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You’re Likable Enough, Gay People
IN his first press conference after his re-election in 2004, President Bush memorably declared, "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it." We all know how that turned out.
Barack Obama has little in common with George W. Bush, thank God, his obsessive workouts and message control notwithstanding. At a time when very few Americans feel very good about very much, Obama is generating huge hopes even before he takes office. So much so that his name and face, affixed to any product, may be the last commodity left in the marketplace that can still move Americans to shop.
I share these high hopes. But for the first time a faint tinge of Bush crept into my Obama reveries this month.
As we saw during primary season, our president-elect is not free of his own brand of hubris and arrogance, and sometimes it comes before a fall: "You're likable enough, Hillary" was the prelude to his defeat in New Hampshire. He has hit this same note again by assigning the invocation at his inauguration to the Rev. Rick Warren, the Orange County, Calif., megachurch preacher who has likened committed gay relationships to incest, polygamy and "an older guy marrying a child." Bestowing this honor on Warren was a conscious - and glib - decision by Obama to spend political capital. It was made with the certitude that a leader with a mandate can do no wrong.
In this case, the capital spent is small change. Most Americans who have an opinion about Warren like him and his best-selling self-help tome, "The Purpose Driven Life." His good deeds are plentiful on issues like human suffering in Africa, poverty and climate change. He is opposed to same-sex marriage, but so is almost every top-tier national politician, including Obama. Unlike such family-values ayatollahs as James Dobson and Tony Perkins, Warren is not obsessed with homosexuality and abortion. He was vociferously attacked by the Phyllis Schlafly gang when he invited Obama to speak about AIDS at his Saddleback Church two years ago.
There's no reason why Obama shouldn't return the favor by inviting him to Washington. But there's a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural's de facto pope. You can't blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he'd been slapped in the face. "I'm all for Rick Warren being at the table," he told The Times, but "we're talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he's praying to is not the God that I know."
Warren, whose ego is no less than Obama's, likes to advertise his "commitment to model civility in America." But as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reminded her audience, "comparing gay relationships to child abuse" is a "strange model of civility." Less strange but equally hard to take is Warren's defensive insistence that some of his best friends are the gays: His boasts of having "eaten dinner in gay homes" and loving Melissa Etheridge records will not protect any gay families' civil rights.
Equally lame is the argument mounted by an Obama spokeswoman, Linda Douglass, who talks of how Warren has fought for "people who have H.I.V./AIDS." Shouldn't that be the default position of any religious leader? Fighting AIDS is not a get-out-of-homophobia-free card. That Bush finally joined Bono in doing the right thing about AIDS in Africa does not mitigate the gay-baiting of his 2004 campaign, let alone his silence and utter inaction when the epidemic was killing Texans by the thousands, many of them gay men, during his term as governor.
Unlike Bush, Obama has been the vocal advocate of gay civil rights he claims to be. It is over the top to assert, as a gay writer at Time did, that the president-elect is "a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot." Much more to the point is the astute criticism leveled by the gay Democratic congressman Barney Frank, who, in dissenting from the Warren choice, said of Obama, "I think he overestimates his ability to get people to put aside fundamental differences." That's a polite way of describing the Obama cockiness. It will take more than the force of the new president's personality and eloquence to turn our nation into the United States of America he and we all want it to be.
Obama may not only overestimate his ability to bridge some of our fundamental differences but also underestimate how persistent some of those differences are. The exhilaration of his decisive election victory and the deserved applause that has greeted his mostly glitch-free transition can't entirely mask the tensions underneath. Before there is profound social change, there is always high anxiety.
The success of Proposition 8 in California was a serious shock to gay Americans and to all the rest of us who believe that all marriages should be equal under the law. The roles played by African-Americans (who voted 70 percent in favor of Proposition 8) and by white Mormons (who were accused of bankrolling the anti-same-sex-marriage campaign) only added to the morning-after recriminations. And that was in blue California. In Arkansas, voters went so far as to approve a measure forbidding gay couples to adopt.
There is comparable anger and fear on the right. David Brody, a political correspondent with the Christian Broadcasting Network, was flooded with e-mails from religious conservatives chastising Warren for accepting the invitation to the inaugural. They vilified Obama as "pro-death" and worse because of his support for abortion rights.
Stoking this rage, no doubt, is the dawning realization that the old religious right is crumbling - in part because Warren's new generation of leaders departs from the Falwell-Robertson brand of zealots who have had a stranglehold on the G.O.P. It's a sign of the old establishment's panic that the Rev. Richard Cizik, known for his leadership in addressing global warming, was pushed out of his executive post at the National Association of Evangelicals this month. Cizik's sin was to tell Terry Gross of NPR that he was starting to shift in favor of civil unions for gay couples.
Cizik's ouster won't halt the new wave he represents. As he also told Gross, young evangelicals care less and less about the old wedge issues and aren't as likely to base their votes on them. On gay rights in particular, polls show that young evangelicals are moving in Cizik's (and the country's) direction and away from what John McCain once rightly called "the agents of intolerance." It's not a coincidence that Dobson's Focus on the Family, which spent more than $500,000 promoting Proposition 8, has now had to lay off 20 percent of its work force in Colorado Springs.
But we're not there yet. Warren's defamation of gay people illustrates why, as does our president-elect's rationalization of it. When Obama defends Warren's words by calling them an example of the "wide range of viewpoints" in a "diverse and noisy and opinionated" America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a "viewpoint" defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable.
It is even more toxic in a year when that group has been marginalized and stripped of its rights by ballot initiatives fomenting precisely such fears. "You've got to give them hope" was the refrain of the pioneering 1970s gay politician Harvey Milk, so stunningly brought back to life by Sean Penn on screen this winter. Milk reminds us that hope has to mean action, not just words.
By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Obama's disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Warren is nonetheless a relatively tiny infraction. It's no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It's bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.
Since he's not about to rescind the invitation, what happens next? For perspective, I asked Timothy McCarthy, a historian who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and an unabashed Obama enthusiast who served on his campaign's National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Leadership Council. He responded via e-mail on Christmas Eve.
After noting that Warren's role at the inauguration is, in the end, symbolic, McCarthy concluded that "it's now time to move from symbol to substance." This means Warren should "recant his previous statements about gays and lesbians, and start acting like a Christian."
McCarthy added that it's also time "for President-elect Obama to start acting on the promises he made to the LGBT community during his campaign so that he doesn't go down in history as another Bill Clinton, a sweet-talking swindler who would throw us under the bus for the sake of political expediency." And "for LGBT folks to choose their battles wisely, to judge Obama on the content of his policy-making, not on the character of his ministers."
Amen. Here's to humility and equanimity everywhere in America, starting at the top, as we negotiate the fierce rapids of change awaiting us in the New Year.
58 Comments so far
Show AllFrom what I've heard, Rick Warren's anti-AIDS initiatives consist of telling Africans not to have sex (abstinence-only education); i.e., he is against condom distribution.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this....
Rick Warren is actually a pretty decent and honorable guy.
Read Juan Cole's Piece entitled,
"Rick Warren: "I love Muslims . . . I happen to love Gays and Straights"
http://www.juancole.com/2008/12/rick-warren-i-love-muslims-i-happen-to.html
Prof. Cole concludes, "I came away liking and looking up to Warren. In fact, I wonder whether with some work he could not be gotten to back off some of the hurtful things he has said about gays and rethink his support for Proposition 8."
.We all of us have our standards, I guess. I fail , each and every time, to understand how low yours can descend.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Right. And your 'standards' have allowed you to blithely call me a 'witch' and tell me that I "don't know (insert four letter word for fecal matter here)' with absolutely no problem because I have dared to post on this forum. Nice ! Not . . .
FYI the short version of my story goes something like this : my husband-to-be was in a man/boy 'love' relationship as a teenager. The man in question was also and simultaneously in a relationship with my husband's father. The downstream result of this was that I ended up infected with HIV while pregnant with our daughter. My husband, children and I have all had very serious health issues as a result. There are many families like ours. Until the gay community acknowledges our existence AND the role which gay sexual behavior has played in creating the problems we face, I cannot really see much credibility in the gay platform. If that makes me a bigoted homophobe as so many on this forum have called me, so be it.
The negative focus of gay behavior is so much in evidence with all the flak over Rick Warren (invocation) and the simultaneous ignoring of Rich Lowery (benediction). No balance whatsoever. And Melissa Etheridge gets gayly lectured for being an 'appeaser'. And Rich Lowery gets dissed for stating the obvious, that there is no way to avoid the 'cognitive dissonance' many people feel when confronted with gay marriage issues. Is it so wrong for him, a man of a many years, to say that ? Another focus on the negative, rather than the positive aspects of his inclusion in the inauguration.
It is very tempting to draw a corollary between such embedded negativity and the negative vibe of certain sexual behaviors but that would best be left to someone else on another forum where such things could be discussed more objectively.
.Hi witch....Your story may or may not be true, either way it is absolutely no reason to hate gays. You're being insulted, not for posting here, but for posting crap, posting distortions and posting bigotry against a people and a culture about which you don't know shit..
I seriously doubt that there are many families with the experiences you describe, I also doubt that you are being truthful, sorry but Ive read far to much from you and see the worms in your head. You have lost all credibility here a long time ago. You seem to have , if we accept your words for the sake of dialogue, misplaced you anger and turned it upon all homosexuals because your husband gave you the HIV virus....
Those who prey on children are an anathema to both communities, straight and gay. The simple facts are that any reputable psychiatrist will tell you that pedophiles are almost always straight. The statistics are ,in fact, overwhelming in that regard. Oh, and yes your position does indeed make you a bigoted homophobe.
What the fuck the criticism of the choice of Warren to give the invocation has to do with "gay behavior" is a freaking mystery to me and seems an incoherent rant from you. The Warren choice is being contested because of Warren's awful position on homosexual rights and women's rights as well. Choosing such a one as he gives an undeserved credibility to a hater and a bigot. But I do understand why you love him, because you both are haters and bigots.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Correction : Joseph Lowery. My apologies.
Clarification: There may not be that many families with the same dynamics as mine. BUT there are a great many families where the woman and children have been infected with HIV by men who bring it home to them.
Comment : Pedophilia strictly speaking applies to prepubescent children. The situation of teenage males being sexually mentored by older men who are simultaneously in same sex relationships with their peers is far from uncommon.
There is no point whatsoever in my responding to the post below. I have had enough of gay males invalidating my experience.
.You use "gay male" as an epithet, I do not, thus your assumptions of sexuality are irrelevant to any conversation. What is not irrelevant is your deep seated phobic reaction to this topic.
It is, I would assume, that phobia that makes you post, again and again, lies , exaggerations and distortions. I feel very sad for such as you. Link, if you can, to statistics proving the wild assumptions about what you claim....
I have four children and fourteen grandkids and not a one is a homophobe Im proud to note.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Copperiverkid: I will take your story as given, and recognize the courage it took to post it, even anonymously. I regard it as tragic. Clearly, you have suffered. I wish you and your family the best.
I hope you have had a chance to read my account, elsewhere in this thread, of my gay brother's contributions to his community, because I think it reveals the prejudice inherent in your statement: "Until the gay community acknowledges our existence AND the role which gay sexual behavior has played in creating the problems we face, I cannot really see much credibility in the gay platform."
Please consider that your case is not the result of "gay sexual behavior," but of "abberant sexual behavior." By abberant sexual behavior I mean sexual behavior that injures another party. It is universal; not an elemental part of gay culture or a gay agenda. Gay sex is no more inherently abberant than straight sex; either can be abberant in specific cases, as in yours. It would have been just as abberant (because of the harm to you and your children) had your husband contracted HIV from unprotected sex with a female carrier of the HIV virus.
My brother, whom you would condemn, counsels against aberrant sex. In comparison, the Catholic Church opposes all things "gay" as inherently abberant, but literally institutionalized sexually abberant behavior when it protected clergy who molested both boys and girls, men and women. Nevertheless, not all Catholic clergy are sexually abberant (well, maybe not--celibacy is arguably abberant, though it causes no harm if adhered to); neither are all gays.
I hope this makes sense to you. I hope you heal the psychic wound. I hope you get the best possible care.
Please understand that from the viewpoint of the adult males in the situation I married into (and which I was not cognizant of until many years later, and then only by piecing the puzzle together myself), their behavior was NOT aberrant. Now try to understand that our definition of their 'aberrant' behavior was, to them, bigoted and homophobic. Now please grok that none of this behavior is nearly as neatly defined (vis a vis 'gay vs aberrant') as gay advocates want to make it. And that is why I will not buy into their lifestyle or their vibe. (Also the 'injuring another party' tripe is so bogus, ask any woman who has given birth !)
Why do you think I have condemned your brother ? I know lots of gays. They know I do not agree with what they do and they are okay with that. In fact, they like me because I am truthful and can be trusted. I am not at all alone in thinking that the term
'mangina' speaks volumes when it comes to the inherent aberrance of certain sexual behaviors. And if you understood that the ultimate goal of the relationship my husband-to-be found himself in was to be groomed as the active partner of the older man then you might understand the horror that engenders in the female mind. Enough said. Have you found Michael Telliinger's
book SLAVE SPECIES of god yet ? You can go to Amazon and read the book reviews on it (always a fun thing to do.)
I'm trying to understand, but am subject to some confusion (happens a lot!). I do not doubt that the adult males in your situation thought they were doing just fine (they were wrong), or that they would have reacted against being labeled aberrant (they were wrong again). Anticipating arguments of moral relativity, I added the part about "injury" to the more limited definition of aberrant ["straying from the right or normal way (e.g., aberrant behavior such as delinquency and crime")]. "Grooming" young people for anything repels me, whether for sex, violence in sport, racism, or strapping on bombs. It's child abuse, plain and simple, and should "engender horror" in any compassionate mind, male or female.
As an aside, one of my brother's gay acquaintances--not friend--made a pass at me when I was about twelve years old. He was probably 20-ish. It terrified me and I fled the scene. The memory, though dim, still disgusts and angers me (though it certainly helped confirm for me my own heterosexuality). I am thankful he wasn't enought of a predator to groom me. When I told my brother years later, he, too, was appalled, so I know he would never buy into the moral relativity argument offered up by those men. Rather, he would find them aberrant.
Nevertheless, I pass no judgment on what consenting adults do with one another sexually (as long as they are adults, and both--or all, for that matter--truly consent, it's just flat out none of my business). I understand that anal sex is aberrant to you and that you are "not alone" in this view; I disagree that it is "inherently" aberrant. I doubt it is the be-all and end-all of gay sex. Not particularly my cup of tea, but many men AND women take pleasure in it. However, I certainly will not question your right to your point of view.
Sorry I misinterpreted your comments as condemnation of my brother. I retract that. I am pleased that you have honest and truthful relationships with gays. I hope ALL your relationships are honest and truthful. However, I'm going to guess that I know many more gays than you do, so I disagree that there's any such thing as a singular "gay lifestyle" or gay "vibe." There is as much diversity in gay personalities and lifestyles as in straight personalities and lifestyles. We'll probably just have to agree to disagree on that.
I'm not sure how childbirth came up in all this (one point of confusion for me). Having witnessed it, it's clearly painful (understatement of the year?), and it can be injurious, even mortal. But childbirth is by no means aberrant (it's the opposite!), so I'm not sure how it fits in the discussion. It does raise a tangential point, however. "Grooming" or, when grooming fails, forcing women to carry any and all pregnancies to term, even in the case of rape, incest, or when it is likely to be injurious or even mortal to the woman, is as wrong as any other grooming (or coercion). It's abuse, a violation of human rights, and morally wrong. Which brings us back full circle to Rick Warren, which is what started all this in the first place. Now, I don't know if Warren toes this fundamentalist line or not (I would bet "yes"), but those who do are, in my opinion, aberrant (Sarah Palin, John McCain, etc.)
Finally, I haven't found "Slave Species" yet. It's not in our library system, which I depend on because I can't afford to buy a lot of books. I will look at reviews on Amazon because you've thoroughly piqued my curiosity.
Again, I wish you well.
Ok. Last post as it will be minus fifty degrees tonight here in interior alaska and i fully intend to enjoy the special silence of the deep chill, where your very thoughts seem to crystallize in the liquid air, without the voices of others in my head. And to use that time of clearance to start the new year afresh.
My specific concern does not address consenting adults. It is and always has been the role modeling of same sex behaviors in the intimacy of a family setting. You were properly horrified by the circumstances of my husband-to-be's adolescence. Yet ON AN ENERGETIC level I cannot see that much difference between what happened to him and what would be considered 'normal' in a family situation consisting of two gay males, one of whom could very well be the biological father, and adolescent boys. Understand that I am NOT suggesting any sort of physical molestation here. I am merely bringing up the concept of role modeling of sexual behaviors and trying to make the point that MENTALLY, the situations are not dissimilar. (Sorry for the caps, but this is difficult to express in a culture where energetic connections are not well understood).
Ditto for anal intercourse. It is the ENERGETIC CONSEQUENCES of that behavior (well, that and the obvious health problems) which are not addressed in this culture. We think if a child is not conceived, then nothing is conceived. That may not be true.
What if anal intercourse results in the conception of ENERGETIC ENTITIES which we cannot perceive ? (Notice that your mind will instantly deny this possibility and label me a whacko. Why ?) Because the truth is that I am dealing with an energetic entity, conceived by my father in law and his gay lover, which was ultimately 'downloaded' into the youth who became my husband. In their minds, that was a totally acceptable method of replicating themselves. Not the least bit 'aberrant'.
These issues are very much more complex than we are meant to realize. Happy New Year everybody !
.Continue to promulgate the myth of homosexuals and young children all you wish. It says everything about you and nothing whatsoever about truth.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
"I have seen what I have seen and I know what I know". -- Anne Wilson Schaef, author of Woman's Reality
Posting here, I have said NOTHING about homosexuals and young children. Only homosexuals and adolescents. Big difference.
Fast Eddie has posted of his experience of being 'hit on by a gay guy' when he was about twelve. What if he had not been so secure in who he was ? Or what if he was starved for affection ? Or what if he was conditioned to submit to authoritative older males ? His life might be very different right now. You are the one who is not paying attention to what has been said here.
You are very much like my father, you hear things not as they are, but as you are. I think you must be a very lonely old man,
coming to forums like this and being so mean and dismissive of other people's experiences. You should try to be nicer in 2009.
.I am neither lonely nor stupid enough to be nice to filth like you. You add to the hatred of this world, you backtrack and double talk your way out of obviously true charges of your creepy sexuality, your homophobia, your made up crap in silly attempts to justify your own sickness. Certainly there is a lot of hatred in this world, yours is unjustified as it seeks to brand people and make them second class citizens if not abnormal. Mine towards you is precisely because of what you attempt to do to thousands upon thousands of good folks. Truthfully, were I a better person I would simply pity you, but I am not aiming for sainthood, only to rid this world of the likes of you..
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Do you mind telling me how my decision to settle down with another woman has ANY effect on your world-- that you do not agree with it? Excuse me, but my relationship doesn't hurt anyone or the planet.
All orphans/foster children/wards of the state are a result of the only behavior YOU approve of.... Doesn't seem like THAT is a very healthy lifestyle....
"Rick Warren: "I love Muslims . . . I happen to love Gays and Straights"
He may love Muslims, but he believes that non-Christians are going to hell. There are plenty of inclusive religious figures who Obama could have chosen for this job. You can't bring the country together by throwing Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians under the bus!
To be fair, many religions believe in a form of Hell.
And, non-Christians aren't being thrown under the bus.
Warren was speaking at MPAC.
You won't find a single Christian who believes that any non-Christian is not going to hell. Period. It's a key piece of the doctorine. "There is no way to the Father except through the Son". Period. It's just the way it is... so it's not "damning evidence"...
There is no hell, except that which we create on earth, you insufferable fool.
Screw you man. I'm entitled to my beliefs just as much as you are. Hell, for a so-called progressive you're sure intolerant. heh.
I think an objective reviewer of my posts would find me a strong advocate for tolerance. My weakness is that I can't suffer belligerent idiots. Run and hide back in the Dark Ages now, simple-minded one.
goosnargh, that's what i've heard too. p-rick warren is james dobson w/a norman vincent peale veneer.
and please, obama is not 'tone deaf' or whatever the latest excuse for him is. he's a coldly calculating duplicitous politician who knows that gays, like most lefties, are solidly w/in the democratic party. he doesn't give a crap about religion except as a political tool, and he knows he has more to gain potentially by appeasing the fundies than he has to lose by pissing off the gays.
if he's wrong in that calculation, he's wrong about the fundies, not about gays and gay rights supporters. you will not see a revolt from the dem. party over this issue.
Senator Obama's decision to reach out to the likes of rev. Warren are yet another sign of his disgraceful ability to sell-out his own (supposed) friends without a lick of shame in doing so. The Rev. Wright was right, "minister's do what minister's have to do and politician's do what politician's have to do." Obama talks a good game about justice for everyone--right up until (and even after) he throws another supporter to the dogs.
Now now, this is the United States of America that Obama is going to be the president of. If people can't have opinions that a gay union is like pedophiliia or incest, well then, what sort of a free country are we? Of course, such opinions promote acts like beating up young gay men and leaving them on the fence to die, but surely this is a small price to pay for having a free country.
This is a life and death issue for gays, but that's OK. Obama, be glad your black little girls no longer have to worry about going to church in Birmingham.
.There's no reason why Obama shouldn't return the favor by inviting him to Washington. But there's a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural's de facto pope. You can't blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he'd been slapped in the face. "I'm all for Rick Warren being at the table," he told The Times, but "we're talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he's praying to is not the God that I know."
This says it all!
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais NinThere's
What this whole episode points out is that it is utterly incumbent upon gays to aggressively pursue their agenda to the extent (and beyond) that the more looney sections of the right wing noise machine accuse them of doing. They would be well advised to learn from the rise of the intolerant right, and speed it's coming irrelevance.
www.wunderman-comics.com
"so that he doesn't go down in history as another Bill Clinton, a sweet-talking swindler who would throw us under the bus for the sake of political expediency."
OBAMA: Take a seat in the back of the bus and keep your mouths shut!
John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta
"Take a seat in the back of the bus..." Wow! You sound like a caricature of an old slave-holdin', Jim Crow law-enforcin', KKK lovin', good ole boy dumbass southern redneck. And here I had hoped your kind had inbred itself out of existence. Congratulations on posting one of the most odious, stupid comments I've seen on this site, and that says a lot!
First tell the truth, that being a gay man is not to be compared to sexually assaulting either little boys or little girls.
Such talk is shameful. It has no more to do with Jesus's teachings than old KKK propaganda does. For those idiot words, Rev. Warren should by rights be kicked out of his church position and defrocked by any ordaining body.
Now, from this unhappy spot, where do we go when half the nation is a bunch of bigoted unChristian gumballs who secretly think what Rev. Warren says aloud? President-elect Obama's tack is to at least talk to Rev. Warren, who partly gets the Gospels, as opposed to many, many other money-worshipping preachers who unfortunately won't get the parables about the good Samaritan and not stoning the adultress until the day they die.
Maybe Rev. Warren might learn to back off from his bigoted invective. Maybe other preachers and worshippers would then get the idea? No guarantees for this huge bloc of blockheads, but we want to start somewhere.
With all of the hate festering and growing like a bad case of heat rash, what are we all even talking about here? PEOPLE THAT LOVE EACH OTHER AND WANT TO SPEND THEIR LIVES TOGETHER. OOOH, WHAT A THING TO FORBID...what a waste of time for us to be debating this!!!! In case we have forgotten, there are many more pressing matters that need addressing.
People need all of the love they can get, and I say that if a person finds another person that makes them happy and content enough to want to marry...nobody has a right to deny them a union under God. Under the very system that is whining that they want to forbid Gay marriage, God made us, and God brings us together, and God keeps us together,it's a miracle that any of us are here and able to be together.. people have no right to judge,no right to forbid union.
... How in the world do children even enter into it? Children don't see what goes on in the bedroom of any parents, hopefully, why would it be different because parents are gay? How is it that we are all so adept at dehumanizing fellow humans based on our prejudices and limited world view? When is ignorance going to stop dominating the arena of public dialogue?
Many children are abused, but people that abuse children are sick. Many thousands, if not millions, of children have been abused by people inside of the catholic church itself (how many of us have heard about or experienced first hand the unwanted touch or sexual glances or words of a priest or youth minister or the awful sting of a nuns angry words, ruler, or paddle...)
True religion makes no allowances for restrictions on love. I wish everyone would stop being so uptight. Why can't we all just get along???!! -{[:-) xoxoxoxo
"True religion makes no allowances for restrictions on love." May I offer an edit? "Enlightened humanism makes no allowances for restrictions on love."
The "truth" of religion is evidenced by centuries of behavior. People of faith who finally "get it" do so more in spite of their religion than because of it. Religion functions to stuff nonsense into people's brains, usually from a very young age when they are most vulnerable (why else would so many American Catholics describe themselves as "recovering Catholics"?). The major religions function to comfort people with promises of something good after this very challenging and troublesome life. Then the hammer comes down: "You can't REACH the comfort of the (fictional) afterlife unless you do X, Y, and Z, even if such actions are confusing or contradictory (love your enemies; kill your enemies). There is no more powerfully divisive force in human societies than religion; no more powerful doctrines to separate groups into "us" and "them." The highest purpose I can think of for modern religions (sorry for the oxymoron) is to give thinking people abundant examples of how badly good intentions, turned into dogma, can go awry.
Rick Warren's crowd would trample a gay marriage to death faster than a crowd of Walmart shoppers if Rick Warren told them to. It's part of "the mission." Do not trust evangelicals or fundamentalists (or Mormons or Catholics or Jews or Hindus or Muslims or New Agers or...) for one second if they are offering you "the truth." None of this conflict will go away until religion goes away (until humanity grows up and leaves fantasy and wishful thinking behind), but religion will not go away so this is unfortunately moot.
Isaac Asimov wrote: "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." Amen to that!
Fast Eddie, I see where you're coming from here, enlightened humanism is the more correct way to describe it. When I say true religion, I mean actual Truth. The Truth that all of us know, the very source of truth, and that content as it pertains to our relationship with ourselves, each other,and any perceived source of our being, and the being of all that exists. For people that profess to be "religious" to go against true religion, or true enlightened humanism...or enlightened universal communion with all other beings, more purely, demonstrates a glaring contradiction, confusion, and hypocrisy that is the cause of more ills in our communal moral fiber than any other. I agree with you there. The world's religions have been corrupted by people's selfish desires, and violent urges. The truth is suppressed until it is literally forgotten, and then people suffer. However, if we take all of the true messages that all of the world's major religions have in common, we basically get down to the nitty gritty of the truth of our universal purpose, which is our position in the spiritual war to defend love, morality, and virtues, like compassion and forgiveness, and universal humanitarianism, or enlightened humanism, and things like discipline and faith, which are things that we need as people, and as a world society. Whether you want to believe the myths of religion, or the parables, which serve to offer an understanding of these much broader and more complex and multifaceted issues which we do not want to lose touch with as a society, we can all agree that love and kindness, peace and prosperity are things that we strive for in life, even long suffering has a very useful place in our growth as individuals and adds to the integrity and understanding of our collective struggle. Religion offers a view of the other side of the spiritual war, as well, which is the side which really offers us eternal death (symbolic,...perhaps..) which is a station to defend things like hatred, violence, greed, objectification of other beings, anger, fear of God, and self-righteous prejudice. The truth does not discriminate. It shows the whole picture. We can chose to extract and utilize the parts of religion that give us affirmation of our worth and our purpose, or we can extract the perspective of violence and domination for our own perceived gain and selfish ends.
"There is no more powerfully divisive force in human societies than religion; no more powerful doctrines to separate groups into "us" and "them."...What about economics? What about greed? Self-righteousness? What about prejudice? Degradation? Religion is not greed, it is not violent domination, is not economic and environmental terrorism, but these things are spread like disease by people that claim to be religious, and that is the problem. Religion is a long term project that really HAS aimed to be well intentioned, but people along the way have used it as an excuse to do harm to one another far too often.
By the way, I am truly sorry for anyone that had to be subjected to the Catholic church, it is messed up, and the culmination of their teachings leads to self hatred and horrible fear and guilt for many thoughtful and sensitive people.
I don't understand, though, how religious institutions can even comment on the issue of gay marriage, because marriage is civil, and that is the problem. I am a ULC reverand, and if gay people want to marry, I could perform a union ceremony that would not be recognized by the state or county where they live, but it would be a marriage ceremony. SO really, it is not a moral issue, but rather an issue with the "moral majority" being corrupted by self-righteousness, and not being exposed to the truth as it exists to nurture, rather than degrade.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Usually I get burned at the stake for my atheistic (though I prefer "naturalistic") views. My reply here will be brief, as I am trying to escape the blogosphere!
You wrote: "We can chose to extract and utilize the parts of religion that give us affirmation of our worth and our purpose, or we can extract the perspective of violence and domination for our own perceived gain and selfish ends."
Yes, and I offer two books, one for each side of the "either/or" parts of your statement. You may know these books already. Max Oelschlaeger wrote "Caring for Creation: An Ecumenical Approach to the Environmental Crisis (1994, Yale University Press). Oelschlaeger extracts from all the major faiths those teachings that should compell honest people of all major faiths to care for creation.
On the "or" side of your sentence, Charles Kimball, an ordained Baptist minister with a Ph.T. from Harvard, wrote "When Religion Becomes Evil" (2002, HarperSanFrancisco). He details how some "people of faith" extract those negative perspectives to justify all the religiously motivated crap people of one faith unleash on people of other faiths (or of no faith) around the world.
You also wrote: "... people along the way have used it [religion] as an excuse to do harm to one another far too often." My opinion (based more on bias than on evidence) is that, in the balance, abuses of religion have done far more harm than uses of religion have done good.
You wrote: "... these things [greed, self-righteousness, predjudic, degradagtion, violent domination, terrorism] are spread like disease by people that claim to be religious." Yes. Religion is a prime vector of this disease. That is why I put it front and center. So, religions need to seriously clean their own houses (literally, their holy books), purging all elements that are used to justify the "horrors of the day" (or year, or era). Were that task ever to be completed, I "imagine no religion" would remain, just the qualities we need to function in peace. Read the atheist French philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville's "Small Treatise on the Great Virtues" and "A Little Book of Atheist Spirituality" to understand how religion is unnecessary for the development of morality. Religion has taken on the task of developing moral human beings, but moral development does not require religion. Every act of hypocrisy by any religious leader (Rick Warren among them) confirms my claim. (I admit, I laughed hysterically when Ted Haggard was busted for doing meth and having sex with a male prostitute. On the other hand, I grieve for the victims of the Catholic clergy, with its long, heavy history of hypocrisy, murder, mayhem, greed, and avarice. And Islam! Good grief! Where does one start?)
When my brother married his husband, a woman ordained in something (forgive me, I do not try to keep track of sects) performed the ceremony, and the ceremony was valid to legally establish their marriage in California. So I'm puzzled that you think gay marriages you might perform would not be recognized. I suppose the devil is in the details, no?
Anyway, thanks again for you thoughts, and best wishes enlightening those who follow you. Open their minds and hearts and, if I may be so presumptuous, lead them to eliminate those aspects of religion that are overtly, obviously stupid (e.g., opposition to evolution) or sick (e.g., blind obedience).
So much for a "brief" reply!
FastFreddie? enlightened humanism? hahahahahahaha. More like retarded selfishness.
You again, elmorono? I notice you never actually attempt to refute anything I say, probably because you don't understand it in the first place. You just strike out with inane comments like "atheists are stupid," then run away and hide like any common coward. I place your intellectual capacity at about eight years-old, though I fear that insults all bright eight year-olds, so let's bump it down to four or five. You're not worth my time or anyone else's, and that's the last you'll hear from me.
On second thought, keep posting your idiotic comments. Every time you do, you kick one into your own goal, scoring points for me.
What do you mean? elmysterio? Are you showing up here with a point? You go right ahead and express your point. Do you think that taking an approach to others that involves compassion and a lack of dominance is selfish? Really? Because that is what this comment tells us, that you are opposed to viewing other people as deserving equality and validation of their loving commitments...It's okay if you feel that way, because we all have our own viewpoints, and you can talk about it here, I think you should really comment on how you see things, though, because to single out other people and make random unexplained comments that seem to be ungrounded in anything other than a desire to aggravate...does nothing to add to the conversation.
Rev.charity: You're a much better qualified person than I to try and work with elmysterio. We've been fighting for a week ("my bad": I know it's wrong to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man, as the saying goes, but it's a waste of time I find hard to resist). He's one of the ones blinded by his "faith," so don't expect much if you engage him. He won't try to refute you--he lacks the tools. He will, as I said elsewhere, just lash out like a belligerent, spoiled child, then run away and hide in the skirts of his mother faith. Good luck!
Wow, thanks for the titles! Always looking for information that will help my understanding. Sure, morality exists without religion, religion is really just a series of attempts to explain it to the masses.
The nice thing about being a ULC minister is that people will never follow me. I don't judge and I don't aim to criticize. I want everyone to feel safe and
comfortable sharing personal views that will lead to further everyone's understanding within an open atmosphere of conversation. I won't preach, I won't point fingers. They may come along with me to explore and learn and grow, but I believe in equality, so even though I might lead conversations, or get people organized together on a line of thought, I would never tell them WHAT to think based on my own beliefs.
My ministry really revolves around my larger than life need to nurture people until they see that everything that they have ever been told that has caused self hatred is a lie. That may be the worst thing about many religious teachings, Fast Eddie, just that they cause people to wallow in guilt and self hatred and think that there is something foul about their souls and bodies. or it causes them to take on an unjustifiable sense of superiority ("...we are members of the one true religion...everyone else is falling victim to earthly temptation, and they need to become one of us or they will perish..." yadda yadda yadda.) We are taught that we are born flawed, which is a lie that is perpetrated by the religious domination to keep us weak and subservient, and quarreling. This perceived flaw manifests depressed thought cycles, which manifest more and more horrible actions and situations. As children, we really don't see ourselves as being flawed at all until someone starts nagging at us that we are wrong; Really, I think, we are all miracles; all mere vulnerable infants on this huge spinning ball of fertile rock that sustains our fragile existences.
I will check further into my rights as a WI Rev., but I am pretty sure the state and local governments would not approve a same-sex marriage license submission. I wish there was a way to make it work... I would marry every loving gay couple under the sun if I could.
As ever, thanks for the thoughtful conversation. I haven't heard Wisconsin mentioned as a state that allows same-sex marriages no matter how they are applied for or conducted (civil service before a judge or minister or anyone), so you're probably looking at a closed door. In California, the door for my brother opened. He and his husband entered the room of equal rights. Now others want to push them back out. Hopefully, those others will fail.
Anyway, I respect your sense of inquiry and, if fact, everything you have said your ministry is about. I would come listen to one of your services, too, and think those who do are lucky to have you.
I have to agree a little... while I disagree strongly with giving any pedestal to a man who would compare me with a pedophile (the man has a lot of nerve to say our discourse is uncivil!), we really do have to at least let Obama take office before we tear him down. It's been a rough couple of months but just because we know who the players are doesn't mean we know what the plan is. I'll put my whining on hold until February.
Perhaps what we are seeing here is the conversion of Rick
Warren. The Common Dreamer crowd was always very anti-Obama for the most part, so the unwillingness to cut our POTUS-elect some slack here does not surprise me. Bringing movers and shakers like Warren to the table on issues like Global Climate Change is the bottom line folks. Bill Clinton let himself be painted into the position of being seen as anti-military and pro- Gays in the military from the earliest days of his adminsitration and it cost him the control of the Congress in 1994. The Gay community needs to turn its effort toward enacting full-scale civil union / domesitic partnership legislation over the next four years. By the end of Obama's second term it may be possible for a Democrat candidate to win who openly supports Gay Marriage.
In my opinion, Frank Rich has just experienced the first in what will be a very long string of disappointments in Obama. As his silence on the Gaza massacre makes clear, along with a long history of throwing those who've supported him under the bus, Obama is a coward. His biggest weakness is that he has no moral conviction in which he believes enough to stand his ground no matter what--thus his love of "consensus governance."
Okay let's judge Obama on his policy making decisions.
He has chosen for his cabinet a bunch of conservative Democrat warmongers and lobbyists and Republicans.
So Rick Warren being chosen is just one more example of hubris for Mr. Obama.
Hey if you're going to build bridges why not ask a minister who still thinks that black people are less than human, are all good a sports, can all tap dance real good and just love watermelon?
Mr. Warren also believes the foreign leaders who oppose American christianity, as defined by him, should be killed.
He also believe woman who have abortions are just as bad as the Nazis who killed the Jews.
So, hey let's get the leader of the KKK up there on stage Mr. Obama. If you're building bridges that lead to hate, let's go all the way shall we.
Great editorial by Frank Rich. Gay men and lesbians must keep the volume at loud for equal rights and total acceptance. I think we're doing a great job - the whole country has been talking about this issue, and homophobes are on the defensive (and, as always, proclaiming themselves not to be homophobic, while opposing our rights and vilifying us - calling prejudice a "difference of opinion"! - my goodness!).
I do not understand why some people fear and/or hate gay and lesbians, and bisexual and transgender people. It also seems natural to me that some people would love a "mirror image", that is, someone who looks like them:e.g. a man loving a man, a woman loving a woman. I support the right of gay and lesbians to same sex/gender marriage. I think Obama made a mistake when he invited Rick Warren to give the opening prayer at his inauguration. (I would eliminate prayers at public events, but I don't seem to have power over it.)
The subject was covered and covered and commented under the Katha Pollitt article. Certainly a topic that needs airing.
.Freud had a handle on this issue. We ,all of us, contain the elements of male and female within us. Some are very uncomfortable with that and that discomfit manifests itself in hatred and bigotry.
Of course you support equal rights for all peoples, you are a rational and sane human being.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
My brother, a gay man approaching sixty years-old, just married (in October) his partner of thirty years in California. Their community is much broader than gays, however, and their marriage was attended by the most diverse group of people imaginable, most of whom agreed it was one of the most moving ceremonies they'd ever witnessed. My brother and his husband are well-loved figures in both their broadly diverse community and in the gay subset of that community. For years they have counseled other gays struggling to "come out" in a society so prejudiced against them that it spills out in violent hate crimes. Hell, they stepped up as leaders twenty-five years ago, counseling safe sex when HIV/AIDS first emerged. More recently, they organized their neighborhood against a crack dealer who was spilling violence into their streets (posting sentries on the corners, "training" pit bulls in the yard to render them viscious... the whole nine yards). My brother and his partner received death threats, but the community backed them and proved stronger than the dealer. They are activists and community organizers who engage the world with both compassion and joy. They are shining examples of integrity. In short, they are two of the very best people I know (and both better men than this heterosexual).
They decided to marry after thirty years because they wanted their commitment and compassion publicly honored. They deserve that honor. People of Rick Warren's odious ilk think my brother is failed, flawed, confused, even evil. They think he needs to be "cured." Obama's selection of Warren to deliver that stupid, inappropriate invocation was a big "fuck you" to my brother, his partner, and their entire diverse and supportive community. Obama wants to be inclusive. If he keeps this up, he will not likely be able to "include" me, my brother, his partner, or their richly diverse community among his supporters. We all voted for him (anything to keep McCain/Palin out), and we're already disappointed.
FastEddie75:Congrats to your brother and his husband. Your comment is wonderful (except I do get uneasy at printed cuss words in comments, which is my problem). I am sad that your brother and spouse have had trouble. As a woman, I have no idea what "better men than this heterosexual" means. Every once in awhile, I ask my husband about "being a man" and what it meant at different times in his life. No clear answers, just as I can't in re being a woman. I'm older than your brother. And a feminist.
Out of respect for you, I will try to contain my cussing. It's mostly unnecessary, and an indulgence since I used to write all my letters to the papers, which won't post a cuss word. (An documentary about free speech called "F@#K!" might add perspective and ease your mind about it--some argued that cussing at just the right moment in just the right way can be just the right thing. On this site, well, the amount of cussing is way out there.) I will try, in other words, to be as deliberate with my "bad words" as I am with the rest (see George Carlin's old "seven words" routine for an inquiry into how a word can be "bad").
Perhaps I should have said I think my brother is a "better person." My deliberate phrasing was intended to tweak homophobes, who obviously think they are, by definition, "better men").
Quick note: I replied to your comment regarding lobotomies at the very end of the post on Jonathan Freedland's article, "Seasonal Forgiveness Has a Limit" (last Wed). I wasn't sure if you thought I was making a joke or not (I wasn't), so just an FYI that I replied.
Thanks.