I’ve received some feedback about my post on Diana Medley, the horrible teacher in Indiana who thinks gay couples should be excluded from the prom, outlining various reasons why it’s OK to discipline or even fire her for professing anti-gay beliefs. The feedback has made me even more concerned about the attitude that seems to be developing on what I think of as “my side” of the debate. So I now feel obligated to spend even more time defending the right of this narrow-minded, nasty woman to be narrow-minded and nasty.

The most common argument is that this teacher’s stated opinions compromise her ability to work with LGBT students. I think this is the strongest argument, and I want to unpack it a little bit. It’s certainly true that if I were an LGBT student at her school, these comments would make me uncomfortable about this teacher. And as I said yesterday, if she did in fact behave inappropriately or unfairly to a particular LGBT student, those complaints should be investigated and addressed in the same manner as any other complaints about unprofessional conduct. But I absolutely will not agree that her public statement of her opinions, in and of itself, should threaten her employment.

I’d really like people to think through what they are saying about this. People have opinions about different groups. Some of those opinions are well-founded, some are ignorant, some are just nuts. This person thinks illegal immigrants are harmful to the community, that person thinks organized religion is destructive, another person believes premarital sex is sinful, someone over there thinks only Mormons are going to heaven. All of those beliefs, carried to their logical conclusions, would understandably make children of illegal immigrants, churchgoers, sexually active teens or non-Mormons feel insulted or even threatened.

So we have a range of political, religious or philosophical beliefs – which we all agree citizens have a right to profess, rightly or wrongly – that are directly or indirectly hurtful to members of the affected groups. Schoolteachers, being citizens and human beings, are likely to hold some of these beliefs. What are the options? One comment I’ve heard from a couple of people is that teachers should be allowed to hold these beliefs, just not to express them in public. That isn’t really a solution. The right to profess your beliefs, openly and without fear of retribution, is essential to any idea of free expression.

Another suggestion is that a teacher who makes offensive statements should receive “training” to understand the harm caused by their statements. I understand the impulse here, and the promise of a therapeutic solution is especially appealing to secular liberals like myself. But I must confess I find the idea condescending at best and Orwellian at worst. We are not talking about some thoughtless slur that can be corrected with sensitivity training. This woman believes, with apparent sincerity, that homosexuality is a sin and should be discouraged. I don’t think some form of reparative therapy is going to change her beliefs. So where does that leave you? Either she reaffirms her beliefs and you are back where you started, or you force her to recant her beliefs as the price of continued employment.

This is not an isolated case. As you might imagine, I subscribe to a lot of news sources that focus on gay rights. I would say roughly half of the posts I read are calling for someone to be fired, boycotted or otherwise punished in some way for expressing anti-gay opinions. The circumstances are varied, and in some cases I think the calls to action are justified. But I have to be honest, it disturbs me how seamlessly we seem to glide from “this person has expressed a hateful view” to “what can we do to damage this person.” I think the gay equality movement has shown that in a free, fair clash of ideas, we win. We don’t need to punish those who disagree to make our case.

I understand what it means to be a gay kid and hear the awful things that teachers and other authority figures say. I understand that causes real harm and real pain, and it breaks my heart, even more so since I became a parent. I believe we should take every opportunity to refute those messages, to support LGBT kids, to correct those who may be speaking from thoughtlessness or ignorance, and to confront those who speak out of malicious or misguided beliefs. I will try to do as much of that as I can until the day I die. But you will never convince me that the way forward is to require anyone to hide or renounce sincerely held beliefs in order to hold a job. Even if I thought it would work, it’s too high a price to pay.

I’ve been thinking recently about one of the most puzzling reactions to social change, which you might call the “beleaguered majority” argument. Invariably you see members of dominant social groups – straight, white, male, Christian, English-speaking or all of the above – adopting the language of oppressed minorities, talking about how their rights are being violated.

This can take various forms, from the ugliest “white pride” groups to the “men’s rights” activists who pop up in online comment threads whenever sexism is being discussed. These types of arguments have cropped up more and more often in discussions about gay rights, which is probably a sign of progress. The other side now seeks to depict gay people as “bullies” who are violating their rights, invading their churches or Boy Scout troops or fast food franchises.

In the past, I have always dismissed these arguments as pure posturing, trying to claim the mantle of victimhood for tactical reasons. And I’m sure that is part of the equation, but I am increasingly convinced that these arguments are at least partially sincere, based on genuine — albeit mistaken — fears and insecurities.

One thing that jumps out at me, particularly in discussions about racism or sexism, is that the “beleaguered majority” arguments tend to come from the least advantaged members of the ostensibly privileged majority. Barack Obama addressed this directly in his 2008 speech on race, talking about the anger of white Americans who Most working- and middle-class white Americans “don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.”

A proper leftist, which I am not, would probably chalk this up to “false consciousness,” and that’s certainly part of the equation, but I think other psychological forces are at play. Members of dominant groups who feel short-changed have powerful incentives to blame “outsiders” rather than the higher-status members of their own group. A direct comparison risks leading to the conclusion that they are somehow inadequate, that other people are better at the game of being straight white males. Resentment of women or minorities is psychologically safer, and the nagging feeling that the game is rigged can be laid at their feet. This leads people to adopt the language of oppression in ways that often sound ludicrous coming from a member of the ostensible majority. But the feelings of resentment are often genuine and even justified, albeit directed at the wrong targets. The game is rigged, but the casino is not owned by women or African-Americans or gay people. It’s owned by the straight white males whose taxes you want to cut.

Compounding the problem, various forms of information bias converge to make minority groups seem much more powerful and threatening than they are, or at least to make resentment fantasies somewhat plausible. When we look at the progress achieved by African-Americans or LGBT Americans or women, we are — consciously or unconsciously — bracketing those groups and comparing their current status to their former status, rather than assessing their status relative to society as a whole. So during the backlash that occurred after the great victories of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, some white Americans genuinely felt that African-Americans must have immense political power, since they were able to get the U.S. Congress to declare that they had the same rights white Americans had taken for granted for 200 years.

Compared to the status of a gay man in 1960 or 1980 or even 2000, my own legal rights are vastly more expansive. My home state is no longer allowed to criminalize my sexuality. Many states expressly protect me from employment discrimination. I can legally marry my spouse in nine states and the District of Columbia. Those were hard-fought, hard-won victories, and I am grateful for them. And viewed narrowly, the progress is almost astonishing. This narrow view is why the lawyers defending the Defense of Marriage Act could declare to the Supreme Court with a straight face that “gays and lesbians are one of the most influential, best-connected, best-funded and best-organized interest groups in modern politics, and have attained more legislative victories, political power and popular favor in less time than virtually any other group in American history.” (I have a suggestion for anti-gay bigots trying to sound reasonable: don’t use “gays” as a noun).

This argument is not especially strong, but the only reason it can even be stated is that it views the rights of gay Americans relative to earlier generations of gay people, rather than in comparison with their fellow citizens right now. The signs of progress that I listed above stand out against a backdrop of pervasive discrimination. In vast stretches of the United States, to say nothing of the rest of the world, gay couples have no right to marry, no formal protection against employment discrimination, and woefully inadequate protection from physical violence and intimidation. Color me underwhelmed by tributes to our “political power and popular favor” because we’ve enjoyed nine years in which gay people could not be put in jail for being gay.

Another cognitive bias that may be relevant here is the endowment effect. People tend to react strongly to actual or perceived losses, whether or not the thing being lost was that important in the first place. All things being equal, I doubt that many Christians assigned huge importance to the perfunctory prayers offered in schools before the Supreme Court ruled such prayers unconstitutional. But the act of taking away this privilege vastly inflated its subjective importance, and to this day Christians – an overwhelmingly dominant and powerful majority – nurse a sense of persecution. The act of moving from favored status to neutrality feels like persecution, just as a swimming pool feels icy cold when you first plunge in. For people used to a pervasive and largely invisible privilege for their beliefs, switching from “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays” seems like some sort of pogrom.

The only corrective to these skewed perceptions is empathy. Take a moment and reflect on whether your sporadic discomfort with gay people is really a substantial violation of your rights. Consider that the passage of anti-discrimination laws is usually not some huge favor to minority groups but rather a partial and belated response to entrenched, systematic discrimination. The only reason you see them as “special rights” is that you enjoy such rights as a matter of course, without needing explicit statutory protection. And when you get that nagging feeling that others are exploiting the system at your expense, make room for the possibility that the game is being rigged by people who look just like you.

UPDATE: In response to this post, my friend Alicia made the excellent point that among certain religious people, the idea of being persecuted has special resonance, so they are drawn to narratives in which they are punished by secular society for their beliefs. As if to prove my point, Dan Savage flagged an especially egregious interview with the the Archbishop of San Francisco.  Adopting that tone of florid self-pity that only a Catholic prelate can really pull off, the Archbishop laments that “All our detractors can do is call us names.”

Let that sink in. For the past few years, people throughout the world have been engaged in a lively moral, political and ethical debate about marriage. For the Archbishop to conclude that the whole thing boils down to name-calling, with the mean gay people harassing the powerless Catholics, reveals a breathtaking level of narcissism. (Sorry, was that name-calling? My apologies.)

This issue about backlash is something I’ve been meaning to write about it since the Supreme Court granted review of the same-sex marriage cases. The general idea is that premature judicial decisions on social issues create an unstable backlash, whereas discreet delay can give social change room to breathe. This was a very widely discussed argument when I was in law school, particularly among liberals who were a bit squeamish about courts overriding popular opinion. The primary expression of the argument was in criticism of Roe v. Wade by scholars (including at one point Ruth Bader Ginsberg) who favored abortion rights but felt that the 1973 decisions short-circuited the liberalization of abortion laws that was already underway and created social upheaval that still divides the country. For all its superficial plausibility, I think this argument is a festival of confused thinking and category mistakes masquerading as sociological analysis.

The authors of this article argue for delay on the same-sex marriage question. I think there are legitimate reasons for deferring the question, mainly because the jurisprudence of LGBT equality is still relatively undeveloped. For that matter I can see perfectly respectable  arguments for upholding bans on same-sex marriage. I’m not someone who thinks the Constitution necessarily enacts all of my moral beliefs, although in this instance I think bans on same-sex marriage are invalid under the intermediate level of scrutiny applied to gender-based distinctions.

But the argument about backlash seems to be based on an unfounded theory about backlash and the pace of social change. The authors contrast the ostensibly premature decision in Roe v. Wade with the Court’s more leisurely pace in striking down laws against interracial marriage laws in 1967, several years after the Civil Rights Act. I think very few people really consider the Court’s delay in striking down the blatantly unconstitutional anti-miscegenation laws as a shining moment in judicial history. But even accepting the premise that the delay was wise, it certainly wasn’t a long enough delay to avoid backlash. Southerners in 1967 were, to put it delicately, not exactly eager for their daughters to marry gentlemen of color. The Court’s decision was probably later than the legal merits would justify but it was still decades ahead of public opinion.

But where the argument really breaks down is in the implicit premise that, if Roe v. Wade had not been decided, legislatures would have liberalized abortion laws while producing less backlash. I have never seen a convincing argument made for this counter-factual scenario. Abortion is a divisive issue because those who care about the issue on either side see it as a literal matter of life and death. Sincere pro-lifers are not any happier about legislative grants of abortion rights, which they see as contrary to a higher law.

Social change of any sort produces backlash, but there is no evidence that judicially imposed social change is especially likely to do so. Witness the recent disputes over legislatively approved changes in labor law in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, and ask yourself if the protests are less vehement because judges weren’t involved. For that matter, look at the recent history on same-sex marriage. In 2008 both California and Maine had approved same-sex marriage – by judicial decision in California and by legislation in Maine. The degree of backlash was indistinguishable, and voters rejected same-sex marriage in both states (Maine voters righted this wrong in The backlash is about the policy, not the process.

Backlash is a part of social change. Progress in any arena – legislative, judicial or executive – is typically met with resistance. If five justices decide that the Constitution requires marriage equality, they should say so. Let history decide if they were too late, too early or right on time.