or called to its moral senses.

We do well to look back to 1963 and remember the reality. In the South, Jim Crow laws enforced segregation. Separate motels, restaurants, schools, and water fountains marked the moral landscape. In the North, the absence of Jim Crow laws did not mean that the races were integrated. North and South, black and white Americans inhabited different worlds. African-Americans were routinely denied access to accommodations, higher education, and the voting booth.

Those standing on the nation's Mall that day could not have known that years of struggle, frustration, violence, and tragedy lay ahead. Observing America in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “I do not imagine that the white and black race will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere.” His words proved an understatement.

Obstructionists attempted to block racial progress at every turn. Some white Americans just could not abide the idea of racial equality and full integration. On the other hand, Stanford University professor Shelby Steele traces how many of the civil rights leaders traded moral consciousness for racial consciousness, and abandoned the vision of racial equality for identity politics.

Still, America is a very different nation now. Racial discrimination is prohibited by law. Statements of prejudice are now socially unthinkable and politically incorrect. Black America can now claim the nation's Secretary of State and the world's leading golfer. Poverty still holds many in its grip, but the majority of African-Americans are in the middle class. Nevertheless, much ground remains to be recovered.

Southern conservatives bear a special burden, especially as Christians. I was not yet four years old on August 28, 1963. I have no memory of hearing Dr. King deliver his famous address. A white boy raised in the South, I had not seen any black persons at close hand. I had seen black workers, field hands, and children, but all at a distance. I had no black friends, no black neighbors, and saw no black faces at school or at church. To the best of my knowledge, I attended segregated schools until the fifth grade.

Later, living in a major metropolitan area, I attended integrated middle high schools with hundreds of black students. I came to know black teenagers at school, work, Boy Scouts, and other activities. I considered several of these as friends, but I never really entered their lives. It now dawns on me that I have no idea where they may be living, or what they may be doing.

Now, I know many African-Americans as cherished friends and treasured colleagues. I cannot imagine a world in which this is not normal, nor can our children. But honesty compels me to admit that this is more because my black friends have entered my world, than that I have entered theirs.

Christians must begin with the affirmation that all human beings are equally created in the image of God. But we also realize that we are sinners, and sin is the fundamental problem on the issue of race. Sin is so interwoven in our lives and institutional structures that we often cannot even see it. The only real remedy for the problem of racial prejudice is the transforming power of the Lord Jesus Christ. His atonement for sin is the only cure, and the only real picture of true racial reconciliation is that found in Revelation 7:9-12, where we read of the redeemed people of God as “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the Lamb.” The Lamb will make us one.

There is much work to do. We struggle in a fallen world until Jesus comes. By God's grace, we know that real progress is possible and that we are accountable. The church must show the world that the new community of Jesus is called to demonstrate His glory in calling us together.

August 28, 1963 seems like a very long time ago. We still do not know what to do with Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a complex person, and the cracks in his personal character have become more evident over time. We admire his courage and the clarity of his conviction, even as we are troubled by his flirtations with liberal theology. We simply do not know what he may have done or how he would have led, had he not been assassinated in 1968. We cannot fully enter into the mind of any man -- much less a man who died nearly four decades ago.

This much is clear. When Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke that day from the Lincoln Memorial, he demonstrated true moral courage and spoke as a prophet. His dream was the right dream. His dream must be our dream. Our response to that dream reveals the true content of our character.

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R. Albert Mohler Jr. is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. This column first appeared in his weblog at www.Crosswalk.com.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #19122]

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was a great Afro-American educator. He organized the famous Tuskegee Institute, a school for Afro-Americans, at Tuskegee, Alabama. He was the school's first president.

Washington was born in slavery at Hales Fort, Virginia. Although he attended a mission school, he was largely self-educated. Few people have influenced the black race as much as did Washington.

On one occasion Washington was invited to give an address in a large city. Hailing a cab, Washington asked the driver to take him to the auditorium where Washington was to speak. But the white driver refused because Washington was black.

Patiently addressing the prejudiced driver, Washington said: "All right, then, if you will get in the passenger seat I will drive you to the auditorium."

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Jack Finegan, "At Wit's End," Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1963, page 74.

When Alicia Pedreira's co-workers first told her they'd seen her picture at the Kentucky State Fair, she didn't know what they were talking about. Then she figured it out, and set in motion events that could determine the shape of religious liberty in the twenty-first century.

In the photograph her co-workers saw, Pedreira, wearing a tank top that identified her as a lesbian, was being embraced by another woman. This was a problem because Pedreira's employer was the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children. Shortly afterwards, Pedreira was fired because, her employer said, a "homosexual lifestyle is contrary to Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children core values."

At the urging of friends, and with the support of the ACLU, Pedreira filed suit against the Baptist Homes for Children, alleging that her firing was an act of illegal discrimination. She maintains that if the government can't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, then Baptist Homes, which receives 75 percent of its funding from government sources, shouldn't be able to do so, either. But the case -- which is expected to come to trial later this year -- will affect more than religious nonprofits in Kentucky.

Pedreira's lawyers say that if they win, they will then go after the parts of the 1996 "Charitable Choice" law, passed by Congress, which allows groups to make "[adherence] to the religious practice of the organization" a condition of employment.

The ACLU isn't the only group taking aim at the religious freedom of religious nonprofits. Liberal groups have urged the President to eliminate what they call "government-funded discrimination" in his Faith Based Initiative.

Of course, there's no serious question that Christian nonprofits would discriminate on the basis of race or nationality. What's being called "discrimination" is objections to homosexual or extra-marital heterosexual sex. The ACLU and others believe that's contrary to the principles of the sexual revolution.

If Pedreira and her allies prevail, an unmistakable message will have been sent: Sexual freedom will always trump religious freedom. And the only way that believers will be allowed a place in American public life is if they're willing to disregard the moral teachings of their faith.

It's hard to overstate how perverse this situation really is. It stands the whole idea of religious freedom on its head. If believers are disqualified from public life because we make moral judgments based on what we believe, then what's the point of the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment?

Equally perverse is what will happen to those being served by Christian nonprofits. The President's Faith-Based Initiatives is already under fire from Christian groups who fear that public funding may compromise their beliefs. Cases like this one only reinforce those misgivings and encourage churches to withdraw into a safe little circle. So then who will do the work these Christian groups are doing? The ACLU? The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force? Don't count on it.

That's why we need to let our neighbors know what is at stake. It's freedom, and it's helping those in need; it's not discrimination that's at issue here. Judges, remember, read the newspaper and often react to public pressure. So we need to rally support with our neighbors for our position -- before the courts set in motion something that will leave all of us a little less free and a lot worse off.

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For further reference:

Hopgood, Mei-Ling. "Bush Faith-Based Initiative Troubling: Gays Fear It May Promote Discrimination." Dayton Daily News, 8 April 2001; p. 1A.

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Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Hear the word “courage,” and what comes to mind? White crosses covering Arlington National Cemetery? A firefighter entering a burning building? A single mother laboring at two jobs to provide for her family?

Courage comes packaged in a variety of forms and performs on a myriad of stages. In a very real sense, courage is in the eye of the beholder.

For those who view freedom and equality as priceless ideals, courage is personified by a petite black woman whose award-winning performance occurred almost 50 years ago. And, though she died recently, her performance lives on.

Rosa Parks, the catalyst for the civil rights movement, died at her home in Detroit Oct. 24. She was 92 years old. Her courageous moment took place the afternoon of Dec. 1, 1955, on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

Montgomery’s Jim Crow laws for the public bus system were, at best, humiliating. Black riders were required to pay their fare to the driver, exit and re-board through the bus’s rear door -- that is, if the bus driver let them on at all.

“[M]any times, even if you did that [paid the fare], you might not get on the bus at all,” Parks recalled. “They’d shut the door, drive off, and leave you standing there.”

In 1943, Parks was even forced off a bus because she entered through the front door and not the rear.

Although 75 percent of passengers were black, the front four rows of seats were always reserved for whites. Behind these seats was a middle section that blacks could use only if there was no white demand. However, if just one white passenger needed a seat in the middle row, all the blacks in that section had to move.

In December 1955, at the end of a day’s work as a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus. She took a seat in the first row of the “colored section.”

After Parks was seated, the driver demanded that she and three other blacks move so that a lone white man could sit. Three of them complied, but Rosa Parks refused.

Recalling the incident for a public television series on the civil rights movement, Parks said, “When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up and I said, ‘No, I’m not.’”

When the bus driver told her he would call the police if she would not give up her seat, Parks replied simply, “You may do that.”

In her autobiography, “My Story,” Parks wrote: “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired that I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

For Rosa Parks, being asked again to give up her seat on the bus was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

For the civil rights movement it was the tipping point -- the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point, the point when everyday things reach epidemic proportions.

Like Parks, blacks all over Montgomery –- all over the South, all over America -- were tired of giving in to unjust laws.

Parks was arrested on a Thursday. The ensuing Monday the Montgomery bus boycott began. It lasted 381 days and resulted in the desegregation of the bus system. Eventually, Parks’ case resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that segregated bus service was unconstitutional.

On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks became the spark that ignited the torch of the civil rights movement.

“At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this,” Parks said decades after the incident. “It was just a day like any other. The only thing that made it significant was the masses of people that joined in.”

I cannot imagine the courage it took to ignore the bus driver’s demand. At the time blacks were intimidated, beaten and killed simply because of their skin color.

I cannot comprehend the courage it took to challenge the institutionalized racism of the South. Parks and her husband lost their jobs and received death threats due to her actions.

While I may not be able truly to fathom it, I can marvel and be inspired by Parks’ courageous action.

“Courage is contagious,” Billy Graham once said. “When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.”

Through the eyes of this beholder, not only does Rosa Parks epitomize the famed evangelist’s statement, she also personifies courage.

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If I told you that someone's religious freedom was being violated or they were being persecuted, you would immediately think that I was talking about what's happening in China or Vietnam. And while these are certainly the most egregious examples, religious freedom is also being trampled in a place that is, for me at least, closer to home: Massachusetts.

In Massachusetts, adoption agencies must be licensed by the state and adhere to the state's anti-discrimination laws, including laws prohibiting discrimination against gay couples.

This puts Catholic Charities in a bind. The Vatican has called gay adoptions “gravely immoral” and said that they do “violence” to children. By “violence” it means taking advantage of the children's “dependency” to place them “in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.”

At the same time, Catholic Charities wants to help children in need of a home. The most obvious way out of the dilemma is an exemption from the law, what's commonly called a “conscience clause,” which is done all the time. So, the bishops of Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Fall River hired a law firm to “explore legal and political strategies for opting out of gay adoptions.”

Last week, they got the bad news: Governor Mitt Romney informed them that “he was not authorized to give such an exemption.” And State Representative Eugene L. O'Flaherty told them that the legislature was unlikely to enact such an exemption.

This leaves the bishops, who, at least nominally, control Catholic Charities, with two choices: Allow gay adoptions or get out of the adoption business altogether.

Actually, there's a third option: Find ways around the law. Now, this is what the Worcester branch did. It refers prospective gay adopters to other agencies. But even this has prompted state officials to investigate the agency for possibly “flouting” the laws against discrimination.

Well, this all shouldn't really surprise anyone. What motivate regulations like this one isn't the interests of the children — it's the interests of adults. Truth be told, Catholic Charities and other faith-based groups care a whole lot more about the children than those who enforce these kinds of rules.

It also shouldn't surprise us that even in the most Catholic state in the United States, Massachusetts, the legislators and government officials won't grant an exemption for religious groups. Legally and culturally, religion is increasingly being treated as a purely private affair whose teachings must yield to any so-called public purpose. You're free to believe what you want, of course, so long as it doesn't affect how you behave.

What's more, rules like the Massachusetts one embody a cynical calculation: The enforcers are betting that, in the end, the desire to help these kids will trump the desire to adhere to Catholic teaching.

In other words, it's a kind of hostage-taking: “You do what we say or you're going to risk the well-being of these kids.” Now, this characterization might outrage the supporters of the policy, but their outrage can't begin to compare to what Christians ought to feel, faced with such a cynical ploy.

Doing good should not require doing violence to your conscience. Apparently, officials in Massachusetts have forgotten this, which puts them in very bad company indeed when it comes to religious freedom.

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According to singer Elton John, organized religion fuels anti-homosexual discrimination and bias:

"I think religion has always tried to turn hatred toward gay people. Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays.

"From my point of view, I would ban organized religion. Organized religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate."

Last weekend, the WASHINGTON POST reported on a new survey by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. The survey found that “53 percent of its sample of 1,200 college and university faculty members said they have ‘unfavorable’ feelings toward evangelical Christians.” That’s far higher than the unfavorable ratings for any other religious group — the next highest was Mormons at 33 percent, followed by Muslims at 22 percent.

The American Association of University Professors tries to explain away the statistic as a result of how professors feel about Christian political engagement or Christian views on science. But as pollster Gary Tobin counters, “If a majority of faculty said they did not feel warmly about Muslims or Jews or Latinos or African Americans, there would be an outcry.... No one would say, ‘The reason they feel this way is because they don’t like the politics of blacks or the politics of Jews.”

Now I need to stress that I’m not crying “persecution.” When Christians in some countries are being killed for their faith, we should thank God every day that we can exercise our freedom of religion. Besides, as my colleague Roberto Rivera points out on our blog, THE POINT, it was Jesus Himself who told us, “Blessed are you when they insult you. . .because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”

So there’s not much surprising here. But it’s still a valid concern. Christian college students have a right to the same respect and consideration from their professors as every other student, and when the professor judges them solely on the basis of their religion, it can mean serious consequences for their education and future job prospects. Much less what it says about the entire university system.

The POST cites a Missouri State University student who, when she wouldn’t complete an assignment in support of same-sex adoptions, “was hauled before a faculty panel on a charge of discriminating against gays.” The student filed suit and the university settled. But not all cases end this well. And what about Christians trying to keep their jobs as professors?

But the problem goes beyond how individuals are treated within the system. Colleges and universities play an enormous role in shaping the thinking of every generation, and professors know it.

Is it any wonder, then, that our universities are producing generations of people who consider Christianity anti-intellectual at best, and oppressive at worst? And remember, the influence of our universities goes way beyond the campus gates and the classroom. The very same professors who distrust evangelical Christianity are publishing enormously influential reports, studies, and books that make headlines, influence political leaders, and shape our culture in profound ways.

So what are we as Christians do? First, prepare our young people for what lies ahead. Visit our website, BreakPoint.org, for Christian worldview materials that can help — especially if you have high school teens, our curriculum called REWIRED. Second, we need to encourage more Christians to pursue academic careers. Third, we need not be discouraged. We know that Truth will win out — even in the halls of academia.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

In the past decade India has enjoyed an economic boom fueled, in large part, by trade in services with the United States. Sadly, many Indians, however, have not benefited from the boom, chief among them the Dalits, or, as they used to be called, the “untouchables.”

On October 2, Mohandas Gandhi’s birthday, 25,000 Dalits from across India set out on a Gandhi-style protest march to New Delhi. They protested their continuing marginalization within Indian society, which is especially intolerable in the midst of unprecedented economic growth.

It is difficult for any American to imagine how marginalized the Dalits are. They are considered to be less-than-human by much of Indian society. Because of this, they are relegated to “the most squalid jobs,” as Stephanie Giry put it in Foreign Affairs magazine — for example, cleaning human waste.

As one Dalit woman told the BBC, she cleaned toilets because that was the only way she could feed her children. The woman’s daughter said that she “tried looking for a job in a school or nursing home, but no one would take” her. “The first question they always ask is your caste-system.”

The Indian government has enacted anti-discrimination laws and created programs to compensate for this discrimination. Yet the Dalits’ place within the “Hindu religious and social hierarchy” limits the impact of these laws. More than 2,000 years of culture and religion often trump the law.

Little wonder that millions of Dalits have sought to escape that hierarchy by converting to Christianity. According to the Wall Street Journal, the “overwhelming majority” of India’s Christians are Dalits. [see #34858]

This, in turn, gives their Hindu neighbors and local government two reasons to discriminate against them: their caste and then their Christian faith.

In fact, if a Dalit converts to Christianity, he risks losing whatever little anti-discrimination protection and benefits are offered to Dalits — benefits that, however, can mean a decent chance at life.

Despite the risk, Dalits continue to convert — an estimated 25 million so far. Because of this double discrimination, they often have to practice their faith in secret. As one Dalit teacher told the Wall Street Journal, “If [officials] ever find out I’m a Christian, I will lose my position.” He and other Dalit Christians are forced to live a kind of double life: appearing to be a Hindu in public but limiting expressions of their faith to their homes and churches.

The situation in what’s called the “largest democracy in the world” reminds us that “democracy” and elections are not enough — there needs to be a commitment to the “first freedom”: freedom of religion. There needs to be a recognition that all freedoms grow out of what one of our founders James Madison called “the act of freedom by which each responds to the call of his Creator.” And it is time to start reminding India that business-as-usual with us does not include continuing to treat our brothers as “untouchable.”

So this Sunday, on the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, remember to pray for the Dalits and our persecuted brethren around the world. And this year, resolve with me to pray for the persecuted Church not just on this designated day, but year-round, “without ceasing.”

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

In July 2008, Ian Martin needed a place to stay. That should have worked well for Douglas McCue, the owner of the CornerStone Bed and Breakfast.

Well, maybe it would have in another place, time, and culture.

Martin is blind and uses a seeing-eye dog. That wouldn’t be a problem, except that B&B owner McCue “suffers from acute sinusitis aggravated by exposure to canines.” Thus, no matter how much he wanted to rent Martin a room, his health wouldn’t permit it. That should have ended the matter.

Except that, as Canadian columnist Mark Steyn notes, this was Ontario, home to the Human Rights Commission. Martin filed a complaint and demanded compensation that “started at two grand and quickly escalated into five figures.” Eventually, Martin paid a $700 fine, issued a perfunctory apology — and then closed his bed and breakfast.

What happened to McCue was outrageous, but it could have been worse. He could have been sued for refusing to allow a horse to stay in one of his rooms.

Earlier this year, the Chicago Tribune ran a story about a blind Muslim woman in Dearborn, Michigan, who rides the bus with a seeing-eye miniature horse named “Cali.” That’s because dogs — even seeing-eye dogs — can, quote, “violate [Muslim] ritual purity.”

What if the woman had visited Perth, Ontario, and needed a place to stay? Could McCue have refused her a room? After all, while a horse is a horse of course, of course, it’s also an expression of her rights as both a disabled person and a Muslim.

For that matter, would the fact that McCue is gay factor into the whole “rights” equation? Could she, as a Muslim, ban a homosexual bed and breakfast owner from his own home? Or what if the blind man, Martin, had shown up with his dog at the same time? Could she force him to leave?

What’s going on here is more than political correctness run amok. As Mark Steyn rightly says, it’s part of ongoing process wherein government is seen “as the only valid mediator of social relations.”

What Steyn characterizes as “invented rights of near parodic absurdity” is the logical outcome of what Harvard law professor Mary Anne Glendon calls “rights talk.” According to Glendon, the emphasis on “rights” promotes “unrealistic expectations” and “heightens social conflict.”

That’s because it condones accepting the benefits of living in a democratic society without accepting the “corresponding personal and civic responsibilities.” In a culture dominated by “rights talk,” we engage each other not as fellow-citizens or neighbors, but as autonomous rights-bearers.

When our rights inevitably come into conflict, the only recourse we have is government — the courts, human rights tribunals, or laws that favor one kind of rights-bearer over another. Coercion replaces compromise, “mutual forbearance,” and, ultimately, “peaceful coexistence.”

As Steyn notes, in the last well-publicized Human Rights Commission case involving a gay man and a bed and breakfast, a Christian couple lost their business. This time the gay man lost his.

Eventually, our dependence on “rights talk” will cost us all something much more valuable than a room to rent: our freedom.

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Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

It takes remarkably little for children to develop in-group preferences. Rebecca Bigler, a professor at the University of Texas, ran an experiment in three preschool classrooms, where 4- and 5-year-olds were lined up and given T-shirts. Half the kids were randomly given blue T-shirts, half red. The children wore the shirts for three weeks. During that time, the teachers never mentioned their colors and never grouped the kids by shirt color.

The kids didn’t segregate in their behavior. They played with each other freely at recess. But when asked which color team was better to belong to, or which team might win a race, they chose their own color. They believed they were smarter than the other color. “The Reds never showed hatred for Blues,” Bigler observed. “It was more like, ‘Blues are fine, but not as good as us.’” When Reds were asked how many Reds were nice, they’d answer, “All of us.” Asked how many Blues were nice, they’d answer, “Some.” Some of the Blues were mean, and some were dumb — but not the Reds.

Bigler’s experiment seems to show how children will use whatever you give them to create divisions — seeming to confirm that race becomes an issue only if we make it an issue. So why does Bigler think it’s important to talk to children about race as early as the age of 3?

Her reasoning is that kids are developmentally prone to in-group favoritism; they’re going to form these preferences on their own. Children naturally try to categorize everything, and the attribute they rely on is that which is the most clearly visible.

We might imagine we’re creating color-blind environments for children, but differences in skin color or hair or weight are like differences in gender — they’re plainly visible. Even if no teacher or parent mentions race, kids will use skin color on their own, the same way they use T-shirt colors. Bigler contends that children extend their shared appearances much further — believing that those who look similar to them enjoy the same things they do. Anything a child doesn’t like thus belongs to those who look the least similar to him. The spontaneous tendency to assume your group shares characteristics — such as niceness, or smarts — is called essentialism.

Within the past decade or so, developmental psychologists have begun a handful of longitudinal studies to determine exactly when children develop bias. Phyllis Katz, then a professor at the University of Colorado, led one such study — following 100 black children and 100 white children for their first six years. When the kids turned 3, Katz showed them photographs of other children and asked them to choose whom they’d like to have as friends. Of the white children, 86 percent picked children of their own race. When the kids were 5 and 6, Katz gave these children a small deck of cards, with drawings of people on them. Katz told the children to sort the cards into two piles any way they wanted. Only 16 percent of the kids used gender to split the piles. But 68 percent of the kids used race to split the cards, without any prompting. In reporting her findings, Katz concluded: “I think it is fair to say that at no point in the study did the children exhibit the Rousseau type of color-blindness that many adults expect.”

The point Katz emphasizes is that this period of our children’s lives, when we imagine it’s most important to not talk about race, is the very developmental period when children’s minds are forming their first conclusions about race.

Nicole Mamo, 48, tried to place a help-wanted advertisement in Thetford, Norfolk, England. The owner of an employment agency, Mamo said applicants for the 5.80-pound/hour (US $9.35/hour) position of cleaner “must be very reliable and hard-working.” But the Thetford Job Centre refused the ad. “She said it was because they could have cases against them for discriminating against unreliable people,” Mamo said.

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London Telegraph

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A similar story that ran on June 6, 2000:

Jason Pitt and Bill Wood of Walsall, England, wanted to hire some new staff for their business. They called the local government-run jobs center to place an ad, but the center wouldn’t allow its wording: they wanted to advertise for “hardworking and enthusiastic” employees. “They told us You can’t put that, it’s discrimination’,” Wood said. A Walsall Jobcentre manager spokesman said the ad violated the Disability and Discrimination Act. Secretary of State David Blunkett personally intervened and ordered the agency to back down.

The number “42” is sacred in Major League Baseball. On April 15, 1997, it became the only number retired throughout the entire league. It is prominently displayed in every Major League park. Forty-two is synonymous with the man who most famously wore the number on his jersey -- Jackie Robinson. Beginning in 2004, Major League Baseball permanently named April 15th Jackie Robinson Day each year, marking the day in 1947 when Robinson, a 28-year-old rookie, courageously ran onto Ebbets Field transforming one of the most sacred spaces in American culture.

As I write, baseball fans are eagerly anticipating the release of “42,” the biographical film about Robinson’s monumental life and historic achievement. The lionization of Robinson as a significant hero of civil rights in America is heartening but there is an oft-forgotten hero of the saga. Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodger president who signed Robinson, were equally indispensible partners in what Rickey deemed the “great experiment.”

Rickey meticulously planned and shaped the master narrative for integrating the national pastime but it could not have been accomplished without a unique player of great ability, personal courage, and unfathomable self-control. Rickey said of Robinson, “God was with me when I picked Jackie. I don’t think any other man could have done what he did those first two or three years.” And Robinson would say that in his estimation Rickey did more for African Americans “than any white man since Abraham Lincoln.”

It is easy to miss the historical magnitude of that moment in 1947 for the advance of civil rights in America. Consider that when Rickey signed Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the color barrier in baseball, it was a year before President Truman ordered the US military desegregated, seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, eight years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, 10 years before President Eisenhower used the US military to enable the Little Rock Nine to attend Central High School in Arkansas, 16 years before Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I have a Dream” speech, 17 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and 18 years before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Looking back on his role in the integration of baseball Robinson concluded, “I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey’s drama and that I was only a principal actor.” Robinson’s overstated, self-deprecating, observation is helpful in remembering that breaking the color barrier in baseball did not begin with the “great experiment.” Mr. Rickey’s drama began with his family’s Midwestern Baptist and Wesleyite Methodist roots. His father was described as a “pious, devout, religious man ... a genuine New Testament Christian” and his mother is said to have taught Branch countless Scripture stories even before he could read. Biographer Murray Polner described Rickey as a conservative evangelical Christian whose religious faith was the decisive factor in his commitment to racial equality. Rickey would often repeat the family motto he learned as a child, “Make first things first, seek the Kingdom of God, and make yourself an example.”

Biographer Jimmy Breslin argues, “It was Rickey who broke the color line in baseball” and his motive was that “he thought it was God’s work.” Breslin unflinchingly states, that because of the consequences, Rickey accomplished “the single most important act in the history of this nation.” Rickey said, “I believe a man can play baseball as coming to him from a call of God.” Looking back on Rickey’s life and legacy, one would have to conclude that he viewed being a baseball executive as a call of God as well.

Branch Rickey was a baseball man to the core. He loved the game from childhood. Playing professionally for the St. Louis Browns, Rickey told a reporter his goal in life was “to be both a consistent Christian and a consistent ballplayer.” By all accounts, he was successful in the former but his professional playing career was less than stellar. He possessed a career batting average of .239 with three home runs in three seasons and as a catcher he holds the record for allowing 13 stolen bases in a single nine-inning game. In 10 years as a Major League Baseball manager, Rickey accumulated a pedestrian 597 wins and 664 losses.

In 1926, Rickey moved exclusively into his role as a baseball executive that would lead into his induction in the baseball Hall of Fame. Rickey-led teams won four World Series championships in his 29 years. He revolutionized baseball and gained a competitive edge over other clubs by his innovation of using farm clubs to develop players for the big league club. Rickey was known as a Bible-quoting, tight-fisted Republican, a fierce competitor, and a shrewd negotiator whom players referred to as “El Cheapo.” It was said that Rickey’s everyday speech resembled a sermon and second baseman Eddie Stankey once retorted after negotiating his contract with Rickey, “I got a million dollars’ worth of free advice and a very small raise.”

In 1903, Rickey was the 21-year-old head baseball coach at Ohio Wesleyan University when his Christian conviction collided head on with his love for the great game. Charles Thomas was recruited by Rickey to play catcher and was the only black player on the team. OWU traveled to South Bend, Indiana, for a game against Notre Dame. When they arrived the hotel clerk refused to allow Thomas to stay because of a whites-only policy. Rickey persuaded the hotel to allow Thomas to go to his room and later requested a cot. That evening Rickey found his catcher sobbing and rubbing his hands and arms convulsively while muttering, “It’s my skin. If only I could wipe off the color they could see I am man like everybody else!” Rickey told him to “Buck up!” and said, “We will beat this one day!” but later noted, he never felt so helpless and vowed at that time that he would do whatever he could to end such humiliation.

As an executive for the St. Louis Cardinals, Rickey unsuccessfully pushed for an end to segregated seating at the park and tested the waters for racial integration of the team but feared that a premature attempt in the wrong place would set back the cause. When Rickey left the Cardinals for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1942 he immediately took the initiative to integrate baseball. The cultural moment and the location of the Dodgers in Brooklyn made it an opportune time for Rickey to act. Americans of all races were fighting in World Ward II against racist ideology in Europe while racist Jim Crow laws were in place back home. The tragic irony was slowly becoming apparent to many Americans. In Brooklyn, Rickey was in a place where he could make a credible case to ownership of potential profits if they were the first club to sign black players. Rickey used his business acumen to serve his conviction that segregation was morally indefensible.

In March 1945, Branch Rickey met at Joe’s restaurant with Red Barber, the beloved Dodgers broadcaster, to tell him of his plan to sign a black man to play for the Dodgers. Barber was initially appalled but recalls Rickey telling him that he had to act because he had heard Charles Thomas crying for 41 years. At that time, he did not know who that player would be but later that summer scouts had narrowed the list down to a handful of players. It seems the initial plan was to sign several players at once but instead Rickey settled on Jackie Robinson.

In their first meeting, Aug. 28, 1945, Rickey stunned Robinson with the news he wanted him to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He grilled him for hours and made him commit to three years of non-retaliation. Rickey read to him from Giovanni Papini’s book “Life of Christ” and pointed him to the biblical account of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. Rickey told Robinson, “We can’t fight our way through this, Robinson. We’ve got no army. There’s virtually nobody on our side. No owners. No umpires. Very few newspapermen. And I’m afraid many fans will be hostile. We’ll be in a tough position. We can win only if we convince the world that I’m doing this because you are a great ball player and a fine gentleman.”

Rickey believed that the right player, who was also the right person, full of moral courage, willing to commit to non-retaliation for three years -- except with his play on the field -- could end what he called an “odious injustice.” There is a sense in which Rickey laid out an incipient strategy that would be later utilized by Martin Luther King Jr. in the larger Civil Rights movement. Rickey said about signing Robinson, “I couldn’t face my God much longer knowing that His black creatures are held separate and distinct from His white creatures in the game that has given me all I own.”

In his excellent biography on Branch Rickey, Lee Lowenfish describes him in the sub-title as “Baseball’s Ferocious Gentlemen.” What an apt and powerful description. He was ferocious. Journalist John Chamberlain described Rickey as “one of the slyest men who ever lived, but in all fundamentals, a man of honor.” He was passionately driven to succeed and made no apologies for turning a profit in the process. Yet his aggression and fierceness were guided by his Christian conviction and worldview. His life embodied Jesus’ admonition to His disciples, sheep in the midst of wolves, to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

On November 13, 1965, Branch Rickey stepped to the podium to speak after having been inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. Baseball’s ferocious gentleman had left the hospital against the advice of his doctors because, as he often said, “it is better to die ten minutes sooner than to live doing nothing.” He rose to speak about a topic he had lived -- courage. He spoke of having objectives on which there is no price and began to tell the biblical story of Zaccheus, who he said, “Had the greatest amount of courage of any man in the Bible.” He did not get to finish telling about one of his favorite biblical characters because -- while still speaking -- he collapsed, and less than a month later died.

Perhaps adding one word to Lowenfish’s descriptive title of Rickey would prove helpful -- Baseball’s Ferocious Christian Gentleman. But I fear the moniker, “ferocious Christian gentleman” sounds oxymoronic in contemporary evangelical circles where manhood is often reduced to being a nice guy and God is envisioned as a kind of cosmic smiley face. Where Christian discipleship is cheapened to generic niceness, men pursue comfort and respectability in the place of self-sacrificial “great experiments” that demand ferocious Christian gentlemen.

Billy Graham said of Branch Rickey, “He was a man of deep piety and integrity -- that rare combination of a ‘man’s man’ and a Christian man, at the same time.” Here’s hoping Graham is wrong and the combination is not so rare, because our churches are in desperate need of some ferocious Christian gentlemen.

[Holwick: how anti-religious prejudice is fed by our way of thinking.]

Anti-Muslim sentiment in America and abroad has grown in recent years, especially in light of the gruesome acts of Muslim extremists in Iraq and Syria. It is important to try to understand the fear and confusion that some, perhaps even many, Americans have about Muslims and Islam.

For American Muslims and for those of us who see ourselves as progressive allies of a vibrant pluralistic society, this may feel like a step backwards. Based on other successful public education campaigns that I have developed, working to understand people’s fear is a critical first step to appealing to people’s better angels.

Fear: How our downstairs brain, which is focused on keeping us safe, makes us suspicious of others

First, it’s important to understand that fear is our brain’s way of keeping us (and our species) alive.

Fear is regulated in our downstairs brain – a part of our brain called the amygdala. The amygdala, at an evolutionary level, is the oldest part of our brain. It is responsible for innate reactions and impulses that we have about the world around us – especially things that might harm us.

When our reptilian ancestors were making their way through the world millions of years ago, their brains were focused on spotting things that were different, new or unfamiliar.

Today, our downstairs brains continue to be attuned to people and things that are different or unfamiliar to us. When we notice something new or unfamiliar, our brains begin to develop what my psychologist colleague, Dr. Phyllis Watts, calls a mental template.

Mental templates help our brains remember how to relate to different, new or unfamiliar things, especially those things that may pose a risk to us.

Now, for those of us who are not Muslim, but who have many American Muslim coworkers, friends and neighbors, we are more likely to have the types of experiences that allow us to see Muslims the way that we see others in our social circles – going about their lives raising families, working hard, giving to charity and contributing positively to the fabric of American life and culture.

Those who know few, if any, Muslims are likely developing a limited, highly flawed mental template of Muslims. That’s because mainstream news performs a type of shock and awe assault on their psyches.

Because of a gap of knowledge based on real-world experiences with American Muslims, many Americans likely construct an inaccurate mental template of Muslims.

With an inaccurate mental template, many Americans’ downstairs brains are highly activated. In other words, when they hear or read about Muslims in the news, fear is driving their impulses and reactions.

It’s important to know that when our amygdala has been activated, it can shut down or limit access to our upstairs brain – where empathy resides. It does this in order to respond to fear and our evolutionary focus on survival.

This makes it very difficult for them to “hear” the type of intellectual messages that are meant to counter the negative stereotypes their minds have constructed because of all of the negative “noise” in their downstairs brain.

Empathy: How our upstairs brain can appeal to our better angels

Empathy is the ability to understand and to imagine another person’s experience. In other words, it is the capacity to walk in another person’s shoes – including those who are different from us.

Empathy is critical to our efforts to counter a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in America because as my colleague, Phyllis Watts, often says, “empathy is a precursor to altruistic behavior” (a person doing something that benefits others even if it doesn’t benefit them).

In other words, empathy helps to appeal to what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature.”

The good news is that according to Roman Krznaric, author of Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution, 98% of humans are hardwired for empathy.

Great, so most of the world’s humans have the ability to understand or imagine other people’s perspectives – including what it must be like to be judged for the sins of others.

However, above, I just mentioned that it could be difficult for humans to even access their capacity to empathize if their amygdala is operating on overdrive.

There are several strategies to help to calm the downstairs brain so that we have access to empathy.

The first is to normalize or acknowledge the negative emotions that your audience is feeling. This may seem counter-intuitive. In fact, for those who are Muslim or those of us who admire, appreciate, love our Muslims neighbors, friends and colleagues, this may even feel icky.

Doing so, however, allows us to speak to our audiences in a way that allows them to be their better selves.

I’ve been in countless focus groups where I have been able to see how this helps to calm people down – their body language becoming noticeably more relaxed.

In my work to promote alternatives to school suspension for kids acting out in class or other minor acts of misbehavior, we understood that many teachers would be resistant to a new approach.

By simply sharing examples of other teachers who voiced the same misgivings, we named and normalized the anxiety they were feeling, which allowed them to listen to a message with a more open heart.

The second strategy is to surround them with familiarity. Neuroscientist Gregory Berns says, “familiarity calms the amygdala.”

Two sources of familiarity that work well: shared values and trusted messengers.

Change is possible

There is no doubt that this is hard work, but change is possible. Those who came before us have shown us the way. One king stands out in my mind. He said:

Martin Luther King, Jr. had amazing insights into human nature – what makes people tick and how you can shape positive perceptions of people who are different from you. He used that understanding to develop strategies to elicit empathy and lessen fear to do what seemed like the impossible – end Jim Crow segregation.

[Holwick: how anti-religious prejudice is fed by our way of thinking.]

Anti-Muslim sentiment in America and abroad has grown in recent years, especially in light of the gruesome acts of Muslim extremists in Iraq and Syria. It is important to try to understand the fear and confusion that some, perhaps even many, Americans have about Muslims and Islam.

For American Muslims and for those of us who see ourselves as progressive allies of a vibrant pluralistic society, this may feel like a step backwards. Based on other successful public education campaigns that I have developed, working to understand people’s fear is a critical first step to appealing to people’s better angels.

Fear: How our downstairs brain, which is focused on keeping us safe, makes us suspicious of others

First, it’s important to understand that fear is our brain’s way of keeping us (and our species) alive.

Fear is regulated in our downstairs brain – a part of our brain called the amygdala. The amygdala, at an evolutionary level, is the oldest part of our brain. It is responsible for innate reactions and impulses that we have about the world around us – especially things that might harm us.

When our reptilian ancestors were making their way through the world millions of years ago, their brains were focused on spotting things that were different, new or unfamiliar.

Today, our downstairs brains continue to be attuned to people and things that are different or unfamiliar to us. When we notice something new or unfamiliar, our brains begin to develop what my psychologist colleague, Dr. Phyllis Watts, calls a mental template.

Mental templates help our brains remember how to relate to different, new or unfamiliar things, especially those things that may pose a risk to us.

Now, for those of us who are not Muslim, but who have many American Muslim coworkers, friends and neighbors, we are more likely to have the types of experiences that allow us to see Muslims the way that we see others in our social circles – going about their lives raising families, working hard, giving to charity and contributing positively to the fabric of American life and culture.

Those who know few, if any, Muslims are likely developing a limited, highly flawed mental template of Muslims. That’s because mainstream news performs a type of shock and awe assault on their psyches.

Because of a gap of knowledge based on real-world experiences with American Muslims, many Americans likely construct an inaccurate mental template of Muslims.

With an inaccurate mental template, many Americans’ downstairs brains are highly activated. In other words, when they hear or read about Muslims in the news, fear is driving their impulses and reactions.

It’s important to know that when our amygdala has been activated, it can shut down or limit access to our upstairs brain – where empathy resides. It does this in order to respond to fear and our evolutionary focus on survival.

This makes it very difficult for them to “hear” the type of intellectual messages that are meant to counter the negative stereotypes their minds have constructed because of all of the negative “noise” in their downstairs brain.

Empathy: How our upstairs brain can appeal to our better angels

Empathy is the ability to understand and to imagine another person’s experience. In other words, it is the capacity to walk in another person’s shoes – including those who are different from us.

Empathy is critical to our efforts to counter a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in America because as my colleague, Phyllis Watts, often says, “empathy is a precursor to altruistic behavior” (a person doing something that benefits others even if it doesn’t benefit them).

In other words, empathy helps to appeal to what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature.”

The good news is that according to Roman Krznaric, author of Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution, 98% of humans are hardwired for empathy.

Great, so most of the world’s humans have the ability to understand or imagine other people’s perspectives – including what it must be like to be judged for the sins of others.

However, above, I just mentioned that it could be difficult for humans to even access their capacity to empathize if their amygdala is operating on overdrive.

There are several strategies to help to calm the downstairs brain so that we have access to empathy.

The first is to normalize or acknowledge the negative emotions that your audience is feeling. This may seem counter-intuitive. In fact, for those who are Muslim or those of us who admire, appreciate, love our Muslims neighbors, friends and colleagues, this may even feel icky.

Doing so, however, allows us to speak to our audiences in a way that allows them to be their better selves.

I’ve been in countless focus groups where I have been able to see how this helps to calm people down – their body language becoming noticeably more relaxed.

In my work to promote alternatives to school suspension for kids acting out in class or other minor acts of misbehavior, we understood that many teachers would be resistant to a new approach.

By simply sharing examples of other teachers who voiced the same misgivings, we named and normalized the anxiety they were feeling, which allowed them to listen to a message with a more open heart.

The second strategy is to surround them with familiarity. Neuroscientist Gregory Berns says, “familiarity calms the amygdala.”

Two sources of familiarity that work well: shared values and trusted messengers.

Change is possible

There is no doubt that this is hard work, but change is possible. Those who came before us have shown us the way. One king stands out in my mind. He said:

Martin Luther King, Jr. had amazing insights into human nature – what makes people tick and how you can shape positive perceptions of people who are different from you. He used that understanding to develop strategies to elicit empathy and lessen fear to do what seemed like the impossible – end Jim Crow segregation.

The breathtaking pace of the moral revolution now transforming Western cultures staggers belief. In the course of a single generation, the sexual morality that has survived for thousands of years is giving way to a radically different moral understanding. Just consider the couple in the United Kingdom who were recently found guilty of discrimination because they allowed only married couples to share a bed at their small hotel.

Peter and Hazelmary Bull own a bed and breakfast hotel in Cornwall. In September of 2008, a homosexual couple requested a single bed and was denied that accommodation by the Bulls. The couple sued, and this week a judge found the Bulls guilty of discrimination under Britain’s Equality Act of 2007.

What makes this case particularly troubling is the nature of the judge’s decision.

Judge Andrew Rutherford ruled that the Bulls would have to sacrifice their Christian convictions if they intend to own and manage their hotel. Mrs. Bull told the court, “We accept that the Bible is the holy living word of God and we endeavor to follow it as far as we are able.” In this specific case, it meant that the Bulls would restrict rooms with a double bed to married couples. They enforced this policy regardless of sexual orientation — a point acknowledged by the judge.

Nevertheless, Judge Rutherford stated: “It is inevitable that such laws will from time to time cut across deeply held beliefs of individuals and sections of society for they reflect the social attitudes and morals prevailing at the time that they are made.”

Affirming the swift reversal of public morality on the issue of homosexuality, the judge commented: “These laws have come into being because of changes in social attitudes. The standards and principles governing our behavior which were unquestioningly accepted in one generation may not be so accepted in the next.”

Further, “It is a very clear example of how social attitudes have changed over the years for it is not so very long ago that these beliefs of the defendants would have been those accepted as normal by society at large. Now it is the other way around.”

The judge, who is himself an influential member of the Church of England, accepted that the stance of the Bulls concerning marriage was “a perfectly orthodox Christian belief in the sanctity of marriage and the sinfulness of homosexuality.”

But, those beliefs will have to give way to the new cultural mandate of non-discrimination. This is the legal logic that has driven Christian charities in both the United States and Britain out of adoption and foster care work. Now, the Bulls are likely to close their hotel or get out of the business by some means.

The Telegraph [London] warned: “The right to hold religious beliefs, and to act in keeping with one’s faith, is being set against the right not to be offended — and is losing. This is a dispiriting trend in a free society.” Andrew Brown, a columnist at The Guardian {London], warned conservative Christians that the world has changed, both legally and morally.

The real bomb embedded within Judge Rutherford’s ruling is this sentence: “Whatever may have been the position in past centuries it is no longer the case that our laws must, or should automatically reflect the Judaeo-Christian position.”

There can be no doubt that this logic is fast taking hold in legal circles, pointing to a severe constriction of the rights of Christians to live by their own convictions. At the same time, this decision serves as yet another sign of how swiftly the moral revolution is happening all around us. When Judge Rutherford said that the moral consensus is now “the other way around,” he wrote that revolution into law.

The late Maurice Cowling, one of Britain’s most significant intellectuals of the twentieth century, argued that when the public influence of Christianity wanes, the space is not then filled with anything truly secular. Instead, some new religion takes the place of Christianity. In this case, the new religion is the religion of sexual anarchy.

The judge explicitly acknowledged the fact that the Bulls would be forced to act against conscience in order to comply with the ruling, and that the convictions held by the Bulls were the norm in British society, even in recent times. Fueled by this decision, the moral revolution marches on.

________

Owen Bowcott, “Gay Couple Wins Discrimination Case Against Christian Hoteliers,” The Guardian [London], Tuesday, January 18, 2011.

“The Law is Eroding Our Right to a Set of Beliefs,” The Telegraph, Tuesday, January 18, 2011.

Andrew Brown, “Why the Cornish Hotel Ruling Should Worry Conservative Christians,” The Guardian, Tuesday, January 18, 2011.

A small band of former homosexuals representing about 10 organizations stood on the steps of the Supreme Court in late July to demand recognition and equal rights under the Constitution. They protested the claim by homosexual activists that people with same-sex attractions cannot change.

“Anti-ex-gay extremists say that I do not exist -- that we don’t exist,” said Christopher Doyle, president of Voice of the Voiceless and Equality and Justice for All. “Tell that to my wife of seven years. Tell that to my three beautiful children.”

Some of the activists spent the morning in meetings on Capitol Hill. Doyle said he met with Democrats and Republicans, all cordial, but “Republicans were definitely more sympathetic.” The event marked the first Ex-Gay Pride Month, which the group designated as the month of July. Organizers had originally planned a reception at the Family Research Council, but emailed and phoned threats from homosexual activists caused them to postpone the event until September at an undisclosed location. Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, will receive the first Ex-Gay Pride Freedom Award at the event.

Greg Quinlan, president of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), said homosexual activists have no room for other opinions because they want to “take over” education, health care and government so that theirs is the only voice heard. Quinlan, a lobbyist, said he learned his trade while working with the Human Rights Campaign Fund in the 1980s and ‘90s.

“When you see that equality sign in their logo, it’s not about equality -- it’s about dominance,” Quinlan said. “It’s not about human rights. It’s about sexual rights of a small sexual minority.”

The gathering at the Supreme Court only numbered about a dozen but they said there are thousands of ex-gays around the country who are afraid to identify as such.

“I have suffered more discrimination and intolerance as an ex-gay than I did when I was actually in the [homosexual] lifestyle,” said Grace Harley, an African American woman who lived for 18 years as a transgendered man named Joe.

“Former homosexuals like me need protection,” Harley said. “Ex-gays are more hated than gays are.”

Various participants explained how they believe they ended up in the homosexual lifestyle, including childhood sexual abuse, emotionally incestuous relationships with parents and unresolved bitterness toward fathers.

One man, Chuck Peters, said he was molested by his Boy Scout troop leader, which sexually disoriented him and led to 22 years in the homosexual lifestyle. He held up a printed copy of sworn testimony from Nicholas Cummings, the former American Psychological Association president who led the effort to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness, to point out that homosexuals have the ability to change.

Peters said after his boyfriend died of AIDS, he decided to seek therapy to determine why he had such a strong attachment to other men. He eventually found the help he sought, but not before being told “over and over again that I was born that way and I should accept it.” Peters, now the clinical director of the Sexual Orientation Change Institute in Beverly Hills, California, said therapists told him he had internal homophobia that made him not want to be homosexual.

Richard Cohen, who appeared with his wife of 33 years, said he was delivered from unwanted same-sex attraction and now helps others experience the same. Cohen, a psychotherapist and director emeritus of the International Healing Foundation in Bowie, Md., said he’s found there are many reasons people become gay over the course of thousands of counseling sessions. He said he has an 85 percent success rate with those who want to change their orientation, using a three-step process: identifying root causes, healing root causes and helping people bond in friendship with their own gender.

“We should have the right, like all Americans, to be able to express our views without intimidation,” Doyle said while wearing a pink “Ex-Gay is ok!” lapel pin. “We’re not going anywhere.”