The despicable outers

Liberals are all about tolerance. Not. Senator Craig has issued a formal denial on the "trust me" charges made by the scumbag gay activist Mike Rogers. Mary Katherine Ham at Town Hall notes how flimsy the "evidence "is.

Ooh, and I heard that Kathy and David did the deed under the bleachers at Friday's football game. For real. Would I lie to you?

Andrew Sullivan says what needs to be said:

If the gay left thinks it will advance gay dignity by using tactics that depend on homophobia to work, that violate privacy, that demonizes gay people, then all I can say is: they are wrong. They will regret it. It will come back to haunt them. And they should cut it out. The fact that their motives might be good is no excuse. Everybody on a witchhunt believes their motives are good. But the toxins such a witchhunt exposes, the cruelty it requires, and the fanaticism of its adherents are always dangerous to civilized discourse. What you're seeing right now is an alliance of the intolerant: the intolerant on the gay left and the intolerant on the religious right.

Gay Patriot (great minds thinking alike, as this article I put up last night shows) said that in that short blurb he "discovered the old Andrew Sullivan whose blog I once very much enjoyed." And then he notes where the new Andrew Sullivan sneaks in and gets it wrong. "What you're seeing right now is an alliance of the intolerant: the intolerant on the gay left and the intolerant on the religious right." Actually, Gay Patriot notes, there is no such alliance, instead characterizing the dynamic as ...

the intolerant gay left ... trying to use the intolerance of those social conservatives to split the GOP.

... which isn't really an alliance. But I would also reword Gay Patriot's statement with the added phrase in italics to make it perfect:

the intolerant gay left is trying to use what it sees as the intolerance of those social conservatives to split the GOP.

And that's why this outing craze will not only not work but actually backfire. "The intolerance of the social conservatives" is a myth. Or at least grossly exaggerated in ways that eventually shrink to zero in this case because of how the outers and their liberal-left enablers and friends simply don't understand social conservatives.

Let's start with a few names: Phyllis Schlafly. Alan Keyes. Dick Cheney. Sonny Bono. Every one of them, conservative icons all, has a homosexual child. (There are undoubtedly others; these are just the ones I could think of where the family matter became public.) Besides family situations, practically every conservative knows or "knows" about some colleague -- at work, at church, across the street, etc. At some level of detail and intimacy, homosexuality and homosexual persons are now part of the ordinary fabric of daily experience for just about everyone. Homosexuality is no longer "the unspeakable vice of the Greeks" or "the love that dare not speak its name." Whether this be a good or bad thing about life today, it is nevertheless a fact about it. This normality (no other word for it) makes a certain primitive repugnance toward "butt-fucking faggots" a lot harder to maintain. This is indeed, the very logic of "Coming Out Days" -- to make people more "tolerant" of homosexuals by showing them persons rather than concepts. Religious conservatives simply are not what they used to be. I won't deny there are some outright haters. But they have become more and more marginal with time. And the Catholic Church teaching on the homosexual persons has developed considerably in the last 30 years (see next above post for the latest example).

To wax personal, never have my homosexual attractions been a problem with any of the approximately 40-50 other Christians (half of them other Courage members) who know about them. True, I have to a certain extent cherry-picked, but more often in the name of discretion than fear per se. The dance of disclosure is different for every person, every relationship, every occasion. I don't fear being outed myself because I seriously think I would show up at work (I work for a well-known conservative institution) or at Church the next day and be lynched by the righteous. Rather because, as Sullivan has written:

Properly understood, outing is not a resolution of something, a final act. It’s when the intricate steering of self-disclosure, with which every homosexual is intimately familiar, is suddenly seized by someone else, when one’s ability to describe oneself, one’s freedom to say who one is, is peremptorily taken away.

But every person who knows about my homosexual attractions outside the specific (and rather unique) context of Courage knew me as a person first. Knew "John." And so a certain amount of love and trust already existed, making me free to say things about myself. The persons in question — all conservative or religious, and most both — have never treated me badly. I can truthfully say I have never been the object of hostility or contempt from a Christian over my homosexuality. Or even certain homosexual sins. Ever. (OTOH, I have been the object of contempt and hatred from gay activists.)

More generally, Christians tend to be rather forgiving people -- something about which gay activists, because they are not such, always miscalculate. For someone else say that Sen. Craig is a sinner will and should surprise no Christian, whatever shape the universal fact of sin might take in his particular case. And this is also why many religious conservatives have no problem with people who preach against homosexuality in public or oppose the gay activists in public life, while having stumbles with it himself in private. We recognize that people are sinners, and that the dynamic of sin. Sin often means, as St. Paul said, doing what we know to be wrong. To "not do what I want, but do what I hate." For the "spirit to be willing but the flesh weak." This isn't to say there isn't such a thing as an unnatural obsession with certain sins. But still, because Christians acknowledge we are sinners, we tend not to be perturbed by the mere fact of hypocrisy or a gap between one's morality and one's conduct. Upon reflection, hypocrisy even becomes socially necessary since without it, all public morality goes into the shitcan because it can only ever be upheld by the sinless. Which is to say, by nobody.

This isn't to say there never might have to be temporal consequences. With Mark Foley, the e-mails were just too explicit and the conduct also involved minors. And if there's explicit e-mails or video or, as with Schrock, audio of Sen. Craig and some man, he (or any congressman) would be well advised to get out of Congress. But this won't cause religious conservatives to rethink either their morals or their political allegiance. In fact, quite the contrary. What "outing" does is transform the narrative. It pushes the spotlight from some (hypothetical) lawmaker's bathroom-hookups or whatever to someone else's gossip and reveals the true depth of the outers's politically-motivated hatred. Making a similar point is libertarian Ann Althouse:

I would like to see Republicans abandon social conservatism, and I'm not cheering on these slimy outings. But, honestly, I think these creepy, gleeful efforts at outing will only make social conservatives more conservative, and they will continue to look to the Republican party to serve their needs.

Exactly. Add to this how the outers cut such unattractive and transparent figures — clumsily trying to game us, to use our morals (which they proudly hate) against us. And for nothing but naked political gain, even at the cost of their own self-defined goals (privacy, dignity for homosexual persons, sexual freedom — two of which actually are real goods). Or as Gay Patriot put it:

That there are those on the left who would attempt to play into the prejudices of the most anti-gay forces in our society in order to help defeat the GOP shows that they are more interested in advancing their own partisan agenda than in respecting the private lives — and personal choices — of individual gay men and women. For them, it’s all politics. (I’ve said this before. As have countless others.) While they may express noble sentiments about helping gay people, they could care less about gay individuals who happen to be Republican.
I can no longer count how many times those on the left have wondered how I could support a political party which has contempt for gay people. And yet while I don’t always agree with my party — or the attitudes of some of its members — I have never encountered the level of hate or vitriol that those involved in the outing campaign have directed against closeted gay Republicans.

The outers are exactly what they profess to hate. In fact, this parody from Iowahawk isn't really that much of an exaggeration. Titled "it's the homos, stupid," it ends thus:

In less than three weeks you will be asked to make a stark choice. You can choose the GOP's same old Washington "backroom insider games" -- ewwwwww -- or choose a fresh start with a new team dedicated to rooting out and exposing the Republicans' culture of man-love. ... With your support, our team will make sure that you will no longer be at risk from tax cuts tainted with gay Republican AIDS cooties, and that your children trapped in the military will no longer be taking orders from the Butt-Commando-in-Chief.
But if, for whatever reason, you can't vote for us, why not stay at home and sit this one out? Let's face it, polls prove the GOP is doomed, and your traditional mindless loyalty to them has brought you nothing but heartache, disappointment, and a legislature full of sodomist and negros. The GOP came into power promising you a return to traditional values; instead, they were a Trojan Horse full of purse-swinging black Greek sailors who have turned Washington into Sodom on the Potomac, and Capitol Hill into the Love Shack on Brokeback Mountain.
While you're thinking it over, remember to register for the DNC's nationwide all-day Bible Study church lock-in on Tuesday November 7. Free chewing tabacky for the first 10 million enrollees!

The Lavender Moonbats strike again

According to Daily Kos, outer Michael Rogers has declared that Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, is a closeted homosexual. Craig has three children and nine grandchildren, but that doesn't matter to the likes of Rogers. Anything to humiliate a Republican, true or not. According to the Kos item, Rogers said his sources are men who say Craig had sex with them and he will go to jail to protect their anonymity. From Rogers' initial post, available at Kos [I won't link to Rogers on principle], the sex encounters were of the anonymous-pickup at bathroom stalls genre. So there's no way to verify this -- just straight up one person's word. In the words of this cri de couer:

I was asked to confirm a story presented anonymously ... Why should I answer? I waited for someone with an actual name to come forward and accuse me of something with evidence. Nothing. Mere anonymous rumors.
Why should anyone in public life be forced to respond to such things? What, after all, was McCarthyism? In the history books, it is described as a method of political intimidation where someone is accused of something allegedly shameful, not told who his accusers are, and forced to respond.

You would think that the party that made privacy a constitutional right, that says it opposes intrusion in the bedroom, that says there's nothing wrong with homosexual behavior -- that this party would reject this behavior.

Nah.

It's been a bit more than six hours since the item was put before the Kossacks. As I write this, there are 845 comments. These are some samples from just the first 50 or so:

Good work to out that hypocritical bastard. May he swiftly resign!

You haven't heard about Mehlman.......because he can't get laid.

It was never mentioned that Craig is the Guru of Guns in the Senate. Maybe he does that to look manly.

Gee -- self-flagellation. Do you suppose that's their turn-on?

There's also a Kos poll going on, and just this second, I voted "No" so I could see what the results were to the poll "Do you agree with outing gay Republicans?" Depressingly predictable:

Yes 2,624 votes 70%
No 1,110 votes 29%

I've said before that I hate the Democrats, and here is Exhibit 57700182305. They hate me. Or, to be precise, their voting base considers what Sullivan calls "the high-tech lynching of uppity homos" to be an acceptable, indeed a laudable, endeavour. One of my very favorite Sullivan articles is this one, which I can't find very quickly online. The walk-off line:

The gleam in the eyes of the outers, I have come reluctantly to understand, is not the excess of youth or the passion of the radical. It is the gleam of the authoritarian.

This is now what liberals stand for -- the forced political uniformity of totalitarianism for the selected victim groups that They in Thy Wisdom have designated as needing Thy protection. Whether they asked for it or not. (And this evil arrogant self-righteousness is not confined to homos either.)

Even as a strictly political matter ... wtf? Craig isn't even up for re-election. Nor is Idaho's other Senate seat. What do Rogers and the majority of Kossacks think this will accomplish? The private acceptance of homosexuality is just about an accomplished fact (I have never had a Christian, and I travel in some pretty conservative circles, denounce my behavioral lapses). Indeed, I hope this outing of Craig WILL become better known, because voters need to know what kind of fever swamps liberals inhabit and what kind of actions win approval among those to whom the country may be about to turn over the keys of power.

My heart hopes that those liberals who oppose this kind of thing will denounce the Rogerses of the world with as much vigor as they did Sen. Macaca and disassociate themselves from his works. But my head tells me the Kossacks suggest the likelier result.

But hey, extremism in the defense of political conformity and liberal power is no vice.

No, there's no media bias

Here is the lead of an Associated Press story running tonight:

Former Rep. Gerry Studds, the first openly gay member of Congress, was married to another man in Massachusetts at the time of his death, but the federal government has refused to pay death benefits to his spouse.

This does the intellectual equivalent of stealing all four bases. The article refers to the other man factually as "his spouse" — a construction and fact that the story simply takes for granted throughout that a man can marry a man as a matter of fact and this man is in fact Studds' spouse. Those are precisely the issues in dispute in the debate over homosexual "marriage." But you wouldn't know this was even an issue from the way this article is written. Here are some of the constructions that betray the way:

after gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts.

Hara, unlike the spouses of other members of Congress who have died

if the marriage were recognized by the federal government

This article by the nation's premier wire service is gonna run in a hundred papers nationwide, probably with minimal editing, under the suggested headline:

Gay Congressman's Spouse Denied Benefits

Here is one TV station that uses the same headline almost word-for-word.

Congressman's Spouse Denied U.S. Death Benefits Because He's Gay

No.

The person in question is not the congressman's "spouse" because the two were not married according to federal law (and the universal understanding of marriage until just the day before yesterday).

At best, one could say that the two men were married in Massachusetts. But then by taking that as normative for the rest of the story, by calling a marriage what is a marriage only in Massachusetts and not in 49 other states, AP is thereby privileging Massachusetts as the norm, and constructing other states' morality as deviant or dubious or "controversial."

Why should anyone trust coverage of an important public issue from a news organization whose very style and choice of descriptors presupposes the rightness of one side of that issue.

Is homosexuality a choice?

This was something I wrote on a friend's site two years ago, during the 2004 presidential campaign. I reprint it simply because it is pretty much my comprehensive take on probably the biggest of questions on Topic H. David initially quoted moderater Bob Schieffer's question to the two presidential candidates.

MR. SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, let's get back to economic issues, but let's shift to some other questions here. Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?

Here's how I would have answered the question:

"Mr. Schieffer, it depends what you mean by homosexuality. In any event, I don't think it's a closed question. If you mean homosexuality as a disposition or temptation, it almost certainly is unchosen. I note, though that this leaves open the question of whether it is genetic-biological trait, like eye color, or an acquired personality trait, like generosity or irascibility or alcoholism or saintliness. But if you mean homosexuality as behavior, then it certainly is chosen, on account of ... well ... all behavior is chosen. I note, though that this leaves open the question of the degree to which one's will or freedom can be clouded by previous habit."

I should note that the evidence for a strong version of the genetic-biological theory (homosexuality as eye color) is actually very skimpy -- not even the twin studies show the almost-100 percent correlation they would have to if homosexuality were purely genetic (and the brain studies -- please). The correlations are high enough, though, to support the acquired personality trait theory -- we're disposed a certain way, but environment and choice determine what we do with those dispositions. Again, the analogy with alcoholism is fairly precise -- scientists have located genes, but they merely raise the correlation rates. You won't become an alcoholic, no matter what your genes, if you live your whole life in Provo or Mecca. You'll become an alcoholic, no matter what your genes, if you drink enough.

I think this debate over choice gets clouded by, among other things, the connotations of the word "choice" -- it implies a fully-conscious act of decision-making at a given moment with all the options before one, with the pros and cons weighed, etc. "Choosy moms choose Jif." Clearly, nobody IN THAT SENSE chooses to be gay.

But that isn't the only sense of "choice," which is why, when I outlined my answer above, I used the word "acquire," which is less ... positivistic and deliberate. You can acquire something you didn't choose or (and this is the key point) are never conscious of having made a choice about. This is most clearly true in the case of one's personality traits, whatever they might be and indifferent to whether they are good or bad traits to have. In a phrase, you become what you do and you do what you become, in a never-ending dialectic. I didn't choose my homosexual dispositions, any more than I chose to be a scholastic pedant. I remember both dispositions from a very early age, prior to both formal education and anything that could be called sexual agency. I could have either confirmed or been confirmed in those dispositions; steered away or been steered away from them. They could have been either nurtured or neglected. (For example, I could have been born Amish, and so ended my schooling in 8th grade.) And the accidents of my environment, including a somewhat Catholic schooling, meant I never had to fully "come out" to myself until I had my first serious love-crush, which was at about 24.

As for the testimony of self-identified gay people, it's not that I believe they're lying. It's a combination of immersion in cultural propaganda (the society constantly TELLS everybody this) and the will to believe the strong-genetic explanation, since it soothes the conscience by seeming to end moral debate about homosexuality (it also short-circuits claims of changeability, which is both of its attraction and why I think it risible). But there's also two other things, neither blameworthy -- (1) the human tendency to describe one's life story in the terms of a teleological narrative ("this is how it was meant to be"); and (2) the existential fact that neither they nor any gay person they know remembers "choosing" to be gay, in the sense above.

Foley Agonistes

I suppose I'll play the dissenting fool on Mark Foley. To start with, I have no doubt whatever that this story was leaked to ABC by a Democrat because the party wanted an opportunity to pick up another House seat. If that means outing or humiliating a politically-incorrect homo,¹ so be it. As has been done to Schrock and Graham and Taylor -- and that's just the (supposed) ones I can think of off the top of my head at the national level (rinse-and-repeat with the racism Dems will direct at politically-incorrect blacks). As I've said before, I hate the Democrats. This Washington Post article seriously understates matters (hat tip: Jay Anderson). It says:

Foley's creepy behavior might have done him in even if he'd been the most liberal of Democrats. But that's not assured.

Actually, it pretty much would be assured. Two words -- Gerry Studds. The Massachusetts Democrat was censured by Congress for an actual affair (not simply dirty talk) with an at-the-time-of-the-affair current House page (not an ex-page). Those brackets aren't great distinctions, but they're not nothing. And Studds defended it. But when you're a Democrat who commits sexual immorality, you will survive and can count on the support of your party, as it basically stands for sexual immorality. And when voters from the bluest-of-the-blue-states had a chance to vote on Studds, they kept sending him back. As the Wikipedia link notes, Studds acted with contempt toward the censure, and claimed that his acts were morally peachy.

Studds's case [involved] a 1973 relationship with a 17-year-old male congressional page. The relationship was consensual, but violated age of consent laws and presented ethical concerns relating to working relationships with subordinates. ... As the House read their censure of him, Studds turned his back and ignored them. Later, at a press conference with the former page standing beside him, the two stated that what had happened between them was nobody's business but their own.

The non-sequitur in the first part of the quote is remarkable -- it violated "age of consent" laws but was "consensual." What a steaming piece of bovine scatology. The whole point of "age of consent" laws is to take the possibility of consent "off the table." To say that someobody under that age, as this page was, cannot "consent." But hey ... when you're a Democrat, I guess even statutory rape gets a pass if there's consent or you tell her to put a piece of ice on it afterward. And why not? From JFK and Chappaquiddick to gay "marriage" and the Boston-founded NAMBLA, Massachusetts is sexual immorality Ground Zero — Mecca, Rome and Jerusalem for amoral libertines all rolled into one.

Also, there is a very simple reason Hastert et al sat on the first set of e-mails, which were questionable in their forwardness and friendliness, but not smoking guns or anything dirty. No talk of fellatio under the table or using cigars as sex toys. The two sets of IMs are much more problematic, but they weren't in GOP leaders' hands. But take those IMs out of the picture, and what do you have? And then imagine how Democrats and the pro-gay MSM would react to an attempt to discipline or expel Foley. Since it was widely "known" (word deliberately in quotes) in Washington that Foley was a homosexual, and since that round of e-mails at most shows Foley expressing excessive but nonsexual interest in someone of the same sex ... all we'd be hearing about is Republican "homophobia." How Foley was just trying to be a mentor. And how straight congressmen always take an interest in helping the pages' careers. And gay people love like anyone else, and aren't defined by their sex drives, and have families and apprentice relationships too. And it's demeaning to infer sexual interest and on and on. We'd get the petulant "youreallyhateusyoubigot" tantrums. We know the script by heart. As the Wall Street Journal put it:

But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?

The other group I have absolute contempt for is the gay-activist crowd. At Beliefnet, Rod Dreher called Foley "a scumbag gay congressman." The whinnying started:

Don't turn this into an anti-gay thing! Most gay men are gay men because they want to be with OTHER ADULT MEN. I NEVER seen a creep who goes after teen girls called a "scumbag straight pedophile." How casually insulting and rude!

Quickly, the MSM reaction story came to remind us "never confuse homosexuality with pedophilia. it is Badthink."

Gays activists cautioned Tuesday - as they have since the scandal broke surrounding sexually explicit Internet communications with teens - that Foley's sexual orientation, in or out of the closet, has nothing to do with improper involvement with minors.
"His sexuality was never a question. Everybody knew. (But) being gay and being interested in teenagers are two different things," said Eric Johnson, who was assistant manager of a Foley campaign for the Florida Legislature in 1991 and 1992. ...
Johnson's view is backed up by science,² said Melodie Moorehead, a psychologist who counsels patients and their families at several South Florida hospitals, including Kindred Hospital in Fort Lauderdale.
"Molestation has nothing to do with homosexuality," she said.

I'm willing to accept that homosexuality has nothing to do with pedophilia, if that term is understood clinically, meaning "sex with someone pre-puberty." But by that definition, Foley was not a pedophile. His interest was in post-pubescent teenagers. In other words, males who, speaking biologically in the matters of sex and the secondary sexual characteristics, are adults. Not children.

None of what follows is meant to say that Foley's conduct wasn't immoral or that the legal fictions surrounding "age of consent" matters are unjust. But speaking strictly and clinically about Foley's desires, they were not pedophilic, but homosexual. The fact that he had a taste for youth (rather than, say, a taste for bears or jocks, or being a "leg man" or a "breast man") does not make it different in "sexual orientation," any more than the dirty old man lusting after high-school cheerleaders thereby isn't "straight." This isn't complicated. If attraction for the same sex over the opposite one defines sexual orientation, then a desire for males and not females makes a man a homosexual. Is there any evidence or even whispers Foley was hitting on female pages? After all, if "pedophilia" is a separate orientation having nothing to do with same-sex or opposite-sex attraction, then Foley The Non-homosexual Pedophile should have been doing that too. Where's the evidence of his interest in female pages? Where?

But it's the dirty little secret, that the gay activist crowd will never permit the MSM to note, that gay-male culture has a sexualized fascination with youth. First, it's clear that many men of every sexual persuasion find youth attractive (hence all the lusting after Britney Spears and Anna Kournikova). But the problem with the homosexual culture is that "It's men, without women" -- i.e., there is no natural restraint on the male impulse to sex-as-conquest. Second, the cult of the Beautiful Boy has been part of male homosexuality from the very beginning. No reader of Plato or Kenneth Dover can have any doubt that for the Greeks, homosexuality MEANT a man and a teenage boy. The Renaissance and the Victorian/Edwardian aesthetes, up to Oscar Wilde, took their cues from that, as Camille Paglia has shown. Or consider even any number of "growing up in an English boarding school" novels or films. As for today ... well, "barely legal" "baby-face" "boi" and "twink" are practically genres in gay-porn and personal ads, right alongside and in the same forums as desires for "military," "daddy" and "frat boy" types (i.e., the frankly-stated desire for young males is not marginalized in "mainstream" gay outlets as NAMBLA the self-conscious organization generally is). That a significant, more-than-random (and way more than enough to rule out the "bigotry" card) number of homosexuals express a sexual desire for teenagers, or for adults who are baby-faced enough to pretend they are teens or allow for the fantasy that they are teens, just seems to be the case.

Indeed, when the subject is sex ed, liberals (and gay activists) never seem to forget to patronizingly remind us old-fogies that even pre-pubescent children are sexual beings in some senses and that teenagers are so fully sexual that they need free condoms, with demonstrations on use. Whenever GLSEN wants to set up a high-school chapter, we'll hear all the pious talk about "gay teens." In other words, boys the same age as those Foley was pursuing. But now Nancy Pelosi et al want to get all moral on us? While pretending Foley is not a homosexual? Gimme a break.
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¹ And not even that politically-incorrect. Foley was not the most-conservative Republican and had a pretty pro-gay voting record; very much, by GOP standards. Even the Daily Kos noted that, before this blowup.
² Insert Magnus Pike blurting out "Science!" in a Thomas Dolby video.

The dry period

To my friend David Seleb (and the hope that some others might find it useful):

So you've read through The Stranger. I knew you would dig Camus and see yourself in Meursault. But I also knew that it wouldn't "cure" your Angst -- Camus himself would be the first to agree. I don't know that there's anything I, or anyone else, can say that would "cure" you or make it all make sense.

A period of spiritual dryness is one of those things that happen even to the greatest saints (OK, so Mother Teresa isn't a saint yet, as if there's any doubt, but the term "long, dark night of the soul" comes from St. John of the Cross). There's no way around such periods, only through them. I wish I could direct you to Mother Teresa's letters, but as far as I know Il Segreto di Madre Teresa hasn't been translated into English and I doubt your Italian or mine is up to it. Nor is anger at God without precedent. In some sense, it's inevitable among the afflicted. There's Job, of course ("the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be His Holy Name"). A priest in confession once told me that St. Teresa of Avila cursed at God in a moment of distress when her cart got stuck in a stream, saying "if this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few." The much-cruder Martin Luther said "Love God? Sometimes I hate him."

But the Catholic faith is ultimately about truth, not about "enthousiasmos." Truths can be hard to accept, and hurt, in a way that feelings cannot. More to the point, we're both at the age by which most devout Catholic men have become fathers or Fathers. I could make a fairly fruitful analogy with "mid-life crisis," and thus advise you to go buy a Porsche or go do some hot young chick. But I think both those things are beyond our means. Anyway ... now it's hitting us -- and hard -- that this thorn in our flesh is apparently never going to go away (I haven't been able to go to a wedding since I was 28). Thorns in the flesh hurt. There's no way around that. The most I think I can say is to make living with the pain less intolerable. Some of what I'm about to say are thing I myself suck at. They may sound like bromides. But I composed the outline for this letter before the Blessed Sacrament at Adoration last night, and all my intentions were for you.

First of all, you're not lost or gone. The very fact that people, relationships and duty all still matter is still a sign of hope. The very fact that you're terrified by the thought that they might not is still a sign of hope. The very fact that you care about giving scandal and keeping up appearances is still a sign of hope. Next time you ask yourself "why," ask those "why" questions instead. Why DO I care about duty? Why DO I care about giving scandal? The easy, simple skeptical answer is "lifelong habit" or "reflex." Even if true, that begs the question of why have these acts become a lifelong habit, while other acts -- such as contempt for the souls of others in giving scandal -- not become such. After all, it's not as though any of us has never done the latter act or felt it mentally, right? But we knew it was wrong. In other words, it's quite coherent to say that "what we should do" is perfectly clear, even if sometimes the "why should we do it" is not. But the "what" answers the "why" -- because the "what" is who we are and have become. It's now our nature. Is this perfectly motivated love? In that sense, no. But if it's what we can do, for now, the Lord doesn't reject the gifts we can bring him according to the state that we're in at the moment -- The Little Drummer Boy, St. Therese's Little Way and all that.

Second, we both know that the gay lifestyle is not an option, and know that you (and I both) would be no better off or happier living that way. I can kinda-semi-sorta-"understand" leaving the Church for Dupont Circle -- preferring the life of flesh and so convincing oneself that therefore the Church must be wrong, etc. But not to leave the Church for the sake of a drift into the abyss. I know this sounds flip, but one may as well be buried in Angst with Christ than without Him. Particularly since we both acknowledge the Truth and the Church as its custodian, however uninspiring that will be at certain times. Reacting to that fact of its uninspiringness too hard, and going into a kind of depressive withdrawal isn't an option, at least in the long term. The spiritual equivalent of lying on the couch all day, watching soaps and eating bonbons is understandable for a while. I can attest. But I'm happiest when I think of Topic H the least, and most depressed when I dwell on it. And you (and I both) are self-conscious-enough and self-critical-enough and demanding-enough of (y)ourself to know that this only makes one more contemptuous toward (y)ourself. At some point, we always come to realize that we are called to more than that. We always do. As a little boy, my school uniform's badge read "Ad Majorem Natus Sum."

Third, to the extent that Topic H makes itself known to us (and it will, it will) do your best to take some kind of joy in it. This is the hardest thing in the world to do, I admit. And I double-plus-factorial-exponential suck at it. But remember that the most-Catholic symbol is the Crucified Lord, not the highly-effective person using his 7th habit. We *are* called to crucify ourselves also, in a certain sense. Or "die to self" if one prefers. It's one of the ways God calls us to him, and sees us as and makes us more "worthy." If God gave us everything we wanted — and he has cursed both of us with the gift of faith and same-sex attraction — then he'd be nothing more than a cosmic vending machine, with everything costing 0 cents. St. Padre Pio never asked (or maybe he stopped asking, I forget) to be lifted of the stigmata. Sure, this can bleed over into outright masochism, which can lead to unhealthy things, but it need not. Eve Tushnet has written that if she weren't gay, she likely wouldn't be Catholic (she doesn't elaborate on it at that particular post, but as I understand her, she's saying that her attractions made the Church's accounts of the Fall and of Beauty the easiest things in the world to assent to). Dreadnought writes about the homosexual as a sign of contradiction -- and there is no greater contradiction, a defiance of conventional categories of ordinary thought, than the Cross, a god offering himself up to a mocked criminal's death.

As I said, I wrote the outline of this at Adoration. While there, I also thumbed through the bookcase at the St. Agnes adoration chapel and came across St. Thomas Kempis's Imitation of Christ, and there were some things in it I found potentially valuable, in re the last point. I'm sure there's little you haven't heard, but Truth can't be said too often.

Bk. 3, Chapter 18 (in the voice of Christ):
Son, I came down from heaven for your salvation and took upon Myself your miseries, not out of necessity but moved thereto by charity, that you (my disciple) might learn patience and might bear without repining the sufferings of this life. From the hour of My incarnation to My expiring on the cross, I was never without suffering. I underwent great want of temporal things. I frequently heard many complaints against Me. I meekly bore with confusions and reproaches. For My blessings I received ingratitude, for My miracles, blasphemies, and for My heavenly doctrine, scorn.

Bk. 3, Chapter 19 (in the voice of Christ):
He is not truly a patient man who will suffer no more than he thinks good and from whom it pleases him ... But however much and however often any adversity happens to him from anything created, he takes it all with equality of mind, as from the hand of God, with thanksgiving and esteems it a great gain. For nothing, however little, that is suffered for God's sake can pass without merit in the sight of God. ...
(in the responding voice of the disciple)
You know that I can bear but little and that I am quickly cast down by a small adversity. Let all exercises of tribulation become amiable and agreeable to me for the sake of Your name.

Comments update

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

I did this because I really don't want to have to moderate comments, requiring me to be near the Internet 24-7. Haloscan makes it possible to ban a specific person while leaving things open and free to others. I simply have no tolerance for the kind of person who won't take hints and considers queeny bitchiness, ad-hominem slanders, and com-box psychologization to be ordinary human behavior (which in his circles, it undoubtedly is. Those circles have no place here.)

Haloscan automatically erased the old comments, but I had them backed up, and I reposted them manually in the relevant Haloscan boxes, with the names and then-provided-homepages of the initial senders, even though it was I doing all the posting. I changed nothing, except for a few of double posts, grammar-correction posts and now-broken links.

Ideas taken to their conclusion (twice)

And now, it's not just dissident "Mormons," but (in one case) homosexuals themselves going about the redefinition of marriage and family to deprivilege the number "2."

After all, if the male-female requirement can go by the wayside because it's contrary to some people's passionate desires, there's no reason not to reject the numerical requirement of 2-and-only-2. After all, the requirement of "2" is equally contrary to some people's passionate desires. And there's actually FAR more historical precedent (n>0) for plural marriage as for homosexual "marriage."

Anyway, on the first count, some members of a breakaway quasi-Mormon sect have filed an appeal in a Denver federal court, seeking to overturn Utah's ban on polygamy. Partially on religious-freedom grounds, but also taking pages from the pro-gay playbook.

"It's time for it to be readdressed," [Mary Batchelor of Sandy, Utah, executive director of the group Principle Voices] said in an interview. "We live in a society of family arrangements that simply are, no matter how people want to define them. They are not labeled criminal and we don't believe our family arrangements should be labeled criminal either."

Sound familiar? "Our families simply *are* -- and definitions don't matter." A triumph of the will, where the creation of something constitutes its justification, or its immunity from moral legislation. (The spate of gay "marriages" led by the mayor of San Francisco, an attempt to create facts on the ground, proves how utterly lawless pro-homosexual activists are.) Then we get the citation in the legal briefs, as cited by the Associated Press as arguing that "under a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking Texas laws banning sodomy, polygamy is a private interest that should not be prosecuted." The brief says:

The [Supreme Court] found no compelling state interest in criminalizing homosexual sodomy based on a long history of states and/or a majority of society finding the practice immoral. Similarly, the state of Utah can offer no compelling justification for criminalizing polygamy ... Utah's criminalization of religious polygamy, even if the crime is rarely prosecuted, brands plaintiffs as criminals and sanctions public and private discrimination based on plaintiffs' religious based choice of marital relationship.

The case for a right to plural marriage is actually far stronger than the case for a right to sodomy, because "the free exercise of religion" (unlike "privacy") actually appears in the U.S. Constitution. Religion, unlike sex, is an activity protected in principle from state regulation, and thus there's a "there" there besides "I want something" or the famous Casey "mystery" passage.

Then there's the other case -- involving three homosexuals in Canada (warning: link is to 365gay.com). A gay man and a lesbian woman had a child together and are the child's legal (as well as biological) parents, but the lesbian's lover also wants to be granted parental rights.

"The family has evolved over the years in a way that the law should recognize the reality of this little boy," the father's lawyer, Alfred Mamo, told the [Toronto] Globe and Mail. "His reality being that he's got two mothers and a father with whom he thrives. They all want this for their son."

Again ... this sound familiar? The issues aren't exactly gay marriage (Canada having long ago joined the Brave New World), but the creation of a three-parent family. Still, the argument is exactly the same -- recognize the reality and diversity of the contemporary family. Pictures of a cooing baby. And heck, why stop at three. Doesn't the father's boyfriend/"husband" have any say in this? (Four.) What if this child had been carried by a surrogate mother? (Five.) And her husband/lover/partner/whatever (six)? Once you throw in divorces in these with-it times and all the shared custody issues, you might get into the double digits.

But "more" isn't "better" in the matter of parents. In fact, like with cancer cells, exactly the contrary. Parental love is jealous and depends on a love of what is really, truly one's own (in Plato's Republic, Socrates knows that the City in Speech has to keep mothers from knowing who their children are, lest they favor them). Once motherhood is decoupled in principle from the physical acts of conception and the nine months of carrying to term -- "the biological bits," the lover's lawyer played them down as, saving his strength for the red-letter word "discriminatory" -- it becomes a property contract like any other. Just as fatherhood, inherently a less-exhausting enterprise, has been decoupled from love and marriage -- with predictable results.

Here was my favorite part of the article:

In 2003 a lower court rejected the partner's attempt to be listed as a co-parent.
In his ruling, Mr. Justice David Aston said the woman plays the role of parent to the child in every sense imaginable, and suggested that allowing the trio to share equal rights as parents would be in the boy's best interests.
...
But Ontario law, he ruled, binds his hands. Provincial family law allows two parents of the opposite sex, or two parents of the same sex, but not three parents.

The law bind a judge's hands? Heaven forfend.

Pro-homosexual propagandists can protest that they oppose polygamy or how they now have no right to marry *at all* (which is not true), but the logic of the law and precedent-based decisions forces principles to play themselves out to their logical conclusion. If a private desire for something creates a right to it, and a concomitant right to overturn the definitions of marriage and family as mere historical accidents or prejudicial, then this is what must happen. This is far less the case for democratic deliberation, where the inherently messy mind of the demos operates as a de facto brake on the slippery slope. But lawyers, like Chesterton's madman, are more perfectly logical.

Now hear this

I'm not under any illusions that this is a high-traffic site. Nevertheless, I wish to make one thing absolutely clear.

I will not tolerate, not should I have to, name-calling against me. I state my own opinions, often quite pungently, but I simply have no tolerance or time for people (and they seem to be commoner than random among pro-gay Internet posters) who think calling someone a "bigot" or the like, or playing psychiatrist to a stranger on the Internet, is a substitute for argument. Feel free to disagree with me (really). But the punches will stay above the belt. Capice?

It should go without saying that anyone who thinks I myself violate this standard is free to call me on it. And the practice of constantly having to confess to one's own faults and sins gives one thick skin on such matters.


UPDATE: And because one particular person will not take the hint, repeatedly posting comments after I have deleted and told him he is not wanted, I have been forced to introduce comment moderation. I don't ask for much, but I will get it.

Great article from the Alternapress

These were the articles that got me into the debate at Rod's -- one week apart by Julie Lyons, editor of the Dallas Observer. At her publication's blog, the woman who holds the top editorial position at the Village Voice Media's outlet in Dallas outs herself as having struggled with lesbianism and ends her story (even worse) by becoming a Pentecostal Christian who married after being born again. She underwent some kind of spiritual prayer-healing -- she's vague on the matter, and I know nothing of that side of Protestantism, but that won't prevent me from stating with certainty that it probably involved some snake-handling.

It's a brilliant piece, not the least because of the unexpected location of it (and don't think there isn't plenty of vituperation of her in the Observer blog; and elsewhere). The best line in the original piece, in my opinion, is this one:

The evangelical faith loses every bit of its meaning and power when it is separated from love, the eternal principle behind the gospel of Jesus Christ. But this love is not some squishy, infinitely malleable thing that exists apart from truth—the truth revealed in the Bible. It is a love that constrains: from hatred, and from sin.

"Love that constrains"?? How can unconditional acceptance "constrain"; constraint is denial??

To paraphrase the end of a recent George Will column, if you want to understand the real reason for the religiosity of Red America — read that sentence again. And then read the one next to it. And reflect on the differences in referents and the assumptions they both contain and cause. I'll give Lyons herself gets the last word, from the Front Burner blog, turning a favorite phrase of liberals back at them:

Last week when hostile comments starting flowing in to Unfair Park concerning Bible Girl, my husband ... wrote a very eloquent response ... I advised him not to post it, touched as I was by his concern for me. He ultimately made his own decision not to post. I told him this: Don't waste your breath on people who are unwilling to challenge their own prejudices, regardless of what you say and what you've gone through.

Preach it, sister.

"Putting a rein on it"

I read this while at Adoration last night -- for whatever reason, I tend to prefer to read and reflect on spiritual and devotional works than pray (in the "say a Hail Mary" sense). In this excerpt, one of the Church's greatest doctors talks about the appetites ("desires," we'd be more likely to say) and the degree to which we can manage them.

To sum up, this sensual appetite is in fact a rebellious, seditious and subversive subject. We must acknowledge that we cannot conquer it so completely that it will not rise up again, make opposition and assail reason. Yet the will has such strong control over it that, if it wishes, it can put reins on it, shatter its plans and drive it back, since not to consent to its suggestions is enough to drive it back. We cannot prevent concupiscence from conceiving, but we can prevent it from bringing forth and perfecting sin. ... This horde of passions is let stay in our souls, Theotimus, in order to develop our will in spiritual strength and valor.

— St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1 Chapter 3

The Great Unanswered Question for me about God and Topic H is not so much "why did You do this to me?" (or let this happen), but something closer to "why do You keep me in this state." Without touching (for now) questions of theodicy, St. Francis de Sales points to about as good an answer as any. That having in the forefront of your head a specific concupiscence, one that you cannot conquer per se, but only dampen over time by not surrendering to it, makes your will hardier (as fighters train in order to become tougher) while underscoring your dependence on God. If we could overcome concupiscence absolutely, we'd no longer be men, but angels. And since we're not angels, thinking that we are angels is an invitation to prideful disaster, to an antinomian collapse. But this is not to say that becoming tougher doesn't hurt. A lot.

Speaking of frauds...

... there is a new "spiritual adviser" and performer of homosexual marriages, now recently out of the closet herself.

Miss Cleo.

Threat to religious freedom

The New York Times notes that religious conservatives are making a new argument against gay "marriage" -- namely that it's incompatible with religious freedom. Set aside for now the typical NYT bias -- couching the argument in its lead grafs in terms of conservatives trying to drum things up from fear of losing their base, etc. Here is the meat of the argument:

To revive some of the emotions around the issue, several organizers said they were taking up the argument that legal recognition of same-sex marriages would cramp the free expression of religious groups who consider such unions a sin — an idea much discussed at the conference.
“That is an issue that wasn’t around two years ago and one that is absolutely moving to the very forefront,” said the Rev. Donald Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, a conservative Christian broadcaster and advocacy group.
Although that idea may seem far-fetched to many liberal or secular-minded voters, legal scholars across the political spectrum agree that authorizing same-sex marriages could present legal questions for some religious groups. A Roman Catholic group in Massachusetts, for example, recently stopped offering children for adoption rather than provide them to gay couples.
At the Values Voters conference, Mr. Perkins played a preview for an October telecast to Christian broadcasters that dramatized the conflicts in stark terms. He interviewed parents who are suing the town of Lexington, Mass., because its public school assigned their 7-year-old son a book called “King and King,” about two princes who marry.

Amplifying what I wrote below, saying the homosex activists simply want "tolerance" is not true. Nor could it be (I'm not arguing bad faith). Tolerance is only possible for that which society considers "tolerable," and what is "tolerable" cannot be understood apart from some (religious or quasi-religious) notion of the good -- or right and wrong. The judgment that homosexuality is a morally neutral fact or attribute is not compatible with freedom for religions that say it is not, because that judgment of so-called "neutrality" will determine public policy on such matters as, say, assigning books in schools.

I'll note with amusement that the Times sees fit to note that the "idea may seem far-fetched to many liberal or secular-minded voters" -- and then goes on to cite two examples of how "tolerance" for homosexuality impinges on religious freedom (there are many others). Why is that necessary to note? "The idea that Bill Clinton is a cad may seem far fetched to many liberal or secular-minded voters" followed by references to Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey, Gennifer Flowers, etc. Or should I be cynical and suggest that "liberal or secular-minded voters" are blind to events before their eyes because, in their typical narrative, their template of understanding "Christians" are by definition persecutors, rather than persecuted.

Over on Beliefnet

I spent a lot of time at the weekend at Rod Dreher's Crunchy Con blog debating gay "marriage" with religious liberals. Some of the people could actually parse a sentence, though hopelessly trapped inside their own assumptions; others were just drama queens throwing a hissy fit (I provide the link to the combox to prove I am saying nothing behind anyone's back that I didn't say there).

Predictably, it reached the following impasse with the first set. Impasse one from Susan:

So, CM, maybe you need to bow out of this conversation since you aren't willing to think outside your ideological box. People are trying to talk more abstractly and push beyond their own perspectives, but you don't seem to be interested in that.

Impasse two from watsy:

I have no problem with Courage Man or Rod or anyone else having objective truths. But we live in a diverse culture. I want to know why CM and Rod think that they have the right to say that MNW and his spouse should not have the benefits that come with marriage.

There is a certain sense in which these are both true.

Discourse among people with incompatible first principles is pretty jejune -- one is tempted to say pointless. And it IS pointless -- absolutely so -- when one party is so wrapped up in his first principles that he doesn't even see them as disputable (fish not noticing the water and all of that). It is also true that American society is not monolithically Christian, and its government is (and should be) secular.

But where both these commenters go off the rails is the conclusions they draw from these facts (or from the implicit ways they frame these facts), and the errors they make are fairly typical (the reason for my putting them here).

For example, if it be true that I am "unwilling to think outside my ideological box" in saying that "marriage means a man and a woman and so talk of 'gay marriage' is talk of 'four-sided triangles' or 'male pregnancy'," then it is equally true that gay "marriage" advocates are equally "unwilling to think outside their ideological box" by defining marriage as "the union of two persons." Again, you have to have *some* starting point and understanding of definitions. Further, to call me "unwilling to consider abstractions" is, to be polite, batshit crazy. I insist that the gay "marriage" debate is meaningless unless and until we consider what marriage *is.*

Further, why does it follow that if Susan and I¹ cannot have meaningful discourse because our starting assumptions are too incompatible (so far, so good), that (a) the fault is with me -- i.e., I need to be the one who "bows out" of the conversation; and/or (b) only *I* have an ideological box, outside of which I am unwilling to think.

By inviting me to "bow out" Susan (ditto note 1) is indicating a belief that she gets to define the terms in, and the terms of, meaningful discourse. If I speak Spanish and someone else speaks French, it'd be false and self-righteous for me to say that the Francophone needs to "bow out" of the conversation because he doesn't speak the right language. Inability to communicate because of incompatible languages/discourses is always and inevitably a two-way street. Liberals tend not to realize that because they generally think their "language" is that of all rational men. Not realizing that it isn't. Why is Susan's invitation/dismissal more rational than for me to say that she should "bow out" because she is unwilling to think outside her ideological box (which, phenomenologically-speaking, she clearly is not)? Or to overextend the metaphor, on what basis could one assume that Spanish (or French) is the natural language of discourse, the one that sets the terms of the conversation in the first place.

And the pro-gay-'marriage' folks clearly, obviously and repeatedly show their "unwillingness to think outside their ideological box" (or insistence on speaking French) by talking as if, and using constructions that presuppose, it were already uncontroversially and incontrovertibly established that marriage is the union of two persons, rather than the union of a man and a woman. For example, watsy talks about "MNW and his spouse," which is the intellectual equivalent of stealing all four bases. And I'll say it up front -- if marriage is the defined as the union of two persons, rather than a man and a woman, then there really is nothing to discuss. Everything turns on the definition of marriage. But Susan (ditto note 1) said that my definition puts me beyond the pale.

Further, there's a political analog here to the "bow out" exhortation which intellectually-aware Christians never fail to pick up on, and which watsy made quite explicit. As extrapolated from the private sphere of a combox discussion to the body politic, that analog provides an insight on liberals' general psychology -- namely that they assume, usually without even realizing it, that the "public square" belongs to them. That others, including Christians, must participate in it on their terms. But they truly do not realize how deep their unexamined assumptions go or that they reason from principles that they take to be self-evident, but which are not. This was how watsy put it:

I don't know that it's enough to say that "somebody" has to say. I think that the person who can provide the best non-theological reasons one way or the other should get the say. The reason that I think that it should be the best "nontheological" reason is because our civil laws aren't based on the Bible or what a subset of people consider to be sacred.

In one sentence -- why are "non-theological reasons" privileged? I understand why a secularist would think they should be, but what understanding exists that a Christian (or Muslim or Jew or Zoroastrian) might find persuasive?

Yes, it is true that Bible is not the civil code, but one cannot extrapolate from that to the notion that public reason, i.e., what counts as an argument in the public sphere, therefore must be non-religious. Sure, I don't expect a non-Christian to be persuaded by a citation from Romans 1 (or even Catholic Natural Law philosophy). But why is the measure of "public reason" the ability to persuade a non-Christian? Why isn't it just as damning that a Christian will not be persuaded by an citation from Hume (or even an argument that presupposes, implicitly or explicitly, that God doesn't exist)? And if it doesn't matter that "secular" arguments can't persuade Christians, why shouldn't Christians take that as a sign that secularists consider them second-class citizens or second-class intellects?

Yes, it is true that not everybody holds the same things sacred. But everybody considers *some* things sacred. Maybe not in the "place in the monstrance for Adoration" sense of "sacred." But in the general sense of "sacred cow," meaning the that-which-cannot-be-questioned, secularists have just as many as Christians (secularism itself, equality, freedom, identity, one's personal ideology). And so someone's sense of the "sacred" will have to prevail, and there is no independent reason to privilege these secular "gods" over the Christian one. They are every bit as pre-rational and universe-defining.

The error is is assuming that one can go from the legal separation of church and state (an institutional arrangement that Christianity developed a millennium before Jefferson's ancestors were this side of the Atlantic) to the social separation of religion and society. The latter, to put it bluntly, is impossible, absent the formal disenfranchisement of Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. A religious believer has to believe that his religion is true, just as a secularist must believe that secularism ("freedom is good"; "the measure of public reason is to provide secular grounds for something") is really true. So to say that the religious person *has* to bracket his religion but a secular person need not bracket secularism is unvarnished arrogance, an imprisonment inside one's one beliefs so deep it cannot even see itself as imprisoned.

In the earlier quote above, watsy says she has no problem with "Courage Man or Rod ... having objective truths," which completely misses the point about "objective truth." By saying it's something somebody is "having," the speaker always already personalizes² or privatizes the matter, which is not what "objective truth" is. Watsy is presupposing that truth is something internal that one constructs for oneself rather than something external that is discerned -- like saying 2+2=4 (an objective truth, I think we can agree) is a matter of opinion rather than a truth binding upon you, whether you want it to be true or not.

Put that way, it's obvious that there's not much "there" there except "if everyone agreed with me, we'd all agree." Which is somewhat less than persuasive.
------------------------------------------------------
¹ It should go without saying that I use these names simply to designate ideal-types and for convenience's sake, not for the purpose of personalizing matters.
² "Personalizes" in the sense of "turns into a matter of personal opinion"; not "personalizes" in the sense of "making a disagreement into a personal attack" -- "you're a stupid bastard" and all that. As I used the word at the end of note 1

Ex-gay ministries

Eve Tushnet and David Morrison both have written in recent weeks about ex-gay ministries and psychological programs that say they can heal homosexual desires. There is much wisdom in both of what these individuals say. Eve also followed up her NRO piece on her blog here (scroll down to the end of the day for about five posts) here and here.

As for my thoughts, I am a bit of a skeptic about these programs, because they tend to be based on historical-psychological theories for the genesis of homosexuality, and if that's true, then by definition, it can't be undone. You can't unlive your adolescence (you can try to recode it, sure, but I'm not sure wht this would help existentially ... the male body has a mind of its own and it's a hard thing to fool). But I have even less time for the attacks on these ministries, which I think presuppose a descriptively inaccurate understanding of sexuality -- the dominant-hand/eye-color model of something teleologically determined at birth (or so soon in one's pre-sexual conditioning as to make the distinction academic). I posted some of my thoughts at Amy Welborn's last month, and I've adapted my two or three notes into a few more paragraphs that I think stand up without the context of the back-and-forth:

As for the success of these programs, 'successful" sublimation of homosexual desire does not constitute 'becoming heterosexual,' if we understand these terms as ontological categories. But having desire for the opposite sex might constitute success, at least somewhat, and that IS common. What is rare is the complete elimination of homosexual desire -- in other words, therapy produces three sorts of results; all-straight, mixed (i.e., glass half-empty, half-full, howver you wish to slice it), and all-gay (i.e., complete failure). Whether this split is 33-33-33 or 20-40-40 or 5-5-90 is neither here nor there, ontologically. The point is that change is possible. The rigid division of persons into "gay" or "straight" orientations blinds us to this fact.

The problem is that "sexual orientation" (as our society understands and constructs that term) is not "one's essential being." To ask the question in reverse ... can a breeder change his behavior to the point where homosexuality becomes habitual and "normal" for him? Sure. And if he's propagandized sufficiently with the notion that he's now discovered his "true nature," he can develop the "orientation" as much as anyone else.

I agree that people should go into these programs, if at all (I have not) only with their eyes wide open, knowing what the chances of "success" are, and with realistic expectations. All too often, this caveat is undermined both by marketers eager to sell their product, and by the hopes of potential customers who want to be rid of what they see as a scourge (understandably also ... hey, remember that episode of The Brady Bunch where Dad warned eager-beaver pitcher Greg that out of millions of young boys, only one will go up to be a Don Drysdale. And Greg said, "well, I'm gonna be the one." It's like that.)

So yes, I agree that these things often are unsuccessful and shouldn't be oversold. Shame on those who do. I hope you enjoy your money. But the thing is, I don't think the APA/gay activist concern on this subject is disinterested and unideological. The general prevalence of failure or only-partial success doesn't distinguish anti-gay therapy from any other non-drug, non-intrusive (think "A Clockwork Orange") psychological treatment. And keep in mind that only the believing and highly-motivated should even enter such efforts in the first place (which BTW makes the "unscientific" charges ring hollow). If there were a (say) 30 percent success rate, that wouldn't mean 3 of 10 random men on Dupont Circle. But again, this doesn't distinguish anti-gay therapy. No therapy can ever work on someone determined to resist it or who thinks his condition is good.

I ♥ NY again

... though I still ♥ the New York Times.

In an explicable outbreak of sanity, modesty and knowledge of their place in their scheme of government (which is NOT to make substantive moral choices), the New York state Supreme Court refused to impose gay marriage on the state. Money quote, from Cheryl Wetzstein of the Washington Times:

"We hold that the New York Constitution does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same sex," Judge Robert S. Smith said in the 4-2 ruling by the New York State Court of Appeals. "Whether such marriages should be recognized is a question to be addressed by the Legislature."

And ...

"If we were convinced that" state marriage law was "founded on nothing but prejudice ... we would hold it invalid, no matter how long its history," he wrote. But by "limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples, New York is not engaging in sex discrimination."

Reading those quotes practically produced a case of the Pepsi Syndrome on my computer. Since when have judges let legislatures decide moral issues? [/sarcasm] The second quote notes something remarkable -- a judge is acknowledging that the rational basis test is not a license for free-standing moral enquiry on rationality. Or in the words of Gerard Bradley in the matter of Martha Nussbaum's disgraceful lying in the Colorado Amendment 2 case:

Its defenders do not have to show that Finnis (for example) is right and that Nussbaum is wrong. Amendment 2 needs merely a rational basis, not the unequivocal verdict of reason. Its opponents needed to do more than rebut Finnis' account of the classical writers. They needed to show that his account is unreasonable or incompetent-not just debatable or inadequate.

I despise the rational-basis test in US courts because I don't think most people (especially those in some elite clersiy such as the legal profession) have the intellectual humility to realize that others can have rational reasons for disagreeing with them. "If I think X, it's because X is the verdict of reason, so anyone who thinks not-X must be doing so on non-rational grounds" is too common an implicit intellectual template (and actually as common on the natural-law right as the post-modern left) to give anyone the power to invalidate a law on the grounds of "rationality." Unless you actually WANT him (or them) to be dictator(s).

But read the excerpts Judge Smith's opinion, from the International Herald-Tribune. Everything is couched in the conditional (bold-face mine):

First, the Legislature could rationally decide that for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. ... The Legislature could find that this rationale for marriage does not apply with comparable force to same-sex couples. ... The Legislature could rationally believe that it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and a father. ... It is obvious that there are exceptions to this general rule ... but the Legislature could find that the general rule will usually hold. ... In sum, there are rational grounds on which the Legislature could choose to restrict marriage to couples of opposite sex. ... A court should not lightly conclude that everyone ... was irrational, ignorant or bigoted. ...

It's hard for me to overstate how joyful this decision makes me, quite apart from the particulars of gay marriage. A court is realizing that a Legislature could make a certain judgment rationally, without taking that as a license to judge the rationality of that judgment itself. That is, this court understood that value judgments are generally not their call. Gay activists have gotten so used to bypassing all public discussion, debate and persuasion with the cry "BIGOT!!!" that they just sputtered ... "how?" The Human Rights campaign called the decision "archaic" and "rooted in ignorance"; Lambda Legal said it denied that homosexuals "are full citizens of this state"; and in spectacular act of presuming one's own conclusion, the ACLU blustered that "there is simply no good reason" not to have gay marriage.

One quote from the dissent by Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye deserves to be unpacked. From the International Herald-Tribune:

The claim that marriage has always had a single and unalterable meaning is a plain distortion of history. In truth, the common understanding of "marriage" has changed dramatically over the centuries.

This is, as far as it goes, true enough. The common understanding of marriage, who can marry, and why, etc., has indeed changed dramatically in nearly every way conceivable:

Age: Mahatma Gandhi was married as a little boy, before puberty, and this was far from unprecedented in the India of his time, and other cultures where parent-arranged marriages were the norm. Puberty has been generally understood as defining the ability to marry (for obvious reasons), while our current society generally discourages marriage until about the late-20s;

Consanguinity: While the principle is pretty near universal, its application has been very far from that, primarily in matters of cousin marriage. That is, in some societies, one can only marry someone of no known blood relationship at all, while in some others (particularly clan societies) a first cousin or a second cousin is possible, and in some cases even preferred (ditto);

Number: Obviously, polygamy is as old as marriage itself and is approvingly practiced to this very day in some societies, and even in our own among some religious sects, sub rosa. Multiple husband to one wife is rare, but not unheard of. And curiously (or not), AFAIK, the same-sex spouses have never been considered married to each other (there is a great Chinese film called "Raise the Red Lantern" about rivalry among wives;

Dissolubility: Again, whatever Our Lord may have said about "from the beginning, it was not so" divorce or annulment have been available in some or another form in many socieities and religions; in some others, not very easily; and in others, not at all. The social stigma attached to divorce has varied too, with India going all the way and killing widows on the funeral pyre (a practice called suttee);

Love: Marriage hasn't always been understood in romantic terms, and exclusive "love marriage" is a recent development. Most famously, Aristotle argued that the highest form of friendship (one based on character rather than utility or pleasure) was between equals, and thus not possible between men and women, or other superior-inferior groups. Greek men still married because they understood biology, but erotic love was generally thought to be same-sex. Socrates married Xanthippe, but still had his eyes captured by Lysis, Phaedrus and Alcibiades. And there was also Sappho of Lesbos (and yes, that's the derivation);

Dowry/Property: Today's custom that the father of the bride pays for the wedding is a residue of this practice, a way of providing for the bride and an assurance that she came from a good family. Otherwise, it's not generally practiced today in the West, but still is common in India. The reverse practice, called "bride price," is commoner in traditional African and American Indian societies -- it began as a form of the groom showing respect to the bride's father and showing his ability to be a good provider. (Feminists whine about both practices, which just shows how irrational they are.) And in Japan, marriage customs include both practices (sorta) -- the two families exchange a series of symbolic gifts. In our society, not until capitalism gained steam (about the time of Regency England) did marrying for property begin to be considered disgraceful gold-digging (Jane Austen sat on the cusp of the two eras, and this tension is the source of much of her drama);

Matchmaking: Again, our current practice -- the free choice of two autonomous parties -- is quite a recent development. The Church teaching has always been that the bride and groom marry one another, but family influence has waxed and waned considerably. Now, we believe the family has no real input, while at other times, even in our own culture, the family held at least a veto (ditto what I said above about Jane Austen). In other societies, marriages have been arranged outright -- sometimes with the children having a right to refuse, other times not;

Virginity: Generally, knowing another man has "spoiled" a woman (Jane Austen again -- Lydia and Mr. Wickham), but today, we don't think it does. And we consider it suspiciously overpious (if not downright eccentric) for a man to have had no experience before his wedding night.

That was longer than I intended ... but what I'm demonstrating is that I am under no illusions of the kind about which the dissenting New York judge thinks she needs to disabuse the likes of me. That one model of marriage has prevailed in human civilizations, or in our own throughout time, is not true. Correct. In many, many details -- including ones that we now consider (in a loose sense) "sacred" -- marriage is historically conditioned.

And yet ... something still strikes me. Despite all these myriad ways that marriage has differed throughout the 5,000 years of human civilization (I suspect I haven't scratched the surface; I am not an anthropologist), the one notable way it has NEVER differed is the centrality of the male-female union. As I noted above, even in plural marriages, the multiple wives were not married to each other, free to worship Sappho (sometimes they were friends; othertimes rivals; and probably in a few cases, Sappho came upon them). But unless the good judge's point is that any change in the understanding of an institution means the institution has no meaning per se, the fact that an institution has changed in every conceivable way BUT ONE seems to rather suggest that this one thing (male-female) constitutes marriage's essence (this is the classic Aristotelian way of defining, in fact; the unique feature constitutes the essence, distinguishing it from the "accidents," such as [in this case] dowry, number, age, love, etc.). The alternative is simply to say that marriage has no meaning at all, in which case, why not marry an animal, your children, etc.

Nor is this understanding of marriage as essentially male-female the result of ignorance or homophobia. Marriage has been understood as male-female in essence, even in societies with what-we-think-of as a more "tolerant" view of homosexuality. As I mentioned above, pederasty was a common and widely-admired practice among the Greeks [and Romans, to a lesser extent]. In many other primitive societies, rites of passage and periods of testing have involved same-sex sex acts and/or some form of same-sex love (sponsorship, adoption, brotherhood). What is completely unknown in human history (until historically speaking, five minutes ago) is a marriage parallel -- an exclusionary same-sex union that followed the same or parallel customs as opposite-sex unions. (And yes, I know of John Boswell and I also know that his books' account of social approval and gay marriage are incompetent fantasies based on tendentious eisegesis.)

Marriage *means* a man and a woman, so there is no such thing as a homosexual "marriage" (though there is same-sex "love" and same-sex sex acts). It's really that simple.

I ♥ NY

There may be elements of wishful thinking in this New York Times report on a homosexual "marriage" ruling, expected today in New York state supreme court. But as an object lesson in the New York Times' agenda on homosexual issues, how it's barely more than cheerleading for the Human Rights Campaign et al, the article is just this side of unbeatable. You can see the hopeful anticipation seeping through the article in phrases like:

● "[W]hether to permit gay and lesbian marriages in the state" in the story's lead paragraph. Which phrasing presupposes that there is any such thing as a gay and lesbian "marriage" in the first place, something that the state can "permit" (or "ban") as it pleases. The whole case against homosexual marriage is that marriage MEANS a man and a woman and that there 'tain't no such thing as gay marriage, any more than four-sided triangles or male pregnancy (insert Monty Python joke here).

● "The most sweeping would be a clear affirmation of a constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry" in the second paragraph. Which phrasing presupposes that there is such a right, one that needs "affirming" rather than being "created" from whole cloth. And doing so in a "clear" way; clarity always being good you understand (and I doubt the Bowers precedent abberation was ever called "clear" by the NYT). The controlling worldview is that gay marriage is a reality that our bigoted society just needs to acknowledge and be liberated toward.

● The first direct quotation from Stephen Gillers of NYU: "The question is whether they can intellectually do what I think intuitively and emotionally they'd like to do." As a piece of legal prognostication, this is nothing short of a shocking admission (albeit probably true) that what matters is not what the law or precedents say, but what the judges "intuitively and emotionally [would] like to do." The intellectual work -- the legal analysis, in other words; the supposed expertise that earns judges their legitimacy as rather than a super-legislature, deciding value conflicts -- is slave to the wish.

● "[L]awyers noted that the Court of Appeals has a long history of trailblazing, going back to a golden age in the 1920's under Chief Judge Benjamin Cardozo." Which phrasing presupposing that "trailblazing" in matters of legal issues, is something good. Otherwise an era of it wouldn't be called a "golden age," but a "dark age." Can you imagine the 12th century being called "the golden age of religious authority"; if you can't, you see my point.

Does Jesus love porn stars?

The answer to that question has got to be "yes." After all, it's bedrock Christian doctrine, held by all this side of Fred Phelps, that God loves us all as His children and wants us all to be His. Now this is not at all the same thing as "Jesus loves what porn stars do" ... duh. And it doesn't mean that a porn star who loved Jesus would keep being a porn star ... double duh. After all, Our Lord both saved the women caught in adultery and told her "go and sin no more."

This is not advanced exigesis of Von Baltasar in the original German. This is fairly basic Mere Christianity, one would think. But apparently not for some. XXX Church describes itself as the "#1 Christian Porn Site" but it's really a ministry to the porn industry and to those suffering from pornography's effects. Some people don't like that. From the news article:

But some believe there are better ways to attract potential converts.
"Christ would never compromise or stoop to their level. Mary came to him, remember? He didn't go to the whore house using words like sex and porn," said a typical entry in the hate mail section of the XXXchurch website.
"It's nothing but a gimmick to you, an excuse to mingle with the perverts. You talk more about porn than you do Jesus Christ," it said.
Mahon admits his ministry has received mixed reactions in the Christian community. "When we first started this thing four years ago, some people looked at us and thought we were working for the devil," Mahon said.
The young ministers also had trouble finding a publisher for their porn-fighting Bible. The American Bible Society, one of the oldest Bible publishers in the US, refused to print it.
"Out of a sense of propriety, ABS felt that the wording 'Jesus Loves Porn Stars' was misleading and inappropriate for a New Testament cover," the company said in April.

I can understand a certain "not my style" reaction to the gaudy New Testament covers, the free translation style, the nonobservance of certain forms of social piety, including such deliberately provocative phrasings as "#1 Christian porn site." There's an instant knee-jerk backlash among some Christians, understandable to a degree and borne of one too many guitar Masses or visits from "Bishop" Spong, to anything that looks too modern, not that old-time religion. (But c'mon ... Christ would never use the word "sex"; and coming from someone who does feel comfortable using the word "whore.")

But I think what many current Christians, especially those who do not or have not struggled with ... ahem ... sexual compulsion, do not realize is what "reaching people where they are" means. Excessive surface piety and a condemnatory attitude (in this day and age of socially-approved libertinism, at least) only pushes away. David Morrison once criticized a right-wing Catholic columnist on the issue of same-sex-attracted priests, saying that her heresies and attitude and arguments were, effectively if not intentionally, counter-witness. Here's his description of the mental dynamic of a proud sexual sinner in his comment fields.

Father before, and even after, I came to belief in Christ I used to have a little box in my mind into which I put "Christians" and attitudes I understood to be "Christian." While the little box would not have provided me the sufficient argument to intellectually defend eschewing Christ, it was enough of a disincentive to keep the question from arising. That is what I think this sort of thing does, just like [Fred] Phelps' signs, they put one more brake on, one more brick in the barricade.

It would be one thing if there were any porn on the XXXChurch site or links thereto, or if they were pushing bad beliefs. But all that is at the site is perfectly orthodox in content, there's free anti-porn software for downloading. Yeah, there's a flambuoyant or impudent style to it all. But this site's critics cannot get blinded by such inessentials, the things on which that modernist heretic St. Augustine said there should be liberty. And y'know what ... whatever self-promoting streak Mahon and Gross have (and they clearly have one) ... at least they're there. They're at porn conventions, trying to minister to those most in need of Him and those whom I (and millions of other Christians obviously) have helped corrupt through my own sin. And ask yourself honestly ... if you're far-gone enough to be degrading yourself for money, on film and tape for all the world to see forever -- is the title "Jesus loves porn stars" make you more or less likely to open a book than "Porn stars are evil."

I will never understand gay ideology ...

Here is the newly-elected head priestess of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, from a CNN interview as reported by Reuters (scroll to second page):

Asked how she reconciled her position on homosexuality with specific passages in the Bible declaring sexual relations between men an abomination, Jefferts Schori said the Bible was written in a very different historical context by people asking different questions.
"The Bible has a great deal to teach us about how to live as human beings. The Bible does not have so much to teach us about what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear -- there are rules in the Bible about those that we don't observe today," she said.
"The Bible tells us how to treat other human beings and that is certainly the great message of Jesus to include the unincluded."

OK ... let's parse this. The Bible has a lot to say about the meaning of life, but nothing about diet and dress. Fair enough, in itself (I'm Catholic, not a fundamentalist; I can hardly deny that statement, as far as it goes).

So what then, must the bishop be saying about homosexuality? Presumably, to make her categories fit her analogy, it would have to be that homosexuality fits into the diet-and-dress template, and not meaning-of-life issues (like ethnic diversity, say). Diet and dress are matters of indifference, of accident. Or at most, a temporally-defined matter -- prohibitions that might have been valid at one time but not now. "Don't eat shellfish" was right in ancient times, but made obsolete by refrigeration, Saran Wrap, Tupperware, etc. If sexuality, or the sex of one's beloved, truly is a "meaning of life" matter, then what the Bible has to say about it presumably would be salient -- and none of it is *good,* whatever ambiguities we might read into Romans 1, "para phusin" and "pathe atimias"). But we don't need to worry about that.

But, but ... if homosexuality is a matter resembling diet and dress -- why is it so important to anybody's life? Why is gay "marriage" so necessary? How could any teaching against its practice be as ornery, inhumane or degrading as we constantly hear the Church's teaching on it described as. "Don't mix cotton and silk" or "don't eat crabcakes" might be stupid or asinine or any other number of unkind adjectives, but they could hardly be called "oppressive" "hateful" "phobic" or the like. I could never see another shrimp scampi in my life and I would hardly be any the worse for it (in fact, my waistline might be the better for it). Nor does the fact I can't sue people for discriminating against the Langostavore Community any great hardship on me.

On the one hand, homosexuality is a matter of indifference; with the other, it's the essence of life, the meaning of existence and all that. When it suits the gay propagandists, as in exigesis of the Old and New Testaments, sexuality is a mere taste preference, with no great import. And when it suits the gay propagandists, as in exigesis of (say) civil-rights laws and the 14th Amendment, sexuality is the immutable WHO I AM, and everything depends on it. Heads I win; tails you lose.

'Romano DID NOT bend my life'

During my absence, I got a couple of e-mails from the subject of a post last month. J. David Enright IV wrote to protest that the New York Post got wrong the details of his threatened lawsuit, with their Page One tabloid head (quoting from memory): "Suit: Priest made me gay."

His initial note to me said:

Tidy thinking and writing. The NY POST being the sensationalistic tabloid it is portrayed me as quite the jackass. NO, Father Romano's molestation did not make me gay and I was adamant about this with the reporter as I noted him attempting to steer me in that direction. Pls. refer to Wayne Besen's blog reportage ... he checked the facts, interviewed me and hopefully the false accusation will dry up.

Here's a link to the post Mr. Enright refers to by homosexual journalist Wayne Besen. The article also contains a link to the initial column Besen wrote, denouncing Mr. Enright.

I responded in part:

But I'd like to know what you're saying the Post got wrong. Are you saying the Post made up the quote from whole cloth? Or are you saying you said something they misconstrued (though it's hard to see what's ambiguous about "I believe that my life would be very different now ... I'd probably be married, living in Greenwich, with four children in boarding school.")
As I interpret the NYPost story, you've merely filed notice to sue, not the actual suit. May I take this note to mean that when the lawsuit proper is filed, it will not cite "making me gay" or anything similar as part of the damages you would be seeking to collect.

He responded, in part, as follows:

I never said that Joseph Romano "made me gay" which would be a ridiculous assertion. Yes, The Post made that up all by themselves. Father Romano introduced me to homosexuality by repeatedly molesting me as a seven- eight-year old child explaining that it was an accepted "rite of passage." He, given his stature, told me that to lie, to cover-up, tell no one, was also part of growing up. He forced a "dirty little secret" upon a child with his sexual molestations. He caused elaborate childhood depression robbing me of an otherwise happy childhood. At such a tender age, sexuality isn't even part of most children's thinking. Whether it had been hetero or homosexual pedophilia, I knew something wasn't quite right - the man damaged my natural happy and curious spirit. He stole a big chunk of my childhood away from me and that is what this suit (in part) is all about. He did BEND my life dramatically by his pathetic, sick deviate child molestation.
Whether I'd be living in Greenwich with a wife and children in school, otherwise, is anyone's guess. The Post swamped me
on this as well. The answer is, who knows what might have been? My issues with Father Romano and the Diocese of Albany (NY) are far larger than what has been suggested by The New York Post, a sensationalistic tabloid where I bet a young reporter could learn plenty - hands on - about yellow journalism.

AND

No, my actual suit will not have any mention of Romano "making me gay." Now that would be preposterous.
Yes, The Post did a hatchet job with my words and intent for the sake of their sensationalistic journalism and ambition to sell newspapers. Thank you for checking Mr. Besen.

As Mr. Besen wrote, the Post stands by its story, and it has not issued any corrections as best I can tell. As long as Mr. Enright's lawsuit will say what he says it will say (or not say, actually) and he says the molestation did not "make me gay," then I withdraw the comments I made about his lawsuit and case, plus the snarky asides.

I do not, however, withdraw the general point that the gay ideologues' insistence on homosexuality's supposed inborn-ness or God-given-ness in on a collision course with reality and even the pro-gay APA itself.