An Open Letter to Douglas Wilson

Professor Wilson,

Peace be with you in our Lord Jesus Christ.

I have little reason to think you’ll read this letter—that is the way of open letters published on blogs, and if you write in a chimney then I write in a flue—but I write nonetheless: partly in the hope that you may after all stumble upon it somehow, and partly to address sentiments you expressed, which have had a good many other advocates in Reformed circles. The inner politics of the Reformed are no longer of grave importance to me, since I left the PCA ten years ago to become a Roman Catholic; all the same, I retain an irrational fondness for the Presbyterian tradition: my mother is still PCA, and the Reformed were the first to teach me the love of God and reverence for sacred Scripture. Moreover, my topic is your remarks on the upcoming Revoice Conference, which is being hosted at a Reformed church, and that gathering has garnered criticism principally from Presbyterian sources (that I’m aware of).

Now then, to brass tacks. You invite the reader to read your collation of quotes from Eve Tushnet, Ron Belgau, Greg Coles, and Nate Collins, ‘and try to tell me there isn’t a whole world of compromise nestled in some of those words and phrases. If this isn’t the thin end of the wedge, then I’m a Hottentot.’ I feel obliged to inform you that you are, in hunc effectum, a Hottentot. We mean precisely what we say; that’s why we say it. If we wanted a church with more compromises, they can be got two a penny at CVS, so why would we waste our energy and time with all this? This, aside from the fact that assuming bad intent on the part of an opponent is an ad hominem, which, as I’m sure you know, thanks to your admirable championing of classical learning, is a fallacy—an assault on motive worthier of Ezekiel Bulver than of yourself. And all this is without touching on St Paul’s dictum that charity thinketh no evil and hopeth all things.

But linger with me, please, over one of the images you’ve chosen as an analogue for Revoice.

There is absolutely no way that this is the whole program. … To change the image, the PCA is pregnant with some bastard children, and is only three months along, barely starting to pooch out a bit, and is busy arguing that her confessional standards don’t say anything about pooching out a bit. So we’re all good.

Well, if the PCA, or any church, is pregnant with bastard children, am I to gather from your analogy that you believe they should be aborted? That, taking one of your key-words, is as obvious from your words as our mauvaise foi is from ours. As for that, it is your ill opinion of bastards rather than of Revoice that principally troubles me, insofar as neither hath this man sinned, that he was born blind. But I feel sure that is not quite what you meant. In any case, we can return to the topic at hand, which is this.

I claim the title of God’s bastard child. I am no heretic; a sinner, yes, but Catholic; and that divine Love which elected Rahab, Ruth, Tamar, and Bathsheba as his foremothers has embraced this bastard too. Or art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

Nothus Dei Natus

Your accent on shame seems to me profoundly misguided. One thing that I absorbed during my time as a Reformed Christian was the utmost importance of letting the Scriptures speak, on the grounds that all human interpreters are fallible; and without prejudice to the Biblical passages you cite, I shall venture to point out that of those texts, only one addresses homosexuality per se, and it is (I dare to say) reasonably plain that it is a summary of the human condition apart from divine grace, since there were plenty of people in the ancient Mediterranean who didn’t exhibit the behaviors St Paul here condemns. Or, if we insist that the Apostle is making a categorical and logical statement here, rather than a homiletic and rhetorical one, are we not bound to assert that all people other than Christians are secretly homosexual? In any case, I should have thought that the doctrinal statement ‘homosexual intercourse is wrong’ was a more important area of agreement among Christians than the severity of the adjectives chosen to describe it.

I speak from experience when I say that shaming people—that is, scolding and humiliating them (or what else do you mean? by all means tell me)—is not a healthy or productive technique even when it is combined with others. I was raised in Reformed circles where the practice of shame and the doctrine of grace were both standard currency, and I hated and despised myself so much that I cut up my skin and considered suicide for years. That is what being shamed naturally does to a person.

Nor does your enthusiasm for it seem to me to reflect the actual practice of the Lord Jesus or his Apostles. A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench; He is meek and lowly in heart; the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, and against such there is no law. Or, you might simply recall that the title 'Accuser' is not an epithet of our Lord.

You pass from here to complaints that, in your collection of quotes, no one is told ‘simply to repent, simply to stop being that way’. Well, given that Revoice is primarily about how believers gay or straight can support their LGBT brethren in Christ, we tend rather to take repentance of sin as a given. I would also add that a collation of quotes, however extensive, is not the same thing as reading our words in their full context: you might pick up a copy of Eve Tushnet’s Gay and Catholic, Melinda Selmys’ Sexual Authenticity, or Greg Coles’ Single, Gay, Christian (that is, in toto) for a more complete picture. As for the advice to ‘stop being that way,’ has that ever worked for you? Have you heeded the Bible’s constant warnings against slander and gossip in your decision to believe the worst about us? Or tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither your fathers nor ye were able to bear?

Moreover, do you mean ‘stop surrendering to gay lust,’ or ‘stop feeling gay attractions’? In your own book Fidelity, if I recall accurately, you point out quite correctly that some scrupulous men fear that they are guilty of lust merely because they notice that a woman is attractive. Surely that means that the simple experience of attraction is not in itself a sin—which would likewise mean that (as you also said in Fidelity) there is no obligation to be attracted to the opposite sex, and accordingly no imperative to stop feeling gay attractions, which as it happens we can’t do anyway?

Of course, if you mean ‘Stop surrendering to gay lust,’ then the command remains theologically sound if rather oddly worded. In that case, I would only present myself as a far more suitable target for censure than women like Eve Tushnet or men like Ron Belgau, who unlike me actually practice the chastity they profess. I cling to my orthodoxy not out of moral consistency, but because I have little else.

Passing to your patriarchal halakhah on communication and on the gentleman in the photo you selected, who is (as far as I can tell) being judged effeminate because he wears a suit, combs his hair, and jumps, I have this to say. You are of course perfectly correct that gestures, clothing, facial expressions, and mannerisms are elements of communication. However, they are also gestures, clothing, facial expressions, and mannerisms. (I would apologize for the implication that you do not understand the obvious, save that you show by your article that you don't mind stating that those who disagree with you, even on a point as trivial and changeful as proper dress, do not understand the obvious; and, as I’m sure you’ll agree, with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.) Persons sometimes adopt all these things not because they wish to convey a message, but because they happen to like them. The flaw in the shrewd cartoon you mention is that neither the mother nor the reader can say with justice that they know whether the extravagantly dressed person wants to be stared at, or merely has unusual tastes and is not afraid of being stared at. Given that fear of being stared at does not seem like a common motive among Reformed theologians, and was not a recognizably common trait among the Reformers, I would not have assumed you thought so highly of it.

That aside, given your confident condemnation of the picture, would you indulge us by stating what about it is effeminate? If this people who knoweth not the law are cursed, a patriarch, author, and professor should be ready to teach. And, more important (given the sole infallible authority you profess), on what Biblical texts you base this conviction? Not the conviction that effeminacy in men is wrong, you understand; but that the picture in question is effeminate. That it offends the Lord. For surely you would not issue moral censure based on your own likings or mislikings; and I certainly hope you have a better basis for your conviction than the ‘Obvious’ Fallacy.

I ask, because I am bold to consider myself traveled, having lived on three continents, spent time in nine countries, and visited twenty-five states (my attendance at Revoice will make twenty-six); and I can count on the fingers of no hands the number of people I’ve met who say or even think that that gentlemen is obviously effeminate, whether in gesture, clothing, facial expression, mannerism, or anything else. Since social conventions change over time and the culture of ancient Rome, Greece, Asia, and Palestine was radically different from our own, I trust you are not claiming that the social standards and conventional signals of the Idaho chimney represent God’s final say on matters of human, or even merely masculine, style. Regardless, since we’ve apparently gone full Footloose here, I’d remind you that He does not despise dancing in his heart.

I'd point out also that the archetypes of masculinity you cite with approval, ‘lumberjack’ and ‘long-haul trucker,’ are conspicuous by their absence when one peruses Scripture—even using the extended edition employed by Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Given the Reformed principles of Total Depravity and semper reformanda, I don’t think it’s presumptuous to advance, as a possibility at least, that your idea of masculinity is unduly influenced by your culture; or, in Scriptural terminology, by the World. And given that your mode of defending it is evidently to insult those who don’t see it the same way, calling them culturally illiterate or willfully stupid—rather than explain what precisely you are objecting to (is it the posture? the hairstyle? the colors? in all seriousness, what is it?) and why—I am the less convinced that your standard is a love that vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, is not easily provoked, and thinketh no evil.

All joking aside, Professor Wilson, please stop and take thought. If something other than stated fidelity to the teaching of Scripture and the constant tradition of the Church is to be required of us (a hedge around the law, as it were?) to be in your good books, say what and say why. I have no plans to bother about your good books myself, though as Edmund Pevensie said, ‘If there’s a wasp in the room I like to be able to see it.’ But there are fellow believers in your own tradition, striving after godliness on an often lonely and difficult path, who endure mockery and misunderstanding from Christians and non-Christians alike; have you considered the effect your words are likely to have on them? I tell you plainly that it is not one of joyful encouragement in virtue. I know that from my own scars. Have you really nothing better to do with your time than insult and shame fellow believers who have the temerity to profess orthodoxy, attempt chastity, and differ with you on points that are not mentioned in Scripture at all?

I hope that, in spite of my anger, I have maintained justice and charity in writing this; if I have sinned, I beg the Lord’s pardon and yours. May the grace of God, the love of Christ Jesus, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with you and with all who read this.

Gabriel Blanchard, NDN

Men and Monsters, Part I

Why? McVeigh told us at eloquent length, but our rulers and their media preferred to depict him as a sadistic, crazed monster who had done it for the kicks. 

—Gore Vidal, on the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 

It was Adela, yet it was not. It was her height, and had her movement. The likeness appeased Wentworth, yet he did not understand the faint unlikeness. He was up to her now, and he knew it could not be Adela, for even Adela had never been so like Adela as this. That truth which is the vision of romantic love, in which the beloved becomes supremely her own adorable and eternal self … that was aped for him then. The thing could not astonish him, nor could it be adored. It perplexed. He hesitated.
‘Who are you? You’re not Adela.’
The voice said: ‘Adela!’ and Wentworth understood that Adela was not enough, that Adela must be something different even from Adela if she were to be satisfactory to him, something closer to his own mind and farther from hers. She had been in relation with Hugh, and his Adela could never be in relation with Hugh. He had never understood that simplicity before. It was so clear now. 

—Charles Williams, Descent Into Hell

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Trigger Warning: Terroristic Language and Ideologies

On Monday the twenty-third, in Toronto, a man named Alek Minassian drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians and killed ten people. He faced the Canadian police, shouting ‘Kill me’ and apparently pointing a gun at them (it was later determined he had none), but was taken down without a shot by the incredibly brave Officer Ken Lam, and is now awaiting charges for his terroristic murders. Immediately before the spree, Minassian posted this on his Facebook page:

Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!

And, like a number of other people, I’m left wondering, What the fuck is going on with men in America right now?

Minassian was part of the self-styled online ‘incel’ movement, a portmanteau-abbreviation of involuntary celibate. I call it a movement only for lack of a better word. It isn’t monolithic or doctrinaire. For many, participating the incel community seems simply to be an expression of loneliness and depression in the face of sexual frustration, and some incel forums police radicalism quite strictly. But there are others in the community who pass from experience to philosophy, arguing that desirable women—‘Stacies’—are shallow and cruel, and only respond to muscular, alpha-type men—‘Chads’—whom the incels cannot become due to poor genetics. Incels, they reason, are thus deprived by an unjust social hierarchy of the sex they have a right to.

This might sound like an unfair caricature of even the lunatic fringe. It isn’t. Here is some of the milder content from ‘BlkPillPres,’ screenshotted by journalist David Futrelle:

This shit right here [the Toronto attack] is lifefuel for me and exactly what I was talking about, too many ER [Elliot Rodger] guys are using guns so its expected and they get taken down very quickly these days, not only that but having these killings only take place with guns makes normies feel safe. … You can’t ban hatred, hatred is all it takes to go do a mass killing event. This is literally what I asked for, somebody finally breaking the mold … ER doesn’t always have to be violent, it just has to be strategic and punish normies in some way, they need to be in constant fear for EVERY ASPECT OF THEIR LIFE …

I won’t horrify you with more of this satanic filth, and I sure as fuck won’t link to their website. Suffice it to say that it does not improve as it goes on.

Now, obviously men like this are outliers—if this were normal, what we’d have is not ghastly news stories, but civil war and socio-economic collapse. And obviously not all of the incel community is this way; a lonely young man can have any number of grievances, justified or not, without turning to violence to resolve them. And even among young men who get, in one way or another, radicalized, [1] not all turn to violence nor go this far. But the fact that these outliers are common enough to be noticed at all is what’s creepy and frightening, and it would behove us all to know what’s happening.

There are a number of stock answers, for this and other explosions of violence in our time, that I find rather unsatisfying. The language and identity of victimization that can be found in a lot of Incel forums, and indeed in a lot of contemporary culture. The tendency of some feminists to rail against men indiscriminately. The misogynistic male sense of entitlement to sex. The culture of death, fostered by euthanasia and abortion, that degrades all human dignity into human usefulness. Toxic masculinity and its impossible standards. Lack of gun control. Class warfare. Video games. Smoking in bed. Sunspots. Neap tides. eBay.

Any or all of those things could be contributing factors, but my gut’s telling me that no one of them, nor the sum of them, is the whole story. Now, from here forward, I’m embarking on a speculative examination of what the underlying problem may be. I doubt I have all the relevant facts at my disposal, and I welcome others’ input; nonetheless I’ll go ahead and speculate, because if we all just sit around with our thumbs up our asses for fear of being wrong, nothing will improve.

Let’s take a step back. Starting with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, there have been at least eighty mass shootings or terrorist attacks (foiled or successful, minor or major) on American soil, an average of one every three or four months for the last twenty-five years. These acts of violence have come from many very different sorts of men [2]: differing ethnic backgrounds, religions, parts of the country, and professed principles. Ravening, sexually motivated hatred of attractive women and of the men who sleep with them seems to be a comparatively new motive, while racism (principally against blacks), outrage over killings in the Middle East at the hands of the US military, homophobia, and anti-abortion wrath are long-standing culprits—though school shootings seem to present a much more puzzling problem, partly because, contrary to popular belief, mental illness and a history of bullying aren’t consistently to be found in shooters.

So … what? Are we supposed to think that, sometimes, dudes just kind of snap, apropos of nothing in particular, and decide to kill some folk?

I think there are two causes, one sociological and one spiritual. I want to explore both at greater length: here I’ll content myself with a précis of each.

The sociological one is that a lot of men today feel powerless—whether in the sense of having nothing worthwhile to do with their potential, or in the sense of feeling inadequate and weak. This isn’t to shunt aside the crippling loneliness that afflicts so much of Western culture, but the pain of that loneliness is shaped by the feeling of powerlessness, too; and powerlessness is, not necessarily a more important, but a different thing for men than it is for women. [3] The ‘primal’ expressions of characteristically male aggressor instincts aren’t needed in a technocratic, sedentary society (such as they arguably were even as late as the Industrial Revolution). The traditional institutions and expressions of masculinity, except for football I suppose, have been largely sidelined, de-gendered, or dismantled—and perhaps justly. But with nothing put in their place, men are left without the tools of coming to understand ourselves as men that most societies depend on for cohesion, and that most individuals use to build a sense of self. And that’s an ideal breeding ground for the alienated, angry, hurt young man who’s been given nothing constructive to do with his fire, and decides to turn that fire against others, to prove to them and especially to himself that he does have it.

The spiritual cause is harder to explain, without sounding superstitious. A person who doesn’t mind sounding superstitious might just drily point out that nearly the whole US is after all built on top of an Indian burial ground. The way I would put it is that I believe, or rather suspect, that we are a nation under judgment. Lots of fire-and-brimstone televangelists and hysterical Catholic conspiracy theorists like to say we’re under judgment because we tolerate the sin of Sodom; and I agree with them, if we turn to the pages of Scripture to find out what it in fact has to say about the sin of Sodom.

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good. … Thou also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame for thy sins which thou hast committed more abominable than they: they are more righteous than thou … [4] 

And it isn’t just our cruelty to the poor (stop to reflect for a moment that many US cities have laws against private citizens giving to the homeless, and that many if not most have laws against panhandling; that is, laws against people in need asking for help). Consider. The US regularly interferes in the internal affairs of foreign nations, up to and including military action with no declaration of war and no international approval. That military action regularly incurs civilian casualties—or, to de-sanitize that concept a little, our boys regularly wind up killing unarmed men, women, and children. The US is the only country on earth to have ended a war with nuclear weapons, whose effects are completely uncontrollable, and did it by targeting civilian populations. This administration and the last two are all known for holding prisoners without counsel or trial indefinitely, and for practicing torture on prisoners, sometimes hundreds of times. That’s a pretty formidable list of war crimes; especially considering how many of them we packed into just the last quarter-century.

Did we really think there would be no consequences? That God would ignore all this?

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a veteran of the Gulf War (aka ‘Operation Desert Storm’), bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City. One hundred and sixty-eight people were killed, nineteen of them children due to the presence of a daycare center in the building; it was the single deadliest terrorist attack on American soil—for the next six years. He was mostly dismissed as a sadistic psycho by the press, but the truth is that he was something far more frightening: an eloquent, driven, rigorously consistent man with a defective conscience. But his defective conscience was a mirror of ours, and he held that mirror right up to our faces.

The [Clinton] administration has said that Iraq has no right to stockpile chemical or biological weapons (“weapons of mass destruction”)—mainly because they have used them in the past. Well, if that’s the standard by which these matters are decided, then the US is the nation that set the precedent. The US has stockpiled these same weapons (and more) for over 40 years. The US claims this was done for deterrent purposes during its “Cold War” with the Soviet Union. Why, then, is it invalid for Iraq to claim the same reason (deterrence) with respect to Iraq’s (real) war with, and the continued threat of, its neighbor Iran? 

The administration claims that Iraq has used these weapons in the past. We’ve all seen the pictures that show a Kurdish woman and child frozen in death from the use of chemical weapons. But, have you ever seen those pictures juxtaposed next to pictures from Hiroshima or Nagasaki? I suggest that one study the histories of World War I, World War II and other “regional conflicts” that the US has been involved in to familiarize themselves with the use of “weapons of mass destruction.” 

Remember Dresden? How about Hanoi? Tripoli? Baghdad? What about the big ones—Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (At these two locations, the US killed at least 150,000 non-combatants—mostly women and children—in the blink of an eye. Thousands more took hours, days, weeks, or months to die.) If Saddam is such a demon, and people are calling for war crimes charges and trials against him and his nation, why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible and involved in dropping bombs on the cities mentioned above? 

… Hypocrisy when it comes to the death of children? In Oklahoma City, it was family convenience that explained the presence of a day-care center placed between street level and the law enforcement agencies which occupied the upper floors of the building. Yet, when discussion shifts to Iraq, any day-care center in a government building instantly becomes a “shield.” … Whether you wish to admit it or not, when you approve, morally, of the bombing of foreign targets by the US military, you are approving of acts morally equivalent to the bombing in Oklahoma City. [5]

And so we have to ask ourselves a very nasty question. Was Timothy McVeigh wrong only because bombing innocent people is wrong no matter the pretext? Or was he also wrong because even that wouldn’t wake us up?

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[1] I don’t propose to belabor the question of whether the kind of men who do these things count as terrorists. When your stated aim is to change society through violent acts that inspire fear, you’re a terrorist. You don’t need to be a Muslim, a Basque, an alienated veteran, or any other specific subcategory to qualify.

[2] Nearly all of them men. The only female shooter I came across in my research was Rachelle Shannon, an anti-abortion fanatic who attempted to murder Dr George Tiller (yes, that George Tiller) in 1993.

[3] Obviously I’m speaking in generalities, for convenience’s sake.

[4] Ezekiel 16.49-50, 52.

[5] An Essay on Hypocrisy, written and published in 1998 while McVeigh was in prison.

Dr Esolen's Disastrous Advice

It’s easy to focus on the thing that feeds your neurosis, and pretend the other aspect of our relationship with God doesn’t exist, or focus solely on the aspect which comforts and corrects you, and look away from the part that too-easily sharpens in your hands. A lot of people’s spiritual journey within the Church is about realizing that the kind of spirituality that feeds their self-destructive tendencies isn’t the only kind there is—and what’s striking to me is that so many kinds of Christian spirituality can be so destructive, depending on what you yourself fear and what you tend to misunderstand.

—Eve Tushnet, Catholic Horror and the Two Theologies of ‘The Witch’

The room is on fire as she’s fixing her hair …

—Julian Casablancas, ‘Reptilia’

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Trigger warning: this post deals with, and includes footage of, violent parental abuse.

Last time I posted on Dr Anthony Esolen’s post at Crisis titled Open Your Eyes, Father Martin. Today I am writing about his follow-up piece, Talk to Your Father, which is apparently meant to be the first in a series. I doubt I will remark on the others. Going over this one is a dismaying exercise. But there are people who will either take Esolen’s word as gospel or at the least be influenced by it, and I’ve dealt with the aftermath of his kind of advice.

Now, to his credit, I believe Dr Esolen’s advice is given out of a sincere desire to offer hope and comfort to any sexually confused young men who may happen across it. His words have the ring of kindness; that is not the problem. The problem is that they’re bad advice.

Let me now reassure any boy or young man who may read these words. Talk to your father. Do not talk to a gay man or to your school counselor. If the counselor is a woman, she will know as much about your feelings as I know about being pregnant. If the counselor is a man, he likely has stock in the whole sexual breakdown of our time. Do not talk to your friends, whom you cannot trust to keep your words to themselves. They are, after all, young, as you are, and prone to give way to the impulse of the moment. Talk to your father. … Be assured. You are the same. You are one of us. And your sexual feelings? Your arousal? Meaningless, and transitory, unless you put them into action. Don’t do that. Think: ‘This feeling is stupid.’ Do not take it too seriously. … If you have done something dumb, something you are ashamed of, by all means go to your father. You may be astounded by the old man’s wisdom. He will have seen a lot more than you will believe. Go to him. Do not go to the school counselor; do not go to any adult who has a vested interest in your failing. Talk to your father.

Urging an adolescent who’s having same-sex thoughts and feelings to talk to his father about them is not necessarily bad advice; reassuring him that he truly is part of the brotherhood of males, regardless of his feelings, is excellent.1 What isn’t, is the presumption that only fathers, and all fathers, will have anything worthwhile to contribute here.

Take the alternatives Dr Esolen categorically rejects. Whether a gay man would be worth talking to about sexual uncertainty depends entirely on the character and intelligence of the gay man in question, not on whether he happens to be gay.2 If he is hostile to Catholicism or Christianity, or considers chastity intrinsically unhealthy, or is eager to ‘claim’ people as exemplars of queerness, or doesn’t understand people very well—then yes, talking to him about same-sex feelings and thoughts is probably going to be a fruitless, and possibly be a demoralizing, exercise. Indeed, this holds true of any person and any subject. But if the gay man in question happens to be a devout, orthodox, chaste, and perceptive person, as sometimes happens, then he may be an ideal source of insight for these experiences. Dr Esolen himself might be astounded by the queer man’s wisdom.

The same criteria apply to school counselors: some are bad, some good, others yet indifferent. Lumping them all into a single category is not so much unfair (though it is certainly that) as unhelpful. I would also venture to point out that, while I personally have always preferred to talk with other men about sexual matters, my experience isn’t universal; and, as Simcha Fisher points out in her own response, we may surely suppose that a female school counselor might be able to grasp attraction to men at least as well as a male confessor could grasp the spiritual and personal state of a female penitent.

I would tend to agree with Esolen’s counsel against asking friends’ advice—teenagers are not, as a rule, fountains of wisdom, sexual or otherwise—but with two important, and related, caveats. One is that this must be treated as a rule of thumb. Depending on circumstances, a given teen may have peers who really are trustworthy, or (God have mercy) are at any rate less untrustworthy than anybody else available. And the other is that, while teenagers are rarely good sources of advice, everyone needs friends to confide in, not for direction but simply for company. And while they don’t have to be, friends are usually peers. The fact that they should be chosen carefully doesn’t mean they can go unchosen with no ill effects.

There are a few unintentionally hilarious moments in Dr Esolen’s piece, as when—continuing to push the ex-gay explanation of homosexual attractions, stating that all such feelings are really just about the need for male affirmation—he writes the following:

But your feelings are powerful. Well, flimsy bonds do not move mountains. Of course they are powerful. The football player you admire, he has those feelings too. But in his case, the feelings are satisfied by a powerful and normal and healthy object. He has his football squad, and that both affirms him as a man and clears up his confusions.

Which is why nobody has ever heard of an insecure high school football player, and why Wade Davis, Kwame Harris, David Kopay, Ryan O’Callaghan, and Roy Simmons never amounted to anything. But he goes further.

And your sexual feelings? Your arousal? Meaningless, and transitory, unless you put the feelings into action. Don’t do that. Think: ‘This feeling is stupid.’ Do not take it too seriously. … Your sexual feelings during the teenage years are on overdrive. A picture of Michelangelo’s David will set you off. Big deal. … Your real need is for masculine affirmation, so often expressed in a broadly physical way—think of a big bunch of coal miners showering after a day under the earth.

Which does afford us convincing if indirect proof that Dr Esolen has, to his credit, never watched porn.

Under the circumstances, the less said about Michelangelo the better ...

The fact that Don’t do it is the most obvious, and therefore the most useless, advice to give someone struggling with a desire they’re conflicted about, apparently goes for nothing. The fact that for some people, homosexual thoughts and feelings never go away regardless of whether they’re acted upon, is either unknown to or ignored by this essay. The facts that the whole psychogenic theory of homosexuality has a legion of problems,3 that there is some evidence that biology plays at least some role in sexual orientation, and that attempts to deliberately change orientation have failed so dramatically that many of the organizations and individuals who had the most stock in it have publicly renounced it, are not so much as hinted at.

None of this is a counsel of despair on my part. It is a counsel not to decide too hastily what your orientation is (since after all, people do pass through phases, especially in their teens); and also a counsel that, if it turns out that your same-sex feelings stick and opposite-sex ones fade or never take shape, that’s fine. Difficult, if you want to live according to the Church’s teaching, not that there’s any easy version of living according to the Church’s teaching; and, yes, the decision between living in transgression of the Church’s teaching on sexuality, attempting life as a celibate in a disconnected society, and embarking on the dangerous and surprising experiment of Christian marriage without one of the normal ingredients of such a marriage, is an unenviable trilemma. I haven’t solved it myself.

But being gay is not a moral or personal failure. It’s just there. What to do with it is something we have to discern over time, and that process of discernment will be by turns scary, exciting, dismal, humdrum, infuriating, lovely, and weird; but, in my opinion, it will rarely if ever be solved by simply dismissing the problem.

But the most terrible flaw in this essay is the one that Esolen betrays no inkling of: sometimes, tragically, it is a really awful idea to talk to your father. Because your father might be irrationally afraid of or hateful toward gay people, and being his flesh and blood might be no protection. This is why I so often harp on the need to preach against the sin of homophobia just as much as we preach on Catholic sexual mores: because this sin has victims, and they are not infrequently the victims of Christian parents. This is horrible enough in itself; but it also calls to mind the frightening text, The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. A Church so wary of scandal can afford to have a little more wariness about this scandal.

Here is what happened to nineteen-year-old Daniel Ashley Pierce when he spoke honestly with his father, mother, and grandmother in 2014. (For those who can’t play the video at that link or don’t want to, I’ve included a partial transcript of about the first four minutes—partial, because I can’t face transcribing the fifth.)

Grandmother: Daniel, I want to tell you before I say anything else, that I love you. Now I know that you’re not gonna believe that, but it is true.

Daniel: Oh, I believe it.

Grandmother: So … and I have known that you were gay since you were a tiny little boy.

Daniel: Mhmm. Then, you would know at this point it’s not a choice.

Grandmother: And you have made a choice—

Daniel: I have not made a choice.

Grandmother: —evidently, from what you’ve told your daddy.

Daniel: I have not made a choice. I have not made a choice. I have been—from the moment I come out of my mother’s uterus, I have been that way. Probably long before I come out of her.

Grandmother: No.

Daniel: Yes. Mhmm.

Grandmother: No, you can deny it all you want to, but I believe in the word of God, and God creates nobody that way. It’s a path that you have chosen to choose.

Daniel: Mhmm.

Grandmother: Alright, you believe it the way you wanna believe it, ‘cause I cannot change that.

Daniel: This is the way I’ll put that part. I have taken basic biology, and psychology—

Grandmother: Uh huh.

Daniel: —and it’s determined, within the first six weeks of birth, what your personality’s gonna be, and that’s part of your personality, and you cannot change it, and it’s a scientific proof. Not—not based off of the Bible.

Grandmother [overlapping]: Well—well—you go with all the scientific stuff you want to, I’m going by the word of God.

Daniel: Well, scientific proof trumps the word of God.

Grandmother: No, it doesn’t in my opinion.

Daniel: Well, in my opinion it does, ‘cause there’s scientific proof. That’s why it’s called a scientific proof.

Grandmother [overlapping]: Well—you—okay, I’m not gonna argue that point with you. But I’m gonna tell you: since you have chosen that path, we will not support you any longer. You will need to move out, and find wherever you can to live, and do what you want to, because I will not let people believe that I condone what you do.

Daniel: Okay. Well, I’ll—I will be out by Thursday night at midnight. How about that?

Grandmother: Alright.

Daniel: I’ll be completely out and you’ll never, ever have to see me again.

Grandmother: If that’s the way you choose it, that’s fine.

Daniel: No, that’s not what I’m choosing, I’m doing what you’re telling me to do, and you’re disowning me. So that proves how much of a person you are. In fact, can I live in your basement, since it’s your house, and you’re my mother? [Pause] Really. So all of that support that you told me about …

Mother: Oh, I support you. I don’t support what you do—

Grandmother [overlapping]: And we don’t support your habit. No.

Mother: And I have a lot of friends that are gay. But they’re friends.

Daniel: See?

Mother: They’re not related to me.

Daniel: That’s not what you told me that day on the couch. That doesn’t seem very motherly to me.

Mother: And to summon your dad, and telling him that he’s a racist, and that your dad didn’t raise you—your dad’s gone to bat for you for the last twenty years of your life. That man’s put a roof over your head, he’s put food on your table—

Daniel [overlapping]: That’s diff—that’s not raising me.

Mother [overlapping]: He’s clothed you. Him.

Grandmother: Well, wait a minute, what—

Daniel: None of these people have raised me!

Mother [shouting]: You’re full of shit! And you told me on the phone that you made that choice! You know you wasn’t born that way, you know damn good and well you made that choice! You know, that this man has done everything he can to raise you, and you told me right on that damn phone that that was a choice you made, he didn’t need to blame himself! So don’t fill these people full of bullshit, Daniel!

Daniel [shouting]: You’re twisting my words!

Mother [shouting]: You twist everybody’s words!

Daniel [overlapping, shouting]: You are a completely different person!

Mother [shouting; camera swings erratically]: Let me tell you something, you little piece of shit!

Daniel [mixed with sounds of fighting]: No! No! No, you’re not gonna fucking hit me! [Indistinct cries and words]

Father: You son of a bitch!

Daniel: Get off me! Bitch! Get off me!

Father: Let me tell you something!

Daniel: No! [screaming]

You may be astonished by the old man’s wisdom.

✠     ✠     ✠

1One thing that fascinates me about male psychology is how important being masculine is to us, when I’ve never had the impression that being feminine was nearly as important or universal a concern to women (though obviously this could be my own myopic understanding of women at work). I have a half-baked theory that part of the reason St Paul directs wives to respect their husbands and husbands to love their wives, is that respect is a sort of currency among men, in a way that affection is a sort of currency among women; and that the apostle was thus directing each spouse to be careful to give the other the kind of love that that other would intuitively appreciate. All this is generalized and conjectural, but I tend to feel there’s something in it

2It should be unnecessary, but isn’t, to repeat here that the word gay as used by most people (LGBT people included) just means ‘erotically interested in the same sex.’ In the vernacular, it indicates nothing about a person’s beliefs, ethics, behavior, or socialization. Insistence that it does mean such things amounts to telling other people what they mean when they speak, which is insulting, ineffective, and rather silly.

3I’ve written on the subject before; here, I’ll content myself with an incomplete précis of its difficulties.

(1) If gayness is caused by an unmet need for male affirmation, what causes this unmet need to be interpreted sexually by the psyche? I have heard it asserted that this happens, many times. I have heard it explained zero times.

(2) Ought we to apply this consistently, and assume that heterosexuality is caused by an unmet need for female affirmation? Will a child who is adequately and appropriately loved by both parents become asexual? And in both cases, if not, why not?

(3) Given that many gay men have good relationships with their fathers, their peers, or both, and that many straight men have bad ones, what made the first group gay and kept the second straight? Or, looking to further development, is it reasonable to suppose that a gay man who comes to enjoy a better relationship with his father and/or other men will experience a correlated decrease in his attractions? I know from my own experience as well as others’ that this correlation is far from universal, if it exists at all.

(4) Where do lesbians fit into this? I’ve come across ex-gay sources that attribute homosexual attractions among women to: excessive identification with the father, masculinizing the psyche; a distant and/or abusive father, producing fear and distrust of men; a failure to bond with the mother, creating an unmet need, as with gay men; or a mother who was abused, leading to a desire to dissociate the self from femininity. That so many causes should have the same effect, and yet not necessarily have the same effect since there are also heterosexual women who meet these criteria, makes one wonder whether the causes and effects have been properly related to each other by the hypothesis.