Please don't tell me I'm becoming one of "those" people

Wow. I've been working for the Public Defender for too long... My distrust of all things "institutional" is growing.

Last night I went to a "screening" with my roommate of the Extreme Home Makeover that aired, which featured her non-profit, Camp Heartland. It was a really nice testament to the work that they do, and helped focus on some of the shocking discrimination that still occurs against people with HIV. The ignorance that continues to exist on these issues still amazes me (and, true enough, one of the people at this party, as nice as he was, asked at a point, "So, how is HIV spread?").

But at a certain part of the show, a teenager started to speak about how she was kicked out of her CHURCH on EASTER by her pastor. Holy Lord. While I was also kicked out of a church in my youth, having it done because of a disease you are already suffering with somehow makes it seem so much worse. And yet why? I was just reading this blog post (try to read it and NOT get sucked into the comments...) about the cruelty of growing up gay in fundamentalist families.

One of the guys I mentored in college as he came out grew up in a family like that. He was terrified of what being gay meant for his soul. When this article was published in our student paper, he contacted me for guidance. After he started to come out, and was doing rather well with the process, his evangelical pastor kicked him out in front of the whole congregation at their summer picnic, the event where he knew that this young man would set the best "example" for everyone else in the flock. Why this even shocks me though is beyond me. The Catholic Church is still forbidding contraception in Africa, because it can't see past its own nose on "birth control." So it is letting people die.

How quickly faith and reason get lost in religion.

And then, this morning, I was listening to this story on Slate.com about the American Center for Voting Rights. It essentially was this fake advocacy group that used anecdotal (and often false) evidence to push forward legislation to stem the tide of big-bad-voter-fraud that was overtaking our country. Except, there was no such epidemic, and the advocacy group, low and behold, was serving as an instrument of the GOP, targeting Democratic districts to pass laws that would largely disenfranchise Dem voters (poor, elderly, and/or minority). This also ties in nicely with the Justice Department firings of AGs who wouldn't pursue cases of voter fraud against Dem candidates, particularly because those AGs didn't think there were merits to the cases.

So here, once again, it seems that we have the GOP trying to pull one over on the American people (and largely succeeding) by creating a fake scandal. It becomes one of those "trust no one" societies when even our voting turns out to be manipulated.

The truth is out there. ;-)

Musical Fodder for my Writing:
"Fire and Rain" James Taylor,
The Best of James Taylor

Response to Comment:

I received an interesting comment post last night regarding my sexuality and my faith. Specifically, how I can be a “gay Christian” and what my “defense” is to, well, my life.

First to clarify to the curious reader, “Christian” is not only my faith but also my name. So, at least we can go from there. I grew up in the Catholic Church, in fact almost joined the seminary, but in the end became disillusioned by the Church’s stance on many social issues that I simply think are indefensible. But while I may have stepped away from my religion, my faith is still very strong. (If a discussion on the difference between spirituality, faith, and religion is warranted, let me know).

While I appreciate the curiosity of your question, I’m not sure that I like the idea that someone’s faith needs to be “defended.” While my beliefs (clearly) disagree with many big churches in the U.S., and in fact the church I grew up in, I still believe that faith is a personal belief system that stems not from what others believe, but from what you yourself believe.

As to how I came to become comfortable with my personal faith, it was after more prayer and spiritual journey than I think I even credit myself for. It was through a personal “giving it up to Jesus” experience that was incredibly powerful when I was 17. It was through being kicked out of a youth group when I was 18 after I had come out. It was through daily prayer and meditation while living in Venezuela at age 19. It was through a spiritual pilgrimage across the northern face of Spain when I was 22. It was through getting a degree in Theology at Marquette University when I was 23. I only mention these things so that you will see that I didn’t come to some blithe conclusion that, “God loves me, I am gay, so it’s all good” (although I think there is certainly something to that argument).

My personal faith is also based on much more than what the Bible says. It is based on a personal relationship with Jesus, based on continued prayer and reflection, and finally based on what I have come to know about the existence of God and the world around us.

Someone once told me that hell is an existence in the absence of God. I don’t know if that is theologically sound, but truly I hope to never find out. Much of modern religion will give gay men two options: 1) live celibate or 2) live outside of God’s love. Through my personal journey, I have discovered that the God of the New Testament is not likely to cast entire peoples from his sight, no matter what their sins. I have also learned, as is backed up in 1 Corinth 7:7, that celibacy is a gift of the spirit, not to be expected or demanded of people, but to be celebrated in those who are able to practice it for spiritual oneness with God. I, to assure you, do not have this gift. I’ll address where my sexual practices fall into my faith in a moment.

I will tell you what my personal faith journey has led me to interpret into Biblical teaching, but for a more thorough, complete and, perhaps, correct analysis I suggest this site. As to the Biblical address to the issue of homosexuality, here are my thoughts:

1) Leviticus forbids a lot of things, most of which are ignored by modern society. The person who has forsaken shellfish and blended fibers can be the first to cast a stone at me regarding that scripture. Historically, Leviticus was written not for all of the Israelites, but for a special tribe of priests called Levites. So, even when God handed down that scripture, it was not intended for all the Hebrews, only a select portion of them. It would be like the Catholic Church’s teachings being interpreted to command all Catholics to live in Poverty, Celibacy and Service.

2) St. Paul wrote a great many books (even if you don’t believe he wrote all those credited to him) in the Bible. Honestly, I have a little harder of a time reconciling his scripture than I do Leviticus. However, St. Paul, in all his inspiration, also wrote passages that have been read to subjugate women and condone slavery. He wrote, to my knowledge, three phrases about homosexuality. My final conclusion with those pieces is that they are the “letter of the law” and missing its spirit. They capture that era’s condemnation of Greek culture from St. Paul’s orthodox Jewish perspective, and not the message of the new Church. St. Paul was trying to get his reader’s to live more holy lives. And in the process he told them what he thought that looked like.

From an interpretive stand-point, this all may sound like a weak argument, but I come back to my faith, which is based in the love of Christ Jesus, who chided against the Pharisees for living only the letter of the law, rather than its spirit. I am reminded that Jesus’ message was far less about condemnation than charity and forgiveness. About taking the plank out of your own eye and such. In that light, I find the judgmentalism of the modern Christian church rather appalling.

As for my actual sexual practices, outside the guidance of religion, this has been a bit of a personal journey as well. Would it be best to wait til I have a marriage/commitment ceremony to have sex only within the context of a perpetual, life-long, monogamous relationship? Absolutely. However, one must realize that support systems for such a decision by a gay person do not exist. That is, however, only an excuse, and I realize that my sexual encounters outside of a loving, committed relationship are sinful. Just as are those of any other Christian, heterosexual or otherwise, who falls to that temptation.

I was making a spiritual pilgrimage across Spain when I found in my prayer book a prayer for forgiveness for a “disordered” sexual life (this, of course is a rough translation of what I was praying). I realized then that perhaps what I needed to be concerned with was not the marriage/not marriage thing, as that was a worry I would not be able to overcome, but whether I am truly treating my body as a temple, or whether I was bringing chaos into life by disrespecting my body by treating it as nothing more than an instrument of pleasure.

Do I continue to have sex outside of meaningful, committed relationships? Yes. Do I admit that that is a sin? Yes. Is it something that I have reconciled in my own personal faith journey? Yes.

I have now waxed on for far longer than I think my commenter would have desired, but I thought it was an interesting and respectful question, and an interesting thought path to take.

Besides, I am still avoiding studying for jurisprudence.