Land of the Freeish, Home of the Tattlers

Good God Almighty, America, grow the eff up.

Seriously, we have become a nation of tattlers. This week has been chock-full of the most pathetic national “discourse” I’ve ever seen. In the midst of the hysterical hysteria over the RFRA, Ryan Anderson’s mic getting cut off and Memories Pizza going up in social media flames are the high low points in our rapid descent into uncivil discourse.

Last week I wrote about my daughter getting body-shamed by a fellow kindergartener. I mentioned in passing that I don’t encourage tattling in children, and there were more than a few outraged comments. One person said, “It’s no good to tell children not to “tattle” either. Children should feel free to express themselves to you. What happens when someone does something serious to your child and they are afraid to “tattle”?”

Tattling isn’t telling. I never tell my kids not to tell me things — in fact, I want them to tell me all the things. But tattling is different. Tattling is telling on someone so they’ll be punished. Tattling about minor infractions — say, for example, “Tommy said I’m a shoebox!” — should not be encouraged in children, because dealing with minor insults and hurt feelings without resorting to adult intervention is vital for young children to learn. It helps them develop the coping mechanism for their teenage years, when the insults become more serious and the hurt runs deeper. It helps them prepare for adult life, when people will be cruel and mom or dad won’t be able to fix the hurt or render justice.

I say when, not if, because people are cruel. They just are. Sometimes it’s unintentional cruelty, but sometimes it’s not. Experiencing emotional pain inflicted by other people is absolutely common to human beings. It’s the one thing we all share. I want to raise children who are capable of absorbing the pain and allowing it to mold them into better people, people who remember the pain and choose not to inflict it on others.

I’ll be honest and say I think it’s silly for a gay couple to be refused a wedding cake or flowers. I think the logic behind those decisions is rational but uncharitable, which is at odds with my understanding of how Christians should treat others. I also worry a bit that it tips toward discrimination.

Moreover, I understand the pain that such a refusal causes. My first daughter was initially refused baptism, and a few people in our diocese tried to bar me from entering the Catholic Church and having a sacramental wedding. Not because I was gay, but because I had icky premarital sex and kept the tangible evidence of it — my daughter. That hurt more than I can describe.

But here’s what I didn’t do: I didn’t throw a colossal tantrum and contact the media to drum up a witch-hunt for those responsible. I didn’t contact the bishop, or the archbishop, or canon lawyers so I could have vengeance via litigation. I just went to a different priest and a different parish, and told myself that I would never forget that the law is for the people, not the other way around.

Even according to canon law, what happened to my daughter and me was wrong. There was no justification for it, and it hurt. But only a child responds to unprovoked pain by dishing out greater pain. Only a child says, “you hurt me, I’m gonna hurt you back worse!” Only a child rallies all the bullies in the schoolyard to thrash the shit out of the kid who started it. Or, well, only a child should.

Clearly, America has become a nation of children. Instead of choosing to accept unjust suffering and allow it to make us better, we go to the courts and the media to tattle on each other. “Pain and suffering” can be recompensed in court, ya know? Why not take the money, the livelihood, and the peace of the person who hurt you? Why not rally the bully-troops to issue death threats to their children? When you can’t respond to an argument, why not just yell “SHUT UP SHUT UP” and cut off their mic? When there’s no one around to be outraged against, when no one has actually hurt you lately, why not set someone up to say the wrong thing and then manufacture outrage, so you can vent all your hate on someone who hasn’t actually done anything at all? Why not take that hurt you suffered and make someone — anyone — pay for it double, triple, quadruple?

This is literally the death of civility. This is uncivil behavior. My favorite priest once told me that children are savages — “which is not to say they are barbarians. They do not reject the rules of civil society, they simply do not understand them. They must be taught to behave in a civilized manner, and that is why parenting is so difficult.”

Well, congratulations, America. You’ve regressed to the point of savagery, and it’s so much worse than just childish behavior. Children are small and relatively powerless. When a child throws a tantrum, no one is in any real danger. When an adult throws a tantrum, lives are ruined. This latest collective tantrum over Memories Pizza has even put the lives of family who owns it in jeopardy. This is not mere childish behavior, not innocent, irritating tattling, not harmless but infuriating tantrums. This is the new savagery, and our society has accepted it as legitimate adult behavior.

If that’s the kind of society you want, fine. Go ahead and embrace it. Just stop pretending that it’s a civil rights movement. It may be about rights, but there’s nothing civil about it.