Reminder to my CA readers

You don’t need a minister to marry you in California. You don’t need a state official to do it either! Anyone can witness your vows to each other and sign the document as witnesses (you need two). It is the signatures of the witnesses that makes it legal. It is a community act - not a minister or the state - that makes your marriage real.

Get your license, get your friends together, and get married!

Mazel Tov!

Something we can teach you?

The NY Times offers this interesting piece on how Same-Sex Couples Offer Insight Into Gender and Marriage:

For insights into healthy marriages, social scientists are looking in an unexpected place.

A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships.

I was intrigued by the news that most heterosexual couples still use inequitable models and that same sex couples, without this issue, seem to be healthier.

Not all the news is good, however: click through to read.

Rainbows!

After Church, this AM, and the noon-time sermon discussion, I spent the day at the Buffalo Pride Fest, hanging out at the Trinity Church booth/tent and socialising. The Mayor showed up, along with several hundred folks who took our flyers, several kids who played with out bubbles and balloons, and not a few attractive sorts. I’ve a galore of pictures on the flickr site.

The Unforgivable Sin

Just so you know, and to correct the 39 Articles (and several saints), the unworthiness of the minister does inhibit the effectiveness of the sacrament, at least in Rome.

Yep. It’s true…

I just purchased the entire first season (1976) of Wonderwoman off of the iTunes Music Store. 14 hours of Classic TV for $24 isn’t too bad. Lynda Carter… in her satin tights, fighting for our rights. I was a devout watcher of this show when I was in Jr High School. We won’t get into the True Confessions aspect but suffice to say that in 1976, everyone should have known.

A Desktop image for your amusement:

A writer once theorised that gay kids preferred Bewitched to I Dream of Jeannie. Strangely enough nearly everyone on Bewitched was either queer or involved in queer-activism in the 80s and 90s. I liked the Jeannie show too because it involved Astronauts - I wanted to be one when I grew up.

Anyway, I digress. I think all my friends, gay and straight, had an attachment to Lynda Carter. (And yes, Lyle Waggoner was pretty hot.)

Hard: a review

I finished reading Wayne Hoffman’s Hard: A Novel last night before bed. It was an enjoyable read - very lighthearted and, given my own history, a bit of a romp down memory lane. In the interest of full-disclosure: Wayne and I first met at a bar - Ty’s - in Greenwich Village in July of 1997, a few months before I moved to San Francisco and we have been in contact off in one for the last decade.

In the short: enjoyable read. Summer’s coming - this would be good by the pool or at Bear Pride/IML in Chicago. Or just on the Subway on the Morning commute. Like any book about people in NYC, some of it won’t mean much, some of it will mean too much and some of it will go over the head of anyone who doesn’t live there.

More

Ecumenism, Greek style

The 13 bishops of the Greek Orthodox Church’s standing committee said on March 17 that the bill was unacceptable. “The Church accepts and blesses the established wedding, according to Orthodox traditions, and considers any other type of similar relationship to be prostitution,” the committee said.

I know that’s not what they mean. But, taking the words on face value, I guess that means you Catholics - and the rest of us - are all prostitutes.

Just to be clear: Orthodox Tradition in marriage, especially the liturgical stuff, is radically different from any other wedding I’ve been to. There is *no possibility at all* that anyone married in any other religious tradition, no mater how devout, could consider their rites to have been performed “according to Orthodox traditions”. Again, I know that’s not what the Bishops of Greece mean, but that is what they said (no doubt speaking in haste prompted by either righteous anger or homophobia). And in 1000 years when someone looks back on this statement, they will debate the “real” meaning versus the “literal meaning” and there will be a council that will pounce on those not politically in favour at the time…

Conspiracy of Sins

According to Catholic News Agency (more on that in a minute) the RC Bishop of Motherwell thinks there is a “‘huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy’ by homosexual activists”. And he says of the Roman Church, “We neglect the gay movement at our peril”.

I want to ask you if you are able to see the giant conspiracy that’s taking place before our eyes, even if we didn’t see it at the time. I take it you’re beginning to see that there is a huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy taking place, which the Catholic community missed,” he said

Well, ok…

To think of gays as well-orchestrated is humorous: it’s clear he’s never been to even the local Gay Community Centre’s dance-planning committee meeting, let alone a full-on political meeting. But he’s right about the peril: although did our Lord worry much about knighting gay men like Sir Ian McKellen (as the Bishop seems to do) or would Jesus just reach out to them?

It’s been offered in comments posted by readers in these pages that when Christian leaders speak of “Conspiracy” in this way what they mean is that the Evil One is conspiring - no matter how disorganised his human dupes might be. I do wish a Conservative Cleric would have the Cojones to say so. But I think it’s far easier to point hate at actual human beings, at flesh and blood instead of “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

I do love this passage:

In remarks about the legislative battle over civil unions and same-sex adoptions the bishop said that the “supreme moral values of liberty and equality” had been placed above the values of “truth and goodness” in society.

Well, yes. That’s what a democracy is. “Truth and Goodness” are relative. And even if you disagree with that, you have to admit that ideas of good and truth vary from culture to culture and from time to time. Modern democracies are filled with various cultures. It is not the place of gov’t to enforce one culture over another save when those cultures clash. Then, I think, it’s best to err on the side of the “supreme moral values of liberty and equality”

The bishop concluded his speech with a dramatic flourish saying, “Like Mel Gibson, who said, ‘I’m going to pick a fight’, so am I.”

I think this means he’s about to get drunk and reveal that it is Jews - not gays - that are the actual conspiracy trying to run everything. (He made some odd Holocaust Memorial references in his speech too, that the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust had to counter.)

The CNA, by the way, just lifted without attribution or links, whole swaths of text from this article in the Times of London - clearly plagiarism is not a sin against “truth and goodness” in the Roman communion as it would be, say, among bloggers.

I heard that, part 2

Citizen Crain reports on the saga of The Sally Kern Hate Show.

Question Month

Michael asks:

Why do you think gay men of a certain sort seek religious affiliation despite the rejection we experience on almost every hand by the groups we seek to join?

Within myself I feel the struggle to find a spiritual home battling with the desire to be honest about the inadequacies of so many spiritual options. A desire for rigorous honesty makes me unwilling to “play at” a pleasing religious style that requires excessive “willing suspension of common sense”.

You are too subtle a thinker to give me a cheap grace answer, so I look forward to your reflections.

There is an across-the-board quality: I think that many gay men spend part of their life being so introspective - wondering what the heck has mis-fired, grown up different, changed, etc, between them and others. Why am I different from other boys? This isn’t true of all gay men, but a lot of them get it. And they hit religion seeking answers. There is a zen quality to figuring out *that* you are gay. You just don’t think the same way as others. And then there is a moment where you think “What does this mean?” I notice in many of my younger friends, who grew up in a more accepting society, that they do not have this issue or pattern. My friend, Patrick, was out to his parents when he was in middle school. He never went on a quest for meaning…

But some of us wonder a lot: reach and stretch, and, more than straight people, decide to risk something on the possibility that love might be “over there” instead of “over here”. No straight person ever had to ask “who are you and what are you doing in my hormones?” for longer than it took to get to sex ed or have the Birds and Bees talk with the Parents or, maybe, just see the most recent Time magazine or newspaper. Older than a certain age, every gay person has had to ask “What does this mean?” For straights, they just keep moving forward: they never have to wake up or look around - they run on instinct and never have to grow up. For gay, they mostly wake up a little more. And stay there. If the former are “never grow up” the latter only get to puberty. Again, I don’t see this problem in much of the younger gays.

And then it all breaks into three parts: I don’t know what you mean by “of a certain sort” so I have to read that in four various ways - most of which are mutually exclusive.

Some of a certain sort are beating themselves up. They have accepted God is real and they are thinking like the Apostles around Jesus when faced with the man born blind. They ask, “Who sinned, this fag or his parents, that he should be born this way?” They think something must be wrong - and so they attempt to appease God and they put up with just about every piece of crap thrown at them.

And they think, “Oh, I’m getting beat up for my sins. Good. Praise Jesus”

These folks are masochists.

Then there are those, of a certain sort, who get off on the oppression and the anger they feel. They want to be oppressed by “straight white males” so they can be angrier at same.

These folks are passive-agressive and they often do things like hold protests in churches when the Cardinal is visiting. They also often end up in gay-only churches later, still fuming about “them”.

A third sort usually end up Roman Catholic or Anglo-Catholic or Orthodox. Having spent much of their life in the closet, they are used to relating through a filtre, to communicating, as it were, sacramentally or through extra layers of symbol and code. They experience much of their life this way: and so they follow through with their spirituality. This is the way they know how to relate. SO they continue. These sorts often have don’t-ask/don’t-tell relationships with their clergy or religion.

I have been #1 and #3.

Styles 1 and 2, at least, and maybe 3 (but more later) can tend to keep the self inwardly-focused. Never focusing outward not only prevents one from growth or change, but it also keeps one from seeing that there are other ways to deal. Nos 1 and 2 also are just exaggerations, reaction formations. They are as much out of whack as all sex all the time parting.

A fourth option - selecting a spiritual community where all (gay and straight) are nurtured into spiritual adulthood together. The result can be something akin to “the younger gays”. A life lived “as oneself” doesn’t need sacramentalism or filtres or even confession of faith. They are themselves as God made them - pardon the phrase, but “in dios”. It’s rather refreshing to watch. And they don’t need the masochism or the passive aggression. I fancy myself here, now and then, but I know that I dance between here and #3. There are still times in my life when I feel it’s important to be closeted for a time - until it’s clearly safe to come out into the open.

As I said to the Preacher Lady yesterday: it’s a desire for integrity, or even self-integration. I think you can dance between 3 and 4 as an adult, seeking to be whole, but also mindful of those others who might stumble. And mindful of the ways in which one is expected to grow.