Jehovah's Witnesses: a model for church and state
By Joel P. Engardio
If I'm ever allowed to legally marry, my mother won't attend my wedding.
I'm a gay man and my mom is one of Jehovah's Witnesses. To remain true to her faith, she can't in good conscience be part of a same-sex marriage celebration. Like the Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals who supported the gay marriage ban in California, Jehovah's Witnesses vehemently oppose same-sex marriage on moral and biblical grounds. Gay people are not allowed to be Jehovah's Witnesses unless they live celibate and single lives. The congregation shuns members who insist on being in a same-sex relationship. Yet my mom didn't support California's Proposition 8, nor did any of the million devout Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States. They have a strong belief to stay out of politics and all wars, including culture wars. So while I'm left with a mom who believes being gay is a sin, I also know she isn't doing anything to block gay people from seeking their fundamental right to marry.
As a marginalized religion with unpopular beliefs, Jehovah's Witnesses know what it's like to have their rights taken away. First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion didn't protect Jehovah's Witnesses from losing their jobs, expulsion from school and even imprisonment for preaching in the 1940s. Jehovah's Witnesses didn't want to salute the flag because to them it was an act of worship reserved only for God and God wasn't American (German Jehovah's Witnesses refused to say "Heil Hitler" for the same reason and were put in the concentration camps). It wasn't until a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in 1943 (West Virginia v. Barnette) when it was decided that a free society shouldn't force its citizens to say or do things against their will. That case also addressed the Tocqueville fear of "tyranny of the majority" in which voter will trumps minority rights. The Supreme Court said Jehovah's Witnesses - and thus all unpopular minorities -- were protected from a majority seeking to discriminate at the ballot box. "One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly," Justice Robert Jackson said, "may not be submitted to vote."
Jehovah's Witnesses proselytize door-to-door advocating a religious point of view, just as Mormons do. But the difference with Jehovah's Witnesses is that acceptance of their message is a choice that ends at the front door. They don't support ballot initiatives that amend the constitution to force everyone to live their way. State laws are not needed to legitimize their moral views. Jehovah's Witnesses don't see the state as an enforcer of a moral code. That's the Bible's job, they say. If you want to be in God's Kingdom, simply live the code yourself -- it's not their mission to enact laws to stop gays from marrying.
I wish all religions had as much confidence in their faith that someone else's definition of life, marriage and morality posed no threat to their own. The beauty of the Bill of Rights is that it supports both religious freedom and personal liberty. There was no better demonstration of it than on August 4, 2010 when a federal judge ruled California's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. The key legal precedent that Judge Vaughn Walker used was the 1943 Supreme Court case involving Jehovah's Witnesses. "Fundamental rights," Justice Jackson wrote in 1943 and Judge Walker quoted in 2010, "depend on the outcome of no elections."
Now that's something my mother and I can agree on.
Engardio is a 2011 MPA candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His essays have appeared in USA Today, Washington Post.com and on NPR. Engardio directed KNOCKING, an award-winning PBS documentary on Jehovah's Witnesses.
