Category Archives: GLBT

The Biblical Problem of the Prostitute


I used to believe that Christians could affirm monogamous same-sex relationships without rethinking our other theological commitments. It is possible, but now I question whether it’s such a desirable goal. That is to say, are we merely interested in bringing one more group into the circle of respectability? Or does Jesus want us to identify with others who are marginalized as our families once were, and settle for nothing less than a radical theology that includes everyone?

When Moses presents the Ten Commandments to the Israelites in chapter 5 of Deuteronomy, they’re in an interesting position: rescued, victorious, but still homeless, with a lot of wandering to do before they reach the promised land. Without a nation-state, barely a unified people, they’re entirely dependent on God for their identity. And here we’re given a hint that that identity is supposed to transcend barriers of class, status, tribe, even species.  Consider Moses’ explanation for observing the Sabbath (emphasis mine):

Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deut 5:12-15, NIV)

We can’t truly understand what it means to be created, chosen, and saved by God, unless we see God’s other creatures as essentially like ourselves. The proper response to a blessing is to extend it to others, not to remain indifferent to the ways we benefit at their expense.

The above thoughts were prompted by hearing a gay-affirming evangelical pastor’s analysis of two of the Biblical “clobber passages”, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. This scholar made a plausible case that the obscure Greek words variously translated as “sodomite”, “effeminate”, “pervert”, and “homosexual” should be read narrowly to describe male prostitutes, pimps, and johns, not all sexually active gay men.

But wait…that doesn’t make the text more fair. To the contrary, it just kicks the condemnation down the road to an even more persecuted group.

The vast majority of prostituted children and adults are victims of sexual slavery, either literally, through human trafficking, or effectively, because there are no social resources to help them kick their addictions and escape from abusive men. (If you need convincing, see the extensive research at the Polaris Project, Our Voices Matter, and NoPornNorthampton.)

As the pastor in my discussion noted, the male prostitutes in St. Paul’s time would have been mainly pre-teen or young teenage boys, probably 14 or 15 at the oldest, servicing much older men. We don’t immediately notice the unfairness of including these sexually abused children in the Epistles’ condemnation lists because, even in our “liberated” culture, the stigma of being prostituted still attaches primarily to the prostitute, the most visible and most powerless member of the triad, while the pimps and johns remain in the shadows.

In the quest for mainstream religious and social acceptance, it’s tempting to divide the MSM community into “good” and “bad” gays. But what have we purchased here? In order for Bill and Bob to get married in First Baptist Church of Wherever, we’re scapegoating men and boys who never had the freedom to live our ideally chaste, monogamous life. Any sexual ethic that ignores class privilege–one of Jesus’ favorite targets–doesn’t seem very gospel-centered to me.

Looked at closely, the condemnation lists in Corinthians and Timothy, like much of the Old Testament holiness code, appear morally incoherent to us. Ancient writers didn’t draw the same distinctions between ritual impurity and personal culpability that we now regard as essential to compassion and fairness. Under a purity-based system, a raped woman would be considered “ruined”, compounding the assault on her dignity, whereas contemporary ethicists would insist that the shame attaches to the sinner, not the sinned-against. It’s a shift away from formalism and toward respect for the sacredness of each person, something else that Jesus cared about a lot.

Too much of queer theology comes down to fudging the facts or quibbling over Greek vocabulary in order to preserve the Biblical writers’ viewpoints intact at all costs. Like the Supreme Court searching for the right-sounding precedent to give a veneer of objectivity to political decisions, we pretend we’re not changing the tradition when we are.

Give it up.

We have a bold opportunity here to question our stifling reverence for a cultural moment that has passed. When we don’t allow ourselves to grow beyond whatever moral philosophy was current 2,000 years ago, we’re turning the Bible into a limit on our ability to follow the golden rule: Love your neighbor as yourself.

Orientation Versus Identity


The Nervous Breakdown, an eclectic intellectual blog covering poetry, politics, the arts, and popular culture, recently ran this insightful essay by Peter Gajdics, a survivor of ex-gay therapy. (Hat tip to Paul A. Toth, who blogs about
psychology, atheism, the writing life, and the cultural bankruptcy of
Sarasota at Violent
Contradiction.)

In “One Road Diverged: Same Sex Desire & the Closet of Homosexuality“, the author observes that both conservative Christians and gay activists tend to conflate same-sex desire and gay identity. The former has always been with us, while the latter is a modern invention. So-called conversion therapy rarely changes one’s inner feelings, but rather teaches participants how to perform a mainstream heterosexual identity. From the introduction:

Trying to “change” oneself from homosexual to heterosexual is a displacement of social identities under the erroneous belief that by changing one’s map, one’s territory will also, oftentimes Divinely, “change.” Such a “change,” however, is destined to fail, with the resulting dissonance between identity and desire ensuring the individual either “tries harder” at changing themselves, or breaks the cycle, like an addict, once and for all, and addresses the conflation between their map of identity, and territory of desire.

Later in the essay, Gajdics writes:

…The institutionalization of homosexuality performs three distinct functions: 1) it divorces same sex desire from the experience of many by projecting it into the experience of few, thereby maintaining a binary view of sexuality generally, and a normative view of heterosexuality specifically; 2) it reinforces the either/or mentality that sustains a hegemonic patriarchy, and relieves a cultural anxiety over what it means to be “male,” a “man,” “masculine”—in other words, as long as I am on the side of the fence marked “straight,” I am safe, loved, accepted, all-powerful; 3) it promotes the implicit idea that “changing” sexual identity from the category of “homosexual” to the category of “heterosexual” is not only possible, but highly desirable—after all, who wouldn’t want to be “safe, loved, accepted, all powerful”?

In his essay, “Love Me Gender: Normative Homosexuality and ‘Ex-Gay’ Performativity in Reparative Therapy Narratives,” author Jeffrey Bennett examines the Paulks’ co-autobiography, Love Won Out, in which the two juxtapose their early immersions “into homosexuality” to their later involvement with Exodus International and “entrance into ‘heterosexuality . . . [in order] . . . to pursue a ‘normal’ life of marriage and children” (2003, 332-34). Their stories spawned national attention, with articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, as well as with guest appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and 60 Minutes. Can gays “change”? Should gays “change”? These and other questions were raised amongst media, and public. Unfortunately, there was little, if any, inquiry into what the Paulks, or others like them, were attempting to “change,” when they said they wanted to change their sexuality. While the implication always seems to be a change from same sex to “opposite” sex attraction, this is precisely what does not occur, as I myself can testify, for those who undertake such therapy. How, after all, does one change desire? In practice, the locus of attention in reparative therapies becomes less about desire, about changing one’s desire, than it does the obligatory avoidance of same sex temptation, engagement in “opposite” sex scenarios, and modification of behavior to reflect a normative stance on male and female gender roles.

As detailed by Bennett in his essay, the Paulks’ memoir “attempt[s] to reconstitute the discourses that shape and stabilize abstract notions of the self . . . [by] . . . relegate[ing] identity and authenticity to a system of anticipatory acts that can be modified by altering the conduct of the actors” (332). Nowhere is it claimed the Paulks end up changing their desires; rather, they reduce themselves to actors, playing the part of the “homosexual”: In order to play the part of the “heterosexual,” they simply modify their performance. “If Anne can learn to wear make-up, and John to throw a football, they are taking the necessary measures to redefine and stabilize their heterosexuality by employing an illusory ontological identification” (ibid). In a reversal to Butler’s theory on gender performativity, the Paulks have reframed their collective “homosexualities” as the normative, and their modification to heterosexuality, its subversion.

Throughout their book, the Paulks point to the unreality of “gay life” as justification for “replacing . . . the unnatural homosexual self with the ‘true’ heterosexual identity” (335). This statement alone necessitates delineation. If “homosexuality” points, as I’ve suggested, to the territory of same sex desire, then in one respect the Paulks, or all advocates of such therapies, are correct in their description of an “unnatural homosexual self.” Homosexuality, as with heterosexuality, is the symbol for the thing, and not the thing itself—symbols are, to a large extent, “unnatural.” However, as the Paulks also evidently conflate their map of homosexuality with their territory of desire, their same sex desire, they illogically deduce that if homosexuality is unnatural, heterosexuality must consequently be natural. The “naturalness” they, and others like them, seek lies not in a different map, a different symbol, but in a consciousness, an awakening, to their own, incontrovertible territory of desire. Maps, if lived as territories, will always disappoint: sooner or later they will always be experienced as unnatural, inauthentic, unreal.
…

Read the whole essay here. Read more of Gajdics’ work here, and see a video of him reading at Opium magazine’s Literary Death Match in Seattle.

Alexander McQueen, R.I.P.


Acclaimed British fashion designer Alexander McQueen was found dead in his home on Feb. 11, CNN reported. Later news stories confirmed that the 40-year-old designer had committed suicide by hanging.

I was deeply saddened by this news. It goes without saying that premature death is always terrible, especially by suicide, and especially when it seems to outsiders that the person had so much to live for–genius, success, and an appreciative community.

But McQueen was special to me in particular because his aesthetic matched my ideals as a writer. Through fashion, a medium that many dismiss as frivolous, he achieved that marriage of beauty, sensuality, horror, and the uncanny that philosophers of art have called the sublime.

The Associated Press writes:

…Known for his dramatic statement pieces and impeccable tailoring, McQueen dressed celebrities from Cameron Diaz to Lady Gaga and influenced a generation of designers.

The son of a cab driver, McQueen grew up on a public housing estate in London’s East End, left school at 16 and entered the fashion world the old-fashioned way, as a teenage apprentice to a Saville Row tailor. He later studied at Central St. Martin’s art college in London and was discovered by fashion guru Isabella Blow, who bought his entire graduation collection. She became a friend and mentor; her suicide three years ago shook the designer, who wept openly at her funeral.

McQueen was a private man who avoided the limelight, but his Twitter postings show emotional turmoil after his mother’s death on Feb. 2. McQueen had posted messages four days before his death about his “awful week,” and said he had to “somehow pull myself together and finish.”

His mother’s funeral was held the day after McQueen died.

Friends also said he might have felt under pressure to outdo himself at the unveiling of his spring collection in Paris next month.

“I don’t think success was easy for him,” friend Plum Sykes wrote in the Sunday Telegraph this week. “He told me he was driven by his insecurities, and he believed that all successful people were.”

McQueen became chief designer at the Givenchy house in 1996, but was best known for his own label, in which Gucci bought a majority stake in 2001. McQueen retained creative control, and became famous for his dramatic and often uncategorizable creations: sculptural cocktail dresses in psychedelic patterns; headwear made of trash; 10-inch (25 centimeter) heels shaped like lobster claws.
…


The GLBTQ website, an online encyclopedia of queer culture, includes a good description of McQueen’s unique and controversial aesthetic:

McQueen always attracted (if not courted) controversy. His theatrical fashion shows gained him as much of a reputation as his stylish clothes. Some fashion experts deplore his “shock tactics” and publicity seeking, while others defend his exploration of radical ideas. The latter see his shows as questioning accepted notions of fashion and beauty.

For his March 1995 “Highland Rape” show, McQueen sent his models down the catwalk in ripped lace dresses and skirts with what appeared to be tampon strings attached. The 1996 “Hunger” show featured clothing and jewelry that evoked bondage and decay, while the “Untitled” show of 1998 (originally named “The Golden Shower” but changed because the sponsor, American Express, felt it was too risqué) highlighted a model with what looked like a bit between her teeth, walking through water lit with yellow light.

The outrageousness of McQueen’s shows has led to accusations of misogyny (an accusation often leveled at gay designers for the supposed fantasy women they try to create) and exploitation, but the “bad boy of fashion” is quick to counter these accusations. “Highland Rape,” he explained, was about the “rape” of Scotland by the British, a subject that had a personal resonance as his family is of Scottish descent.

Moreover, he insisted that his attitude towards women is informed by his having witnessed as a child scenes of violence involving his sister: “Everything I’ve done since then was for the purpose of making women look stronger, not naïve,” he was quoted in The Independent Fashion Magazine in 2000, “models are there to showcase what I’m about, nothing else. It’s nothing to do with misogyny.”

One of McQueen’s most controversial shows grew from his art direction of an issue of the alternative fashion magazine Dazed & Confused about models with severe physical disabilities. The subsequent catwalk show inspired by the issue featured model Aimee Mullins, whose legs had been amputated from the knees down, walking down the catwalk on hand carved wooden legs. The show was presented in a spirit of empowerment and inclusivity.
…


McQueen’s family has temporarily taken down all videos and photos from the designer’s website as a gesture of mourning. Readers interested in seeing images of his signature collections, with critical analysis, should pick up a copy of Caroline Evans’ excellent book Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness (Yale University Press, 2003).

Evans suggests that a fascination with the body’s abjection, its traumas, disfigurements and decay, is the shadow side of our culture’s bodily hedonism and individualism, and of fashion’s impossibly narrow standards of physical beauty. Stories of violence and political instability fill our news media, juxtaposed with ever-more-luxurious images of products for sale. The genius of designers like McQueen is to express these tensions and paradoxes in costume, creating a modern self that we can wear.

Since Evans references the 19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire in one of her chapters on McQueen, I’ll close with this poem from his collection Les Fleurs du Mal, which to me expresses the McQueen signature themes of shock, eroticism, and the grotesque. This website includes several English translations; I’ve chosen the one that I like best because the free-verse rendition sounds more natural to my modern ear. With a poem like this, one runs dangerously close to the edge of the ridiculous, which English rhyme seems to accentuate.

Rest in peace, Lee McQueen.

Une Charogne

Rappelez-vous l’objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,
Ce beau matin d’été si doux:
Au détour d’un sentier une charogne infâme
Sur un lit semé de cailloux,

Les jambes en l’air, comme une femme lubrique,
Brûlante et suant les poisons,
Ouvrait d’une façon nonchalante et cynique
Son ventre plein d’exhalaisons.

Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture,
Comme afin de la cuire à point,
Et de rendre au centuple à la grande Nature
Tout ce qu’ensemble elle avait joint;

Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe
Comme une fleur s’épanouir.
La puanteur était si forte, que sur l’herbe
Vous crûtes vous évanouir.

Les mouches bourdonnaient sur ce ventre putride,
D’où sortaient de noirs bataillons
De larves, qui coulaient comme un épais liquide
Le long de ces vivants haillons.

Tout cela descendait, montait comme une vague
Ou s’élançait en pétillant;
On eût dit que le corps, enflé d’un souffle vague,
Vivait en se multipliant.

Et ce mo
nde rendait une étrange musique,
Comme l’eau courante et le vent,
Ou le grain qu’un vanneur d’un mouvement rythmique
Agite et tourne dans son van.

Les formes s’effaçaient et n’étaient plus qu’un rêve,
Une ébauche lente à venir
Sur la toile oubliée, et que l’artiste achève
Seulement par le souvenir.

Derrière les rochers une chienne inquiète
Nous regardait d’un oeil fâché,
Epiant le moment de reprendre au squelette
Le morceau qu’elle avait lâché.

— Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure,
À cette horrible infection,
Etoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature,
Vous, mon ange et ma passion!

Oui! telle vous serez, ô la reine des grâces,
Apres les derniers sacrements,
Quand vous irez, sous l’herbe et les floraisons grasses,
Moisir parmi les ossements.

Alors, ô ma beauté! dites à la vermine
Qui vous mangera de baisers,
Que j’ai gardé la forme et l’essence divine
De mes amours décomposés!

A Carcass

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases.

The sun shone down upon that putrescence,
As if to roast it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
The elements she had combined;

And the sky was watching that superb cadaver
Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You’d faint away upon the grass.

The blow-flies were buzzing round that putrid belly,
From which came forth black battalions
Of maggots, which oozed out like a heavy liquid
All along those living tatters.

All this was descending and rising like a wave,
Or poured out with a crackling sound;
One would have said the body, swollen with a vague breath,
Lived by multiplication.

And this world gave forth singular music,
Like running water or the wind,
Or the grain that winnowers with a rhythmic motion
Shake in their winnowing baskets.

The forms disappeared and were no more than a dream,
A sketch that slowly falls
Upon the forgotten canvas, that the artist
Completes from memory alone.

Crouched behind the boulders, an anxious dog
Watched us with angry eye,
Waiting for the moment to take back from the carcass
The morsel he had left.

— And yet you will be like this corruption,
Like this horrible infection,
Star of my eyes, sunlight of my being,
You, my angel and my passion!

Yes! thus will you be, queen of the Graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath grass and luxuriant flowers,
To molder among the bones of the dead.

Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will
Devour you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
Of my decomposed love!

— Translated by William Aggeler

Toward a Gender-Inclusive Understanding of “One Flesh”


In the comments below my last post, Simon, a lay reader in the Church of England who describes himself as a conservative Christian, asks:

How do you feel the doctrine of ‘one flesh’ applies (or not) to gay marriage? Eve was taken out from Adam’s side and in heterosexual marriage the circle is closed as genders are reunited, but how does this work for gay couples? I have concluded that most apparently anti-gay proof texts have been wrongly translated and wrongly interpreted by sincere but mistaken homophobic cultures, but can’t get my head around a gay interpretation of ‘one flesh’. Can you help?

In addition to my response that you can read in the comments box, I put the question out to some Facebook friends. The poet Karen Braucher suggested, “I think the answer lies in the fact that we all have both masculine and feminine sides to our personality. So all those sides are joining, in gay and in hetero couples.”

Another poet and mutual friend, Carolyn Moore, observed, “I always have trouble with the line between the Biblical literal and the Biblical parable. We seem to know when we are in parable in the New Testament but are so rigid in the Old Testament about what is literal and what may not be. We never allow for something there functioning as a Fatherly parable to help us grasp a spiritual concept….[In the Garden of Eden] some knowledge was forbidden and we are to trust God to keep it to God’s self, right?…Well, isn’t it vain of us to assume we were told ALL of God’s plans? Why was he obligated to tell us if he was also trying out life on other planets? Why is he obligated to tell us why he created some people who are attracted to their own gender? Aren’t we to have faith that God knows best and we are here to help one another towards peace and light and not appropriate his power of final judgment?”

I also sought advice from Pastor Romell Weekly, an evangelical minister who runs the Gay Christian Fellowship website. He’s given me permission to reprint his thorough and Bible-based analysis below.

Pastor Weekly writes:

“What you’re ultimately referring to is called Complementarity. It’s a theory that male and female complement one another in a way that two people of the same sex cannot. As you have indicated, the primary basis for this theory is the Creation narrative. However, there are a few major problems with this theory.

“1) The theory is not in Scripture. It’s derived from conclusions based off of the biblical narrative; but nowhere does Scripture actually teach this theory as a principle.

“2) The theory REQUIRES all humans to get married, lest they live a lifetime incomplete. If the male is incomplete until his missing rib returns in the person of his wife, then no man without a wife is complete… and it would CERTAINLY mean that no woman is complete without a husband, as she only represents the rib, while he represents the rest of the body.

“3) The theory indicts all single people as not being whole, including Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, John the apostle, Paul, and, dare I say, Jesus Himself. All of these mighty men of God were single. Can we say that they were incomplete because they were not married, especially considering point #1–that Scripture doesn’t actually teach this theory?

“4) We have to ask what the point of the Genesis narrative is in relation to marriage. Is it that woman completes man, or is it that marriage provides a means for two people to become as one? I think the latter.

“I believe that the creation narrative shows a beautiful picture of two distinct people coming together in both body and soul and becoming as one through the joining of the heart and of the body. This principle certainly does not contain a mechanism that prevents it from being applied to people of the same sex in precisely the way that it’s applied to people of the opposite sex. They can, indeed, unite in soul (through emotional intercourse). They can, indeed, unite in body (through sexual intercourse).

“I think about David and Jonathan. God told Eve that she would “cling” to her husband. The Bible tells us that Jonathan’s soul was “knit” to David. There was, indeed, a clinging involved. In fact, the two Hebrew words used in both passages are synonyms of one another. Did the fact that Jonathan was a man prevent his soul from clinging or being knit to David? And, even more important, does it matter to God?

“When God created Adam and realized that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, what did He do? Most people immediately state that He created Eve; but this isn’t true. He first brought every animal He’d already created and presented it before Adam in order for Adam to do to things: 1) name the animal, and 2) determine whether the animal was a suitable companion for him. After going through every animal life, “there was not found a companion suitable for him” (Gen. 2:20).

“This doesn’t mean that God would have been perfectly fine if Adam wanted a giraffe. But, God went through this process to demonstrate a principle to us. The point is that He allowed Adam to determine suitability. It wasn’t determined by the Divine, but my the human perspective. It was only after Adam found nothing suitable that God put him to sleep and took his rib to create Eve.

“But, even then, God brought Eve and presented her to Adam, much as He did with the other animal lifeforms. God didn’t pronounce her suitable. It was ADAM who said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh…” It was Adam who basically said, “Alright now, God. THIS one works!”

“The suitable companion for Adam was Eve. But, the suitable companion for Doug might be Jason, while the suitable companion for Danielle might be Elise. We each determine suitability. We each determine the person that complements us, and allows our soul to join together in the way that Eve’s joined Adam’s, and Jonathan’s joined David’s. This is not determined in Heaven. It’s very much determined in the heart of each human being.

“So, I don’t think the doctrine of “one flesh” precludes same-sex couples at all. It’s not at all about whether the one has a penis and the other has a vagina. It’s much more about whether the soul is knit together in love. This certainly can be the case with same-sex homosexual couples, exactly as it can be with opposite-sex heterosexual couples. Contrarily, it CANNOT take place with opposite-sex homosexual or mixed-orientation couples.

“So, if love truly is what God is after, and if He truly looks upon the heart, while man looks at the outward appearance (1Sa. 16:7)–e.g. whether one has a penis and the other has a vagina–then gay couples absolutely fit into the paradigm of one flesh.”

New Radio Program at Gay Christian Fellowship


The Gay Christian Fellowship is an affirming evangelical website featuring Bible studies, a discussion forum, book and movie reviews, and (coming soon) a searchable gay-friendly church directory. Their latest project is The Voice of GCF, a weekly streaming radio show hosted by Bryan Dillon and Pastor Romell Weekly. Pastor Weekly is the drafter of the Affirmation Declaration, an inclusive response to the Manhattan Declaration. I enjoyed listening to their first show, which covered, among other topics, the importance of reading the Bible for yourself. New half-hour episodes will be released every Monday.

Here’s an excerpt from one of Pastor Weekly’s articles at GCF:

If there’s one thing about God’s people that hurts my heart more than anything, it’s how little we understand our worth in the Lord. Our poor concept of humility has led to a deficiency of confidence, both spiritually, as well as naturally. Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that this was a virtue. IT IS NOT!

It is neither haughty nor prideful to be sure of who we are as children of the King of the Universe. Our Father is not some far away, detached demagogue who selfishly demands worship but has no interest in positively impacting our lives. To the contrary, He intensely desires for our lives to be enriched by His presence working in and through us.

Now, if the Personhood of love is at work in our lives (whether we can perceive the evidence of it or not), what justification could we possibly have for looking down upon the gift of God at work in our lives? Sure, He’s not finished with us just yet—some of our rough edges have yet to be smoothed out—but still, Scripture calls His work in us “good” (Ph. 1:6).

Think about that for a moment. The Creator of Heaven and Earth is doing a work in you, and He calls it a “good work”. Now, if His work in you is considered good from the Divine perspective, surely there’s nothing in that worth feeling ashamed of.

Is a master painter ashamed of his work-in-progress? Does he consider horrid the splashes of color on the canvas, just because the image has not yet taken form, or does he value the present mess as though it is the masterpiece he knows it will become?
…

Read the whole article here. This message particularly spoke to me because I often am ashamed of my novel-in-progress for its imperfections, which has less to do with my novel than with unhealed personal shame that needs continual doses of God’s grace. Unless I “value the present mess”, I won’t be able to pick up my notebook each day and try to make it a little bit better.

Thursday Non-Random Song: Steve Taylor, “This Disco (Used to Be a Cute Cathedral)”


According to the liner notes for this satirical 1980s Christian rock song, Steve Taylor was inspired by a visit to New York City’s legendary Limelight nightclub, which was housed in a deconsecrated church:

“…I started to imagine it was Sunday night, and that the church elders had devised all this as a way to attract new members.

Most of us, myself included, are guilty of wishing Christianity was more fashionable. But the Apostle Paul’s example of becoming ‘all things to all men’ in order to reach across cultural barriers can sometimes be used as an excuse to dilute the Gospel message, and hopefully draw a trendier, more affluent flock.”

Sunday needs a pick-me-up?
Here’s your chance
Do you get tired of the same old square dance?

Allemande right now
All join hands
Do-si-do to the promised boogieland

Got no need for altar calls
Sold the altar for the mirror balls
Do you shuffle? Do you twist?
‘Cause with a hot hits playlist, now we say

This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the year
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where we only play the stuff you’re wanting to hear

Mickey does the two-step
One, Two, Swing
All the little church mice doing their thing

Boppin’ in the belltower
Rumba to the right
Knock knock, who’s there? Get me out of this limelight

So, you want to defect?
Officer, what did you expect?
Got no rhythm, got no dough
He said, “Listen, Bozo, don’t you know”

This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the week
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
But we got no room if you ain’t gonna be chic

Sell your holy habitats
This ship’s been deserted by sinking rats
The exclusive place to go
It’s where the pious pogo, don’t you know

This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the year
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where we only play the stuff you’re wanting to hear

This disco used to be a cute cathedral
Where the chosen cha-cha every day of the week
This disco used to be a cute cathedral
But we got no room if you ain’t gonna be chic

(Lyrics and liner notes courtesy of YouTube.)
****

Taylor’s line “Where we only play the stuff you’re wanting to hear” sticks in my mind. We’re all familiar with the pressure on pastors to please their congregations with easy, flattering messages. Liberals pride themselves on being inclusive, conservatives on walking the straight and narrow. Both attitudes are uncomfortably similar to the exclusivity that’s the chief pleasure of club-going. Are you hot enough to get into the Kingdom?

Some serious Christians, therefore, are instinctively skeptical of any religious message that doesn’t increase our pain and self-sacrifice. When Rev. Peter Gomes, the openly gay Harvard University chaplain, gave a Bible lecture here at Smith College last year, he described the core of Jesus’ message as change that leads to liberation. Afterward an evangelical acquaintance of mine disparaged the lecture by quoting 2 Tim 4:3-4: “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” Christianity Today cited the same verse to dismiss the legitimacy of the Human Rights Campaign’s Out In Scripture series of GLBT-inclusive reflections on the weekly lectionary.

But if the Word we’re hearing is not something we can “receive with joy” (Mt 4:16), is it really the gospel? Yes, we are eager to hear that the love we feel for one another in our bodies and souls is not a sin. We are also, all of us, too happy to be told that we’re better than someone else, especially if we don’t have to do anything to gain this privileged status. Whose ears are really itching for flattery here?

I’m tired of Grape-Nuts theology. Sacrifice for the sake of proving your toughness is merely pride. Wherever people feel joy, connection, integration of body and spirit, freedom and fellowship, Jesus is present. Maybe the cathedral can learn something from the disco.

Ted Olson Makes the Conservative Case for Gay Marriage


Prominent trial lawyers David Boies and Theodore Olson are arguing the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8 in California federal court this week, in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Day-by-day trial coverage is available on the Firedoglake blog and the Courage Campaign website. Meanwhile, Newsweek recently interviewed both the liberal Boies and the conservative Olson to explain why their support for gays’ civil rights transcends left-right politics. Olson’s comments represent the best of that libertarian tradition that has sadly been drowned out by theocratic social conservatives during the past decade of GOP ascendancy. An excerpt:

…The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held that marriage is one of the most fundamental rights that we have as Americans under our Constitution. It is an expression of our desire to create a social partnership, to live and share life’s joys and burdens with the person we love, and to form a lasting bond and a social identity. The Supreme Court has said that marriage is a part of the Constitution’s protections of liberty, privacy, freedom of association, and spiritual identification. In short, the right to marry helps us to define ourselves and our place in a community. Without it, there can be no true equality under the law.

It is true that marriage in this nation traditionally has been regarded as a relationship exclusively between a man and a woman, and many of our nation’s multiple religions define marriage in precisely those terms. But while the Supreme Court has always previously considered marriage in that context, the underlying rights and liberties that marriage embodies are not in any way confined to heterosexuals.

Marriage is a civil bond in this country as well as, in some (but hardly all) cases, a religious sacrament. It is a relationship recognized by governments as providing a privileged and respected status, entitled to the state’s support and benefits. The California Supreme Court described marriage as a “union unreservedly approved and favored by the community.” Where the state has accorded official sanction to a relationship and provided special benefits to those who enter into that relationship, our courts have insisted that withholding that status requires powerful justifications and may not be arbitrarily denied.

What, then, are the justifications for California’s decision in Proposition 8 to withdraw access to the institution of marriage for some of its citizens on the basis of their sexual orientation? The reasons I have heard are not very persuasive.

The explanation mentioned most often is tradition. But simply because something has always been done a certain way does not mean that it must always remain that way. Otherwise we would still have segregated schools and debtors’ prisons. Gays and lesbians have always been among us, forming a part of our society, and they have lived as couples in our neighborhoods and communities. For a long time, they have experienced discrimination and even persecution; but we, as a society, are starting to become more tolerant, accepting, and understanding. California and many other states have allowed gays and lesbians to form domestic partnerships (or civil unions) with most of the rights of married heterosexuals. Thus, gay and lesbian individuals are now permitted to live together in state-sanctioned relationships. It therefore seems anomalous to cite “tradition” as a justification for withholding the status of marriage and thus to continue to label those relationships as less worthy, less sanctioned, or less legitimate.

The second argument I often hear is that traditional marriage furthers the state’s interest in procreation—and that opening marriage to same-sex couples would dilute, diminish, and devalue this goal. But that is plainly not the case. Preventing lesbians and gays from marrying does not cause more heterosexuals to marry and conceive more children. Likewise, allowing gays and lesbians to marry someone of the same sex will not discourage heterosexuals from marrying a person of the opposite sex. How, then, would allowing same-sex marriages reduce the number of children that heterosexual couples conceive?

This procreation argument cannot be taken seriously. We do not inquire whether heterosexual couples intend to bear children, or have the capacity to have children, before we allow them to marry. We permit marriage by the elderly, by prison inmates, and by persons who have no intention of having children. What’s more, it is pernicious to think marriage should be limited to heterosexuals because of the state’s desire to promote procreation. We would surely not accept as constitutional a ban on marriage if a state were to decide, as China has done, to discourage procreation.

Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples? Tellingly, when the judge in our case asked our opponent to identify the ways in which same-sex marriage would harm heterosexual marriage, to his credit he answered honestly: he could not think of any.

The simple fact is that there is no good reason why we should deny marriage to same-sex partners. On the other hand, there are many reasons why we should formally recognize these relationships and embrace the rights of gays and lesbians to marry and become full and equal members of our society.

No matter what you think of homosexuality, it is a fact that gays and lesbians are members of our families, clubs, and workplaces. They are our doctors, our teachers, our soldiers (whether we admit it or not), and our friends. They yearn for acceptance, stable relationships, and success in their lives, just like the rest of us.

Conservatives and liberals alike need to come together on principles that surely unite us. Certainly, we can agree on the value of strong families, lasting domestic relationships, and communities populated by persons with recognized and sanctioned bonds to one another. Confining some of our neighbors and friends who share these same values to an outlaw or second-class status undermines their sense of belonging and weakens their ties with the rest of us and what should be our common aspirations. Even those whose religious convictions preclude endorsement of what they may perceive as an unacceptable “lifestyle” should recognize that disapproval should not warrant stigmatization and unequal treatment.

When we refuse to accord this status to gays and lesbians, we discourage them from forming the same relationships we encourage for others. And we are also telling them, those who love them, and society as a whole that their relationships are less worthy, less legitimate, less permanent, and less valued. We demean their relationships and we demean them as individuals. I cannot imagine how we benefit as a society by doing so.

I understand, but reject, certain religious teachings that denounce homosexuality as morally wrong, illegitimate, or unnatural; and I take strong exception to those who argue that same-sex relationships should be discouraged by society and law. Science has taught us, even if history has not, that gays and lesbians do not choose to be homosexual any more than the rest of us choose to be heterosexual. To a very large extent, these characteristics are immutable, like being left-handed. And, while our Constitution guarantees the freedom to exercise our individual religious convictions, it equally prohibits us from forcing our beliefs on others. I do not believe that our society can ever live up to the promise of equality, and the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, until we stop invidious discrimination
on the basis of sexual orientation.

If we are born heterosexual, it is not unusual for us to perceive those who are born homosexual as aberrational and threatening. Many religions and much of our social culture have reinforced those impulses. Too often, that has led to prejudice, hostility, and discrimination. The antidote is understanding, and reason. We once tolerated laws throughout this nation that prohibited marriage between persons of different races. California’s Supreme Court was the first to find that discrimination unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed 20 years later, in 1967, in a case called Loving v. Virginia. It seems inconceivable today that only 40 years ago there were places in this country where a black woman could not legally marry a white man. And it was only 50 years ago that 17 states mandated segregated public education—until the Supreme Court unanimously struck down that practice in Brown v. Board of Education. Most Americans are proud of these decisions and the fact that the discriminatory state laws that spawned them have been discredited. I am convinced that Americans will be equally proud when we no longer discriminate against gays and lesbians and welcome them into our society….

I can almost forgive the guy for helping George W. Bush get elected…

Read more of Newsweek’s trial coverage here. Offering another good sign that the Right is splintering on this issue, Cindy and Meghan McCain, the wife and daughter of 2008 Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R, Ariz.), posed for promotional photos for the NO H8 website–despite the fact that the senator himself opposes gay marriage. Score one for feminism.

WSJ Interview With David Boies on Prop 8 Constitutional Challenge


Superstar lawyers David Boies and Theodore Olson, who faced off in Bush v. Gore in 2000, have teamed up to challenge the constitutionality of California’s gay marriage ban, Proposition 8, in federal court. The trial begins today in San Francisco. This Wall Street Journal interview with Boies also includes links to in-depth coverage of the case in the New Yorker, the American Lawyer, and leading national newspapers. An excerpt:

The headline in Margaret Talbot’s New Yorker story out Monday asks: “Is it too soon to petition the Supreme Court on gay marriage?” It’s also a question that’s been asked by others who oppose Prop. 8 — whether you and Ted are rushing into this in a way that’s doomed from the start, that there’s no way you’ll get five votes from the Supreme Court. How do you respond to those critics?

It’s not an uncomplicated issue. My question back is this: How do you decide when the time is right to vindicate one’s constitutional rights?

The polls and the evidence suggest that the the overwhelming majority of young adults support gay marriage. Those that don’t are, for the most part, people in my and Ted’s age bracket. And that’s the age bracket of the judges we’ll be arguing our case in front of. And people say you ought to wait to litigate this until you have judges that have not grown up in an atmosphere of discrimination against gays.

Because those judges have grown up in that type of atmosphere. When Ted and I were in sixth grade and when most of the justices and judges were in sixth and seventh grade, you had President Eisenhower issuing decrees dismissing all homosexuals from military service and dismissing from federal service more generally. You couldn’t be a letter carrier if you were a homosexual. Homoesexuals were described as sexual deviants, homosexual activity was criminalized.

So the argument goes like this: it’s hard for people of my generation to separate themselves from the atmosphere of prejudice in which we grew up. But I have more confidence that judges will be able to separate themselves from that atmosphere. If I’m wrong, I suppose we’ll just have to wait.

It’s interesting. You talk as if you think same-sex marriage is an inevitability. As if it’s just a matter of time before it becomes the law of the land.

I think you’re right. There’s clearly going to be gay marriage in the future, and the attitudes of young people make that clear. It can happen now, or we can lose another generation to discrimination.

In my opinion, the time is right now. But it’s also true that if we win or lose, the issue will be back. Both Ted and I feel we have more than five votes on the Supreme Court, but this issue isn’t going away. Plessy v. Ferguson was not the final word on segregation, nor will a defeat, if that happens, end this battle.

What about critics who say that the issue is playing out the way it should — in the states; that by filing this suit, you guys are circumventing the legislative process and attempting to cut off Democratic debate?

Well, that’s the reason you have a Bill of Rights. You don’t want to place issues involving constitutional importance in the hands of a democracy. If you subscribed to that, you’d hardly need a constitution.

Videos from the Soulforce Anti-Heterosexism Conference


Videos of the keynote speakers from the 2009 Anti-Heterosexism Conference are now available on the Soulforce website. Each segment is about 50 minutes long. I especially recommend Rev. Deborah Johnson’s sermon.

Here’s another clip (10 minutes) of her speaking at the 2007 Black Church Summit sponsored by the National Black Justice Coalition, a group that was also a co-sponsor of the Anti-Heterosexism Conference. She’s calling on the black church to use its moral authority on behalf of sexual minorities.  Too often, she says, the church does the opposite. “There are no words to say what it does to the soul of a person to tell them they are an abomination in the eyes of God…At least as slaves we had a purpose in the universe, but they’re telling us that there’s not even a place for gay people…in God’s universe.” Later she asks, “Why do you have to sacrifice your authenticity, your integrity, the pure integration of your mind, body, and soul…for fear of excommunication from the church?”

That’s right, Rev. Deborah. It’s not just about sex. It’s about truth.

In the second half of this video, Rev. Dr. Michael Eric Dyson talks about the “symbolic queering” of black sexuality by the dominant white culture. The black community ought to be able to identify with sexual minorities because white culture has always taken a fearful and prurient interest in black heterosexuality as “other”. “Hating gay people is hating ourselves as black people.”


Growing Opposition to Anti-Gay Genocide in Uganda


My heroes at Other Sheep, the outreach ministry to sexual minorities in the developing world, have posted their January online newsletter with links to the latest stories about Uganda’s pending Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Although the bill may still pass in some form, possibly without the death penalty provisions, even conservative Christian leaders are beginning to realize they need to distance themselves from this legislation. Here’s an excerpt of one story from the newsletter:

(New York, December 11) – A United Nations General Assembly panel that met this week broke new ground and helped build new momentum for ending human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity, a coalition of sponsoring nongovernmental organizations said today.

The meeting included discussion of discriminatory and draconian “anti-homosexuality” legislation currently before the Ugandan parliament, and of the role of American religious groups in promoting repression across Africa. In a groundbreaking move, a representative of the Holy See in the audience read a statement strongly condemning the criminalization of homosexual conduct.

The panel, held yesterday on the 61st anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, featured speakers from Honduras, India, the Philippines, and Zambia, as well as Uganda, where the proposed “anti-homosexuality law” shows the steady threat of government repression.

Sweden organized the panel in coalition with Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, and Norway. It was sponsored by a group of six nongovernmental organizations that defend the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. The audience of 200 people included delegates from over 50 nations.

Ugandan lawmakers are currently debating the “anti-homosexuality” bill. While there were reports that the death-penalty provisions might be stripped from the bill, other punishments would remain that would drive many Ugandans underground or out of the country, participants said.

Speaking on the panel, Victor Mukasa, co-founder of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and program associate for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLRHC), described how he was forced to leave Uganda following police brutality and raids on his home. He said that Uganda’s “anti-homosexuality” bill reflects a pattern of state-sponsored homophobia spreading across the African continent.

“Lack of security, arbitrary arrests and detentions, violence, and killings of LGBT people have become the order of the day in Africa,” said Mukasa. “Nothing can change as long as LGBT people live in fear for their safety when they claim their basic human rights.”

The statement from the Holy See said it “opposes all forms of violence and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons, including discriminatory penal legislation which undermines the inherent dignity of the human person….[T]he murder and abuse of homosexual persons are to be confronted on all levels, especially when such violence is perpetrated by the State.”

Also at the panel discussion, the Reverend Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia who is project director for Political Research Associates (PRA) in Massachusetts, presented the group’s new report, Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia….