I have just written a column against Toronto's G*y Pr*de Week; it will not win me any friends. Well, no. Actually, it may win me friends about people who think of themselves as gay but think Toronto's G*y Pr*de Week is hopelessly vulgar and commercial and that the presence of so many politicians lowers the tone. Were I a gay man, I would be tempted to pinch a few political male bottoms just to hear the forced laughter: "Ha, ha, ha. Naughty, naughty."
Me as G*y Man [the following Saturday]: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I went to the Pr*de Parade and pinched the bottom of the Minister for Transportation.
Priest: Yes...
Me as G*y Man: And I drank too much and took some crystal meth and squabbled with my mother and listened to a few stories I shouldn't have listened to and told a dirty joke and had sexual thoughts about my neighbour and for these and all the sins of my past life which I have forgotten I am truly sorry.
Priest: What was that about the crystal meth?
Me: It was only once.
Being old-fashioned and even increasingly older (every year!), I don't enjoy over displays of sexuality in the public street by anyone except very young Orthodox Jewish newlyweds walking hand-in-hand up Toronto's Bathurst street. They look heartbreaking sweet: proud, happy, bashful. They certainly aren't drawing attention to themselves, and I notice them only because it is so rare to see an Orthodox Jewish couple hand-in-hand, even on Bathurst Street. And I have never seen my Catholic parents hand-in-hand, although my brother says he did once, when they were walking in a university campus. AWWWW.
The AWWW is because my parents were in their sixties and still love each other after forty years of marriage and five children and scrimping and saving and getting the piano tuned, etc. etc. I do not bequeath the AWWWW on all cute 50+ male-female couples; B.A. and I once came across fifty-somethings making out like teenagers in Edinburgh Waverley's station, and our first thought was that they were having an affair. Married people don't make out in public in Edinburgh. We are shy.
While trying to figure out how to squeeze maximum opinion into 800 words, I thought about how childish it is to try to shock and hurt people, or get their attention, by acting out sexually before them. I remember a very confused young chap who both identified as gay and was in love with my friend Mary. I think I was 16 and Mary was 15. I remember we were all on a train, and Mary and I were in our school uniforms and that I knew the guy was gay, which made him the first gay guy I ever met, and he suddenly and very nastily asked me if I had ever seen the shaft of a man's penis.
The word was still taboo in public in Toronto of the mid-1980s, so I couldn't have been more shocked and hurt if he had slapped me, and Mary murmured shocked words of reproof. For the life of me I could not think of what I had said or done to earn such a insult, and it is only now by writing it out that I come to the conclusion that it really had nothing to do with me at all. He was clearly a mess, poor guy, but it has taken me a long time to forgive him.
Then, in 1990, Orientation Week at University of Toronto began against a backdrop of tree featuring grainy photocopies of photos of men-and-men and women-and-women making out, something I had never seen before and also found very shocking. All the Orientation Kits at U of T had condoms in them, only at the Catholic college volunteers had carefully taken them out, and it is a good thing they did, for had I had been handed a condom by my Catholic College on top of seeing those photos on the trees across the street, I would have dropped out. My ideas about sexuality were very tender, involving privacy, tenderness, fidelity and, if possible, having babies. They did not (and do not) include performing tonsil-hockey with my beloved to freak out the squares.
We cover up what we're ashamed of, yes, but we also cover up or shield those things we hold precious....
Well, I am all written out on that for the time being.
My parents, B.A. and I all had a good time at the cottage. B.A., Aged P and I all climbed East Lomond, and B.A. and I attempted to roll down it. This was very amusing but made my head spin.
Showing posts with label SSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SSA. Show all posts
Monday, 7 July 2014
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
The Particular
This morning I was very disturbed to read a report that the Ont*rio English C*tholic Te*chers' Association has decided to participate in Toronto's Pr*de Day Parade. Of course, it is an open secret among church-going Catholics in Toronto, at very least, that OEC*A is Catholic in name only. The same can be said for many of the actual English-speaking Cath*lic teachers in Ontario, I am very sorry to say.
I find it a horribly irony that the word that denotes this infamous parade is the first of the Seven Deadly Sins: pride. And the true aims of the parade are quite obviously a celebration of another deadly sin, which is lust. Note the remarks of a man named Danny Glen*right in this LifeSiteNews article.
I think it is particularly horrible to use the agony of little children who fall into the clutches of pedophiles to score points against someone. This is particularly horrible when this is used to justify sexual abuse of other children--in this case, adult men and women parading naked, or in sexually shocking or provocative costumes, where children are.
This may boggle your minds, but in Toronto some parents really do bring their children downtown to watch "the fun"--not just of this parade, but of something I believe is called the "Le*ther Fair." I was once walking with a left-wing pal through "Le*ther Fair" and at a stage where a lesbian comic was warming up for a obscenity-laced show, the comic paused for a moment and told some women with children that her act wasn't really suitable for children. The women said something like, "Ah. It's okay. It will be over their heads anyway."
Really? Because one of the most vivid memories of my childhood was a production of Doctor Faustus, in which all the roles were played by men, and a man dressed as Helen of Troy caressed the man playing Doctor Faustus. I had never seen a man dressed as a woman in my little life, nor had I ever heard a man saying, as said Doctor Faustus's servant, that he would use magic to make all the maidens of his parish dance around him naked.
My father, who had taken me to this university production, felt rather badly that he had taken me to see it, but I absolutely loved it. In fact, because of this fun play I hoped to become an actor myself and to join that very same super-glamorous medieval drama club when I grew up. And I DID. And compared to all the glamorous, smart, sophisticated, sexually active people in that club, my Catholic friends suddenly seemed so....boring.
In case you are wondering, the lesbian comic carried on with her child-unfriendly act.
Anyway, I mention Danny Glen*right by name (with * so he doesn't find us while Googling himself) because I scorn to do what he did, which is make cheap shots about a whole class of people. In his case the class was "priests". In my case, the class would be called "gays". However, I don't want to do that because I am not angry or horrified by everyone who calls himself (or, very rarely) herself "gay" but specifically at Danny Glen*right and any other person who thinks lewd behaviour in public is worth breaking the laws of the land for, no matter how many children might be around.
Also, I think sexuality is rather too fluid and complicated to box in with terminology. I do not really believe in "gays" or "straights" at all; I believe there are human beings with different sexual impulses or feelings, who make different sexual choices at different times in their lives, for different reasons. The vast majority of these people, whatever their "preference" are psychologically capable of having ordinary sexual relations that can lead to reproduction. A small minority are not. And like all orthodox Christians, I am not so cool on "pleasure" being the primary reason for anything including sexual behaviour. Pleasure is a nice bonus to, say, staying alive or having children or keeping your marriage alive, but you'll notice that temporarily giving up innocent pleasures, like coffee or meat or sleeping in or married sexual relations, is considered an important spiritual discipline.
I was off-my-head crazy about an older girl when I was 14. I didn't think it was a big deal. Books I read and, later, observations about high school, told me many girls tended to get over-emotional about other girls, and I would probably grow out of it. I grew out of it although, now that I think about it, a younger female friend broke my heart when I was in my early thirties. Dear me, how I cried.
Well, that's love, which is an entirely different beast from sex, no matter what anyone tells you. Love can certainly be mixed in with luv, which is to say, immoderate attachment to another human being, often against reason. I've had that for women, but not sexual desire or lust, which is a lack that got Charlotte of Sex & the City kicked out of her new super-cool, well-connected lesbian friends' club, if you recall that episode. I won't repeat what they said to Charlotte, for it was obscene. Basically it was that she had to do more than smile at everyone.
No, your Auntie only feels sexual desire or lust for men, and tries to keep that under the control of her God-given reason, and hopes to inspire nothing stronger than admiration or affection in the entire male population save your Uncle B.A. Which means that if there was any such thing as a "Straight Pride" parade, with so-called "straights" dancing about naked and, having consumed sufficient quantities of crystal meth, thrusting their hips at children on the pavement, I would be disgusted by that, too.
If it weren't so serious, I would have be terribly amused by the lovestruck, hand-holding, usually male couples (including teenage) presented to our attention by Scottish lawmakers during the g*y marriage debates. The idea presented was that marriage was about luv, when marriage has almost always been about sex, either having it, or presenting a respectable front to society while having it elsewhere, which an astonishing number of homosexu*l male "couples" plan to do. [Link is to an article with shocking language and themes albeit in the New York Times.) But marriage is not about luv, but about sex, familial companionship, joint projects (like parenthood) and doing chores when you don't want to and think the other person should be doing more of them. Sex, however, should be the servant of marriage, not marriage the servant of sex, just as reason should rule the passions, not the passions reason.
If 2% of Torontonians have strong homosexual desires that means there are about 58,000 individual Torontonians to whom Danny Glen*right is speaking. And I hope a goodly number of those 58,000, each having reason and responsibility for his or her own actions, will write to Danny Glen*right and say that they do not approve of adults dancing naked in front of children, and that they do not want them doing it in their name. Fifty-eight thousand people telling Danny Glen*right where he can stuff his attitude would do more to heal divisions in the community than any parade.
I find it a horribly irony that the word that denotes this infamous parade is the first of the Seven Deadly Sins: pride. And the true aims of the parade are quite obviously a celebration of another deadly sin, which is lust. Note the remarks of a man named Danny Glen*right in this LifeSiteNews article.
I think it is particularly horrible to use the agony of little children who fall into the clutches of pedophiles to score points against someone. This is particularly horrible when this is used to justify sexual abuse of other children--in this case, adult men and women parading naked, or in sexually shocking or provocative costumes, where children are.
This may boggle your minds, but in Toronto some parents really do bring their children downtown to watch "the fun"--not just of this parade, but of something I believe is called the "Le*ther Fair." I was once walking with a left-wing pal through "Le*ther Fair" and at a stage where a lesbian comic was warming up for a obscenity-laced show, the comic paused for a moment and told some women with children that her act wasn't really suitable for children. The women said something like, "Ah. It's okay. It will be over their heads anyway."
Really? Because one of the most vivid memories of my childhood was a production of Doctor Faustus, in which all the roles were played by men, and a man dressed as Helen of Troy caressed the man playing Doctor Faustus. I had never seen a man dressed as a woman in my little life, nor had I ever heard a man saying, as said Doctor Faustus's servant, that he would use magic to make all the maidens of his parish dance around him naked.
My father, who had taken me to this university production, felt rather badly that he had taken me to see it, but I absolutely loved it. In fact, because of this fun play I hoped to become an actor myself and to join that very same super-glamorous medieval drama club when I grew up. And I DID. And compared to all the glamorous, smart, sophisticated, sexually active people in that club, my Catholic friends suddenly seemed so....boring.
In case you are wondering, the lesbian comic carried on with her child-unfriendly act.
Anyway, I mention Danny Glen*right by name (with * so he doesn't find us while Googling himself) because I scorn to do what he did, which is make cheap shots about a whole class of people. In his case the class was "priests". In my case, the class would be called "gays". However, I don't want to do that because I am not angry or horrified by everyone who calls himself (or, very rarely) herself "gay" but specifically at Danny Glen*right and any other person who thinks lewd behaviour in public is worth breaking the laws of the land for, no matter how many children might be around.
Also, I think sexuality is rather too fluid and complicated to box in with terminology. I do not really believe in "gays" or "straights" at all; I believe there are human beings with different sexual impulses or feelings, who make different sexual choices at different times in their lives, for different reasons. The vast majority of these people, whatever their "preference" are psychologically capable of having ordinary sexual relations that can lead to reproduction. A small minority are not. And like all orthodox Christians, I am not so cool on "pleasure" being the primary reason for anything including sexual behaviour. Pleasure is a nice bonus to, say, staying alive or having children or keeping your marriage alive, but you'll notice that temporarily giving up innocent pleasures, like coffee or meat or sleeping in or married sexual relations, is considered an important spiritual discipline.
I was off-my-head crazy about an older girl when I was 14. I didn't think it was a big deal. Books I read and, later, observations about high school, told me many girls tended to get over-emotional about other girls, and I would probably grow out of it. I grew out of it although, now that I think about it, a younger female friend broke my heart when I was in my early thirties. Dear me, how I cried.
Well, that's love, which is an entirely different beast from sex, no matter what anyone tells you. Love can certainly be mixed in with luv, which is to say, immoderate attachment to another human being, often against reason. I've had that for women, but not sexual desire or lust, which is a lack that got Charlotte of Sex & the City kicked out of her new super-cool, well-connected lesbian friends' club, if you recall that episode. I won't repeat what they said to Charlotte, for it was obscene. Basically it was that she had to do more than smile at everyone.
No, your Auntie only feels sexual desire or lust for men, and tries to keep that under the control of her God-given reason, and hopes to inspire nothing stronger than admiration or affection in the entire male population save your Uncle B.A. Which means that if there was any such thing as a "Straight Pride" parade, with so-called "straights" dancing about naked and, having consumed sufficient quantities of crystal meth, thrusting their hips at children on the pavement, I would be disgusted by that, too.
If it weren't so serious, I would have be terribly amused by the lovestruck, hand-holding, usually male couples (including teenage) presented to our attention by Scottish lawmakers during the g*y marriage debates. The idea presented was that marriage was about luv, when marriage has almost always been about sex, either having it, or presenting a respectable front to society while having it elsewhere, which an astonishing number of homosexu*l male "couples" plan to do. [Link is to an article with shocking language and themes albeit in the New York Times.) But marriage is not about luv, but about sex, familial companionship, joint projects (like parenthood) and doing chores when you don't want to and think the other person should be doing more of them. Sex, however, should be the servant of marriage, not marriage the servant of sex, just as reason should rule the passions, not the passions reason.
If 2% of Torontonians have strong homosexual desires that means there are about 58,000 individual Torontonians to whom Danny Glen*right is speaking. And I hope a goodly number of those 58,000, each having reason and responsibility for his or her own actions, will write to Danny Glen*right and say that they do not approve of adults dancing naked in front of children, and that they do not want them doing it in their name. Fifty-eight thousand people telling Danny Glen*right where he can stuff his attitude would do more to heal divisions in the community than any parade.
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
The Forces of History
Berenike sent me this Atlantic Monthly article, and I most definitely think it is worth a read. By the way, I wonder when people will stop using "All the Single Ladies" as a title for everything written about Single people.
Read the whole thing. It is long, so get a coffee.
The article is worth a read because it shows that the Dominant Narrative, which is not Catholicism, has woken up and noticed what forty years of the feminist revolution and much social engineering has wrought. Of course, the Dominant Narrative thinks this is mostly pretty good, especially the part about Single women having (doing) as much sex as they like and Single women embracing "biological parenthood." It ignores, of course, the mangled corpses of millions of aborted human fetuses and the natural wish of children to have and know their fathers.
Page 2 of the article does acknowledge the ill-effects the past forty years have had on men, economic and moral. Economically, men are often in a worse situation than women, and morally the ones who can get it are more interested in having sex than in having committed relationships until (page 3) they apparently hit "Marriage O'Clock" at the age of 35.
The article also talks about historical periods in which there have been literal man-shortages. I find it significant, however, that instead of talking about England, France or Germany after the First World War, the writer chooses (page 2) to look at atheist communist Russia after World War Two. The illegitimacy rate in Britain was at its LOWEST by the end of the 1950s whatever it was in Russia.
And it also looks at the American (but not just American) problem of the black, fatherless underclass. One of life's little ironies that makes me grind my teeth to stumps is that comparatively rich white and Asian kids in Canada, the USA, Britain, France and Germany think American black ghetto culture--the big stupid baseball caps, the falling down jeans, the horrible noises--so goldarned glamorous. Little European girls of eight do bump and grind routines to lyrics celebrating unfettered, uncommitted, blatantly misogynist or misandrist sex. How on earth did we get from dignified, well-dressed, church-going civil rights marchers to that?
I could go on and on, but instead I will cut to the chase. And the chase is that a healthy society is a society in which men and women co-operate and love each other. Loving each other means men and women respecting each other's differences and understanding what makes each other happy. It doesn't mean shaming them or ourselves into some brand new notion of what human beings SHOULD be like. It certainly doesn't mean saying that men are redundant. How can that POSSIBLY make men flourish?
Meanwhile, as the article points out, there have been times in history when there were not a lot of "marriageable men." In Britain, women's chances for marriage were blighted by war. Some Single women (like Rose Macaulay and sex-obsessed Diana Athill) made extramarital sexual arrangements in the wake of war, but others lived lives of impeccable respectability. Some of the post-WW2 Singles are still alive, and there is a set of very elderly and frail Edinburgh bluestockings that totter together determinedly to every arts event or lecture they can manage.
It is possible to face a husband-free existence with class and determination; women always have, and usually on much less money than today. But, for society at large, the destruction of marriage, which is the proper cradle of children and the protection of men and women from sexual decadence, is a seriously terrible thing.
What if the reason why American white people are comparatively more successful than American black people, or Europeans comparatively richer than Caribbean people, IS marriage? For me, racism is not noticing that some people flourish better than others. It is assuming that success is naturally determined by race. Europeans have not flourished because they are white; Europeans have flourished because the majority of European men have been proper husbands and fathers.
The Christian Single Life does not denigrate Married Life. The Best (and the tradition of the Church is that perpetual virginity is the highest state in life, barring martyrdom) must not be the enemy of the Good. So on this blog, even as I hope to convince Single women that their Singleness is not just a cross but an invitation to holiness, I am also very pro-marriage. Anyone who cares about their culture--or the flourishing of the human race--should care about marriage. Marriage is about the proper ordering of relations among men, women and children. It is not about sentiment, gifts and a champagne reception.
Meanwhile, we should all have a hard look at reality--and I mean reality. Recently a 15 year old child in Ontario, a child with loving parents and many friends, who identified publicly as "gay" and read with interest material by Dan Savage for gay teens, took his own life. He noted that being an openly homosexual teenager was not like it was on "Glee." Of course it is not like it is on "Glee!" What you can learn about real life from television is almost nothing.*
And thus the article to which I have linked is very interesting. If it is true that men get all anxious about marriage at 35, and if it is true that men prefer to marry women younger than themselves, and if it is true that the way to keep a husband happy is to look at him adoringly, then this is useful information. If you are (despite my protests) on a Catholic dating website, stop complaining about that men your age won't look at you and start catching the eye of men ten years older. And if you think you would rather die than acknowledge your husband as the head of the household, give your think a think.
***
*Note: I had a look at the poor child's blog, and it is seriously disturbing. It juxtaposes homoerotic images and gay porn with notes and photographs about suicide, photographs and notes about his self-harm, quotes from another gay teen about her own disappointing love life, and declarations that his friends aren't really his friends.
This is an incredibly sad story, and the boy was terribly bullied, and heads should roll. But what has gotten lost in the media circus is that he had a bottomless, irrational, unhealthy, impossible hunger to be loved and accepted by everybody.
Most people don't have this, thank goodness. Most of us understand that there will always be people who don't like us, who are mean to us (if they can be), and are uncomfortable with our hugs and neediness. I understand that there are men and even women who will always dislike me because I am a woman, Catholic, white, foreign, whatever.
If we belong to an ideological minority and we can't take the heat, we get out of the kitchen: I lasted only two years or so as an on-the-street, blatant-button-wearing pro-lifer. I couldn't take the verbal abuse, and I got seriously depressed. I did not stop being pro-life, of course, but I thought very prudently about how to express this controversial stance and to whom to reveal it.
Despite years of bullying, this poor child didn't know how to do that yet. He trusted to "Glee", and not to experience, when he sought love and acceptance through "Rainbow Club" posters. It is terrible that a mentally unstable 15 year old was allowed become his school's gay rights crusader.
As difficult and as unpleasant as it can be, we must stare reality in the face.
Read the whole thing. It is long, so get a coffee.
The article is worth a read because it shows that the Dominant Narrative, which is not Catholicism, has woken up and noticed what forty years of the feminist revolution and much social engineering has wrought. Of course, the Dominant Narrative thinks this is mostly pretty good, especially the part about Single women having (doing) as much sex as they like and Single women embracing "biological parenthood." It ignores, of course, the mangled corpses of millions of aborted human fetuses and the natural wish of children to have and know their fathers.
Page 2 of the article does acknowledge the ill-effects the past forty years have had on men, economic and moral. Economically, men are often in a worse situation than women, and morally the ones who can get it are more interested in having sex than in having committed relationships until (page 3) they apparently hit "Marriage O'Clock" at the age of 35.
The article also talks about historical periods in which there have been literal man-shortages. I find it significant, however, that instead of talking about England, France or Germany after the First World War, the writer chooses (page 2) to look at atheist communist Russia after World War Two. The illegitimacy rate in Britain was at its LOWEST by the end of the 1950s whatever it was in Russia.
And it also looks at the American (but not just American) problem of the black, fatherless underclass. One of life's little ironies that makes me grind my teeth to stumps is that comparatively rich white and Asian kids in Canada, the USA, Britain, France and Germany think American black ghetto culture--the big stupid baseball caps, the falling down jeans, the horrible noises--so goldarned glamorous. Little European girls of eight do bump and grind routines to lyrics celebrating unfettered, uncommitted, blatantly misogynist or misandrist sex. How on earth did we get from dignified, well-dressed, church-going civil rights marchers to that?
I could go on and on, but instead I will cut to the chase. And the chase is that a healthy society is a society in which men and women co-operate and love each other. Loving each other means men and women respecting each other's differences and understanding what makes each other happy. It doesn't mean shaming them or ourselves into some brand new notion of what human beings SHOULD be like. It certainly doesn't mean saying that men are redundant. How can that POSSIBLY make men flourish?
Meanwhile, as the article points out, there have been times in history when there were not a lot of "marriageable men." In Britain, women's chances for marriage were blighted by war. Some Single women (like Rose Macaulay and sex-obsessed Diana Athill) made extramarital sexual arrangements in the wake of war, but others lived lives of impeccable respectability. Some of the post-WW2 Singles are still alive, and there is a set of very elderly and frail Edinburgh bluestockings that totter together determinedly to every arts event or lecture they can manage.
It is possible to face a husband-free existence with class and determination; women always have, and usually on much less money than today. But, for society at large, the destruction of marriage, which is the proper cradle of children and the protection of men and women from sexual decadence, is a seriously terrible thing.
What if the reason why American white people are comparatively more successful than American black people, or Europeans comparatively richer than Caribbean people, IS marriage? For me, racism is not noticing that some people flourish better than others. It is assuming that success is naturally determined by race. Europeans have not flourished because they are white; Europeans have flourished because the majority of European men have been proper husbands and fathers.
The Christian Single Life does not denigrate Married Life. The Best (and the tradition of the Church is that perpetual virginity is the highest state in life, barring martyrdom) must not be the enemy of the Good. So on this blog, even as I hope to convince Single women that their Singleness is not just a cross but an invitation to holiness, I am also very pro-marriage. Anyone who cares about their culture--or the flourishing of the human race--should care about marriage. Marriage is about the proper ordering of relations among men, women and children. It is not about sentiment, gifts and a champagne reception.
Meanwhile, we should all have a hard look at reality--and I mean reality. Recently a 15 year old child in Ontario, a child with loving parents and many friends, who identified publicly as "gay" and read with interest material by Dan Savage for gay teens, took his own life. He noted that being an openly homosexual teenager was not like it was on "Glee." Of course it is not like it is on "Glee!" What you can learn about real life from television is almost nothing.*
And thus the article to which I have linked is very interesting. If it is true that men get all anxious about marriage at 35, and if it is true that men prefer to marry women younger than themselves, and if it is true that the way to keep a husband happy is to look at him adoringly, then this is useful information. If you are (despite my protests) on a Catholic dating website, stop complaining about that men your age won't look at you and start catching the eye of men ten years older. And if you think you would rather die than acknowledge your husband as the head of the household, give your think a think.
***
*Note: I had a look at the poor child's blog, and it is seriously disturbing. It juxtaposes homoerotic images and gay porn with notes and photographs about suicide, photographs and notes about his self-harm, quotes from another gay teen about her own disappointing love life, and declarations that his friends aren't really his friends.
This is an incredibly sad story, and the boy was terribly bullied, and heads should roll. But what has gotten lost in the media circus is that he had a bottomless, irrational, unhealthy, impossible hunger to be loved and accepted by everybody.
Most people don't have this, thank goodness. Most of us understand that there will always be people who don't like us, who are mean to us (if they can be), and are uncomfortable with our hugs and neediness. I understand that there are men and even women who will always dislike me because I am a woman, Catholic, white, foreign, whatever.
If we belong to an ideological minority and we can't take the heat, we get out of the kitchen: I lasted only two years or so as an on-the-street, blatant-button-wearing pro-lifer. I couldn't take the verbal abuse, and I got seriously depressed. I did not stop being pro-life, of course, but I thought very prudently about how to express this controversial stance and to whom to reveal it.
Despite years of bullying, this poor child didn't know how to do that yet. He trusted to "Glee", and not to experience, when he sought love and acceptance through "Rainbow Club" posters. It is terrible that a mentally unstable 15 year old was allowed become his school's gay rights crusader.
As difficult and as unpleasant as it can be, we must stare reality in the face.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Courage Apostolate
I've already posted today (see below), but it struck me that I have not stated the obvious for awhile, and it might help someone if I did so: some Single Catholics and other Singles of good will remain unmarried because they are not sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex but to members of their own sex. Some live this out quietly, firm in the conviction that this is a matter between themselves and God alone. Others feel a need to share this truth about themselves, either solely with people in the same boat or with a wider community. Some do their best to live lives of perpetual continence in chastity. Some do not. Those who do not are unlikely to be fans of this blog, however.
Perhaps because the Catholic faith (and sometimes the ordinary Catholic himself) is so bitterly attacked by self-styled gay activists, some Catholics are deeply confused about how to relate to homosexuality. To assist Catholic parents of children with homosexual tendencies, the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) published a guide called "Always Our Children." I think all Catholics should read it.
There is also an apostolate for Catholics who experience same-sex attractions called Courage. For those who feel a need for the fellowship of people in the same situation, this might be a good organisation with which to get involved.
I regret that tension between the Church and the "gay lobby" makes it very difficult to present special models of holiness to Catholic and other Christian Singles who are sexually attracted to the opposite sex. Some gay activists cynically skim the work of saints like St. John of the Cross and the lives of saints like Blessed John Henry Newman for evidence that they were gay.
These activists have an agenda; I don't have an agenda. But I feel comforted by saints who had struggles like my struggles, and so I think it would be helpful to Catholic singles who are attracted to their own sex to know of famous, faithful Catholics who had the same experience. This is why I have posted the photograph of the great Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. It would surprise me very much to learn that he did not, in fact, experience same-sex attractions.
I do not think the same of Blessed John Henry Newman, whose friendship with Fr. St. John has been sniggered over, and having mentioned them, I would like to state again that many Singles find it irksome to be suspected of same-sex attractions themselves, either because they don't have them or because they do have them, but it's nobody's business but their own. The current social obsession with sexual identity and sexual behaviour does not serve human flourishing and makes some of us very unhappy, to say the least. I hit the ceiling whenever the expression "in the closet" is used to describe anyone I know.
At the same time, the experience and struggles of that very small percentage of Single Catholic men and women (and other Singles of good will) who are not attracted to members of the opposite sex certainly deserve to be acknowledged on a blog for Singles. So here I am, once again, waving from my office, saying "Hello!" to those readers, known and unknown, for whom I especially wrote this post.
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Auntie Seraphic & the Crush Who Came Out
Dear Auntie Seraphic,
[I had a painful, dehabilitating crush on a man named John for over a year, and this is what he told me last night:]
"I'm gay. I just wanted you to know."
And I [had known] deep down that he probably was, but I just didn't WANT to believe it! It was too sad to think that such a nice person with a good heart could like other men [in that way]. I'm not sure how to deal with it in the future, though. I told him that we could still be friends, but I also made it clear that I believe what the Catholic Church teaches in terms of homosexuality. That was the best way I could phrase it at the time in my emotional state.
Now, I know you seem to have a different view on men with SSA than other traditional, faithful Catholics I know. You seem more accepting of them, and seem to think it's OK for them to be as they are as long as they don't act on it. But what exactly ARE your beliefs on SSA? And how do I deal with people afflicted with SSA while still remaining faithful to the Church's teaching? He's the first person I've known well to have it, so this is very new to me. I've talked it over with my mom, and her answer is to just pray and stay friends, which I plan on doing. I plan on storming heaven with prayers for him. Not prayers that he changes, but prayers that he remains chaste. And I think I might tell him to just not tell me anything about his.....inclinations. I don't want to know if he's been out on a date with a man or any such event.
And I think it's really horrible how society treats men with SSA. Men are not accepting of other men who have feminine qualities. If a man doesn't want to play sports or want to chow down on a steak, he's ridiculed by other men. I wonder if that's why men with SSA actually DO get attracted to other men who are like them. Maybe they finally meet someone who is accepting of them as they are, and then think they're in love because it feels so good to be accepted by another man. I dunno, I'm just rambling here. I just wish that men who have SSA did NOT have it, because I firmly believe that they would make many women very happy as husbands. They seem to be very caring and attentive to others' needs, they don't insult other people, they are warm and loving, etc. Sigh, it makes me sad. Such a waste of good men.
Disappointed
Dear Disappointed,
Before I say anything, here is the pastoral statement of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on homosexuality: Always Our Children: A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children and Suggestions for Pastoral Ministers. All traditional, faithful Catholics in the USA should read it.
I remember the first time a good friend told me he had same sex attractions (he called it being gay). I went home in a state of shock and slept for hours. I wonder sometimes if men with SSA understand what it is like for women who adore them to receive these confidences. Probably they are so worried about rejection and have been thinking about their SSA for so long that they can't get beyond "She'll reject me/she'll accept me." However, in your case, John's revelation does help give you a long-desired emotional freedom, and that is good.
Life is so difficult, isn't it? But then it is so beautiful, too. It is both at once--just as the truth about John is both happy and sad at the same time. The happy bit is that now it will be easier for you to become free from your inordinate attachment to him. The sad bit is that John has SSA, which must not be easy for him at all.
However, it is John, not you, who has SSA, and it is only John who can take care of his safety, spiritual and physical. Of course you should stay friends with John and pray for him, but I don't think storming heaven on his behalf is your job. You can storm heaven with pleas that YOU keep on the straight and narrow path, but you shouldn't storm heaven about someone else's potential sins: this plays right into co-dependency, which is what happens when a person gets overly involved in another person's problems. Make sure you spend time with other friends and in absorbing activities.
It is not a sin to merely experience SSA. Some people have same sex attractions as an adolescent stage, but then others (1% or 2% of men, I believe; Kinsey's claims have been debunked) have it as their primary inclination either from birth, or because of things that happen to them as children, or both. They are not to blame. But yes, as we know, deliberately performing or accepting homosexual acts is sinful. (This includes 'straight' girls french-kissing each other to show off.)
According to the old catechism, "the sin of Sodom" is one of the four sins crying out to heaven for justice. (This includes an-l s-x between 'straight people,' by the way. No-one ever bothers to mention this.) And I do not believe Catholics can, in good conscience, support "gay culture," with its emphasis on sterile sex, party drugs, rebellion for rebellion's sake, deliberately motherless (or fatherless) parenthood and demands for a new social order in which the ancient facts of marriage and reproduction are demoted to "lifestyle choices."
Fortunately, not all men with SSA sign up with "gay culture." Gay culture chews up and spits out men with SSA, exploiting the young and rejecting the old. Recreational drugs are quite a feature, too. So it is not just the American cult of masculinity that is cruel to gentle men. Meanwhile, many men with SSA say that SSA are a small part of their life; their identity is based on something else, like belief in Christ.
There are many, many, many good men with SSA, including some good priests. The great priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins probably experienced them but never, in his holy, long-suffering life as a priest, acted on them. I know at least one living priest with SSA, and he too lives a life of holy chastity. Meanwhile, I suspect I know other good men with some degree of SSA who also live chaste and happy lives.
You haven't mentioned if John is a devout Catholic or not. If he is, his faith will keep him safe if he understands that he is a child of God before anything else. Don't assume that he will have lurid stories you don't want to hear; it could be that John is your friend because you live a chaste, faithful Christian life. There is a great fellowship for Catholics with SSA called "Courage." Click and see if there is a chapter in your college or town, so that if John brings up his SSA again, you can tell him about it. No-one who has SSA should have to join gay culture to find friends and community.
Meanwhile authentic Catholic friendship means loving people with SSA as your friends, as concrete, particular individuals, but not to bow before the glamour of gay culture or put up with "gay" jokes and conversation. (Indeed, young women should never put up with any kind of loose talk.) Sometimes "gay" men adopt feminine language, referring to men (or themselves) as "she" or "my sister" or claiming to be feminine. I find this ridiculous, harmful and disrespectful to women. Men with SSA are men, and they are by nature always more masculine and therefore less feminine than women are. However, once again, many men with SSA do not do these things. They live wholesome, holy lives and have wholesome, respectable friends. They look masculine, and behave in ways that you and I think are entirely masculine. "Masculine," by the way, includes a rather wide spectrum.
I too am sorry that so many good men are made or become ineligible for marriage by SSA. It is a mystery, and St. Paul seems to say it is because of "sin"-- which generally these days is taken to mean that homosexuality, like a host of other sad things (like my weak eyesight), is one of the effects of the Fall. Meanwhile, a few--perhaps only a very few--adult "gay" men do discover that, over time and with strict observance of chastity, their SSA disappear. And a few fall in love with women and marry.
I am wary of pointing this out because thousands of men with SSA have married women, for all kinds of reasons, most of them perfectly understandable, and women have suffered for it. Some were fooled into thinking their husbands never had SSA or had been "cured" or would remain faithful. Some were (and are) dumped flat when the men achieve what marriage helped them to achieve.
Having SSA does not necessarily mean a man is never attracted to women, too, or that he is incapable of begetting children. However, a woman should be wary of marrying a man who has had SSA, unless they both know he is capable of remaining sexually faithful to her for the rest of his (or her) life. So-called liberal elements of society reserve their scorn for men who leave their aging wives and helpless children for other women; they stand and applaud when men leave their aging wives and helpless children in pursuit of other men.
I hope this is helpful. In short, love is the answer--real love that sees a man for who he is in his entirety and desires his good, neither endowing him with the dark glamour of gay culture nor assuming that he is its slave.
Grace and peace,
Seraphic
Comments will be strictly monitored, but anonymous comments of merit will be permitted.
Update: As I half-expected, there was a comment from a non-Catholic in a long-term homosexual relationship who objected very much to the idea that homosexuality is a trial. She does not like the expression SSA. Whereas her views, with which we are all acquainted from the mass media, might not be helpful within the context of faithful Catholic women who love Catholic men (and other men of good will) who experience same-sex attractions, I want to acknowledge that she wrote in.
[I had a painful, dehabilitating crush on a man named John for over a year, and this is what he told me last night:]
"I'm gay. I just wanted you to know."
And I [had known] deep down that he probably was, but I just didn't WANT to believe it! It was too sad to think that such a nice person with a good heart could like other men [in that way]. I'm not sure how to deal with it in the future, though. I told him that we could still be friends, but I also made it clear that I believe what the Catholic Church teaches in terms of homosexuality. That was the best way I could phrase it at the time in my emotional state.
Now, I know you seem to have a different view on men with SSA than other traditional, faithful Catholics I know. You seem more accepting of them, and seem to think it's OK for them to be as they are as long as they don't act on it. But what exactly ARE your beliefs on SSA? And how do I deal with people afflicted with SSA while still remaining faithful to the Church's teaching? He's the first person I've known well to have it, so this is very new to me. I've talked it over with my mom, and her answer is to just pray and stay friends, which I plan on doing. I plan on storming heaven with prayers for him. Not prayers that he changes, but prayers that he remains chaste. And I think I might tell him to just not tell me anything about his.....inclinations. I don't want to know if he's been out on a date with a man or any such event.
And I think it's really horrible how society treats men with SSA. Men are not accepting of other men who have feminine qualities. If a man doesn't want to play sports or want to chow down on a steak, he's ridiculed by other men. I wonder if that's why men with SSA actually DO get attracted to other men who are like them. Maybe they finally meet someone who is accepting of them as they are, and then think they're in love because it feels so good to be accepted by another man. I dunno, I'm just rambling here. I just wish that men who have SSA did NOT have it, because I firmly believe that they would make many women very happy as husbands. They seem to be very caring and attentive to others' needs, they don't insult other people, they are warm and loving, etc. Sigh, it makes me sad. Such a waste of good men.
Disappointed
Dear Disappointed,
Before I say anything, here is the pastoral statement of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on homosexuality: Always Our Children: A Pastoral Message to Parents of Homosexual Children and Suggestions for Pastoral Ministers. All traditional, faithful Catholics in the USA should read it.
I remember the first time a good friend told me he had same sex attractions (he called it being gay). I went home in a state of shock and slept for hours. I wonder sometimes if men with SSA understand what it is like for women who adore them to receive these confidences. Probably they are so worried about rejection and have been thinking about their SSA for so long that they can't get beyond "She'll reject me/she'll accept me." However, in your case, John's revelation does help give you a long-desired emotional freedom, and that is good.
Life is so difficult, isn't it? But then it is so beautiful, too. It is both at once--just as the truth about John is both happy and sad at the same time. The happy bit is that now it will be easier for you to become free from your inordinate attachment to him. The sad bit is that John has SSA, which must not be easy for him at all.
However, it is John, not you, who has SSA, and it is only John who can take care of his safety, spiritual and physical. Of course you should stay friends with John and pray for him, but I don't think storming heaven on his behalf is your job. You can storm heaven with pleas that YOU keep on the straight and narrow path, but you shouldn't storm heaven about someone else's potential sins: this plays right into co-dependency, which is what happens when a person gets overly involved in another person's problems. Make sure you spend time with other friends and in absorbing activities.
It is not a sin to merely experience SSA. Some people have same sex attractions as an adolescent stage, but then others (1% or 2% of men, I believe; Kinsey's claims have been debunked) have it as their primary inclination either from birth, or because of things that happen to them as children, or both. They are not to blame. But yes, as we know, deliberately performing or accepting homosexual acts is sinful. (This includes 'straight' girls french-kissing each other to show off.)
According to the old catechism, "the sin of Sodom" is one of the four sins crying out to heaven for justice. (This includes an-l s-x between 'straight people,' by the way. No-one ever bothers to mention this.) And I do not believe Catholics can, in good conscience, support "gay culture," with its emphasis on sterile sex, party drugs, rebellion for rebellion's sake, deliberately motherless (or fatherless) parenthood and demands for a new social order in which the ancient facts of marriage and reproduction are demoted to "lifestyle choices."
Fortunately, not all men with SSA sign up with "gay culture." Gay culture chews up and spits out men with SSA, exploiting the young and rejecting the old. Recreational drugs are quite a feature, too. So it is not just the American cult of masculinity that is cruel to gentle men. Meanwhile, many men with SSA say that SSA are a small part of their life; their identity is based on something else, like belief in Christ.
There are many, many, many good men with SSA, including some good priests. The great priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins probably experienced them but never, in his holy, long-suffering life as a priest, acted on them. I know at least one living priest with SSA, and he too lives a life of holy chastity. Meanwhile, I suspect I know other good men with some degree of SSA who also live chaste and happy lives.
You haven't mentioned if John is a devout Catholic or not. If he is, his faith will keep him safe if he understands that he is a child of God before anything else. Don't assume that he will have lurid stories you don't want to hear; it could be that John is your friend because you live a chaste, faithful Christian life. There is a great fellowship for Catholics with SSA called "Courage." Click and see if there is a chapter in your college or town, so that if John brings up his SSA again, you can tell him about it. No-one who has SSA should have to join gay culture to find friends and community.
Meanwhile authentic Catholic friendship means loving people with SSA as your friends, as concrete, particular individuals, but not to bow before the glamour of gay culture or put up with "gay" jokes and conversation. (Indeed, young women should never put up with any kind of loose talk.) Sometimes "gay" men adopt feminine language, referring to men (or themselves) as "she" or "my sister" or claiming to be feminine. I find this ridiculous, harmful and disrespectful to women. Men with SSA are men, and they are by nature always more masculine and therefore less feminine than women are. However, once again, many men with SSA do not do these things. They live wholesome, holy lives and have wholesome, respectable friends. They look masculine, and behave in ways that you and I think are entirely masculine. "Masculine," by the way, includes a rather wide spectrum.
I too am sorry that so many good men are made or become ineligible for marriage by SSA. It is a mystery, and St. Paul seems to say it is because of "sin"-- which generally these days is taken to mean that homosexuality, like a host of other sad things (like my weak eyesight), is one of the effects of the Fall. Meanwhile, a few--perhaps only a very few--adult "gay" men do discover that, over time and with strict observance of chastity, their SSA disappear. And a few fall in love with women and marry.
I am wary of pointing this out because thousands of men with SSA have married women, for all kinds of reasons, most of them perfectly understandable, and women have suffered for it. Some were fooled into thinking their husbands never had SSA or had been "cured" or would remain faithful. Some were (and are) dumped flat when the men achieve what marriage helped them to achieve.
Having SSA does not necessarily mean a man is never attracted to women, too, or that he is incapable of begetting children. However, a woman should be wary of marrying a man who has had SSA, unless they both know he is capable of remaining sexually faithful to her for the rest of his (or her) life. So-called liberal elements of society reserve their scorn for men who leave their aging wives and helpless children for other women; they stand and applaud when men leave their aging wives and helpless children in pursuit of other men.
I hope this is helpful. In short, love is the answer--real love that sees a man for who he is in his entirety and desires his good, neither endowing him with the dark glamour of gay culture nor assuming that he is its slave.
Grace and peace,
Seraphic
Comments will be strictly monitored, but anonymous comments of merit will be permitted.
Update: As I half-expected, there was a comment from a non-Catholic in a long-term homosexual relationship who objected very much to the idea that homosexuality is a trial. She does not like the expression SSA. Whereas her views, with which we are all acquainted from the mass media, might not be helpful within the context of faithful Catholic women who love Catholic men (and other men of good will) who experience same-sex attractions, I want to acknowledge that she wrote in.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Confirmed Bachelors
Oh dear. The sexual revolution. So much is known (or, at any rate, believed) by so many. One hundred years ago, a Catholic woman like me would never have speculated, as so many of us do, when contemplating a handsome, unmarried man, "Is he gay?"I always write on this subject with a good deal of trepidation, not experiencing myself what in Courage they call "Same Sex Attraction" (SSA). I had an agonizing crush on a female camp counsellor when I was a very young teenager, and that was it. I'm not even sure that "counts," for it wasn't at all sexual--just incredibly emotional (and, I hasten to add, one-sided).
Meanwhile, I have never been mistaken for (or accused of being) a lesbian, except perhaps by the hopeful women who made passes now and then. So, really, I am not the best person to write about either "being gay" or being mistaken for "gay". However, I'm a person who writes about Singles, and there are both many chaste gay Singles and many chaste Singles who are suspected of "being gay." Their existence and experience deserves (careful, discreet) acknowledgement.
One of my male friends never visits a set of his elderly relatives without bringing a female friend. He calls it the "I'm not Gay Tour." When he told me, I was surprised. I mean, this is a man who has dozens of female friends. He's very popular. He really just hasn't met the right girl yet. It never occured to me that anyone might label him because of it.
One of my priest friends sometimes preaches at a special healing Mass for people who have HIV/Aids. The majority of those who attend are gay men. I remember one homily in which my friend commiserated with these men on feeling rejected by some Catholics for being gay and for being rejected by some gays for being Catholic. And from the pages of the "alternate press", I have gathered that Catholics and other Christians with Same Sex Attraction who are determined to live lives of chaste celibacy face no little derision from militant anti-Christian gays.
Meanwhile, life is still precarious for men and women who are, or who are perceived as, homosexual. It's harder to slip under the radar in societies so obsessed with sex and sexuality. And it's hard to diverge from 21th century social and gender expectations without people making comments.
Even people of the past can't escape our post-Freudian obsession with erotic desire. When I was doing my English Literature M.A., some woman in Jane Austen studies was arguing that Jane had an incestuous lesbian relationship with her sister Cassandra. How utterly ahistorical and ridiculous. But "outing" literary figures was a common past-time in the Nineties. In the university book shop, I came across a volume of poetry compiling the work of homosexual writers: it included St. John of the Cross. Give me strength!
I do not feel competent at all to talk about what it is like to be Catholic with Same Sex Attraction, so I'll just link here to (-> Courage). But as for Catholic Single men who aren't gay but fear that women will think they are, I will suggest that they not worry too much about that.
As a group, we women are terrified of rejection by the men we like. We live in a world of mixed messages: six thousand years of civilisation has told us that actively pursuing men makes us slutty or a joke. (Think of poor [->Big Ethel] in Archie Comics.) But fifty years of second-wave feminism has told us that pursuing men is what cool, liberated women do. So we do attempt it, but before we risk making complete asses of ourselves, we do risk assessments on the men we like. We ask ourselves, "Is he married? Does he have a girlfriend? Is he discerning a call to the priesthood? Is he gay? Is he a commitmentphobe?" We can spend days, even weeks or months, trying to figure these things out as subtlely as possible.
The "Is he gay?" question is, then, a compliment. After a certain age, we wonder why a good-looking, funny, personable, intelligent man has been allowed to remain Single. Why, o why, has he not been snapped up? Because we live in a post-Freudian society, the explanation we are handed as most obvious, is that the attractive man is gay. But we hope he isn't.
As for everyone else (concerned old aunties who watch day-time television, et alia), it would be nice if they just minded their own business, and indeed, many people do. Not everyone is wondering if the guy in the next cubicle is gay or not. But if the question ever arises as to why a man isn't married, a man could just tell his truth. This truth might be "My wife died." It might be, "I'm divorced." It might be, "I like living alone. I like my space to be my space." It might be, "I'm definitely in the market for the future Mrs. Know anyone?" It might be, "I met the perfect woman, but she was looking for the perfect man."
Is this anyone else's business? NO. It is not. But it's your truth to share if you wish. If you think sharing would help you, then go ahead and share. For all you know, your nosy questioner is thinking you might be the perfect match for the nice new girl in the office. And maybe you are.
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