Are "Celibate Gays" Really Gay?

Dryden also ‘meant’ by wit the essential gift of the poet. He defined this gift as … ‘propriety of thoughts and words.’ … This definition would commit us to the consequence, ‘Euclid was the greatest wit that ever set pen to paper.’ It may also be asserted almost safely that no human being, when using the word wit to talk with and not talking about the word wit, has ever meant by it anything of the sort. Nor does Dryden himself anywhere make the slightest use of this definition …

We might tax our brains for a long time to explain how a man of Dryden’s stature could have said anything so false to all actual usage, so useless, and so unsupported, if we did not realize its tactical function. He is thinking neither about what the word actually meant nor about what it could, in the interests of clarity and precision and general utility, be made to mean. It is a valuable vogue-word. Therefore a strong point in the critical battle. He wants to deny the enemy the use of it.

—C. S. Lewis, Studies In Words

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Yes.

Freelance journalist Brandon Ambrosino tweeted up a storm about ex-gay organizations a day or two ago, and concluded with a shot at self-identified celibate gays, stating in no uncertain terms that anyone who abstains from gay sex due to traditionalist moral or religious beliefs doesn't even qualify as gay. As he put it, ‘Gayness is more than gay sex, but it can’t be less’ (I think I recall that correctly). I'm not at all sure why he came after me and my friends [1]. Perhaps he had us on the brain because Revoice just took place, I don't know. Regardless, he did it—and seemed more than a little thin-skinned about it: anyone who wishes can go to his Twitter feed and look it up, but I can’t, because he blocked me and several other people who, in his words, came for him and got bitchy.

Anyway. I actually don't want to just rag on Mr Ambrosino for a whole post: partly because I have no intention of obeying a guy who’s not my dom, partly because I've liked a lot of other things he's written, but chiefly because I do think I understand where he’s coming from. Ex-gay organizations have taken to rebranding and moving the goal-posts a hell of a lot in the last fifteen years or so, as it became irrevocably clear that orientation change does not work, but many of them remained unwilling to really face up to the facts. Some ex-gay people have even appropriated the Side B label, notwithstanding the fact that Side B’s salient characteristics are rejecting SOCE and embracing LGBTQ identity and culture. [2]

Further still, some people’s experience of Side B has been toxic for a variety of reasons. A lot of my own attempts at chastity as a Side B person were shot through with problems that could easily have wrecked my mind, if I hadn’t had the help of guides much wiser than myself. Defensiveness and suspicion toward celibate gay identity are perfectly understandable in these circumstances.

But that doesn’t make this gatekeeping definition of gayness a sound one. I believe it’s not only a poor use of language, but actually damaging to the community it’s ostensibly meant to serve, for a great many reasons. I will list just seven.

1. It’s not how anybody actually uses the word. Okay, ‘anybody’ is an overstatement. There is an ideologically driven minority among gay people who do insist that the word be used to indicate beliefs as well as orientation; and thirty or forty years ago, that meaning was much commoner currency. Nonetheless, it isn’t how the majority of people use the word now. It normally indicates orientation, experience, and self-identity, none of which depend on having sex to exist. That is how we know we’re gay before trying gay sex, after all.

There is one other group, however, who habitually use this definition. This leads me into a second and bigger issue …

2. It endorses a definition of gayness originally designed by homphobes to justify and maintain homophobic practices. Now, the origin of a term or definition is not the only thing that determines its value, but it is one of them. And, well, in this case, it's a doozy.

I mentioned ex-gay practices above, which I endured personally. The definition expressed by Ambrosino is the exact same one drafted and used by ex-gay organizations like the Restored Hope Network to this day, because it’s one of the things that helps them move the goalposts. You’re ‘not gay anymore’ because you stop having gay sex, which they can then sell with all the appeal of orientation change—a bait-and-switch change of identity. It downright encourages ambiguous, deceitful language and thought patterns, both with oneself and others. It’s arguably the most basic tool in the ex-gay box. Insisting on gay sex as a qualifier for gay identity gives ex-gay groups more room to maneuver and ammunition to do it with, not less.

3. It erases ace and demi identities. Asexual, aromantic, demisexual, and demiromantic identities all have queer expressions (indeed, insofar as they depart from the het norm, they’re queer by definition). An asexual but homoromantic woman is every bit as entitled to call herself a lesbian as a sexually active polyamorous lesbian is. [3] Under a you-must-be-open-to-gay-sex definition, grey identities are implicitly excluded.

4. It forces people who are still navigating their own feelings into a false dichotomy. This is especially true of teens, I think, who have the most navigating to do and the most at stake in doing it; but it’d certainly apply to, e.g., the heterosexually married Christian man in his thirties who’s finally facing up to the fact that his feelings about his best guy friend are erotic, not just affectionate. A person who’s told that they have to have gay sex (or at least be open to it) in order to ‘really’ be gay is being given an ultimatum about their feelings and identity, and maybe being asked to choose between deeply held religious convictions and powerful instinctive and emotional desires—being asked to call one of those things false and insignificant, when they aren’t ready to do that. What good does that do to anyone? Why is a choice like that necessary? They should not be compelled by others to choose what part of themselves to lie about.

This is normally what Side B is saying to fellow traditional Christians. In this case, we find ourselves saying it to fellow LGBTQ people. The dichotomy is artificial either way.

5. It erases Side B Christians who support gay civil rights, including those of us who’ve been traumatized by SOCE. Okay. In the name of not pulling a bait-and-switch myself, I’ll say frankly here that there are Side B people who don’t support complete political equality between, e.g., gay and straight marriages. [4] But a lot of us do support full political equality, and have paid for that belief among our families, friends, and churches. Furthermore, a lot of us are ex-ex-gays, survivors of conversion therapy. We rejected that stuff because it’s unnecessary, wrongheaded, and toxic. We learned that the hard way—which, if I may be a bit tart, is more than can be said of Mr Ambrosino. We paid for our identities. Having those identities invalidated again, by members of the very community we’ve been vilified for asserting, is a blow upon a bruise.

6. It adds an ideological modifier onto an identity more defined by experience than by behavior. Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying that every LGBTQ person’s experience is the same. But the shared thread among them is the experience of being othered, excluded, demeaned, treated as less than, on the basis of our attractions or gender expression. We all experience that, in our fears while we're closeted and in our lives when we leave it. That unites lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, trans people, and everyone else in the community, not sexual activity.

Really it couldn’t be sex that united the gay community, not just because (for a variety of reasons) some of us never have any, but because our sexual acts and experiences are so radically different. An act of gay sex usually contains none of the same ingredients as an act of lesbian sex; in that way, each resembles heterosexual sex more than the other. This is, of course, a ridiculous line of reasoning, but that’s kinda why I don’t take this view.

7. It drives an unnecessary wedge between LGBTQ people during a time when anti-gay sentiment appears to be rising rather than falling. Infighting is dull and wasteful at the best of times. When you have a homophobic administration elected by a right-wing portion of the populace, it’s dangerous. And sure, the media distorts things and my own consumption of media is kinda random; but I’ve been seeing a lot more stories about homophobic violence lately, including a couple of nasty scares even at Pride events. This is not a smart time to be fractious.

When Side B people speak up for ourselves and the LGBTQ community as a whole, that is precisely what we’re doing: speaking up for ourselves, and for the LGBTQ community as a whole. If you think we don't get targeted for harassment and hatred because our families or our churches know we're 'the good gays,' you're wrong. We are endangered when the gay community is endangered, and vice versa. Homophobes don’t generally care that (most) Side B people are attempting celibate lives; they care that we’re gay. That’s the thing they hate. That is why, for example, an institution like the Catholic Church can be at one and the same time welcoming on paper, full of homosexually active clergy, and riddled with homophobia in its attitudes, rhetoric, and policies. They’re targeting the identity, the rallying point for the community: often as not, they’re prepared to ignore the sex.

Want to deprive your enemies of a word? Fine. But know who they really are first. You might learn something.

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[1] At any rate, many of my friends can truthfully claim celibacy. I admire celibacy, and I consider celibacy and monogamous heterosexual marriage the only two intrinsically licit sexual states; but, phrased gently, it would be generous at the expense of accuracy to describe me as chaste, and I'm certainly not going to marry a woman. [5]

[2] With qualifications? Sure. But then again, St Augustine embraced Neo-Platonism with qualifications, St Thomas Aquinas embraced Aristotle with qualifications, St Edith Stein embraced Phenomenology with qualifications. That doesn’t make any of them not part of those traditions: it just means they’re a different part of the tradition.

[3] Yes, she might well add the qualifier ace lesbian at her discretion. But that’s exactly what it is: a qualifier, added at her discretion, not a contradiction.

[4] I’m not crazy about this fact. But I don’t want to be accused of pinkwashing a movement that is pretty diverse in certain ways, including some ways that a lot gay people would find objectionable. All the same, I don’t consider it a very damning criticism of the Side B community, since there are outliers in the gay community, like Milo Yiannopoulos or Jack Donovan, that most LGBTQ people find objectionable, too.

[5] Phrased less gently, I’m kind of a whorebag.

Five Quick Takes

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I have an announcement: Mudblood Catholic is moving! I was recently picked up by a blogging platform, and I’ll be relocating accordingly. I’m not sure yet of the exact date, but I believe it should be some time next month. I’ll keep you informed about the details!

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Speaking of movement, I’ve been drifting away from anarchism lately. Less for practical reasons—I always knew anarchism was impractical (even if it isn’t nearly as impractical as people suppose)—than because it’s hard to maintain simultaneously that men should govern themselves, and also that the state, i.e. the structure which most men at most times and in most places have recognized as a legitimate governing power, is intrinsically illegitimate. How can their political choices be genuine, with the sole exception of that one? The system may be salvageable: I don’t rule out a possible return to my anarchist convictions. But even in anarchism, I accepted that there would have to be some sort of compromise with the state, since it clearly isn’t going anywhere right this second.

So yeah, after my first time voting for a President eleven years ago, I’m probably gonna vote for the second time in 2020. Feels a little odd.

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I’ve been feeling the bite of singleness a lot more in 2019 than in previous years. Singleness, not loneliness; I’ve often felt that, and if anything it’s troubled me somewhat less this year than before. But that’s only one of the trials of being single. The workload of just being alive is hard to handle by yourself. A couple, or a commune, can divide among themselves the responsibilities of earning a living, cleaning, cooking, budgeting, making social arrangements, and the like. When you’re single, either you do those things for yourself or they do not get done.

This is one of the principal things that many straight Christians who take a traditional view of sexual ethics forget, or neglect. I rather suspect it’s also one of the things that tends to move many Christians to progressivist views on sexuality; a subconscious conviction that God wouldn’t impose a burden like that on people (and indeed, it is not he but our society’s determination to identify intimacy with sexuality that imposed this burden).

I am open to dating: I don’t consider a relationship as such in the least contrary to my beliefs, because finding an intimate relationship through dating doesn’t have to be sexual (though I certainly make no claim to be a good boy whether dating or not). But, I’m not dating anyone now. And I’m a little stumped; as so often.

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My antifa posts are really taking the energy out of me, so don’t expect them to get any more regular. There’s only so much white supremacism I can stand to wade through in a given month.

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I’ve been reflecting a little of late on social media. It’s commonly accepted that it’s an echo chamber, that it gives anger and hatred a place to flourish, that it aids the spread of misinformation, that people are crueller online than they’d ever be in real life, and so forth. All of that’s true, and I don’t know that I have a good solution to any of it.

All the same, and while I do have to be thoughtful and restrain my desire to reply a lot of the time, when I think about Facebook or Twitter, I have to say: they’re delightful! Not 100% of the time, but by and large. I know so many sweet, smart, funny, caring, devout people that I’d never have heard of except thanks to Twitter. The number of brilliant jokes and adorable animals in my Facebook feed far outweighs the impact of most of the online nastiness I come across, and it’s nearly all stuff I’d never have come across except thanks to social media. We spend a lot of time lamenting the divisiveness and ragesturbation of American media, and well we should; but one of the ways we can counteract that darkness is by seeing the good that’s there and enjoying it.

And if that makes me basic, consider: perhaps basic will save the world. It’d fit right in with meek and poor in spirit.

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The Next Catholic Reform, Part II

‘Isn’t it a fact that, having more or less made up your mind to a spot of celibacy you are eagerly peopling the cloister with bogies? If you want to do without personal relationships, then do without them. Don’t stampede yourself into them by imagining that you’ve got to have them or qualify for a Freudian case-book.’

‘We’re not talking about me and my feelings. We’re talking about this beastly case in College.’

‘But you can’t keep your feelings out of the case. It’s no use saying vaguely that sex is at the bottom of all these phenomena—that’s about as helpful as saying that human nature is at the bottom of them. Sex isn’t a separate thing functioning away all by itself. It’s usually found attached to a person of some sort. … The two great dangers of the celibate life are a forced choice and a vacant mind. Energies bombinating in a vacuum breed chimæras.’

—Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night

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So! How do we respond to these scandals prayerfully, without partisanship, concretely, publicly, and in sustainable ways? To answer that, we need to determine exactly what disease shows this particular range of symptoms: i.e., abuse, unchastity, concealment, vow-breaking and deceit, and a sense of entitlement to escape consequences. All kinds of flaws show up in all kinds of cultures; but every culture has sins and blind spots that flow from its history, and outlining that context can give us an idea of how to remedy the disease.

Now, while I have some confidence in my analysis here, it has to be considered tentative. No one can have exhaustive access to history, and I wasn’t alive during most of the period I’m going to discuss. But the construction I’ve put on the facts seems to me to be plausible in itself, and likelier than the other analyses I’ve run across (to the extent that there’s any conflict). So, rather than lace every sentence with qualifiers, I’ll treat this preface as sufficient and write as if with the assurance of a journalism undergraduate.

The Catholic Church has been losing its practical authority and prestige since about the nineteenth century, if we measure those things by the amount of influence it has in fields such as law, education, and public standards of conduct. The Reformation, coming after the pinnacle of the Church’s societal victory and during its finest period of artistic accomplishment and financial success, was only the beginning. The triumph of classical Liberalism and the rise of Marxism [1] and nationalism [2] in the nineteenth century all encroached on the influence of the Church even in those countries which had remained Catholic after the Reformation, and anti-Catholicism throve throughout the English-speaking world at the same time (exacerbated by ethnic prejudices, e.g. contempt for Irish and Italian immigrants in both England and the United States). The Industrial Revolution pulled families and clans apart into smaller and smaller units, and placed harsh demands on men, women, and children in the name of production, devouring their power to practice any religion. After eleven centuries, the Papal States were conquered and abolished in 1871. And with the dawn of psychoanalysis and sexology, sexuality began to be claimed as the proper domain of medicine and the scientific method, rather than of the theological, legal, and pastoral professions.

The middle of the twentieth century saw three events shake the Catholic Church, each in different ways. The Nazi state and the Second World War involved a large-scale persecution of Christians, and there were many Catholic casualties on both sides of the war; the Second Vatican Council allowed a dramatic revision of liturgical, disciplinary, and catechetical practices; and the Sexual Revolution transformed the ideology and norms of most Western societies with respect to moral authority, marriage and divorce, fertility and contraception, abortion, and (eventually) homosexuality. This left much of the Church feeling defensive, unsure of itself, and increasingly isolated in a libertine and chaotic culture.

A rich soil this, for sins rooted in fear, doubt, and envy—not unlike adolescence itself. A sincere Catholic, placed on the defensive about clerical authority, would easily become clericalist by way of compensation, and more so to silence interior doubts. The recently codified doctrine of infallibility would exacerbate the danger and encourage triumphalism; in the Sedevacantist heresies, we see this produced to the nth degree. Other theological ideas may have played a part, too, as that, in confecting the Eucharist, priests literally control God (a subtle inversion of the true doctrine that would turn the Mass into a kind of witchcraft). [3] 

This same defensive egotism would foster a devotion to the importance of image: if you’re smart enough, charismatic enough, morally unimpeachable enough in the eyes of others, then maybe you’ll get to keep what others are losing. If you claim infallibility, you have to look the part of impeccability. Otherwise they might not believe you—you have to make them believe you. A little reflection might have reminded us that faith is God’s gift; but while he often gives faith, he less often gives security, and prestige almost never. One has to approach other spirits for that.

And so we get a clerical culture whose idea of its own importance is swollen, and a general Catholic culture whose idea of the importance of its reputation is positively cancerous. Any criticism of the Church, any assertion that she is failing to care properly for some group of people, is labelled ‘giving scandal’ and, if possible, shown to be based in heretical ideas of what proper care consists in. Offenses on the part of individual clergy must be hushed up, and the need for hushing up becomes more urgent as offenses multiply.

But why should they be primarily sexual offenses? Well, strictly speaking, we don’t know that they were: there may be, for example, a great deal more financial corruption than we’re aware of in the hierarchy (and considering the lawyers that various Catholic dioceses and institutions are able to pay for, some would argue that there is a pretty huge misappropriation of funds going on regardless). Nonetheless there are a number of possibilities for the offenses that were and are sexual. Envy of the licentious behavior of others is one possibility, especially as celibacy went from being an unusual but ordinary state in life for all sorts of people, to being the almost exclusive preserve of Catholic priests and religious, and licentious behavior itself became increasingly public and provocative. But I seriously doubt that that’s the deciding factor here, because chastity (with its opposite) is a function of the human capacity for relationship, and sex can’t be considered entirely outside of that context. The aforementioned fragmentation of the family and Catholic reticence about discussing sex are both likelier to have a big impact: the one to exacerbate the unmet need for human connection, the other to diminish the individual’s power to understand that need.

And the Church’s teaching on homosexuality does little to correct and much to poison this culture. This is partly to be laid at the feet of the ex-gay movement, some exponents of which (like Monsignor Anatrella) were later revealed to be homosexual abusers themselves. Lip service is paid in the Catechism to the need for ‘respect, compassion, and sensitivity’ towards LGBT people, but the status quo among Catholics does not evince much of those, for, in a culture that rewards image and is honeycombed with sexual indiscretions (because every human culture is thus honeycombed), LGBT people are the perfect scapegoat: most people can tell themselves, truthfully or at least convincingly, that they aren’t interested in their own sex, so at least they’re better than Those People. Such easy victories on the field of self-mastery are all but irresistible.

But the point here is not that this has a negative impact on gay people (though it does, and that deserves to be addressed as well). The point is, a homophobic culture is, if anything, likelier to have problems with homosexual abuse than one that isn’t. Writing specifically about the proposal to ban all gay men from enrolling in seminary, Chris Damian put it perfectly.

What do you do with that seminarian, the seminarian so prejudiced against homosexuality that he can’t even recognize his actual feelings? What do you do with that person, whose prejudices can harden into callousness as he seeks to cover over what he feels? Surely that will enter into the ways he ministers to those with same-sex-attractions, preventing true compassion, mercy, and engagement. He’s never practiced these towards himself, so he wouldn’t be able to fully practice it towards others either. One day he may be overcome by his repressed desires and begin acting out in odd ways, ways that he doesn’t understand and can’t face … Older, manipulative priests may recognize this and invite them into their lives, eventually surprising them with a carefully crafted seduction or assault. Seminarians unaware of how to relate to these desires and unable to recognize such advances (probably because they have been unable or unwilling to recognize much about sexuality generally) will be caught off guard and unable to formulate a response until it is too late. Then, once the seminarian realizes what has happened, a mixture of shame, fear, and desire to serve the Church may prevent him from being open about what happened. The manipulator will know this and will use the fear and secrecy created by a callous ban to further manipulate. … The seminarian will both be stuck in an abusive relationship and will be unable to honestly and vulnerably address great portions of his interior life.

My pastor, in his homily this past Sunday, spoke of non-Catholics embodying Catholic values (like the Catholic notion of the family being more evident among Mormons than among us) as a kind of fulfillment of the text If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. It seems to me that the stones of the New York Times, PFLAG, the APA, and Rainbow Railroad have been shouting for an awfully long while. Perhaps it is time we took notice.

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[1] Not to be confused with Socialism, of which it is a specific type. Some systems of Socialism have no conflict with Christianity, or even specifically endorse it; Marxism specifically opposes religion in general and Christianity with it.

[2] I.e., the idea that every ethnic group (in Latin natio, as in ‘native’) should form an independent state. Until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, multi-national states were quite common. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a famous example.

[3] I heard of this bizarre teaching as current in seminaries thanks to a talk given by Dr Lee Podles, a fellow parishioner of mine who wrote an enormous book titled Sacrilege on the abuse crisis, which was published in 2008. It explored the interior rot long before the findings of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury were released, and came to many of the same conclusions, if not sterner ones.

Fear and Trembling

An adherent of the Enlightenment, a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him, too, and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi's room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, 'But perhaps it is true after all.' The scholar tried in vain to collect himself -- his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Yitschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: 'My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true.' The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible 'perhaps' that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance.

—Martin Buber, Werke [1]

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Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation

This was a tough post to write, and may be a tough post for some of you to read. However, if you’re going to read it then I beg you to read the whole thing. Each part of it is important to hold together with each other part.

You may have heard of Josh and Lolly Weed, a Mormon couple in a mixed-orientation marriage whose coming out post, ‘Club Unicorn,’ went viral about six years ago. This wasn’t a late-in-life gay identity epiphany or an ex-gay conversion therapy success story; Josh knew he was gay before he even met Lolly, he told her before they started dating, and he never claimed to be a straight man (or an ex-gay one, for that matter). A couple of weeks ago, they announced on their blog that they are getting divorced.

It’s an eloquent, heartbreaking piece. I admire the Weeds for their courage and honesty. And it left me physically shaking, and mentally shaking, too.

Some key excerpts from their (justly) lengthy post, ‘Turning a Unicorn Into a Bat.’

[Josh:] About three years ago, I finally saw how important it was to love myself, to truly love myself as a gay man. It happened when my dear friend Ben Shafer (who himself is straight) turned to me one day and said, ‘Josh, you realize your sexual orientation is beautiful, right? Not just tolerable. It’s beautiful …’ I could hardly even register what he was trying to say. … ‘But what about it being so obviously not what God or biology intended? I’ve just always believed that I was meant to be straight, and that God will fix me someday so that I fit in with the rest of His children. I’ve always believed I was a broken straight person …’ And it was as I said those last words that my therapist-brain kicked and listened to the words coming out of my mouth. And I was stunned. People who view themselves as fundamentally broken, I knew, are not healthy. What I had just said was not healthy. 

… That night I talked to Lolly and told her all Ben had said, still with a vein of skepticism. ‘Can you believe he said that?’ was the feeling behind my words. And she sat for a moment thinking, then said something that surprised us both. ‘Josh, Ben is right. You aren’t just a broken straight person. Your gayness is a part of who you are. And your sexual orientation is beautiful. You are as God intended you to be.’ Though we had never fully embraced these ideas as reality before, we felt the spirit confirm them powerfully in that moment. The truth of Lolly’s words rang in our bodies. … And we were suddenly able to see more clearly the pain that my sexual orientation brought to our marriage. It hurt us both very deeply, and we spent many long nights holding one another and weeping as we thought of the decades to come for us, neither of us experiencing real romantic love. 

… Probably the most motivating factor of all that got me to actually really consider what God had been telling us for a while was my recognition of my own internalized homophobia—the layers of disgust and self-loathing I felt for myself that I was in denial of—and the way that led to my own suicidal ideation. … Guys, my life was beautiful in every way. My children, my wife, my career, my friends. It was filled with so much joy. The things I talked about in my coming out post in 2012 weren’t false. The joy I felt was real! The love I felt was real, but something in me wanted to die. …

My suicidality was not connected to depression. That’s how my mind could hide it from me. With no context and no warning, I would occasionally be brushing my teeth or some such mundane task and then be broadsided with a gut-wrenching, vast emptiness I can’t put into words, that felt as deep as my marrow—and I would think in a panic ‘I’m only 37. I’m only 37. How can I last five more decades?’ That thought—the thought of having to live five more decades, would fill me with terror. It was inconceivable for a few moments. 

And then it would pass. 

But the other thing I hadn’t been looking at was something I read, with horror, in a text message I sent to a dear friend during my week in Jacksonville. By the time I read what I had sent, the denial had broken down. Lolly was sitting next to me, holding me as I wept, and I was reading these text messages to her, and it felt like reading the words of another person … The text I had sent one week earlier said: I have thought of putting a gun in my mouth more times than I can count. 

… Do you realize how wrong it is that I have had to face the following cost/benefit analysis: if I stay in my marriage then I won’t disrupt my daughters’ sense of continuity. But I also might take my own life. And if I did die, wouldn’t that end up being way worse for them in the long run …? Is it worth the risk? 

[Lolly:] For me, giving my whole heart to Josh while knowing that he did not love me the way a man loves a woman has always been devastating. We were best friends, but he never desired me, never adored me, never longed for me. People who read our previous post might be confused because we mention having a robust sex life. That was true. We put forth a lot of effort and were ‘mechanically’ good at sex—and it did help us to feel intimate, and for a time that did help us to feel content … Whenever he held me in his arms, it was with a love that was similar to the love of a brother to a sister. That does eventually take its toll on your self-esteem. No matter how much I knew ‘why’ he couldn’t respond to me in the ways a lover responds to a partner, it wears a person down, as if you’re not ‘good enough’ to be loved ‘in that way.’ 

… Almost everyone has said to me, with an air of protective emphasis, ‘Oh, but Lolly, you deserve to be loved in that way! You will find someone else who can love you like that. You deserve to love and be loved in that way!’ And I agree with them. … The thing that’s so interesting to me is how few people think of Josh in this way. How few people in his life have ever thought these things about him—things that are so obvious, so clear, so emphatic when talking to another straight person.

Christian, when you talk or think about sexual ethics, when you study and articulate and defend Catholic teaching on the subject, this needs to be held firmly before your eyes, too. Not only are you not speaking in a vacuum; not only are you speaking to human beings; you are speaking to loving, devout, perceptive people, who have spent time and thought and agony in trying to practice their beliefs faithfully and gained nothing from it but more anguish. It’s easy enough to rationally disapprove of the man who gets high and has unprotected sex with four complete strangers in the back room of a bar; it shouldn’t be so easy to turn that same disapproval against a man like Josh Weed. I don’t say it’s impossible to affirm Catholic doctrine in the face of this kind of testimony, but I do say that any affirmation of Catholic doctrine must acknowledge and grapple honestly with this kind of testimony, with the cost the doctrine imposes. If you refuse, you’re printing counterfeits.

Take time to think, actually think, about the effect of pious clichés. ‘Just take it one day at a time’ is among my least favorite, because what it sounds like is: ‘It doesn’t matter that you’re lonely, because after all, you can survive as long as you don’t think about the fact that it isn’t likely to change.’ ‘We all have a cross to bear’ is, please note, not a quote from St Simon of Cyrene. ‘Your sexuality doesn’t define you’: well, no, but this isn’t about what defines people; it’s about whether they can be happy, healthy celibates if they don’t seem to be called to celibacy. And I’ve seen in the lives of others that relationships and marriage aren’t everything, sure, but masturbating into a sock while crying quietly still gets old after a while.

But what I think I hate the most is when people turn us into mascots. Those of us who are able to lead chaste lives as celibates are exceptional, for exactly the same reasons that chastely celibate heterosexuals are exceptional. And mixed-orientation marriages are very exceptional indeed, again for the same reasons that straight people getting into gay relationships, while it does happen (and adorably), is exceedingly rare. [2] Saying that so-and-so can do it, and therefore so can anybody, is not only a blatant error but a terribly cruel one. No two people enjoy identical circumstances, nor identical graces. Using the transparency of one person to shame or pressure another is hideous behavior.

If our religion is true, Catholic reader, then a lot of gay people have to lead lives of intense suffering. We need you to respect that.

For me personally—like I said, this post left me shaking for hours. I’m scared for myself, I’m scared for my gay brothers and sisters, I’m scared for my Church. I don’t know how to deal with this kind of thing: and as a self-appointed quasi-apologist, I need to say that, publicly and clearly. Anything less would be spiritual fraud.

About the most sense I can make of this experience is in something Pope Benedict wrote:

Both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt. … Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sides from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication. It prevents both from enjoying complete self-satisfaction; it opens up the believer to the doubter and the doubter to the believer; for one, it is his share in the fate of the unbeliever; for the other, the form in which belief remains nevertheless a challenge to him. [3]

Note how ‘solving the problem’ is not at all what His Holiness tries to do here. Eliminating doubt isn’t his goal. Facing the truth is.

And to those of my LGBT readers who may be moved to write me words of instruction, urging me to slough off the unhealthy beliefs my Catholic faith has imposed upon me: please don’t. I’m not in a place where I can process that kind of thing. For all her warts, I love my mother the Church very deeply, and being unsettled about her is not merely unpleasant; it’s a shock to my sense of self. I need to spend my own time with that.

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[1] Though I admit I know the passage only through Benedict XVI’s Introduction to Christianity.

[2] Some people (of various orientations and philosophical alignments) insist that a single instance of erotic interest in the same sex should always be classified as bisexuality. I personally don’t find this a very helpful use of the term; falling in love outside of one’s normal attractions once doesn’t necessarily mean that you had been repressing your other attractions, nor that you are attracted to both sexes in general, &c. But I’m not deeply invested in the terminology here: the only distinction that I would want clearly made is that between people who are attracted to both sexes in general, and those who are generally attracted only to one sex but experience an exception.

[3] Also from Introduction to Christianity.

Dona Eis Requiem, Part VII

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

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This link will take you to Part VI, which also includes links to Parts I-V.

Throughout Dona Eis Requiem, I’ve touched on things that LGBT people need from Christians. To conclude this series, I’d like to make some concrete, practical suggestions. I’ve gone over those things that fall under the Works of Mercy (to pray for the living and the dead, to shelter the homeless, to comfort the afflicted), and some points of courtesy (in language and demeanor). Now, with those as the preparation, I want to turn to the realization of those guidelines.

1. Balanced preaching, including preaching against homophobia. I’ve rarely, if ever, heard a homily against gay marriage that did not include a reminder that it’s wrong to hate gay people. I have also never heard a homily against gay marriage that left me with the impression that the preacher liked gay people in the slightest. Not that I was sure he didn’t; but, apparently, love and respect weren’t important enough to merit more than a reminder. To put the same problem another way: though it would be at least equally orthodox, I’ve never heard a sermon about showing love to LGBTs that included a mere reminder of the Church’s teaching on marriage.

This matters for several reasons, one of them being the risk of scandal it gives to those outside the faith: a casual reminder sounds like saving face, not conviction. But it also matters because—if I may trust my own limited experience—the sort of person who listens to and tries to heed a homily, is not often the sort of person who needs to be told that the Catholic Church doesn’t approve of same-sex marriage. They know that already. There are people who don’t know what the Real Presence is, or what infallibility is, or the difference between the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth, who can tell you that the Church is against gay marriage. Preaching to the choir is not only boring and useless, it carries a danger within it: that of reinforcing and exacerbating any homophobia, active or latent, that the choir has within it. If the message they hear is consistently heavy on political opposition and not at least equally heavy on love, love that doesn’t need to be explained in order to look like love, a distorted relationship between Catholics and LGBT people is likely to result. Homilies against arrogance and prejudice are as important as homilies against fornication and heresy.

2. Teaching on virtue, celibacy, vocation, and discernment. Last week I spoke with a priest who gave me a much better perspective on celibacy and vocation (not that I’m ready to embrace it, exactly, but I’ve got a less unhealthy notion of what I would or will be embracing). He brought up a question that I don’t think I’d ever considered before, that of why Jesus was celibate. The obvious answer is that, if He had had a wife, His principal love would have had to go to her: Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her, forsaking all other? With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. That is an exact statement of His relationship to the Church. Marriage would have meant giving Himself totally to one person; celibacy allows him to make that total gift to humanity.

Moreover, every virtue, chastity included, is a positive quality rather than an exclusion of something else; it excludes sin as something that inhibits the positive quality, not arbitrarily. Chastity has to be not only believed but preached as the integrative, coïnherent self-mastery of soul and body together. And again, while a vocation can’t be forced, it’s also not exactly a choice in the conventional sense. It’s what you were made for, and, if freedom means the power to do what comes naturally (and sin, objectively speaking, is that which interferes with our natures, whether obviously or subtly), then freedom comes from obeying and pursuing your vocation, not from the opportunity to pick between options.

In the language of the monastic fathers, all prayer, reading, meditation and all activities of the monastic life are aimed at purity of heart, an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and of our situation as willed by him. It means the renunciation of all deluded images of ourselves … Purity of heart is then correlative to a new spiritual identity—the ‘self’ as recognized in the context of realities willed by God. … What am I? I am a word spoken by God. Can God speak a word that does not have any meaning?1

All of which is genuinely great, and it explains a lot about celibacy. What it doesn’t do—and maybe no book or homily could do it—is give us content for living as celibates. Give yourself to God is a universal command, but we live in particulars, and have to fill the time somehow. Discerning our specific vocation as celibates can be difficult, confusing, and dreary, and being given the universal command over and over is, well, only so useful. Not being the Savior, how do I give myself to humanity-in-general?

This lack of content shows through in the language used to describe the four main states of life: marriage, priesthood, consecrated life, and ‘the generous single life.’ That phrase, at least to me, is soggy with afterthought. That doesn’t mean non-consecrated lay celibacy isn’t a real vocation; but I don’t think it’s unfair either to say that the Church has given little of her energy and time to any living and life-giving theology of what that is. Because, as it stands, it sounds just as negation-centered as defining celibacy in terms of not having sex. Doubtless each one of us has his or her own peculiar mission as a celibate; but we need guidance to find it, we need to be given tools to discern the concrete. General platitudes, however true, leave us as rudderless as we were before.

3. Speak and act against the oppression of LGBT people. For the American, this will above all mean the oppression of LGBTs in other countries: Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania all have laws against homosexuality ranging from restrictions on freedom of speech to the death penalty, and the cultures that undergird those laws frequently exhibit anti-gay violence. Speaking against that sets a good example, to those inside and outside the Church, and is consistent with the Christian teaching that all men are made in the image of God and should be treated with dignity; and, more to the point, acting against it (Rainbow Railroad is one way of doing so) saves people’s lives. It’s no small thing to help a person escape a Chechnyan concentration camp or a Ugandan prison.

Navy blue: same-sex marriage legal

Cyan: same-sex marriages performed elsewhere recognized

Sky blue: same-sex civil unions legal

Pale blue: unregistered same-sex cohabitation

Grey: no recognition of same-sex relationships

Beige: restrictions on liberty of expression about LGBT issues

Yellow: same-sex activity illegal without enforcement

Orange: same-sex activity punishable by imprisonment

Deep orange: same-sex activity punishable by life imprisonment

Brown: same-sex activity punishable by death

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.2

4. Let us work alongside you. Christians are much given to telling gay people not to define ourselves by our sexuality. Well and good; but we kinda need you to cut that out, too. Let us be teachers, priests, therapists, soldiers, youth pastors. Of course a person with psychological problems or sexual addiction wouldn’t necessarily be cut out for such roles, but psychological problems and sexual addiction don’t really have anything to do with being gay. They’re abundant among heterosexuals. Reluctance to allow LGBT people a role in ministries and leadership is based either in ignorance of the facts about us—an ignorance which, sad to say, is commonplace among Christians—or in bigotry. And neither bigotry nor ignorance is helpful to the Church, or to the person discriminating, or to the one discriminated against.

Whatever our vocations may be, we must fulfill them, and if we don’t then both we and the Church will be deprived of a good that God meant to give us: quench not the Spirit. If our attempts to pursue our vocations are thwarted by our fellow believers, the consequences can be tragic. A repressed vocation is as dangerous as a repressed passion, for both, being rooted in our natures, will find other and perverted modes of expression if their natural growth is cut. This doesn’t mean you don’t weed the garden of nature, but, as the parable of the wheat and the tares hints, weeding should not be undertaken prematurely or hastily.

To sum up the series: love us; and take care to think out how to love us in ways that we will recognize as love. God emptied Himself, taking on the likeness of a servant.

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1Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, p. 46.

2I John 3.16-18.

Why Hast Thou Thus Dealt With Us?

It is the rarest thing in the world to hear a rational discussion of vivisection.1 Those who disapprove of it are commonly accused of ‘sentimentality,’ and very often their arguments justify the accusation. They paint pictures of pretty little dogs lying on dissecting tables. But the other side lie open to exactly the same charge. They also defend the practice by drawing pictures of suffering women and children whose pain can be relieved (we are assured) only by the fruits of vivisection. The one appeal, quite as clearly as the other, is addressed to emotion, to the particular emotion we call pity. And neither appeal proves anything. If the thing is right—and if right at all, it is a duty—then pity for the animal is one of the temptations we must resist in order to perform that duty. If the thing is wrong, then pity for human suffering is precisely the temptation which will most probably lure us into doing that wrong thing. But the real question—whether it is right or wrong—remains meanwhile just where it was.

—C. S. Lewis, God In the Dock, ‘Vivisection’

And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.

—Luke 2.48-50

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Before I return to more regular content, I want to address a particular argument for Side A theology2 that, I feel, helps no one. Roughly summarized, it’s the argument from agony: how could God demand celibacy of gay people? It’s stated with great clarity and pathos by Constantino Khalaf on his blog.

The uncomfortable truth is that many gay Christians who can’t reconcile their faith and sexual orientation often slip into promiscuity. … Committing to someone of the same sex would mean committing to a life of unrepentant sin, whereas the ‘trip up’ involved in casual sex is an offense from which we can easily seek forgiveness. … Scripture and human experience reveal that celibacy is a gift reserved only for some. I implore our straight brothers and sisters to imagine being told you must permanently abstain from sex (not only until marriage, but for life), while in your hearts you don’t feel called to celibacy. Imagine spending years praying that God will either change your sexual orientation or numb your desires for intimacy. Imagine trying one therapy after another, often at severe emotional and financial costs. Imagine praying for just one thing, but the one thing you ask for is the one thing God continuously denies.

‘Well, Lord,’ you might say, ‘I’ve done everything I could to give up this need. If you won’t help me; if I’m on my own; I give up. If you’ve turned me over to illicit desires, then I’ll give in. Goodbye.’ This is tragic, and I can’t imagine it pleases God. In fact, I can’t think of a better example of a wolf in sheep’s clothing than a theology that, in its practical application, favors promiscuity over monogamy. ‘A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.’ You cannot build a healthy sexual ethic on just ‘don’t do it.’ Gay Christians have never been given a framework for God-honoring sexuality, and this is the reason why so many use sex less ethically than non-believers.3

I hope that anyone who reads this does have a pang of compassion: no matter the details of your theology, other people’s suffering is a tragic result of the Fall, and is rightly mourned. Further, it's absolutely true that a theology consisting merely in No is unlivable, and that the Church has made a fairly shabby showing thus far in terms of giving her LGBT children something more. And to dispose of one very bad counterargument, when he speaks of sex, I don’t think Mr Khalaf has the mere physical act in mind; the piece as a whole make it clear he is talking about erotic fulfillment, of which sexual intimacy is the crown; to go without that involuntarily, even if we think it’s morally necessary, is a terrible hardship. 

Nevertheless, the syllogism drawn by Mr Khalaf (and many others) from the data is gravely flawed, and there are sounder reasons to take Side A views. There are certain details which merit discussion in their own right—for instance, what the criteria of discernment are; does everyone feel called to what God in fact calls them to? or are there objective, ‘external’ touchstones upon which to make that judgment? Is the fact that God refuses something to the earnest suppliant evidence that that thing is, intrinsically, undesirable or unnecessary? or might He have other reasons for refusal? But I don’t propose to treat these other questions, because the chief argument here is the argument from agony. Would God really consign someone to a lifetime of self-denial with respect to eros? Would He allow—no, require—that kind of suffering?

I think the answer is a totally unavoidable Yes. And not just because I’m Side B: when, for a brief period some years back, I was Side A, I’d have given you the same answer. To say that God would not allow that kind of suffering makes a mockery of Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Lubyanka, Vladivostok, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Sirte. If these things do not make belief in a benevolent God untenable, unwanted and unhappy celibacy certainly won’t.

But would He impose that kind of suffering? Why? What for? Well—as hackneyed and unjustly applied as the topic usually is—we already know He does in the case of pedophiles. The two cases are extremely different: two women or two men can give meaningful consent, while a child can’t; and consent (that is, the intention of mutual self-gift, regardless of any attendant imperfections) is even more central to sex than procreation on Catholic premises, for sex that doesn’t happen to result in a baby need not be immoral, whereas rape always and necessarily is. But, as soon as we admit any case in which some person is simply not allowed to ever have the erotic relationship they most desire, full stop, the possibility of another such case emerges by the terrible force of logic.

Now, it’s perfectly possible to hold that there is in fact only one such case, or that there are multiple cases of this kind but homosexuality isn’t in fact one of them. Arguments about the meanings of Greek and Hebrew words are well and good; arguments about whether and how much ancient cultural expectations of the genders influenced sexual mores, and whether we ought to retain those expectations or modify them or reject them, are well and good; even arguments about progressive revelation are well and good. These deal in facts. But let us have none of the argument from agony, for there is no doctrine, no religion, no total view of the universe, that can eliminate the fact of agony. Only the Second Coming can do that. The Christian may espouse many things, but he cannot espouse the doctrine that obedience will never make martyrs, not when his God was martyred, in life and death. Perhaps the gay Christian need not crucify his erotic desires; but he will most assuredly have to crucify something, and it will be at least as appalling as the terrible call to unwanted celibacy. Take thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest …

If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor-camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.

—Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

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1Vivisection is the practice of performing surgery on living animals for purposes of research, as opposed to the medical purpose of treating some ailment. Conservatives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were for the most part horrified by the practice—for instance, Dr Samuel Johnson (of dictionary fame) wrote a severe denunciation of vivisection, quoted by Lewis near the end of this essay—while Darwinian scientists generally defended it. C. S. Lewis, though not an activist, was an unwavering opponent of the practice.

2If you don’t read this blog regularly or don’t travel much in gay Christian circles, Side A is a sort of nickname for progressivist theology on the subject of homosexuality: i.e., the belief that God blesses homosexual unions on the same basis as heterosexual ones. Whether and to what extent marriage is involved varies somewhat among different Side A theologians, though most of those I know of consider it just as necessary for gay people as for straight.

3From ‘Pious Promiscuity’ on Dave and Tino.