The Catholic LGBT Pride Prayer Service That Is and Isn't Taking Place

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: as spin doctor for the chancery of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, Dennis McGrath must have the job from hell.

No, really, I feel bad for the guy whenever I hear or read of his attempts to defend the impoverished sexual theology of the Roman Catholic Church. And with the appointment of John Nienstedt as archbishop, McGrath seems to be doing a lot of defending.

Recently, the chancery has got itself into yet another mess by dictating to parishes who they can and cannot pray for. Seriously.

As you may or may not have heard, the organizers of the annual [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT)] Pride Prayer Service at St. Joan of Arc Church have been told that this service can now no longer take place on church property – despite the fact that that’s exactly where it’s taken place for years.

“People who fully adapt to the GLBT lifestyle are not permitted to receive the sacraments or be the subject of a prayer service that endorses that lifestyle,” McGrath said in an article published in today’s St. Paul Pioneer Press (see below). Yet what exactly does McGrath mean when he says “the GLBT lifestyle.” And how exactly would the St. Joan of Arc prayer service endorse this lifestyle? McGrath failed to elaborate.

As Paula Ruddy notes in a previous Wild Reed post, “lifestyle,” as used by the Catholic hierarchy, is a “propaganda word, meant to carry distasteful overtones,” a “pejorative word used to denigrate gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender persons.”

Now, if the Church means “sexually active LGBT persons” when they say “lifestyle,” then they should just say that. And if they’ve got such a problem with LGBT folks having sex outside of marriage, then they should allow them to marry - or at least fess up to the terrible bind in which they place LGBT people: “No, you can’t have sex because you’re not married. And no, we won’t ever let you marry.” Well, thank you very much.

After the chancery’s intervention, leadership at St. Joan of Arc agreed to change the focus of tomorrow night’s prayer service. It’s now going to be a “peace prayer service.” A member of the parish shared with me that the words “pride,” “gay,” and “lesbian” will not be allowed at this new service. For the folks at the chancery, “peace” seems to be another word for censorship, and the only LGBT people they welcome are those who stay silent, like good little boys and girls, in the closet.

I commend the members of St. Joan of Arc for the many years they’ve held the Pride Prayer Service. I understand yet lament why they’ve been forced to discontinue it. I’m happy to announce, however, that the leadership and members of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM) agreed last night at CPCSM’s Annual Community Meeting to take up the reins of this particular Pride Prayer Service. And to honor the good work that the community of St. Joan’s has done in relation to initiating and hosting this service for many years, CPCSM’s inaugural Pride Prayer Service will take place at the entrance of the parish (4537 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis) at 6:30 p.m., tomorrow, Wednesday, June 25.

This service will include, songs, prayers, and readings. Those who gather will do so not only to keep alive the tradition of a Catholic prayer service to mark the beginning of LGBT Pride celebrations in the Twin Cities, but to express their pride in their LGBT loved ones and to give thanks for the gifts that LGBT people bring to the Church. So if you’re able, please come and join us.

Of course, the local chapter of the nation’s largest LGBT Catholic organization, Dignity, has been hosting an annual LGBT Pride Liturgy for over twenty years. This year, Dignity Twin Cities’s Pride Liturgy will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 27, at Prospect Park United Methodist Church in Minneapolis. It would be great to see you there also!

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Archdiocese Halts Church’s
Annual Gay Pride Prayers
By Tad Vezner
St. Paul Pioneer Press
June 24, 2008

St. Joan of Arc will hold service with no mention of gay rights.

A Roman Catholic Church decision to prohibit a Minneapolis gay pride prayer service has many in the gay community up in arms, leading activists to call the action a troubling and telling sign from the Twin Cities' new archbishop.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis recently told staff members at St. Joan of Arc Church they could not hold their annual gay pride prayer service planned for Wednesday — an event held for several years in conjunction with the annual Twin Cities Pride Celebration, parishioners said.

Instead, the archdiocese suggested a “peace” service with no mention of rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

“That descriptor (LGBT) was not possible on church property. We suggested they shift it, change the nature of it a little bit, and they did,” said archdiocese spokesman Dennis McGrath.

“The reason is quite simply because it was a LGBT pride prayer service, and that is really inimical to the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

Officials with the Minneapolis-based Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM), a grass-roots coalition promoting acceptance of gays in the Catholic Church, see the action as an attack by Archbishop John Nienstedt, who took the helm of the archdiocese in May.

In an e-mail to supporters, CPCSM co-founder David McCaffrey called the move “yet another volley of dehumanizing spiritual violence directed at LGBT persons and their families under Archbishop Nienstedt’s reign of homophobic hatred.”

McGrath said such assertions were untrue. He said the services had not been canceled in previous years because the archdiocese was not aware of them.

“It was not something that happened because there’s a new regime,” McGrath said. “If (previous Archbishop Harry Flynn) had known of it, the same thing would have happened.”

This year, he said “several people” came to the archdiocese to inform church officials of the event at St. Joan of Arc.

Michael Bayly, executive director of CPCSM, was skeptical.

“I find it hard to believe that they didn’t know about it. St. Joan of Arc had been very upfront in advertising it on their web site and in their bulletin. That was always their style — they took pride in welcoming and affirming gay people,” Bayly said.

St. Joan’s regular pastor, the Rev. Jim DeBruycker, is on leave until July. His replacement, the Rev. Jim Cassidy, who was faced with the decision of altering the service, did not return a call for comment Monday.

Bayly said he saw signs of an ongoing “chilling effect.” Usually, gay-friendly parishes advertise in the “pride guide” in advance of the Twin Cities Pride festival; this year, none did. The 2008 festival is this weekend.

“I think most of the parishes are in a terrible bind,” Bayly said.

McGrath said Nienstedt is simply following Catholic doctrine, like previous archbishops.

He said “the church welcomes people with same-sex attractions among its worshippers.”

“The distinction is people who fully adapt to the GLBT lifestyle are not permitted to receive the sacraments or be the subject of a prayer service that endorses that lifestyle,” McGrath said.

Some in the St. Joan of Arc congregation are troubled.

“I’m sort of split down the middle between being really sad and really angry,” said Gerry Sell, who has been a parishioner at the South Minneapolis church since 1965. Sell, married and the mother of six, chaired the 1989 Minnesota task force on lesbian and gay Minnesotans.

“I think that the move is going to resonate with some people, who will say, ‘If this is the church, then I’m out.’ Not another parish — a different church,” said Sell. “Not me. Not at 75 years.”

Nienstedt has said homosexuality is a disorder, and he is a leader in the campaign to persuade the Legislature to prohibit same-sex unions.

“Those who actively encourage or promote homosexual acts or such activity within a homosexual lifestyle formally cooperate in a grave evil and, if they do so knowingly and willingly, are guilty of mortal sin,” he wrote in a November article in the archdiocese’s paper, The Catholic Spirit.

Controversy over LGBT issues also had been an issue with Flynn, Nienstedt’s predecessor.

Last year, the then-archbishop prohibited Mass at a symposium exploring the conflict between homosexuality and Catholicism, saying to allow it might mislead archdiocese members into believing the speakers’ views had the church's sanction.

In October, authors Robert and Carol Curoe, a lesbian and her Catholic father, were scheduled to speak at [a CPCSM-sponsored event at] the Church of St. Francis Cabrini in Minneapolis, but they were told they could not do so.

And in 2006, Flynn supported a proposed state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The year before, Flynn ruled that gay rights supporters could not receive Communion while wearing rainbow-colored sashes because the practice was seen as a protest of Catholic teaching.

Tad Vezner


Recommended Off-site Links:
Minneapolis Parish Ordered: No Gay Prayer Service at Church - Paul Walsh, Star Tribune (Minneapolis), June 24, 2008.
Archbishop Stops LGBT Pride Prayer Service - Andy Birkey (EleventhAvenueSouth.com, June 24, 2008

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Talk of the Archdiocese
Thoughts on Archbishop Nienstedt
An Asinine Decision by the Chancery
The Shrinking Catholic Tent
Reflecting on Inclusive Language
Celebrating and Embodying Divine Hospitality
300+ People Vigil at Cathedral in Solidarity with LGBT Catholics
Archbishop Nienstedt’s “Learning Curve”: A Suggested Trajectory
A Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent
Thoughts on Authority and Fidelity
What it Means to be Catholic
Celebrating Our Sanctifying Truth
The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace
Coming Out: An Act of Holiness

What Is a “Lifestyle”?

Earlier today, my friend Paula Ruddy jotted down some thoughts in response to statements made by Dennis McGrath, the Communications Director of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, in an article in today’s St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Following are Paula’s thoughts on what McGrath refers to as the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender “lifestyle.”

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The term “lifestyle” has become a pejorative word used to denigrate gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered persons. It’s a propaganda word, meant to segregate a group by its sexual practices and to exclude them from social acceptance.

Dennis McGrath, the Catholic Archdiocesan communications officer, is quoted in the St Paul Pioneer Press of June 24 as saying that GLBT persons who have “fully adapted to the lifestyle” may not be endorsed by a prayer service on church property.

Generally, the term “lifestyle” has economic connotations. There is the lifestyle of the rich and famous, the jet set. Their lifestyle is glamorous, not mundane. These are people who have lots of options in the way they live their lives. There is a middle-class lifestyle. We get up in the morning, get the kids off to school, get ourselves off to work, came home, make dinner, do all the things that need to be done and fall into bed. On weekends we play a little.

Middle-class partnered gays and lesbians have a lifestyle just like middle-class partnered heterosexual couples. They get themselves off to work, and live more or less decent, more or less happy, productive lives just like anyone else. Middle-class gays and straights who are not partnered probably live similar lifestyles. Their orientation is essential to who they are, but their lifestyle is not determined by it. Their sex lives are incorporated into a lifestyle that includes family life, work, civic engagement, religious practice and a myriad other cultural factors.

The Roman Catholic moral teaching sees same-gender sexual activity as “intrinsically disordered.” McGrath says celibate GLBT persons are welcome “in the pews.” They are obviously not “fully adapted to the lifestyle.” So the lifestyle must mean people who are sexually active. No one speaks of heterosexuals who are sexually active as “fully adapted to a lifestyle.”

The Archdiocesan spokesman restricts the term “lifestyle” to refer only to sexual practices when talking about GLBT persons. Why would he do that?

Does this restriction of GLBT lifestyle to sex imply that all sexually active GLBT people are promiscuous and lead decadent, dissipated lives? No doubt there are GLBT persons, just like straight persons, whose sexual practices are self destructive or harmful to others. The Archdiocese can’t be making that overly general judgment about all sexually active GLBT persons, but the suggestion is there in the term “lifestyle.”

When the Church uses the word “lifestyle” to designate same-gender sexual activity, it is saying that GLBT people are different from the mainstream culture, not only in their essential sexual orientation, but in all the other areas of human activity we associate with “lifestyle.” They are not people whose lives we can celebrate in a prayer service on church owned property.

Catholics can be ashamed of the Archdiocesan spokesman for being spiritually and morally obtuse.

In the Garden of Spirituality: Michael Morwood

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“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

- Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on spirituality continues with an excerpt from Michael Morwood’s 1998 book, Tomorrow’s Catholic: Understanding God and Jesus in a New Millennium.

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We each have our images and thoughts about God and our relationship with God. Spirituality is simply the manner in which we allow these images and thoughts to direct the way we live. We can, for example, picture God as a cruel dictator. That belief would have an enormous impact on our relationship with God, our style of prayer and worship and self image.

We could, on the other hand, perceive God as incredibly loving and understand ourselves as richly blessed with the presence of God’s Spirit. Obviously, in the second example, our spirituality will be quite different from the first example. What we believe and image and the way this influences the way we live, relate, pray, and worship - this is our spirituality.

As Catholics, our spirituality has been shaped and packaged for us by centuries of experience, thought, and reflection. We inherited a Catholic worldview at an early age. We took this on board, unquestioningly in most cases, and tried to be faithful to it.

One of the problems being encountered today – and one we must face if our spirituality is to be real – is that much of our inherited spirituality was shaped by religious thought patterns and worldviews that are now questionable, if not irrelevant.

It is somewhat like trying to perform heart surgery in a modern hospital with only the knowledge of fifteenth-century medical science. It is not that anyone wants to scoff at the medical knowledge of earlier centuries. That would be unfair. Likewise with our religious worldview and our spirituality. The intent is not to belittle earlier thought patterns which sustained Christian living for centuries. The intent is rather to look at the basics of our religious beliefs in the light of today’s worldview which is vastly different from that which shaped Christian thought in its beginnings. What we find is good news: the Christian message blends beautifully with today’s worldview.

Christianity has always maintained that God is infinite, that God is everywhere, that God’s presence sustains everything that has existence. . . . God permeates all creation.

Let us pause and examine what this means for a spirituality.

It surely suggests that we must rid ourselves of notions that we have to buy or win God’s love or presence. God’s presence is an essential condition for existence. You cannot have “more” or “less” of it.

Every one of us is permeated with God’s presence. The pope does not have it any more than the truck driver or the nurse. The vital difference comes not from the reality but from the recognition and the naming of the reality, that is, naming and recognizing oneself as someone who gives flesh to, gives human form to, gives particular, unique, personal human expression to the reality we name God.

God comes to expression, comes to a particular life in ME. In me, God can speak, can move, can dance, can compose music or write poetry, can make love and create life, can laugh and can cry at the imperfection of it all.

The reality we name as “God,” mightier and more vast than 400 billion galaxies, permeates my existence as a human person. Certainly God is infinite and unknowable; but we look into our hearts and lives, and there is this same God bursting to life in us. Why do we keep looking elsewhere to find God? Why do we stay locked into a spirituality that looks for God in the heavens in preference to a spirituality that focuses on the God within and among us, urging and prompting us to claim our sacred identity - and to live it? Here is the arena of conversion and the heart of Jesus’ message to all of us who have ears to listen.

Our spirituality needs to articulate more clearly and more thoroughly this basic relationship between God and ourselves. It should emphasize both the reality of God’s presence with us, and our responsibility to allow that presence to emerge and be seen in the way we live. Our basic sin, if we are to talk about an “original sin,” is our blindness to this reality of who we are and the ways we block the emergence of the sacred within us. The story is not of a “fall” from a perfect state of consciousness and developed conscience; rather, it is the story of the slow emergence within human beings of the realization that the sacred is deep within each of us.

- Excerpted from Tomorrow’s Catholic: Understanding God and Jesus in a New Millennium by Michael Morwood (Twenty-Third Publications, 1998, pp. 97-98).


Others highlighted in The Wild Reed’s “In the Garden of Spirituality” series include:
Zainab Salbi
Daniel Helminiak
Rod Cameron
Paul Collins
Joan Chittister
Toby Johnson
Joan Timmerman
Uta Ranke-Heinemanm
Caroline Jones
Ron Rolheiser
James C. Howell
Paul Coelho
Doris Lessing

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

A Profound and Devastating Loss

Minneapolis-based writer Kris Berggren’s latest piece in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) surveys the responses of parishes in the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis to an impending ban on lay preaching. A number of folks from St. Stephen’s, the Catholic community I worship with, are quoted in Berggren’s article, excerpts of which are reprinted below.

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Minnesota Parishes Tussle with
Impending Ban on Lay Preaching
By Kris Berggren
National Catholic Reporter
June 13, 2008

An archbishop’s recent order to end lay preaching in the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese has brought a deep sense of loss to Catholics who believe in the practice and the theology behind it. In some parishes, lay leaders are seeking ways to register their disagreement with the new ban or to keep lay voices alive despite it. And some people are voting with their feet and finding other places to worship.

Archbishop Harry Flynn sent the letter in January to all archdiocesan pastors instructing them to end lectionary-based liturgical lay preaching by May 2, his retirement date, calling such preaching a “liturgical abuse.” While Canon 766 of the 1983 revised Code of Canon Law states that lay preaching may be permitted when deemed useful or necessary according to norms developed by episcopal conferences, Flynn’s directive appears to be guided by the restrictions in the 2004 Vatican instructional document Redemptionis Sacramentum, which narrows the criteria for allowing lay preaching only to accommodate a scarcity of priests or the needs of a specific community.

Some 29 parishes here are affected by the ban. Some offered formal ministry training and formation for lay preachers, while others offered informal support and resources.

The targeting of lay voices deeply disturbs Patricia Hughes Baumer who, with her husband, runs Partners in Preaching, an Eden Prairie, Minn., organization that has trained 500 lay preachers here and in five other dioceses since 1997.

“[Lay preaching] isn’t an abuse now and it wasn’t even by constructionist standards,” said Baumer, who believes the ban ignores “the direction of canon law” away from prohibition and toward authorization of lay preaching since Vatican II.

Some have speculated that Flynn was cleaning house for his successor. Baumer said, “It was widely anticipated that Archbishop [John] Nienstedt would not be open to the continuation of [lay preaching] and that Archbishop Flynn made the request so that parishes could attempt to respond with grace, that it was not going to be an immediate termination, [which] would be experienced as far more harsh. Clearly, if you believe something is an abuse, you don’t give people four months to terminate it.”

Bishops can and do interpret instructional documents and episcopal norms differently, said Passionist Sr. Elissa Rinere, a canon lawyer. “The fact that it can change easily is the nature of the system.” It is important to understand how that system works, she said. For example, instructional documents such as Redemptionis Sacramentum may well inform a bishop’s decision-making but should not supersede canon law itself.

In a 2006 article for Preach magazine, Rinere called the language on lay preaching in the instruction “chilling.” She explained that the instruction not only lacks the legislative standing to trump existing canon law or episcopal norms, but contains discrepancies in wording compared with the canon’s text. Rinere wrote: “The instruction cites the canon as saying ‘Laypeople may preach outside Mass in churches or oratories (161).’ Canon 766 does not contain the words ‘outside Mass.’ ”

Catholics who support lay preaching have expressed dismay, even grief, at the ban.

“I just feel as if somebody stole my church,” said Miriam Meyers, a retired professor of linguistics and a longtime member of St. Stephen Parish in Minneapolis, which has involved lay preachers for almost two decades. “I think the loss [of lay preaching] is profound and really rather devastating.”

Mary Wilmes, also of St. Stephen, resents the effective silencing of the voices of women and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. As the unofficial archivist at St. Stephen, she has collected 336 sermons, which she e-mails to parishioners who request them.

“Different things appeal to different people,” Wilmes said. “When you have a range [of preachers], you are going to be touched more than you will ever be touched by one preacher. Many parts, one body, isn’t it? It is an incredible richness.”

Frank Schweigert of St. Frances Cabrini in Minneapolis spoke emotionally about the importance of lay preaching in setting an example of living with faith for other laypeople, especially “in a formative way for boys and girls. It did a lot to enhance ecclesial understanding of what it means to be a baptized Christian.”

Parishes are wrestling with how to comply yet retain lay presence and perspective. A typical solution is to schedule the lay preacher before Mass.

St. Joan of Arc changed its preaching model well before Flynn’s letter, said associate pastor Fr. Jim Cassidy. Formerly, lay preachers spoke after the Gospel. Now they’re scheduled before Mass. The priest preaches a homily. The advantage to the community, Cassidy said, “besides wanting to respect the guidelines of the liturgy,” is that the two often complement each other. “It is a win-win situation.”

Others find two speakers unwieldy. Staff liturgist Chris Kosowski at St. Frances Cabrini said laypeople have preached for some four decades with the “invitation, encouragement and support of pastors. We have had a feeling of mutuality between lay and clergy.” Parishioners feel various proposals to keep lay preaching in different ways have shortcomings, said Kosowski. “The proposals we have to consider place [clergy and laypeople] on different planes. There’s the sense of not wanting two ‘homilies’ in one Mass. And just the feeling of how can something that was OK, allowed by canon law since 1983, all of a sudden not be OK?”

. . . Wilmes has decided to worship with a breakaway group from St. Stephen that retains ties with the parish but has arranged for offsite worship space on Sunday mornings. [See the previous Wild Reed post: “The Shrinking Catholic Tent”.] She’s joined by at least 100 parishioners who feel similarly, including Miriam Meyers.

Others aren’t taking the order lightly, either: One parish council is considering its finance committee’s request to withhold 10 percent of the parish assessment to the archdiocese until lay preaching is restored, according to a lay preacher at that parish.

. . . Partners in Preaching will continue to offer training. Its board has commissioned Baumer to work on a book documenting the impact of lay preaching on the Catholic church. She said, “We will continue to advocate for diversity of voices, believing it really is a need of God’s people.”

Kris Berggren
National Catholic Reporter
June 13, 2008


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Talk of the Archdiocese
Thoughts on Archbishop Nienstedt
The Shrinking Catholic Tent
Reflecting on Inclusive Language
Celebrating and Embodying Divine Hospitality
Archbishop Nienstedt’s “Learning Curve”: A Suggested Trajectory
A Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent
Thoughts on Authority and Fidelity
What it Means to be Catholic

For two lay homilies that I’ve delivered, see:
A Homily for the Feast of the Epiphany (St. Stephen Catholic Church, January 2, 2000).
Somewhere In Between (St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, January 15, 2006).

Jesus and the Centurion (Part 2)

In my last post I shared a tract entitled “When Jesus Met a Gay Man,” excerpted from the book The Children Are Free: Reexaming the Biblical Evidence on Same-Sex Relationships by Jeff Miner and John Tyler Connoley. As its title suggests, this tract explores the contention that the Roman centurion who pleads with Jesus to cure his servant, may well have been what we today call a gay man. I also highlighted Jack Clark Robinson’s treatment of this matter as published in the November-December 2007 issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review.

Robinson’s article elicited a number of responses from readers, which were published in the January-February 2008 issue of the magazine - the editors of which note how “the critiques focus on the originality of the author’s thesis . . . [while the] additional letters confirm that it’s a thesis that has a history and a small but respectable body of literature behind it.”

One of the letter writers was William A. Percy , who provided a detailed outline of the history and development of the thesis that the Roman centurion was what we’d now call gay.

Following is the full text of Percy’s letter in response to Robinson’s piece in The Gay and Lesbian Review. As you will see, this letter serves well as an insightful and scholarly article in and of itself.

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In attempting to discuss Jesus and homosexuality, Friar John Robinson could have greatly improved his insufficiently referenced article, “Jesus, the Centurion and His Lover,” (The Gay and Lesbian Review, Nov.-Dec. 2007) by citing Donald Mader’s closely argued “The Entimos Pais of Matthew’s 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10,” first printed in the now-defunct Paidika (1, 1987), and then reprinted in Wayne Dynes and Stephen Donaldson’s Homosexuality and Religion and Philosophy (XII of their thirteen-volume Studies in Homosexuality, Garland, 1992, now available at williamapercy.com). He would also had benefited from awareness of Theodore Jennings Jr. and Tat-Siong Benny Liew’s meticulously sourced “Mistaken Identities But Model Faith: Rereading the Centurion, the Chap, and the Christ” in The Journal of Biblical Literature (123:3, 2004).

Or, for that matter, Robinson could have noted Tom Horner’s Jonathan Loved David (1978), written at the height of the gay liberation movement. Both Mader and Jennings and Liew credit Horner with being the first theologian (at least in the English language) to suggest that the Centurion and his “boy,” whom Jesus cured from near death, is a text about pederasty, although Horner does not attempt an analysis of the text himself. Despite Mader’s and Jennings & Liew’s assertion, it was apparently one of Fr. Robinson’s own co-religionists, Dr. John McNeill, S.J., to whom the honor should actually go. Two years prior to the publication of Horner’s book, in an obscure interview published in Christopher Street magazine, “God and Gays: A New Team” (interview with J.J. O’Neill by Charles Ortleb, Christopher Street, October, 1976), McNeill says: “The four gospels are totally silent on this issue of homosexuality. There is no explicit reference to it whatsoever. There is one curious story of the Roman centurion whose boy servant is ill. Jesus is asked to cure him. It is said that the centurion loved the boy very deeply; one could read into it a homosexual relationship.”

In 1987, Mader argued that the texts of Matthew and Luke, whose gospels present the story of Jesus healing the centurion’s pais or doulos, both obtaining it from the common source “Q,” demonstrate a pederastic relationship between the centurion and his sick companion. In 2004, Theodore Jennings Jr. and Tat-Siong Benny Liew, both at the Chicago Theological Seminary, endorsed Mader’s conclusion but argued that the method of comparative exegesis by which he arrived at it was not sound. Mader had argued that Luke cleaned up Matthew’s language, replacing the word used by Matthew, pais, meaning “boy” or “child,” with another Greek word which specifically meant slave, doulos, in an attempt to tone down the pederastic relationship between the centurion and his esteemed slave boy that was suggested by pais – a connotation that revealed too much about the sexual connection between the centurion and the boy and Jesus’ attitude about pederasts.

Matthew, more at home in Aramaic, was, Mader claims, less attuned to the pederastic connotations of pais than was Luke. Jennings and Liew maintain that because the order in which Luke and Matthew were written cannot be ascertained with certainty, such an argument is invalid, and base their case on an analysis of the key word in Matthew alone – ending, however, with the same conclusion regarding the centurion, his boy, and Jesus’ attitudes.

Fr. Robinson discusses another converted centurion, Cornelius, from the Acts of the Apostles 10:1-38, centurions being something of a trope in the New Testament for gentiles who were nevertheless people of faith. He does not take up, however, Morton Smith, as did W.V. Harris recently in “The Case of the Fake Gay Gospel” (Times Literature Supplement, Oct. 19, 2007), who claimed his Secret Gospel of Mark (the text of which has Jesus spending the night with a naked, newly converted youth) may be early and authentic. Smith’s argumentation is summarized in Dynes, vol. XII. Nor does Robinson deal with Warren Johansson’s masterly article, “. . .whosoever shall say to his brother, racha” (also in volume XII of the Dynes/Donaldson collection, reprinted from the Caberion and Gay Books Bulletin, No. 10, 1984). There, citing a German source, Johannson loosely explains that racha is an Aramaic word meaning something like queer or faggot today. This puzzling word was never translated by St. Jerome, Martin Luther, the translators of the King James Version, or the French Roman-Catholic Douai. If it had been, Jesus would be on record as having said, “Don’t put down fags.”

In short, Robinson’s piece lacks the serious scholarship required to make a strong case about Jesus’ attitude towards homosexuality. Had this foundation been there, it would have been clear that Jesus opposed the homophobic condemnations of St. Paul and St. Clement. Nearly two centuries ago, in 1814, Jeremy Bentham wrote that “Jesus has on the whole field of sexual irregularity preserved an uninterrupted silence” (cited in Louis Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, 1985); scholarship today gives plenty of reason to believe that far from being silent about homosexual relations, including age-differentiated relationships, Jesus viewed them at least with toleration, if not approval, so long as they were conducted ethically.

Jesus, most scholars believe, was literate in Hebrew and/or Aramaic, though not in Greek. The Septuagint, however, was in Greek. According to legend, the Septuagint was the product of a “seminar” in Alexandria, circa 250 BCE, when King Ptolemy had the Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek by seventy rabbis in seventy separate cubicles. All seventy rabbis came up with identical renderings, word for word – a feat of divine inspiration. Like St. Paul, Josephus (Contra Apionem, 2) and Philo Judeaus (De specialibus legibus, 3), all of whom used the Septuagint, other Jews who used the Hebrew text interpreted the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, as shown in the Mishnah, as a transgression of lust and not of inhospitality. The case that Jehovah destroyed Sodom because of inhospitality can indeed be plausibly deduced from the Hebrew scriptures, but that interpretation was certainly abandoned during the intertestamental period (that is, between the canonization of the Old Testament around 200 BCE and that of the New Testament, around 200 CE), in such texts as the Book of Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Secrets of Enoch. Warren Johannson convinced me that Canon Derrick Sherwin Bailey was instructed by higher-ups in the Church of England to minimize the Jewish argument that God destroyed Sodom for sexual acts rather than for inhospitality, in order to reduce hostility to the Wolfenden Commission’s recommendation to decriminalize consensual sex between males over 21 in England. Accepting Bailey’s claims without question, John Boswell went so far as to claim that the medieval Orthodox Church developed rituals for same-sex unions, which his admirers assumed to be same-sex marriages.

Many of these arguments are summarized in the Encylopedia of Homosexuality, edited by Wayne Dynes with Associate Editor Warren Johannson and William A. Percy (two volumes, Garland, 1990). But Johannson’s book-length manuscript, published posthumously just this year on my website, gives a more profound and original interpretation. Along with many other authorities, Johannson maintains that a group of scholars under Ezra created the Hebrew Bible in the 5th Centurt BCE under Persian rule, condemning “males who lie with males” as the Zoroastrians did. When Alexander conquered Palestine in 330 BCE, bringing with him the Greek pederastic tradition, apocryphal and pseudo-epigraphical writings registered Jewish condemnation and reinterpreted the Sodom legend to make it divine retribution not for inhospitality but for homosexual lust. In the first century CE, Josephus (Contra apionem, 2) “categorically condemned sexual relations between males,” so that on the subject nothing remained for Christian theologians to do.

Christians did add an elaboration for unnatural behaviors, that is to say all sexual activity not leading to procreation, as “the sin of the sodomite,” fusing the Greek philosophical concept with the Jewish legend. Mainstream Judaism proper, however, never fully abandoned the old notion that the Sodomites violated inhospitality and justice, as the Talmud had recorded.

– William A. Percy

Recommended Off-site Links:
The Historical Jesus and the Slave of the Centurion: How the Themes of Slavery, Sexuality, and Military Service Intersect in Matthew 8:5-13 – Eric Koepnick. (NOTE: This is a pdf document.)
The Gay Centurion: The Day Jesus Blessed a Gay Relationship – Rick Brentlinger (GayChristianity101.com).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Jesus and the Centurion (Part 1)
• The Bible and Homosexuality
• Song of Songs: The Bible’s Gay Love Poem
• On Civil Unions and Christian Tradition
• St. Francis of Assisi and Human Sexuality
• The Sexuality of Jesus
• The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace
• Alexander’s Great Love

Image: Ernest Borgnine as the Roman centurion and Robert Powell as Jesus in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977).

Jesus and the Centurion (Part 1)

Recently on the blogsite Bessemer Opinions, Joe Openshaw shared an excerpt from The Children Are Free: Reexaming the Biblical Evidence on Same-Sex Relationships by Jeff Miner and John Tyler Connoley.

I’d not heard of this book before, though was familiar with the idea that the Roman centurion who begs Jesus to cure his servant, may well have been what we call today a gay man.

Here’s the excerpt of The Children Are Free that Openshaw shares on his blog.

_________________

When Jesus Met a Gay Man
By Jeff Miner and John Tyler Connoley

From our days in Sunday School, many of us are familiar with the Gospel story where Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurion. The story is recorded in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10. In Matthew, we are told that the centurion came to Jesus to plead for the healing of his servant. Jesus said he was willing to come to the centurion’s house, but the centurion said there was no need for Jesus to do so. He believed that if Jesus simply spoke the word, his servant would be healed. Marveling at the man's faith, Jesus pronounced the servant healed. Luke tells a similar story.

Just another miracle story, right? Not on your life!

In the original language, the importance of this story for gay, lesbian and bisexual Christians is much clearer. The Greek word used in Matthews account to refer to the servant of the centurion is pais. In the language of the time, pais had three possible meanings depending upon the context in which it was used. It could mean son or boy; it could mean servant, or it could mean a particular type of servant one who was his master’s male lover. (Footnote 18) Often these lovers were younger than their masters, even teenagers.

To our modern minds, the idea of buying a teen lover seems repugnant. But we have to place this in the context of ancient cultural norms. In ancient times, commercial transactions were the predominant means of forming relationships. Under the law, the wife was viewed as the property of the husband, with a status just above that of a slave. Moreover, in Jesus’ day, a boy or girl was considered of marriageable age upon reaching his or her early teens. It was not uncommon for boys and girls to marry at age 14 or 15. (Footnote 19) Nor was it uncommon for an older man to marry a young girl. Fortunately civilization has advanced, but these were the norms in the culture of Jesus day.

In that culture, if you were a gay man who wanted a male spouse, you achieved this, like your heterosexual counterparts, through a commercial transaction purchasing someone to serve that purpose. A servant purchased to serve this purpose was often called a pais.

The word boy in English offers a rough comparison. Like pais, the word boy can be used to refer to a male child. But in the slave South in the nineteenth century, boy was also often used to refer to male slaves. The term boy can also be used as a term of endearment. For example, Jeff’s father often refers to his mother as his girl. He doesn’t mean that she is a child, but rather that she is his special one. The term boy can be used in the same way, as in my boy or my beau. In ancient Greek, pais had a similar range of meanings.

Thus, when this term was used, the listener had to consider the context of the statement to determine which meaning was intended. Some modern Christians may be tempted to simply declare by fiat that the Gospels could not possibly have used the term pais in the sense of male lover, end of discussion. But that would be yielding to prejudice. We must let the word of God speak for itself, even if it leads us to an uncomfortable destination.

Is it possible the pais referred to in Matthew 8 and Luke 7 was the Roman centurion’s male lover? Lets look at the biblical evidence.

The Bible provides three key pieces of textual and circumstantial evidence. First, in the Luke passage, several additional Greek words are used to describe the one who is sick. Luke says this pais was the centurion's entimos duolos. The word duolos is a generic term for slave, and was never used in ancient Greek to describe a son/boy. Thus, Luke’s account rules out the possibility the sick person was the centurion’s son; his use of duolos makes clear this was a slave. However, Luke also takes care for indicate this was no ordinary slave. The word entimos means honored. This was an honored slave (entimos duolos) who was his master’s pais. Taken together, the three Greek words preclude the possibility the sick person was either the centurion’s son or an ordinary slave, leaving only one viable option: he was his master’s male lover. (Footnote 20)

A second piece of evidence is found in verse 9 of Mathew’s account. In the course of expressing his faith in Jesus’ power to heal by simply speaking, the centurion says, “When I tell my slave to do something, he does it.” By extension, the centurion concludes that Jesus is also able to issue a remote verbal command that must be carried out. When speaking of his slaves, the centurion uses the word duolos. But when speaking of the one he is asking Jesus to heal, he uses only pais. In other words, when he is quoted in Matthew, the centurion uses pais only when referring to the sick person. He uses a different word, doulos, when speaking of his other slaves, as if to offer a distinction. (In Luke, it is others, not the centurion, who call the sick one an entimos duolos.) Again, the clear implication is that the sick man was no ordinary slave. And when pais was used to describe a servant who was not an ordinary slave, it meant only one thing: a slave who was the master’s male lover.

The third piece of evidence is circumstantial. In the Gospels, we have many examples of people seeking healing for themselves or for family members. But this story is the only example of someone seeking healing for a slave. The actions described are made even more remarkable by the fact that this was a proud Roman centurion (the conqueror/oppressor) who was humbling himself and pleading with a Jewish rabbi (the conquered/oppressed) to heal his slave. The extraordinary lengths to which this man went to seek healing for his slave is much more understandable, from a psychological perspective, if the slave was his beloved companion.

Thus, all the textual and circumstantial evidence in the Gospels points in one direction. For objective observers, the conclusion is inescapable: in this story Jesus healed a man’s male lover. When understood this way, the story takes on a whole new dimension.

Imagine how it may have happened. While stationed in Palestine, the centurion’s pais becomes ill experiencing some type of life threatening paralysis. The centurion will stop at nothing to save him. Perhaps a friend tells him of rumors of Jesus’ healing powers. Perhaps this friend also tells him Jesus is unusually open to foreigners, teaching his followers that they should love their enemies, even Roman soldiers. So the centurion decides to take a chance. Jesus was his only hope.

As he made his way to Jesus, he probably worried about the possibility that Jesus, like other Jewish rabbis, would take a dim view of his homosexual relationship. Perhaps he even considered lying. He could simply use the word duolos. That would have been accurate, as far as it went. But the centurion probably figured if Jesus was powerful enough to heal his lover, he was also powerful enough to see through any half-truths.

So the centurion approaches Jesus and bows before him. “Rabbi,” my the word gets caught in his throat. This is it the moment of truth. Either Jesus will turn away in disgust, or something wonderful will happen. So, the centurion clears his throat and speaks again. "Rabbi, my pais, yes, my pais, lies at home sick unto death.” Then he pauses and waits for a second that must have seemed like an eternity. The crowd of good, God fearing people surrounding Jesus probably became tense. This was like a gay man asking a televangelist to heal his lover. What would Jesus do?

Without hesitation, Jesus says, “Then I will come and heal him.”

Its that simple! Jesus didn’t say, “Are you kidding? I’m not going to heal your pais so you can go on living in sin!” Nor did he say, "Well, it shouldn't surprise you that your pais is sick; this is God’s judgment on your relationship.”

Instead, Jesus’ words are simple, clear and liberating for all who have worried about what God thinks of gay relationships. “I will come and heal him.”

At this point, the centurion says there is no need for Jesus to travel to his home. He has faith that Jesus’ word is sufficient. Jesus then turns to the good people standing around him those who were already dumbfounded that he was willing to heal this man’s male lover. To them, Jesus says in verse 10 of Matthews account, “I have not found faith this great anywhere in Israel.” In other words, Jesus holds up this gay centurion as an example of the type of faith others should aspire to.

Jesus didn’t just tolerate this gay centurion. He said he was an example of faith someone we all should strive to be like.

Then, just so the good, God-fearing people wouldn’t miss the point, Jesus speaks again in verse 11: “I tell you, many will come from the east and the west (i.e., beyond the borders of Israel) to find a seat in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs (i.e., those considered likely to inherit heaven) will be thrown into outer darkness.” By this statement Jesus affirmed that many others like this gay centurion, those who come from beyond the assumed boundaries of God’s grace are going to be admitted to the kingdom of heaven. And he also warned that many who think themselves the most likely to be admitted will be left out.

With this story, we rest our case. Who could ask for more? In this story, Jesus restores a gay relationship by a miracle of healing and then holds up a gay man as an example of faith for all to follow. What more do our fundamentalist friends want? Who is Lord? Jesus or cultural prejudice?

Footnotes:
18. K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1978), page 16; Bernard Sergent, Homosexuality in Greek Myth (Beacon Press, Boston, 1986), page 10.

19. Mercer Dictionary of the Bible (Mercer University Press, Macon, 1994), page 554.

20. For an excellent and thorough discussion of the terms pais and entimos duolos in these two gospel accounts, see Donald Mader’s article The Entimos Pais of Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10, (Source: Homosexuality and Religion and Philosophy, Harland Publishing, Inc, New York, 1998).

____________________________

Interestingly, in the November-December 2007 issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review – an issue devoted to the theme “Eros and God” – Jack Clark Robinson had an article entitled “Jesus, the Centurion, and His Lover.”

Toward the end of this article Robinson discusses the implications of the story of the centurion and his servant for the lives of Christians today.

“Christians by definition ponder the words and actions of Jesus,” he writes. “For all of the statements over the centuries justifying the Christian condemnation of homosexuality, no one has ever quoted Jesus himself making such a pronouncement, because he never did. Instead, in his one encounter with what may well have been a homosexual man, Jesus offered no harsh judgment but instead went to unusual lengths to heal the man’s sick companion. . . . Historically, homosexuality has not been condemned by the Christian community because Jesus condemned it, but because the community inherited a condemnation of homosexuality from a worldview that did not understand the incidence, provenance, or nature of any form of human sexual attraction. The Gospel of Jesus should mean that the condemnation of anyone or of their relationship cannot be based on prejudice.”

Robinson also notes “one final irony.” “In the Roman Catholic Communion rite,” he reminds us, “the last words said by every communicant before receiving Holy Communion are: ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but say the word and I shall be healed.’ These words may sound familiar now. They paraphrase the centurion’s words as recorded in Matthew. How surprised many of those who condemn homosexuality in Christ’s name would be if they realized that every time they take Holy Communion, the words on their lips are those of a gay man.”

Robinson’s article ensured some interesting letters-to-the-editor in the next issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review. Although they didn’t disagree with his overall thesis, all of the letter writers took Robinson to task for insufficiently referencing his article. For instance, Donald Mader (author of the 1987 article, “The Entimos Pais of Matthew’s 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10”) wrote: “I am not suggesting plagiarism; rather, it would appear that [Robinson] has been guilty of sloppy research.”

And apparently, there’s quite a bit of “research” out there on this particular gospel story – research that’s surveyed in some detail by another letter writer to the Gay and Lesbian Review, William A. Percy of Boston.

NOTE: Percy’s response to Robinson’s article can be found in Part 2 of “Jesus and the Centurion.”


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Bible and Homosexuality
• Song of Songs: The Bible’s Gay Love Poem
• On Civil Unions and Christian Tradition
• St. Francis of Assisi and Human Sexuality
• The Sexuality of Jesus
• The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace

Intimate Soliloquies

Part 3 of In the Footsteps of Spring, an exploration of the coming out process as a spiritual journey.

I wrote the following “letter to God” in 1992, at a time when I was living as a closeted gay man. This “letter” reminds me of a beautiful insight offered by Viktor Frankl in his book, The Unheard Cry for Meaning: “When I was fifteen years old or so,” he writes, “I came up with a definition of God to which, in my old age, I come back more and more. I would call it an operational definition. It reads as follows: God is the partner of your most intimate soliloquies.”

It’s strange to read again the words of my “letter to God” and to think back to the sad and lonely person I was when I wrote them. I can see so clearly the darkened room in which I sat, scribbling down onto paper my thoughts, fears, and hopes by the flickering light of a solitary candle. In some ways it seems like only yesterday; in other ways, several lifetimes ago.

Yet although the frustration and loneliness of my situation back then saddens me, I also have to admire the braveness of my words. They are not the words of a victim, of someone who has given up. They’re the words of a seeker, of someone still very much in process. I mean, declaring to God that I desire a lover! That signifies something big: a shift, a movement not only in awareness of myself as a human being, but also a deepening of trust in my relationship with God. I wasn’t writing to some distant deity, but rather, in questioning and challenging myself, was conversing with God – a very real and present partner in this intimate soliloquy.

In retrospect, this letter conveys a largely unconscious awareness that I was standing with God on the threshold of a new phase of our journey together. Within two years of my writing these words, I had moved to the U.S. and began to come out to those around me.

The reflection that follows my 1992 “letter to God” was written in 1996 for In the Footsteps of Spring, and was probably my first attempt to reflect upon how I and my way of thinking and talking about God, had changed in the past four momentous years of my coming out journey.

(NOTE: For an introduction to In the Footsteps of Spring, click here. For Part 1: “The Light Within,” click here. For Part 2: “Shards of Summer,” click here.)

___________________________________

Autumn 1992

God, I am filled with frustration and regret. I know this comes from watching as opportunities for companionship and intimacy pass me by as I stay silent about who I really am.

This need for intimacy and union with another is like a hunger. And yet I know there are so many experiencing more life-threatening hunger - people in need of food, water, shelter, and clothing; children in need of their parents’ love; the elderly in need of dignity and respect; the poor in need of justice. Truly I have a lot to be thankful for and, believe me, I am grateful for my health, my family, my career, my friends, and my standard of living. I’d just like to truthfully be able to thank you for my sexuality – my homosexuality.

Does my homosexuality separate me from your love? Are my feelings and desires really sinful? There must be others like me – young men wanting to build a meaningful and loving relationship with another. Where are the structures in society, in the Church, for us to do so?

I desire a lover. I will not be afraid or ashamed to say that; a lover with whom I can create and celebrate love. And this love, Lord, would reflect the love you have for us. I desire someone who will love me for who I am. Surely this is the prayer of every man and woman!

Am I being selfish? Is it your will that I live alone always – nourished by your love only? Yet how can your love, as boundless as it is, replace the physical love and intimacy of another human? Can one abstain from sexual relations and be truly whole? After all, we are sexual beings. Must our sexuality be abandoned in our spiritual journey to wholeness? So many questions and so few answers.

Yet I know this for sure: I am special; I am gay. This doesn’t detract from my personhood – it’s an integral part of it. It is an aspect of my true self that requires nourishment through acceptance. Yet it is an aspect that I must keep hidden – an ultimately destructive endeavor. I live a lie. I live behind a façade – one that I need to be constantly checking for cracks – cracks that would allow others to perceive the real me.

But with you, Lord, there is no façade. I come before you in this quiet time as I truly am – as a child of your love, as a follower of your way, as a sexual being in need of love and intimacy, and as an individual who is not perfect – who at times is selfish, intolerant, proud, envious, bitter - and yet who knows that despite this am still loved by you.

Spring 1996

People sometimes say that suffering is redemptive. There may have been a time when I believed that, but not anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, suffering, like any human experience, can serve as a vehicle to redemption, to union with God. But to imply from this that suffering itself has been ordained by God, that it is God’s will, reduces God to a mere puppet-master and denies human beings God’s gift of free will.

I guess that for many people, however, an all-controlling, puppet-master of a god that we fear, is easier to deal with than confronting an ultimately mysterious God with whom we’re called to be in relationship; easier than confronting our own role and responsibility for many of the events in our life and in the world.

You may ask what caused me to think this way. Well, what causes any of us to question and challenge limiting ways of dealing with the complexities of life; limiting ways of speaking about God?

The answer, of course, is when our experiences show us otherwise. My experience of God has not been one of an all controlling entity far removed from me, but rather an all-loving and ever-faithful companion, here, deep in my soul. Indeed, I’m prepared to abandoned previously held notions of an all-powerful God in order to hold fast to the all-loving God I have come to know.

Yes, challenging things may happen to me throughout my life. I may experience confusion, isolation, and pain. But I know that no matter what, I am still loved by God; that, indeed, God suffers with me; rages with me against the injustices of this world.

Yet God is yearning, too – yearning to channel healing and transforming love to the world through any one of us willing to be open to receiving and passing on that love. We’re called to be co-creators with God – co-creators of justice, peace, and love. With this awareness in my mind and soul I have experienced transcendence.

Transcendence – an often misunderstood word. It’s not about fleeing or escaping, or rising beyond reality. No, it’s about claiming and proclaiming one’s own inner reality of sacredness brought to consciousness through delving deep within and engaging our true self – that part of us most infused with God.

Such a process requires letting go of surface things, and yet it fills one with a sense of freedom and peace, and such a new perspective, that indeed it feels as if one has taken flight. But it is no fearful attempt at escape.

The perspective of transcendence says that the journey is not in vain. Perception, insight, salvation – all are gained not by a change in essence, but by a change in perspective.

The way may indeed be confused and painful. Yet, somehow, in ways that I cannot begin to explain, out of the darkness and chaos can emerge a pattern, can emerge meaning – as rich and luminous as a tapestry of autumn leaves; as relentless as a river winding to the great sea.

Only in retrospect do we discern the path traversed, the insights gained, and the transformation (ours and the world’s) that is birthed when we bring these insights to life through our words and our actions.

Transcendence gifts us with new sight, new and freer ways of viewing ourselves, our world, our God. No longer burdened with images solidified over centuries, but free to trust our own images, hopes, desires, and dreams brought to birth by our own lived experiences.

I’ll share with you what I mean . . .

Within me is an ocean,
an ocean the colour of jade.
In times of doubt and despair it comes to me.
Its presence is dark and mysterious,
without form or feature.
Yet I am calm and at peace;
all fear and anxiety washed away.

I sometimes stand on the ocean’s shore -
unsure, lonely, sad.
The ocean calls to me,
invites me to be renewed,
to be carried upon its waves.

The ocean calls me to leave all else behind,
to lose myself in its blue-green depths,
to find myself anew in its pounding surf,
to emerge childlike from its waves.

The ocean calls me to know a force
greater than myself, to experience intimately
the source and sustainer of all life.

God is the ocean within me.

NEXT: Part 4: Coming Out


Photography: Michael Bayly.

“The Ocean Within” by Michael Bayly (November 1993).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
In the Footsteps of Spring: Introduction
In the Footsteps of Spring: Part 1 - “The Light Within”
In the Footsteps of Spring: Part 2 - “Shards of Summer”

The Same People

A friend recently forwarded me the following commentary by Anna Quindlen. Entitled, “The Same People,” and first published in the May 31 issue of Newsweek, this commentary is for many an encouraging sign of hope. It also confirms for me what I’ve long sensed: that for the younger generations, the “gay issue” is actually a non-issue.

Writes Quindlen: “The polls predict the future. The younger you are, the more likely you are to know someone who is gay. The more likely you are to know someone who is gay, the more likely you are to support gay marriage. The opposition is aging out. Someday soon the fracas surrounding all this will seem like a historical artifact, like the notion that women were once prohibited from voting and a black individual from marrying a white one.”



Accompanying Quindlen’s commentary are recent images from California – where dozens of gay couples are now being married after the historic May 15th decision by the California Supreme Court to overturn a 2000 ballot initiative banning same sex marriages.

___________________________________

The Same People
By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek
May 31, 2008

Scream, shout, jump up and down. No matter.
The gay-marriage issue is over and done with.
The upshot: love won.

During his sophomore year in high school, one of our sons mentioned at the dinner table that a classmate had come out of the closet. I can’t even remember which of the two boys it was, and that’s not only because my memory is now so bad that I can reread mystery novels and not recall whodunit. It’s because the announcement was such a big nothing among the kids that it was only slightly more noteworthy than “pass the mac and cheese.” Unlike my own high-school friends, these kids took gay for granted.

One of the most transformative social movements over our lifetime has been the battle for gay rights, and the key to its great success has been the grass-roots phenomenon of exploding stereotypes by simply saying, “Yes, I am.” Each time the woman at the next desk or the guy down the street lets it be known that he or she is gay, it takes another brick out of the wall of division. Or, as Ellen DeGeneres told John McCain on her show recently, “We are all the same people, all of us.”



That’s what the California Supreme Court said when it ruled that gay couples should have the right to marry as a matter of basic equality. Before you could say “Jonathan and Andrew request the honour of your presence,” opponents were suggesting that civilization would crash and burn if two guys could register at Pottery Barn and raise kids in a ranch house. All those wailing that gay marriage is an invention of amoral modernism might want to consider these lines from a Roman poem of the second century A.D.:

“The bearded Callistratus married the rugged Afer/Under the same law by which a woman takes a husband./Torches were carried before him, a bridal veil covered his face.” And afterward everyone sat down to salmon, rice pilaf and chocolate mousse. Well, actually, I made up that last part just as surely as some people are making up the dire consequences of same-sex troth-plighting.

In the wake of the court’s decision, those folks vowed to find a way to protect the sanctity of hetero marriage, that time-honored staple of sitcom mockery and savage custody fights. Polls showing opposition to gay marriage were proffered to prove that the court had overstepped its bounds, ignoring the fact that the most sacred business of judges is not to ratify the will of the majority but to protect the minority from its tyranny.



It is true that the California Supreme Court is something of a Scandinavia of jurisprudence, willing to get out front on social issues. But it’s not really courts and legislatures that will settle this issue. It’s the neighbors, friends and family members who have come out and made the political personal—and lovable. Jennifer? Smart, funny Jennifer? Of course she should be able to marry Anne. They’re perfect together.

If only coming out could be used in other areas that remain unsettled and contentious. The stereotype of the feckless woman who has an abortion and then a pedicure is a sub rosa staple of the opposition, and there’s no question that it could be counteracted by real people talking about making a difficult but necessary choice. But since abortion has always been couched, quite properly, as an issue of personal privacy, that feels discordant. Immigrants face bigotry that grows directly out of the swamp of ignorance, but the impulse—and the pressure—to fit in means that they don’t often testify to where they come from and what their lives are really like.



Gay men and lesbians have prospered because they’ve refused to acquiesce to the notion that they should hide their lives from public view. Two by two the’ve adopted children, bought homes, volunteered in their communities and slogged through life together just the way hetero couples do, except without preferential tax codes, inheritance rights and the automatic assumption that they can make decisions for one another in emergency situations. Too often, without legal protection, they have found themselves dependent on the kindness of those who were not kind, like the man in Indiana who became severely disabled and whose parents prohibited his partner of 25 years from visiting him in their home.

Here’s what I don’t understand: is there so much love and commitment in the world that we can afford, as a society, to be contemptuous of some portion of it? If two women in white want to join hands in front of their families and friends and vow to love and honor one another until they die, the only reasonable response to that is happy tears, awed admiration and societal approval. And—this part is just personal opinion—one of those big honking KitchenAid mixers with the dough hook.

Before we know it that will be the response everywhere, not just in Denmark and the Netherlands and Canada and California: approval, appliances. The polls predict the future. The younger you are, the more likely you are to know someone who is gay. The more likely you are to know someone who is gay, the more likely you are to support gay marriage. The opposition is aging out.



Someday soon the fracas surrounding all this will seem like a historical artifact, like the notion that women were once prohibited from voting and a black individual from marrying a white one. Our children will attend the marriages of their friends, will chatter about whether they will last, will whisper to one another, “Love him, don’t like him so much.” The California Supreme Court called gay marriage a “basic civil right.” In hindsight, it will merely be called ordinary life.

Anna Quindlen



Opening Image: Robin Tyler, left, and Diane Olson lean on each other during their same-sex Jewish wedding ceremony on the steps of Beverly Hills Courthouse, Monday June 16, 2008, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Dozens of gay couples were married Monday after a historic ruling making California the second state to allow same-sex nuptials went into effect. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

Image 2:Bride and groom figurines are on display on wedding cakes at Cake and Art bakery in West Hollywood, California June 4, 2008. A California Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday clears the way for gay marriage ceremonies that could bring a business windfall to San Francisco and other cities starting this month. (Reuters/Mario Anzuoni)

Image 3: Jeff Barr, left, places a wedding ring on the finger of Wes Wilkinson during their wedding ceremony at the Yolo County Clerk/Recorder’s office in Woodland, Calif. on Monday, June 16, 2008. The couple were among the first gay couples to wed in Yolo County after a May 15th decision by the California Supreme Court to overturn a 2000 ballot initiative banning same sex marriages. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Image 4: Shelly Bailes, left, and Ellen Pontac, right, hold each other’s hands as Yolo County Clerk/Recorder Freddie Oakley performs their wedding ceremony at her office in Woodland, Calif., Monday, June 16, 2008. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Image 5: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, center, kisses Del Martin, left, as Martin’s partner Phyllis Lyon, right, looks on in a special ceremony at City Hall in San Francisco, Monday, June 16, 2008. Lyon and Martin became the first officially married same sex couple after California’s Supreme Court declared gay marriage legal. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, Pool)

Image 6: Crowds cheers outside of City Hall after the first same-sex couple was legally married by Mayor Gavin Newsom in San Francisco, Monday, June 16, 2008. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Image 7: Same-sex couple Ariel Owens (right) and his spouse Joseph Barham walk arm in arm after they were married at San Francisco City Hall on Tuesday, June 17, 2008. (AFP/Getty Images/Justin Sullivan)

Below: Supporters of marriage equality stand on the steps of San Francisco City Hall on the first full day of legal same-sex marriage in San Francisco, California - June 17, 2008. (Reuters/Erin Siegal)



See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
What Straights Can Learn from Gay Marriage
Good News from the Golden State
The Changing Face of “Traditional Marriage”
The Real Gay Agenda
Naming and Confronting Bigotry
Love is Love
On Civil Unions and Christian Tradition
Separate is Not Equal
Mainstream Voice of “Dear Abby” Supports Gay Marriage
New Studies: Gay Couples as Committed as Straight Couples
Grandma Knows Best
Truth Telling: The Greatest of Sins in a Dysfunctional Church
Just Love
The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace
Good News from Minnesota

Recommended Off-site Links:
History is Made as Same-Sex Couples Marry - Wyatt Buchanan, et al (San Francisco Chronicle, June 17, 2008).
Hundreds of Same-Sex Couples Wed Across California - Lisa Leff (Associated Press, June 17, 2008).
Same-Sex Weddings Are Just So Yesterday’s News - Mary McNamara (Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2008).
Same-Sex Marriage: The Atmosphere Changes - Wayne Dynes (Dyneslines, August 31, 2006).