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The Peculiar Role of Religion in American Citizens’ Public Discourse
Karen Tracy
Communication Department
University of Colorado-Boulder
Karen.Tracy@colorado.edu
Keynote Presentation, RHETORIC IN SOCIETY 4, Copenhagen, January 15-18, 2013
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”Speaking out is the patriotic duty of democratic citizenship” (Ivie, 2002, p. 281).
“If we are concerned about the shape of our democracy, we would do well to start by
exploring exactly those practices, by investigating the norms we already live by”
(Shiffman, 2004, p. 112).
If you can’t afford to hire lobbyists or make big contributions to elected officials’
campaigns, “public meetings may be the only opportunity to speak face-to-face to elected
officials to try to influence their vote on matters of public importance” (Laidman, 2010,
61).
Christian Kock and Lisa Villadsen (2012) begin their introduction to rhetorical
citizenship by asserting that talk is not a precursor to real action but itself is “constitutive of
citizen engagement” (p. 1). I would like to push their claim further but also problematize a link
built between the discourse of rhetorical citizenship and democratic deliberation (Villadsen,
2012).
Many genres of discourse legitimately count as rhetorical expressions of citizenship. One
particularly important one is the speech-making citizens do in public meetings of governance
units. Through speaking out at public meetings people enact what it means to be citizens in a
democracy, seeking to shape the policies and practices of the communities and states of which
they are a part. Yet while this activity may be fundamental to rhetorical citizenship, there has
been little systematic analysis of such discourse. For the most part scholarly work about
democracy and citizenship has been philosophical and normative, inattentive to the empirical
practices it is seeking to theorize. This inattention to the empirical is problematic. A useful
proposal about how citizens ought to act—that is, a reasonable, morally defensible one—must
take account of how citizens actually speak. Studying citizen speech, in turn, requires taking
account of the context for speaking. Specifics matter.
In this paper I analyze citizen testimony at US state legislative hearings convened to
consider bills extending the right of marriage to gays and lesbians. The first section of the paper
reviews research on citizen participation in public meetings, making the case for why in the
American context person-rights/moral issues are distinctive speech occasions that inevitably
involve religion. Following an overview of the hearings and citizen speeches, I identify six
discourse practices that citizens employed to bring religion into the hearings. For each practice I
suggest what rhetorical functions are served for the speakers themselves and the elected officials
they address. In concluding, I sketch out the implications of this case study for rhetorical
conceptions of citizenship.
Citizen Participation in Public Meetings
The discourse of elites—candidates for elected office, prime ministers, presidents,
governmental agency leaders, and so on—has been an enduring concern for scholars of many
traditions. Their speeches, given at public occasions of one type or another, have been objects of
regular scrutiny. But until the last decade or so, little attention was given to the speech of
ordinary citizens attending and speaking out at public meetings. The reasons for this inattention
are many. Besides the practical challenges in taping and transcribing such speeches, a theoretical
reason for inattention is the prominence of deliberative democracy as the ideal of citizenship
(e.g., Gastil & Levine, 2005; Habermas, 1989; Hicks, 2002). Deliberative democracy emphasizes
back-and-forth talk, reason-giving, openness to others’ views, and equality among participants.
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Such a communicative format is desirable for some, perhaps even many, kinds of decisionmaking, but such a profile does not call to mind the kinds of public meetings that governance
bodies routinely hold. In a review of empirical studies of deliberative democracy, Delli-Carpini,
Cook, and Jacobs (2004), in fact, ruled out public meetings as a site that warranted the label
deliberative. Although public meetings may not be highly deliberative, they are the bread-andbutter format of democracy, the icon of ordinary democracy (Tracy, 2010). At least for the
American version of democracy, most local and state governance groups are not only required to
hold meetings in public but are expected to provide speaking slots to citizens.
Dietz and Sterns (2008) provide a comprehensive review of purposes for and formats of
public participation in meetings, as well as an evaluation of the success and pitfalls of different
formats. What they conclude is that much of the time, but far from consistently, having public
participation generates a better quality decision and/or enhances the perception of a governing
group’s legitimacy. Public participation also may increase the capacity of citizens for future
decision-making. Public meetings vary from strictly information-giving to highly interactive,
with two common formats. In a first one, experts present information and then citizens are
permitted to ask questions. Of note, questions in such meetings are often opinion-asserting
actions, grammatically clothed as a question but actually expressing a criticism.
A second common format for public meetings is that of the hearing. Hearings, often held
before elected officials make a controversial decision, involve large numbers of citizens giving
short speeches where officials may ask questions but often do not. The understood responsibility
of officials in such hearings is to listen to citizens’ testimony and, in some non-specified fashion,
take it into account it in their voting and decision-making (Fung, 2006). From the citizen point of
view, the purpose of speaking at a public meeting is to influence decision-makers in a desired
direction.
Another important difference among types of public meetings concerns their issue
breadth. At one end of a continuum are regularly scheduled, recurring meetings held by
governance bodies to make decisions about a large assortment of practical and symbolic matters.
Town hall meetings, which employ the increasingly rare format of direct democracy (Bryan,
2004; Townsend, 2009, Zimmerman, 1999), and school board meetings run by elected officials
(Tracy 2010; Tracy, McDaniel and Gronbeck, 2007) are two examples of broad, multi-purpose
meetings. At the other end are meetings that are convened specifically for the purpose of
considering some particular issue. Many of the issue-specific meetings that discourse and
rhetorical scholars have studied have concerned the environment and health risks. For instance,
in an edited volume Hausendof and Bora (2006) examined a public hearing about genetically
modified organisms in a town in Germany. Buttny (2009, 2010; Buttny & Cohen, 2007) analyzed
hearings about the environmental impact of a proposed Wal-Mart in a small New York town, and
Lassen and colleagues (2011) analyzed a meeting to consider climate change mitigation
initiatives in a town in Denmark. Controversies about how to use or develop parcels of land have
also been studied. Leighter and his colleagues (2009) examined the racial tensions in a Western
US city’s public meeting to consider land development in an area of a city involving African
American residents and white business developers, and Olson and Goodnight (2004) analyzed
citizen strategies in a rural Maryland hearing deciding whether to allow Disney World to develop
a large historical park.
Although we could expect topic-focused public hearings, whatever their topic, to include
some common rhetorical tactics, differences related to a hearing’s focus are also to be expected.
Hearings that focus on moral/person rights issues such as laws related to abortion, capital
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punishment, gun rights, and same-sex marriage have not been much studied. In contrast to
science-policy focused hearings where technical expertise is crucial, person-focused rights issues
make no such requirement. Rather for such issues, citizens’ experiences in the world and their
moral beliefs are relevant bases for the positions they advocate.
Government Ties to Religion in the United States: A Few Facts
In his examination of religion’s role in the making of the United States, Meacham (2006)
makes a distinction between the US as a nation founded by Christians, and as a “Christian
nation.” The US Constitution includes no references to God or the Christian religion, and in an
early letter from President John Adams to the Muslim nation of Tripoli creating a treaty, Adams
indicated that the US government was not a Christian nation. At the same time the US was
founded by men who were Christians—almost all Protestant—and aspects of their Christian
beliefs have been woven into the laws and practices of the United States. Moreover, while the
federal government was explicitly built to be separate from religion, such was not the case with
the governments of individual states. The First Amendment to the Constitution, which spelled
out that the US government could not establish a religion, was designed to insure that decisions
about religion stayed with the states. Well into the 1800s different states required their citizens to
pay taxes or have affiliation with specific Christian religions. It was not until after the civil war
and, practically speaking, following a series of court cases in the 1940s that contemporary
notions about the separation of church and state began to be applied to individual states (Levy,
1994).
Both Germany and the United States, for instance, have clauses in their constitutions
prohibiting the establishment of religion. In a comparison of how these clauses gets played out
legally, Haupt (2012) concludes that the US allows religion to flourish in state matters much
more than Germany. The US Constitution’s First Amendment promises to its citizen both the free
exercise of religion and that there will be no particular religion endorsed by the state. Consider
several religious activities that are allowed and prohibited in 21st century America (Haiman,
2003). First, prayers are not allowed in the public schools, but they are allowed and regularly
said at the openings of congress and state legislatures. In addition at high school graduation
ceremonies students may lead prayers but a religious leader may not. Second, states may pay for
buses to transport students to religious schools, but they may not pay for buses to take religious
school students on field trips. Third, in public schools, teachers my wear crosses and stars of
David, but a Sikh may not wear a turban and white clothes, nor may a teacher who is a nun wear
her religious habit.
Furthermore, although many of the battles about religion’s role in American society treat
religion as if it were a clearly defined thing (i.e., an institution focused on belief in God with
sacred texts), legally that is far from true. When conscription for the armed forces existed in the
United States, it was possible for a man to get a conscientious objector status for religious
reasons. When an atheist applied to be conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, he was
initially denied that status by the courts. Later, however, after appeal to the US Supreme Court,
he was granted such status. In the Court opinion for this case, religion was defined as an abstract,
ultimate code (Stronks, 2002). When religion is defined in this way it makes sense to consider
atheists as “religious.” However a consequence of this broad definition of religion is that it
makes it possible, as has been happening in the last decade in multiple states in the US, to treat
intelligent design as simply a debate between two religious views, fundamentalist Christianity
and secular humanism.
Thomas Jefferson wanted to build a wall between the church and the state. This never
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happened. Warren Burger, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court during the 1970s said of the
constitutional battles over politics and religion: “the line of separation, far from being a ‘wall,’ is
a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on the circumstances of a particular issue”
(Meacham, 2006, p.240). This blurred boundary between religion and the state extends from
interpreting law in the courts to the making of law in legislative hearings. When a US state
considers changing its law with regard to a matter that ties to some people’s religious beliefs and
other people’s rights, public discussions about what policy the state should adopt are likely to
become battlefields.
The Public Hearings and the Discourse Materials
In this paper I analyze testimony from three public hearings held by legislative judicial
committees assessing whether bills giving the rights of marriage to same-sex couples should be
moved to the full legislative body for a vote. In one state (Rhode Island) the bill would extend
the rights of marriage and the name, “marriage.” In Rhode Island a second bill was also being
considered that proposed allowing citizens, rather than the legislators, to vote on whether to
approve same-sex marriage. In the other two states (Colorado, Hawaii) the proposed law was
about extending the rights of marriage but the bills labeled gay and lesbian committed
relationships “civil unions.” Both Colorado and Hawaii had relatively recent laws that defined
marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
I obtained tapes of the hearings by requesting them from the appropriate legislative office
and then created transcripts. Transcripts were a verbatim record including all words, repetitions,
cut-offs and vocal sounds (uh, um); no attempt was made to capture intonation (Tracy, 2005).
Following transcription and viewing/listening to the tapes I carried out several simple counts,
and then studied the discourse, seeking to identify how the Discourses of religion entered the
discourse of citizen testimony. Table 1 provides an overview of each hearing in terms of its date
and length, the bill being debated, and the number of citizens speaking for and against the bill.
Table 1
Overview of the Hearings
State
Hawaii
2/24/2009
Rhode Island
2/8/2011
Colorado
3/31/2011
HB5012 HB5260
8.5 hrs
SB 11-172
7.5 hrs
Video
Audio
108
79
Pro SS unions 76
67
61
Con SS unions 100
41
18
Date
Bill No.
HB444
Hearing Length 18 hrs
Data Video
Total Speakers
176
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How is “Religion” Brought Into Citizen Speeches?
In this site of ordinary democracy, citizens used six discourse practices to bring religion
into their debates about same-sex marriage. The first three practices are relatively
straightforward; each connects with institutional notions of religion in obvious ways. The second
set of practices, numbers 4-6, connect to facets of religion in inferentially complex ways. For
each practice, I identify the function it serves for speakers and audiences.
1. Naming and/or Quoting of Religious Text
When scholars (Audi & Wolterstoff, 1996) debate about the reasonableness of bringing religion
into public discourse, what immediately comes to mind is a speaker referring to a religious text
to argue for or against a proposal. This, in fact, was one common way religious talk entered
citizen argument-making. In these debates about whether states should pass bills to extend
marriage or civil union rights to same-sex couples, citizens referred to various books in the bible,
with Leviticus being mentioned most often, in fact a total of 47 times across the hearings.
In referencing the bible some speakers were highly detailed, naming and quoting chapters
and verses, as is seen in Excerpt 1.
Excerpt 1 (Colorado, Con)
Uh with all due respect, those people are not adhering to the teachings of the scripture.
Leviticus 18:22 says if a man lies with another man, it is an abomination. Leviticus
22:18 says that if a man lies with a man as with a woman, they shall both be put to death
for an abom- abominable deed, for they have forfeited their life. . .In the words of St.
Paul the apostle, you do not know- that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor boy prostitutes, nor
sodomites, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, will inherit the
kingdom of God. First Corinthians 9:10. Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, we’re
living in a world where the awareness of sins is ticking away. Let me show you that Jesus
Christ is real, and he will judge us all at the moment of our death. If you’re not a believer,
at least consider the lessons of history.
At other times, speakers used less specific textual references, treating the text and what it
had to say as being so well-known to the audience that the most general of references was
sufficient for speakers to make their point. Excerpt 2 exemplifies this type of vague biblical
reference. How speakers referred to the bible, virtually the only religious text cited, varied on a
continuum ranging from quoting or near-quoting using biblical language (“abomination”
“sodomites”) to waving one’s hand toward “the scriptures” to everything in between. Excerpt 3,
from a high school student who reported what “the Lord says” and summarized the gist of
Leviticus illustrates an intermediate specificity reference.
Excerpt 2 (Hawaii, Con)
Um, let’s start with God first ok? I’m a Christian, as most of us are, ok? And uh I’m notI’m not gonna go through all the scriptures or whatever. But just to tell you that
when God says something is not good, you better abide by what he says. Otherwise
there’s gonna be some serious consequences.
Excerpt 3 (Rhode Island, Con)
Anybody can love who they want- who they want to love, but to endorse it uh would- by
the government- is to uh- i- it’s to allow something that, to speak frankly, the Lord says
in Leviticus, that it is detestable for a man to lie with a man the way a man would lie
with a woman.
Religious texts were typically used by speakers as if they settled the dispute about what to do. In
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fact this was the only way that religious texts were used by speakers arguing against the samesex marriage bills. Citizens passed on God’s instructions to elected officials about how to vote.
Using texts as a vehicle to straightforwardly instruct officials, however, was not the only
way texts were cited. Citizens favoring the bills highlighted the many different messages one
could find in the bible, often quoting passages that emphasized God’s loving character. Speakers
would also cite a text to problematize its implications for decision making. We see an instance of
this in Excerpt 4 where a citizen cites Leviticus to make apparent the interpretive difficulty in
using the bible to guide policy.
Excerpt 4 (Hawaii, Pro)
Hi. Thank you for this opportunity to testify. Um, some have testified in opposition to
HB444 stating passages from the Bible, including Leviticus 18:22 which states you
shall not lie with a man, as a woman is it- it is an abomination. Any argument against
civil unions that appeals to Leviticus is extremely problematic for a number of reasons.
While it’s true that Lev- Leviticus defines same-sex relationships as an abomination,
Leviticus also defines handling pigskin as in a football, or eating shrimp or lobster,
as an abomination. Leviticus was written thousands of years ago, and is filled with
laws that no one would ever think of enforcing today. For instance, Leviticus
prescribes the death penalty for disrespecting your parents, eating catfish, and vitaviolating the Sabbath, and it also explicitly condones slavery. So actively invoking
these ancient laws exclusively for homosexuals is unfair and unethical.
2. Praying for Officials
Not common, but a communicative act that occurred several times, was for a speaker to begin
praying in the midst of testifying. Praying in essence changes the footing (Goffman, 1981) of the
elected officials from the key addressed parties to that of overhearing third parties. But it is not
just the legislators’ positioning. By virtue of the discourse being a conversation with God about
them, the religious character of what is at stake is asserted. Excerpt 5 illustrates one instance of
praying enacted toward the end of a lengthy speech.
Excerpt 5 (Hawaii Con)
Thank you Heavenly Father I apologize if I haven’t always acted out of love. There are
times when I would like to kick some peoples’ butts. But I know it is out of love, Lord
God that you called me and you loved me. And thank you for loving all of us and
respecting the fact that you’ve given us the free choice to make our own choice. So it is
with that love that I pray for our leaders and their families. Please guide them with your
truth and your wisdom Heavenly Father. I pray also Lord God, for our nations and for the
people of the nations, for every tender tongue and people. We are special, you made us,
and you created us in your image and not to be degraded. I pray for our churches and our
wonderful pastors and their wives and families and especially for those who have had the
courage, thank you Jesus, to stand up for what God says is his word and to fear God
rather than man. They took a risk and I thank you Jesus.
2. Labeling Speakers’ Religious Category Affiliations
A third way religion entered citizen talk was as a credentialing device, an implicit
justification for why a legislature’s judicial committee should listen closely. In citizen speeches
in public meetings, whether a speech is directed to a local or university Board of education, a
city council, or to a legislative hearing, there are identifiable discourse moves that mark the talk
as the speech genre of citizen testimony. A key move in openings of these speeches is for the
citizen to identify the features of self that warrant his or her views being taken seriously on the
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issue of discussion. What exactly a citizen will mention in this opening slot will vary with the
issue and the context. In school governance meetings, for instance, speakers often mention their
longevity residing in a geographic area, the number of children they had in the school district,
their role as tax-payers, or an occupation that gave them expertise related to the focal topic
(Tracy, 2010; Tracy & Durfy, 2007). Of note, speakers rarely mentioned their race, ethnicity, or
sexual orientation. The exception to this generalization was a set of meetings in which the focal
matter was a policy regarding treatment of students of different races and sexual orientations
(Tracy, 2010). Similarly, in an analysis of citizen testimony at a Board of Regents’ meeting
focused on affirmative action West and Fenstermaker (2003) found that African American,
Latino, and female speakers, but not white male speakers, regularly named the race and gender
categories of which they were a part when they introduced themselves.
Because a speaker can describe self in a large variety of ways—by age, political party,
ethnicity, occupation, place of residence—the category terms speakers select give us insight into
what identities they regard as giving them credibility in the interactional site on a particular
topic. Harvey Sacks (1992) would describe this practice as the use of membership terms. To
describe persons using some membership terms rather than others is powerful because the
selected term sets in motion inferences about activities, attitudes, and other people. In these
hearings citizens used many different identity labels to self-describe. But what was striking was
the frequency of religious identification. In a study that is underway with a subset of these
hearings (Tracy & Parks, 2013), including the Rhode Island and Hawaii ones analyzed here, 55
of the 346 testifiers (16%) identified as religious leaders. In opening comments many speakers
described themselves as pastors, priests, ministers, rabbis, or spokesperson for religious-political
organizations. These identifying terms were used by speakers expressing pro as well as con
views on same-sex unions. Excerpt 6 illustrates these opening credential moves.
Excerpt 6 (Use of Religious Leader Membership Terms)
(a) Hello, my name is Dennis Dutton, I’m assistant pastor of the Family Chapel
Estuwahu. … Today I’d like to provide three points of uh discussion concerning House
Bill 444 (Hawaii, con).
(b) After being identified as “Rabbi Mack” by the chair, she said, “Thank you so much.
Um I’m here this evening, I think it’s important um that you hear from me as- as the only
formal representative of any Jewish community here in Rhode Island. Um just because I
am the only representative, um does not mean that uh the Jewish community is not
widely supportive of marriage equality. I’m the Associate Rabbi at Temple Bethel in
Providence. Um we have 950 families (RI, pro)
(c) I appreciate the opportunity to be here this afternoon. My name is Susan Candea, I
have been an ordained Lutheran minister for over 27 years, and I serve as a pastor of a
congregation in Loveland, and am the Chair of the Policy Committee of the Lutheran
Advocacy Ministry of Colorado. I am here this afternoon as a person of faith, and as a
leader of a faith community, to urge that this bill be passed. (Colorado, pro)
But it was not only religious leaders who mentioned their religious identities, so too did
citizens who had no leadership roles in religious organizations. We saw this in excerpt 3 where
the speaker announced that he was a Christian. In all the hearings, although particularly in
Hawaii, speakers described themselves as religious members in their openings by using identity
terms explicitly (“I’m a born-again Christian,” We’re Catholic” said by husband/wife speakers)
or less commonly by identifying beliefs that cued the category. What do opening announcements
about religious identity do?
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These self-labeling moves both underscore that the policy decision is a religion matter
and function as an implicit reason that the legislative committee should give careful attention to
the speaker. Of note, many speakers who began by self-labeling brought religion into their
message in others ways. But some did not. For those who do not, the self-labeling functions to
cue and reinforce the existence of important other unsaid argument grounds for being for or more
often against the proposed bill.
4. Denying that a Proposal is a Matter of Civil Rights
In these hearings the central argument for extending rights of marriage or civil unions to samesex couples was the need for equality: Marriage, proponents argued, is a basic civil right to
which all citizens are entitled. This argument was repeatedly made with subtle kinds of variation
by citizens favoring same-sex unions. Consider just one example from a woman in Hawaii:
Excerpt 7 (Hawaii, Pro)
This is a bill about equal rights for all human beings. This is the civil rights issue of our
time. There was a time and a place where as a mixed race couple, my husband and I,
would not have been allowed to marry. In the 19th century interracial marriage was illegal
in nearly all states. Opponents then used to misdirect an interpretation of the Bible,
saying God created different races, and put them on different continents for a reason.
Looking back today at how far we’ve come, it’s really hard to imagine and understand
that kind of prejudice, I am certain that one day soon we all will look back on this time
with similar disbelief. This is your chance to be at the front of an historic movement that
recognizes the rights and dignity of every human being. Please help me create a
Hawaii for my son. And all Hawaii’s keiki [children] can grow up in a community that
supports love, family, and equality for everyone.
As Michael Billig has shown (1987, Billig et al., 1988) everyday thought is fundamentally
argumentative. Asserting one claim conveys an assertion about the opposing claim. Often, too,
the discourse reveals traces of the understood opposing claim. Many speakers denied that civil
unions was an issue of civil rights. In the Hawaii hearing, for instance, speakers on the pro-side
used the term “civil rights” 58 times while con speakers used it 53 times (Fridy and Tracy, 2012).
That an issue is not a civil rights issue does not necessarily make it a religious one, but in this
context, it did. Excerpts 8 and 9 are two examples of con-speakers denying that the issue before
them was a matter of civil rights. The speaker in Excerpt 8 cues the contrast is religious through
his religious identify introduction, claiming to represent Jesus Christ, and by describing the issue
as a “moral” matter, a term that most would see as a cousin of religion. In Excerpt 9, an African
American speaker uses his body and experience to assert the issue before them in not a civil
matter, cuing that its alternative is religious with his preface about not getting into the religious
aspect.
Excerpt 8 (Colorado, Con)
My name is uh Pastor Roger Angis, and I represent uh myself and I also r- represent Jesus
Christ. I’ve been listening to the testimonies from both sides of the fence, I hear
economic policies, I hear so-called civil rights. This is not a civil right. . . . This bill
has to be put up first. Is this a moral bill? And this is not a moral bill in any way shape or
form.
Excerpt 8 (Colorado, Con)
I’m not gonna get into the religion expect- aspect of it. But I have a super problem with
the civil rights thing about this. Now when the gay lesbian groups compare this issue to
the issue of Americans who are black, and to civil rights, I find it very disingenuous. Let
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me just give you a story,
Although far less common, explicit denials that the issue was religious also occurred. As
might be expected these assertions were made by pro speakers.
Excerpt 10 (Hawaii, Pro)
This is not a religious issue. It is an issue of granting civil rights.
Excerpt 11 (Rhode Island, Pro)
It is not about the religious side of marriage. But um it’s not just about the rights and
responsibilities. That is a very important part of it. It is about a lot of the benefits, I
suppose, but it’s also about those responsibilities. It’s about the opportunities to um- um
to lead a life together.
We might say that the dominant counter position in these hearings to same-sex marriage
being a civil rights issue was to regard it is a religious, moral matter. Thus a central way speakers
brought religion into the debate was to deny that the issue before them concerned civil rights
Although “Is really civil rights” versus “is really religious” was the major frame debate, other
contrasts could be built. One contrast that a couple of speakers created was between same-sex
marriage being a religious issue versus the issue being a natural, God-given matter. In this case
con speakers treated religion as the human-constructed institution contrasting it with the
enduring, actual will of God. Consider how a speaker accomplishes this:
Excerpt 12 (Colorado, Con)
I agree with uh Representative Ferrendino [sponsor of the civil unions bill] that this is not
a religious issue. We believe that marriage- uh the ordering of male and female in- into a
domestic society suitable for procreation and raising children uh predates religion. And it
also predates the state. Senate Bill uh 172 clearly has fallible language.
5. Referring to the First Amendment of the US Constitution
The opening clause of the First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The two pieces of this
statement outline the expected relationship between government and religion: Phrase 1, the
establishment clause, seeks to keep religion and the state separated, allowing no religion to be
prioritized above others. Phrase 2, the free exercise clause, works to insure that citizens will have
the right to practice their religion. These two constitutional commitments may be necessary parts
of a well-functioning democracy. Rod Hart (1977) argued that “a country must be
simultaneously religious and areligious for it to function properly” (p. 64). But how these
commitments are to be put together is deeply problematic. In his engaging book, Divided by
God, legal scholar Noah Feldman (2005) comments that “no question divides Americans more
fundamentally that that of the relationship between religion and government” (p.5).
Not only are disputes among legal scholars common regarding the meaning and
application of the establishment and free exercise clauses (e.g., Haiman, 2003; Levy, 1994;
Sandel, 1999; Stronks, 2003), but speech of ordinary citizens orients to these ideas. Speakers in
these public hearings participated in the larger debate, seeking to persuade elected officials that
to vote one way on a proposed bill would be to fail to honor the First Amendment commitment
to religion. Which First Amendment clause a speaker gave attention, however, depended on
his/her position on the bill. Speakers arguing in favor of their state’s bill to extend marriage
rights argued how it was a clear case requiring separation of church and state. An especially
nuanced argument was made by one Christen minister. He said:
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Excerpt 13 (Rhode Island, Pro)
Now we have clergy and followers of Jesus that are on one side of this issue. And we
have people who claim Christianity that are on the other side of this issue. We have a
clear religious disagreement in front of you. But we live in the state of Rhode Island. And
it was founded by a man named Roger Williams, a Christian, in fact, a Baptist Christian
of all things. Roger Williams did not believe that marriage was a holy sacrament. Our
Roman Catholic brothers and sisters do believe that. But a great number of Christians of
the Protestant tradition and the anti-Baptist tradition and the Quaker tradition and many
more, do not believe that marriage is a holy sacrament. Believe that it’s a civil act made
between loving people? Yes. Recognized by the Creator? Yes. So you have religious
distinctions in a state which is founded on religious tolerance. We all agree I hope that
murder is a sin or- and that murder should be illegal. We believe, I hope, that lying is
inappropriate. That is a big problem. We all agree on some things, we disagree about gay
marriage. We disagree. In my church experience we have found somewhat to some of our
surprises that guess what? Gay and lesbian Christians are already fully in the kingdom of
God, they have testimonies of God’s love and grace and transformation in their life, just
as the rest of us. Hallelujah. May I say that in this room? But here’s the thing, there’s a
disagreement between religions, now it’s a civil matter. And from a civil point of
view, when two religions disagree, and you base your decision on Catholic teaching,
or shall I say Orthodox Catholic teaching, there are many Catholic brothers and
sisters who would agree with us, then aren’t you recognizing an establishment of
religion, one over the other?
In contrast, speakers arguing against proposed bills drew attention to the free exercise
clause of the First Amendment. In the Colorado hearing Douglas Napier, the “Senior Legal
Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund,” an organization that describes its purpose as “build[ing]
alliances between Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations to accomplish what none of
us can do alone: protect and defend YOUR religious freedom” spoke extensively.1 After making
a complex claim about a different issue, he launched an argument about how the proposed bill
would violate religious freedom guarantees.
Excerpt 14 (Colorado, Con)
This bill is insufficient to protect the religious liberties in this state. People of- of faith anand people of conscience. The only protection that this bill accords is by saying that
clergy do not have to engage in the ceremonies of- of moralizing these civil unions. But it
says nothing about uh Catholic Charities, who want to be involved in- in uh- in families.
Or it doesn’t say anything about businesses and what the impact would be on businesses
and their policies internally. It doesn’t say anything about the photographer who doesn’t
want to participate in filming civil ceremonies. Like we have a client in New Mexico that
was sued because she chose not to do it. And now she has been faced with civil rights
charges. Or a church that has a facility that they give to people in their congregation to
perform marriages, but they get a same-sex couple that wants to use it and they say no.
Like we have in a case in New Jersey where they’ve been sued, and the Civil Rights
Commission has fined them. And now they’re trying to revoke their property taxes. This
bill is insufficient to guard those protections.
Although in legal circles religion is often treated as an individual matter of belief that is lodged
in someone’s mind or heart, as this comment makes visible, for many religious people being
religious is bound up with doing as well as avoiding certain practices. In sum, religious talk
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entered citizen testimony as speakers referred to the long-standing legal debate about what
religion means and how religious people and organizations ought to be treated in American
society.
6. Claiming or Disavowing (Expected) Neighbors of God and Gays
Preferred activities, political attitudes, and beliefs occur in clusters. Sturdy linkages
between actions and attitudes, as well as with buying preferences, have led to targeted marketing
of news, goods, and services. “Issue preferences,” as political scientists Conover, Searing, and
Crewe (2002, p. 54) comment, “say something about who we are—about our basic values, our
character and our identities.”
A more discourse analytic way to frame this same phenomenon is to reflect about how
verbal descriptions of activities implicate the kind of person someone is and vice versa—the
labels given to persons implicate their likely activities and attitudes. Research exploring this
linkage between person terms and activities/stances, a central focus of membership
categorization analysis (see Jayyusi, 1984; Hester & Eglin, 1997; Housley & Fitzgerald, 2007),
has shown how communicators work to deflect negative attributions tied to a category they are in
or claim positive qualities not usually associated with that category. For instance, van De
Mieroop (2011) shows how debt defaulters being interviewed by Belgium debt mediation
services discursively work to disavow that they are irresponsible money managers and reframe
themselves as caring parents caught in tough circumstances. Claims and disavowals, then, work
in two ways. Such verbal acts seek to redefine what should be seen as going together—as part of
the bundle—and they underscore what the taken-for-granted bundle is.
In these hearings citizen testifiers were advancing claims about the goodness/badness of
the proposed bills, but as they did they were also doing discursive work to show they possessed
attributes not assumed to go with their stance category (pro or con same-sex marriage) or that
they didn’t possess undesirable attributes associated with the category.
Consider a category of assertion, frequently made by gay and lesbian pro-speakers that
while offered by con-speakers was far less frequent. The assertion was a patriotic one, an
espousal of love of state or country.
Excerpt 14 (Colorado, Pro)
Our relationship started after 9/11 changed our lives dramatically along with much of
America. After that tragedy we re- realized it was time to be true to ourselves and let our
love take its course. And it was then that we started building our lives together in
Loveland, the town we love in b- this beautiful state.
Excerpt 15 (Hawaii, Pro)
I’m not asking for any special treatment, and um nothing else like that. I just want the
same rights. The exact same rights. I don’t wanna have to leave my home. I’m born and
raised here, I don’t- I don’t wanna leave my home to start a family . . . even be with the
one I love, you know? Hawaii’s just- I love Hawaii.
Excerpt 16 (Colorado, Pro)
A lot has happened in the past 15 years. The good news is that our country has never been
more just. Our country’s founders would look at our country now and see the change that
has taken place and look at us in admiration. I’m proud to be an American. In fact I
work for our citizens everyday as a law enforcement officer.
Excerpt 17 (RI, Pro)
I really appreciate the opportunity to speak here uh this evening on behalf of marriage
equality, uh and I will be brief. . . I’m a proud Rhode Island native. I grew up here. I
13
went to school here. I’ve enjoyed a terrific professional career here spanning 25 years
In the American culture, love of country, I would argue, is expected to go with God, especially a
Christian God, which in turn is expected to go with an anti-gay stance. In making patriotic
espousals these gay and lesbian citizens can be seen as working to destabilize the association
among these terms, forging a new link between being gay, loving country, and valuing God and
religion.
That being gay does not imply irreligiousness is asserted by a good number of prospeakers. Yet at the same time speakers asserted that being gay and being Godly went together, a
notion that they do not usually go together was referenced through how religion was cited. For
instance, Excerpt 18 comes from a professor at the University of Hawaii law school who is the
faculty advisor for Lamda Legal Law Students’ Assocation (a gay/lesbian civil rights
organization).
Excerpt 18 (Hawaii, Pro)
Let me tell you a little about the students for whom I speak today. Most are local, born
and raised in the islands, Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, South Pacific Islander,
European, Hapa. They give lie to the stereotype that gay rights are a mainland
Haole issue. Many, myself included, are deeply religious people whose faith plays a
central role in their and our lives.
Although her utterance construction is not straightforward, the discursive proximity of her
identification of the existence of inaccurate stereotypes and her claim that she and many of her
gay students are religious function both to rebut and solidify the expected association.
Narratives about how a person came to be with his or her significant other and why that
partner is exceptional are staples of everyday storytelling in contemporary Western cultures.
What is not so usual is a reference to God in such stories. God’s appearance in these expressions
of love works to strengthen the link between God and gay, even as, by virtue of the unusualness
of the mention, it shows a gay speaker attending to the need to assert a connection with God.
That is, I would flip Harvey Sacks’s (1995) notion of “noticeable absence” and argue that some
topical mentions are “noticeably present,” verbal mentions that stand out by virtue of their
unexpectedness in the context. This is illustrated by comments from two lesbian citizens, one of
whom (Excerpt 20) is the same testifier as we heard from in Excerpt 14.
Excerpt 19 (Colorado, Pro)
What I’d rather talk to you about today is why I fell in love with Fran. I believe that God
chose her for me.
Excerpt 20 (Colorado, Pro)
Living with Wendy in Loveland and being with Wendy for over 17 years has been the
most stable, God-centered place I’ve ever been in my whole life.
The final part of the bundled ideas given attention repeatedly in citizens testifying against
the bill was to proclaim one’s love of gays or disclaim that one was bigoted or prejudiced. In
another paper (Tracy, 2011) I suggest that such disclaimers are recent phenomena arising from
the societal transformation in which homosexuality as a kind of criminal conduct was reframed
to gays and lesbians being a discriminated-against category of person. With this reframing,
brought about by the gay rights movement and landmark court cases, expression of negative
sentiment about issues connected to gay citizens becomes hearable as being personally hostile to
gay people.
14
Excerpt 21 (Hawaii, Con)
I have family members whom I love who have chosen this lifestyle, and I will stand
shoulder to shoulder with them, in defending their rights to not be discriminated because
of their lifestyle choices.
Excerpt 22 (Hawaii, Con)
I wanna state unequivocally that I love the gays, lesbians. Our church has some of them,
the gays. Our company has employed them, my kids have gay friends. I will also say that
I love drug addicts, alcoholics. I’ve been ministering the homeless. I’ve been ministering
to them for the last fourteen years
Excerpt 23 (Rhode Island, Con)
To say that this traditional understanding of marriage as many people do believe, and
they honestly believe it, is in fact based on uh, uh bigotry and discrimination, Um I would
say that we also have a new problem and I do recognize that in society. Which is how do
we demonstrate respect for our gay friends and family members and neighbors? And it is
uh- It is a good question. It’s a serious and important question. ... Um, I would say this in
conclusion, that uh whatever else our marriage tradition is, it is not based on animus or
hatred or bigotry or a desire to do harm.
In sum because of the assumed bundling of God, patriotism, and anti-gay sentiment,
speakers indirectly cued their attention to religion by referring to their love of the state (pro
speakers) or their love of gays (con speakers) or explicitly brought God in, where he would not
usually be expected to be an actor in personal stories of commitment and love (pro speakers).
Implications for Rhetorical Citizenship
In a response to Schudson’s (1997) essay, “Why conversation is not the soul of
democracy,” Schroll (1999) remarks, “Some new way of talking about talking is needed that
reflects the complexity of modern democratic life” (p. 103). Two aspects of modern democracies’
complexities are the dominance of representative formats and the focal role that public meetings
serve in giving elected officials knowledge of their citizen desires, principles, and preferences.
Public meetings should not be seen primarily as flawed sites of democratic deliberation; rather,
they are a distinctive site for citizenship that requires a way of speaking that differs from how
discussion unfolds in small nondecision-making groups.
To be sure not all aspects of citizenship are rhetorical. Voting for political leaders and
voting on referenda or ballot initiatives are central aspects of citizenship, but are not rhetorical
actions. Rhetorical citizenship involves communication by citizens, including ordinary people as
well as elites, for purposes of reflecting about the best policies and/or influencing political
matters. Most prominently, rhetorical citizenship includes speaking at public meetings;
participating in face-to face and online deliberative groups; writing letters, blogging, and
tweeting; and participating in protests. Rhetorical citizenship must include advocacy as well as
deliberation and must also recognize that the two communicative stances rarely go together
(Heindriks, 2011). Political scientist Diana Mutz (2006) goes so far as to state that “it is doubtful
that an extremely activist culture can also be a heavily deliberative one” (p.3). Public meetings,
with their thin connection between citizens and elected officials, make possible expression of
strong disagreement that enables clarity about issues and a deeper understanding of differences.
In relationship-attentive, deliberative settings, the disagreements that do occur are often muted
and not explored in depth (Karpowitz & Mansbridge, 2005).
As a society, the US differs from other Western democracies in its religiousness. The vast
majority of Americans define themselves as religious. A recent survey by the Pew foundation
15
(“Nones on the rise,” 2012), in fact, treated it as news that the number of Americans defining
themselves as not religious (agnostic, atheist, or nothing in particular) had increased from 15%
five years ago to slightly less than 20% in 2012. In addition, 65% of Americans report religion to
be an important part of their daily life (Newport, 2009). Given religion’s importance in American
life, it seems wise to not treat it as something that should be left at the entrance door to public
meetings. Because, as Wolterstorff argues (Audi & Wolterstorff, 1996, p.89), “we live inside our
traditions, not alongside,” it is essential to legitimate religious talk in the public sphere.
Legitimating religious talk is desirable for those of us who are not religious for two reasons.
First, in a pluralistic society with many different flavors of religion, it keeps visible that there is a
diversity of opinions on just about any issue that connects to “religion.” Second, legitimating
religious expression in public meetings is more likely to keep policies about person rights as
matters for publicly critique-able rhetorical citizenship, rather than channeling an issue into a
direct democracy initiative that invites citizens to privately decide a disputed matter in a nonrhetorically accountable fashion.
16
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1
See http://www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org.