Boy ... the rehab REALLY didn't take

Now Isaiah Washington is saying that "they fired the wrong guy."

In an interview with Houston Chronicle, the fired Gray's Anatomy star said TR Knight should have been canned for stirring up trouble on the set in the hope of creating a public furor and increasing his own profile and salary. According to Washington, Knight did this by lying about whether Washington's first use of the word "faggot" was aimed at him (Knight was not publicly 'out' at the time).

"That's a lie," Washington said. "I used the word during a disagreement with Patrick [Dempsey, another cast member]. I apologized for that. We shook hands and went back to work."

Washington has since elaborated on the point

"[T.R.] has been working on a conspiracy to get Patrick Dempsey and myself off the show for the last year and a half," Washington claims, "using the incident of the so-called F-word... to blackmail the writers into doing his bidding, and it's not working. The producers...all think that something has gone awfully awry with the stability of T.R. Knight."

And in his first Chronicle interview, Washington noted the fact that first got me interested in this story -- that his second use of the new f-word was not a usage but a quotation to the effect of "I never called TR a faggot," which I called "the all-time low in the field of Stupid Public Obeisances to Political Correctness."

Washington says he was shabbily treated since then and is considering a lawsuit.

"My livelihood, my honor and dignity and my name have been so challenged." ...
"I was not fired for making homophobic slurs," he said. "I did everything I said I would do. I offered to go to counseling, to do a public service announcement. I wanted everyone to know I was remorseful."
"I did everything they told me to do, including not saying anything, and then they didn't renew my contract. That's not fair."

Some black homosexuals are taking his side in this "let's you and him fight" story, and Washington also took his case to BET's Keith Boykin. Washington also has been booked on the ultimate show for celebrities with an agenda -- Larry King. July 2. Set your TiVo. Washington's basic case seems to be "yes, I used the word, but not in the ways it's been portrayed, and TR Knight is using this whole thing as a power play." (Not an unprecedented script when charges of racism, homophobia and the only Seven Contemporary Capital Sins.)

As much as I criticized the Caveman for his use of the same word (although there was much, much else in that case and not this one ... a factor not unrelated to my different reaction), my sympathies are still with Washington on this one.

Yeah, Washington shouldn't have used the word "faggot" in the first place at all. But there is a difference between using a slur and calling a person by that -- the former is analogous to bad language like "fuck" or "shit" and should be forgivable with a handshake in most cases; the latter is a personal assault and may require temporal consequences. Particularly since Knight and/or ABC clearly left people with the impression that Washington had called him a faggot, which was apparently not the case. When you gild the lily about how you have been wronged, others are right to take the actual wrong less seriously.

UPDATE: Washington has played the race card, telling Newsweek that ABC fired him because he refused to play the "a mush-mouth Negro" role (though to be perfectly frank, I thought his post-second-comment reaction was rather servile).

"someone heard the booming voice of a black man and got really scared and that was the beginning of the end for me." ...
"My mistake was thinking black people get second chances. I was wrong," ...
His unwillingness to act like a submissive black at work was part of the problem, Washington said.
"Well, it didn't help me on the set that I was a black man who wasn't a mush-mouth Negro walking around with his head in his hands all the time. I didn't speak like I'd just left the plantation and that can be a problem for people sometime," he said.

This smells like it could get REALLY ugly.

Also for Father's Day

A few days ago, one of the lengthiest, densest comments ever received at this blog was posted in re my post earlier this year on my not getting the Prodigal Son parable. The post is now so old that I doubt anybody will read it if I don't attract attention to it. But it also makes for good Father's Day reading.

It's by a "non-Catholic follower of Jesus" (is there such a thing????) named Rick. It goes into some personal history on his part, but RTWT. This is the overall point.

So, the approach to Father's Day from the parable is to point out that the characteristic of the father's love toward his son is to be seen, in representative form, in our love for our children. So, the point is not so much to "honor" Father's as it is to challenge them to see what Fatherhood means from God's perspective.
Also, I want people to experience the depth of God the Father's unconditional, extravagant, even scandalous love for them.

Father's Day

I bought a Father's Day gift for my confessor yesterday. I have to admit now that I genuinely have come to love the man as one does a father and as an icon of God the Father. I know from how he acts with me that my confessor would have been a wonderful father had God not called him to the priesthood. For example, like a father and the Father who is both loving and a disciplinarian, a good priest is a tiger in the pulpit and a pussycat in the confessional. Father is demanding (see anecdote recounted here), but never harder on me than he needs to be (in fact, he has a reputation for wimpy penances). I'm hard enough on myself as it is; I don't think that is unrelated to his manner with me. In fact, only once has he so much as snapped at me; when I was getting ready to walk out of his office in a fit of despair, he said abruptly, "sit down."

In fact, I have to admit that in many respects large and small, I treat him as a father even though he is younger than I. For example, I don't ever call him by his first name, not just in direct address (I always call him "Father" or the more familiar "Padre"), but even in the third person. When I speak of him to other persons, when named at all, he's always "Father" or "Father [Smith]," never "[John]" or "Father [John]."

I also was corresponding earlier today with a different Catholic priest, Father Bryce Sibley of St. Blogs, Louisiana apropos of something else (he has a wonderful and timely sermon available as a CD here on the homosexual agenda and fatherhood). Anyway, I also got to wondering whether Father's Day is actually a lonely day for Catholic priests, given ... well, you know. Shortly before he retired his site, Father Sibley put up this baptism picture that people joked made him look so paternal, in the more-usual sense.

But I wished Father Sibley the following in parting, which I here universalize to all the good Catholic men who answer God's call to spiritual fatherhood:

And Happy Father's Day, Padre. Obviously, I know priests cannot be fathers according to the customary usage of the word, but thanks to you and all the rest of the good men who make the sacrifice you do, in order to be fathers to us all.

Thanks to all of you.

Correspondence

Two bits worth noting in re my Caveman posts. One correspondent wrote to me (reprinted with permission ... I guess I should note that I don't follow the popular Welborn Protocol. Private correspondence is usually private for a reason). I reprint my friend's words after the line breaks. They are all HIS words, including the first person usage:
--------------------------------
A few weeks ago, I was invited to talk about chastity with the students at a local Catholic middle school. Most of the talk was addressed to things like the meaning of Christian marriage and the importance of modesty in dress and speech and things like that--the ABC's of Catholic teaching on the virtue of chastity.

However, the teachers had asked me to briefly address homosexuality, because they said that with all the news coverage these days, the kids heard about it and it would be good to give them at least the basics of the Church's teaching. So, I spent about five minutes explaining that (1) the Catholic Church says that homosexual acts are sinful because they go against God's plan, which is for sexual intimacy to occur within a marriage between a man and a woman; (2) that it is somewhat common for boys and girls to feel a certain amount of confusion about their sexual orientation during puberty, but that the vast majority of those who experience some homosexual feelings in their teen years will end up straight; and (3) that the Church does not condemn people for having homosexual feelings, and that the sort of teasing of homosexuals that often occurs in middle school and high school IS condemned by the Church.

After the lecture, a 7th grad boy came up to me with tears in his eyes, and told how he was constantly teased and beaten up for being a faggot. He had considered suicide because of this. He said he was attracted to girls, but as he talked about the bullying kept coming back to the worry that he might turn out gay--that maybe his fellow students were right. The fact that his peers saw him as a faggot caused him to doubt his sexuality, despite the fact that he was attracted to girls.

Fortunately, in this case, the administration seemed seriously interested in addressing his situation, and hopefully they will help to make the school a more supportive environment for him going forward.

The Church has a great deal of experience with the deceptions of the human heart, and her teaching is neither a mindless acceptance of the spirit of the age nor a mindless reaction against it. When she teaches that homosexual acts are sins, she also teaches that homosexual persons are created in the image of God, and that unjust discrimination against homosexual persons is to be condemned.

But wonder whether the Caveman really cares what the Church says. In this matter, at least, he seems to act like an overgrown 7th grade bully, more interested in yelling about faggots and talking about excretions than in understanding the Church's teaching or putting it into practice.

--------------------------------
The second correspondent posted something in the combox, then wrote me a personal note, which he signed off with what I take to be his personal signature. But it's worth my reprinting as suddenly more relevant in this context (despite what I said above, no permission was sought here, but no sane man can think he has a proprietary or confidentiality right over a great saint's words):

First be purified and then purify others; first allow yourself to be instructed by wisdom and then instruct others; first become light and then enlighten others; first draw close to God and then guide others to him; first be holy yourself and then make others holy.

-- St. Gregory Nazianzen

More with the Cavemen

The Catholic Caveman defends himself from my post a couple of days ago, accusing him of "counterproductive homophobia (yes, there is such a thing)," which has the effect of being objective counterwitness and of making the Church's task more difficult.

He posted in my combox down below and on his own site. To the first instance:

Allow me to remind you that the pic was chosen at random, to signify "The *I Hate The Caveman* Fairy". The fact that the individual was a homosexual, and a marcher at a so-called "Gay Pride" parade are purely coincidental.

C'mon, Cavey. Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. The term "fairy" is the ur-insult aimed at homosexual persons. There is no way that is a coincidence. Pointing out the fact the word "fairy" has other uses too is the worst form of sophistic casuistry in this context, with a gay-pride photo and a deliberately disgust-inducing male body. It's like pointing out that there really are "camel jockeys," or that swimming does give you a "wet back," or that all one's Asian photo-caption references to "chinks" or "nips" are about armor gaps or chilly air.

Nor is it relevant that the Caveman says the fairy is an icon for those who Hate the Cavemen. Indeed, that indeed is the point -- "those who hate us are fairies." With a gay-pride photo. And a reference a couple of days later "to all the Evil Fairies out there," followed by a description of anal sodomy.

His second point defends this usage ...

THIS CAVEMAN will always fight against the soft-headed notion that some guy sloshing his penis around in another man's feces filled colon is "normal."

... with ...

As far as my description of the anal sex act... I used 100% correct medical terms. If anyone happens to find my description disturbing/disgusting... good! That's exactly what I'm after. The homosexual act itself IS disturbing and disgusting.

Bovine scatology. On so many fronts, it's hard to know where to begin.

1. Disgust is neither a legitimate point nor the basis for the Church's teaching against homosexual acts.
2. I could up with just as disgusting language to describe the marital act -- references to menstrual blood and the right locker-room terms, etc.
3. Is it more "normal" for some guy to slosh his penis around in a woman's feces-filled colon? If it's just as bad, then the complaint is with anal sex, not homosexuality. If it isn't, then what does "feces" have to do with it.
4. Is it therefore "normal" for some guy to slosh his penis around in another man's colon if it's not feces-filled? In other words, is there some point here other than 'the bottom should have the good manners to have an enema done first'? (Ironically, this view merely reinforces the lie that gay groups tell about the Levitical condemnation of homosexual acts being about ritual purity and cleanliness.)
5. Is it more "normal" for some guy to slosh his penis around in another man's non-feces-filled mouth or just whack each other off? If the feces is the point, it would seem so. And they are far more common acts than anal sodomy, at least in my experience.
6. What is there wrong with lesbianism, then?

Yes, my points 2-6 are dumb arguments standing alone and do not legitimate homosexual acts or the gay lifestyle. But they make eminent sense as rebuttals at the same dumb level to the dumb argument being made in this instance.

As for the post at his site, I'm really not sure what the point is. Does he think I have anything but contempt for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? Does he think I believe people should tattoo the word "faggot" on their shoulder? Well ... I hope not, because Cavey would be sadly misreading me. Do many practicing homosexuals do disgusting things, including acts of public exhibitionism, that demean both the Church and themselves? Absolutely.

But what does, or could, any of that have to do, other than "tu quoque," with the rightness of one's own conduct, including the deliberate inflaming of disgust and the use of demeaning language? I didn't do a thorough search of the site, else I would have mentioned this:

Marine General Tells Truth - Queers Throw Hissy Fit
Panties in a wad... film at 11. ...
he knew darn good and well that he'd have to apologize. Why? Because of so damn many queers in congress. ...
The bottom line is that Gen Pace did get his point across, even if it did piss off the homos.

If there's a point here other than "arguing by disgusting photo," I'm at a loss to see what it could be. The nearest I can hypothesize would be that somehow there is no such thing as "homophobia" and/or that "homotaedet" is good. I would be the first to acknowledge that the former term in the hands of the homosex activists is a mere term of politically-based abuse, a meaningless devil-word, a scare-term without real content. (Believe me, Cavey, I am a homophobe by the standards of any of these people.)

But I used a very deliberate term: "counterproductive homophobia," which is a real thing, just as "unjust discrimination" doesn't lose its meaning because of all the mewling antics surrounding "discrimination" from the NAACP, NOW, HRC, La Raza, etc.

It's "an aversion to homosexuals that turns them away from God." Or perhaps more realistically in the current climate: "... and/or rationalizes and confirms them in their having turned against God." What many "on the right" of the Church do not seem to grasp or are proud of not grasping is that there is such a thing as dislike for homosexual persons that turns us off (yes, I use the first-person-plural here ... that was my whole initial point), that turns us off of Christians as haters and/or off of Church teachings as a mere rationalization.

I quoted two of my Courage brothers extensively and referred to my own gut revulsion to the Cavemen's personae, which I think is objective counter-witness. Keep in mind who we are. Now imagine how active homosexuals read the words of the Cavemen.

For example, yesterday on Andrew Sullivan's site, he repeats the following lie that he told Jebbie-run America magazine 14 years ago.

"(The Roman Catholic Church) defines Gay people by a sexual act in a way it never defines heterosexual people..."

Now, that is simply not true, but it is a common trope among homosex activists. In fact Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, that noted liberal squish, said exactly the opposite in 1986.

What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. ...

The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation. Every one living on the face of the earth has personal problems and difficulties, but challenges to growth, strengths, talents and gifts as well. Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a "heterosexual" or a "homosexual" and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life.

Saying the Church reduces homosexual persons to a sex act is completely and totally false. In fact, the Church doesn't even consider any person defined by "sexual orientation," much less by a sexual act. But that is exactly what the Cavemen does in his leering descriptions. Talk about penises sloshing around in feces is enabling and validating Sullivan's misperception and giving public currency to his lie. Now, it is probably true that the particular case of Sullivan, the individual man, is a very far-gone case. But it nevertheless so, as David, Ron and myself point out from our own experience, that "homosexual person turned away from the Church by being demeaned by Christians" is not an empty set. This is exactly why the Church, in its wisdom, condemns demeaning homosexual persons. Again from the modernist heretic Cardinal Ratzinger:

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.

I see I've already written way more than I intended when I sat down to this post. Appearances aside, I really don't want either (1) a perpetual blog war with the Cavemen, whom I often do enjoy as very funny; or (2) to come across as a humorless PC scold. I just want he and others like him, those who think that "faggot," "fairy" and graphic descriptions of anal sex constitute some manly display of orthodoxy, that they think about how the Truth is not only what we say, but how we say it. Assuming no major escalation or position-shift from Cavey, this will constitute *my* last word on the subject, which he is welcome to have overall.

I may have a lawsuit

The Pentagon last week acknowledged planning to build a "gay bomb." Here is a PDF file of the contracting document itself.

Capability Sought and Uses to Which It Could Be Put
a. Chemicals that could be sprayed onto enemy positions or onto infiltration routes used by enemy forces. Three classes of chemical weapon are proposed ...
(3) Category #3: Chemicals that effect human behavior so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely effected. One distasteful but completely nonlethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical caused homosexual behavior ...

I *knew* it. THAT'S what happened.

I must have been downwind from the tests, like with the 50s A-bomb tests with the Bikini Islanders and the GI guinea pigs. It just so happens that 1994, the year of the funding, was the year I first committed a sexual sin. Coincidence? I think not. I think I need some compensation for the years of trauma the Military-Industrial Complex imposed on me.

I should note though, that I do not have halitosis.

Chastity prayer

Although I can't honestly call myself an intellectual fan of Thomism, I keep on my keyring at all times (in fact it can't easily come off, it's so small) a medallion with a cast image of St. Thomas Aquinas on one side and the words "Pray for us" on the other (as I say, it's very small). I don't even remember where I got it, now that I think about it, though I was able to find this image of the same one at eBay.

Anyway, St. Thomas had a famous chastity-preservation story that ends with angels protecting him for life. There's a specific prayer for chastity, that's attributed to the Angelic Doctor, so-called because he observed chastity as if he were an angel. Here it is:

Dearest Jesus!
I know well that every perfect gift, and above all others that of chastity, depends upon the most powerful assistance of your providence, and that without you a creature can do nothing.
Therefore, I pray that you defend, with your grace, the gift of chastity and purity in my soul as well as my body. And if I have ever received through my senses any impression that could stain my chastity and purity, I ask you, who are the supreme Lord of all my powers, to take it from me, so that I may with a clean heart advance in your love and service, offering myself chaste all the days of my life on the most pure altar of your divinity.
Amen.

Christian shame

I criticize the homosex activists at this site a lot. But it does no disservice to the truth to note that I do react to some Christians in exactly the way they do, and so in that minor and temporary sense, some solidarity exists.

My newly-blogging friend David Morrison, a former gay activist, has said that whatever might be said about homosexuality, he knows that gay activists are made, not born (I can't find it on his site, so I may be recounting personal conversation).

How Christians act matters, and if Fred Phelps represents counterproductive homophobia (yes, there is in fact such a thing) at the level of being a virtual parody, other Christians do not. Another Courage friend, Ron Belgau, wrote here:

Under ordinary circumstances, I feel almost no identification with gay culture. But let me spend 15 minutes listening to various conservative voices speak their bit about the “gay agenda,” and I start thinking all sorts of defensive thoughts about “my people.” (Incidentally–and perhaps somewhat ironically–ex-gays and reparative therapists doing their “gay identity is evil” schtick have this effect on me in spades. Joseph Nicolosi does a better job of making me feel identified with the gay community than anybody associated with HRC, NGLTF, or any other gay pride group could possibly do.)

I've been spending my whole life deliberately not-identifying with homosexuality or gay activists, and for some of the reasons Ron cites at his initial note (it's an autobiographical matter for all, clearly, from the discussion there at DM's and with Eve). But similarly, I must acknowledge that some situations identify me with them and not my fellow Christians, shameful as that is to say.

Last week, I came across a Catholic blog where the author ridiculed the Rainbow Sashers by posting a picture of a fat guy in a fairy costume where the leotard barely started to cover his butt. I issued a mild protest, realizing I was a stranger at this site. A couple of days later, the author wrote:

To the Evil Fairies out there, know this... I don't care how long you people perpetrate The Big Lie. THIS CAVEMAN will always fight against the soft-headed notion that some guy sloshing his penis around in another man's feces filled colon is "normal."

And then in the same combox, when I noted that the case being cited actually pitted two of the left's favorite victim groups against each other ("let's you and him fight"), an Orthodox admirer responded:

feminazis vs. faggots. BWA HA HA HA!!!!

Tone is a very difficult thing to convey; different people have different blogging styles, blog premises and personal "voices"; there's the strangers-vs.-friends distinction; I detest linguistic protests from people with no sense of (toilet) humor; and I realize that there is a big element of exaggeration in the Cavemen's personae, which is largely comic, and is part of the fun (this, for example, is brilliant as is this).

But with all that, the words "faggot" and "fairy," the description of anal sex, the picture -- they produce an involuntary reflex in me, which I might as well call "feeling gay" (undoubtedly not le mot juste, but it isn't coming to me). Ron calls them "defensive thoughts about 'my people'." David and Ron had a kerfuffle with New Oxford Review a couple of years ago, where David made the point about how important it is for Christians to act toward homosexual persons:

When I self identified as a gay activist, if the only Christians with whom I had come into contact had been those who took the advice of the New Oxford Review as to how to treat me, I would still likely self identify as a gay activist today and remain dead in my sin.

and

I used to believe that Christians would treat me…well, much as the New Oxford Review appears to believe they should have.
I had a little box of prejudices in which I put “Christians.” Christians, I believed, hated and feared me. Christians would not want to have anything to do with me. Christians believed I could not be trusted with their children.
Essentially, I believed Christians were far more interested creating an icon of homosexuality at which they could throw insults or darts, than they would be in me as a human person ...

God knows I understand how satisfying name-calling can be, particularly vis those whom one already has "written off." But whenever I see Christians say the kinds of things about homosexual persons that the Cavemen do, my gut clenches. And I realize if that's MY reaction ... how much more difficult does that make saving the souls of those not already in the Barque.

Gay tolerance updates

I could blog about this subject forever. I don't see how any sane human being can any longer deny that the homosex-activist movement is about forcing all of society -- institutions and persons -- to believe, in speech, thought and action that homosexual acts are good. Here are two more examples of what we have done and what we have failed to do.

1. In Britain, the sexual-orientation regulations that I blogged about a couple of months ago and attendant anti-bullying rules are being used to argue for taking away from the Church the right to run schools. This report makes it clear that the preliminary steps in this direction are already happening. (HT: Ed Watch Int'l.)

The status quo (today):

Education Secretary Alan Johnson told gay activists that the government is preparing guidelines for schools to address what was identified in the report as “faith-based” homophobic bullying. At a meeting with Stonewall, the gay lobby group that brought about the notorious Sexual Orientation Regulations passed earlier this year, Johnson told activists that he hopes to make a presentation at the group’s upcoming conference in July. ...
“Whatever the setting,” [Jim Knight, Minister of State for Schools] said, “whatever the ethos, whoever the external partner to a school might be, school might be, if they have got one, be it the Catholic Church or anybody else. We should not tolerate bullying in any from, we should not tolerate people not respecting the difference that people have and I think that applies to homophobic bullying.”

The avant-garde (tomorrow):

The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) says, "Such is the level of homophobia in the Catholic Church that its schools should be taken from it and returned to the community sector."
GALHA's secretary George Broadhead said, "We've seen homophobia in Catholic circles rising at a terrifying rate over the past few months. The Pope is almost hysterical on the topic and the British Catholic hierarchy is constantly agitating to retard gay rights. What chance have gay pupils got in schools which are run by an organisation that hates them?"
"For the sake of these children and for the community at large which should be protected from the promotion of bigotry in schools, the Catholic Church should be stripped of its educational establishments."

2. On this side of the pond, a case is being appealed to the Supreme Court to challenge Oakland's discriminatory treatment of gay speech and Christian speech. Oakland gives a gay city employees group access to the city's e-mail, for internal spamming and blitzing.

When some Christians asked whether an announcement of "Coming Out Day" was city business, a city councilman said that was badthought: a "celebration of the gay/lesbian culture and movement" was part of the city's role to "celebrate diversity." But as Camille Paglia has long pointed out, Diversitymongers pick and choose their diversity as snobbishly as a Proust duchess.

When Christian employees posted an introductory flier on the employee bulletin board, a lesbian worker complained to the city attorney's office that the flier made her feel "targeted" and "excluded," according to a deposition. The flier was removed by a supervisor because it violated the city's anti-discrimination rules. What did it say?

"Preserve Our Workplace With Integrity: Good News Employee Association is a forum for people of faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day." It said it opposed "all views which seek to redefine the natural family and marriage," which it defined as "a union of a man and a woman, according to California state law."

The Christians were told they could post bulletin boards that did not have "verbiage that could be offensive to gay people." But that's a Catch-22 standard because, as the lesbian co-worker indicated, the homosex practitioners and activists have made it abundantly clear that they consider any criticism of the gay lifestyle or their movement to be offensive and bigoted. It's what's known in First Amendment law as "the heckler's veto," and submitting to it not only denies the "heckled" party's free-speech, but incentivizes "heckling" and thus inevitably produces more "heckling" -- in this case, "offense-taking" by the actively-homosexual, plus the inevitable retaliation, chill and teaching effect on other groups, cf. "Islamophobia."

Hence today's continuous narrowing of free speech and assault on the free exercise of religion.

Some blog business

First of all, my friend David Morrison is back to daily blogging, no doubt jealous of my expanding readership. Last time I met him, I teased him about his losing so much weight. "There's so much less of you to love," I complained.

As long as he stays away from discussions of The Document, we'll be just fine. Oh ... and neither of us was at Washington's annual Celebration of Sodomy Gay Pride Parade. At least I know *I* wasn't.
------------------------------
Second, one of my Courage brothers read my recent posts about Tammy Faye Messner, whom he as a North Carolina native likes as much as I do. He sent me this link to an interview she gave Entertainment Tonight (there's more of it here).

"When they said there's nothing more we can do, for just about a minute I felt sorry for myself, had my little pity party. Then I said, 'I've got somebody bigger than the doctors, I know the Lord, Jesus Christ, and he can do something for it.' He's the only one that can, and so I just trust Him every day."

It'll be a sad day on Earth when she dies and a happy one in Heaven when she fully sees the Lord she loves at last.

Is heresy even a crime¹ any more?

What would the homosex-advocacy group Dignity have to do to have itself declared anathema, its members excommunicated and its status ended in every Catholic diocese that acknowledges it?

It looks as if Dignity is trying to be declared officially heretical, a la the Masons, the Episcopal Church or the Communist Party. The forthright statements that Church teaching on morals is wrong, plus the annual Rainbow Sash ritual -- they apparently will not be enough, so why not try to outdo oneself? Push the envelope as it were.

And so the New York chapter of this particular Sin Lobby will have its Gay Pride² "Mass" in a couple of weeks presided over by a "Priestess" (HTs: Curt Jester and Dom).

Dignity/NY, the LGBT Catholic group, will have a woman preside over its Gay Pride Mass for the first time on June 23 at 7:30 p.m. at the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South. She is the Reverend Victoria Rue, a Roman Catholic womanpriest who was ordained by three Roman Catholic womenbishops in 2005.

I guess if they're gonna have pretend-Catholics attending a pretend-Mass, you may as well have a pretend-priestess. There is simply nothing to discuss here, on a teaching that has been constant for its whole history and reiterated as not even open to debate, all appearances and insistence to the contrary, just last decade by the Roman Pontiff himself (i.e., just last week, historically speaking). Women cannot be ordained, it's simply impossible. There's no discussion to be had, and if you think there is, your conscience has been ill-formed. It's backed up by this piece of intellectual lint:

"If we believe as Jesus did that all peoples are coequally created in the image of God, then let's stop the nonsense and get on with living this truth with justice for all."

"Coequal" doesn't mean identical. And where did the Lord in fact, *say* that? I don't think the word "coequal" or anything that can plausibly be translated thus even occurs in the New Testament? This is in some ways a good thing. Dignity is crossing yet another line, and maybe this will marginalize them further.

I also love the part from the Dignity USA FAQ on conscience that Jeff quotes:

Neither Scripture nor Tradition nor natural law theory nor human science nor personal experience convincingly supports official Catholic teaching about the immorality of homogenital acts. Accordingly, and after much soul-searching, many gay and lesbian Catholics have formed consciences that differ from official Church teaching and have entered into homosexual relationships. In this respect they are exactly like the many married Catholic couples who cannot accept the official teaching on contraception.

Of course they like to quote from Church documents that rightly teach about how those with same-sex attraction are to be treated. So if a Catholic went against Church teaching and decided his conscience allowed him to treat homosexuals as an "object of violent malice in speech or in action." I doubt they would consider this a valid following of conscience that "differ from official Church teaching." The following of a conscience formed outside of the Church if it proves anything, proves too much.

Exactly. In my experience, the very people who insist that the Church doesn't teach X definitively when X doesn't suit their loins become fire-breathing fundamentalists that the Church teaches Y definitively when Y suits them. Remember when I joked about the Feast of St. Russell Henderson or the prayers for the canonization of Venerable Aaron McKinney? That was awesome. These deeply devout men were validly following their conscience, despite its differing from official Church teaching. I bless it probalistically so in the name of the Parent, the Sibling and the Holy Sex. Amen.³

Moreover, when I read this ...

Neither Scripture nor Tradition nor natural law theory nor human science nor personal experience convincingly supports official Catholic teaching about the immorality of homogenital acts.

... I wonder what exactly, in principle, could ever constitute "convincing support." But the first three overwhelmingly do support Church teaching.

There's something desperate about the bland way that Scriptural passages are unconvincingly minimized or squirmed around; it reads like a bad lawyer's brief valiantly trying to support the pre-determined conclusion. I really do recommend the sections trying to argue away Tradition and Natural Law, which have enormous entertainment value. The first cites the tendentiously selective Boswell as an authority while neither citing nor addressing a single Magisterial document, referring only the secular-law practices. The latter gives you the expectation that it'll address Natural Law reasoning, but then simply says it's "inconclusive" as if any philosophy ever has been to people who don't accept it.

Nevertheless, I would agree that "human science" doesn't, but that's simply because morals and philosophical anthropology are not that field's competence (a thermometer would hardly support a teaching on the color of the sky, and that's about as relevant). And it should hardly be surprising if "personal experience" in the current social environment of ill-formation, secularization, poor-catechization, dissent-worship, faithlessness, authority-phobia and self-worshipping individualism should not support Church teaching. In fact, Dignity's very existence makes the poorly-formed conscience a self-fulfilling prophecy, by surrounding dissenters with others like themselves, thus affirming each other in their "personal experience." As always, heresy eventually becomes its own justification.
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¹ By this, I of course mean a crime under Church law. That it has to be a canon-law crime seems as axiomatic to me as it not being a secular crime.
² What can you say about a lifestyle that is defined by one of the 7 Deadly Sins (Lust) and still finds the moral space to take one of the others (Pride) as its quasi-official slogan?
³ Moral personalism and the denial of the objective nature of morality should never be taken seriously. Nobody believes it except in the breach against some specific moral teaching he himself doesn't hold.

I guess the rehab didn't take

Or maybe there weren't enough ounces in that particular pound of flesh.

Isaiah Washington was fired from Gray's Anatomy last week, and not because of professional or monetary reasons, but because of his purported words about gay co-star TR Knight, according to this report in the New York Times:

The executive, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak for the production, said that the decision was tied to Mr. Washington’s comments regarding his fellow cast member, T.R. Knight.

Washington understandably wasn't happy, and went all Howard Beale on us.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

Remember when stars would have to hide their homosexuality or have fake marriages? And how homosexuals complain today that this was unjust. Apparently it wasn't about justice or the freedom to be as one wishes, but about turning the tables. Now "homophobia" (even dubiously-charged "homophobia," in this case) is the new "homosexuality."

Gay-rights advocacy is reaching its logical conclusion -- everybody must accept that homosexuality is moral and good, upon penalty of every consequence the homosex activists and their enablers can inflict. It's not, and in the long run never could be, about "tolerance."

"Tolerance is not enough" Update

You're an evangelical Christian with ties to Focus on the Family. You establish a dating service (online, as it happens, but that's hardly essential) with the goal of matching people according to marriage-compatibility rather hookup-hotness.

Even your business is not safe from the gay-rights busybodies. You must conform. EHarmony is being sued for not providing a homosexual service.

The popular online dating service eHarmony was sued on Thursday for refusing to offer its services to gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
A lawsuit alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Linda Carlson, who was denied access to eHarmony because she is gay.
Lawyers bringing the action said they believed it was the first lawsuit of its kind against eHarmony, which has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a "men seeking men" or "women seeking women" option.

There's some slippery language in there. Miss Carlson was not denied access to eHarmony because she is gay. EHarmony simply doesn't provide the service she wants, which is her problem and doesn't give her the right to demand a different service. You might as well go to a Porsche dealer and demand a Subaru Outback; to a rec football league and demand to play softball. Indeed there's one chunk of material that sets off my bovine-scatology meter:

According to the lawsuit, Carlson, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, tried to use the site's dating services in February 2007. When she was denied access, she wrote to eHarmony saying that its anti-gay policy was discriminatory under California law but the company refused to change it.

I wonder what "tried to use the site's dating service ... [but] was denied access" means -- exactly. I smell an activist looking for a cause. Just right now, I went to eHarmony to see if I could use their service, which involves filling out forms to determine personality and interests, and get matches. And despite my SSA, which is of a degree that the thought of sex with a woman is an active turnoff, I could answer the entire questionnaire truthfully.¹ Only 2 questions among the 200 or so could be seen as problems for person like myself: "I greatly appreciate the physical beauty of the opposite sex" and "I like to look at people of the opposite sex." But in both cases, I just answered "very uninterested" (or something to that effect ... I forget exactly how the choices were worded), which could just as easily have meant I was past the age of interest in sex and wanted a Josephite match, for companionship.

EHarmony makes the sensible point that same-sex unions are different and they cannot offer the service.

"The research that eHarmony has developed, through years of research, to match couples has been based on traits and personality patterns of successful heterosexual marriages," it said in a statement.
"Nothing precludes us from providing same-sex matching in the future. It's just not a service we offer now based upon the research we have conducted," eHarmony added.

Of course, the causemongering shyster lawyer says upfront that this lawsuit is entirely about social engineering and "making a statement.

Carlson's lawyer Todd Schneider said the lawsuit was "about changing the landscape and making a statement out there that gay people, just like heterosexuals, have the right and desire to meet other people with whom they can fall in love."

Rocky Mountain oysters. Yes, people have a right and desire to meet others and fall in love -- but y'know, nobody is prevented from doing that now. And God also created bars, clubs, discos, workplaces, the street, Craig's List and gay.com. You have a right to meet others, but not the right to use someone else's facility to help you. No ... this lawsuit is purely a spiteful effort to force a business to provide a service and punish them for not doing so in the past. Stamping out diversity, and making every dating service provide the same range of services.

This is what the gay-rights movement of today is all about and why it should be absolutely resisted and discredited at every opportunity. It's not about social tolerance or having the right to be let alone in their private lives (even the homophobic CM, at least, treasures that and would not want to return to the bad-old pre-Stonewall days).

When a homosex advocate says he has no intention of persecuting or punishing people who morally object to homosexuality, or making you approve of his behavior, he is either lying or being disingenuous. "Gay rights" today is all about forcing other people to conform their private behavior to what homosexuals think it ought to be and what will benefit them. In other words, it has become the authoritarian.
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¹ Actually, I did get dissed. I got the following message, which they say they give out frequently:

eHarmony is based upon a complex matching system developed through extensive research with married couples. One of the requirements for successful matching is that participants fall within certain defined profiles. If we find that we will not be able to match a user using these profiles, we feel it is only fair to inform them early in the process.
We are so convinced of the importance of creating compatible matches to help people establish happy, lasting relationships that we sometimes choose not to provide service rather than risk an uncertain match.
Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching model could not accurately predict with whom you would be best matched. This occurs for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply will not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand, and we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time.

So the chicks of Washington didn't even get their hopes falsely raised. But I knew any dating service would have trouble matching me based on my moods -- depression and frequent melancholia, swinging into bouts of recklessness.

Match Game 07

I noticed on the blog of Sean Bugg (editor of one of Washington's gay weeklies but eminently reasonable and worth reading)¹, that Charles Nelson Reilly died a few days ago. And when he showed up at the gates, God said, "why are you still carrying your (blank)?"

Sorry ... I couldn't resist that, even in death. Seeing Charles and Brett bicker at one another, while Gene, Richard and Fannie were playing lewd instigator was one of the highlights of my youth. I don't know how much older Mr. Bugg is than I (yob: 1966), but I loved game shows too and it never registered on me that Charles or Paul Lynde were "big, flaming homosexuals," Probably because the very concept of homosexuality was alien. I just took them to be funny guys who acted a bit sissy as part of their "act" or "role."

A couple of times, I also saw, in reruns obviously, Charles Nelson Reilly on the old "What's My Line?" in black-and-white with John Charles Daly in the early/mid-60s when CNR was still best known as a Tony-winning Broadway actor. And unfortunately, he was awful. He has all his what Mr. Bugg called "the big flaming" mannerisms -- but is holding them back, wearing the same dinner suit as Bennet Cerf, and desperately and unsuccessfully trying to fit into a show that is so "straight" (unfortunate word choice in this context, but unavoidable). There's probably a lot of symbolic metaphor in there. Understand, I love "What's My Line?" -- it's the greatest game show of its era. But Charles Nelson Reilly on it ... ugh ... looks like Nixon trying to disco.

RIP, Charles.
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¹ For example, while Mr. Bugg had a very different reaction than I to the gay march in Moscow, natch, the post also indicates a real sense of perspective about anti-gay sentiment in this country.

Bad stuff is happening in the US too

DePaul University remains on the cutting edge of societal devolution, hosting the second "Out There" Conference, whose full title is "the Conference of Scholars and Student Affairs Personnel Involved in “LGBTQ” (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer) issues on Catholic Campuses." It's set for October and being organized though DePaul's Department of (what else?) Women’s and Gender Studies (maybe attendance will count as credit for DePaul's LGBTQ Program).

Defending the decision to hold the 2005 conference, Santa Clara University told Catholic News Agency that hosting a two-day long conference “on how to promote opportunities for gays and lesbians at Catholic colleges is the Catholic way to act.” The 2005 conference chose not to highlight Catholic teaching on the intrinsic immorality or medical dangers of homosexual activity or offer assistance to homosexuals to leave their lifestyle.

Why is this "the Catholic way to act"? Particularly since "not ... highlight[ing] Catholic teaching on the intrinsic immorality ... of homosexual activity" has been specifically denounced at the highest levels of the Church as "neither caring nor pastoral." I'm of half-a-mind to submit or rework/update a grad school paper I did on homosexuality just to see if I could get it in.

I noted below the Russian reaction to a gay pride parade. My thoughts are not unalloyed about such tactics obviously. But the Russian Orthodox Church would really know how to handle DePavel Universitetskiya. It was recently faced with a priest performing a homosexual "marriage." First the priest who took a bribe to perform the ceremony was defrocked. Then the church where the ceremony took place, having been defiled, was demolished. Maybe I should join Rod Dreher and swim the Bosporus.

Will Jerry Falwell never die?

I don't mean that question literally, obviously. But will one of the lies about him never rest -- namely that stupid meme about Tinky-Winky, which is now finding its way elsewhere and has the usual suspects sniggering up their sleeves.

A Polish cabinet office official, whose party recently called for laws against the propagation of homosexuality in the schools, said the office of children's rights was investigating "The Teletubbies" and Tinky-Winky. And, sure enough there was even "background matter" on Falwell at the end of this Agence France-Presse article, the top of which read:

Poland's child rights ombudsman said on Monday she was investigating whether "The Teletubbies," the British television show for infants, promotes homosexuality.
"It would be good for a group of psychologists to talk to children about this. We need to examine this. If inappropriate attitudes have been promoted, we need to react," said Ewa Sowinska. ... "I have heard that this could be a hidden homosexual insinuation."

Sowinska later backed off the comments, but not before it was noted in the world press. And set off the predictable reaction in those quarters of the gay blogosphere to notice it were predictable (as were the repetitions of the smear against Falwell)

The late Jerry Falwell would be thrilled to know that his suspicions about the gay leanings of Tinky Winky of Teletubbies fame, are now shared by some concerned Poles. ... A spokesperson for children's rights, Ewa Sowinska, has finally cottoned onto the fact that Tinky Winky is a boy, but horror-of-horrors ... a boy who carries a handbag. Technically you could argue that Tinky Winky is an "it", but such fine distinctions are liable to escape Ms Sowinska.

Oh those wacky Polish children's rights watchers .... always a day behind and a dollar short. Remeber back in 1999 when Jerry Falwell deemed Teletubbie Tinky Winky a homo because he carried a purse (TW is the purple one)? Now Ewa Sowinski [sic] is on the same bandwagon.

Maybe Ewa Sowinska, Poland’s children’s rights watchdog, was tipped off by all the Jerry Falwell eulogies when she announced that she was going to see what exactly was in Tinky Winky’s purse. I’d caution Ms. Sowinska however that if she’s not careful, she may single-handedly revive the whole 1970’s-era genre of Polish jokes, something none of us around here would like to see anytime soon.

If there was one thing I hated reading in all the Falwell obits, it was the snickering references to the Tinky-Winky episode, which has falsified by revisionist repetition of lies worthy of 1984's Ministry of Truth. But Ann Coulter once said that liberals do not realize the problems that Lexis-Nexis poses to their incessant lying.

It is a documentable fact that long before Jerry Falwell breathed his first word about Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubbie was being appropriated as a gay icon, by people who thought that this was a good thing ("teach kids about tolerance, respecting difference, celebrating diversity and all that") or a good leering joke. I will turn you over to La Ann, in her column about Falwell. It doesn't matter who she is, "faggot" and rehab, or anything else. She is citing documented fact for anyone with a Lexis-Nexis account.

Beginning in early 1998, the news was bristling with stories about a children's cartoon PBS was importing from Britain that featured a gay cartoon character, Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubbie with a male voice and a red handbag.
People magazine gleefully reported that Teletubbies was "aimed at Telebabies as young as 1 year. But teenage club kids love the products' kitsch value, and gay men have made the purse-toting Tinky Winky a camp icon."
In the Nexis archives for 1998 alone, there are dozens and dozens of mentions of Tinky Winky being gay — in periodicals such as Newsweek, The Toronto Star, The Washington Post (twice!), The New York Times and Time magazine (also twice).
In its Jan. 8, 1999, issue, USA Today accused The Washington Post of "outing" Tinky Winky, with a "recent Washington Post In/Out list putting T.W. opposite Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche, essentially 'outing' the kids' show character."
Michael Musto of The Village Voice boasted that Tinky Winky was "out and proud," noting that it was "a great message to kids — not only that it's OK to be gay, but the importance of being well accessorized."
All this appeared before Falwell made his first mention of Tinky Winky.
After one year of the mainstream media laughing at having put one over on stupid bourgeois Americans by promoting a gay cartoon character in a TV show for children, when Falwell criticized the cartoon in February 1999, that same mainstream media howled with derision that Falwell thought a cartoon character could be gay.

Too sexy for this march

Didn't we all want to see this ... so bad ... back in the early 90s?

Right Said Fred singer Richard Fairbrass was one the gay-rights marchers attacked in Moscow at the weekend (video is here) and bloodied up by Orthodox and nationalist counterprotesters ("so sexy, it huuuuurts" ... yeah, it really does now). Police reportedly arrested from 20 to 30 gay-rights marchers, and about 10 were hospitalized.

All jokes aside about getting bloodied for making crap records (you're next, Michael Bolton), my response initially was sympathetic toward the pro-gay marchers. But when you read the guts of the news stories, you find it is a bit more complicated.

First of all, the march itself was illegal. They applied for a permit to the mayor of Moscow and he turned them down on the grounds that the march was "satanic." Supposedly, this was a march for the right to march, which is silly legerdemain. The pro-gay marchers were breaking the law. Period. At the very least, the official acts of the arrests and breaking up the parade were entirely legitimate. And big boys know that some rough justice is likely in such cases.

Second, homosexuality is not illegal in Russia. The article I linked to says that "Russia decriminalised homosexuality in 1993 but tolerance is not widespread." Understand that we're not talking about a legally persecuted group, which changes everything in my view. As I implied above, you can break an unjust law for good and proportionate reasons, and legal persecution would be one of them. But that's not what the demonstrators wanted here -- they want an annual parade to celebrate sin and scandalize the nation -- which is not such a good reason. Pride parades are part of the landscape here already. That's regrettable, but it is a fact. But I don't blame the Russians one bit for not wanting their country to go down that road, turning it into a really big and cold San Francisco. (The large number of non-Russian celebrities among the marchers surely is relevant.) And acting to prevent it.

Yellworthy

When I got my Yahoo News Alert the other day, one item from the Irish gay site gcn.ie (warning: potential triggers), by its editor Brian Finnegan, had this excerpt as the teaser:

But the Catholic Church believes that gay people, despite the fact that God made them gay, must be denied love and sex.

I don't know why I lost it as I did. But I let loose with a volley of obscenities at my computer screen. How can a human being be so ill-informed (or mendacious) as to write that while being thought smart enough to get it published (and even edit a publication)? As a sentence, separate from any discussion of the morality of homosexual acts, that is descriptively inaccurate on so many fronts, it's hard to keep score, but it's worth unpacking because Finnegan's mistakes and misconceptions are so widespread.

First of all, there is nary a shred of evidence that "God makes people gay" (even assuming we must use that lingo). So to say "the fact that" is simply false. Oh ... there's some evidence that heredity and/or physical-body structures play a partial role in "making people gay." But if there were no element of choice or environment, then every set of identical twins in the world would be all-gay or all-straight, just as they are all both blue-eyed or brown-eyed or whatever. We know that not to be the case, even in the studies the gay activists trumpet, so anybody who says "God makes people gay"¹ is telling a falsehood.

Even apart from that, it is also not true that the Catholic Church teaches that "God makes people gay. And while that's a logically separate claim from whether He does, it's also a point essential for the very stale contradiction Finnegan thinks he has caught the Church in. In the previous graf, before reaching the "God made" conclusion, he writes, clearly thinking it leads to that conclusion:

There is a big contradiction at the heart of the Vatican’s stance on homosexuality. The Catholic Church believes that being homosexual is not a sin, but engaging in homosexual sex is. In saying that homosexuality itself is not a sin, the Church is telling us that homosexuality is in inherent to humanity, not a chosen sexual orientation or a mental disorder, but something some of us are born with.

Some terminological imprecision aside ("being homosexual") that can bear ugly fruit later, the sentence in blue is fine. On a pass-fail test, in itself, that's a "pass."

But with the red clause, you start to see the train going off the tracks. Original sin is also inherent to humanity (in the sense of "normal" and "universal") but is obviously, well, sin. Finnegan also cannot really mean "homosexuality is inherent to humanity," because almost all of humanity is not gay. He must mean something like "homosexuality is a prevalent, recurring feature in human groups." But that has nothing to do with homosexuality's not being a sin (all sins are prevalent at some level). And it's not being a sin doesn't make it morally-neutral or good; there is the whole category of "natural evil," e.g., diseases and disasters, that this leap elides.

Which brings us to the green clause and by now we are well and truly off the rails. Saying that something is not a sin doesn't mean that something is not a mental disorder, or, as I said, a natural evil, like a disease. In fact, "mental disorder" is one of the commonest categories of "things that make a sin in the ordinary case not a sin," in this case because it robs a person of culpability," like, say, a person with Tourette's cursing.² And while nobody says that "sexual orientation" is chosen, that doesn't speak to our behavior, which is.

By the purple clause, we have the peak of a house of cards built upside-down. In quicksand. To start with, again, the Church does not teach that homosexuality is inborn ... neither in the Catechism (2357: "It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained") nor its teaching documents (e.g., as cited here). Also, there is no way that Finnegan can infer that conclusion from the mere fact of a homosexual orientation's non-sinfulness. Even if homosexuality were, in fact, something as inborn as eye-color, the fact that eye-color isn't a sin is neither the reason it's inborn nor evidence that it's inborn. Liking NASCAR or Univision telenovelas aren't sins (though they should be IMHO), but that fact hardly makes either inborn. Whether a condition is inborn or acquired (how) or chosen is a scientific matter (assuming science be properly understood). Period.

Aside ... I also love how gay-activists have such a narrow and presentist (and thus narcissistic) understanding of Providence that gayness is the only place where it's acknowledged. God doesn't confect the Host, God doesn't issue Commandments, God doesn't establish a Church, God doesn't condemn to Hell, God basically does nothing ... except make people gay.

But believe it or not, that's not the worst of the Literary Crimes of Brian Finnegan. No, he thinks he's proven a contradiction based on this choice bit of nonsense.

the Catholic Church believes that gay people ... must be denied love...

Newt Gingrich once said, "if all I knew about me was what the Mainstream Media reported, I'd hate me too." Same here. If all I knew about the Catholic Church is ignorant burbling flatulence like that column (and its ilk can be found in every issue of every gay publication worldwide) -- I'd hate the Catholic Church too.

Where do gay activists pick up that kind of shit (CQ)? Where does the Church say that gay people must be denied love? Where? The Church does say that people shouldn't engage in same-sex sex. But since Finnegan's next two words, which I ellided, are "and sex" (note the disjunctive), he must recognize at some level that love and sex aren't the same thing. Someone who does recognize this fact hasn't even got the feeble excuse of a sex-obsessed culture that conflates love with fucking. At every Courage meeting, we recite the Five Goals, at least two of which (3 and 4) explicitly acknowledge that homosexual persons need love like anyone else -- though the terms are "fellowship" and "friendship." My confessor has chided me for sometimes thinking and acting as if otherwise, like love were a luxury good. Dare I even mention in this context the Sacraments as instruments of love or the Atonement as an image of love ... nah ... too theologic-mysticistical.

Actually, though, that is the problem with Finnegan and most gay activist types -- they think that life without sex is life without love, which is only tenable if sex is the only form of love. I said recently at Mark Shea's combox that the worst thing the modern homosex movement has done (the sin of sodomy itself long predates Stonewall) is to impoverish our culture's understanding of love by always turning any hint of same-sex love (David and Jonathan, Cosmos and Damian, Batman and Robin, etc.) by seeing same-sex sex everywhere there is same-sex love. Comments like "the Church says gay people must live without love" are simple utter drivel that gay activists and the modern gay-lifestyle practitioner so adore because, lie or not, repeating it convinces themselves and feeds their sense of martyrdom. And convinces them that love without fucking is inconceivable.
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¹ This is a different question, of course, from "are same-sex attractions chosen" and "are same-sex attractions, however caused, reversible," questions to which the answers are far more dicey. But "God makes people gay"? Not even worth discussing.
² I'm not for now endorsing any of these metaphors or ways of looking at same-sex attraction or definitive homosexuality. Merely pointing out that you cannot intellectually make the leaps this writer does.

¡Viva España!

Total coincidence in my Inbox this evening, two items about Spain:

First, a gay bridal shop is going to open in Barcelona next week.

Porrero said gay couples in his shop will be able to buy from a set collection or have a tailor-made suit, all envisioned for their wedding, from daylight to night ceremonies, in the city or at the countryside or even on the beach.

Second, Spain's divorce rate is now the EU's highest.

Three in every four Spanish marriages now end in divorce, the investigation by the Family Policy Institute (IPF), based on Spanish legal records found. ... The country also has one of the world's lowest birthrates.

Move along people, no connection here.

Well, strictly speaking, I guess that's true. There's no reason gay "marriage" in itself should raise the divorce rate. But that's to crudify the notion of causality, to reduce it to nothing more than identifiable isolated cause and identifiable isolated effect, like one of Hume's billiard balls crashing into another. But as an understanding of the organic society, of human behavior, of the self-conscious actor ... that model is worthless.

No, Adam and Steve making the weekend jaunt to Massachusetts (and that is hardly happening any more) is not going to "make" Adam and Eve divorce. Rather, a society that views sex and marriage in a certain way is going to have both gay "marriage" and a high divorce rate, each being the logical consequence of viewing sex as a form of recreation and marriage as a self-regarding lifestyle choice. Said society will be indifferent to Adam and Eve staying together and make it easy as possible for them to split, forget the kids (if any). Said society will not be able to think of any reason why Adam and Steve cannot or should not "marry."

If today's reigning philosophy of sex is a flu germ, then gay "marriage" is merely the runny nose and high divorce is the cough (and so on ... falling birthrates can be the sinus congestion, VD rates the sneezing, etc). Runny noses don't technically cause coughs. But they are both symptoms of the same disease.

Satan's Plan B

... and it's not emergency contraception.

Right now as I type in this post, I should have a man in my apartment, in my bed. Not in the first, moral sense of "should," of course -- in the second, predictive sense. The time and place were set, for right now tonight, and general preferences on the details were agreed on. But I backed out a bit beforehand. Not for any specially heroic reason. I met a Catholic cyberfriend for the first time that afternoon during his Washington visit, and I thoroughly enjoyed his company to the point that I couldn't have faced him the next day as planned if I had gone ahead with my other plans in the interim. But beyond that, backing out was simply the latest manifestation of something very obvious about me -- that I have never been (and probably never will be) able to engage in gay sex with a good conscience; I have backed out of more set-up liaisons than I've gone through with. Both my confessor and stranger-priests in confession have said "thanks be to God" for my chronic cold feet, and I obviously don't disagree.

Why am I saying this? Because I'm determined to make myself write about this and what I need to do (I have no idea where this post will end as I write it), and to do so without getting down about it. Here's the deal as I put it in a message to my confessor a little bit ago:

Satan had the upper hand for a while ... not long enuf to make good on his promises before I let God right things just now. I'm trying not to fall now, not in re self-abuse but the morbid guilt that has been Satan's very successful Plan B (with me) in the past.

Last year, on the Monday after Palm Sunday at Adoration, I came across for the first time St. Josemaria's "Christ Is Passing By" and I read his Palm Sunday sermon (oh wow ... Steeleye Span's recording of "Gaudete" just came up on my basically-all-pop iTunes; I'll put it on "repeat" until I finish), and it was one of the most uplifting things I've ever read. I frantically wrote down whole chunks of it on the back of bank receipts and other scraps of paper I had in my wallet. I bought a copy of the book later. The Palm Sunday sermon was about interior struggle, and the ways we can fall into sin, including one most relevant here -- pride. St. Josemaria says this:

However, a powerful enemy is lying in wait for us, an enemy which counters our desire to incarnate Christ's doctrine in our lives. This enemy is pride, which grows if we do not reach out for the helping and merciful hand of God after each failure and defeat. In that case the soul remains in the shadows, in an unhappy darkness, and thinks it is lost. Its imagination creates all sorts of obstacles which have no basis in fact, which would disappear if it just looked at them with a little humility. Prompted by pride and a wild imagination, the soul sometimes creates painful calvaries for itself. But Christ is not on these calvaries, for joy and peace always accompany our Lord even when the soul is nervous and surrounded by darkness.

When we stumble, as we will, pride produces morbid guilt, what St. Josemaria calls "the painful calvaries." Or at least it does in me. I do not easily want to "reach out for the helping and merciful hand of God," because dammitall, I'm not a wimp. And I never want to be treated as one (for an example of the same character trait in a different context, I once left Adoration in tears, and a man followed me outside and asked if anything was wrong, and I told him "no" and walked away). Getting depressed over every wank is my perverse mental proof of how good I am and how seriously I take things. This is what I mean by referring to my pride as "Satan's Plan B." The physical act of gay sex may be Plan A, but I'm OK at resisting that. Eventually. What I'm not so good at, and thus is the Evil One's fallback, is keeping this stumble in perspective and not succumbing to despair. I've contemplated and acted toward both physical suicide and spiritual suicide (i.e., leaving the Church) at the apparent hopelessness of living a chaste life. And each bout of depression becomes the justification for the next stumble, as needed medication ... which quickly sinks my soul deeper. But St. Josemaria says otherwise:

In this adventure of love we should not be depressed by our falls, not even by serious falls, if we go to God in the sacrament of penance contrite and resolved to improve. A Christian is not a neurotic collector of good behaviour reports. Jesus Christ our Lord was moved as much by Peter's repentance after his fall as by John's innocence and faithfulness. ... Jesus Christ is always waiting for us to return to him; he knows our weakness.

I have no weaknesses as only wimps have weaknesses. What it is, I realize, is that I want to be God, at least the god of myself, since that would make me perfect, omniscient, omnipotent and all the rest. And I have no interest whatever, given my Cartmanesque detestation of hippies, in the all-affirming, all-luvving New Age god. If I'm gonna be god of myself, it'll be a Jonathan Edwards god.

But this time, it will be different. I'm not gonna cry over this one. I'm not going to beat myself up over it. I committed a solicitation. End of story. God doesn't tut-tut at me and rubs his hands at how many more years in purgatory he can impose on me, etc. But He still wants me back (the Steeleye Span song I mentioned above does not have the title "Tristis"). God cares more that I let Him, through my conscience and the providence of my friend's visit, back in time to prevent further and greater wrong. St. Josemaria says this :

I know that the moment we talk about fighting we recall our weakness and we foresee falls and mistakes. God takes this into account. As we walk along it is inevitable that we will raise dust; we are creatures and full of defects. I would almost say that we will always need defects. They are the shadow which shows up the light of God's grace and our resolve to respond to God's kindness. And this chiaroscuro will make us human, humble, understanding and generous.
Let's not deceive ourselves: in our life we will find vigour and victory and depression and defeat. This has always been true of the earthly pilgrimage of Christians, even of those we venerate on the altars. Don't you remember Peter, Augustine, Francis? I have never liked biographies of saints which naively — but also with a lack of sound doctrine — present their deeds as if they had been confirmed in grace from birth. No. The true life stories of christian heroes resemble our own experience: they fought and won; they fought and lost. And then, repentant, they returned to the fray.
We should not be surprised to find ourselves defeated relatively often, usually or even always in things of little importance which we tend to take seriously. If we love God and are humble, if we persevere relentlessly in our struggle, the defeats will never be very important. There will also be abundant victories which bring joy to God's eyes. There is no such thing as failure if you act with a right intention, wanting to fulfill God's will and counting always on his grace and your own nothingness.

My confessor once said to me "we conservatives sometimes mock and roll our eyes at Scripture's mentions of unconditional love and boundless forgiveness. But we need it as much as anyone else." And he has said it comes exactly from what St. Josemaria talks about -- recognizing the greatness of God's grace compared to our nothingness.