When I became Catholic in 1998, I didn’t know of a single other openly gay Christian who intended to follow Church teaching on sexuality. I made my way though what appeared to be a trackless wilderness armed with good friends, cheap vodka, and hubris.
(Eve Tushnet, Coming Out Christian: How faithful homosexuals are transforming our churches, in the January/February American Conservative) The article from which this quote is taken appears not to be available online yet, and I don’t recall the magazine’s paywall practices.
But if you have an interest in this topic, Eve Tushnet’s article is definitely the sort of article you’d be interested in. There’s a lot of potentially stinging observations (your sting may vary) about double-standards in the Church.
And if you don’t have an interest in this topic, you probably should wait for my next blog, because this one’s full of this topic. If you’re interested just in the legal issues, read numbers 3, 6 and 7 and have a nice day.
I also want to draw a fine distinction between guilt and shame in the life of a Christian. Here’s how I’m using the terms: Guilt refers to feelings of remorse or grief over attitudes or behaviors. Shame refers to negative feelings about one’s inherent value or worth. In other words, guilt is what you feel when you think you’ve done something wrong, whereas shame is what you feel when you think you are something wrong.
Based on those definitions, I think every Christian experiences guilt from time to time, and it serves an important purpose in convicting them to repent from sinful behaviors. … On the other hand, I don’t think all Christians necessarily experience shame, and I think shame has no place in the life of a Christian. Shame is something deeper than the sense you’re a sinful person in need of God’s grace and mercy; shame is a feeling of dirtiness and ugliness that convinces you you’re outside the reach of God’s grace and mercy. Shame produces despair, which can often manifest itself as depression, self-harm, or suicide.
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Here’s the point: Whenever people speak about sexual minorities in a way that increases shame, the stakes are much, much higher than merely “ruffling people’s feathers,” or “hurting people’s feelings,” or “making people uncomfortable.” The danger increases whenever sexual minority youth, who may still be settling some fundamental perceptions about who they are and whether they’re worth anything, are in earshot.
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Some believe it is impossible to profess traditional Christian teachings on homosexuality (i.e., that gay sex is sinful) without heaping shame on sexual minorities. I don’t believe this is the case, but in light of Christians’ historical reputation for heaping shame on sexual minorities, and in light of everything we’ve learned about sexuality in the last century, it certainly requires more tact and nuance than you’re likely to find in something like a magazine interview or a Facebook status update. The way Christians talk about this stuff has to change.
(Brent Bailey, Odd Man Out, writing of the Phil Robertson/Duck Dynsasty/homosexuality episode.)
I don’t think anyone wants to produce shame in this sense, but when you feel besieged, and when you feel that you’re battling for the survival of something sufficiently valuable, you might see inadvertent shame-production as an acceptable bit of collateral damage. Not that I’m a mind-reader, mind you.
I heard Evan Wolfson on All Things Considered Thursday, reflecting on many of his law professors declining to advise him, 30 years ago, on his law school “thesis” (his own dubious term) in favor of same-sex marriage. The idea was just too outlandish. 30 years ago. At that bastion of social conservatism, Harvard Law School.
I remember 30 year ago. 30 years ago was a friend of mine. And 2013, you’re no 1983.
I was fresh out of law school myself. One of the things we talked about in law school, back there in fascist Amerika, was what interests the state had in this institution of marriage that warranted its involvement as a sort of third party beneficiary to the marriage contract (along with how marriage was strangely different than other contracts in other ways, such as the then-recent tidal wave of no-fault divorce laws that made the marriage contract uniquely voidable by one side without consequence). I don’t remember that “sending out ‘warm fuzzies’ to super-special friends” was one of the interests that came up.
Nor do I recall anyone saying “There is no state interest. Marriage is arbitrary favoritism. Government should get out of it.” Instead, I seem to recall talk of sex and babies and families. It was sooooo retrograde.
Anyway, in the United States, one of the top news stories of the year must be the precipitous legal abandonment of traditional marriage, by court case and legislative vote, seemingly in favor of marriage as nothing more than a super-special friendship. Why super-special friendship should be reserved for just one other person; or should require a state-issued license, or should elicit government perks, remain unexplained except by the mantra of “equality.”
I’d predict that America will rue the day, but I’m not so sure that will come very soon.
For one thing, the America of my youth will be portrayed as dark, gloomy and repressive Amerika, from which we could not possibly learn anything worthwhile. Why, it was so barbaric back then that they actually made babies by hooking up, not have learned how liberating it is to use Third World Rent-A-Wombs as incubators for in vitro designer lifestyle enhancers.
If America does rue the day, it could be because the marriage pedestal collapses under the extra weight (producing “equality” of an unintended sort, where all the perks go away) or it could result in restoration of traditional marriage, or … who knows? “Why not smash the pedestal if that’s all marriage is?” is my rhetorical position, and I think it’s my substantive position as well, though with the caveat that I think marriage legitimately is much more than that, and that it’s gendered by nature.
There are many reasons for Russia’s dramatic tilt toward homophobia. The country has always sought to define itself against the West. Now the Kremlin and the nationalist far right are finding common ground in their view of homosexuality as a sign of encroaching decadence in a globalized era.
(Mark Gevisser, Life Under Russia’s “Gay Propaganda” Ban) There’s much to fault in this New York Times piece, but I think it’s clear that Putin is drawing, or at least testing the usefulness of, a line between traditional Russia and the insanely iconclast Western world. I think the line will draw many traditional cultures closer to Russia.
I really think the bloom is off the American rose in much of the world, and we have drones and Dubya and hubris and – gosh, I’m afraid I’m leaving someone out! Oh, yeah: Evan Wolfson – to thank for it.
I know the press just doesn’t get religion, but one might hope for a little more from Emily Click, Assistant Dean at the Harvard Divinity School:
There are people within the Methodist tradition who want very much to be able to support gay people making a holy covenant with each other, as well as people who think it’s fundamentally wrong.
(From the NPR Religion Podcast for December 22)
Really?! Someone is against anyone making a holy covenant?! Do you mean to tell me they don’t just think there’s something dubious about calling this particular kind of covenant “holy”?
Meanwhile, on the Hoosier home front, looms HJR 6. Two different legislatures – not just two sessions of the same legislature – must approve it if it is to go on the ballot as a referendum. What with one thing and another, 2014 is the last chance to pass it in the second legislature and get it on the ballot, and it’s the end of a process that’s been ongoing for a while.
Here’s what HJR 6 says:
Only a marriage between one (1) man and one (1) woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Indiana. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized.
The whole thing is dismissed by many as “enshrining bigotry in Indiana’s constitution” or whatever. Indiana’s Universities seem to be getting into the game with sentiments that boil down to “We don’t don’t want good students and staff to think Indiana has Cooties, so don’t pass this.” I may be wrong, but I think I’m reading between the lines “All the cool states are getting SSM.” The Chamber of Commerce types seem at least not to want Cooties; some major state industries have weighed in against it.
I believe I went on record, in a moment of weariness and candor, as thinking the battle for traditional marriage is lost. Events of recent weeks have not renewed my strength, and I’m not much mounting up as with wings of an Eagle.
Be we supporters of traditional marriage should, it seems to me, be troubled by that second sentence. Nobody knows what it means. Oh, yes, it means “no end runs.” It probably means “no ‘civil union’ or ‘domestic partnership’ status.” And for most of the same reasons I oppose same-sex marriage, I oppose those consolation prizes as well. I won’t rehearse it all again.
But I have something new to add. We’re really in a bit of bind because the zeitgeist has shifted so radically. We can’t win for losing.
For instance, if “we” pass HJR 6 in the legislature, undergo long and expensive media campaigns for and against, and then the voters pass it next fall, we can fully expect the ugliest, most atavistic ads in favor of HJR 6 to be introduced as evidence in the subsequent Federal lawsuit to strike it down under the Federal constitution. In due course, we’ll have Justice Kennedy ignoring guys like me, citing those exhibits, and saying that Indiana is just one more damned state full of hateful haters and their hate-filled hate and bare desire to harm. Bye-bye, HJR 6.
But if we don’t pass it, we’ll be told that Hoosier sentiment now favors SSM, that our legislature’s out of step with the people, and it’s safe for SCOTUS to bring forth SSM’s Roe v. Wade moment and (snicker) lay this issue (guffaw) to rest (bwahahahahaaa!) by invalidating the law (not constitutional provision) already on the books:
(a) Only a female may marry a male. Only a male may marry a female.
(b) A marriage between persons of the same gender is void in Indiana even if the marriage is lawful in the place where it is solemnized.
All things considered, I hope the legislature kills HJR 6. Second best is if they drop the second sentence in hopes that we can get it on the ballot with just the first sentence (even though the prior legislature passed it with both). Just take with a grain of salt the ersatz opponents of the measure with their outlandish ads; they may be moles, manufacturing “evidence” for the resolution’s opponents’ eventual judicial use.
[G]ive Justice Antonin Scalia credit — or condolences.
When the court last June struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act and said the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages performed in those states where it was legal, Scalia sounded a loud warning.
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“It takes real cheek for today’s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here,” Scalia wrote.
Instead, “the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition,” Scalia wrote, and such suits are a “second . . . shoe to be dropped later.”
Scalia’s words have been highlighted in the two recent decisions about same-sex marriage that will return the issue to the Supreme Court.
(Robert Barnes in the Washington Post. H/T Rod Dreher)
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 