Review: "I'm Gay" by Eugene Lee Yang

Every single courageous act of coming out chips away at the curse of homophobia. Most importantly it’s destroyed within yourself, and that act creates the potential for its destruction where it exists in friends, family, and society.

—Anthony Venn-Brown, A Life of Unlearning

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Photo by Noam Galai

Eugene Lee Yang of the Try Guys (a foursome who try weird new experiences on YouTube) recently released a coming out video, simply titled I’m Gay. It tells his story wordlessly, through dancing and music, and while ‘interpretive dance’ sounds … well, put bluntly, pretty fucking stupid to anybody who grew up in my generation, this video floored me. I first saw it on Saturday and I’ve already watched it six or seven times, as well as his making-of video. It’s stunning. And I am not the first to observe that, of the possible ways, an intricately designed, visually spectacular internet video of interpretive dance is arguably the gayest way to tell people that you’re gay.

The story is arranged in six scenes, corresponding to the six colors of a typical Pride flag: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Yang tells his archetypal yet fairly complex story with incredible economy—only a single scene (the red) lasts longer than one minute, and every movement is choreographed to communicate its meaning vividly. The best way I can review it is just to describe it, pointing out a few of the symbols that stood out to me. I’ll take the scenes one by one, adding the keywords from the making-of video.

The Red Scene: Nature

This presents Yang in a family setting. A coffee table surrounded by a couch and two chairs sits in front of a red wall, with father, mother standing behind, brother and sister on the couch on either side of Yang; he is dressed in an androgynous red costume representing his different-ness, while his family are in grey, suggesting that they have not yet taken a side, perhaps not recognized a conflict. Childhood, playfulness, and innocence are the salient characteristics of most of the children’s movements. At first their playfulness is not gendered, their mother’s beauty and their father’s rigidity are equal ingredients in all three; but their play soon begins to be an imitation of the same-sex parent—except Yang, who begins imitating his mother more than his father. The camera pulls out more and more, away from the wall, showing that its confines are artificial and belie the real shape and size of the room and that there are large windows letting in bright light further off. When Yang is about to use his mother’s lipstick, his father slaps it out of his hand and hits him; then the family marches offscreen into the next scene.

The Orange Scene: Nurture

A large crowd of people dressed mostly in grey, American clothing (save for Yang, who is in orange-colored clothes that seem to be some variety of hanbok, traditional Korean garb) are marching into a room full of benches. This is stated in the commentary to represent school and work as well, but the primary imagery chosen is that of a church, with a cross-bearing pulpit and two candelabra full of bright orange candles. The main mass of people march in an ordered pattern, sometimes covering their eyes or grabbing their heads as if in pain or anger. Yang’s dancing and leaping become wilder and more joyful as he goes, until one of the grey-clad people stops him, moving his body into a rigid, pious posture like the others, then forcing him to bow and dismissing him. Yang takes a seat in a pew with a toothy smile, and the grey clothes of the others shift to white and black: sides are being taken, opposition expressed. The man behind the pulpit is in white, as are the people on the far side of the aisle from Yang, whose side is in black; the pastor figure begins making violent gestures like a fundamentalist preacher, and the camera zooms in on Yang’s face as he looks away.

The Yellow Scene: Love

This scene is particularly complex in its action. The music shifts suddenly to a lighter passage, building gradually through the scene. Sitting on a bench in front of a stand of trees and sunflowers and golden streetlamps, dressed in a vest and yellow trousers, Yang sees a girl in black dancing. The floor is covered in yellow leaves, as if signifying the organic change that is about to take place. He gets up to dance with her, and they leap and swirl for a while, until he sees another figure, a male, also dressed in yellow trousers. He moves into a pas de deux with him, with acrobatic, extraordinarily graceful movements. At first the two men move away from the girl and she moves more slowly after them. Then the men briefly move back: Yang reconnects with her, and she gives a kindly gesture connecting the two men again. (Yang describes her as representing the genuine ally, helping him discover and accept himself.) The other man lays himself on the ground, catching Yang in a suspended hold and slowly lowering him onto his body. They are about to kiss as the scene changes.

The Green Scene: Community

Here Yang appears in an elegant, sequined, deep green drag costume with a large pompadour wig, going down a set of stairs, greeting and embracing other drag queens and women as they head down to a dance floor. Their costumes are in an assortment of rainbow colors, but green predominates, at once dark and lush. The music has become energetic again, and characters dance for a few moments—then a figure in white, shown only from behind, approaches them, his fingers in the shape of a gun: likely a tribute to the mass shooting at Pulse three years ago. The dancers pause; then the outer ring ducks out of sight, then the rest, leaving only Yang visible, his face fearful as he raises his hands as if to stop the shooter, but then arms reach up from below and pull him out of the frame.

The Blue Scene: Hate

This is maybe the toughest part of the video to watch. We see Yang from above, in a crowd of anonymous white-clad people, bloodied and being kicked from every side. He is dressed only in a pair of jeans that are much longer than his legs; he cannot walk, cannot escape. The brutalizers disperse suddenly, and the camera moves down, showing him pulling himself along the ground, a blue dumpster and garbage bags behind him. Suddenly his family reappears: his mother and brother are now in black instead of grey, and his father and sister are now in white. His mother and brother move to help him up, but his father and sister begin fighting them, and before long his family are all fighting each other and slide out of the shot; Yang is pushed onto the ground again as they leave, and lies there, convulsing, trying to get up. Darkly echoing the first scene with the red lipstick, Yang touches the red blood on his mouth as he finally manages to sit up, then stand.

The Purple Scene: Pride

Yang is again in an arresting drag outfit, indigo shading into violet. He rises from the ground, at first with his back to the camera, but he quickly turns, anxious in his beauty. Crowds of people, some in white, some in black, surround him; some of those dressed in black reach out as if to caress or encourage, some of those in white shove or paw him, but most are busy yelling at each other as he slowly walks forward, finally reaching a point beyond the crowd; as he does, the shot switches to a distant and unfocused one that slowly pulls back in to his face. The music climaxes and stops, and we hear the angry arguments behind, but the shot lingers on Yang’s face: uncomfortable, anxious, defiant, the lips moving slightly, the eyes going back and forth uncertainly and then—just a couple of seconds before the scene ends, it all smooths out. Yang’s mouth is set, his eyes steady, his brows un-knotted. A peaceful, self-assured dignity closes the scene.

Credits

The credits play over a final, narrative-less scene. Yang is dressed in a luxuriant robe, apparently an open-breasted version of the shenyi (a traditional Chinese robe for men), silver and turquoise in color with what looks like a tea-green obi (a Japanese garment that’s a little reminiscent of a corset), seated alone in the room from the red scene, now with the encroaching wall removed. He rises, gesturing with the magnificent trailing sleeves that had at first appeared to be a gown; as if in response, six figures from the green scene—one in each color: red, purple, blue, orange, yellow, and green—file in. When they have all taken their positions, mirroring the arrangement of the family from the beginning, Yang sits down again in the center, and the legend For the LGBTQIA+ Community appears on the screen.

This is one of the most powerful and visually captivating short videos I’ve ever seen. I rank it with the music videos for Hunger or Spectrum by Florence + the Machine. I recommend it to anyone with a taste for dance or design, or anyone who cares about LGBT issues. Or really, anybody who’s open to watching it. Hats off to Eugene Lee Yang for a beautiful piece of art.

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Review(ish): "Love, Simon" and "Geography Club"

Did they remain friends when they went back to school on Monday? Or did they immediately return to their respective social circles and continue ignoring each other? … If the kids show up to school on Monday and form a new clique that breaks down social barriers and challenges conventional high school’s idea of archetypes and popularity hierarchies, that makes The Breakfast Club a piece of shit movie. … We’d lose the realism and honesty that was present throughout all of The Breakfast Club’s non-weed-related moments. … The right ending would have the kids all going back to their own cliques, because that’s how you survive high school. The criminal goes back to being high and making fun of the brain, the princess goes back to ignoring everyone, and the jock continues doing whatever popular jocks do in high school. That ending makes The Breakfast Club heartbreaking and real and kind of a perfect movie. 

—Dan O’Brien, Three Classic Movies That Desperately Need an Epilogue

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I went to see Love, Simon today. As well-made gay movies so often do, it left me feeling really jumbled up inside—caught between liking the characters, empathizing with their angst, and feeling sorry for myself about not having what they have. [1]

The premise is straightforward: the Simon of the title is seventeen, has a generally happy and normal life, and a secret: he’s gay. He has been in the closet for four years, even to his closest friends. He starts trading anonymous e-mails with another gay teen [2] at his school, known only as Blue. He becomes more and more taken with Blue and desperate to find out who he is; but Simon is also still attempting to maintain his passing status, afraid of the social fallout of making his sexuality public. Then an acquaintance, Martin, finds out, and decides to try and blackmail Simon in exchange for a chance with Abby, a friend of his.

WARNING: HEREAFTER BE SPOILERS

The blackmail works, and Simon makes hay of the relationships of his friend group, trying to keep Abby available for Martin by redirecting another friend toward a different girl—who, unbeknownst to Simon, is in fact in love with him. When Abby turns Martin down after a very public, very dramatic declaration of love, he spitefully publishes proof of Simon’s homosexuality. Simon’s friends, on finding out about his lies and manipulation, desert him, and Blue, frightened by the sudden publicity, cuts off all contact with Simon. After a homophobic prank, however, Simon’s friends gradually decide to forgive him, and even Martin feels guilty and tries (with limited success) to make some amends. Finally, Simon finds the strength to accept the ways his life has changed, and sends the anonymous Blue a public invitation to meet him—which is, at the last moment, accepted.

It’s finely acted if formulaic. Nick Robinson (the lead) and Katherine Langford (of Thirteen Reasons Why fame) do particularly well, as do Tony Hale and Josh Duhamel. What I found interesting, though, was comparing and contrasting Love, Simon with a highly similar film that came out five years ago: Geography Club.

The plot reads like a bad plagiarism of Love, Simon, at least at the beginning. Russell, a teenage boy, is starting to think he’s gay and gets interested in an anonymous fellow student online. He and the guy eventually meet, and it turns out to be the quarterback, Kevin. The two share a kiss, which another student sees; she tries to get them involved in the Geography Club, which is in fact a clandestine LGBT support group (they chose the name because they thought it sounded so boring that nobody else would want to join). Russell does, while he and Kevin conduct a secret relationship. Russell and his best friend Gunnar, thanks to the former’s new status as a running back on the football team, even start dating two of the most coveted girls in the school. However, in order to stay on good footing with his teammates, Russell is forced to humiliate another member of the Geography Club, and gets thrown out. Then, when a double date with Gunnar seems to be getting sexual, Russell rejects his girlfriend’s advances, hurting her deeply and prompting the other girl to start spreading the rumor that he’s gay, and he and Gunnar argue over Russell ruining both dates. The other players force him off the football team over the gay rumor, Kevin included, and Russell is left completely isolated; until the kid he humiliated, understanding the pain of being an outcast, extends a friendly hand to him.

The Geography Club finally decides to go public. Kevin begs Russell to keep seeing him secretly, but Russell refuses. He and Gunnar make up, and do a parenting project together for a class. Russell outs himself decisively by attending the first open meeting of the re-formed LGBT club. Kevin almost goes as well, but can’t face the prospect of losing his place playing football, and passes by.

The structural parallels are obvious—and perhaps inevitable, given that high school stories are all but invariably social dramas, which, when dealing with queer issues, become more intense exponentially. But Geography Club’s handling of its material, if on a much lower budget, was to my mind far more inventive and realistic. Like the eponymous group, a film titled Geography Club is not likely to have a vast audience, at least not immediately (some films, like Clue, prove to be slow burns); and I must admit that there were some deliciously cringeworthy moments on the part of the adults in Love, Simon that its predecessor lacked.

But what Geography Club did so well was to present, not only in the character of Russell but in Kevin’s as well, the two distinct arcs of coming out to oneself and coming out to everybody else, and it depicted the possible consequences of the latter with much more force. Not because the consequences for Russell in Geography Club were worse than they were for Simon in Love, Simon, though they were; rather, the power came from how the consequences in the earlier film lasted, whereas the consequences in the later one were all swept away by the end. Geography Club has, on balance, a happy ending, but it’s a complicated and fairly realistic happy ending, and one that doesn’t involve Russell and Kevin riding off into the sunset together; which is almost literally how Love, Simon ends.

In Geography Club, there is moral development in each character, or the definite refusal to develop thanks to cowardice or vanity; Simon and Martin and the rest make choices in the later film, but we aren’t quite left with a sense that they’ve grown. Simon often expresses the fear that everything will be irrevocably different if he comes out, but nothing really is. And that isn’t a terrible message by any means—some people need to hear it; coming out is scary even when it doesn’t have to be—but it is also (in my opinion) a less interesting message than ‘Sometimes change is worth it.’

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[1] I don’t simply mean ‘a boyfriend’ here, though that’s certainly something I want. But whether sad or happy, what (nearly) all movies have in common is resolution, which life often lacks, at least while it’s being lived.

[2] To any LGBT teens who happen to be reading this, for the love of heaven, please do not think that trading e-mails with an anonymous person who might want to shag you is a good idea.

Kintsukuroi, Part IV: Hush

So supposing we grant the gist of this series of posts: that being gay (which is something distinct from having gay sex) is, or can be, a legitimate if limited part of our idea of ourselves, and capable of faithfully Catholic expression. Put more simply still, gay Catholic is a meaningful category. Even supposing that, why bring it up? Why not remain private about the whole thing? After all, it's no one else's business, and it's an extremely personal thing.

Well, I am the first to say -- and have said more than once -- that no one on God's earth is obligated to come out of the closet. Now, if you're contemplating getting married and your prospective spouse doesn't know, then I think you have an obligation to tell him or her, specifically; and if you have a spiritual director, you probably ought to be open about it there. But in general, "I don't want to" is an adequate and complete response to nearly any urging to come out, because it's your own business.

A lot of Catholics, and others, seem to want to go a great deal further than that, though. They seem to want not merely for us to have the option of staying closeted, but for LGBT people en masse, Christian or not, to be silent on the subject.

I've seen a number of reasons adduced for this; the main objections, as far as I can tell, are that others bear their crosses with quiet patience rather than howling for others to come help them, and that so much talk about homosexuality risks scandal by normalizing it and muddying the Church's teaching.

For the first concern, I'm frankly worried about the people who profess to be bearing their crosses alone. Christ Himself did no such thing. Nor did He or His apostles instruct us to try to. Bear ye one another's burdens is not mere moralizing on St Paul's part; it is the very principle of the life of grace. Our coinherence with one another in Christ is a coinherence in sufferings and in actions, or it is nothing. All things are vicarious: when an infant is baptized, he enters into the life of Christ, which is one with the life of the Church, in the persons of his godparents, who profess his penitence and faith on his behalf; when the Eucharist is consecrated, it is the whole Church in the person of the priest who consecrates, and it is the Person of Christ who offers and is offered to God and man at once, Himself the coinherence of man with God; in prayer, it is from the Holy Ghost that, with and through the saints, the angels, and the Mother of God, we approach the Father in Christ; in Penance, the absolution we receive by the death of Another itself issues in our pouring out our lives, in however small a way, back to that living Other in the person of our neighbor. Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these, My brethren, ye have done it unto Me; and again, Hereby we perceive the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. There is no room for jealousy of one's cross in Christianity.

I must admit, I often get the impression from authors who wish to discourage people like me from coming out, that it isn't so much a matter of what they believe is best for gay people, but that they are tired of hearing about the topic at all. That's understandable. But, if any of them are reading this, I would gently remind them that they have the privilege of being tired of the subject, and of ignoring it if they like. We don't.

If you haven't seen it before, this is the coming out video of Daniel Pierce, which 

went viral a little more than a year ago. Be warned that it is extremely disturbing.

Turning to the possibilities of scandal, I'd like to unpack that problem somewhat. First, at the risk of sounding flippant, I feel that there's a closing-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-has-bolted quality to worries about the normalization of homosexuality. Gay culture has gotten to be, by cultural standards, about as normal as Froot Loops (maybe more so, since I can't actually remember the last time I saw a box of those).

Second, I don't think personally that keeping homosexuality socially abnormal was ever that important a goal to begin with -- and not only because homosexuality is, after all, normal, in the sense of having been around since time immemorial and showing no signs of going anywhere now. That aside, abnormal and wrong are not interchangeable terms, in either fact or feeling; and one of the flaws of human nature is that most people tend to prefer doing what's normal to doing what's right. Concentrating on normality versus abnormality of sexual orientation seems to me to be playing into the hands of the World, rather than issuing a prophetic challenge to its mode of valuing things.

As to the risk of rendering the Church's teaching unclear, I for one am convinced that silence is the worst possible response to that danger. Merely to repeat the words of the Catechism, in a world to which both its philosophical basis and its technical vocabulary have become incomprehensible, will not serve. We have to say what we think, and why, in language that is comprehensible to those outside the Church, and no one is in a better position to do that -- in either understanding or credibility -- than LGBT Catholics. Catholic and Queer are two extraordinarily different dialects of English, and we are ideally suited for translation. I am convinced that to ask us not to do that is, in effect, to seriously hamper the New Evangelization.

And if we speak of scandal, it is worth noting that scandal does not only mean making people think that we're okay with gay. Insofar as any act that risks moving other people away from God by its bad example is scandalous, I think the scandal given by tacit -- or explicit -- approval of the brutal treatment of gays in Russia, India, or throughout much of Africa is grave, and reprehensible. Turning a blind eye to cruelties committed in the name of family values and traditional religion discredits the whole Church in the eyes of those outside her.

Because it isn't just about political justice -- though if it were, that would be enough to have a conversation about. It's about every human person being worthwhile and wanted in the Catholic Church. There is no one whom God loves less, and there is no danger that He will not have enough love to go around. The debate about homosexuality is not about Those People and their evil agenda. It is about people, dearly loved by Love Himself however well or badly we behave. And if we don't behave ourselves, well, with St Peter the apostate, St Paul the terrorist, the Magdalene whore, and all the ragtag and bobtail of drunks, con men, witches, womanizers, cowards, trolls, and assorted delinquents whom the Church has blessed and canonized and celebrated -- well, we're in good company.

But the impression we make on those outside isn't my only concern in arguing that, while not obligatory, coming out should be accepted. The effect of the closet on LGBT Catholics concerns me, too (whether they identify with LGBT labels or not, which is of course their own affair).

I've said before that no one is obliged to identify as gay, and I stand by that. But I would add that I've seen not identifying as gay used as a pretext to deny, ignore, and repress one's sexuality, instead of accepting and integrating it. I think this is a very bad and dangerous move. Repression doesn't work -- what you repress will worm its way out of you by some other route; or, if it doesn't, the force required to keep it inside you will stifle and distort your psyche.

That isn't to say either that you should do whatever any impulse tells you to; but integration (and thus, chastity) requires accepting one's feelings and desires for what they are: the raw material given to us by God to make a person with. Regardless of what you prefer to call the material, if what you call it is a pretext for pretending that it isn't there, you're going to hurt people -- just yourself if you're very lucky, but more probably others as well. The stories of women and men who've refused to accept homosexual feelings and gotten married, without being honest with themselves or their spouse about them, only to have those feelings catch up to them and ruin the home they worked so hard to build, are neither few nor far between.* The ex-gay world is littered with them, including some of the most prominent names in the movement. I know more than a few myself.

The long and the short of it is: be honest. Say anything, as long as it's the truth as best you know it; and see that it is the truth as best you know it.

*This should not be taken to decry those couples who enter what are sometimes called mixed-orientation marriages, such as Josh and Lolly Weed or Chris and Melinda Selmys. The distinction here is that, in these cases, the queer individual had already come to terms with their sexuality, and had come out to the eventual spouse, before there was any question of marriage. This honesty is often lacking, on one or both sides, in professedly ex-gay marriages.

Five Quick Takes

I.

I got to spend this past weekend up in Worcester, Massachusetts, with my friend Joseph Prever, erstwhile author of the outstanding Steve Gershom blog. We met two or three years ago through reading each others' work and, more importantly, a shared love of Strong Bad.

He has gone into a sort of retirement from blogging, though he is currently working on the possibility of getting a Courage chapter started in Worcester. He is also making some nifty electronica, complete with YouTube channel.

While I was up there, we went out to visit Plymouth, which I'd never been to before (actually I'd never been anywhere in Massachusetts before). My mother is distantly descended from the Mayflower Pilgrims -- though, come to think of it, is anybody today closely descended from them? -- and specifically from Elder William Brewster, their pastor. I sometimes amuse myself with wondering what he would think of me -- and I suspect that, out of being Catholic, gay, a pacifist, and an anarchist, he'd probably object most strongly to the first, given that he and his left the Church of England and indeed the country of England because it was too papist. I'd hoped to find the old Brewster house if it were still standing; as far as we could tell, it wasn't, but we did manage to find Plymouth Rock, which turned out to be a lot more difficult than we anticipated, because apparently most people don't choose to visit Plymouth or its rock in the horrible January freeze, so a lot of the tourist stuff was shut down.

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II.

Speaking of gay Christian authors, there's been some good stuff lately. Eve Tushnet (who is going to be talking about her new book, Gay and Catholic, at the Catholic Information Center in DC tomorrow night at 6) posted this piece on her ever-excellent Patheos blog, of which the following is a selection:

I did a long, fascinating interview ... in which the interviewer is a secular progressive. He found aspects of my book intriguing, but at one point he said, "Look, I need to push back on you a bit here. You talk a lot about the need for churches to change and become more accepting and welcoming of gay people. And you want to reduce stigma against not only gay people, but same-sex affection ... But can you really reconcile reduction of stigma with upholding Catholic morality? ..." 

... Jesus attempted this same trick. He made the prohibitions on lust more strict, and yet welcomed and succored prostitutes and adulteresses. 

Part of how He squared this circle was by prohibiting judgment. Spending your time imagining what those hand-holding guys might be doing is itself immoral. Acting to stigmatize and humiliate them is itself immoral. This obviously makes building a nice Christian society really hard. The tools of shame and social pressures which all societies use to maintain their boundaries suddenly become moral problems, not solutions.

It's extremely hard to bring together an elevated and exacting moral idealism, such as Christianity demands, with grace, humility, and patience attitude for those who don't live up to that idealism, such as Christianity demands. To adapt a phrase from Charles Williams, it's really hard to combine sanctity with sanity: one of the things that made the saints saintly being that they perceived the difficulty of the problem, and solved it correctly.

There is also this piece from Seth Crocker, author of Building Bridges in War Zones, dealing a little with his own coming out experience -- not so much to others, as to himself -- and interactions with ex-gay thought. I've read a hundred stories like it, but he's a good writer, and I was touched by it all over again when I read it.

And Melinda Selmys posted this at Spiritual Friendship a couple of weeks ago, dealing with the saddening and media-prominent suicide of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teenager. I don't at all know where to stand on trans issues; and I am the more reluctant to form an opinion, between the (so far) silence of the Church on the subject and the fact that, not being trans myself, there will always be a sense in which I don't know what I'm talking about and a sense in which I don't have to deal with the consequences of anything I think. But I do think that compassion, and still more respect, for trans people in our society is seriously lacking, and that wants correcting regardless of what doctrine of gender and body we espouse. A clearer knowledge of trans issues, and most especially listening to what trans people have to say about themselves, is to my mind a vital first step in this.

With a curious persistence and frequency, I've been meeting more transgender and otherwise genderqueer people lately, and I want to do more learning, praying, and thinking about these issues. For now, I'm content to state my ignorance frankly (since "The conviction of wisdom is the plague of man"), and to wait for greater light.

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III.

Ongoing apologies to my Patreon sponsors, for whom I think I've posted one reward so far? Which means I owe you, like, three? I feel really bad. I'll try to do ... something. I don't even know what.

Also, thank you to my Patreon sponsors! I'm touched by the support you guys give me, especially since blogging has turned out to be suspiciously similar to working on a few occasions, with the exception that jobs have an inscrutable tendency to make you put on pants.

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IV.

I participated, almost three months ago now, in a -- well, I don't know what to call it. Forum? Discussion ... community? A something. Anyway, it's called Oriented to Love and it's extremely difficult to explain in words what goes on there (though Sarah of A Queer Calling, whom I rode up with, did a good job of it here.) It was a group of twelve Christians, no two people having the same combination of theological views, sexual orientation, and relationship status. Though there were one or two things that made me uncomfortable, none of them had anything to do with interacting with people I disagreed with. The amount of respect and even affection that we displayed to one another, as almost total strangers, was startling and beautiful to me. I've thought about writing a post about it, although I can't think of much to say except "I liked this, it was super cool!" which is hard to make into blog post length unless you start messing with the font size. It is worth noting that it's an ongoing event; they have two or three a year, so at any given moment they're probably accepting applications.

The thing that was, I think, so powerful about it was not simply that we weren't concerned to persuade one another of our views. The mere absence of theology, or of anything (other than sin), doesn't in my opinion possess that kind of power; and it must be said, too, that no Christian life could be conducted without a modicum of theology, because applying one's intelligence to life is part of what makes you keep being alive -- as much in the spiritual realm as anywhere else -- and, in the last resort, is all theology means.

But I digress. I think the thing that was so powerful there was that each one of us was concerned with a rather different problem, which I think could be fairly summed up as follows: From where I am, how can I best love and understand people who aren't where I am? And, insofar as the Body of Christ (to say nothing of the Church and the World) interacts primarily with people who are different, there's a sense in which I think what we were doing was opening ourselves to one of the basic and elemental modes in which supernatural love has to exist.

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V.

I've been rereading Introduction to Christianity by Pope Benedict XVI, and his brilliance is just magnificent. I've been lingering particularly over his treatment of the Trinity, which he illuminates with a wisdom whose like I've never seen. It's also reminded me how funny it is that people think of him as this brutal Grand Inquisitor type, when he has things like this to say:

Every one of the main basic concepts in the doctrine of the Trinity was condemned at one time or another; they were all adopted only after the frustration of a condemnation; they are all accepted only inasmuch as they are at the same time branded as unusable ... 

[E]very heresy is at the same time a cipher for an abiding truth, a cipher we must now preserve with other simultaneously valid statements, separated from which it produces a false impression. In other words, all these statements are not so much gravestones as the bricks of a cathedral, which are, of course, only useful when they do not remain alone but are inserted into something bigger, just as even the positively accepted formulas are valid only if they are at the same time aware of their own inadequacy. 

... The physicist is becoming increasingly aware today [in 1969] that we cannot embrace given realities -- the structure of light, for example ... -- in one form of experiment and so in one form of statement; that, on the contrary, from different sides we glimpse different aspects, which cannot be traced back to each other. We have to take the two together -- say, the structure of particle and wave -- without being able to find a comprehensive explanation ... 

[I]t remains an exciting simile for the actualitas divina, for the fact that God is absolutely "in act" [and not "in potency"], and for the idea that the densest being -- God -- can subsist only in a multitude of relations [i.e., the Trinity], which are not substances but simply "waves," and therein form a perfect unity and also fullness of being. 

-- Pp. 172-175

This is only a small glimpse of His Holiness' genius. And it is of course no threat to orthodoxy -- not because he was the Pope (which, when he wrote this book, he wasn't), but because orthodoxy, while mistress of its own sphere, has nevertheless a finite sphere; she expresses the truth as best as it can be expressed in terms of the human mind, and admitting the intrinsic limitations of that mind is therefore no insult to her. It is the perennial problem of how we can know anything without knowing everything: regarding which the Catholic Church has always steadfastly maintained that we, and even she, do not know everything, but nevertheless she and we can and do know something. I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that Pope Benedict has a longstanding interest in the work of Dante, since the point of the Divine Comedy is very largely that Beatrice was not God, but that she was Beatrice; that she was not everything, but she was something.

"Then you are Somebody, sir?"

"I am."

Ten Years Out

I'd forgotten until today, but this year actually marks ten years since I came out in high school. That was a ghastly experience: I was ashamed and scared, spoke clumsily, and was reprimanded for it and told to keep silent on the subject thereafter. It was later on, in college, that I started to feel safe and confident enough to just tell people, and ultimately to simply live outside the closet.

Coming out is still a contentious subject among Catholics. Courage, which is thus far the only Catholic ministry to homosexually attracted people that has the Church's full endorsement, has been emphatically hostile to the idea of any public acknowledgement of non-heterosexual attractions.* It's probably obvious from my writing that I do not share their reticence, and I'd like to analyze the question a bit.

The author of the blog Letters to Christopher (whom I know very slightly, and rather like, our disagreements notwithstanding)** wrote a post opposing coming out just recently, in which he has the following to say:

The wisest decision I ever made about living with an attraction to men was never broadcasting it to the world by following the ritual of 'coming out.' As time passes I become more convinced that the wisest course of action for anyone who lives with same-sex attraction is to keep this information limited to a very small number of close confidants. Unless someone likes boxes placed around them which have very little to do with reality. ... [He then writes of a friend finding some of his writing online, and going aside from a bonfire they were attending, to explain to this friend that he doesn't pass judgment on him or anyone else for not being celibate.] It was a good conversation, and we eventually meandered back to the bonfire. Later I heard that when we left the bonfire there was joking that took place among some who were there that "Oh, I bet they're going out there to make out/mess around/do something." Really?

The rest of the post is in the same vein, complaining -- legitimately enough -- about the confining and often crass stereotypes of gay people that still prevail in our culture. In order to avoid being tarred with this brush, he says, he preferred not to come out.

The thing is, that's exactly the kind of thing that coming out of the closet is designed to fight. Can demeaning stereotypes be fought without coming out, in principle? Yes. Should they be fought, whether they affect you personally or not? Certainly. But principled objections, however necessary and important, don't have anything like the power of being confronted with a person whom you suddenly realize you have been treating with disrespect, and who won't fit into your preconceived categories.

Too easy.

I'll admit, too, that the post falls rather flat for me, in that the things the author describes having avoided up to that point by not coming out all seem, to me, to have rather the character of tasteless annoyances, essentially trivial in themselves, if maybe symptomatic of something more serious -- as opposed to an affliction which it was his wisest decision ever made to have hitherto avoided. However, there's no accounting for taste, and one man may be driven past all endurance by something another brushes off easily.

Most of the sources that I've read that oppose coming out don't seem to have the faintest notion of why people come out in the first place; the only explanation that I've ever seen given is that the gay movement uses coming out to lock people into a false identity and gain political support. In support of this, it's been asserted, guides for coming school people to hear only two responses: absolute acceptance or unconditional rejection.*** The only thing to be said about this is that it is not true, as a perusal of such guides will show; and that I find this view a little hysterical in the first place, in that it evaluates LGBT people only as enemies of Catholicism (which plenty of us aren't), and not as human beings with human motivations. I would have hoped that the Catholics who rightly speak so much of not reducing ourselves to our sexuality, would not do such reducing for us.

Now, I'm sure there are people who have come out for Machiavellian reasons, and that is worth addressing. But to suppose that no one comes out for any other reasons appears to me to be, even in the restricted sense I give the word, homophobic. Being gay does not make you crazy or evil; neither does disagreeing with the Catholic Church; and frankly, as someone who used to be active in LGBT advocacy, we spent more time making fun of Christian paranoia than of Christian morals.

So why would somebody come out? And, more particularly, why would a Catholic Christian come out? The USCCB (from whom I do not lightly differ) gently discourages it; to say the least, I should surely have a reason to be out of the closet. And it's worth pointing out, in an essay defending coming out, that there are perfectly legitimate reasons to stay in. It's nobody else's business if you don't want it to be, and "I don't want to" is therefore an adequate reply to any urging to come out.****

For me, the question was academic, in that I was already out before I became a Catholic. But why continue to be out, as it were? For several reasons; the chief of them being that when I was processing all this as an adolescent, I was terribly alone and frightened. I had no one. Whom could I know was safe and wouldn't reject or expose me, perhaps cruelly? Whom could I trust to know what they were talking about? Moreover, if the Catholic doctrine of homosexuality is true, then shouldn't it be open to those to whom it most urgently pertains to talk about it? If it isn't, if they're keeping secrets, how can I trust them? I don't want anybody to have to feel alone like I did; and my e-mail over the past year and a half suggests to me that being out has been worth it for that.

Another reason is the one I've already cited, homophobia. This, I am sorry to say, is largely the preserve of religious people nowadays (in this country, anyway). That prejudice wants correcting. And it can be corrected, without any dilution of Catholic teaching; I was told by a guy I went to college with that he had been kind of homophobic into the beginning of college, but that the example of a classmate who was gay and also a practicing Catholic changed his mind and convicted him of his unfairness in that regard. And Christian leaders can talk about avoiding discrimination all they like, but people can usually only come to recognize and repent of discriminatory tendencies by being confronted with a person; and as long as Christians oppose and condemn coming out, assurances that they aren't prejudiced are going to ring hollow.

Which brings me to a third reason. I believe that the discouragement of coming out, whether gentle or hostile, is a source of scandal to those outside the Church. Fifty years ago this may not have been the case, since the dispositions of society were much more in accord with Christian sexual mores, and for people to come out looked like shamelessness and an attempt to normalize perversion. Well, in a world where "Two Girls One Cup" is a thing,***** I'd say the normalization ship has kinda sailed, and as for shamelessness, I don't think it's either reasonable or healthy to be ashamed of something you didn't choose. Today, the only thing that discouraging coming out looks like, to those outside the faith, is discomfort with knowing that someone is gay, because gay people are icky and you don't want to get any on you.

And for people to believe that the Catholic Church is homophobic is a terrible stumbling block. There are people who will believe that regardless, because they classify all opposition to gay sex as homophobia. But others will test Christians against whether we not only take this view of gay sex, but treat LGBT people as second-class citizens. And if we are serious about making the distinction between disapproving of gay sex and being bigoted against gay people, we have to go above and beyond to prove that we sincerely love gay people; and that means -- it is an embarrassment to have to say this in so many words -- that we have to be okay with knowing that somebody's queer.

Admittedly some people are more obvious about it than others.

But for me personally, and I think for many of us, one of the deepest reasons for coming out of the closet can be put in a single word: authenticity. As I said before, being gay is a very personal thing, and no one is obliged to share that information with the world. But conversely, being gay is a very personal thing, and life consists entirely in being a person interacting with other persons. The doctrine of the Trinity means that relations between persons -- that is, Love -- is the fundamental nature of all reality. 

And being gay affects how you relate to people. Not always in the same way -- LGBT people aren't stereotypical any more than straight people are stereotypical. But it always does: "Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others."****** Everyone wants to know and be known for who they are; and, while sexual orientation may not constitute a person's identity, it is still in a very real way a part of who we are, because it dictates how we relate to people and what sort of relationships we long for, regardless of what our beliefs are about those possibilities.

Pretending to be straight can be suffocatingly inauthentic, and inauthenticity is always isolating, because you're being loved for a part of yourself, or even a fake self, instead of the real you. I was never lonelier than when I was closeted, and no matter what assurances I was given by others that they would love me no matter what, it was only by verifying for myself that a gay man was someone they could love -- which, in rare cases, did prove to be too much for them to handle -- that I was able to begin really receiving love.

Note that I've said authenticity, not honesty. Honesty, that is, telling the truth, can be combined with avoiding the issue in a multitude of ways; which is one reason, too, that I prefer the word gay to same-sex attracted in most circumstances, as I've seen the latter used as a shorthand for "I am going to avoid the implications of my attractions as long as I possibly can, and probably hurt myself and others while doing it" rather too often to like it. Authenticity, by contrast, suggest a way of being: being the same person to everybody, and loving others as that person, because to love is to give oneself. Which is far more important than the mere publication of facts about oneself. That sets me free in daily life to just be who I am, and try, as that person, to love others as best I can, in the grace of God. This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.

That's why I don't regret the decision I made a decade ago: because I told the truth, and now, I'm not scared any more. So, for National Coming Out Day: Hi, I'm Gabriel Blanchard, and I'm gay. Pleased to meet you.

*I must admit that my knowledge of the apostolate is limited in that I have never yet set foot in a Courage meeting, because I don't get the impression I'd be welcome even as an orthodox and practicing Catholic, since among other things I'm out of the closet and use the word gay. There are other reasons I haven't visited -- for instance, it is in my experience quite surprisingly difficult to find a chapter.

**I have, at the cost of slightly awkward phrasing in a few sentences, avoided naming this person, out of respect for his own dislike of coming out. Obviously I don't share his approach, but coming out (or not) is after all a very personal decision, and it's none of my business to make it on his behalf.

***This is based partially on the essays on the subject that used to be posted on Courage's website, and also on the general tenor of many Catholic writers on the subject. The said general tenor can be found on the internet if you care to go looking for it, and to violate the First Rule of the Internet, but Courage has altered its website, and doesn't appear to still be hosting the essay I quoted in this post. If that's the case, I am very pleased.

****I would recognize two exceptions, one practical in nature, one principled. The first is in speaking to a spiritual director; if they aren't fully informed of your nature, their counsel will be correspondingly less accurate and useful. The second is in seeking marriage: a spouse has a right to know about this; indeed, I'm given to understand that an undisclosed homosexual orientation is grounds for an annulment in canon law. Whether I'm rightly informed about that or not, information that is thus directly relevant to a husband and wife's life together cannot justly be withheld or distorted.

*****If you don't know what this is, for the love of God, don't Google it. If you must know, look it up on Urban Dictionary, and then cleanse your eyes with fire. Trust me, you'll want to.

******Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 2332. Sexuality here does not exclusively mean sexual orientation, but the whole of being a human person, an assertion that we are not simply souls that "have" bodies to which sex is incidental, but that we are by nature body-and-soul together, and that gender-sex is part of who we are.

Raw Tact, Part IV: Coming Out Christian

When I was in college, a group of weird fundamentalist preachers came to the campus to yell at us all. I wish I was just contemptuously summarizing what they were doing, but no, they literally stood there for hours, just yelling. While students from the Pride Alliance stood in front of them with a banner, holding a silent protest, the yellers said that God does hate some people, that they themselves didn't sin any more (fascinating), and that we were a university of masturbators. They called themselves Soulwinners Ministries International; we, well, called them other things.

In the wake of that, Campus Crusade's University of Maryland chapter had a counter-demonstration, saying that everyone, including Christians, sin and have sinned, and including public confessions; one girl who was involved with the Pride Alliance said that she was really grateful to see us there saying these things. A journalism student covered the counter-protest, and interviewed a handful of us, including me; I mentioned that I was a non-practicing homosexual, and he, intrigued, asked for a longer interview later on. I assented, and, a few days later, was a little shocked to find a picture of my own face taking up half the front page of the school paper. The article was far from perfect; it makes me laugh now, partly from the very melancholy picture of me it presents, and partly from a few minor inaccuracies; but, in retrospect, I think that was the most public and decisive coming out I ever had. So I guess that's ... something. Not sure what, but definitely very, very something.

That was two years before I entered the Catholic Church. I knew, before I swam the Tiber, that I was in for difficulties of various kinds -- not least the exacting ethic of chastity that the Church believes. But one unexpected thing, which I didn't even begin to pick up on until I had been a Catholic for two or three years, was a great dislike on the part of Catholics for gay people coming out of the closet.

I have always been at a loss to understand this. I've read a lot of the reasons set forth by various Catholic authors, and I think I understand where they're coming from; as that gayness should not be a person's chief identity (and -- let's face it, fellow queers -- a lot of people in the LGBTQ world are pretty immature about gayness as an identity, or a substitute for an identity), or that jumping from any same-sex feelings to a categorical "Well I must be gay then" is foolish, or simply that people's privacy should be respected if they don't want to come out (something else that a lot of folks in the gay world aren't always tactful or tasteful about). The objection that the word gay signifies a moral and political stance in addition to a general disposition of sexual attractions -- i.e., that gay means someone who believes gay sex is morally equivalent to straight sex -- was true, say, thirty years ago and more; but language has shifted and that is no longer the case. Frankly, none of the reasons I've encountered for not coming out, even the reasonable reasons,* seems adequate, aside from a simple desire for privacy. And honestly, if privacy is a person's reason, no further reasons should be necessary.

What has always struck me about a lot of Catholic rhetoric on the subject, though, is how totally it fails to understand the actual lived experience of a gay person. (I say "a lot" because there are exceptions.) The weird abundance of scare quotes in such rhetoric kind of suggests this lack of understanding, but the real evidence of it comes in explanations, from those opposed, of why a person would come out. For example:

"The act of 'coming out' is not the simple moment of openness which the 'gay community' advertises it to be. It is a dangerous trap which puts both persons in the conversation and their relationship at risk ... All the writers coach the person coming out to hear only two possible responses: Total rejection or total endorsement. The mindset is passionately black and white, highly charged, and very difficult to respond to. ... The 'coming out' step is more than a step into full membership in the homosexual movement. A second purpose ... is to seek 'converts' among 'straight' friends and family members to the cause of 'pro-gay' values. The price of refusing those values is often the break-up of the friendship or the family relationship -- a steep price indeed, which has sometimes been termed by those who have been offered those two dark options: 'emotional blackmail.'"**

Yes, because The Gays want their families and friends to reject them, and have never been mistreated or threatened by those they love, ever. Nobody has ever been kicked out of the house by their own parents as a teenager for telling the truth about who they're dating, or berated and beaten when they admitted to same-sex feelings and asked for help; and The Gays are simple-minded creatures who cannot understand the complex moral and emotional factors that influence people's reactions.

Sarcasm aside, the only thing to be said about the passage that I have quoted, is that it is not true. There are people, including authors of books on coming out, who grossly oversimplify the issue and perhaps even contribute to familial conflicts; and there are others who don't. Unlike the person who wrote the passage above, apparently, I've read some of the latter. And I've spent enough time with other gay people, not to mention my own family, to know that, yes, the fallout from coming out is complicated, and has to be handled with tact and patience on both sides, especially when there are conflicting beliefs between the parties. 

Now, far be it from me to say that there are no people whose coming out of the closet was downright Machiavellian. All sorts of people behave in all sorts of ways, and that kind of manipulation can't be said never to have happened. And it must be admitted that a lot of us, especially activists, have not been considerate of our families' feelings in the way we've come out; it's understandable, given that just being gay is an emotionally fraught experience, but the difficulties of parents, siblings, and friends have often been disregarded, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes on the grounds that other people's feelings don't matter when the cause of gay rights is at stake. But the notion that such emotional abuse is the chief or sole motive behind the desire to come out is absurd, and, even from the wholly orthodox Catholic view that I espouse, can be demonstrated to be categorically false by a simple perusal of what Joseph Prever of the Steve Gershom blog has called a gay Christian renaissance: Melinda Selmys, Joshua Gonnerman, Ron Belgau, Eve Tushnet, Aaron Taylor, Josh Weed, Wesley Hill, Jeremy Erickson, Julie Rodgers, Brent Bailey, Daniel Mattson (though he approaches the subject quite differently), and Joseph Prever himself, to name just twelve. (The periodical First Things and the blog Spiritual Friendship house a great mass of essays by the above figures.)

Well, why would somebody come out, unless they were supporting the gay agenda?

First of all, the gay agenda isn't really a thing -- or, it is only a thing in the same sense that the Christian agenda is a thing, or women's agenda, or the black agenda. Any subcategory of "everyone," whether religious or sexual or racial or whatever, is defined by a certain degree of shared experience; but it doesn't follow that everybody in that subcategory has the same views and desires. People are incorrigibly plural. That should point us to the fact that "Why would somebody come out unless they were supporting X?" is the wrong kind of question. Why would a person come out, period?

I cannot speak for everyone. But I get the impression that some of my reasons are pretty common ones. For myself, the following were major causes:

1. Survival. Not everyone reacts to their sexuality this way, but for me, the weight of being the only one who knew about me was crushing. It was like carrying a huge stone on my head, all the time. Telling other people helped me to actualize my theoretical belief that my being gay was not the end of the world. If I hadn't, knowing me, my shame and fear would probably have devoured me: suicide would not have been out of the question. Coming out, far from locking me into a lifestyle, helped me to concretely affirm that there was more to me than my sexuality, because I got to experience first-hand people not reducing me to that once they knew about it. And that helped me learn a little bit of courage and trust. (I experienced a lot of other things first hand, too, but everything has downsides.)

2. Honesty. If there is one thing that I have believed (believed, not practiced) thoroughly for about as long as I can remember, it is that truthfulness is obligatory, about everything, all the time. It does not follow that we have to tell everybody everything or that we have no right to be private, or polite, about some things. But it does mean that one must not tell lies. And it is surprisingly hard to make it through one's life without people assuming that you're straight, for the simple and valid reason that most people are. It is also rather unpleasant, if you're not, to try to carry on conversations and indeed whole relationships, when someone is making a multitude of assumptions about your experiences that simply aren't true.

3. Weariness. Even if a person doesn't feel that they are being dishonest or evasive when others assume they're straight, reworking your instinctive responses to a host of things is necessary if you wish to avoid outing yourself. I'm not just talking about correcting for lisp (when applicable), but about discussing crushes you've had, explaining your difficulties with chastity, telling friends that you aren't interested in dating this cute girl they know, and the like. Even if you're 100% comfortable with both yourself and traditional Christian sexual mores, the mere busywork of keeping it private can be truly exasperating.

4. Witness. The Church says, rightly, that she needs practicing Christians who show in their own lives why her teaching is good, true, and beautiful, not only in spite of but even because of its highly challenging nature. Is anybody in a better position to be a witness to that than a gay Christian, in our time and place? Isn't telling gay Christians that they should stay in the closet, or re-closet themselves somehow, a little counterintuitive? Or, conversely, viewed from the perspective of those outside the Church, doesn't it call into question the Church's professions of love and acceptance, when she doesn't even want the matter discussed by those to whom it most urgently pertains?

5. Concern. I was terribly alone as an adolescent. I would have been anyway -- I was a fairly atypical boy as far as interests, both in terms of liking things many boys don't and not caring about the things most boys enjoy; and my depression certainly didn't help. But one of the worst things was feeling that there was no one who was safe for me to talk to. The silence, and the animosity toward the whole gay subculture, was so oppressive that it made me feel that my orientation was not only bad, but so filthy as to be unspeakable. I decline to regard this as having the least imprint of Christian charity upon it. And I don't think it's a helpful mindset to get teenagers with same-sex feelings in, either; they, of all people, need to feel that the Church is a safe place. I don't want anyone to have to feel as scared and helpless as I did. The Church should truly be a sanctuary.

6. Humor. Awful, awful humor. I'm a fan of South Park, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and so forth. I really like making terribly tasteless and offensive jokes. And if people don't know I'm gay, I can't safely make gay jokes.***

*There are of course people whose reasons are simply and categorically homophobic -- i.e., based on an irrational fear of and/or dislike for homosexuals. I don't consider these reasons worth answering.

**The full article can be found here, and may explain why, despite its status as thus far the only Vatican-approved ministry to homosexuals, I am not specially eager to touch Courage with a ten-foot pole.

***No, seriously, this was one of my reasons. But, you know, not in a gay way.

Okay, that one was terrible, but you get the point, though.

Raw Tact, Part II: The Brother of Beatrice

In keeping with my last, I want to continue from a highly subjective point of view. I consider objective truth infinitely more important than subjective truth; but subjective truth is still, in its fashion, true, and all truth must be communicated in a personal -- that is, a subjective -- context, because people are not objects but subjects. (If you happen to be squeamish about descriptions of homoerotic affections, even without any question of overt acts, you may want to skip this post.)

I fell in love for the first time when I was seventeen years old. I had just started college (long story), and that's where I met Victor.* He was a year older than me -- well, I suppose he still is a year older than me, but anyway. He was uncommonly good-looking, in that sort of rough-around-the-edges way that outdoorsy guys so often have: scruff, callused hands, a hilariously graceless dance step. But the things that really captivated me were his intense devotion to Jesus and his friendliness to me. I told him, trembling and ashamed, that I was gay while we were on a retreat with one of the campus ministries we were both involved in, and the first words out of his mouth were grace and acceptance. He radiated grace; meeting him was for me what meeting Beatrice was for Dante: Hic incipit vita nova, "Here beginneth the new life."

I don't think I'm overstating this. Falling in love is, of course, a very ordinary experience in one way, and does not have any intrinsic spiritual significance. Yet for many people, it is in fact a means through which God makes Himself manifest, and my enchantment with Victor was -- and remains -- one of those: thinking of him always calls me to a higher level of focus upon and surrender to God, irrespective of the cost. (That isn't to say I always heed the call by any means, but the calling remains.)

But of course there was conflict too. Not conflict with him, although we did disagree about some things, but conflict within myself. I knew already that gay sex was wrong; did it follow that gay affections were wrong? Must I abandon my romantic feelings? Could I even if I had to? That question was easily answered: I was powerless to feel otherwise than as I did. I spent two years pining in agony, wishing for the impossible requiting of my affections from a man who was not only a serious, not to say scrupulous, Christian, but quite possibly the most emphatically heterosexual guy I knew. (Not that he was a homophobe; I never once had a harsh or disdainful word from him about that.) His very holiness made me love him more -- was that better? Worse?

I came out of those two years an emotional wreck, tired and desperate. In retrospect, I don't think it's a coincidence that it was after Victor and I more or less parted ways (since we transferred to different colleges) that I tried to persuade myself that pro-gay theology was correct.** I was spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, even physically exhausted.

I did recover, largely through my conversion to the Catholic faith, which gave me nearly all the tools I needed -- Confession, spiritual direction, the writings of the saints and mystics, the Rosary, a ritual language with which to process my turbulent and often mysterious emotions, and, above all else, Christ in the Eucharist. But I could not have come to those very things -- not, at any rate, as I did -- if I had not fallen in love with Victor first. It broke me down in the way I needed to be broken down to be able to accept the Catholic faith, not as the conclusion of my own triumphant reasoning, but as salvation.

It is largely this which forbids me to regard homoerotic affections as being wrong or bad. There are other reasons -- as, for instance, that I don't think of romance as exclusively or chiefly a by-product of sexual desire, and so to make the jump from the wrongness of gay sex to a hypothetical wrongness of gay romantic love is an invalid inference, at any rate on the premises I hold. But my love for Victor so transfigured me -- saved my life, in fact -- and pulled me so consistently closer to Christ, and does even now, that I just can't react to it as something dirty.

Why talk about all of this? For two reasons: one is that everything has to be put in a personal context, as I have carved into the table before me and keep hammering with my shoe.

The other is that this is the matrix in which the discussion of homosexuality really has to take place. Whether or no a person falls in love, or, in doing so, experiences the affection sacramentally, this is one of the chief places where straight and gay experience both intersect and prove themselves alien to one another. The passionate sense of worth, beauty, and meaning -- hardly to be expressed save by the word glory -- that attends erotic love is something that lovers of every kind are acquainted with. There's a reason that Brokeback Mountain works about as well as Romeo and Juliet (and it isn't only that Jack and Ennis are less annoying than a pair of Veronese teenagers with no sense of proportion). But the divergence shows itself already in the dawning experience of first love: for a straight person, the first time your heart stops, it's thrilling and beautiful and you suddenly know what everyone was talking about all this time. For a man like me, that element is there in first love; but with it -- guilt, confusion, fear. The swoop in the stomach that one adolescent boy feels for a girl is matched by the swoop in the stomach that another boy feels for a boy; but the one has a public tradition of sexuality, including romance and theology as well as pop culture, to guide him, while the other may well be rudderless.

This is also part of why gay marriage is such a sensitive topic, and why the commonplace polemical attitude adopted by so many Catholics has been far worse than useless, speaking from an evangelistic perspective. The heterosexual traditionalist Christian has a sacrament by which romantic love, a perception of glory in an individual creature, is made a formal vehicle of Divine grace, as well as a respected institution in society, and among one's Christian friends and one's family in particular. That, as related specifically to erotic love, is something that the gay traditionalist Christian normally does not have.*** When that experience of loneliness crowned with loneliness is met by lectures about disordered inclinations, and left at that, it is idle to protest that accusations of homophobia are a conspiracy to silence the Church -- because even if Catholics aren't homophobes, their actual behavior is so clumsy that it seems a more economical explanation than otherwise.

Of course, rather than trying to imagine what it would be like to feel what I felt for Victor, a much simpler expedient can be used. Imagine for a moment (if you are straight) that the shoe was on the other foot, and that the person whom you loved was out of the question -- not because they were claimed by someone else, but because it was wrong to act on your heterosexual impulses. How would you feel? How would you propose to live? How would you relate to God?

*For his privacy, I have of course used a pseudonym and changed a few personal details. Everything else is accurate to the best of my recollection.

**I do not for one instant suggest that this is true of pro-gay theologians in general. Of some, it is doubtless true, but only because every belief has adherents who cling to it for bad reasons, Catholicism included; conversely, there are Christians who differ with the Catholic Church on this point, as on others, of whose sincerity and devotion I am quite confident. In this essay I am talking about my own bad motives, and do not consider the possibility of others' bad motives my business.

***Gay Christians who espouse the traditional doctrine of sexuality can, and sometimes do, still contract valid and sacramental marriages with people of the opposite sex, and I'm not decrying this -- two of my favorite authors are in mixed-orientation marriages to straight spouses. I am talking specifically here about the link between the subjective experience of eros and the objective institution of the sacrament of marriage, which isn't in my view the most important element of marriage by any means, but is one of the most profound human experiences and should be treated with profound respect.

Reblog: Justin Lee

There have been a few ripples in the blogosphere (once again) over gay Catholics discussing their orientation openly, since Fr. Gary Meier of the Archdiocese of St. Louis came out of the closet. This is something of a pet peeve of mine, as I've often mentioned before, because of the lack of intelligent sympathy with which most Christians approach the issue -- not that most of the Christians I've ever known intend to be jerks, but that they are trying to do too many things at once: show love to people (uh, usually), convert non-Christians, win a kulturkampf, practice chastity themselves, and maintain orthodoxy. Combine that with a history of bad blood and with not understanding the experiences of LGBT people from within, and you have a dangerous exposure to FIMS (Foot-In-Mouth Syndrome).

Justin Lee, author of the excellent book Torn and founder of the Gay Christian Network, wrote this essay recently when Jason Collins came out, and it addresses certain of the problems in the dialogue between Christianity at large and LGBT folks.