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?

What the duck?

So, what's wrong with Duck Commander Phil Robertson going Biblical with his views on homosexuality?

Nothing. 

Not one single, solitary thing. 

His religious views are not substantially different from many Christians all over the world, including the pope in Rome. 

But it wasn't his religious views that caused the Quack Heard Across the Globe.

Here's what he actually said during the GQ interview:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

It takes just eleven words to find the problem. When the topic turns to homosexuality, he immediately throws out the word "bestiality," linking homosexual behavior and bestiality as if they were of a piece, as if the relationship between two gay men or two gay women, between two consenting adults who love and cherish each other, was no different than a redneck having sex with a donkey. 

That's the problem.

Members of the LGBT community are no strangers to this type of talk. We are routinely classified as sexual perverts, and homosexuality, we are told, is not substantially different than sexual perversions like pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia. 

As a child growing up during the 1970s, I remember very well looking up the word "homosexuality" in the dictionary and finding it classified as a sexual perversion, "akin to pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia, which see."

I flipped the pages to look up those other words and was horrified to learn that the crush I had on Shaun Cassidy was no different than my wanting to have sex with a little kid, or a cow, or a dead body. Pretty heady stuff for a teenager in the throes of puberty. And not only heady, but shaming. Intensely, relentlessly, mindbogglingly shaming. And embarrassing. And humiliating. And psychologically damaging. 

Does it need to be said that the love two gay men or two gay women feel for each other is substantially different than someone having sex with a corpse? Do we really need to explain how deeply misinformed, ignorant and offensive such thinking is? 

Apparently we do. 

Folks like Phil Robertson, pontificating on Bible verses and taking a stand for Jesus, routinely throw out comparisons to pedophilia and bestiality. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is famed for talking about gay marriage as something that will lead to the "man on dog" thing. Evangelicals constantly warn that gay marriage will lead to people wanting to marry their pets, or their children, or their brothers or sisters or ... fill in the blank.

Well, you say, so what? What's the big deal?

I'll tell you what the big deal is.

Love.

Surprise, surprise, gay people want to be loved, too. They want to fall in love, experience intimacy and romance, have sex, commit themselves to each other, create families, live normal lives.

By constantly suggesting that gay love is a sexual perversion like bestiality, religious types are striking right at the heart (so to speak) of a person, hitting them right in the place where they feel, where they find meaning and hope and happiness. They are striking at the core of an individual and his or her ability to love, to receive love, to interact with the community, to be a human being. By dismissing as perversion their romantic feelings, their attractions to members of the same sex, they are killing the souls of such people. 

They are suggesting that these feelings of love and affection among gay people are disgusting and unworthy, perverted, sinful, so terrible that such feelings ought to be denied. They are doing this, not because there is any scientific or medical evidence to support it, but because they believe the Bible condemns homosexuality. They are teaching young gay men and women to hate themselves, to hate their feelings, to hate the truth about themselves, to shut themselves off from the love and affection of others like them. The psychological, spiritual and sociological consequences are predictable:  Alienation, suicidal ideation, low self-esteem, self-doubt, self-loathing, loneliness, and ultimately, despair. And as a final kick in the pants, young gay men and women are expected to believe that this is what the God of love wants for them: A life of loneliness and pain and rejection and humiliation and shame. 

Monstrous ignorance, from start to finish, as so many members of the gay community have painfully learned. 

Read those words again:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality ..."
It takes but six little words for Robertson to jump from "homosexual behavior" to "bestiality." As if they were so intrinsically linked, he couldn't mention one without the other. 

This type of talk is so common among evangelicals as to be uninteresting. But that doesn't make it right. That doesn't redeem it from being what it is: Hate speech. 

Hate speech is the use of words to demonize groups of people. Suggesting that two men who love each other is not at all different than a horny farmer raping his goat is demonization. It's a display of shocking ignorance and stupidity which has nothing to do with supposed Biblical teachings on sexuality and everything to do with bigotry and prejudice.

It's wrong.

Many, many churches carry on a conversation about homosexuality without resorting to demonization and hate speech. It is possible to talk about religious beliefs on homosexuality without needlessly offending people. But the moment you stray from your beliefs and start talking about gay people as being no better than pedophiles or people who like to have sex with goats, you are no longer having a conversation on your religious beliefs: You are engaging in highly offensive exercise in ignorance and bigotry. And you can, and should, be made to face the consequences. 

No one argues with Robertson's right to free speech and no one is suggesting that he is not entitled to his own religious beliefs. But when free speech turns into hate speech, and religious belief turns into ignorant demonization of others, there is a problem.

Hate speech leads to hate crimes. Gay people can and do get fired from their jobs. Some have had their children taken away from them. Gay and lesbian teens are kicked out of their homes and left to fend for themselves on the streets.  Hate speech makes it easier for society to discriminate against gay people, take away their rights, violate their persons and property. Hardly what Jesus had in mind when he said we should do unto others what we would have done unto ourselves. This is not loving your neighbor as you love yourself. 

That this hate speech wraps itself in Christianity does not give it the protection of freedom of religion. Your religious beliefs are protected, but your belief that homosexuality is somehow the same as necrophilia is not supported by the Bible (or any authority, including science or common sense). When you talk about homosexuality being the same as bestiality, you are not having a conversation on religious belief. You are being an ignorant bigot, and we have the right to be offended.

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.