We're Queer. We're Spiritual. Get Used To It.

I'm one of those queers who goes to church.

I get looks. Of course I do. And I get questions, the main question being, Why?

My response is always, Why not? Why shouldn't I go to church? Am I not allowed? Don't I also have a soul, or is spirituality the exclusive realm of the heterosexual?

Some of my queer friends are so over church. Proudly, militantly atheist, they look down their noses at little church mice like me. From their superior, lofty perches, they can't fathom why any queer person would set foot inside a church. Bless their hearts.

It took me a rather long time to realize that just because a lot of God's fans hate me, God himself doesn't necessarily hate me. And just because the priest or pastor says bad things about my kind from the pulpit, it doesn't necessarily mean God is speaking through them.

In fact, it could be that God is saying something through me as I sit there in the pews -- something rather more powerful than another long-winded, torturous traipse through Leviticus. Perhaps God is bigger than we want to believe. Perhaps there is more to both heaven and earth than what we understand. Perhaps God made me just the way I am -- and likes me that way and would not have me any other way. Perhaps it's not my calling to hide my light under a basket, but to let it shine.

Don't let me be the one to spill the beans, but a lot of queer folks do church. Growing up Catholic, I can safely say that most every priest and religious brother I knew was gay although not one would admit it.

I became a religious brother myself, and the reason why I'm no longer a religious brother is because my superiors asked me one day if I was gay, and I was honest. The  next day I was asked to leave. The others lied and got to stay.

If telling a lie (and therefore sinning) was the price of being a religious brother, well, obviously it was not the life meant for me. And what does that say about the many priests and religious types who tell that lie every day because they're afraid of being kicked out? Some of those folks are very prominent people in Catholic circles. How do they live with themselves? Who are they fooling?

The condemnation of homosexuality goes way back. Fair enough -- but that doesn't make it legitimate. That doesn't mean our understanding can't evolve and grow into something more compassionate and honest.

We are often told morality cannot and does not change, but that's not quite true. Today, owning a slave would be abhorrently offensive. But not so long ago, owning another human being was the status quo. In fact, on this front, the Catholic Church didn't get around to condemning slavery until the 1800s. Are we to believe that slavery was morally acceptable for all those centuries before that, or did the Church finally realize that slavery was moral reprehensible and evil?

Divorce used to be absolutely forbidden. And in fairness, one must point out that while Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, and very little about human sexuality, he did go out of his way to say things about divorce -- and modern churches and the people in their pews seem to have no trouble whatsoever completely ignoring what he said on that score.

If our understanding of marriage can change (and it probably needed to), perhaps our understanding of homosexuality can also change.

It's not that morality "changes." We mature. We learn new information. We gain new insights. We get better.

So ... I go to church. Make of it what you will, but don't ask me to explain myself because I don't have to, no more than anyone else who goes to church. I go because I want to. 

I have my own "religious beliefs" when it comes to sexuality and relationships; they are vastly different than those of my fundamentalist neighbor, but that's the beauty of having freedom of religion. I'm allowed to come to my own conclusions. I am not required to follow his. I can decide for myself -- and I do.

I have the feeling that the "kingdom of heaven" is filled with tax collectors and whores and other disreputable sorts and misfits. The "least of these." And perhaps, indeed, the last shall be first.

Time will tell.

An Unholy Hatred

I was about twelve years old when I looked up the word "homosexuality" in the dictionary and was given a 1970s definition: Homosexuality, I learned that sad day, was a "sexual perversion" akin to "pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia, which see."

I looked up those big words--and was horrified. After the feelings of horror and disgust washed off, I was left feeling deeply ashamed.

No child wants to be a pervert, not even a twelve year old boy in love with Barry Manilow.

What I learned that day was reinforced by the overly religious, right-wing environment I grew up in. When the adults sat around at their John Birch Society meetings and talked about "pinko commie bastards" I eventually realized they were talking about me, a revelation that only added to my shame. Just because I had weird, inexplicable crushes on other boys didn't mean I wanted to be a communist (God forbid!), or that I hated my country, or that I was the scum of the earth.

Or did it?

My response to this shame was to become extremely religious, to prove, by a life of prayer and piety, that I was a good person. I can't count the number of rosaries I said, the candles I lit, the prayers I offered, the endless hours I spent begging God to "forgive" me, to "heal" me, to "take this cross away."

It didn't work, and it didn't last.

I look back on a life lived in shame, and, ironically, I feel ashamed I spent so many years feeling ashamed when there was nothing wrong with me, when I had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to feel ashamed about.

My life is bound up with shame. The shame of being something I didn't want or ask to be. The shame of being different in a world that is merciless toward those who don't measure up. The shame of being slender, soft spoken, a sissy, effeminate, faggy, girly, limp wristed, a "lady boy," a pervert, what my church calls "intrinsically disordered."

Shame is a very damaging emotion and a deadly dynamic.

Shame leads to silence; silence leads to isolation; isolation leads to depression and, for too many LGBT folks, thoughts of suicide--or worse.

I look back on this life of shame and I wonder: what purpose did it serve?

I am well aware that my life of shame was not an accident. The shaming I experienced was put into place by other people for a reason. What was that reason? What was the point of shaming children like me? Why do we continue to do it? Whose needs are being met by this shaming? Where's the pay off? Who benefits?

The answer is obvious: by and large, it is the churches and religious folk who benefit. And it is the churches and religious people who, by and large, perpetuate this shaming of LGBT individuals.

There are two immediate benefits that come to mind:

1) It serves the needs of heterosexism, which is the attitude that heterosexuality is "normal" and that everyone should be heterosexual. Since heterosexuality is the most common form of sexuality, it is thought to be "normal," or what God intends and wants of us, and any other form of sexuality is a perversion to be discouraged if not eradicated.

2) It is a useful form of social control. The churches, indeed all religions, use shame as a form of social control, the "just ordering of society." While this "just ordering" is supposed to be Biblically based, it is not always so, and shame is used by the dominant group in society as a way to impose its values, whether those values are based on the Bible or not.

There is a great deal that could be said about these two benefits, and a great many arguments could be made for or against them, but that is not my intention. I'm trying to get at the narrative, the structure behind the shaming I experienced (and continue to experience) as an LGBT individual. I'm trying to answer questions like this: Why do people like Pat Robertson and Bryan Fischer continue, on a sometimes daily basis, to shame gay people? Why does the Catholic Church refer to its LGBT sons and daughters as "intrinsically disordered?" Why do so many evangelicals threaten that the wrath of God will fall upon us now that gay marriage has been legalized? What is the point of this? What is the purpose? Whose needs are being met by this constant "culture war"?

Yet there are other questions that are equally important. What has been the effect of this shaming on LGBT people? Has it helped them? Has it brought them closer to God? Has it helped them to live dignified, meaningful lives? Has it contributed to our understanding of the human person? Are we better off because of this relentless culture war? Are families made better and stronger by shaming their gay and lesbian sons and daughters?

Or has all of this fuss and bother, which has caused enormous hurt to so many people, been nothing more than an exercise in bigotry, the bigotry behind the idea that we should all be heterosexual, that it's not okay to be different, that God wants us all to wear our pants the same way?

Or has it been a sort of mass hysteria, a sort of heterosexual panic, that there could exist, among us, people who are profoundly different in their sexuality?

Or have LGBT people been nothing more than scapegoats, the "village idiot," the one group of people in a community that it's safe to pick on and feel superior to as a way to boost one's self-esteem? This is a very traditional role, mind you. You will see it on every play ground at every school. There is always that one child who is picked on, excluded, ridiculed, who simply cannot measure up. By picking on that one child, we feel superior. We also feel part of the "in group." It heightens our sense that we're okay, we're acceptable, we're "good enough." So ... is that the purpose gay people serve? To give society a convenient punching bag?





The shaming I've experienced has hurt me in deep, profound ways that I will never be able to explain to those who have not experienced it.

I spent many years feeling as though my soul had been murdered, that I was a dead person inside a living body, that I was not a good person and could never be a good person because there was something about me that was fundamentally wrong--if not bad, if not evil, if not perverted.

Shame led me into about a dozen serious attempts at suicide, a couple of which really ought to have been fatal.

Shame has left me unable to believe that an entity like "God" could actually love me, or care one way or the other about what happens to people like me.

Shame has made relationships difficult. It's hard to love someone else when you can't love yourself.

Shame has affected me in so many ways for so many years that I will never truly be free of it. It will always lie like a shadow on the past and the future, coloring my choices, poisoning my mind against itself.





I am working my way out of shame.

When I turned fifty a couple of years ago, I decided it was time to come out of the closet-completely and for good. It was a tentative, hesitant step, but much good has come from it.

I continue to process my own shame by trying to understand it, by talking about it, by challenging it, and taking the risk of doing new things and developing new attitudes. It's a lot of work, but it's worthwhile.

What I have come to learn from my experience with shame is that it is a structure. A man-made structure. Someone put it there because it serves their needs. It didn't just happen. It's no accident. Like racism, and all the other -isms, it's serves a purpose. Someone, somewhere, benefits.

I am left with many questions, but the most overriding question for me is this: If you're the one benefiting from the shaming of LGBT people, shouldn't you take responsibility for the harm you've caused, harm that is sometimes so extreme that victims take their own lives? Are you not responsible for your behavior? If your church participates in the shaming of gay people, are you not complicit in the harm this causes? Can you, in good conscience, look the other way and pretend this unholy hatred has nothing to do with you?

Someday churches will have to come to terms with the harm they've caused.

Someday churches will have to recognize their gay and lesbians sons and daughters do not deserve the contempt heaped upon them, that while our mating habits may be slightly different, we are good people, decent people, kind people.

Someday churches will have to understand that you cannot harm others without harming yourself. You cannot demean others without demeaning yourself. You cannot murder the souls of innocent people without murdering your own.

If there is such a thing as Judgment Day, I suspect a lot of believers are in for a hell of a surprise.

"As you have done unto the least of these, you have done unto me" - Jesus either meant these words, or he did not. And if gay people are not the "least of these," then who is?

It's time to end the American Family Association's one-sided conversation on gay rights

As an openly gay man living in the reddest of the Red States, I can be forgiven for spending an unhealthy amount of time thinking about Bryan Fischer and the American Family Association. Headquartered not far from where I work in Tupelo, an omnipresent voice all over the radio, with a daily tsunami of Facebook posts and tweets, Bryan Fischer and the AFA, like magnolia trees and dry counties and Duck Dynasty, are inescapable facts of life in the state of Mississippi.

Bryan Fischer, host of FOCAL POINT

When I moved here three years ago, I could not fathom how it was legal for Bryan Fischer to go on public airwaves and say, on an almost daily basis, the most disparaging and woefully ignorant things about gay people. Comparing them to Nazis, suggesting they were responsible for the Holocaust, calling them a danger to public health, a threat to religious liberty, a threat to the economic well being of the United States, routinely classifying them with pedophiles, deeming homosexuality a “sexual sickness” and just as dangerous as addiction to hard drugs, talking about how we can either have religious liberty or homosexuality, but not both – day after day, the tide of myth,misinformation and just plain foolishness was hard to stomach.

But harder to stomach was the apathy of Mississippians who shrug and sigh and seem to believe there is nothing to be done even though Bryan Fischer and the AFA have earned themselves a hate group designation from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Protected by the right to free speech and freedom of religion, wrapping their myth and misinformation in religious garb and calling American Family Radio programs like Bryan Fischer’s FOCAL POINT a “ministry,” they are a monolithic entity safely removed from the consequences of their actions.

I have watched in disbelief as most local media outlets, when they report on gay rights (rather rare, to be sure), go microphone in hand to the AFA for a comment—as if there were no other religious or spiritual leaders in north Mississippi they could talk to.  I find it incredibly offensive that anyone would care what a hate group would have to say about a complex issue like gay marriage. Even more offensive is the media’s failure to seek out other voices on such issues, as if the AFA alone had some sort of monopoly on the gay rights conversation. But then the AFA has been having a one-sided conversation on gay rights since it was founded back in 1977.

When I inquire as to why no one will speak out against the AFA, I am frequently told that one does not mess with them. It’s as if they were some sort of mafia organization, as if one might wake up one day with concrete boots while being tossed into a swamp for having the audacity to have one’s own point of view.

When I started a Facebook page (Stuff the American Family Association Says) designed to document the hate speech coming out of the AFA, I was warned to be careful.

Why, I wanted to know.

Just be careful, I was told.  

Really? Am I supposed to be afraid of an organization that calls itself Christian? Are they going to break the law, or do something unchristian to me?

How very odd.

Yet I’ve noticed how silent politicians and elected officials are with regard to the AFA. I’ve also noticed that local media outlets don’t mention the fact that the AFA was designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, as if ignoring that fact of life might make it go away. Or are they afraid of offending and losing advertisers?

My Facebook page has not exactly been a rousing success. As of this writing, only about one hundred and fifty souls have been brave enough to click “like” on my page. Some people have sent private messages stating they cannot “like” my page for fear that people on their friends’ lists will find out. Are we back in grade school? Are we not allowed to have our own opinions?

Last year, a small group of hardy souls organized a protest march in front of the AFA headquarters in downtown Tupelo. We were about two dozen, in all. We were largely ignored by the media – as if a protest against the AFA right on their own front door was somehow not news, or not newsworthy.

While the AFA believes itself protected by free speech and freedom of religion, so are the rest of us. We have just as much of a right to engage in this conversation as they do. As a gay man, in fact, I would argue that I have more of a right to speak my mind than they do. This is an issue that affects me directly. This is an issue I have struggled with for decades.

I listen to American Family Radio frequently, but I have never once heard them talk to a gay man about the issue of homosexuality. What are they afraid of?

No doubt they have enjoyed their one-sided conversation on this issue. But isn’t it time to hear the other side? Isn’t it time for gay Mississippians – and there are many of them – to speak up, to speak out, to tell their stories, to tell the truth about what it means to be gay or lesbian or transgender? Might we not be allowed to hear from other spiritual and religious leaders? Is there no room in Mississippi for alternative points of view?

Bryan Fischer hides behind his microphone and religion. I wonder how comfortable he would feel if challenged to a public debate on the issue of homosexuality. Since the man talks about homosexuality almost every single day, surely he would relish the opportunity to demolish an articulate gay rights advocate like John Shore or Dan Savage.

No?

And that’s the point.

Fischer and the AFA are, in my opinion, cowardly bullies who hide behind religion and radio dials and Facebook posts and tweets. They are interested only in a one-sided conversation. They do not seem to realize they are talking about real people, a great many of whom live next door to them, in their own communities, people who attend their churches, who rub elbows with them at the grocery store. They seem oblivious to the harm caused by their hate speech and demonization of others.

I will continue my no doubt woefully inadequate efforts to document their hate speech and provide an alternative point of view and I will do so because it’s important for young members of the LGBT community to realize that Bryan Fischer does not speak for everyone in this state.

I am not afraid of the AFA; neither should you be. We have the right to decide our own religious beliefs. We have the right to free speech and we are entitled to our own opinions. We do not live under a fascist dictatorship where the AFA talks and the rest of us do nothing but listen.

We live in a free country.

Don’t we?

We’re Americans.

Aren’t we?

Our fathers and forefathers did not fight for our freedoms so that organizations like the American Family Association could run roughshod over the rights of fellow citizens. They fought, and many times died, to preserve our right to hold our own religious beliefs and to speak our minds on issues that matter to us.

I do not believe the AFA speaks for everyone in the state of Mississippi. They may be a powerful organization and there may be good reasons to fear their retaliation. And they may well run the table on the gay rights conversation in the magnolia state. But they are not the only ones with a point of view.

It is way past time for Mississippians to shake off the dust of apathy and indifference in the face of this massive and daily assault on the rights and dignity of fellow Mississippians.

Gay people are not child-molesting, goat-buggering, disease-ridden threats to religious life and limb. We are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, created by the same God and entitled to the same rights and dignities as everyone else in this great country.

It’s high time we acted like it.

What Homosexuality Taught Me About the Catholic Church

I can safely be accused of a great many things, including taking things too seriously, which is exactly and precisely what I did - and for many, many years - with regard to the teachings of the Catholic Church on homosexuality.

The polite version of church teaching on homosexuality is that homosexuals are "intrinsically disordered" because a sexual relationship between two people of the same gender does not offer the possibility of procreation. While the church urges its pastors and followers to be "compassionate" with the poor, sad gays, in no way does it condone homosexual activity, even within the confines of a committed, monogamous, long-term relationship. Any homosexual act is a mortal sin. If not repented and confessed, the homosexual guilty of such act(s) will go to hell.

The impolite version is rather more extreme, and too well known to repeat here.

Catholics are to "love the sinner but hate the sin." Any gay man or woman who falls in love with another gay man or woman is only deceiving themselves because their affections are intrinsically disordered and gravely sinful.

From LETTER TO BISHOPS ON THE PASTORAL CARE OF HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS by then- Cardinal Ratzinger: "Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." Now former Pope Benedict, he said during his recent Christmas message that gay marriage is a "threat to justice."

As a Catholic teenager drowning in hormones, I was faced with a choice: Either believe what the church teaches about homosexuality, or take my chances and risk almost certain eternal hell fire.

Now pushing 50, my life to date has been a long string of phases involving one or the other of these choices.

I don't know that I'm capable of explaining the agonies of conscience and self-recrimination I've put myself through, the years of tortured self-doubt and self-loathing that always and eventually reached the tipping point, at which time I would throw all of it to the wind and sow some wild oats, often losing myself for years at a time in the "gay community."

During my teens and twenties, I was repulsed by my own sexuality, which was like some alien lifeform inside my body that I could not control, could not "pray away," could not escape. I could only laugh bitterly when well-intentioned friends opined that all I had to do was choose not to be gay and it would go away. It was, after all, a choice. I could un-choose it. If I refused to do that, well, they weren't about to feel sorry for me.

The agony I experienced led often to half-assed attempts at suicide, but also a few very serious attempts that fortunately did not succeed. I hated myself with a frightful intensity. I hated myself far more than the folks at the God Hates Fags Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

When this hatred became overwhelming, I went completely in the opposite direction, fully embracing the "gay lifestyle." After thoroughly dousing myself in this moral decay, I eventually wound up feeling shamed, morally compromised, sinful, in need of redemption. I would inevitably find my way back to a confessional when the whole sordid tale would be spilled in the hopes that God would forgive me. I would then try again very hard to be a good Catholic, to be faithful to the teachings of the church.

IT'S A CROSS

I used to believe that homosexuality was a cross that God had given me as a test to see whether I really did love Him with my whole heart and soul and mind and body. If I did, I would resist the temptation to get involved with my gay peers. I would accept the loneliness, the sacrifice of my youth and affections, my need to be held, loved, comforted, talked to. I would accept these sufferings in exchange for a crown of glory in heaven, at which time I would be amply rewarded.

As the PASTORAL LETTER says:

"What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian's suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ."

At some point in my early thirties I came to a strange realization: The Catholic Church could very well be wrong about the matter. That's an astonishing thought for a Catholic. That's heresy. That's playing with fire. It was far more likely that I was a lusty sinner looking for a loophole. Wasn't it? But of course it was.

How could the Catholic Church be wrong about something it had taught for many centuries, going (supposedly) all the way back to St. Paul in the New Testament and his "man working with man that which is unseemly"? Isn't the pope infallible? Doesn't the Holy Spirit guide the church and preserve it from error in faith and morals?

As a Catholic, I was often told that God cannot deceive or be deceived, that the church guards the deposit of faith and cannot err in matters of faith and morals. Protestants can err, and often do. Muslims, Jews, Hindus -- they don't have the divine promise of infallibility and immutability that the Catholic Church has. Everything the church teaches is absolutely and utterly true; to question or suggest otherwise is tantamount to heresy.

But ...

I knew from my own painful experience that homosexuality is not a choice. Teenagers don't wake up one day and decide to be straight, or gay, or transgendered. It just doesn't happen that way. At no point in my life did I decide that I wanted to be attracted to members of the same sex. It just was. It just happened. While other guys were talking about Farah Fawcett, I was thinking about Freddie Mercury. I could no more fathom their interest in female breasts than they could my interest in penises. And because it was so shameful and sinful and shrouded in such disgust, I could never tell anyone what I was thinking or feeling, what was passing through my mind. I could not ask anyone for an explanation.

From a small town, I was alone. There was no Google search engine to turn to, no gay book store on the corner, no Amazon.com from which to discreetly order gay books, no possibility of making gay friends. It was just me and inexplicable feelings that would not go away.

Why would anyone in my position choose such a confused, painful path in life?

FALLING IN LOVE

In my early twenties, I fell in love for the first time with a man named Bobby. It was a mad, crazy thing. When I was away from him, I felt like I couldn't breathe. When I was with him, I had to be touching him, sitting with him, talking to him -- he was like a drug. The feelings of happiness and intimacy I experienced were quite beyond anything I had ever hoped for.

How could those feelings be "sinful"? What did it mean when something was "sinful?" These questions led me to ponder for many years the question of sin. What, exactly, was sin? Of course, I knew the definition given in the catechism, taught by the church. I also knew the definitions to be found in the dictionary. But what, I wondered, was "sin?"

To hurt someone, to stab them, to steal their property, to kill them, to cheat people, a man beating his wife or kids, a man drinking up his pay and letting his family starve -- that was sin. It was sin whether or not the church said so. In fact, to my mind, it made no difference what the church said about such matters. To hurt others was sinful. Didn't matter what your religion was, what your beliefs were, what god you worshipped. If you were hurting other people, you were sinning.

Who was being hurt by the fact that I had fallen in love with a man? Me? Bobby? The neighbors next door? Society at large? Who, exactly, was being cheated, or robbed, or beaten? What possible sense could it make to say that the love I felt for a man was somehow hurting someone, when clearly it had nothing to do with anyone else except me and the man I loved?

At this juncture, I was introduced to the church's concept of "self-harm." Something is sinful when it hurts others, or ourselves, the church said.

With regard to my love nest situation with Bobby, I was hurting myself because I was sinning and therefore I would lose my immortal soul and spend an eternity in hell. I was choosing temporary, fleeting physical pleasures rather than the good of my own soul.

The same argument is made in regard to masturbation, which Catholics often call self-abuse. It's not that anyone is being physically (or in any other way) hurt by an act of masturbation; it's that we're sinning and risking our eternal salvation.

I was not mature enough to realize this was a circular, self-referencing argument that ultimately made no sense. On the other hand, I was smart enough to know that loving another man -- bringing him breakfast in bed, or cuddling up with him to watch a soap opera -- was not the same as a husband beating his wife. It was not the same as a serial killer beheading his latest victim.

NATIVE AMERICANS AND SLAVES

Like most young Americans, I knew about our history of slavery and I had some vague notions about the Civil War, but at college, I began to study American history with much more seriousness. I stumbled across Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a book that had a tremendous influence on me. This history of the treatment of Native Americans literally broke my heart. From there, I moved on to the Civil War and the issue of slavery, and for the first time I began to get a glimpse of what slavery actually was -- and again, my heart was broke. Not for myself, but for all those people who had gone down these terrible paths at the hands of my ancestors. It was unspeakably evil, I thought, what we had done. It disgusted me.

Study of these matters destroyed my illusions about the founding of my country, those carefully perpetuated bits of nationalistic pap that pass for high school history. I could never again view Columbus Day in the same light.

For years I could not understand why these things distressed me so much. I tried to talk about them to other people only to receive odd looks or rolled eye balls. My interest in such matters was not shared by anyone else I knew.

I identified with Native Americans, with slaves, with the oppression they experienced, the sadness of their lives, their constant struggle for dignity, but I could not understand why.

At some point I came across an odd thought: If the Bible was wrong about slavery -- and it was -- then could it not also be wrong about other things?

This thought was like a thunderbolt. It seemed to me that I had searched my whole life for this thought, this idea, this sentiment, because slavery was clearly a moral matter. And the church had gotten it wrong. The church had changed its mind. The church no longer told slaves to be "subject to their masters," to quote St. Paul. The church had decided that slavery was immoral, was a violation of a very basic human right.

There was more. Jesus himself had never said a word about slavery. How odd. Slaves were common in the old Roman Empire, under whose heel Jesus lived. Did he truly have nothing to say about it? Nothing to say about the idea that people could own other people, could breed them like cattle, could work them until they dropped dead in the fields, could take their babies away, sell of their spouses, their kids, could trample on their dreams, crush their hopes, whip them, abuse them, annihilate their dignity and self-respect?

Nothing to say?

Really?

WHAT I LEARNED

Sketched above, briefly, is the path I followed in my understanding of homosexuality, which led me from long meditations on the nature of sin, to the study of actual sin, such as accounts of the treatment of Native Americans and slaves, but also true crime accounts of serial killers (I spent many years being fascinated by such tales).

I was also fascinated by religion, in general, and began a lifelong study of the various religious traditions. Catholicism and Christianity, of course, but also Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. At one point, I even became a Muslim. Later, I got involved with the Hare Krishnas. These days, I'm basically a Buddhist who is still open to the question of God.

In my sometimes very intense religious wanderings, I inevitably found myself asking what each particular religion had to say about homosexuality. It was all of a piece. Homosexuality was sinful, shameful, to be avoided. It was unmanly, unseemly, selfish. Its presence signified a troubled, disturbed soul. Even the Buddha, as enlightened as he undoubtedly was, did not want homosexuals to follow him in the homeless life as monks.

Yet none of these religions could provide convincing reasons for this almost universal condemnation.

We tell men not to kill each other. No explanation needed for why we do this, or why we call it sin.

We tell married couples to stay away from adultery because our collective experiences have shown that adultery threatens not only the marriage but the children involved - the safety and stability of the family itself. Adultery has real potential to do harm.

We tell people to avoid incest. It's taboo. Any study of the matter will quickly reveal why, and our current understanding of genetics only adds more proof to the table of the harmful effects of incest.

Do not steal. Do not lie. Don't mug old ladies on the street. Yes. Of course. Did God really have to explain such things to the Israelites?

But two men who love each other? Who is being harmed?

If society is being harmed, how and in what fashion, exactly?

Surprisingly there are no answers to these questions.

How can this be?

The only possible arguments left are perceived threats to the community, or to the "sacred institution" of marriage, or the supposed injustice of two people loving each other but not producing babies. These are pretty rarefied arguments, and very tenuous. They are of a similar nature to the pope declaring that gay marriage is a "threat to justice," whatever he might mean by that.

But approaching this question from the other side sheds some illumination. Many Christians are appalled at gay marriage, which they see as something of a mockery of what they consider a holy state. Some, like Rick Santorum, suggest that if we allow gay marriage, then pretty soon people will be marrying their pets.

In other words, these people are worried about what gay marriage might mean for them, for their own marriage, for their own sense of self-esteem as married people. It's all about them. It's not a question about whether two people of the same gender can love each other and make a marriage work. It's about the reaction of others, mostly Christians: How they feel about it. How it threatens their bigotry. How it frightens them. How it calls into question the entire idea that marriage is holy sacrament instituted by God himself and can never be changed or modified.

At this point, we're arguing subtle abstractions which, in the light of history, are going to prove not very satisfactory.

They are not so different from the arguments used to justify our treatment of Native Americans, whom we dismissed as illiterate savages desperately in need of the civilizing influence of white folks.

Did we take away their land, cheat them out of their land, violate our treaties? Well, never mind, because God gave us America as the promised land. It was God's will. A handful of naked savages had to get out of the way. No matter. It was our manifest destiny to colonize America and create a glorious society for the glory of God. Or whatever.

We used the same arguments on African Americans. They needed our civilizing influence, our religion, our culture. They were backward, sinful, savage. They needed Christianizing. Besides, the Bible doesn't condemn slavery. St, Paul even told slaves to be subject to their masters, to obey the lawful authorities placed over them.

In all such arguments, the good of the people being harmed is not considered. They are helpless bits of flotsam caught up in the tidal waves of history. Too bad for them.

It's only when we begin to personalize the matter, to consider slavery from the point of view of the slave, to consider what it was like for Native Americans when the white guys landed on their shores, that we begin to see the injustice being perpetrated. At this point, we leave off from the pretty abstractions and deft rationalizations and begin to confront cold, harsh realities.

Now, it seems to me, the same is being done with homosexuality. We are beginning to tire of the abstract arguments put forward by popes and priests. We see two men loving each other, living together, eating dinner together, even raising kids together, and there does not appear to be any great harm being done to anyone at all. The only people who are suffering are the bigots.

CONCLUSIONS

Slavery was a moral matter, about which the church had nothing to say for many centuries. In fact, it did not really begin to condemn slavery until the 15th Century -- rather late to the party, one might say. Only at Vatican II did the church take a firm stand declare that slavery was a poison to society.

We need to consider this very carefully. I can't think of an all-encompassing evil quite like slavery, the thought that one can own another human being, can exploit them their entire life, can take their babies, can treat them like cattle. If this is not evil, then what is? Are we to understand that such a grave evil, such a serious violation of the human person, did not attract much attention from the Catholic Church until only very recently?

What are we to make of this? The church was willing to kill heretics like the Arians - but it had nothing to say about a genuine evil like slavery? It has been willing, almost from the start, to condemn gay people out of hand, for reasons which are hard to fathom - but it had nothing to say about slavery? It had no problem going after fornicators and adulterers - but somehow owning slaves was okay?

It's not hard to conclude that the church has gotten the moral issue of slavery complete wrong, that it has, in fact, done a massive face plant on the issue.

If it can be wrong on slavery, what else might be it be wrong about? Might it be wrong about homosexuality?

The next conclusion I reached was that an institution like the church, or even the U.S. of A., has an infinite number of ways to justify and rationalize its excesses and the evil it does. If the treatment of Native Americans and slaves could be so easily justified, and rationalized, and excused away, and trivialized on such a massive level, might not its similar rationalizations for its treatment of homosexuals be also called into question? Might we not be able to now pull the curtain back and reveal the wizard behind this particular sad chapter?

Another book that literally changed my life was Foxes Book of Martyrs, stories about the treatment of Protestants at the hands of Catholics. You cannot read such a book and fail to understand the horror of inter-religious squabbling and the massive murder and death it led to. And you cannot read such a book then look at the Catholic Church in quite the same way as you used to.

But this, too, has been rationalized and explained away, and is now nothing more than a footnote in history. Does the church now claim the divine right to kill heretics? But of course not. Is not the killing of heretics a moral matter? So it was once okay to set a Protestant on fire, but now it's frowned upon?

Finally, I realized in a very concrete way that loving another human being was not -- and could not be -- wrong. When I loved, I was the happiest I'd ever been. I felt complete, healed, energized, hopeful, happy, joyful.

To tell another human being that he or she must not love someone else in a way that seems natural and right to them is monstrous, and is, itself, a far greater evil than homosexuality could ever be. I know that because I experienced both love and the absence of love. I know, from experience, what it's like to be lonely, to hurt, to want to be held, to want to share my life with someone. I know what it's like to be denied that possibility, to be forced to consider the crazy-making idea that my "love" is intrinsically disordered when it very clearly is no such thing.

The idea that a church that professes to worship the "God of love" would tell some of its members not to love each other is preposterous.

To tell God's homosexual sons and daughters that they must violate one of the 10 Commandments and bear false witness against their true selves .., what sort of madness is that?

Homosexuality has taught me that the Catholic Church is sometimes wrong about moral matters. It was wrong about slavery and killing heretics and pretending that kings had a divine right to their often despotic reigns. It has, in recent years, quietly shifted gears on divorce and remarriage. It no longer claims that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, which it once used to do, and quite vociferously.

It may, in future years, quietly shift gears on issues like contraception and sexuality as more information becomes available and ignorance on these topics is overcome. It is not the all-knowing completely Divinely-inspired and utterly unerring entity that it claims to be. It can -- and sometimes does -- fall flat on its face.

For my entire life, the church has asked me to deny what I know to be true about myself, and to pretend that there is something wrong with me, when there isn't. It has told me my love is harmful. It ain't. It has told me I'm incapable of genuine love. That's a lot of hooey.

At the same time, it has asked me to not bear false witness, to not lie. It has told me, over and over, that honesty is the best policy.

It has also told me that I must someday stand before God and render an accounting of my life, which I am quite prepared to do.

Homosexuality has forced me to realize that the truth is worth fighting for, no matter how many forces are arrayed against you. The truth is found in one's heart. That is the only truth one can actually know for certain. If the church asks me to turn my back on that truth because that truth makes it uncomfortable, I am not doing either the church or myself any favors by complying. If I were the only one in this position, the only gay man in the world, the possibility of my being in error would be very great. But I am not the only one, not by a long shot. All throughout history there have been people like me, saying the sorts of things that I have been saying.

Instead of frightening us into silence, the church might consider listening.

Trans student in small town Mississippi sparks debate

"Leah," a transgendered senior in the Panola School District.

There's a remarkable story playing out today in the small town of Batesville, Mississippi. A male-to-female transgendered high school senior identified only as Leah decided to finish out the rest of the year wearing female clothing.

Angry parents, reported to be concerned their religious liberty was being violated by the presence of a transgendered student in their high school, set up a Facebook page called Prayers for South Panola School District bearing this message:

"This page is set up to form a Christian based group to pray for our school's administration, board members, principles, teachers and students. It's time to STEP UP and put CHRIST back in our schools where he belongs!"

As word spread, the Mississippians Support Leah page was set up in response bearing this message: "Mississippians Support Leah respects the rights of ALL people to live the lives they are meant to live, free from abuse and discrimination. We insist on DIGNITY and RESPECT for ALL Mississippians including our LGBTQ family and friends."

The page put up by the parents currently has 540 likes.

Leah's page currently has 1,723.

Both pages were set up yesterday (Tuesday, February 26, 2013).

Facebook has been ablaze with posts about the matter and suddenly, by one student daring to be honest about what she feels to be her true gender, Mississippi finds itself having a statewide conversation on the rights of a sexual minority.

According to a post on Leah's page:

"It's been reported that some South Panola High School students are wearing shorts and sweatpants - dress code violations - today to protest Leah's "breaking" of the dress code. The concern is, of course, for the feelings of Leah (who is at school), but also that the school's actions may be influenced by the students' protest. It's probably pretty important right now to let South Panola High School know that support for Leah is pouring in from across the state, from all over the country, and around the world. All communications of support for Leah should be VERY VERY polite and courteous, focusing on support of Leah not frustration or anger with the "other" side. You might try sending a Letter to the Editor to The Panolian - send to publisher@panolian.com."

A student who posted a comment on this blog post adds:


"People who supported Leah wore pink and green. The students wearing sweatpants were protesting *against* Leah, claiming that she receives special treatment by being allowed to break the dress code (which she hasn't, as a female). These students stood in front of the school this morning and were allowed to enter after they went home and changed into regular clothes."

The page administrator for Mississippians Support Leah page wrote a post on that page, saying: "The support Leah has received from her classmates and friends at South Panola should give all Mississippians hope that the times they are a changin! Mississippi has a long way to go but considering our history, our state has probably undergone more change than any other. It takes is people like Leah (and her supporters) staying here, taking a stand, and saying, "This is who I am!" to start changing perspectives. It can and will get better!"

The page also posted a picture of Leah sent in by her mother. (See picture above.)

On the parents' page, this message was posted:

"The intent of this page is to get Chriatians (sic) together to pray for our school district. To all the trolls and the ones 'against; this page, we will gladly PRAY for you also! This page was never intended against or toward any student directly. We are PRAYING for the school as a whole. Please keep our chidlren in your prayers today. Pray for our teachers. STAND UP FOR JESUS!!"

• This post was updated February 27, 2013, at 6:42pm.

Why I hate "Christians"

Someone asked me recently why I hate Christians.

I replied that real "Christians" are rather rare and I don't know that many. I do, however, know a great many people who call themselves Christians, but who are anything but Christ-like. 

These folks are a dime a dozen. They wrap themselves in religion and use it as an excuse to hate, or judge, or condemn, or exclude. They glory in their chosen-ness, their blessedness, casting a sad eye on those of us who are unwashed and unsaved. They are morally superior and want their morality legislated onto those of us who are apparently incapable of genuine morality.

I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, though. The "Christians" I hate are the ones who are the most strident, the most vociferous, the ones leading the charge in the culture wars, the shiny-faced folks on TV with their hands out who fear-monger about abortion and homosexuality to gin up donations. The "Christians" I'm talking about are the last to turn the other cheek, the last to be meek, mild, humble, the last to leave judgement to God, where it belongs. 

On the one side are real, genuine Christians who are Christ-like, who understand what the Gospels were about, the ones who know that when they pray they should go to their room and shut the door and not stand on the street corner and proclaim their righteousness for the world to see. On the other hand, there are shiny charlatans with $3,000 suits who use Christianity as a weapon to suit their own agenda. Between these two poles are the mass of souls in between.

It is not those souls in between that I hate. It is not Christ-like people that I hate. It's the hypocrites, the users, the abusers, the vampires who suck on the body of Christ to sustain their own lives. Those are the "Christians" that I hate. 

And for good reason.

Jesus hated them too. 

If you read the Gospels attentively, you will notice that Jesus didn't get mad that often. But when he did, it was invariably with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, those self-righteous hair-splitters who were forever rabble-rousing and stirring up trouble, who thought of themselves as the apples of God's eyes, who rejoiced in their salvation even as they sneered down at sinners and the outcast who could never measure up. 

Jesus hated those bastards. Don't believe me? Read what he said about them. On one occasion he calls them children of their father, the Devil. 

I think it's important to understand who he was talking to. The Pharisees and Sadducees were prominent, scholarly Jews. They knew the law inside and out. They were the pillars of the community, the leading lights. They had the prime seats at table and in the temple. They were respected, prominent, important. They called the shots. They were the priests, pastors and popes of their day.

Imagine how it must have appeared to them for someone like Jesus to come along and publicly revile them, over and over, even going so far as to tell them that they were children of the Devil, their mouths like "white-washed sepulchers." It's no wonder these folks schemed to find a way to have Jesus silenced. And it's no wonder they eventually succeeded. 

Let us consider the matter further:

• Unlike so many American Christians, Jesus had absolutely no interest in political power. Indeed, he was a huge disappointment to the Jews who were waiting for a political leader, a worldly "king," not a spiritual Messiah or Savior, but someone who could lead the charge against Rome and free Jerusalem from Roman occupation. When they gave him a coin with Ceasar's image on it and confronted him on the matter, he said, "Render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's, and unto God what is God's."  He wanted nothing to do with political power. He did not tell his followers to agitate for political power or change. He made utterly no effort to overthrow an unjust occupation.  How does this square with the many Christians and Evangelicals who constantly agitate for legislation that is favorable to their religious beliefs? 
• What is the response of a Christian to injury or harm? Jesus was plain: Turn the other cheek. Do good to those that hate you, that revile you, that do all manner of evil to you. Love your enemies. Bless them. Wish them well. So, when was the last time you saw a Christian turn the other cheek? When was the last time you saw Sarah Palin, or Michelle Bachmann, or Ann Coulter, or Mike Huckabee, or Pat Robertson, "do good" to those that hate them? You won't find much cheek-turning these days. You will find, though, a lot of heated rhetoric about how Christians have to stand their ground, step up, be counted, make their voices heard so that we're not steamrolled by the homosexuals or the abortionists or the atheists or the Muslims. Lock and load, to use Palin's terminology.
• "Judge not, lest you be judged." How much plainer or simpler could it be? But the Christians I'm referring to are the first to judge, to condemn, to exclude, to vilify, to actively promote policies that hurt and harm and drive away souls they don't like. But notice something very curious: While they pick on the gays constantly (and, it seems, rather gleefully), they do not pick on adulterers. Or drunkards. Or murderers. Or child abusers. Or men who slap their wives around. Or fornicators. Or business people who cheat their employees out of a just wage. No. Their self-righteous ire is very carefully channeled into a safe outlet: Pick on the gays. Curious, isn't it? To their way of thinking, gays are destroying the family. Not fornicators or straight couples who live together. Not men having affairs. Not men cruising the Internet for porn. But gay people. While there is a website called godhatesfags.com, there is no site called godhatesfornicators.com, or godhatesdrunkards.com. Curious how judgement is carried out against a safe target ("the gays"), and not in a way that might hit too close to home. 
• Furthermore, what is Christianity today if not one giant exercise in judging? Christians are constantly judging everyone and everything: Society, law, other religions, other religious believers, lifestyle choices. It's all but impossible to imagine Christianity without all the relentless judging that goes with it. Jesus never once said you had to go to church on Sunday. He did say, "Judge not, lest you be judged." How do we account for this? Christians are like the Jews who caught the woman in adultery and wanted to stone her to death. What was the response of Jesus? "Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone." Today's Christians would gladly stone the gays, and the women who have had abortions, and the Muslims, and all the other people they can't stand. They would do it without a second thought, and they would feel justified in doing so. 
• "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." In Christianity, the social order is inverted. Jesus invited the riffraff trash of society to his table, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the lepers, the morally compromised. Time and again, he made it clear that the "first" shall be last in the Kingdom of Heaven. You would be hard pressed to find any evidence of this teaching among today's American Christians. Just the opposite, in fact. The Mike Huckabees of this world will always be seated at the head of the table. 
• "See those Christians, how they love another!" To which I can only say: Ha ha ha! Where is the Christian who "loves" those around him? Who loves the stranger? The immigrant? The homosexual? The morally compromised? The other? The enemy? Where is the Christian who loves his Muslim neighbors? American Christianity has become almost synonymous with hate. If you ask Google the leading question of "Why are Christians so ..?" the answers that pop up (based on previous searches) are "Why are so Christians so mean?" and "Why are Christians so angy?" It does not ask "Why are Christians so loving?" When you think of Christians, you do not think of loving, gentle people. 

I admire Jesus a great deal. He was an extraordinary man. It's been more than 2,000 years and we're still talking about him, about what he did, about what it meant. No other person in the history of this world has had a greater impact. 

I admire Jesus. I love Jesus. I love what he stood for, what he taught, what he meant. 

But I would not be the first to say that his followers have messed it up, over and over, time and again, to such an extent that it's hard to believe they think of themselves as "Christ-like."

Christ was not a bully. Christ did not have a "my way or the highway" mentality. Christ did not come to condemn the world, but save it.

Part of my anger at "Christians" has to do with my love for Jesus, and my sadness at the way he has been treated by his followers, at the great many souls they have scandalized and driven away by their unChrist-like behaviors and beliefs. Surely it would be better for these people to have a millstone tied around their neck and for them to be thrown into the river than to have so scandalized so many people. Truly, he has cast his pearls before swine. 

Harsh words? I suspect that when these "Christians" stand before God for their judgement, they will hear much worse. They might be reminded that St. Paul told them that without love, they are just tinkling brass.

All of this is in contrast to a genuine Christian, a soul who has taken Christ as his savior, mentor, friend, spiritual guide.

What does Jesus tell this soul?

• Turn the other cheek. 
• Be patient, kind, loving, humble. 
• Don't put yourself first. 
• When you pray, go into your bedroom and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. 
• Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven. 
• Don't be anxious for tomorrow. 
• Become like a little child. 
• Love your enemies. 
• Do good to those that hate you and persecute you and do all manner of evil against you. 
• If someone asks for your coat, give them your cloak too. If someone asks you to walk a mile with them, walk two. 
• It is better to give than to receive.

These people are not much interested in the politics of the day. They don't wear their religion on their sleeve. They pray in private. They love. They forgive. They ask for forgiveness. They demonstrate, by their actions, that Christ means something to them. They give the glory to God, not to the man on the TV in the shiny suit. They do unto others as they would have done unto themselves. They do not lord it over others. They do not seek a special status. 

Where are these people? They may indeed be sitting in the pew next to you. A few of them may even be in the pulpit. But most of these people understand that it is God who judges, God who sees, not man. They are concerned with what God think of them, not man. They cast their cares and trust upon God and do not worry about the 'morrow. 

When you meet a person like that, you've met a Christian. They don't have to tell you. You just know. The rest are nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing.