GLBT Issues

The Catholic Church Has a New Policy on Gay People

This happened earlier in the week, but I haven’t had time to address it before now. If you know me, you know I grew up Catholic and have had somethings to say in the past about the Catholic Church and their behavior towards gay people.

Catholic Bishops have officially approved new guidelines concerning ministry to gay people that basically say gays are sort of okay within the church, just as long as their sexual orientation is in no way sexual.

The guidelines state that while the Church teaches that homosexual acts are immoral, there is a distinction between engaging in homosexual acts and having a homosexual orientation. “While the former is always sinful, the latter is not.”

“It is crucially important to understand that saying a person has a particular inclination that is disordered is not to say that the person as a whole is disordered. Nor does it mean that one has been rejected by God or the Church.”

In other words, it’s okay if I’m gay, but I have to be celibate. And there are some other conditions, too:

  • Persons who experience same-sex attraction and yet are living in accord with Church teaching should be encouraged to take an active role in the life of the faith community. However, the Church has a right to deny roles of service to those whose behavior violates her teaching.
  • The Christian life is a progressive journey toward a deepening of one’s discipleship of Christ…Those who stumble along the way should be encouraged to remain in the community and to continue to strive for holiness. In this regard, frequent reception of the Sacrament of Reconciliation is of great importance.
  • The Church does not support so-called same-sex “marriages” or any semblance thereof, including civil unions that give the appearance of a marriage. Church ministers may not bless such unions or promote them in any way, directly or indirectly.
  • Similarly, the Church does not support the adoption of children by homosexual couples since homosexual unions are contrary to the divine plan. For this reason, Baptism of children adopted by such couples presents a pastoral concern. Nevertheless, the Church does not refuse the Sacrament of Baptism to these children, but there must be a well founded hope that the children will be brought up in the Catholic religion.

So I get to be a part of the church, but I have to be a sexless second class citizen within it. Oh lucky fucking me.

Yay! Here’s what I think about that:

let me laugh even harder.

Honey, no.

Continue ReadingThe Catholic Church Has a New Policy on Gay People

Soulforce urges people to write compassionate letters to Haggard

Soulforce is urging gay people to write compassionate letters to Ted Haggard now that he’s being targeted for “spiritual restoration.”

In response to the news that Rev. Ted Haggard has been dismissed by New Life Church and resigned as President of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), Soulforce has urged the gay community to respond compassionately.
We acknowledge that many in our community feel legitimate anger toward Haggard and the NAE for their history of religion-based bigotry.
However, Haggard has now been referred to the same “spiritual restoration” therapy that has threatened the mental and spiritual wellbeing of so many gay men and lesbians.
Don’t let the voices of spiritual violence and intolerance be the only voices that he hears in this time of personal, familial, and professional crisis.
We urge you to write to Ted Haggard in a spirit of empathy and welcoming. Let him know that there are alternatives to ex-gay therapy, and that LGBT people can live loving, honest, and purposeful lives.

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Bill Maher Outs Ken Mehlman on CNN, and CNN censors on Pacific Broadcast

Bill Maher “outed” GOP party chairman Ken Mehlman as a gay man on Larry King Live last night — as seen on video here.
But on the rebroadcast for the west coast, they edited that bit out of the program, as seen here.
C’mon, guys. YouTube makes this sort of thing ridiculous. I can’t imagine why they’d bother editing that — it’s not like Larry King said it, Maher said it. If it’s not true, it’s not a reflection on CNN. And editing it out just gives it credence, and suggests that it’s something to be hidden.
UPDATES – The above links no longer show the videos of the Larry King show, as YouTube has asked the blog owner to take them down at the request of CNN. However, you can still see the whole video on the Huffington Post.
I think the cat’s out of the proverbial bag on this one, guys.

Continue ReadingBill Maher Outs Ken Mehlman on CNN, and CNN censors on Pacific Broadcast

A Commonplacebook Candidate Endorsements

These are Marion County, Indiana Democratic candidates who have shown strong stances and leadership on progressive issues including improving education, finding health care solutions for all Hoosiers, property tax reform and equality for GLBT citizens.

I’ve personally shaken hands with all of these candidates at one time or another and discussed issues with them. I met with Russel Brown, Dr. David Orentlicher and John Barnes last week and think highly of their plans for office. I’ve recently had an email exchange with Susan Fuldauer and was equally impressed. I’ll sit down and write about the discussions I’ve had with all of them more fully this weekend.

Candidates with strong, sound stances deserve our support, and your dollars can make the difference. Please make a contribution to this critical cause, either to all of the candidates or on an individual basis.

Julia Carson (IN-07) $
Russell Brown (IN-SD-31) $
David Orentlicher (IN-HD-86) $
Susan Fuldauer (IN-HD-88) $
John Barnes (IN-HD-89) $
John Day (IN-HD-100) $
Edmund Mahern (IN-HD-97) $

If you’d like to promote any of these candidates on your own site, you can link to this page to encourage contributions:
http://www.actblue.com/page/marion_county_indiana

And you can add some nice graphics from this page. Like this one:
Act Blue: Support
Progressive Candidates

UPDATE: The Indiana Stonewall Democrats are endorsing J. D. Lux for House District 57, which is in Shelbyville, Indiana. He doesn’t seem to be plugged into the actblue.com website yet, so visit his page for more information on him and to figure out how to make contributions to his campaign.

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Mark Foley blames crimes on being abused

Priest comes forward to tell of his inappropriate behavior with Mark Foley when Foley was young.

Let me make it really clear:

I was not molested as a kid. Most of my gay friends were never molested as kids. I have several friends who were molested. Some of them are straight and some are gay, and there seems to be no correlation whatsoever between the gender of the person who molested them and their current sexual orientation.

Many studies over the years have shown that there is no causal relationship between sexual molestation and homosexuality.

Also — I’m a 38 year old woman. The woman I love is 34 years old. I’m really quite tired of having our loving, nurturing relationship being equated with pedophilia, pederasty or predatory sexual behavior of any sort, and I’m really hating that I’m reading tons of that crap coming from the religious right currently.

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IYG Wishlist

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From their mission statement:

Indiana Youth Group provides a safe place, a confidential environment, youth development programs and support services which foster personal strength and wellness among self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people. IYG advocates on their behalf in schools, on the streets, and in the community. IYG builds friendships and explores individualism while promoting a peaceful community, based on equality, acceptance and diversity.

I volunteered with IYG years ago, and my little sister did for a college internship also. I dropped out because I got very busy at work (I was very poor and doing lots of overtime) and there were lots of adult mentors in the program already.
IYG has a wishlist of items they want to have donated to use at their center. I really wish I’d seen the list earlier, because we’ve given lots of stuff to goodwill in the past few months that they need.
Fortunately, we have a ton more stuff to give away that is on the list, so we’re going to start gathering stuff up.

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Even more on Outing

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I’ve talked about the subject of “Outing” in the past several times. Scott tackled the issue recently on Bilerico, and along with a lot of others, I commented. I wanted to pull my comment over here, though, because it’s a refinement of some of my previous ideas.

I’ve pointed this out in the past — I really try not to use the euphemisms “outing” and “closeted” because it masks what we really mean — being honest about sexual orientation, or lying about it — and because the terms are so pervasive we no longer think of the issue as an ethical one.

We really have built into our culture this shelter for people who lie about their sexual orientation. In many ways, that’s nurturing for people who are still coming to terms with themselves, but it’s also destructive in many ways. It allows predators to run rampant, it allows people to dodge stigmas they shouldn’t get to dodge, it allows a general air of dishonesty envelope our community that people take as license to be dishonest in other ways.

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Mark Foley, and “real” gay relationships

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In an opinion piece for the LA Times, Michelangelo Signorile says that the media should have “outed” Mark Foley as gay soon after his hypocritical votes in favor of anti-gay legislation. I agree with Signorile about “outing” hypocritical public figures, and consistently always have. But there’s something else in the article that I wanted to highlight…

Foley lived in a glass closet in Washington, where many people, we’re now being told, assumed he was gay, even as he orchestrated a lie for the voters of his district with help from the media both in Washington and at home in Florida.
Foley’s closet wasn’t just about protecting his political career. He seemed to be filled with shame. According to one gay man quoted in the Washington Post last week who challenged Foley on his voting for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, Foley justified marginalizing gay marriage by saying, “I could never compare any relationship I have ever had to the nature of my mother and father’s relationship.”
For Foley, homosexuality meant second-class status.
That kind of self-loathing is bound to play out in harmful ways. Would Foley have made online sexual advances on teenagers if he were openly gay or if he’d been reported on, truthfully, by the media as a gay man long ago, and faced the consequences? It’s quite possible the answer is no.

I find the phrase I highlighted above just heartbreaking, for Mark Foley’s sake as well as for my own.
I love my parents, and the people who are especially my role models for a good marriage — my paternal grandparents, who are just wonderful people. But do they somehow have a more “valid” relationship than mine? Of course not. When I see my girlfriend, I see someone as important to me as the members of my own family; someone that love, adore, want to become a better person for, to live with and build a life with.
If I can live up to my grandparent’s example even half way (I’ve referred to them in the past as living examples of “happily ever after”) then I will be more successful as a spouse than 95% of heterosexual married couples are. And I love Stephanie so much that I want that for her and for me. I want a relationship like my grandparents have, with love and stability and surrounded by family and friends.
As loathsome as I think Mark Foley’s behavior was, I hope that someday he finds a relationship that moves him in that way, too — an equitable relationship based on respect and honesty and concern for the well being of his partner.

Continue ReadingMark Foley, and “real” gay relationships

Marriage, children and equal rights

Good As You presents an especially apt point about the fallaciousness of the “reserving marriage for the nuturing of children” argument:

Hmm..you know why the judges “ignored is that marriage is not primarily about adults; marriage is about the nurturing and development of children?” Because marriage certificates don’t legalize unions with the caveat that those unions produce children! Marriage is one thing; reproduction is another!

Saying that this legal, civil arrangement is all about a non-required by-product of the coupling is kind of like saying that one’s obtaining of a driver’s license is all about the the car, not the legal right. In reality, the person may just want to be recognized as a legal driver, and they might want the license solely for ID purposes. In fact, this New Yorker has a legal license AND a car, but he hasn’t driven in four years. Doesn’t make my license any less legal! And while it may sound insensitive or callous to compare a car to a human child, the comparison in this instance is quite apt. You can’t deny one the ability to obtain any sort of civil permit or license simply because they don’t utilize the legality in the way that you see proper!

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