PASTOR JOSEPH TOLTON (preaching at memorial service): “David’s murder was meant to cause all of us who support human rights to live in fear…”

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: David Kato was memorialized recently on the anniversary of his death, a small service led by a minister visiting from New York. Kato’s advocacy of gay rights in a land where homosexuality is deeply taboo made him a target for a tabloid called Rolling Stone. It published the names of what it called the country’s “top homos.”  Under a banner headline and the words “Hang Them” was Kato’s photograph. A few days later, he was beaten to death. Advocates say it was only the most publicized incident in an atmosphere of growing hostility—socially and legally—toward gays.

TOLTON (preaching at memorial service): “You Ugandans are people of courage. You are people of honor and people of determination, and you are defying the odds because you are taking a stand that we will not be crushed by the Bahati bill.”

DE SAM LAZARO: The Bahati bill, named after its author, David Bahati, in Uganda’s parliament, was introduced in 2009 and reintroduced earlier this month. It would add severe penalties for homosexuality, which is already illegal under so called sodomy laws passed during British colonial times.

FRANK MUGISHA: I could be put in jail for life for not doing anything but for saying I am a homosexual and for being out.

DE SAM LAZARO: Frank Mugisha is Uganda’s best known gay rights advocate.  He took over the group led by David Kato. Mugisha blames American evangelical pastors, like Massachusetts-based Scott Lively, for helping stoke intolerance here.

PASTOR SCOTT LIVELY (speaking on video): “What has caused these people to end up in this condition that God condemns, that is hurting them and that we want to help them to overcome?”

DE SAM LAZARO: Videos posted on the Internet show Lively conducting seminars here decrying a global homosexual agenda, insisting that homosexuality is a learned behavior that can be unlearned, and that he’d helped many people do so. Lively denies he ever called for violence, but in a deeply religious country, Mugisha says such messages affirm local clergy and policymakers.

MUGISHA: You have political leaders saying we should never accept homosexuality, a political leader saying if the law is passed, I’ll go and take a job in the prisons to hang the homosexuals myself. So if it is a political leader, a member of parliament saying that, then how are the people who believe, who have voted for them, who listen to them, how are they going to react?

DE SAM LAZARO: Reaction on the streets was strongly in favor of the anti-homosexuality bill. Polls have shown that 95 percent of Ugandans favor criminalizing homosexuality.

Man on street: I have a verse in the Bible, in Leviticus 20, verse 13. It says homosexuals should be put to death.

DE SAM LAZARO: When first introduced, Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill did call for the death penalty in certain cases. It provoked an international outcry among donor nations. A large part of Uganda’s budget comes from foreign aid. The measure was shelved until what some people here call a new provocation late last year.

US Secretary of State HILLARY CLINTON (in speech): Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human, and that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.

DE SAM LAZARO: Clinton told this gathering of diplomats in Geneva that the US was placing the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people at the heart of its human rights agenda and tying it to aid decisions.

CLINTON (in speech): The president has directed all US government agencies engaged overseas to combat the criminalization of LGBT status and conduct, to enhance efforts to protect vulnerable LGBT refugees and asylum seekers, to ensure that our foreign assistance promotes the protection of LGBT rights.

PASTOR JOSEPH SERWADDA: When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that gay rights were human rights, our response was this is going to be very tough on Africa, because most African nations consider gayism…

DE SAM LAZARO: Gayism?

SERWADDA:  …gayism as a behavior, not as a culture, not as a faith, and definitely not as a way of life.

DE SAM LAZARO: Pastor Joseph Serwadda, who heads an association of Pentecostal and evangelical churches, says Western countries are imposing their values and agenda on sub-Saharan Africa. As proof he noted that the head of mission at the US embassy here attended the funeral of gay activist David Kato.

SERWADDA: Many people, thousands of them, die of HIV/AIDS, of other illnesses and ailments. Many people die in road accidents, and we’ve never seen an ambassador show up at a graveside.

DE SAM LAZARO: Could it be that his picture was on the front page of a magazine that said, “Hang Them”?

SERWADDA: Could also be because America has an agenda for homosexuals in Uganda.

DE SAM LAZARO: Like police and prosecutors in the Kato murder case, he says robbery or a soured business deal could well have been the motivation, not homophobia. Pastor Serwadda isn’t sure he’s ever met a gay person in Uganda and that, he says, is proof that homosexuality was never an issue here until gays in the West began stoking it—encouraging Ugandans to push for special rights and protections he says they don’t need.

SERWADDA: Nobody has gone to jail; nobody has been harassed; nobody has been ostracized because of their sexual orientation.

DE SAM LAZARO: Wow. That’s contrary to what we hear.

SERWADDA: You’ve just come in the country a couple of weeks ago. We live here. I’ve lived here for more than 50 years, so I know.

DE SAM LAZARO: But you’ve never met a gay person.

SERWADDA: Only one, and I wasn’t sure he was.

DE SAM LAZARO: But you know that they’re not harassed.

SERWADDA: They’re not.

DE SAM LAZARO: He says the Obama administration is pushing gay rights now to court the gay vote in the US election. We tried to talk to US officials for this report, but our request to interview the ambassador or any other spokesperson for the US embassy in Uganda was turned down. It’s an indication of how delicate the issue of gay rights is in this country. Meanwhile, the anti-homosexuality legislation—with the death penalty clause removed—is working its way through a weeks-long hearing process. It will be closely watched around the world. In Washington, that will include the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Last year, it awarded its annual prize to Frank Mugisha.

US Senator John Kerry at RFK Center event: “Robert Kennedy would have been amazed by your work, Frank.”

DE SAM LAZARO: It’s the first time the award has ever been given to a gay rights campaigner. Mugisha says the prize and the notoriety are a mixed blessing. It bestows international legitimacy and may allow him access to policymakers. Still, with emotions running high, Mugisha says he lives in almost constant fear for his physical safety.

MUGISHA: I’m not scared of the government. I keep saying that. Because if the government really wanted to harm me they would do that. But I’m scared of the ordinary people. Just recently when someone wrote in the newspaper about me, and if you went and read, there were Facebook comments on that, and if you read the comments there were people who were saying they could kill me if they saw me.

DE SAM LAZARO: On Facebook?

MUGISHA: Yeah, on Facebook, comments on the monitor, and there were who people were saying all kinds of horrible things, so you just imagine. And I interact with people, you know, and people tell you horrible things right to your face.

DE SAM LAZARO: Mugisha says he is bracing himself for the renewed public debate as hearings are scheduled for the anti-homosexuality legislation.

For Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Kampala, Uganda.

BOB ABERNETHY (Host): Welcome. I’m Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us. Our panel of top reporters looks to the year 2012, and the top religion and ethics stories they see ahead. Kim Lawton is managing editor of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Kevin Eckstrom is the editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. And E.J. Dionne is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a professor at Georgetown University. Welcome to you all, and Happy New Year.

ALL: Happy New Year.

ABERNETHY: E.J., the Iowa caucuses take place in just a few days. What do you see there and what is the role of religious conservatives in the Republican campaign?

E.J. DIONNE (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): Well, in the Iowa Republican caucuses religious conservatives always play an important role. And what’s been striking for most of this campaign is how fragmented they’ve been. There’s been a real argument among them about who the better candidate is. There’s no national champion as we talked about last week, Mike Huckabee, four years ago really emerged as a unifying candidate for Christian conservatives. Some of that also I suspect has to do with other forces in the Republican Party. There is the Tea Party which includes a lot of evangelical Christians, one should say, but is a kind of different thrust and you have a campaign built much more around economics and the role of government than around the issues that specifically inspire religious conservatives, such as abortion and issues related to gay marriage. So I think that there is not going to be the kind of clarity about their role this time as there was four years ago.

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly): And of course, we do have two Mormon candidates and that’s still an issue. It hasn’t been front and center this time around for evangelicals as much as it was last time around but there has been talk about Mormonism is a cult or Mormons aren’t Christians and that’s a prevailing attitude among many voters which makes them maybe in a primary a little more hesitant to vote for a Mitt Romney or a Jon Huntsman. One interesting comment last time, a couple months ago, was from when Cain was getting all the support but then all the allegations starting coming forward about him and one evangelical pastor said so, our choices are we vote for a Mormon who’s had one wife, we vote for a Catholic, Newt Gingrich, who’s had several wives or we vote for an evangelical, Herman Cain, who apparently had a whole harem. So, you know, they’re not liking their choices.

DIONNE: You know what’s interesting this time compared with the last time is Mitt Romney ran into I think some real anti-Mormon prejudice the last time. The Latter Day Saints church has really made a very aggressive effort this time to kind of fight against that by explaining its faith. I was at a session that they organized by the Poytner Institute over at the Pew Forum where they were talking about here’s who we are and here’s who we’re not and I think it’s obviously very useful for the church but I actually think it’s a useful way to combat religious prejudice generally.

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor -in-Chief, Religion News Service): One of the things I’ve been struck by and may be worth watching is the difference it seems of the Mormonism between Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Everyone knows that Mitt Romney is a Mormon and an outspoken one. He was the equivalent of a church pastor for a long time. He built a temple in Boston. He’s very Mormon. Jon Huntsman is also Mormon but to a different kind of way. It’s almost like oh yeah and he’s Mormon, too. And so I think it will be interesting to watch to see if Huntsman actually goes anywhere whether or not he will face the same sort of Mormon scrutiny that Romney has.

ABERNETHY: Why should he be considered not as great a Mormon as Romney?

ECKSTROM: Well I think it’s mostly because people just don’t know much about him or don’t even know who he is. I think he’s a relative unknown. It’s not that he’s any less devout or any less of a good Mormon that Romney. But, Romney, I think took the brunt of the anti-Mormon sentiment.

DIONNE: But I also think Romney was a real leader in the church. I think that’s right. And I think this is a very important part of his identity and he’s been very clear about that.

LAWTON: And we should say too that while evangelicals in the primaries might say I don’t know if I want to vote for a Mormon, if you put a Mormon up against Barack Obama, they’re going to vote for the Mormon most likely, because there’s so much anti-Barack Obama sentiment out there within conservative voters. And so I do think that it’s more of an issue in the primaries than it would be in a general election.

ABERNETHY: Has there emerged yet what looks like a great underlying theme for the election of 2012? Is it going to be jobs? Is it going to be the role of government? What do you see?

DIONNE: Well, the economy is always an issue in American elections. And when the unemployment rate is this high and when you’ve gone through such a terrible economic time since 2008, since the crash of 2008, it’s inevitable that the economy is a central issue. But I thought one of the most interesting events of the year in terms of speeches that politicians give was Barack Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, where Teddy Roosevelt, a hundred and one years ago, gave his New Nationalism speech which set him up for his run as a progressive third party candidate in 1912. And I think Obama was really sending a signal there that he wants this election not just to be a referendum on the past and he has some interest in that because the economy is still, even if it improves, is going to be less than people want. But he wants it to be about the future and about the role of government in the economy, what should government do to make opportunity available to the middle class? What should the rules of the economy be? And I think that, I happen to like the speech, whether you like the speech or not, I think it set a really interesting framework for the election because the Republicans in this election will clearly but running as much more pure free market candidates without government interference, lower taxes, less regulation. I think there could be a clarity to this campaign and to the argument that we haven’t seen in a long time.

LAWTON: And religious groups have been involved in these economic debates and in the economic campaigning, political campaigning, as well, on both sides, which makes it interesting to have that moral injection on both ends of the debate and so you have people from a more moderate, more liberal standpoint talking about the immorality of hurting people who are already vulnerable, cutting programs that would hurt the poor, cutting programs for foreign aid and so there’s been a lot of concern about that which is translating into politics. But you also have it in the conservative side. It’s immoral to leave a lot of debt to our children. A lot of that kind of language and that is seeping into the campaigning as well.

ABERNETHY: It’s interesting that, E.J., maybe you can note this. It’s not winner take all, is it, this year? Is it? Can’t you come in second and still have a lot of delegates and be influential at the convention?

DIONNE: Historically, Democrats got rid of winner take all which is one of the reasons why the ’08 race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton went on so long. Republicans have, at the front end, have tended to get rid of winner take all though there is some of it still at the back end of this process. But it could mean that the Republican race will last longer this time.

LAWTON: Or never end.

DIONNE: Yes, or maybe never end. I mean it’s the first time I’ve heard talk of a brokered convention which journalists love because that would be fun but it never happens. And I still don’t think it will happen.

ABERNETHY: I wanted to ask you about that.

DIONNE: If no one gets a clear majority, in other words, if there were at least three candidates with significant blocks of delegates, I still don’t think it will happen, but it’s more plausible it seems, at this moment, more plausible than it’s been in a long time.

ABERNETHY: What about somebody being nominated who is not now running?

DIONNE: Well, there are a lot of Republicans who long for that. I have been very struck by some of my conservative friends who are genuinely unhappy with the make-up of this field. And, I’ve been reminding people, maybe just showing that I’m getting older, there was a write-in campaign for Henry Calbot Lodge that carried the New Hampshire primary way back in 1964. And you wonder if something like that will happen. Again, still unlikely but this has been such a strange contest I don’t rule anything out anymore.

LAWTON: And I’m going to be watching too, on the other side, the Democratic side, how President Obama is going to reach out to people of faith. That was a huge issue in the 2008 election. President Obama had mounted a campaign of faith-based outreach, unprecedented for a Democratic candidate in a really long time. And, you know, is he going to continue that? Is that going to be as robust? And how are people of faith feeling about him? And I know you’ve also looked at the fact that there is some dissatisfaction with him.

ECKSTROM: Right, both on, obviously on the right, but also on the left. There’s a lot of progressives who saw him as the knight in shining armor who was going to come in and right all the ills of the world and obviously that hasn’t happened. And so I think the President’s biggest challenge is, when it comes to religion, is not speaking in Catholic terms, or Jewish terms, or mainline Protestant terms or anything like that, but is getting anybody out to vote for him. I mean, getting his base and getting just any of his supporters, whatever faith they may be, getting them motivated enough to go out and vote for him.

DIONNE: And I think you saw in 2010 that Democrats on the progressive side really fell down in terms of their organizing among religious people compared to what they did in 2008. And they have some ground to make up now.

ABERNETHY: What about gridlock in Washington? Is there any possibility, any even remote possibility, that in this election year coming up there will be any change in that?

DIONNE: Do you believe in miracles?

LAWTON: This is a religion show.

DIONNE: It is a religion show.

ABERNETHY: But look, there is a new poll, Pew poll, I think, that says there’s the greatest disapproval of Congress now that there has ever been in the past. So where does that lead? How does that affect the election?

DIONNE: First of all, those of us who are journalists can be grateful to Congress because somebody can poll lower than we do. I mean, my sense is that the only way you really could see some systematic breaking down of the gridlock is if it looks like President Obama is going to win the election, in other words, if by the middle of the year, he got what looked like a reasonably big lead a lot of the Republicans in Congress who have wanted to block his programs say wait a minute. He’s going to win. We’ve got to get reelected. We’ve got to start working with him. That happened with Bill Clinton in 1996 where the gridlock broke up. If, on the other hand, the election continues to look competitive in the middle of the year, as if you were to place a bet, that’s probably where you would place it, then I’m not sure there’s a lot of political interest on either side in sort of making concessions. I think they will fight it through to the end and then see what happens.

ABERNETHY: What do you imagine the future to be for the Occupy movement?

ECKSTROM: Well it will be interesting a, whether they can make it through the winter. It’s cold out there. But then b, sort of what do they become? One of the big sort of criticisms of this movement has been that nobody quite knows exactly what they want or what they stand for or what they’re even demanding. And so I think the big challenge for them in 2012 is going to be saying OK this is what we need to happen. It’s an election year, there’s a lot of people paying attention, so they probably have a better chance than not. But, the questions that they raise, the moral questions about fairness and equity and corporate responsibility, those aren’t going away, whether or not the movement is able to harness that into something kind of tangible, I think, is still a little unclear.

ABERNETHY: It’s been seen as very secular movement even though religious people have helped it in many ways.

LAWTON: Well, that’s what I want to watch. That’s exactly what I want to watch. Because it does have this perception that it’s a bunch of you know secular, I don’t know, unemployed people hanging around but there’s a strong religious current in it. And that was growing toward the end of 2011 and so you saw African American clergy getting involved, wanting to liken it to the Civil Rights Movement. You had a lot of mainline Protestant, Catholic, other church leaders providing support on the edges. Some of them told me that they didn’t want to be too out front, they didn’t want to look like they were high jacking the movement, but they are there and how is that going to affect what they do, what the rhetoric is, and is that going to continue.

ECKSTROM: It’s also worth noting that one of the most iconic images from this movement was when they paraded around a golden calf, modeled on the bull of Wall Street. When the marched that around lower Manhattan and here in Washington, D.C. That’s clearly a Biblical image so it’s not a completely secular kind of loosey goosey movement.

DIONNE: God and mammon is a rather old theme.

ABERNETHY: What about the extremely interesting cases that are going to be coming down from the Supreme Court, beginning with Obama’s healthcare? The Supreme Court’s going to hear that case and hand down a decision about it right in the middle of the election campaign.

DIONNE: And there’s some much speculation about how a court that often goes five to four in a conservative direction but doesn’t always go five to four in a conservative direction will rule. And, some of the judges in the circuit court who have upheld the healthcare plan have been conservatives and they were, in some ways, you felt they were writing to justices like Scalia and Thomas and Roberts and Alito and saying wait a minute it would not be conservative to overthrow this law. Then the other debate is which way would Republicans or President Obama be better off? Would it be a stinging defeat for Obama and therefore hurt him or would it take this issue off the table or even allow him to go on the offensive and say well we do need a national healthcare plan again so it is going to be an extraordinary day when the court rules on that.

ABERNETHY: Are religious groups involved in that, have they got appeals going for them?

ECKSTROM: Quite a few, especially from the conservative side. One of the first, original challenges to this healthcare law came out of Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell. But there’s a lot of conservatives who, not only for their conservative political ideology, but their religious ideology, don’t like the idea of the government telling them you have to have insurance. And, that’s really what the fight is over is the mandate to purchase individual health insurance or pay a fine. So there’s a lot of conservative groups who are against it. But there’s also a lot of progressive groups who are very much in favor of this, in fact don’t think it went far enough. The interesting group to watch is actually going to be the Catholic bishops because the bishops fought tooth and nail over provisions of this law but then after it was passed and signed into law they said well, we’re not going to fight to remove it.

DIONNE: And then you also have the Catholic Health Association which runs a very large share of hospitals in the United States, a minority, but they have a vast system and there other religious hospitals, religiously sort of affiliated hospitals, in the country who in general supported the healthcare reform because it would expand coverage of poorer Americans, working class Americans, who use their facilities.

LAWTON: But, one of the more contentious parts of that, sort of a lesser aspect, was coverage of contraception. And the Catholic Church was very concerned about being forced to cover things they don’t agree with, such as contraception. And so, that was a battle that’s still going to be played out on some of the local levels.

ABERNETHY: The Supreme Court is also going to consider and hand down an opinion, presumably, about immigration.

LAWTON: Well this has been a really difficult issue, especially for a lot of people in the religious community. A lot of people of faith have been actively helping immigrants and some of the laws, the Arizona law is going to be up before the Supreme Court, there was also a law in Alabama that a lot of religious groups were involved in. And people of faith are helping immigrants, they don’t want it to be criminalized to help immigrants, they are also don’t want the people that they are trying to help be considered criminals. I am interested that even evangelicals seem a little divided on this issue. Technically they tend to me more law and order people and therefore against loosening up on immigration. On the other hand, you have a lot of evangelical congregations that are seeing an influx of Latinos in the pews. And, so it’s a personal issue for a lot of these people. And you know, the kids in the youth group might be, their parents might be undocumented. So you’re seeing some wiggle room in the religious community.

DIONNE: Latinos, immigrants, illegal as well as legal, are among the most vibrant parts of both the evangelical world and the Catholic world. And I think you, the truth of the matter is a lot of the churches are in competition with each other to try to win the allegiance of Latinos which I think helps explain why a lot of Christian groups, regardless of their views on other matters, have tended to be more open to immigrants cause these are the people in their congregations.

ECKSTROM: And speaking of courts, another case to watch, it’s not at the Supreme Court level just yet, but the Prop 8 battle in California. In 2008, voters passed basically an end to same-sex marriage and it’s gone through the courts so far. Federal court has ruled against Proposition 8, saying that it’s unconstitutional. Now it’s going to the federal appeals court and regardless of what the federal appeals court decides, which could very well come in 2012, it’s probably going to go to the Supreme Court very soon after so this is going to be a crucial decision to watch for where that debate’s going to go.

LAWTON: And speaking of gay issues, we have in 2012 a couple of mainline Protestant denominations that are going to be meeting and this has been a tough issue for them and it’s going to continue to be tough in 2012. The United Methodists will be meeting and one of the issues before them is going to be can they marry, can their clergy marry same-sex couples in the states where that is legal. They can’t do that right now. There has been a group of retired United Methodist ministers that is doing that because active ministers could face penalties or the possibility of being defrocked. And, so that’s going to be up for grabs. In the Episcopal Church, you still see this slow breaking apart in the whole worldwide Anglican Communion over some of these issues, interpretation of scripture, and there are a lot of court battles and individual congregational battles going on there too.

ABERNETHY: And E.J., the Pope is scheduled to go to Mexico and to Cuba.

DIONNE: You know, the Vatican’s relationship with Cuba has been fascinating. I happen to be in Rome when Pope John Paul’s trip to Cuba was announced and there have been some interesting differences of opinion. The Vatican has tended to be in favor of a gradual, peaceful transition from the Castro regime. And the fact that the Pope is willing to go there speaks to this desire for a gradual change. Some of the Cuban community in the United States, the Catholic Cuban community one should say, are very uneasy about this. They would like a sort of harder push to get that regime out. So there have been some arguments over the years between our Cuban community, particularly in South Florida, and the Vatican. It will be fascinating to see how exactly, what Pope Benedict says about alterations in that regime and religious freedom. Castro himself, is a dictator, he also has had this kind of lifelong fascination with religion. He seems to be an atheist “but”. Maybe the “but”’s getting bigger as the years go by.

ABERNETHY: Folks, our time is almost up and in the couple minutes remaining I want to ask you, in addition to what we’ve just been talking about, what else are you watching? What are you really keeping an eye on that you think is going to be happening in 2012?

DIONNE: Well I’m looking in the campaign, I think it could be a very good campaign or a really terrible campaign. The good campaign, as I said, is because the parties will probably be as philosophically divided as they have been since 1964. We could have a really fundamental debate where we decide on a direction for the country for some time ahead and that could be a great thing. I also worry that with all of this advertising, the money that can be spent by outside groups because of the Citizens United decision, we may have more outright lying on the air and I know a lot of people think well campaigns are full of lies. It could be much much worse this year and I am very worried about what that’s going to do to us and what it might, how people will feel about this process at the end.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, are you looking at anything that might be a little brighter than more lies?

ECKSTROM: Well, actually I was going to say the end of the world because in 2011, Harold Camping famously said that the world was going to end on May 21st and then it was October 21st. It didn’t happen. 2012 apparently is supposed to be the year that the world will end according to the Mayan calendar so I don’t expect it to happen.

ABERNETHY: Mayan?

ECKSTROM: Yes, the ancient Mayan calendar. So, a lot of people are wondering if that’s actually going to happen. I don’t think it will but doomsday stories are always fun.

DIONNE: That’s the boldest prediction I’ve ever heard on this show.

ECKSTROM: That’s right.

ABERNETHY: Kim?

LAWTON: Well, I’ll take it back to a more serious note, hopefully, I don’t know. That was pretty serious. Another case before the Supreme Court is a church state case that looks at who gets to define who is a minister. Does a congregation get to decide who their ministers are? Or does the government have an input? And this makes a difference when you talk about clashes between religious beliefs and civil rights law. So, for example, if you are a congregation that believes only in a female pastor does that violate gender, anti-gender discrimination laws? And so, there’s been a lot of differing opinions in the court and how broadly does the definition of minister go. If you perform ministry in the church by running the screen in the front, does that make you a minister? If you are the janitor, some people say that’s a ministry, does that make you a minister? And what was really surprising to a lot of religious groups was that the Obama administration argued that there should be no exceptions. That religious groups should not be exempted from these civil rights laws and that had a lot of religious groups upset so I’m going to be watching that and especially the reaction to that decision.

ABERNETHY: Our time is almost up. Is up now. Thanks to Kevin Eckstrom, to E.J. Dionne and to Kim Lawton. Happy New Year to you all and to all our viewers. I’m Bob Abernethy.

BOB ABERNETHY: A new Vatican document this week called for sweeping changes in the global financial system in order, it said, to put “the common good” at the center of economic activity. One of the most controversial proposals would create an international political authority that would have broad power to regulate financial markets. The document was issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. It said changes are needed to address the quote “inequalities and distortions of capitalist development.”

Giving to the poor was one of many issues raised in a new survey of U.S. Catholics. According to the results, 60% now believe you can be a good Catholic without donating time or money to the poor. That number was 44% in 2005. The survey also found that a majority of Catholics now believes that individuals – not church authorities – should be the ones to make decisions about abortion, homosexuality and other social issues.

Joining me now are Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program and Kevin Eckstrom editor of Religion News Service. Welcome to you both. Kevin can you explain this astonishing figure that 60% of those surveyed, 60% of Catholics in this country say, they can be good Catholics without at the same time giving money to the poor or giving time to helping the poor.

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): It’s one of the great sort of paradoxes that this survey picked up. The other figure that was worth mentioning here is that two out of three Catholics said that helping the poor and the church’s teaching on the poor is important to me as a Catholic. So, they see it as core to the Catholic identity but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re actually going go out and do something about it. And it’s sort of broadly reflective of this trend that the survey picked up that I’m a Catholic and I’ll go to mass because I want the Eucharist, I want the liturgy, I think that the core teachings are important but I am not going to do it because some bishop somewhere tells me that I have to. Weekly mass attendance is down to like 30% and the number of people who go to church once a month is actually higher than people who go to weekly. So people are doing it on their own terms.

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly): And, also, in that survey, it did find that a big majority, 88% of Catholics, said that helping the poor, it was meaningful for them that their church had concern for the poor. It’s just, again, what the church says and does and how it translates into individuals’ lives. As one author of the survey said, American Catholics like being Catholic but they like to do it on their own terms, as well.

ABERNETHY: And the confirmation of some other long trends. For instance, making up your own mind about social and moral concerns rather than taking instructions from the hierarchy.

ECKSTROM: Yeah the big number there was on homosexuality, which is sort of a flashpoint issue but I think it’s telling. The number of people who say the church and church leaders should have the final word on the morality of homosexuality or same-sex marriage has dropped by half in the last 25 years. No other issue has seen that sort of shift but I think it’s really telling where people say, you know what, I’ve got gay friends, I’ve got a gay brother or gay neighbors. There’s a disconnect here between what the church is telling me and what my life experience is telling me and so I’m not going to necessarily go along with the church on this one.

ABERNETHY: And what are the implications of a third of Catholics now being Hispanic?

ECKSTROM: Well, within a generation they are likely to be the majority of the Catholic Church in the United States. And what that means, in practical terms, is that Spanish language mass might become the norm and English language mass is going to be sort of what they do on the side, on Saturday nights.

LAWTON: And some of these economic issues may come to the fore, as well. And again, going back to the Vatican document, I mean, a lot of the input for that came from outside the United States as church leaders from Europe, but also Latin America, have contributions about what the church has to say about the poor. And sometimes American Catholics weren’t, there was a lot of mixed reaction among American Catholics to that Vatican document. I mean some religious conservatives, Catholic conservatives, really tried to dismiss it a little bit and say it didn’t have the full force of a papal teaching but it certainly did quote from popes who have raised concerns about the poor.

ABERNETHY: And reminded everybody about how very liberal the church teachings are about how the poor should be treated.

LAWTON: Catholic social teaching does have what many people consider very liberal values when it comes to the poor. Some of the folks this week tried to associate this document with the Occupy Wall Street folks and the Vatican officials said this was not a direct response to Occupy Wall Street. But I saw a lot of similar language. The Vatican document criticized excessive greed as being sinful and evil. Certainly that’s a big theme with Occupy Wall Street. Talked about social inequities being morally wrong and again, that’s in the Vatican document.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to Kim Lawton and Kevin Eckstrom.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the Associated Press this week that if the top military officer recommends an end to the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy relating to homosexuals he will okay the new rules before he retires the end of June. Gates also said he sees no barrier to that happening. Since Congress repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell last December, more than a million US troops have taken instruction in the new policy. Gates says that training has gone well. Still, there are concerns, especially among some military chaplains. Betty Rollin reports.

Gunnery Sergeant Taylor conducting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell training: Lance Corporal A, he’s gay. Lance Corporal B and Lance Corporal C are his roommates. They know he’s gay, or they think he’s gay, but due to the fact that he dresses in a certain way they request to move out of their room. Do they have that right?

BETTY ROLLIN, correspondent: Here at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia, as well as at other military bases, they’ve been holding voluntary training sessions on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: What does it mean? What changes? What doesn’t change?

Training session slide presentation with narration: You are not expected to change your personal, religious, or moral beliefs; however, you are expected to treat all others with dignity and respect consistent with the core values that already exist within the Marine Corps.

ROLLIN: The Marines in this group didn’t seem to have any trouble with these instructions.

CORPORAL JASMINE CASTENADA: The most important thing we are still Marines in the end. We sign a contract, and we are still going to follow orders. We are still going to wear the same uniform. So when we go into combat it’s not going to matter if a Marine is straight or gay.

SERGEANT CRAIG TAYLOR:: I’m a Baptist, but the role that my religion plays is not really important because I have to adhere to the rules and regulations that are governed over me.

ROLLIN: A Pentagon study released last fall showed that a majority of US forces, 70 percent, said that serving with gays or lesbians would have no negative effect on them. But there was a very different response from forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fifty-eight percent of combat Marines said they would prefer not to serve with gays. Another group that has voiced concerns about the repeal are chaplains. Of the 3,000 active-duty chaplains, a majority are conservative Christians. Brigadier General Douglas Lee has served over 31 years as both a reserve and active duty chaplain and now heads the joint commission that represents Presbyterian and Reformed chaplains. He is one of 66 retired chaplains who wrote a letter to President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates urging them not to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

CHAPLAIN DOUGLAS LEE: Homosexuality is one of a multitude of sins. Chaplains essentially help people wrestle with the sins that beset them in their lives and try and give them encourage and hope and a way out of all that, and for the Christian the way out is Jesus Christ. For another religion it might be some other means. The problem with this repeal is that this particular sin is being legitimized as being normal and okay.

ROLLIN: Whereas some chaplains support the repeal, and all chaplains accept their obligation to minister to everyone, Chaplain Lee fears the conflict conservative Christian chaplains are bound to have when counseling openly gay service members.

LEE: Chaplains are concerned that when it comes to the bold preaching, teaching, counseling, marrying, burying, sacramental duties, that there would be challenges to those things if they were decided to speak against homosexuality.

ROLLIN: These chaplains fear that if they express what they really believe they might lose their jobs.

LEE: We believe there needs to be a freedom of conscience clause somewhere Congress has to wrestle with to make sure that chaplains and the troops have freedom of conscience when it comes to proclaiming their own particular faith, and of course they would do that. We would never want that proclamation to be done in a mean-spirited way or hateful way.

ROLLIN: The underlying cause for conservative chaplains’ difficulty with repeal is their belief that homosexuality, like all the other sins in the Bible, is a choice.

LEE: Just to say they can easily choose to get out of this, I wouldn’t say that. I would say it’d probably be a struggle for many. But I know people who have come out of the homosexual community and basically through Christ have actually changed their choices.

JONATHAN HOPKINS: My parents were devout Christians. My values are pretty consistent with theirs. I grew up in a town of 1,000 people, and within my parents’ view that didn’t fit with being gay, so of course I was straight. You had to be straight to be successful. But that was a lie. It was a lie to myself. I told my Mom for the first time when I was 30 or 31 years old and I said, Mom, I spent 20, nearly 20 years of my 30-year existence trying to fight this everywhere I could, or find some way around it, or finding, okay, maybe if I just find the right girl I won’t be gay. But that’s just impossible. It’s a lie.

ROLLIN: Jonathan Hopkins graduated fourth in his class at West Point and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He was awarded three bronze stars and was promoted unusually early in his career to Major. And then, last August, it was all over. Although he says many of his fellow soldiers knew he was gay and accepted him, a few didn’t and reported him to the commander. After a 14-month investigation, he was honorably discharged. Hopkins says throughout his military service he was afraid of this happening.

HOPKINS: Sometimes you might be scared of getting shot at, but you shouldn’t have to be scared of your own fellow service members turning you in for something that you can’t change.

ROLLIN: Hopkins is now a graduate student at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and a spokesman for Outserve, an organization representing active-duty gays in the military. He says he is optimistic about the repeal and its future.

HOPKINS: Will repeal go through? Yes. And once that happens and nothing substantive goes wrong, then it’ll be a done deal.

ROLLIN: So the war is won, in effect?

HOPKINS: It’s not a war. It’s not a war.

ROLLIN: What is it?

HOPKINS: It’s just people trying to serve their country. It’s just people trying to be treated as people, as upstanding Americans. It’s the most American of things there is.

ROLLIN: Under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, 13,000 gay and lesbian members of the military were dismissed. The military plans to finish training for the repeal this summer. After that, if the president, secretary of defense, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify that the military is ready for this change, 60 days later the repeal becomes official.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Betty Rollin in Quantico, Virginia.

ABERNETHY: The answer to that question about whether Marines can ask not to share a room with another Marine just because they say he’s gay is no.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: A highly anticipated report on the causes of the clergy sex abuse crisis in the US Roman Catholic Church was released this week by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The lead researcher said no one factor was responsible for the actions of the priests. Both celibacy and homosexuality were ruled out as causes. Instead, researchers found that priests were influenced by societal changes during the 1960s and 1970s, what they called an increase in “deviant behavior.” Several victims groups denounced the report, saying it does not place enough blame on the bishops who covered up abuse.

We discuss the report and the reaction to it with Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton, the managing editor of this program. Kim, is it the case that the report has something in it to make everybody unhappy?

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly): Well, a little bit. When this crisis here in the United States really hit a boiling point in 2002, a lot liberals in the church said, well, the problem is this all-male priesthood and enforced celibacy, and that’s creating the problem. A lot of conservatives said it’s homosexuality and gay priests and that’s the problem. And this report said it’s not either one of those. But the report did say the social upheaval in the 60s and 70s, and there were critics who didn’t like that sort of blame-it-all-on-Woodstock idea. The report said that in seminaries priests weren’t being trained to handle the new sexual mores of the United States at that time, and there was a lot of stress, and that generated the problem, but that makes a lot of critics frustrated because they say it makes it a sociological problem and not a systematic problem and a spiritual problem within the Church.

ABERNETHY: And the fact is, Kevin, the abuses happened, whatever the causes.

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): That’s right. Whether it’s gay priests or celibacy or anything else, the fact is that this happened within in a very particular institution, the Catholic Church, that was incapable for 50 or 60 years of really handling this problem and dealing with it in an effective way, and a lot of times what they did was they shuffled it off to the side, or they said, oh, well, this isn’t really that big of a deal, or we can reassign this problematic priest somewhere else, and this— the way that this problem was handled did not happen in the same way in, say, public schools or boy scouts or whatever. So I think the bishops to their credit and the church to its credit gets—should be acknowledged that this is the widest study that’s ever been done on child abuse, child sexual abuse, but they don’t really quite go far enough, I don’t think, in saying how the church’s own responsibility contributed to it.

ABERNETHY: And there was nothing in the report, was there, about the bishops who moved around the people who were committing these terrible acts?

LAWTON: Well, the report does say that the bishops were part of the problem in that they didn’t deal with it or they spent more time focusing on the priests and not the victims who were being abused. But what the report doesn’t do is then come up with suggestions for dealing with that, for punishments, or for mandatory things that the bishops have to do when this happens, and that’s a frustration.

ABERNETHY: Do they have to report to law enforcement?

LAWTON: If it’s a state law, they do. The guidelines set up by the bishops encourage the local dioceses to report allegations to the authorities. But again, it’s not mandatory, it’s not binding and there’s no enforcement mechanism.

ECKSTROM: I think one of the big numbers, sort of one of the hidden numbers, actually, in this report was that only 14 percent of these cases over the 60-year period were turned over to law enforcement. That means that 86 percent of cases were handled internally in the Church, and the big criticism of the Church has always been that they don’t know how to handle it internally. And they say, oh, trust us, we’ll take care of it, don’t worry about it, but they’re not referring these to law enforcement, which is what a lot of people say they should be.

ABERNETHY: Is the problem over? To what extent has it peaked and gone away? There was something in there about …

LAWTON: Yeah, the report says it was a historical problem, and there certainly has been a decrease in the number of cases being reported. However, we’ve seen, we’re seeing right now in Philadelphia, in the archdiocese of Philadelphia there’s a situation going on right now where a local grand jury has suggested that 37 priests who were accused, with credible allegations of abuse, were allowed to remain in their posts, and the lay review boards that have been set up to help the Church monitor this—they were shocked to hear that. So there are clearly still a lot of issues.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, very quickly. Is it over or not?

ECKSTROM: Last year, in 2010, there were just seven cases reported of abuse that was alleged to have occurred in 2010. So, in that case, you are not seeing hundreds of cases of abuse, but what’s problematic for a lot of people is that the Church is not reporting any cases, and they are not releasing the names of accused priests that might encourage of other victims to come forward.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks. Kevin Eckstrom, Kim Lawton.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome, I’m Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us. Today, a special report on the events and issues we see ahead in 2011. We do this with the help of Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, the Washington Post, and Georgetown University. Before we begin our discussion, as we close out the first decade of the new millennium we remember some of the stories that set the stage for the news we expect to cover in 2011 and beyond. Our managing editor Kim Lawton took a look back at the events of the last decade.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were perhaps the defining moment of the decade, and the repercussions are still being felt on many fronts. In the wake of the tragedy, mainstream Muslim leaders tried to spread a message that Islam is not synonymous with terrorism. But those efforts were complicated by an expanding extremist movement that recruits over the Internet, as well as several high-profile arrests of Muslims plotting more attacks. American Muslims worked to define their place in US society, but many felt unfairly targeted by enhanced security measures and what they saw as a rising tide of Islamophobia. President Obama made improving relations with the Muslim world one of the priorities of his new administration.

The 9/11 attacks led to American involvement in long and difficult wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Religious and ethical leaders debated whether each conflict was just. President George W. Bush argued for a doctrine of preventive war, the idea that it was moral to attack a country to prevent it from attacking us first. The ethical debates intensified with revelations that the US was using torture as a means of getting information. After thousands of deaths of troops and civilians, President Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq and the intention to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan.

Economic crises dominated much of the end of the decade as recession, unemployment and foreclosures took a toll on faith-based groups and the people they serve. Religious institutions were forced to slash their budgets and lay off staff even as they were asked to do more to help needy people.

Religion continued to be a potent force in politics. In 2000 and 2004, President Bush rallied religious conservatives. He set up a new White House office to expand government partnerships with faith-based social service organizations. Analysts spoke of a God gap, with voters seeing the Democratic Party as unfriendly toward religion. In the run-up to the 2008 elections, Democrats and the Obama campaign developed an unprecedented outreach to compete for religious votes. Many in that faith coalition were disappointed the Democrats didn’t build on the momentum in the 2010 midterm elections. Meanwhile, religious conservatives were energized by the Tea Party movement and vowed new activism leading up to the 2012 elections. Religious groups across the spectrum were involved in policy debates, from health care to immigration and gay marriage.

Issues surrounding homosexuality provoked bitter debates within religious institutions and American society as a whole. The 2003 election of Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the US Episcopal Church brought the worldwide Anglican Communion to the brink of schism, even as other denominations continue to debate the role of gay clergy. In 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, with four other states and the District of Columbia following suit. The issue continues to work its way through the courts.

For the Roman Catholic Church, a dramatic changing of the guard with the 2005 death of John Paul II, who had been pope for more than 25 years, and the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. For the US Catholic Church, much of the decade was focused on addressing a massive clergy sex abuse crisis, enacting new guidelines to prevent abuse, and confronting litigation that saw more than two billion dollars in payouts to victims. In 2010, the clergy abuse scandal exploded across many parts of Europe and posed new challenges to the Vatican and top church leaders.

The new millennium began with a sense of relief that a predicted Y2K computer meltdown never materialized. It ends with the development of social media like Facebook and Twitter offering new online possibilities for personal connection and outreach, enabling information to be disseminated at lightning speed—both for good and for ill.

ABERNETHY: Kim, many thanks for that. Welcome to you, to Kevin Eckstrom, and to E.J. Dionne. E.J., we have a new Congress, Republican control of the House, more Republican votes in the Senate. Walk us through that a little bit. What do you expect that will mean for some of the social issues that are of most concern to religious communities?

EJ DIONNE (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): You know, watching Kim’s set-up piece I was thinking of Yogi Berra’s great line: ‘Predictions are hard, especially when they’re about the future.” And who would have imagined a decade unfolding the way this last decade just unfolded? So I think we’re all in a difficult situation here. I think when you look forward to this Congress, so much of it is not going to be about social issues. The last Democratic Congress kind of acted to get some of those out of the way, notably don’t ask don’t tell. I think they really wanted that through because they knew it was going to be very difficult this time over. You may have some debate about abortion around the healthcare bill. Republicans want to repeal it. I don’t think they’ll be able to but they going to have a variety of ways of trying to hem in President Obama in sort of putting it into effect. So I think you may see it there. I think one of the sleeper issues will be fights we might have around the National Endowment of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, where you have, if nothing else for purely political reasons it’s a question where conservatives can talk about it as an economic issue: should we be spending the money? But there are always issues related to cultural values that get into those debates. So I suspect you are going to see some of those arguments around the humanities and arts endowments. Personally, I hope it doesn’t happen that way, but I think that is going to happen.

ABERNETHY: How about immigration?

LAWTON: Well, I was going to say that I am going to be watching to see how some of the evangelical political activists maneuver with the Tea Party politicians that got elected. You know, in this last election there was so much talk about how the Tea Party was so ascendant and there were a lot of religious conservatives that were supportive of the Tea Party. But when you get to issues like immigration or some of the other issues involving a social safety net for the poor, evangelicals don’t always line up as economic conservatives. And so while they might be hoping for some action on abortion or maybe even some of the gay marriage type issues—I don’t know that that’s going to come up in Congress, but I’m going to be watching some of the economic issues that do have some moral implications to see how much evangelicals, and some Catholics who were supportive of the Tea Party—where they come down.

ECKSTROM (Editor, Religious New Service): Right, and there are a lot of moral issues that a lot of religious groups care about. And so I think what you’re going to have is maybe a different set than what we’ve seen in the last couple years. Whereas under the Democratic Congress we were talking about moral issues like the environment and the minimum wage increase and things like that, you’re probably not going to see as much of that with a Republican House. Instead, you’ll have issues that maybe more conservatives tend to latch on to. But it’s not that these social issues are going to disappear, it’s just that there are going to be a different set of them.

DIONNE: That’s a good point, because you are going to talking more and more about budget deficits and cuts in government programs, and I think it’s going to be fascinating to see how religious groups that sometimes seem to be aligned with conservatives on some of the cultural questions are actually going to be saying no, you can’t cut this program for the poor or that program for the poor, because there are a lot of Catholics, a lot of evangelicals, and many in the rest of the religious community—mainline Protestants, Jews, Muslims—who really want to protect some of those programs. So I think their voices are actually going to be very important at a time of budget stress.

ECKSTROM: And one issue I think that’s worth watching that we’ve already seen indications of is that House Republicans want to hold hearings on American Muslims and the radicalization of American Muslims – sort of home-grown terror threats – and what’s going wrong within American Islam that it’s allowing this to happen? So it’s a different kind of religious issue but one that’s already going to be on Congress’s agenda.

ABERNETHY: Before we leave that, E.J., what about the tone, the spirit that you expect. Is it going to be awful?

DIONNE: I’m not very optimistic that we’re going to see an outbreak of comity and friendship across party lines. On the Muslim hearings, having Congress sort of investigate a religious group in the country raises all kinds of questions, which I hope get raised. I’m not sure that the deal that President Obama reached with the Republicans on taxes can be easily replicated across other issues. After all, tossing out about $858 billion is a lot easier than cutting $400 billion or whatever they decide to do. So I think it’s going to be a very difficult couple of years.

LAWTON: And also, sort of in the backdrop, this coming year in politics is going to be the run up to the 2012 presidential election, and so that’s going to be complicating anything anyone wants to get done because there’s going to be a lot of posturing as people try to set themselves up for the next presidential election.

DIONNE: Which brings us to some very interesting debates inside the Republican Party. Your point about the Tea Party and the Christian conservatives overlapping but distinct groups—how are they going to play those roles inside the Republican fight for the nomination?

LAWTON: And a lot of religious conservatives were very unhappy with the Republican establishment, felt like they took them for granted, Republicans took the religious conservatives for granted—wanted them to come out and work and vote but didn’t necessarily take care of their issues. It will be interesting to see whether they feel the same way about the Tea Party as well.

ABERNETHY: And back on this question of tone, everything perhaps is going to be made more dramatic by the fact that it’s going to be, this year, the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

LAWTON: It’s hard to believe that it was almost 10 years ago when those attacks happened and that really did set up a lot of difficult issues for us as a country, both in terms of the war and as well as in terms of interfaith relations. I know a lot of Muslim groups are sort of bracing after seeing in the previous year a lot of protests against mosques and things of that nature. They’re concerned about the atmosphere and a lot of Muslims I’m talking with are worried about what’s going to happen leading up to the 9/11 anniversary.

ABERNETHY: But Kevin, you or E.J. have made the point that we have this real problem of trying to deal with homegrown terrorism and terrorism here that just emerges out of the suburbs some place, and on the other hand protecting the civil rights of a whole group of people.

ECKSTROM: This is a huge challenge for American Muslims and one of the big debates within the American Muslim community right now is how much do they cooperate with law enforcement on trying to prevent these sorts of attacks that nobody wants to see? How much should parents report their kids if they’re acting strangely or going to bad Web sites or talking in radical terms? And there’s a lot of Muslims who are afraid of being entrapped by the FBI and being led into plots that they might not otherwise do. But then they also know that if they don’t report them nobody else is going to and if there’s an attack, things are only going to get worse.

DIONNE: You’ve got tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Muslims living in American suburbs, living middle-class lives, and if one or two or three or five of those thousands of kids is discovered to get involved in terrorism, suddenly we’re talking about these very middle-class, classically American places being breeding grounds for terrorism. I think one thing that is going to sort encourage that is if we make this big American Muslim middle class feel excluded from the rest of us, and we’re really going to have to think that through. Of course we don’t want home-grown terrorism, but we’re nowhere like where the Europeans are, because we have this great tradition of upward mobility and inclusion in our country.

LAWTON: And this has been a challenge for American Muslims themselves within their communities. If we launch programs to combat homegrown terrorism, homegrown extremism, if we launch programs in our mosques, does that appear like we’re giving in to the stereotype that all Muslims are potential terrorists, and so they’ve really struggled within their community how to approach this problem. They want to look proactive. They want to look like they’re addressing this as good, loyal Americans, but how do you do that without giving into the perception?

ABERNETHY: Kevin, what do you expect to happen with the cultural center/mosque near Ground Zero?

ECKSTROM: Well, it’s going to be a challenge. They presumably have all of the zoning things that they need. They’ve got their permits and the city is going to allow them to build it. What they’re missing right now is the money. And it’s going to take them a while to raise as much money as they’re going to need, but it’s also going to be difficult to get, I think, a lot of people to support that because that center is so radioactive and it’s generated so much heat that there’s going to be a lot of people who maybe don’t want their names associated with it. And on the flip side, there’s a lot of Americans who don’t want the money coming from some foreign anonymous donor somewhere, so they have a big challenge there.

ABERNETHY: Now you were referring earlier to the fact that the beginning of 2011 may well seem like the beginning of the election campaign of 2012, E.J.

DIONNE: Right, and I think you’re going to see some sort of interesting positioning inside the Republican Party. I mean, we still don’t know if Sarah Palin is or is not going to run for president. Sarah Palin seems to be more representative of the Tea Party side of the right, although she has clearly some Christian conservative support. Mike Huckabee is going to be competing with her as the spokesperson for Christian conservatives, but every Republican running for president wants a piece of that vote, because it is such an important vote in the Republican primaries, and that’s going to start right now. It’s already started, before the show went on the air.

ECKSTROM: And I think something worth watching there is Mitt Romney, who is at the front of a lot of these polls, these straw polls, whether or not he tries to make the case about his Mormon faith again with the evangelical base. A lot of people say, you know, he did that; he doesn’t need to do it again. Other people say that he’s never going to win them over; there’s a certain amount of the base that’s just never going to accept a Mormon candidate. So I think it will be interesting to watch how he navigates the Mormon question.

ABERNETHY: And meanwhile, E.J., every pundit worth his salt is giving Obama advice about what he needs to do, how he needs to change himself, how he needs to change his language. Talk about that.

DIONNE: Well, the range of advice goes from you must be nicer to the Republicans and look like you’re a centrist to you’re political and moral obligation is to confront these guys and have a big argument so that the issues can be clear to the country. And I think he’s going to try to do a little of the former to say I’ve reached out my hand to them, and when the hand is rejected on certain issues, he’s going to flip to the second. But I think one of the things to look for is whether he does speak more in a moral and spiritual language both about himself and the underpinnings of his policies, but also about this sense of America can grab its position in the world back after a period when Americans felt we were in decline. I think there’s going to be some John Kennedy-esque rhetoric coming out him getting the country moving again in the coming year.

LAWTON: And the Democratic Party is going to have to figure out what it wants to do in terms of faith-based outreach. There was a lot of criticism from Democrats about how the party handled that in the last midterm elections and a lot of faith-based moderates and liberals and even some conservatives that don’t consider themselves Republicans felt that the party didn’t do enough to reach out to them, so that’s going to be something they’re trying to figure out as well.

ABERNETHY: Meanwhile the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan is supposed to begin n 2011. What are your expectations there?

LAWTON: Well, there’s some really difficult ethical debates still lingering in terms of what America leaves behind in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of civil society and …

ABERNETHY: And safety and protection for the people who helped us.

LAWTON: Exactly. Religious minorities and people who were seen as being part of the American offensive—what’s going on with them and what responsibility does America have within that? And those are going to be difficult questions. I’ve been surprised how little the religious community has been focusing on these issues of war. It seemed like last year, in the last election, people just didn’t really talk about those ethical, moral issues.

ECKSTROM: And, you know, we’ve heard a lot of talk about the president’s problem with his base—you know, the liberal base is dissatisfied for any number of reasons. But it’s worth remembering that a good chunk of that base voted for him because he said he was going to close Guantanamo Bay, and it’s still open, and that he said he’d get us out of Afghanistan, and he actually sent more troops in. So there’s, I think, some ethical problems that he faces in terms of not moving fast enough on that issue.

DIONNE: Actually, he said he’d get us out of Iraq, and he said Afghanistan was the good war, and we’ll presumably continue to pull out of Iraq. My hunch is that if we have a withdrawal this year from Afghanistan it’s going to be very small. It’s clear that the new timeline that the administration wants seems to be 2014. And there’s going to be some opposition in his own party to not withdrawing more quickly. I also think some of the new conservatives who are less interventionist in Congress may also be a surprising opposition to a long commitment there.

ABERNETHY: Let me ask you to look at Europe and the Vatican. What do you expect there in terms of this ongoing struggle about the sex abuse of kids by priests? Anybody?

DIONNE: Everyone is silent.

ECKSTROM: Happy topic. Well, this pope has the unfortunate possibility of his legacy being presiding over this sex abuse scandal that reared its ugly head—that the church didn’t learn anything from the first time around. And I think he has made some progress in sort of admitting that the church needs to do some introspection and figure out what went wrong so that we don’t make this happen again. But the pope is going to be 84 in 2011. I don’t know how much more time he has left in that job, but probably a few years, and I think he’s going to be doing some legacy-making, because this is now at the point where he can still do some things and see what happens.

LAWTON: Well, so many people in the church are frustrated because they want to get beyond this issue but they just can’t do it, and so that’s been something they’ve all had to confront.

DIONNE: I think it’s sort of an argument between people who defend the Vatican and the church say look, they understand, they’ve tried to fix this, they’ve made some moves versus others who say that they still haven’t fully taken responsibility for changing the structures of the church. It’s a classic argument between more conservative or traditionalist people and people looking for greater change in the church because they think it needs it, and I think that is an ongoing struggle and that the sex abuse scandal is a piece of that larger struggle.

ABERNETHY: Our time is almost up, but before we quit, in this coming year do you see something happening or that might happen or do you see some person that you’re going to be paying particular attention to?

LAWTON: Well, we should also point out that last year a lot of the things we discussed we didn’t predict. So, as E.J. said, it’s hard to know that. I think it is going to be a pivotal year for religious groups and issues surrounding homosexuality, whether we’re talking court cases around gay marriage or whether we’re talking denominations still really struggling over how to handle gay clergy and gay bishops. And the Anglican Communion, which has really been torn about by this subject, is also going to have to face some tough questions this coming year.

ECKSTROM: I’m going to keep an eye on Archbishop Tim Dolan in New York, who is the new president of the Catholic bishops conference. He’s a media-savvy guy, he gives you a bear hug, he’s sort of a telegenic face for the church. But he’s no shrinking violet. He will take on the issues of the day, but in sort of a friendly kind of way. It will be interesting. The only real power he has is the power of the megaphone, and which issues he chooses for the bishops to emphasize.

DIONNE: I think that’s an excellent selection. I would say if I could combine Palin, Huckabee, Obama, Romney—we’re going to see if the nature of the discussion of religion in our politics changes substantially this year or not. As we’ve already said, there are challenges to each of those figures, and it will be interesting to see how they deal with it.

ABERNETHY: I have been wondering with respect to Iraq and now Afghanistan why there was no peace movement—not more of a peace movement. Do you think with Afghanistan, as we begin to come out of there, that there will be such a thing?

DIONNE: I think going into Afghanistan there was very broad support when we started because many people, except for pacifists and a few others who have legitimate reasons for opposing all war, most people thought this was kind of a just war response, so you didn’t have a big opposition. I think now a lot of people say God, this is a terrible mess. I don’t have a good answer coming out of it, and I think that sort of undercuts what might otherwise be a big peace movement.

ABERNETHY: Thanks, E.J., our time is up. Many thanks to Kim Lawton of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution. That’s our program for now. I’m Bob Abernethy.

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome, I’m Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us for this special report on the most important religion and ethics news of the year that’s almost over. Our panelists are E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a professor at Georgetown University; also Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton, managing editor of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. We begin with a video reminder of the major events of 2010 assembled by Kim.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: It was a challenging year for interfaith relations, as American Muslims faced new tensions on several fronts. Plans for an Islamic cultural center near the site of Ground Zero generated a firestorm of debate and protest.

Protester: No mosque, not here, not now, not ever.

LAWTON: And the proposed construction of mosques in other communities generated opposition as well. A Florida pastor’s announced intention to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11 set off an international furor, including violent protests in several Muslim nations. The pastor eventually backed off his plan, but controversy continued. Leaders from several faith traditions joined with Islamic leaders to denounce what they called “growing Islamophobia” across the country. Meanwhile, amid several high-profile arrests of American Muslims allegedly plotting terrorist attacks, US mainstream Islamic groups launched new campaigns to combat extremism within their communities.

Imam speaking to Muslim students: Nonviolence, the sanctity of life is valued, and it’s not the sanctity of Muslim life, it’s the sanctity of all life.

Despite some limited signs of economic recovery, many American families continued to face unemployment and foreclosures. Religious institutions were called upon to do more to help the needy even as they dealt with their own sustained budget cuts.

On the political front, religious conservatives appeared to be reenergized by the Tea Party movement and its campaign for limited government. Although the focus of the midterm elections was on economics, many religious right activists were hopeful a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will provide momentum for their social agenda. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats were criticized for failing to reach out more to religious voters. Many faith-based moderates and liberals were disappointed that President Obama did not employ more religious rhetoric when he discussed issues like health care and the economy. And according to one survey, growing numbers of Americans, nearly one in five, believe incorrectly that President Obama is a Muslim.

Issues surrounding homosexuality continued to pose difficult challenges for many in the religious community. Faith groups were on both sides of the issue as Congress debated lifting don’t ask don’t tell, the 17-year-old ban on gays serving openly in the military. They also filed briefs on both sides in several court cases over gay marriage. The Episcopal Church installed its second openly gay bishop, Reverend Mary Glasspool, a lesbian.

The Roman Catholic Church confronted the ongoing clergy sex abuse crisis, this time centered in several European countries, and there were more questions about how high-ranking church officials dealt with the crisis. Pope Benedict XVI offered renewed apologies about the problem and promised new guidelines for handling allegations of abuse.

Faith-based charities scrambled to meet needs in the wake of several humanitarian disasters. Here in the US, social service groups tried to help people along the Gulf Coast after the devastating BP oil spill. In Pakistan, religious relief groups rushed to deliver aid after a summer of massive flooding that has left an estimated four million people still homeless. And for nearly a year now, faith-based groups have been actively working in Haiti, providing emergency aid and helping to rebuild after the January 12 earthquake, which killed more than 220,000 people and displaced almost two million. A rising cholera epidemic is complicating those efforts.

ABERNETHY: Kim, many thanks for that. To you and to Kevin Eckstrom and to E.J. Dionne, welcome. I want to get to churches and politics and economics, jobs in just a minute, but first, Kevin, what do you make of all this Islamophobia?

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): It’s an extraordinary place for us to be in 2010. The most extreme example you can think of on this was in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where a zoning dispute over whether or not to build a mosque, whether they had the right to build a mosque, turned into a debate over whether Islam is actually a religion or not. And we saw it in New York in Ground Zero with the Park 51 mosque that Kim referred to in her piece. And what you saw this year was a fundamental debate over whether or not American Muslims are in a separate category or should be in a separate category from everyone else in terms of their rights, their responsibilities, and their place at the American table. And, you know, when you have a Florida pastor who can come out of nowhere and threaten to burn a pile of Qurans and get a call from the secretary of defense you know that we are not in …

LAWTON: … asking him not to do it …

ECKSTROM: That’s right. You know that we are not in an ordinary year when it comes to American Muslims.

ABERNETHY: But meanwhile there were legitimate threats. There was a Time Square bomber and others.

LAWTON: And this put a lot of pressure on the American Muslim community, as we saw, as they were trying to portray this message that Islam is not the same as terrorism. They are not mutually the same thing. But yet there were these arrests, and so they were really having to confront their own ideology and how they get their message across, and that was a big challenge for them this past year.

E.J. DIONNE (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): You know, we as a country have gone through bouts of this before, and I think when we confront this now it’s worth looking back. We had a party in our country formed in the 1850s in response to the big Catholic immigration, the American Party, also known as the Know Nothings, and it took us a long time to work through anti-Catholic prejudice. It wasn’t until 1960 that John Kennedy was elected president. We had enormous fights over the Mormons and their role in our society. I think what may be most distressing about this year is that the issue of reaction to Islam has become politicized in a way that it wasn’t immediately after 9/11. You know, it’s worth remembering that right after 9/11 President Bush went out of his way to visit the Islamic center here in DC. It kind of took any political sort of edge off this. I think in this election you have more of it occurring on the right and among Republicans. It was used in the campaigns by some Republican congressional candidates, and I think you are going to need some spokespeople on the conservative side who are very much opposed to Islamophobia to speak out so we can sort of go back to the moment, oddly, that we had after 9/11 when their was a lot of opposition in the country to Islamophobia, because everybody understood our need for Muslim allies around the world.

LAWTON: Well I was just going to go on top of that to say that it’s also been a challenge for leaders of other faith traditions. Muslims are looking to them, saying some of you experienced this yourselves. Where are you? Are you supporting us? Are you supporting our religious freedom? And you have seen some high-profile press conferences and statements by some of the leaders of the national religious organizations. Some Muslims wish that there were more of that going on. But I also think in some local communities, as a response to this protest in the streets, there are more interfaith dialogues going on at the local synagogue and at the local church as people try to figure out what is going on within the religious community.

ABERNETHY: There’s a correlation, isn’t there, with what’s happening to jobs and the economy and the fear a lot of people have about everything. And E.J., I wanted to ask you to move from this into the election of 2010, the Tea Party, and how some of these things appeared in the election returns.

DIONNE: What was striking about the election overall is that it didn’t shift religious alignments very much. I mean the Democrats lost ground pretty well across the board, not only among more religious voters but also among more secular voters, partly because a lot of their people didn’t show up this time around. But the Tea Party is fascinating, because on the one hand the poll data makes it very clear that there is a substantial overlap between support for the Tea Party and support for the religious conservative movement. But there is also some difference between the two. The Tea Party is mildly more secular, but what I think it is even more than the Christian conservatives were is a kind of assertively nationalist movement, and that there is a feeling—I think there is a feeling in the country that we have lost ground as a nation in the world over the last 10 years. That feels part of it. There is certainly some uncertainty over the economy, and that feeds a kind of “let’s take care of our own first” feeling in the country. And so I think watching the relationship between this new Tea Party movement and the older religious conservative movement is going to be one of the most interesting stories between now and the 2012 election.

ABERNETHY: And there was this phrase that we heard often—“We want to take back the country.” How do you transpose that? How do you interpret that?

DIONNE: Many people interpret this depending on their own politics, you know. Some people look at it and say this is a reaction to immigration and it’s a reaction of traditionally white or Anglo-Saxon Americans to the growing diversity of America. I think some people might look at it in more economic terms and say, boy, did we feel more secure 30 years ago. There was less income inequality 30 years ago. Average people could count on sort of decently paying jobs no matter what their education level was. Some of it is connected to that, and I think some of it is this sense of who are in the world now compared especially to China, but to some degree compared to India, and a lot of politicians are speaking more about American exceptionalism, we are still an exceptional nation, and I think that comes from a desire to hold on to that sense and that it’s been threatened by the downturn, by a sense our power has been depleted by the two long wars we’ve been in. And so I think there is this spiritual element to what is a national discussion about our national standing.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, between the parties did we see a God gap again in this last election?

LAWTON: Well, that’s what people used to talk about, the God gap—that Democrats appeared to be less friendly towards religion than Republicans, and President Obama and his campaign in the last presidential election and the Democratic Party had really seemed to make an effort to change that and had really reached out to the religious community. I’ve been surprised at the difficulty of President Obama’s relationship with the religious community over this past year. A lot of religious moderates and liberals have been very frustrated with him and some of his policies. They’ve been disappointed he hasn’t been speaking more about religion, and a lot of their community were frustrated that the Democratic Party didn’t appear to be reaching out to them in the past midterm election, so some of that separation still seems to be there.

ECKSTROM: I think the most interesting God gap you saw this year was the gap between perception and reality on whether or not the president is a Muslim or not.

ABERNETHY: What do you make of that?

ECKSTROM: I think when people say that he is a Muslim or that they think that he’s a Muslim, they are certainly not saying it as a compliment. It’s a way of smearing someone now in America in 2010. If you don’t like them, you can say that they are a Muslim. It’s a way of saying that he’s different, that he’s other, that he’s not like the rest of us. But you know, you have a president who speaks in Christian terminology, who went to church on Easter, who talked about finding salvation at the foot of the cross and all this. And yet there’s this gap, this interminable gap that they can’t seem to quite get over. As much as he talks, as many places as he goes, people still want to think that he’s not quite like us, and the Islam label or the Muslim label is a way of expressing that.

DIONNE: And I think there’s another side to it which Kim talked about in that excellent piece—more information per second that any video this year—and that is that President Obama talked quite a lot about religion and his own faith and his own views on the relationship between religion and public life from 2006 to 2008 when he was running for president. I think he’s done a lot less of that in the White House. Now he might defend himself saying I had awfully big problems to deal with out there. Nonetheless, I think that was a missing piece in the way he talked about issues. It was a missing piece partly, I think, on the grounds of persuasion; that providing an underlying philosophical rationale for what he was doing would have helped him, I think, in these two years. But also it’s a sort of a missing piece of who he is, and I think he does need to talk more about it. And it’s not just that minority that sees him as Muslim. I think there’s a minority that dislikes President Obama that would say almost anything about him. But there’s a larger group that just doesn’t have a sense of exactly who he is in this area, and I think he addressed it really well, I think, his critics believed that, from ’06 to ’08. I think he needs to address is again.

LAWTON: And it showed up in issues such as the health care debate or the economic issues, where a lot of times during the campaign trail he would use the phrase “we are our brothers’ keepers, we are our sisters’ keepers.” He would frame issues like health care as a moral issue and use sometimes religious language to talk about that, and he hasn’t done that as much in the Oval Office, and that has frustrated faith-based activists on the ground who believe that and who use that kind of language to mobilize their own people.

ABERNETHY: The recession continues and hurts everybody, and not least churches. Anybody want to talk about what the job problem has meant in churches?

LAWTON: Well, they’re having to do more to help people in their congregations. A lot of food banks and faith-based social services are saying they are seeing more and more people coming to them. People, middle-class people who’d never gone to a food bank before in their lives are now having to do that because of the ongoing economic problems, and at the same time religious institutions, like everybody else, are making budget cuts and slashing staff because of the difficulties.

ABERNETHY: Pastors, assistant pastors, associate pastors out of work.

LAWTON: A lot of congregations talk about that, really cutting back.

ECKSTROM: And what I’m hearing from clergy is that the recession that began in 2008 is actually now sort of catching up in reality with people as they are making their pledge payments for 2011 or going forward, where they are saying I’d like to pledge the same that I did last year but my husband just lost his job or we just don’t have as much money this year. So there’s going to be some difficult choices facing American congregations going forward from here about how they balance lower income from the pews with demand increase for services.

DIONNE: I was so struck in Kim’s piece that she kept coming back to what religious institutions are doing in the charitable sphere, whether it’s for the unemployed here or the suffering folks in Pakistan, and I think sort of one of the good news stories of the year was the publication of a book called “American Grace” by Bob Putnam of Harvard, David Campbell of Notre Dame, where they found that American—first of all, there is an enormous amount of charity that comes out of the religious community in America and that people connected to religious institutions seem to have more of a proclivity toward doing that, and that there is a kind of built-in religious tolerance in the country because of our religious diversity. It was actually a very optimistic book about the nature of religion in America, and I think Kim’s piece kind of underscored that.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, social issues. Don’t ask don’t tell was repealed. Proposition 8—I don’t know where that stands; maybe you do. Talk about those a little bit.

ECKSTROM: It was a significant year for the gay movement in all of its various forms. Gay and lesbian soldiers will now be able to serve in the military openly. On the marriage front, you had a federal court strike down California’s ban on gay marriage, and I think the most significant and often overlooked part of that ruling was that the judge said that religious feelings about homosexuality, religious bias if you will, is not enough to legislate on—that whatever your religious feelings are on the issue, that that’s not enough when it comes to civil rights, and that’s a fairly significant finding, and he found it as a finding of law, a finding of fact—that it wasn’t disputable, and that’s going to be going forward. But you also see in the sort of conservative resurgence that there’s a lot of resistance to going too fast on this issue. And so you’ll see, like in New Hampshire, where the Republicans have regained control of the legislature, they might try to repeal the gay marriage law there that’s a couple years old. You saw judges in Iowa who lost their jobs because they voted in favor of gay marriage last year. So it’s—this issue is always sort of two steps forward, one step back.

LAWTON: It’s been a difficult issue for a lot of people in the religious community whose religious beliefs teach that homosexuality is a sin, and that rubs up against civil rights and so you get to this very difficult place. So I was struck this past year by how people were examining their rhetoric, and you had the anti-gay bullying, the very tragic cases of young gay people committing suicide, and then people in the religious community looking at their rhetoric to say is it possible to oppose homosexuality without being a bully or appearing to be discriminating, and it’s a very difficult issue for a lot of people in the religious community, and how that gets worked out in society has been a challenge and will continue to be so.

ABERNETHY: And E.J., we had this interesting split within the Catholic Church this past year over the health care bill and the bishops on one side and the Catholic Health Association on the other—a lot of nuns.

DIONNE: This was a huge split. I just want to go back to the gay issue for one moment. The passage of don’t ask, don’t tell—it’s hard, I think, to fully appreciate how big a move that is. Think of where we were 15 years ago, and it passed because a number of Republican senators decided that a) they were for it on principal, but b) this is now the more popular position in the country. So we still have a lot of arguments over gay marriage, but the status of gay people has changed radically in this country in a very short time. To go to your question, this was a huge fight in the Catholic Church, and it’s going to have repercussions, where you really had a dispute over what the bill actually said. You had the Catholic bishops insisting that the language in the bill could still lead to federal financing of abortion. You had the Catholic Health Care Association, which is pro-life, and quite a large group of nuns who are also pro-life, saying we looked at this language; this bill does not finance abortion. And I think this has sort of implications for which side will the Catholic Church be on in a lot of other fights. Catholic social teaching, there’s always been a kind of amalgam: very pro-life on abortion but very much in favor of social justice. In this bill those two kind of collided. The Catholic Health Association said there is no conflict here, and I think you’re going to see a lot more arguments in the church about this in the coming several years.

ABERNETHY: And back to what you were saying before, Kevin. There’s a difference, isn’t there, between being for don’t ask don’t tell and on the other hand having that spill over into gay marriage. There’s a lot of resistance to gay marriage.

ECKSTROM: That’s right. There has been a 30-point shift in the last 15 or so years on the question of gays in the military. The shift on whether or not gays should be allowed to be married is somewhere more like in the five to ten range. It’s still very on the border of being a majority or minority of Americans who support it.

DIONNE: Although you still now have a substantial majority who support either gay marriage or civil unions. Civil unions in a very short time has gone from being a rather advanced or very liberal position to being a kind of middle-of-the-road position.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, quickly, are the Episcopalians still divided over gay bishops?

LAWTON: Many, many mainline Protestant denominations have been very divided over issues surrounding homosexuality/ Not just gay bishops—whether gay clergy can be in the pulpit, and gay marriage, whether their clergy can actually perform a same-sex marriage. So this has been and will continue to be a very difficult issue for many religious groups.

ABERNETHY: Our time is almost up. I wanted to ask each of you as you look back on the year whether you see something that we didn’t pay enough attention to—underreported. Who wants to begin? Kim?

LAWTON: Well, I was very struck by the Gulf oil spill and how that was an occasion for many conservative religious people to get a little more environmentally friendly. You saw Southern Baptists and others very struck by that tragedy and taking a look at some of their environmental positions.

ABERNETHY: Kevin?

ECKSTROM: I was struck by the change in rhetoric from the Mormon Church, actually, on the gay issue, where after the Prop 8 ruling came out and the gay bullying came, the church said, you know, we’ve been discriminated against in the past. We need to be much more careful about how we discriminate.

ABERNETHY: E.J.?

DIONNE: The decline of traditional culture-war politics on the one side and the rise of a different kind of cultural fight around immigration, Islam, Hispanics. I think that’s a shift we are going to be thinking about for a long time.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to you, many thanks. Our time is up. Many thanks to E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton of this program.

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: There is a new conversation taking place in parts of the religious community about anti-gay bullying. In recent weeks, several young men committed suicide after being targeted for harassment and violence because of their sexual orientation. Religious supporters of gay rights have launched new anti-bullying campaigns, while some opponents of homosexuality are re-examining their rhetoric. Our managing editor Kim Lawton has more.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: There’s been a lot of concern in the religious community about these acts of violence and harassment. Several religious denominations and faith-based organizations have been providing local congregations with resources. They’ve been urging pastors to preach about this in the sermons and providing information for youth groups and for youth leaders how to minister to people, young people, who might be struggling over some of these issues. A coalition of Jewish organizations from the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movement is actually asking Jewish leaders to sign a pledge promising to end bullying, this kind of anti-gay bullying, within the Jewish community. And even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons—they oppose homosexuality—this week they released a statement saying while we are not changing our position we do condemn any kind of bullying based on sexual orientation.

ABERNETHY: And the language involved, that’s being reconsidered, too?

LAWTON: Well, there’s been some interesting soul-searching among those religious groups that do consider homosexuality a sin. But how do they communicate that? How do they come across as they are communicating that? And some evangelical leaders have suggested that perhaps their community has been too harsh in their condemnations, as if homosexuals are in some kind of special depraved category or something like that. The Catholic Church, which considers homosexual behavior a moral disorder—one Catholic priest this week suggested that perhaps it should be considered within the pro-life agenda if these kids are committing suicide. None of these groups are suggesting that their churches change their theological position, and that then leads to this dilemma—how do you communicate dislike for the behavior without condemning the individual, and that’s a difficult dilemma.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton. Many thanks.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: The US Supreme Court opened its new term this week, and on Wednesday (October 6) dueling protests took place on the court steps as oral arguments began in a closely watched First Amendment case. The dispute centers on the highly controversial Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, a small religious group that travels around the country protesting at military funerals. Members carry signs that millions find repulsive. They preach that America is being punished for its toleration of homosexuality. In 2006, Albert Snyder, the father of a Marine killed in Iraq, sued Westboro, claiming the church violated his privacy and inflicted emotional distress on his family by demonstrating near his son’s funeral. At the court on Wednesday, Synder called Westboro’s actions intolerable:

Albert Snyder: “All we wanted to do was bury Matt with dignity and respect.”

But Margie Phelps, counsel for Westboro and daughter of the church’s founder, Fred Phelps, argued that restricting their protests would have serious ramifications for free speech:

Margie Phelps: “There’s no line that can be drawn here without shutting down a lot of speech.”

We talk now about the major issues in the case with Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, and Tim O’Brien, who covers the Supreme Court. Tim, the most despicable speech imaginable: no limits on it?

TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: Well, there are limits on free speech. There can be time, place, and manner restrictions. You can’t go through someone’s neighborhood at four o’clock in the morning with a loud speaker. This is a content-based restriction, and that’s different. Even content–based restrictions are sometimes allowed. For example, you can sue somebody if they defame you. Obscenity is not protected by free speech. Fighting words are not protected. But here the words, the comments, the demonstration, as despicable as it was, might still be protected.

ABERNETHY: No matter how upset or sick it might make somebody else?

O’BRIEN: Consider this is an important issue. The rights of gay people, gays in the military—it’s a discussion. We might not like the way people come to this discussion or what they have to say about it. It’s still a legitimate discussion about an important public issue. Courts are loath to interfere with that kind of conversation.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: And it’s always the question, too, of who draws the lines and on what basis do they draw the lines? And so what might be offensive to some people may not be offensive to others, and so it’s a very tricky thing for the courts to get into.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, there’s a religious angle to it too, isn’t there?

LAWTON: Well, this speech is religiously motivated, and this is a small church in Kansas—less than seventy members. Most of the people who go there are all from the same family. It’s an independent Baptist church, so it’s not affiliated with any other denomination or other movement, and in fact the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Protestant denomination in the country, has taken great pains to say they are not related to us. The Southern Baptists also preach that homosexuality is a sin, but they say it’s a forgivable sin. So this Westboro church says God is punishing America for being tolerant of homosexuality. They’ve also picketed the Southern Baptists for being too liberal on the issue.

O’BRIEN: I don’t think the courts going to really care very much that it happens to be religious-inspired speech or how offensive it is. I think that what they are going to look at is what about this family’s privacy interests, what about the harm that it does to them emotionally to have this kind of a demonstration at this terrible time in their lives, and balance, try to balance those competing interests.

ABERNETHY: What about in a time when there’s, you know, the television and Internet and all kinds of ways that speech can be spread around the world. What—does that make any difference, should that make any difference in the content of what’s said?

O’BRIEN: Well, the Supreme Court has addressed that question as well. It says television, for example, and radio—they are entitled to the least First Amendment protection because it’s so uniquely accessible to children in the privacy of the home. The Internet, newspapers, demonstrations on the street, however—they’re entirely different, and the Court has accorded them the greatest protection.

ABERNETHY: And what about the feelings of people about, for instance, an Islamic center right near Ground Zero?

O’BRIEN: Bob, I think that is very similar to what we have here. We have something that many of us find offensive, and it may in fact be in bad taste. Perhaps it shouldn’t be there, but to say it may not be allowed there is an entirely different matter. We might not like it, but our Constitution protects it.

LAWTON: Well, and just to get back to the religion point, though, while this case is not directly about those issues, a lot of religious groups have found themselves in this case before the Supreme Court in an uncomfortable spot, because on the one hand they don’t want to be associated with the message of this group, and religious speech doesn’t get a special place in law so, yes, they haven’t spoken on it. But they are concerned. The notion of somebody restricting a religiously motivated speech makes them uncomfortable privately even though they don’t want to necessarily say that, and that’s not what may happen in this case, but it’s sort of out there—religious people worrying about what we can say in the public forum and what we can’t, and so that is one of the things they’ll be watching.

ABERNETHY: And does it bleed over into what might be said in a pulpit?

LAWTON: Well, obviously there’s some concern about that as well, although that’s certainly not what’s at stake here, and I think the courts have always given special protection, you know, to religious practice. But there is some worry about, you know, again, free speech when it comes religion on these tough issues.

ABERNETHY: And Tim?

O’BRIEN: As offensive as you find this conduct, the fact that it happened may make us all cringe, but that it’s allowed to happen is another matter. When you are in a country that doesn’t have anything like this, where everyone behaves, where discourse is always civil, where the press is always responsible—well, that might be the scariest scenario of all. You’ve left a democracy and entered a place that’s much less.

ABERNETHY: Tim O’Brien, Kim Lawton, many thanks.