Christ on Bourbon Street

[Judy Tenuta voice]
Yeah, it could happen
[/Judy Tenuta voice]

I went down to Louisiana a few weeks ago to see a friend take his first vows with the New Orleans Province Jesuits. And I did what every devout Christian would do on the subsequent Friday night before my plane left for Washington on Saturday -- spent it in the French Quarter, specifically one street. (Hey ... I did spend the early part of the day doing the respectable tourist stuff like the D-Day Museum.)

Over the space of about five hours -- well, I drank and ate and drank and drank some more as I walked down America's most famous 24-hour orgy for the second time in my life (the other was a New Year's Eve when I was there for the Sugar Bowl). Hand Grenades, Hurricanes, Jell-O shots, a seafood dinner (it being Friday and all), $1 beer, $3 shooters from street vendors. But even there, God was watching.

Practically the very first thing that happened to me in the Quarter, before I was even on Bourbon Street proper, was that a strip-club owner invited me ("sir," he called me) to come in for a free drink with a lap dance, while an exaggeratedly sexy young thang was spilling out of her T-shirt next to him. I politely said "not interested" as I walked past him. It was all I could do to avoid saying "are you ever barking up the wrong tree."

After dinner, I headed northeast along Bourbon Street, away from Canal Street, when I reached the end of the carnival-light section of Bourbon and, having just finished my drink, I went into a bar for another. And for the second time in my life, I unwittingly went into a gay bar -- Cafe Lafitte. I didn't see the rainbow flag walking in (this end of Bourbon Street was quite dark) and the clues didn't register with me until after I had ordered and started drinking a bottle of beer and so couldn't leave easily. Needless to say, I was still pretty uneasy just sitting there, trying to maintain my usual unflappability and sangfroid.

It wasn't the objective behavior of the clientele, at that time anyway (though to judge from the pix on their site, I must have caught them on Chaste Night). There were lots of queeny mannerisms on display, of course, plus diva dance remixes (Bananarama, Gwen Stefani, etc.) on the video screen and sound system. But as randy as it got that I saw was having a condom stretched over the lips of a cup of carbonated soda. Nobody was shirtless; I saw no PDAs stronger than a peck on the cheek; nobody propositioned me; nobody was garlanding beads as rewards for gawdknowswhat. I saw much more (and much-more) wanton sexuality elsewhere on that street. But, at least personally, I can consume as campy comedy, e.g., a woman sashaying her hips as she stands on top of a bar while her husband/boyfriend takes her picture. Precisely because it doesn't threaten me because she doesn't interest me. I slinked away as soon as I finished my one beer. I wonder if the bartender or the two guys sitting on either side of me noticed how queasy I was.

Going back the other way down Bourbon Street, I happened to look down a side street to my left and I saw an obvious shadow -- a Jesus statue on the wall. Probably looked very like this image (photo taken by a St. Louis architecture buff from his trip to New Orleans from about the vantage point I would have had). I was near the Cathedral of St. Louis.

I can't not go there, so I do ... grenade in hand (no, not THAT kind ... this kind), but with no particular plan. The Cathedral is locked up, so I can't go in. Which I understand somewhat -- the adjoining well-lit square had an interesting cast of midnight characters. I had been to confession a couple of days previous and, for complicated but good reasons, had yet to actually say my penitential Rosary. This seemed a perfect time and place, and so I go to one of the park benches before the main door (at the back edge of Jackson Square; this poster here shows where I was) and say it under my breath and keeping track on my fingers. I'm only interrupted once that I recall, by a street person sitting next to me on the bench who asked if she could have a swig of my grenade ("sure").

Then, walking back toward Bourbon Street, with more drinking on my mind, I'm convinced God sent me an angel. A man stopped me as we passed each other while walking in opposite directions on one of the side-street sidewalks. He stopped me and said, "excuse me, sir, but can you spare me some money?" At that moment, I really couldn't say no. I had just come from church (sort of) and was heading for a site of orgiastic consumption. I did ask him if he needed me to buy him some food, and he said he wasn't really hungry but might be tomorrow: "I live day to day," he said (and his appearance let me believe him very easily). I reached into my pocket, and as it happened, the outer bill on my fold was a ten. Which I gave him automatically. He thanked me, and I said, looking him in the eyes, "God bless you." He returned those words and then said something I've never heard in such situations.

HIM: Would you pray for me?
ME: Sure.
HIM: I mean right now.
ME: Yes.
HIM: I'm from Arkansas and having a run of bad luck.
ME: Sorry.

I put my arms around his shoulders, and he puts his around mine. If he had harbored ill intentions (a thought which did occur to me), I'd have been completely at his mercy. But I trusted. I said a simple "Our Father." He didn't say the words, but at every one of the natural pauses in the prayer as I went through it, very slowly per my custom, he let out a soft ejaculation, in the Charismatic style -- "praise the Lord!" "hallelujah!" or the like. Our faces were touching, we were locked in an embrace, a block off Bourbon Street. In prayer. And at that moment, nothing else mattered to me. Or to him, I suspect.

When I finished, he asked me, "are you a preacher?" It was all I could do not to laugh as I said "no." I repeated my offer of food. He said he was fine, and nodded his assent when I said "well, just use well the money I gave you." We hugged again before parting.

Somehow, after this encounter, another few hours of drinking no longer seemed so attractive. My confessor, who has warned me about my drinking in the past, was a bit disappointed (I am inferring) that I didn't get this man's name when I told him what had happened.

I met him by pure coincidence and the confluence of a hundred accidental factors of timing, but the most immediate of which, though, was my side journey to the Church upon seeing Christ's shadow. To send me in the direction of His shadow again. My night began by being accosted by a strip-club owner after my money and ended by being accosted by someone else after my money some, sure, but after something more also.

I walked backed to the edge of Bourbon Street to Canal, stopping only to browse and buy a couple of gifts for friends. Driking some soda. And going home for the night, praying for this down-on-his-luck man, and making a mental note to do it often. Whatever his name.

Wishful thinking about the past

If I were limited to one reason why "I detest the gay-lib movement," I wouldn't refer to the sinfulness of homosexual conduct (sodomy has been around forever and didn't particularly need Stonewall to justify it). But I would instead choose the way that it has poisoned same-sex love, which takes many forms including loyalty and friendship, by injecting the aura of sex into them.

Consider the execrable articles from last month on a paper in the Journal of Modern History that was widely reported (and positively so, on that grounds) as providing a model for homosexual relationships. Predictably the usual suspects got aroused by it: Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish (though not Sully himself); National Public Radio; Live Science; and very silly student journalists.

Here is Gay.com (customary warning here; article is fine, whatever the dangers the broader site may hold)

Same-sex civil unions, while seemingly new and radical, appear to have existed 600 years ago in late medieval France, a professor writes in the September issue of the Journal of Modern History.
The term affrerement, or "brotherment," referred to a certain type of legal contract that provided a marriage-like foundation for non-nuclear households of many types, according to Allan Tulchin, an assistant professor of history at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

What utter balderdash ... (CM rolls up sleeves and readies fisking muscles) ...

The model for the arrangement was that of biological brothers who inherited the family home on an equal basis from their parents and continued to live together, Tulchin wrote.
But in cases where the affreres were single, unrelated men, the contracts provide "considerable evidence that the affreres were using affrerements to formalize same-sex loving relationships," he wrote.

The $64,000 question here is the phrase "same-sex loving relationships." What does that mean? And what does it communicate?

To answer the latter first, it communicates to a modern audience homosexual "marriage" (see the very silly student journalist). But literally, of course, it doesn't "mean" very much at all. Or rather it means nothing at all new or controversial or anything having to do with marriage law. I have a "same-sex loving relationship" with my father. I have one with my confessor. I have ones with my best drinking buddies, Courage brothers and other friends. We are all of the same sex. We do love one another. And we have relationships.

Well, let's all toodle off to Massachusetts then. (At least, once the consanguinity taboo has been suitably demystified as the irrational prejudice future generations will see it as, so my father can join the fun.)

What never ceases to raise my wrath with these sorts of scholarly articles is precisely that the writers will never say "gay marriage," because they know their scholarly credibility will be shot to hell if they do. Instead they use "same-sex loving relationships," which doesn't exactly "say" gay "marriage," but will be heard as saying it. And also cooperate with news articles that puts that spin on their work sotto voce. Even to me, who cannot be called someone who speaks French, "affrerement" is an easy word to translate -- "brothering" ("frere" is the uncontroversial translation of "brother"). Obviously "brother" has to be somewhat metaphorical in this sort of case, but prima facie, "brothering" someone is not evidence of sexual interest.

Nor is there no precedented for this very problem with this very term. There was the 1990s flap over John Boswell and adelphopoiesin (the Greek term for "making brothers"), which has been roundly dismissed, me saying that "his books' account of social approval and gay marriage are incompetent fantasies based on tendentious eisegesis."

"I suspect that some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is impossible to prove either way and probably also somewhat irrelevant to understanding their way of thinking," Tulchin wrote. "They loved each other, and the community accepted that."

In other words, there is NO evidence at all, merely Tulchin's supposition ("I suspect"). This is rather less than persuasive.

There is a difference between primary evidence and corroborating evidence, and "affrerement" and "adelphopoiesin" rites can only be corroborating evidence of social tolerance of same-sex sex. I agree that Tulchin is making a reasonable surmise if we were dealing with a society in which there were good pre-existing reason to think homosexuality was widely tolerated. But as evidence for such toleration in the first place? Not even close ... that's the classic case of Nietzsche's critique of scholars "who dig up what they themselves buried."

Yes, of course "the community accepted that." But if "the community" were a bunch of homophobic Catholics who understood same-sex love as perverted if it involved sex (while having no difficulty with ritualized friendship, fraternity, paternal love, etc.), then said tolerance would be evidence of nothing whatever.

American academicians comes across as simply incapable, for reasons I dare not speculate, of imagining any form of love that is not sexual or a sublimated pale-substitute for sex. Inevitably, they read sex where it isn't (or rather there is no evidence that it is). To quote from Shaw's review of Boswell:

Such agreements and rituals are "same-sex" in the sense that it is two men who are involved; and they are "unions" in the sense that the two men involved are co-joined as "brothers." But that is it. There is no indication in the texts themselves that these are marriages in any sense that the word would mean to readers now, nor in any sense that the word would have meant to persons then: the formation of a common household, the sharing of everything in a permanent co-residential unit, the formation of a family unit wherein the two partners were committed, ideally, to each other, with the intent to raise children, and so on.
Although it is difficult to state precisely what these ritualized relationships were, most historians who have studied them are fairly certain that they deal with a species of "ritualized kinship" that is covered by the term "brotherhood." (This type of "brotherhood" is similar to the ritualized agreements struck between members of the Mafia or other "men of honor" in our own society.) That explains why the texts on adelphopoiesis in the prayerbooks are embedded within sections dealing with other kinship-forming rituals, such as marriage and adoption. Giovanni Tomassia in the 1880s and Paul Koschaker in the 1930s, whose works Boswell knows and cites, had already reached this conclusion.

That point stands essentially unchanged against Tulchin's work. Back to the Gay.com article:

Before a notary and witnesses, the "brothers" pledged to live together sharing "un pain, un vin, et une bourse" -- one bread, one wine and one purse.
The "brothers'" goods usually became the joint property of both parties, and each commonly became the other's legal heir.

Evidence of a formalized union, even especially one involving property, is not, never was, and never will be evidence that said union included affective ties.

Otherwise what would some Tulchin or Boswell of the 30th century be able to make of documents showing the widespread practice of "fraternities." Such scholars could even find, in addition to proof of collective living, deeds showing that it was a common practice for two or three "special brothers" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, saynomore) to live together, by themselves, away from the community? Add a few "original documents" of fraternity rites and oaths, including all these Greek letters (more winking and nudging).

There will also be all the references to "loyalty" and "bonding in brotherhood" and the like (it'll help if these Tulchins and Boswells do not speak English and so will need to translate "loyalty" and "brotherhood"). And if there are references to "fellowship" and "camaraderie" (all these four words are species of the genus "love") ... do I need to say more?

"Western family structures have been much more varied than many people today seem to realize, and Western legal systems have in the past made provisions for a variety of household structures," wrote Tulchin, who studied documents and gravestones of the affreres to arrive at his conclusions.

And now we get to the other thing that pisses me off when I read these sorts of articles. Those of us who oppose gay "marriage" really are quite aware that a range of family structures is possible, and that all societies acknowledged plurality, within the limits that define the society's understanding of family. We don't need to be talked down to and told this. We really don't. But the mere fact of diversity on points A, B, and C is not a reason for accepting structures that differ on points X, Y, Z. Not in itself. Indeed, social norms operate precisely on the how difference is constructed between ABC on the one hand and XYZ on the other.

CM at others' comboxes -- 1

I have decided that I post so much at other people's comboxes that I should start putting up here the more substantial posts, those that in my judgment make broader points that can stand up on their own, outside the particular context (none of my debate polemics or smart-aleck comments, IOW).

I will post them unedited except for the grammar, clarity or spelling burps we all occasionally make. I posted at Closed Cafeteria earlier today in response to this comment:

why the claim that temptation toward homosexual activity is greater than [it is for] heterosexual persons? I often hear comments like those offered by John Hetman, that homosexual persons grapple with a "struggle with oftentimes overwhelming temptations."

Comparing the weight of crosses is in some sense a futile endeavour, I agree. But I don't think there can be any comparison at all between homosexuality and heterosexuality in this respect (in other words, we are talking about a difference in kind, not of degree). So I responded:

Strictly biological-drive speaking, it probably isn't. But there are still some quite fundamental differences:
(1) Marriage and children are vocations and are always a possibility for the straight person; chastity is both carrot and stick, in other words. For the homosexual person, it can be easily seen (and almost all do see it at times) as all stick and without real vocational value.
(2) No straight person really sees his heterosexuality per se (as opposed to particular features of it) as a curse, a cross.
(3) Straight people really don't have anything comparable to the contemporary "gay rights" movement, which sets up both an alternate temptation and a group of people who despise you. (Nor are there Caveman types among Catholics ready to assume the disgusting worst of one at the drop of a hat.)

Check here for any continuation.

More about the conference

Smile ... you're on Closed Cafeteria. (That should be a line in my opinion.) Thanks for linking, Gerald, and sending my hit count through the roof.

Thanks to everyone else who linked to my post on the Chicago Courage Conference -- the British Catholic Mom of 10 (watch your Americanised spelling there, Mum); Tony at Catholic Pillow Fight; Terry Nelson at Abbey-Roads2; and TJIC and Father Tim Finigan really liked Father Groeschel's comment on the recent atheist books.

Also, Terry posted correspondence he got from Jeron (a frequent commenter here too) about his recollections of the conference. Jeron's memories and Terry's comments are way way WAY more spiritual than mine. There is a reason some people discern monasteries while others play Clown Prince.

Also, the ex-Protestant hypersectarian and reader CW ("who-can-quote-the-croaking-chorus-from-The-Frogs-of-Aristophanes") has apparently decided to start blogging about certain topics (presumably including Topic H) anonymously. Oh ... what hath CM wrought.

This year, in Chicago ...

I just got back yesterday from last week's Courage Conference, which was held in Chicago at Mundelein Seminary. And as I've said about previous conferences, it was like an oasis in the midst of the desert:

To put it in the most crass way possible (moi?), I enjoyed 10 days of chastity -- before during and after. It was the anticipation and later fact of a holy environment, with daily Mass and availability of confession, *despite* the temptations of the people surrounding me. The whole weekend was just ... hopeful. It was more than fellowship, more than the holy environment and daily sacraments, but my just being able to *be* for four days without any fear or shame or worry or Angst. To breathe easily with everybody always already knowing the thing I hate most about myself and most fear others knowing/guessing/finding out. I hate the word "liberating" (it carries the aura of Che Guevara posters), but that's what it was. I was not sunk in my customary gloom, trapped in the whirlpool of frustration, anger, acting out, despair and depression.

Damascene episodes are not my experience here, but the simple ease of a life of submissive grace is. It happens the same way every year for me, with the worst thoughts coming upon leaving, to the effect of "why can't the other 361 days of the year be like this?" Even before going, I was touched by grace.

The previous week, as I finished my assigned hours at my parish's Perpetual Adoration, I told the man who shares my second hour that I would be gone the next week "for a church conference in Chicago." So he needed to make sure he was either there or lined up a substitute. Nodding his understanding, he then innocently asked me "what's the conference about?" I thought about it for a half-second and decided that, though I hardly know the man at all, there need be no fudging in the Presence of Our Lord. I told him it was a Courage conference and he said "oh ... do you know Father Harvey." Turns out the man's wife is a former student of his, and he asked me to say hello to Father Harvey for her. I was relieved at being able to handle The Awkward Question truthfully and without a hitch.

So I go up to Father Harvey during the conference and said "do you know a Mary Constantine?" He responds, without further prompting, "yes. I taught her at Dunbarton College 30 years ago. She was in my moral philosophy class" (exactly what the woman's husband told me). I told Father that her husband and I share an hour at my parish's Adoration Chapel, and he told me to send the former Miss Constantine his blessings and prayers. Here's a man nearly 90 years old (born 1919) and showing it in some ways -- but still having the presence of mind to remember a student from decades ago.

At the end of the conference, I've checked out of my room and am returning the keys, packed baggage in hand. Father Harvey is doing the same at the same time. I grab his hand and thank him for the conference, for Courage, for everything. He responds in the socially normal way but then, he puts his hand on my head and says a blessing on me and my trip home. Without my even asking him.

There was some broader good news in Father Harvey's keynote address, in which he said there were about a half-dozen new chapters, including one astonishing example (albeit quasi-underground) of official approval from one of the most-liberal and least-St.-Blogs-loved of U.S. prelates. He also mentioned that Courage had started the process of incorporation. I don't pretend to understand the subtleties of what this means under either secular law or canon law, but Father said it would make the group's mission more secure and its means broader and deeper. He said Courage International Inc. would be sending out solicitations to us and to others in the Catholic community to raise its projected budget.

Father Benedict Groeschel gave the main address on Friday night. The man is simply amazing, able to hold an audience in the palm of his hand despite having very little physical strength and not too much voice (he had to sit to give his speech and needed assistance from one of his brother friars just to walk from place to place).

But he has so much wisdom and self-assurance that he gave his whole speech, a critique of conventional psychiatry and the turn to virtue, without notes and overflowing with epigrammatic and surprisingly scalding wit:

• "Freud's mother would repress anybody."
• "That's like the Communist secret police publishing the diary of St. Faustina."
• "Why would Mother Teresa want an honorary degree from Harvard? That's like making Jesus a monsignor."
• In reference to some of the recent atheist tomes: "I am deeply insulted that atheism can be so badly represented. I am tempted to write a book defending atheism in response."

But even when tossing off bon-mots, Father Groeschel understood what is relevant to the audience in front of him. In reference to the celibacy vow and the sexless life, he said, "whatever we missed, it's not the secret to happiness; 98 percent of the world's great literature and drama are about problems brought about by sex," presumably referring to works like "Madame Bovary," "The Red and the Black," "Oedipus Rex" and "Don Giovanni." Men like myself tend to think play "if only" ... thinking that all would be well if we were straight or married or whatever. But Father reminded all of us Courage members that "God is not a psychiatrist" and "calls both the healthy and the ill," citing his own namesake, St. Benedict Joseph, as an example of the latter, as someone who exemplified being "poor in spirit."

Amazingly, he ended his talk with the line "my apologies for taking so much of your time." Yeah, you're forgiven for such an affront all right, Ben. Father Groeschel will also be in the Arlington Diocese this weekend for two talks — one at St. Mary's in Old Town Alexandria on Friday night; the other at Blessed Sacrament on Saturday (can't find a mention of it on that parish's site).

We also saw a nearly-finished version of a one-hour profile documentary on Father Harvey, called "Profiles in Courage." I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, particularly the early parts about Father Harvey's boyhood (he was a Phillies fan ... apparently into long-shots at an early age) and the early years of his work with Catholic priests struggling with homosexuality, which dated back to 1953, a decade-and-a-half before Stonewall. The latter parts, particularly after the founding of Courage, is a bit heavier on testimonial and a bit lighter on history and narrative (including the difficulties the apostolate has faced) than I would have liked. There's one really sweet moment, which brought down the house, involving Father Harvey, his sister and a Miraculous Medal. To say more would spoil a moment that really relies on unexpected spontaneity. Besides Father Groeschel, the film also had an appearance by Archbishop Edwin O'Brien (now in charge in the Baltimore Archdiocese; hopefully to effect some changes there).

Some highlights I remembered from other talks, in addition to two strong testimonials, including one from a married couple whose daughter is practicing the lifestyle but who themselves had the Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara bit down pat:

• The ebb and flow of spiritual tides is like the ebb and flow of oceanic tides in that low tide is God enabling us to see the muck that high tide covers up. (from one of my Courage brothers and a reader of this site, on "The Meaning of Companionship")
  

• The Lord, upon His Resurrection, calls Mary Magdelene by name. Not my a slur or a descriptor, but by name because He knows her most fully for who she is. As He does all of us, whom He calls by name.
• The woman caught in adultery is not named. Which means it's the reader (or listener). You. And that moment -- Jesus bending down, writing something and then rising up -- is the whole sacramental economy in miniature. God descending to the earth, revealing Himself and then arising from the earth. As is the woman's arising from the dirt.
• "The only failure is to see yourself as nothing but a sinner with no hope. Not to say 'I did something wrong,' but 'There is something wrong with me'." (all from Father Richard McAlear on "The Healing Presence of God")
  

• "Hell is not going to let go of you easily."
• Even if you've stumbled a thousand times, that means that 1,000 times in Confession, "you've committed yourself to Christ. Whether it lastest 3 hours, 3 days or 3 months is of little consequence."
• " 'Firm purpose of amendment' doesn't mean 'I'll never do it again,' but 'I'll get up again next time'."
• "Why does suffering happen? So love can reveal itself."
• "You cannot live in this society without an adult understanding of the faith." (all from Father Donald Timone on "The Critical Problem of Pornography")

Other things overheard:

• "If you're not doing it for Christ, you're a fool."
• "My SSA is a permanent inoculation against the sin of Pride."
  
• "Know what OSFS stands for? Old Shoes For Sale."
  
• "If anyone finds a missing Roman collar, it's mine."
• "Homosexuals did not start the sexual revolution. They were simply too few ... But then they asked 'if it's OK for everyone else, why not us?' " Why not indeed?
• "I have made all things new -- including you."
• "Father Timone's presentation on porn would have been better with visual aids."
  
• "His penis is fine; he's just too fat."
  

As for myself, I met three readers of this site who didn't know me by name, including one who's discerning the religious life and another who left not merely Protestantism, but a very specific type that he could rattle off like the Very Model of a Modern Major-General. (I think his leaving reduced their remnant rolls by 20 percent.)

As I noted above, one of the best things about these conferences is simply the easy fellowship. And sometimes, some of it is not edifying in the purest sense -- like my teasing Ryan about his mere-wannabe status as an opera queen (the boy didn't even know the ending of "Aida" fer pity's sake); or my doing my world-famous Eric Cartman** imitation one lunch and leaving my whole table in stitches; or my noting that it was OK for me to by wearing white sneakers since it wasn't yet Labor Day, only to have one of the other guys look at the well-worn pair and contemptuously and say "those haven't been white for a LONG time." Holiness is obviously first and last, but fellowship also means the ability to not be serious and have some fun. To let oneself breathe easily, in other words. That ability enabled me to hug the guys in parting or at Mass unselfconsciously and freely, even if they were men to whom I might be attracted under other circumstances.

Next year in Jerusalem. Or if that isn't an option, Boston will do.
--------------------------
** Image of Father Cartman swiped from Father Erik Richtsteig.

More Democrat debate suckitude

Here is a put-up job from Planned Parenthood -- the winner of apparently some kind of standardized contest (Astroturf, I think the pros call it) in which PP conventioneers seem to compete to produce the most obsequious reverse-'have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife-yet' question. The text of the question and answers is here from the CNN transcript.

Unlike with the homosexual "marriage" matter, the question is actually more revealing than the answers (plus I've already picked on Edwards and Obama¹).

My question is, we here at Planned Parenthood support comprehensive sex education, and I'd like to know if any of you as candidates have talked to your children about sex, and used medically accurate and age-appropriate information?

Whether it's "immigration reform" or "sex education," the minute you stick the word "comprehensive" in there, I start looking askance, as if someone is trying to throw a fast one on me or steal some intellectual bases. This particular question also is loaded with rehearsed buzzwords.

But more directly, the question is utterly and totally ridiculous on every front imaginable.

● The president (which I think is the office to which the persons being asked all aspire) has nothing to do with sex education. Governors, state lawmakers, school districts, etc. ... sure. Not the president. He is not sex-educator-in-chief.

● The way the question is specifically put does a slushy slide over from "as candidates" to "talked to your children about sex." But nobody talks to his child about sex "as a candidate." One teaches his children about sex as a parent (or parent-surrogate, like grandparent or even, in principle, teacher). And what one does and says at home in matters relevant to religious values -- as Jonathan Edwards insists -- need not necessarily have anything to do with what one thinks "as a candidate" or "as an officeholder."

Further, nobody denies the need to educate children about sex. The public issue only even comes up when schools that all must attend (in a era when all do not worship the same god) try to address the subject. How do we (or can we) handle moral plurality on this matter? It's not that "as a parent" isn't the same thing as "in public policy," but that the public-policy issue (and the contention therein) comes up only in the context of children who are NOT one's children. All sane people agree that parents have certain prerogatives in raising their own children on which outsiders may not intrude, even for the somewhat better. So asking about "your own children" is exactly the 180-degrees-wrong question.

● The term "medically-accurate" is a shibboleth and actually contradicts the other adjective -- "age-appropriate." Medically-accurate terms generally are not appropriate for children; little boys don't have "penises" or "testicles"; they have "wee-wees" (or whatever was the term in your neck of the woods).

Whatever such lingo lacks in medical precision (and I agree that to an adult in a doctor's office, the talk should be about "your penis" not "your wee-wee" or "your manhood"), it gains in respecting children's innocence. Nor do children really have any need for "medically-accurate" information about reproduction, birth control or abortion. But then Planned Parenthood's idea of age-appropriate includes telling 7-year-olds about masturbation, so apparently people have quite different (and irreconcilable -- reason one why all school-sex-ed should be banned IMHO) understandings of "appropriate."

● Further the very insistence that "medical accuracy" is a relevant criterion hints at reason two why all school-sex-ed should be banned IMHO. Medical accuracy says that sex is a medical (and/or biological) matter. And while it obviously is that in certain contexts, school sex ed that it is not at the same time religious or moralistic (and I think all agree that it should not be that) thereby constructs sexuality as solely a medical/biological matter, without a religious or moral dimension. Regardless of the details of what you say, when you bring up a topic and discuss A, B and C in that context, but not X, Y and Z, you are necessarily marginalizing X, Y and Z in the context of that topic. And in that construction of sexuality, medically-accurate sex ed reduces man to a rutting animal, which is far worse than teaching nothing at all or some ignorance of this or that detail of.
------------------------------------
¹ Still, I did find it interesting that both of the candidates talked more about preventing sexual abuse and predators than sex-education in the more customary, and controversial, sense.

The awful Democratic debate

The exchange on homosexual "marriage" Monday night was about the most incoherent discussion of the issue imaginable -- and not even necessarily from the POV whence I come -- that 'tain't no such thing as "gay marriage." If I were a pro-gay Democrat, I would find it every bit as annoying. It came in response to this question:



And then this amplification from a North Carolina minister, aimed specifically at Jonathan Edwards:



Before I begin, I'd like to note that the first clip illustrates pitch-perfectly one of the trends of political discourse I like least, namely the personalization of every matter and attempts to "put a face" on social policies. "Would you allow US" is not an attempt to get an answer about a matter of the common good. It invites knee-jerking in the answerer, attempts to narrow thought beyond one's own horizon (and thus feeds this generation's narcissism), and is mostly just cheap self-righteous grandstanding by the questioner.

The responses I posted in their entirety here, from the CNN transcript.

This is not difficult. If a person has a right to marry someone of the same sex, then the lack of same-sex "marriage" under the law is government-sanctioned discrimination, truly akin to the miscegenation laws. You cannot be against homosexual "marriage," while considering that any disparate treatment of any definable group is discrimination. This discrimination narrative, "rights talk" as Christopher Lasch and Mary Ann Glendon called it, is something that all the Democrats who answered the question (plus both the questioners and Anderson Cooper) apparently accept. They believe that this is an issue about anti-gay discrimination and not about the definition and purposes of marriage.

One either believes that a person has a right to marry, in principle, anybody he wants to based upon his wanting to do so, and thus the case for gay "marriage" is airtight (as is the case for polygamy and who-knows-what-else-is-waiting-in-the-wings). Or one accepts that marriage has an inherent structure, namely the male-female procreative bond, that contrary unions violate and so are not "marriages." Therefore, privileging the male-female union does not "discriminate." Which is why it is truly incoherent to say, as all the Democrats except Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich apparently believe, that such privileging is "discrimination," but the solution is civil unions. Civil unions are simply another form of discrimination and one made even more incoherent and irrational if such unions have all the privileges and burdens of marriage, but not the name.

Every response was weak at least intellectually and only Kucinich even achieves surface coherence. But the spectacularly incoherent ones were from Edwards and Obama. Here are the highlights of Edwards:

whether it's right for any of our faith beliefs to be imposed on the American people when we're president of the United States. I do not believe that's right. ...
I feel enormous personal conflict about this issue. I want to end discrimination. I want to do some of the things that I just heard Bill Richardson talking about -- standing up for equal rights, substantive rights, civil unions, the thing that Chris Dodd just talked about. ...
But I personally have been on a journey on this issue. I feel enormous conflict about it. ... my wife Elizabeth ... actually supports gay marriage. I do not.

Keep in mind he's answering a question partly and undisputedly framed in the lingo: "Senator Edwards said his opposition to gay marriage is influenced by his Southern Baptist background."

Where to begin? How about with Edwards insisting that he doesn't believe in imposing religion-based morality while supporting his stance against homosexual "marriage" in terms of his religion ... excuse me ... his faith community. He reads like somebody saying something he doesn't believe -- in both directions. There is certainly no other reason -- good, bad or indifferent -- for why he does not support gay marriage.

And how disgraceful is it to hide behind your wife's skirt on such a matter? What ... is Edwards afraid that Elizabeth will keep all the hair mousse if he doesn't make some bow toward her stance. This is a classic case of someone trying to straddle the fence -- wanting to say one thing to the brights the party base, while keeping his option open with regard to the yahoos general electorate come November. He even repeated it later:

I mean, I've been asked a personal question which is, I think, what Reverend Longcrier is raising, and that personal question is, do I believe and do I personally support gay marriage?
The honest answer to that is I don't. But I think it is absolutely wrong, as president of the United States, for me to have used that faith basis as a basis for denying anybody their rights, and I will not do that when I'm president of the United States.

Does Edwards even realize that the entire claim to homosexual "marriage" made by gay activists is precisely THAT the inability of a man to marry a man is a denial of their rights? Even Uber-Homophobe Moi at least acknowledges their arguments as being what they are. You would have to have spent the last 10 years on Pago Pago not to realize that saying "I do not support gay marriage" and "I don't want to deny gays their rights" is an answer that, in the current intellectual climate, does not answer anything without you having a lotta 'splainin to do.

Which gives us a nice segue to the incoherence of Barack Obama. Here's the highlights:

COOPER: Senator Obama, the laws banning interracial marriage in the United States were ruled unconstitutional in 1967. What is the difference between a ban on interracial marriage and a ban on gay marriage?
OBAMA: Well, I think that it is important to pick up on something that was said earlier by both Dennis and by Bill, and that is that we've got to make sure that everybody is equal under the law. And the civil unions that I proposed would be equivalent in terms of making sure that all the rights that are conferred by the state are equal for same-sex couples as well as for heterosexual couples.
Now, with respect to marriage, it's my belief that it's up to the individual denominations to make a decision as to whether they want to recognize marriage or not. But in terms of, you know, the rights of people to transfer property, to have hospital visitation, all those critical civil rights that are conferred by our government, those should be equal.

Not only does he repeat the same Edwards nonanswer about equality, apparently not realizing that the argument for gay "marriage" is precisely that denying it is a denial of equal rights, Obama even managed to commit two further intellectual crimes.

First of all, he didn't actually answer Anderson Cooper's question, which was that he distinguish the current "ban on gay marriage" from the ban on interracial marriage. The analogy between them was also the unstated starting premise of the North Carolina minister's YouTube question. It's surely worth noting in this context that the analogy between homosexuals right and black civil rights is one that much of the black community, particularly in the black church that finds misguided or offensive. Obama's silence shows exactly how the tension on this issue between the black church and the Democrat netroots is treated -- by not acknowledged as even existing. It may be slipperiness but there is method to it.

Second, the second part of Obama's answer manages to introduce a new nonsequitur. Obama says that the churches should have the right to define what marriage is for their own sacramental purposes. One would have thought that the First Amendment's Free Exercise clause would have made that a rather noncontroversial point, but ... whatever (for now)¹. But the issue of what is a marriage for the church has nothing to do with the matter of what is a marriage for the state, which also both acknowledges and performs them. Most of the time, Caesar does simply rubber-stamp what God has put together. But not always -- the county JP will suffice. To tick "married" on your 1040 forms, or any other government document (state or federal), you need a license from Caesar. Thus the definition of marriage is something on which Caesar must decide -- for his own purposes at least. That's what the whole current dispute is about: who can be considered "married" by the state.² And that's a matter that a political office-holder like Obama cannot punt to the church.
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¹ Once gay marriage becomes state policy, we'll see how long it takes before gay activists try to force churches to conform. The over-under is a week, I'd guess.
² Anyone who wants to has long been able to go to the Unitarians, Metropolitans or similar sects, and have a ceremony in (what they imagine to be) the eyes of God, cut a cake, wear rings and have a hot time in bed that night. The free exercise clause does cut both ways.

"My life is in your hands"

Now more than ever.

I got the news while in a movie theater last night, about 1020pm from one of my Courage brothers, the here-mentioned Tar Heel who loved Tammy Faye as much as I did. He sent this simple three-word text message to me:

Rip tammy faye

As a writer, one never knows what will resonate with people. Whenever I check my traffic since May, without fail, I learn that some people have been directed from a word search for "Tammy Faye" to this post "As She Lay Dying," which has gotten prominently listed on major search engines. The editor of one of Washington's two principal gay weeklies, Sean Bugg of Metro Weekly, wrote about my post about her. Just earlier this week, I got the following e-mail from a stranger:

Subject: Thank you for your blog on Tammy Faye
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:25:36 -0700
I caught your blog today and cried. I saw tammy faye on larry king live last night which
devastated me. I will pray for her soul. She is a christian who loves all people (black, white, gay, square).etc.

thank you

Tammy Faye's death was, of course, not unexpected. As the writer noted, she appeared again on "Larry King Live" earlier this week (video excerpts here; transcript here). To say that she didn't look good would be an understatement. That was my dominant initial reaction, though one I quickly took back mentally when I mulled it over.

It was the latest and final proof that superficial appearance didn't matter to Tammy Faye. It's too bad that in English the word "shameless" has come to have a negative connotation, because it describes her appearing on TV to encourage people and talk about the Lord and His presence in her life while she was on death's doorstep. Shame didn't matter to her. Or maybe "prideless" is the word I'm looking for (except that I don't think it's an "official" Webster-approved word). The kind of pride that would keep most of us off TV in her state and which caused her son Jay to have her exit his reality-TV show "One Punk Under God" when she was in obviously better condition than she was this week -- that just didn't matter to her. Only evangelizing did. And if that meant appearing on TV in this way, so be it. Roger Ebert made a similar point about refusing to hide his own illness. One of John Paul the Great's last great witnesses was refusing to give in to his manifest infirmities, to be an icon of Christ in his illness.

Ironically, one part of the King interview, that Yahoo excerpted above or a clip, was providential for me:

I talk to God every single day. And I say, "God, my life is in your hands and I trust you with me."

Earlier on Saturday, a few hours before I learned Tammy Faye had died and while (I'm guessing) her ashes were being scattered, I was in confession, tears again (though no mascara -- I'm a butch, manly-type homo). My parish pastor listened to another bout of despairing doubt and said that better cultivation of Hope was needed. His penance was to repeat several times a short prayer "Jesus, I trust in you."

(Aside: I swear to God, as I write at 2am Sunday morning, my iTunes just rotated randomly to Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," a song that was almost certainly consumed upon release as an 80s slam on televangelism a la Jim and Tammy. But which has lyrics too elemental and too resonant to be contained by this superficial topicality and avoid contrarian appropriation -- having been covered by the devout Christian Johnny Cash near the end of his life. Also, like Tammy Faye. I'll keep iTunes on DM until I'm done.)

But those words "Jesus, I trust in you" were essentially Tammy Faye's last words to the world. She was totally in His hands. And her final days were an act of witness to Father's short prayer, in the face of, in her case, the ultimate earthly darkness.

Thanks to all

Since most of the time, the personal news I do share tends to be "bad" and my last post pretty much made it clear that I was "on the canvas" recently, let me reproduce here a draft from a lengthier note to a priest that I was working on, but decided against finishing and sending.

Hiccups aside, which I do allude to, these past couple of months have been some of the happiest, Godliest I've experienced. For the first time in my life, I think God has been able against my will to turn a corner with me on Topic H, and I'm much more closely attuned to His voice and the angels he sends. "Le bon temps" began approximately with this public prayer request, so thanks to everybody who responded -- publicly, privately or spiritually. Anyhoo, here it is:
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First of all and for the first time ever, I’ve really measurably felt my homosexual attractions diminishing. I would be lying to say that I’ve lived perfectly continently in that period, but (and I will spare you the details) I can definitely say that (1) I can innocently come across a male body without triggering further action, (2) when I do same guiltily, I much more easily and quickly turn away or click off, (3) it takes more “time” to give Satan the definitive upper hand. While I’m aware that libido will naturally diminish over time, I’m still only 41 and not too far removed from my biological prime.

As for sex with other men, I am pretty much uninterested any more, knock wood. The pickup attempts I’ve made have been progressively fewer (function of choking off the routes or having them choked off for me), more half-hearted, and almost always the eventual victim of my cold-footed conscience. And none of the three completed occasions within the past year did I even enjoy much at the time, much less did I leave the bedroom thinking “I have found my true nature and identity.”

To use a disease metaphor, although I still catch colds my immune system is measurably strengthening -- actually “coming into existence” would be more like it. I can’t tell you how joyous and thankful I am over this, Father. To switch metaphors, I’ve served close to 20 years of what I’ve always expected to be a life sentence without the chance of parole. And it’s like finding out that you misheard the judge saying “with” as “without.”

Vastly overextended metaphor

To steal some sports-martial language from my confessor, who has a "weakness" for such things, we're at war with Satan. Christ has secured victory in the end, but only (necessarily) in the end. In the world, at some point, that guy lying on the canvas is gonna be you. Gonna be me. There will always be defeats, as St. Josemaria warned us. But, my confessor also notes, a boxer shows his heart by whether he gets up and fights through a shellacking, not whether he ever takes one (all do).

Boxing is a sport, so the fight has time limits and a way to contrive a final outcome. But the fight of life and against Satan never ends as long as we are alive. Which has both a down and an up side. The down side obviously is that, for the standing fighter (in that pic FWIW, British light-middleweight champ Jamie Moore), victory is never total or complete. The upside is the flip side of that -- defeat is never final or total for the downed man (challenger Matthew Macklin). This particular fight was over that night, going into the books as a 10th round KO loss for Macklin, who reportedly was out cold for five minutes and stretchered out of the ring to a hospital.

The highlights of this "fight of the year" candidate are here, and here's the whole 9th round -- and they indicate why Macklin was counted out. It certainly wasn't that he didn't have the heart to fight through a shellacking. Quite the contrary; the fight had been such a slugfest for nine rounds that when he came out for the 10th, he had nothing left and crumbled when Moore landed a good combination that was no harder than a hundred other punches landed earlier in the fight.

Therein lies the difference for the sacramental life, if viewed properly, which is that we have God in our corner and all the Saints cheering us. Between every round, if we ask Him and receive His Sacraments, God renews us and restores us to the condition we were in at the start of the fight. Corner men can do wonders, but they are not God; and End-Swell is not the Body and Blood of Christ. We can be spiritually renewed every day as Macklin's body (or any other fighter's) could not be renewed every round. So we can fight every round as if it were the first. There is not (or should not be) any "accumulation of punches." There is not (or should not be) any "running out of gas." Our bruises should subside. Our cuts should close. Our broken nose should be back in joint and no longer impede our breathing. Our ribs and gut shouldn't ache from the punches taken nine rounds ago and since.

I've often stayed on the deck from fear of continuing to fight (meaning, "take more punches") ... or perhaps more accurately, I've fled back to the dressing room to whimper. But at some point in your life, you simply acknowledge that God is God and so leaving the ring/surrender is not an option. (Nor is trying to change the rules of the fight, so it's more to your liking.) Like Cortez burning his ships, we remove the ring-steps and aisles that could let us flee the arena. I have declared war on Satan, and so my only option is to fight on. Even if that means getting KO'd, over and over by a demon who has my number and whom I cannot lick. Obviously, the idea is to lick Satan, not the other way round. Hopefully, we learn something of how to fight from the shellackings. But remember that when you (let God) win, you (and God) win; if we lose, we still win because, as long as we're faithful, God will never count us out and declare the fight over.

Seconds out, round 11.

Work of Holy Spirit

I had occasion and need to sniff around the Arlington Diocese's Web site just now, looking for when I could go to confession tomorrow morning. I came across a well-fitting and nearby time at Holy Spirit, and then began looking around the site.

One of the parochial vicars there, Father James Searby (a JP2-generation priest), has his own Web site where I found a couple of items, apparently written by himself informally, of potential broader interest, on sexual impurity generally and masturbation in particular. The items can be downloaded as Mac Word files, but so as not to link directly to the download command, I advise interested persons to go to this page on Father's site and look on the menu at the right for "Some Practical Steps for Overcoming Impurity" and "Overcoming Addiction to Masturbation and Pornography." For people without Microsoft Word (I am one of them at home), I have also copied the texts and repost them at my "Articles" blog as "Practical Steps" and "Addiction."

This struck me as the most-insightful part, including the explanation for why every time you do it, it leaves you numb.

Masturbation, you could say, is the 'lonely problem.' At its core it seems to fulfill a desire but it ends up leaving a man lonely, dulled and unable to really love himself properly and therefore, anyone else. If sexuality is made to unite a man and woman in love and self gift, then masturbation is the opposite. When we take self giving to another and make it a solo act where there is no self giving then the action has the trappings of something good but it is used wrongly. It is a turning in on oneself rather than a giving out of oneself. That is why there is such a let down and so much guilt after the act is completed. When it becomes a habit it can be safe to assume that the problem is not the actual masturbating but a need for love. This need for love, for meaning, and for wholeness is a deeper problem and requires a deeper answer. ...

The pleasure glosses over the deeper need for love, friendship and a hunger for God. It is an easy, predictable way to find what you long for on a deeper level but it always comes up short. That is why, when it is all said and done, there is usually a vow of some sort where one says, “That’s it! That is the last time! I’m tired of this!” and that lasts for a little while until the temptation arises again and the cycle starts again. ...

Then one of two things happen:
You have become numb to it and you don’t care that it happened. You still feel guilty but you say, “well, I already sinned, I might as well keep going for a while until I can get to confession”
Or, you make the vow: you ask God for forgiveness and promise that this was the last time - you’ve had enough, no more!” And you move on and get to confession quickly.
Then, unless the cycle is broken - it all eventually begins again.

I have masturbated "for the last time" a hundred times over. And I have done it again "because there's no reason not to" more often than that. To be honest, I don't think I've had any other reaction more than a couple of times. Only in some recent weeks have I really been able to face up to why that is.

On tonight's 'Media Crossfire'

On the left ... Fox News. On the right ... the Los Angeles Times.

No, really.

Read this Fox News report about denunciations of the ex-gay ministry Exodus, which met last week in Southern California, under the headline "Former Leaders of Ex-Gay Ministry Apologize for 'Bringing Harm'," and remind yourself that this is the far-right organ of the christofascist godbags (HT: private e-mail from Irenaeus).

Three former leaders of an international ministry that counsels gays to change their sexual orientation apologized for their efforts, saying that though they acted sincerely, their message had caused isolation, shame and fear.
The former leaders of the interdenominational Christian organization Exodus International said Wednesday they had all, over time, become disillusioned with the group's ideas and concerned about what they described as the wrenching human toll of such gay conversion efforts.
"Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families," the three, including former Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee, said in a joint written statement presented at a news conference in Hollywood. "Although we acted in good faith, we have since witnessed the isolation, shame, fear and loss of faith that this message creates."

Needless to say, the usual suspects are crowing. And needless to say, wrongly.

Admittedly, the first word is "former," but unless you read the article carefully or know the names or the backstory, it doesn't leap out to you that the speakers aren't just "former" in the sense that Bill Clinton is a "former president." It would be more accurate to describe Bussee as a "disgruntled" ex-gay, something the article mentions only late and in passing. His criticism of Exodus is about as meaningful as a 1980 article about a former Democrat apologizing for the damage his party had done through the Great Society and the "acid, amnesty and abortion culture." Then mentioning that it was Ronald Reagan's stump speech. Or describing David Brock or Damon Linker as "former conservatives," without mentioning that "disgruntled ex-conservative" is now their official role.

I don't mean to be hard on Bussee, but no therapeutic program can ever, in principle, work if the patient walks away or convinces himself, through whatever means, that his condition is something good. Fox notes that Bussee left Exodus to pursue a sexual relationship with another man. I really do understand that resisting a lifetime of habit is hard enough, even apart from cultural propaganda. And that the male organ does have a mind of its own. But Bussee's giving up once a man gave him the hots sufficiently is still a pitch-perfect example of Chesterton's epigram that "the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." In this case, "abandoned" might fit better than "untried," but the point is the same. Instead, Bussee surrendered to Woody Allen morality: The heart wants what the heart wants.

But the better news is that incredibly, and I found this via an article at the California Catholic about the confluence of the Exodus and "Ex-Gay Survivor" conferences, this very good Los Angeles Times piece notes how both the "ex-gay survivors" and Exodus are backing off some of their indefensible claims.

Despite the fundamental gulf that divides them, gay-rights activists and those who see homosexuality as a sinful disorder are starting to reach agreement on some practical points.

They seem to be coming closer to, dare I say, a more-Catholic view of same-sex attraction. (Father John Harvey is cited at the bottom of the Cal Catholic article). I think that the grandiose promises of some people associated with Exodus simply feeds the kind of frustration that produces cases like Bussee. I would have long ago become a self-identified gay, living the lifestyle in Dupont Circle, if the standard for holiness were "never having homosexual feelings" or "never having the standard male reaction in response to them."

But at the one end, the current head of Exodus Alan Chambers, who actually IS on board with the group's mission, acknowledges that "conversion" is slow and imperfect, and probably never complete.

... Chambers won't celebrate successful "ex-gays." Truth is, he's not sure he's ever met one.
With years of therapy, Chambers says, he has mostly conquered his own attraction to men; he's a husband and a father, and he identifies as straight. But lately, he's come to resent the term "ex-gay": It's too neat, implying a clean break with the past, when he still struggles at times with homosexual temptation. "By no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete," Chambers said. ...
Chambers and other Exodus leaders talk deliberately about a possible biological basis for homosexuality, in part to explain that no one can turn a switch and flip from gay to straight, no matter how hard they pray.

Evangelicals tend toward a soteriology of "once saved, always saved," with salvation being a onetime, definable event that divides your life into "Before Christ" and "After Christ." Since religious doctrine shapes imagination, even when it's not intellectually cited, it's not surprising that evangelicals should see "conversion" sexually as analogous to "conversion" spiritually. And set themselves up for a fall. And while the move against that model is merely personal for Chambers, that it is occurring at all is heartening.

While it's not surprising, as the LA Times cites, that the anti-ex-gay side should "[see] it as a sign of openness," the article also notes that they're at least modifying their tune somewhat on therapy, again bringing it somewhat more in line with what the Church teaches (unintentionally in this case, I'm sure).

He and other gay activists — along with major mental-health associations — still reject therapy aimed at "liberating" or "curing" gays.
But Bussee is willing to acknowledge potential in therapy that does not promise change but instead offers patients help in managing their desires and modifying their behavior to match their religious values — even if that means a life of celibacy.
"It's about helping clients accept that they have these same-sex attractions and then allowing them the space, free from bias, to choose how they want to act," said Lee Beckstead, a gay psychologist in Salt Lake City who uses this approach.
The guidelines for this type of therapy — written by Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College and Mark Yarhouse of Regent University — have been endorsed by representatives on both the left and right. The list includes the provost of a conservative evangelical college and the psychiatrist whose gay-rights advocacy in the 1970s got homosexuality removed from the official medical list of mental disorders.
"What appeals to me is that it moves away from the total polarization" common in the field, said Dr. Robert Spitzer, the psychiatrist.
"For many years, mental-health professionals have taken the view that since homosexuality is not a mental disorder, any attempt to change sexual orientation is unwise," said Spitzer, a Columbia University professor.

Every little bit of progress is noted -- the gay therapist refers to "these same-sex attractions," which refers strictly to what can be known (phenomena) and avoids the reifying (and therefore obscurantist) language of sexual orientation. There have been a series of reports in recent months that the APA is considering re-listing "unwanted homosexuality" as a mental-health condition (something I would definitely acknowledge as existing in my own case). As follows:

APA President Gerald P. Koocher affirmed a patients’ right to help at a Town Hall Meeting at the organization’s annual convention in New Orleans. Koocher stated, “APA has no conflict with psychologists who help those distressed by unwanted homosexual attraction.”

The rubber will hit the road when the APA's gay caucus and the rest of its pro-gay membership has to approve a course of action -- will it say approved therapies can "modify[] their behavior to match their religious values" and, in Beckstead's words, "allow[] them the space, free from bias" to do this. After all, the most rabid gay activist can easily acknowledge "unwanted homosexuality" as a condition, but say that the only approved courses of action are those intended to get the patient to "want" homosexuality. Again, this is closer to the Church's teaching that behavior is normative and that "orientation" is a category suspect at best.

I don't quite know how optimistic to be about the APA's vote next year -- there are some doubts about the review panel's composition. Its decision in 1973 to remove homosexuality from the DSM was not a medical or scientific decision at all, but a philosophical one that "gay is good." The work of pro-gay head-shrinkers since merely presuppose this and build on it; they don't and can't actually prove it as true. The head of the APA's gay caucus more or less says as much. Their criticism of anti-gay therapy is not its success or failure, but because it is Badthought.

Anderson conceded that it is the motivation of many therapists involved in reparative and conversion therapies, rather that the effectiveness of the programs, with which he takes issue.
"The APA, of course, recognizes the issue of client autonomy to set their goals," Anderson said. "But we also still see that people who promote reparative therapy are promoting a prejudicial attitude toward homosexuality."

If we must call psychiatry a science (and I am very reluctant to for the reason here¹), a medical decision could in principle have been soundly made within the APA's scientific competence. "There is nothing known that can counter this condition" is not different in principle from "this cancer is inoperable," a judgment in which an oncologist is, in fact, expert. But instead the decision has been taken as giving unimpeachable "scientific" support to what is nothing more than a certain philosophical anthropology, which science is incompetent to critique. An oncologist has nothing to say on whether it is good to have cancer (that's a matter, to use Mr. Anderson's lingo ... "for client autonomy, which psychiatrists [of course] respects"). It misses the point to call an oncologist "wrong" on that issue, in the sense that someone who says 2+2=5 is "wrong. "The point is that said oncologist is not even right enough to be "wrong," instead being more like the man who says "2+2 demonstrates that your love is like a red, red rose."
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¹ The universal problem of all psychological discourses is that the human soul ("psyche") is plastic and self-conscious, which makes all psychologies true to those who believe them and false to those who do not. As I noted above and have before, no therapy will ever work on someone determined to resist it or who thinks his condition is good (so the "scientific" criterion of "randomness" is nonsense on stilts for psychology. Psychology can only be "true" at the level of a self-fulfilling prophecy to those outside each discourse, but so what? Why does gay-activist psychology get a veto over Catholic psychology?

"Act Like a Man"

One of the things Father Paul Scalia, our Courage chaplain, often appeals to, and tries to build up, is our sense of manhood (for whatever reason, and I say this strictly empirically rather than normatively, most Courage members are men). Father recently gave a broader talk on this subject as part of the Arlington Diocese's "Theology on Tap" series, titled "Act Like a Man." The Podcast of his talk and the Q-and-A is right here. (WARNING: The hyperlink is to a very large mp3 file -- 56Mb; so automatic downloads beware.) And here is the page with links to a menu of all this season's Podcasts, with some alternate formats.

I would say, RTWT, except that it's not a written text, so ... LTTWT. And as a bonus, if you ever wanted to hear a priest talk about his first date with a girl, this is your chance.

In Father's Theology on Tap speech, Topic H never came up, either in his prepared remarks or in any of the questions. But I could hear, between the lines with knowledge of what he says in his ministry to us, a lot of the same things, indicating that the collapse of manhood is the social problem, with the rising amount of and acceptance of homosexuality being merely a symptom. He says in his presentation that the title comes from one of the commonest things he tells men -- "grow up" or "be a man, not a boy," something he's said to me individually, with the caveat that "we are raised in a society that makes it difficult." That latter point is the focus of the bulk of his talk.

Father Scalia notes a crisis of manhood, citing the usual statistics -- the education-achievement gap, the overwhelming number of fatherless men in prison. He tells ToT that this is because boys have to be taught to become men (or in Camille Paglia's formulation, "a woman is; a man must become"), and have it done by other men. But our culture doesn't do that, instead keeping males as boys. Biology rebels though, so males not socialized to be men will try to become through other means, which accounts for the popularity of gangs and the "conquest" culture. In the past, he notes, every culture had some rite of passage, which while it often involved taking care of oneself, but it also commonly involved taking care of others. Malcolm X said something similar in his speech at Harvard about the difference between making babies, "which any fool can do," and being a father. Well, that's what Denzel said in the movie.

A father specifically, and other men generally, give a boy something to strive for, men to inspire us. "Every man here knows this," Father Scalia says. But in the absence of that, boys become prey to whatever comes along, a slave to their passions. Males want to sacrifice and be heroic, even in defeat -- it's what makes you a man. He cites examples from the Titanic to the Birkenhead, where men observed the code of honor -- "women and children first" -- even at the cost of their own lives. This is what men want and need, but the culture breeds it out of them. Even in defeat. The Spartans failed to keep the Persians from advancing through Thermopylae, but the 300 men stood in the face and did their duty in the face of overwhelming numbers. He also cited the Chosin Reservoir and Black Hawk Down battles. Father also cites how in boys' war games, everybody wanted to die the noble death, knowing that no greater love exists than to lay down one's life for others. "When boys play war games, they're usually not in the supply lines," Father jokes. But our culture is so phobic to this that even in the 1997 movie about the Titanic, the film-makers said they didn't show the "women and children first" nobility because "nobody would believe it."

Father Scalia says that males need to be called to manhood in three ways -- through the habit of sacrifice, reached in its highest earthly form by laying down your life as a priest or as a husband, but which encompasses even minor sacrifices (he cites the Three Young Men in Daniel as prepared by their observance of Jewish dietary laws); through friendship with other men, which he said all too often now takes the form of drinking buddies, rather than exhorting to and encouraging virtue; and through interaction with women, to make sure it is noble and worthy of a man.

On this last point, Father Scalia also says something that a priest has unique insight on, and he's not the only priest I've ever heard saying it. Namely that many women come to him with matters that really are for the father/husband to handle, or at most, by the priest with both of them there. "He's a good man, but he doesn't do the religion thing," Father Scalia cites the women as typically saying. In many respects, other priests say, these women want a man to listen to them. But, he told the women in his ToT audience, "If you want men to be men, you must not only allow it, but insist on it." He says that the reason for the old rules such as opening doors or pulling out chairs was not that women couldn't do these things for themselves (the feminist lie and absurd on its face), but to teach men both leadership and to equate leadership with service.

And he said we see these three callings exemplified most strongly in Our Lord, with the Cross as the ultimate model for sacrifice, the disciples as the model for friendship, and His relationship with Our Blessed Mother as how one relates to women. Father Scalia noted from "The Passion of the Christ," that every time Jesus looks ready to give in, he sees His Mother. And resolves to soldier on (his speech is filled with martial language even in not-obviously-martial contexts). "There's nothing more manly than being devoted to a good woman," Father concludes his speech.

Not bad for a celibate.

Scrupulosity or a legitimate concern?

I'm "out" to a certain portion of the world. I see no general point in keeping secret, among those one already knows well, the reason I have reached the age of 40 without marrying, and why I never mention "my girlfriend," in either the present or past tenses. And there's all my Courage brothers and those priests of the Arlington and Washington Dioceses lucky(?) enough to have heard my confessions or to have chaplained one of our meetings.

I see no reason not to joke about my SSA, if the audience is right. When I spoke to the pastor at my parish about joining, he said "we impose a time wait so that people can't simply register merely for the sake of getting married." I responded: "well, that won't be a concern you'll have with me." He laughed.

But sometimes I hold back, primarily because it's sometimes difficult to tell in advance the spirit in which a joke about sexuality will be taken, particularly when one's own is suspect. Earlier today I saw a news item about a PETA listing of the sexiest vegetarians (whatthe...???). Exactly the kind of "dumb fun" item that people pass around. I was going to send the link to a priest I know, who is the only vegetarian I know, with a short note to the effect of "you need to start campaigning earlier and harder, Father."

But I decided against it because ... well ... I'm not really sure (this is one of the few posts I've ever "thought out loud" about). It's not because I harbor sinful feelings about him; priests and my Courage brothers are desexualized in my eyes, in all but the most abstractly-intellectual sense. Nor because I think he'll wrongly take it as a declaration of interest, and in the worst case go all Jenny Jones on me. And in general, he has a good sense of humor. And this is not the first time I've held back on making a joke based on the potential for SSA-related misunderstanding.

I guess I'm holding to the standard of all the SSA-related jokes I want about myself (see here) and celebrities, but none at all about others. I can't also deny that I have been made hypersensitive by all the shit that good priests have had to take since The Situation went nuclear (see the anecdote recounted here by Father Brian Stanley; scroll down to 552pm or do a wordsearch for "Stanley" or "molest"). As I say ... I'm not really sure if I'm being excessively scrupulous (bad) or preferring to err on the side of discretion (good).

CM blushes

Was it just because I used the word "gay" 130 times? Oh ... and "penis" five times. No count on "faggot" though, so Virginia rehab clinics can rest easy. (HT: Barbara Nicolosi)

Where we are now

This case is exemplary and not in good way.

A male high-school student kisses another boy for a yearbook picture (and no, I've leaving this post unillustrated, except for one for the eggheads down below). The school blacks it out, but then backs off and apologizes. But it's the next detail that truly makes this item an envelope-pusher.

Andre Jackson, the student, said Monday that he was disappointed that the Newark schools superintendent had not delivered the apology face-to-face and in public. Because of that, he said he did not accept it as sincere.
"I would accept an apology — a public apology," said Jackson, 18.
Jackson said he learned of the apology through the media.

This says far more than all the robotically-learned "Polly wanna cracker"-cant we hear about homophobic this and anti-gay that. An *18-year-old* decides that an apology from the *schools superintendent* isn't good enough because it wasn't in person and in public. He doesn't want the vindication itself; he wants the ritual of public obeisance and to be seen to be cracking the whip.

If beggars can't be choosers, then choosers are indicating that they are not beggars. This student's behavior shows that he knows perfectly well that his homosexuality makes him not a beggar in the matter of public approval, but a chooser. (This is basically the dynamic Isaiah Washington is saying TR Knight is exploiting).

And one other point. This case proves (redundantly for the 46947876841st time) the emptiness of tolerance as a free-standing virtue and the essential unity of the public square. There is only one standard for public morality, since all must share the same public space. That standard, whatever it is, will be enforced on all and for all -- there is no "live and let live." If the morality of gays is what counts, then there is no reason for these sorts of pictures not to appear in the yearbook (or the daily paper). Thus they will do so, people who try to act contrarily will be punished for Badthought, and the image of two men tonguing each other (to speak only of the current picture ... there is, in principle, no limit) become a part of everybody's "Normal."

To Christians I say, walling yourself off completely and totally — I emphasize both those adverbs — is the only (purely theoretical) short-term option the libertine culture has for us. And there are no long-term options. To gays and other libertines, I say, don't patronize us with "don't look at it if it offends you." You act as any other cultural hegemon, and Gramsci would snort at your very innocent-sounding protests. There are no self-regarding actions, and no quarter or compromise is possible on the matter of the standard of public morality.