Society factures along belief lines

By Jeff Klinzman

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Uwe and Hannelore Romeike enjoyed advantages denied other people who flee persecution in their homelands. As German citizens, they did not need visas to enter the United States, where they could stay for up to a year before applying for asylum. The “persecution” faced by the Romeikes, who want to home-school their children in defiance of German law, is prosecution and potential loss of custody of their children in Europe's richest county.

The Romeikes face the consequences of confronting an established system of law, far different from the potential fates of Sudanese or Somali refugees who fled countries with little rule of law, impoverished economies and raging civil wars. Nor do the Romeikes face the kind of persecution which an American evangelical-led crusade has ignited in Uganda against LGBT people. The Romeikes' lives are not in danger, nor do they face imprisonment merely for being devout Christians.

Melissa Harris-Perry, a Tulane University political science professor and host at MSNBC, produced an innocuous public service announcement. Harris-Perry advocates seeing our children as belonging to the whole community, not just the individual household; once we see children as a collective responsibility, according to Harris-Perry, we start making better investments in their future.

Harris-Perry's PSA has ignited a firestorm of protest. Many self-described American “conservative Christians” bristled at Harris-Perry's use of “collective,” seeing in her words a plot by the Obama administration to come and take their children. Harris-Perry has not been afraid to answer her critics, and lost in the cacophony is the simple, obvious insight: As a society, we all do share responsibility in raising and educating our children.

The Romeikes and Harris-Perry are symptoms of how the United States is fracturing on sectarian, religious fault lines. The Romeikes have been embraced by conservative Christian home-schoolers, who see in them a dark future where they will lose their right to home-school. A central Iowa blogger, Shane Vander Hart of “Caffeinated Thoughts,” sees Harris-Perry's short video as an existential threat, since he is a self-described young-Earth creationist who home-schools his children.

Home schooling as practiced by the Romeikes, which is illegal in Germany, or by Vander Hart, which is legal in the United States, is an example of how many of us self-segregate into our own ideological communities. The self-segregation is commonplace on the Internet, including social network sites such as Facebook.

I've been blocked from anti-LGBT sites such Illinois Family Institute, Heterosexual Inspired Pride, both versions of Heterosexual Awareness Month (the first was shut down as a hate site), and Vander Hart's blog and related Facebook page.

My offenses included asking: “How does marriage equality diminish your own marriage or freedom?” to contend that public policy in a secular republic cannot be based on a sectarian reading of the Bible.

To me, the fair-skinned Christian Romeikes do not face a threat to life and limb, unlike the dark-skinned Islamic refugees from Sudan or Somalia, who face a far harder time getting into the United States and being granted asylum. Will this country turn its back on LGBT Ugandans, who have been selected as victims by their Christian countrymen, encouraged and funded by American evangelicals?

Are parents who home-school their children to “protect” them from modern science education fulfilling their parental obligations?

I don't know the answers, but we will never find out if we let sectarians twist the narratives of cases like the Romeikes or Harris-Perry, and if the sectarians refuse to listen to the rest of us and respect our right not to live as they do.

Jeff Klinzman of Coralville teaches at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, specializing in research-based writing, argument and rhetoric. Comments; j.klinzman@hotmail.com