Internet Monk gets it

All I can say is: my sentiments exactly.

Check out a great post by Internet Monk on what gays and lesbians hear when they listen to evangelicals. A sample of just one of his many good points:

One of the inevitable results of the information age is that anyone who wants to know the worst behavior of any group can gather that information easily. If one chooses not to be judicious and cautious with such information, it is possible to make every member of a group guilty by association . . . For example, saying that some gays somewhere have hundreds of sexual partners has little to do with the behavior of gays that I might know. As a statement of statistical truth, it cannot be applied in a determinative way to any individual. The average preacher is well aware of the extremes of sexual sin that probably occur among heterosexuals, but few would find it as easy to speak about internet porn addiction as promiscuity in the gay community.

What this says to the gay community is simple: evangelicals aren’t interested in the truth as much as they are interested in an emotional response. There is an agenda to how we process such facts and stories into communication.

But don't stop there. Be sure to read the whole post.

Unfit to homeschool

This is a bit off the subject, but most of you regular readers know that I'm a homeschooler. And you've probably heard by now that according to a Los Angeles County Appellate Court, I'm not fit to teach my kids at home.

I got my B.A. at UCLA and my Master's degree at Westminster Seminary. I've taught English in Japan, done some public speaking and currently teach a women's Bible study at my church. I've published numerous articles over the years in magazines, papers, theological journals and, of course, the Internet. Ironically, I even served as a math tutor for Cal State University San Marcos students who were trying earn their teaching credential but were failing basic math. Yet I guess I'm not fit to teach my own kids unless I go back to school and get a teaching credential myself.

I have nothing against public schools, just the ones that aren't giving kids a decent education. They are usually located in non-ritzy neighborhoods like the one we just moved out of. For low to middle income families who can't afford private school, homeschooling is the most affordable option you have to help your kid get ahead educationally. And now that's going to be taken from us too? Why should only the rich have all the best educational opportunities?

Moving

Our house is almost fixed up and just about everything's boxed up for the move this Friday. All was going well until I had a bad fall on Monday and spent ten hours at the ER trying to get an x-ray. They finally got around to doing the x-ray--at 4 am. Nothing's broken, but a night of sleep was lost. I can get around okay, as long as I get around slowly. Also, one of the kids came down with a high fever last night. Not good timing since the local appliance recycling program came today to take away our old refrigerator, so we'll be living out of a cooler for two days.

Hmmm.

The good news is that the earth will keep turning and the sun will keep rising and setting until we get past all this.

Oh, and by the way the blogging will be light, very light, over the next couple of weeks.

Lust or love?

I was talking to some friends last night who would consider themselves to be more liberal-minded than most Christians with regard to social issues. Sure enough when they spoke of homosexuality, they were quick to acknowledge that it is no different than any of the other sins out there. But I was surprised to learn that their reasoning was that they characterized homosexuality as essentially "lust." One of my friends, a passionate Democrat, said, "It would be unfair to single out homosexual lust as if it were a special kind of sin, since heterosexuals lust too. Lust is lust."

Now, I'm glad that people are coming around to the idea that it's wrong to vilify homosexual people as some special category of sinner. But my understanding of gay and lesbian people is that their experience of homosexuality is not about being caught up in a continual state of lust. To say so is to characterize their homosexual feelings as fundamentally sordid and self-serving. It leaves no room for any of the feelings or impulses that belong to the higher order of human sexual experience such as emotional and spiritual bonding, mutual respect and admiration, the urge to give oneself to another, the desire to sacrifice oneself for another, or the conviction that you have found a "soul mate."

To say that homosexual people are all about the baser impulses of sexual attraction, minus any of the nobler feelings, is essentially saying they are less human than the rest of us. In other words, it is saying they are incapable of human love.

I think the reason the idea of homosexual love makes some Christians uncomfortable is that it doesn't provide much basis for their negative reaction to homosexuality. It would seem more justified if homosexuality were about people who are of a fundamentally lower moral quality. But to say that there are people who are capable of the exact same kind of sexual attraction as everyone else, except that they find themselves attracted to people of the same sex for reasons even they can't explain, is a more disturbing idea. It turns a part of your universe upside down. How can something as sacred and sublime as love take on this orientation? How could God allow this to happen? What is he doing? What does it mean? Why am I feeling so freaked out by it?

As much as Christians like to talk about "the homosexual agenda" and their righteous anger over "perversion," at its root this is really about the deep issues regarding our own personal faith, isn't it? As Christians we know we're not supposed to despise people. Everyone knows that. So we look for reasons to justify our uncomfortable feelings instead of just admitting we have them. Maybe that's why we make up stuff about how homosexuality is "lust" and "sex addiction" instead of just listening to what gay people have been telling us plainly about themselves until they are sick of saying it. Believing the made-up stuff is easier than having to accept the truth of the matter, than having to confront our own fears and phobias and doubts and questionings of God. We want to believe this is about "them" when it is really about us.

Super Tuesday and beyond

We have closed primaries in the state of California. As a registered Republican voting by absentee ballot, I mailed in my vote for John McCain this past Tuesday. I should add that way back in October I'd already decided to cast my vote for McCain in this primary, feeling a trifle foolish since he was barely on the media radar screen at the time. Now with this latest surge of success, I feel a lot less embarrassed about supporting him.

But that's in a closed primary. What about this November? As a moderate Republican, this is where my cold, rational self stands with regard to the November elections at the present moment:

Clinton vs. McCain -- McCain
Obama vs. Romney -- Obama
Clinton vs. Romney -- Clinton (ouch! ouch!)
Obama vs. McCain -- Obama (by a hair)

My reasoning is that what this country needs right now is a Democrat for president. People are sick of the Republicans right now (and I think for good reason). But what we also need is a leader who can begin to move us beyond the culture war, the red state-blue state divide, and this whole divisive mess we've gotten ourselves into. In my opinion, Obama and McCain move us closer to that goal, whereas Clinton and Romney move us farther away.

If it were Obama vs. McCain I'd have to (painfully, because I really like McCain) choose the Democrat because I think that's better for our country. If it were Clinton vs. Romney I'd have to (even more painfully, because I really can't stand Clinton) choose the Democrat once again. But if it were Clinton vs. McCain, McCain gets my vote because he will be much less divisive than Clinton.

If John McCain wins the Republican ticket, I personally think the only Democratic candidate who can beat him is Obama. Obama is the first Democratic candidate who has appealed to me in a long time. I take interest in watching the drama of whether Democrats will take this golden opportunity of voting him in, or whether they will again jeopardize their chance at the presidency by going with the more partisan choice.

Protesting "fag enablers"

Westboro Baptist Church is trying to find out where Heath Ledger's funeral service is being held. Apparently, they are only interested in protesting the funerals of truly innocent victims of crime (Matthew Shepard) or people who are courageous enough to have done something worthwhile with their lives (soldiers fighting terrorists, actors promoting understanding about homosexuality). Maybe it's an honor if they show up at your funeral. Should any of us dare to hope they would show up at ours?

One of the signs they are allegedly planning to bring says "God Hates Fags and Fag Enablers." Now that is the first time I've heard the term "fag enabler." In the '60's they called whites who marched with blacks in the civil rights movement "n----- lovers." By employing the derogatory term for an African American person, the term is supposed to make you, as a white person, feel ashamed.

I have had to deal with this kind of assault from people who were trying to make me feel as ashamed of myself as they were ashamed of me for associating with gay and lesbian people. But I never encountered any standard schoolyard term used by straights to try to cut me down along those lines. Not that people haven't had plenty to say, but it's as if they can't agree on one label. The fact that Westboro Baptist Church can only come up with something as relatively benign as "fag enabler" does surprise me.

Heath Ledger (1979-2008)

I felt sick hearing the news this afternoon. So far it sounds like an accidental overdose. It's hard to imagine any other explanation for an actor who was at the top of his game like Heath Ledger was. Anyone who has landed the role of The Joker has to be at the top of his game (and the clips of him in The Dark Knight trailer looked terrific).

When I first saw Ledger in The Patriot I wasn't impressed. I assumed he was just another pretty boy who couldn't act. When I heard he had the lead role in Brokeback Mountain, I would have written the film off if I didn't have so much respect for the director, Ang Lee. Ledger's performance blew my mind. I had seen the private pain and struggles of so many closeted gay men, but never imagined I'd see it portrayed so compassionately up on the cinema screen, let alone by someone I had written off as a B actor. It was a gift to anyone who could see his own life's story in the character of Ennis Del Mar.

I respected Ledger not just for that performance but for proving me wrong. I was so looking forward to The Dark Knight. I still am, but after this news how can it not be painful to see?

I wrote a review for Brokeback Mountain shortly after I had seen it in the theater. You can read it here.

Self-Made Man

I finished reading Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again by Norah Vincent, a former columnist for the L.A. Times who quit her job to write this fascinating book. Vincent is a lesbian who grew up a tomboy and thought it might be fun to write a book on what it would be like to go undercover and live as a man. She felt she was in a good position to pull it off, and she did so successfully. For a period of eighteen months as "Ned" she joined a bowling league, dated women, went to strip clubs, worked in sales, and even lived in a monastery for her research.

She did not do this as a transsexual (someone who believes he is a man trapped in a woman's body), or as a cross-dresser (someone who enjoys dressing as a man). Rather she had to endure tremendous psychological and emotional stress to keep up the act, disguising her speech, mannerisms, feelings and body language (not to mention her appearance) to complete her transformation as Ned. Aware of the common feminist complaint that men have a cushier lot in life than women, she was eager to experience male life for herself and report back with her findings. She writes:

At the beginning of the project I remember thinking that living as a man and having access to a man's world would be like gaining admission to the big auditorium for the main event after having spent my life watching the proceedings from a video monitor on the lawn outside. I expected everything to be big and out in the open, the real deal live and three feet from my face, instead of seen through a glass darkly.

Yet what she discovered completely surprised her. Instead of living large once she was freed from the social expectations of femaleness, as a male she felt she encountered only a different type of repression, a different set of problems. She learned that the only socially acceptable emotion Ned was allowed to express was anger ("As a guy you get about a three-note emotional range"). She found that women were immediately hostile to Ned on the first date ("'Pass my test and then we'll see if you're worthy of me' was the implicit message coming across the table at me. And this from women who had demonstrably little to offer"). Among men Ned was always on guard against doing anything that might get him labeled a "fag."

Being a guy was just like that much of the time, a series of unrealistic, limiting, infuriating and depressing expectations constantly coming over the wire, and you just a dummy trying to act on the instructions. White manhood in America isn't the standard anymore by which women and all other minorities are being measured and found wanting, or at least it doesn't feel that way from the inside. It's just another set of marching orders, another stereotype to inhabit.

The entire book, in fact, could be summed up as a politically incorrect critique of radical, anti-male feminism. And no one is in a better position to pull it off with greater credibility than this free-thinking lesbian intellectual. Norah Vincent's message to women is: Men aren't what you think. Her message to men is: You have it harder than people know. Far from thinking that the line between male and female can be obliterated into some sort of androgynous human existence, her experience of having lived as Ned brings her to quite the opposite conclusion:

I believe we are that different in agenda, in expression, in outlook, in nature, so much so that I can't help almost believing, after having been Ned, that we live in a parallel worlds, that there is at bottom really no such thing as that mystical unifying creature we call a human being, but only male human beings and female human beings, as separate as sects.

As a woman and a lesbian, Vincent can get away with raising issues no conservative male could without sounding reactionary, sexist and defensive. And, of course, the irony is that by run-of-the-mill conservative standards, when it comes to dealing with feminist viewpoints on sex and gender issues, a lesbian is automatically relegated to the enemy camp.

Yet not only did Vincent use her lesbian angle on life to her advantage in doing the research, coming to some surprisingly conservative conclusions, but she pulled it off at tremendous personal cost. The strain of maintaining her male identity for eighteen months and shutting off her female self resulted in a breakdown that landed her for a few days in a mental hospital. The fact that she could, in the end, recover from her ordeal and write such a winsome and compelling account is a testimony to her personal strength, as well as her compassion and commitment in trying to understand both sides of the male-female divide. Considering her book is not likely to be embraced by either conservative traditionalists or liberal feminists, she has paid quite a price. I hope she gets the credit and recognition she deserves.

Japanese American

Sometimes people ask me, "If you're not gay yourself, why are you so interested in their cause?" I used to think to myself, As a Christian why wouldn't I be? It's a clear case of social injustice, and much of the blame falls upon the Christian community. Naturally as a Christian I'd want to do everything possible to help salvage the credibility of my faith and of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But lately I've been thinking along different lines. Maybe this cause hits home with me because I'm also a fourth generation Japanese American. I often discount my ethnic background as having anything to do with "me." Aside from going to family gatherings, I don't hang with other JA's. I'm not involved in the JA community and I have no JA friends. But even in my free-floating, culturally-detached state, I wonder if I've been more affected by my community and family history than I realize.

My grandfather was a 30 year-old American-born citizen living in Los Angeles when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Grandpa had been born, raised and educated in Los Angeles, California. His ambition was to go to UCLA and become a doctor. But money was tight, his own father was a useless alcoholic, so Grandpa become the main provider for his three younger brothers, even succeeding in putting one of them through med school instead. Having given up his own college education, he never left celery farming. He was married to a young Japanese wife and raising two young children of his own (my aunt and my dad) when America went to war against Japan.

As a Japanese-American farmer, Grandpa soon received a government notice assuring him that if he supported the war effort by stepping up farm production, the U.S. government would acknowledge his loyalty. So he bought a new tractor, even though he couldn't afford it. Probably sunk all his savings into it. Then a mere two months later he received another notice telling him he and his family would be bussed off to Manzanar Relocation Center. So much for getting a chance to prove his loyalty.

I don't know what he and Grandma did with all their stuff. They only had two weeks to prepare for relocation. Many JA's sold their belongings dirt cheap while neighbors descended like vultures for a bargain. I'm sure it was no different for my grandparents. Grandpa locked up the new tractor in a storage barn and asked a neighbor watch over it until they returned. He didn't know how long they'd be in Manzanar. Maybe one month? By the time Grandpa and his family returned from camp, three and a half years later, the barn had been broken into and the tractor ripped off.

They stayed in army barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by armed guards. They were among the first to arrive, allowed to bring only what they could carry on their backs. Manzanar is a windy, dusty wasteland, rolling with tumbleweeds and banked by a mountain range at the far end of the camp grounds. My grandmother later told me that dust constantly blew up into the barracks through one-inch spaces between the floorboards. Three families were squeezed into the one-room barrack and they all had to hang up bedsheets for privacy. The toilets in the women's bathroom had no partitions for privacy either. They stuck up in the middle of the floor so that everyone could watch you do your business.

After the war was over, the government dumped Grandpa and his family off in L.A. so that he and Grandma could start over again in bitter poverty. Celery farming doesn't exactly rake in the bucks. And when you've had everything taken from you, and you have to start from scratch with everyone else sneering at you as one of those "Japs" fresh out of camp, you don't exactly get the breaks.

I don't know all this stuff because I grew up hearing about it. Grandpa never said a word about it, and Grandma wasn't understandable since she spoke in Japanese. I did gather from my dad's childhood stories that Grandpa stewed in a silent, sometimes violent rage for a couple of decades, though I wasn't clear on the reason. Only when I reached college and interviewed my grandparents for a paper I did for an Asian American Studies class did I learn the details of what they went through. Otherwise, the matter wasn't spoken of.

Maybe Grandpa's pride wouldn't allow him to speak of the injustice. Sometimes words seem to cheapen the suffering you've been through when you try to explain it to others. And when you know your words will only be received with sneers and disdain, you don't even want to bother. The last thing you want to hear people say is, "It was justified," "You deserved it," or, "Why are you complaining? It could have been worse."

Even though times have changed, I see how the older members in my family, particularly my grandpa's and my dad's generations, still operate with the sub-conscious awareness that some people might think being Japanese American makes you lesser. It is important, in my family's view, to do well in life, get an education, be successful, and behave appropriately. Whatever you do, you must not be an embarrassment. If you do draw attention to yourself, let it be because of excellence and not because you are acting like an idiot. It is also important to integrate yourself into the mainstream and contribute something positive to society. Because you aren't a threat to society, you never were, you are an asset to America if only people would give you a chance, and they were wrong, so very wrong to have treated us otherwise. But we won't say it, we won't have to if our lives and our conduct prove it.

Nobody said these things out loud, but I now realize all the vibes were in the atmosphere I grew up in. I guess it's no surprise, then, that I naturally recognize these feelings in others when I see them grappling with similar situations. Some gays and lesbians are very vocal about the injustice they suffer, but many are not. Certainly in the conservative church most gay people remain silent, hoping that if they are found out, their conduct and contribution would prove they are not a threat, and that they don't deserve to be treated as such. I'm afraid I know all too well what that struggle is all about.

The loneliest man who ever lived

I've done my Christmas preparations this week knowing that a friend of mine will barely make it through the loneliness of the holiday season. Like many people I know, he hasn't yet come out to his family or church, and he wonders if he'll ever know what it's like to be truly loved. One reason I'm apprehensive about Christmas every year is that I know it causes some people reflect on their personal sadness more than usual. Whenever I sense that sadness, it's hard not to be affected too.

Back when The DaVinci Code was all the rage, it was vogue to speculate that, contrary to the church's teaching, Jesus actually got married to Mary Magdalene and had a child. Jesus was actually a family man! My position has been that if people want to believe that, go ahead. It takes nothing away from my faith. Yet to me, the traditional and biblical teaching that Jesus dwelt among us as the loneliest and most sorrowful man who ever lived on earth rings much closer to the truth.

The Jesus I know came not to find joy or comfort for himself, but rather made himself poor for our sakes that we might become rich. As a single man, rejected by his hometown and misunderstood by his parents and siblings, he befriended the despised and forsaken and marginalized. The lonely. He identified with them by becoming despised and forsaken and marginalized himself. Then he told them the secrets of the kingdom of heaven and they believed, because they were wise enough not to put their hopes in the fickle promises of earthly life.

The notion of Jesus as a Family Man only makes him into another one of those people who makes people without families feel left out, especially during Christmas time. Fortunately, as a Bible-believing traditionalist, I don't have to buy into that. I believe Christmas is, ironically, a time to remember the birth of the loneliest man who walked the earth, who is most present and most at home among those whose hearts are broken.

Frank Schaeffer speaks

I don't read popular books written by evangelicals any more. But seeing this quote from Crazy for God, by Frank Schaeffer (the late Francis Schaeffer's son), is tempting me to make an exception.

The public image of the leaders of the religious right I met with so many times also contrasted with who they really were. In public, they maintained an image that was usually quite smooth. In private, they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have had a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement.

While the late Francis Schaeffer helped to launch the Religious Right movement because of the abortion issue, his son Frank Schaeffer reveals in this interview how contrary his father's sentiments were from his fellows on the issue of homosexuality.

JW: His views of homosexuality were quite different from those of today’s Christian Right, which is stridently anti-gay. But Francis Schaeffer didn’t see it that way. As you say in the book, he saw homosexuality as a serious matter. But he didn’t think they would stop being homosexuals if they became Christians. And he didn’t condemn them. Is that right?

FS: That is absolutely correct. A lot of people in the evangelical and fundamentalist communities speak theoretically about homosexuality being no worse than adultery or divorce. However, in practice, they are not undertaking national campaigns to single out evangelical people who were married to somebody else at one time and got divorced. So actually there is a tremendous moral hypocrisy there because the whole gay issue has been singled out for special treatment. My dad literally practiced what he preached. He said that homosexual sex was on the same level as adultery, premarital sex and spiritual pride. He didn’t differentiate between all this and write people off on the basis of it. He actually believed and acted on what a lot of people in the Religious Right say theoretically. But he literally was that way. My dad didn’t see it as a special problem to be singled out from everything else. He didn’t see it as threatening. We had quite a few gay people come through L’Abri. As a child, I knew who they were and why. But my dad did not push them into programs where they were going to try to become straight based on special counseling. He didn’t see it that way. He just saw this as one amongst all kinds of challenges that face people humanly and was very compassionate about it. We had a number of people who came to L’Abri who were not Christians or were Christians who were gay who never changed their orientation, and they didn’t become less friendly with my dad as a result. He didn’t make a big point of it one way or another. That is how his attitude manifested itself to other people.

It has often puzzled me that Francis Schaeffer had apparently helped found the Religious Right. I knew he was first and foremost a Christian thinker and philosopher and associated him most strongly with his ministry at L'Abri. I figured an intellectual like him would be above such a scheme. This interview with Frank Schaeffer has helped to put those pieces together in my mind. He tells how his father thought Pat Robertson was out of his mind and Jerry Falwell was harsh and inhuman, but he tolerated them in those early years as necessary allies in opposing Roe vs. Wade. The elder Schaeffer died in 1984. If he knew today what the Religious Right had become, his son says, he'd be rolling in his grave

Slow blogging

Sorry for the infrequent blogging lately. We just bought a house and are now in escrow. Someone once told me that buying your first home is like having a baby; it rearranges your whole life. I believe it. And the real busyness is yet to come.

When we first moved into our current apartment in the spring of '96, we had no kids. Now we have three. The landlord abides by two basic principles when it comes to keeping up the place: 1) Spend as little money as possible, 2) because he doesn't live here, after all. We've put up with that for eleven years, not to mention the shrinking space with the growing family. This move will be a tremendous blessing needless to say.

Family talk

Every evening during our little family prayer meeting, we pray for each other and for any friends we know who are in need. I often ask the kids to pray for gay friends I know who are having troubles with their families or churches. One evening last week it was just me with my two older children at the prayer meeting. They were asking why parents who find out their kids are gay get so upset.

"Because it makes the parents angry and afraid when they find out," I tell them.

"Why?"

"Well, especially Christian parents. Because some Christians believe their kid chooses to be gay. Other people believe that if their child turns out gay it's the parents' fault, so they get angry at the kid because they feel responsible somehow. But we don't really know why people turn out gay. It's still kind of a mystery."

My ten-year-old asks, "Mommy, what would you do if you found out one of your kids is gay?"

The seven-year-old looks at me too.

"I would love you just the same," I say. "Besides, I don't think that being gay or not gay is the most important thing. The most important thing to me is that you believe in Jesus."

The two kids jump up. Apparently, it is a fist-pumping moment for them.

"Yeah!"

"Yeah!"

They bounce around on their queen-sized futon.

"Believing in Jesus is the most important thing!"

"Jesus is more important than gay!"

"Yeah!"

After they settle down, we talk about it some more. For their age they have tremendous spiritual understanding, and they've come such a long ways. I'm very proud of them.

Quote for the day

I don't believe that God is a fussy faultfinder in dealing with theological ideas. He who provides forgiveness for a sinful life will also surely be a generous judge of theological reflections. Even an orthodox theologian can be spiritually dead, while perhaps a heretic crawls on forbidden bypaths to the sources of life.

Helmut Thielicke (1908-1986)

Disconnection

I went to a friend's baby shower last weekend where I got to meet a number of her friends from college. They were terrific people, and it made me miss my own college friends.

I had two really good friends I have lost contact with ever since my civil same-sex marriage article caused controversy in my old denomination, the OPC (Orthodox Presbyterian Church). I remember the first day the controversy broke out the morning of February 25, 2002. Five Reformed discussion lists were overheating with rage. Some people were calling me names while others were debating how to formulate judicial charges against me. Hate mail was pouring into my and my husband's email inboxes. The phone started ringing, not from friends but total strangers.

Then a different email showed up in my box. It was from my old college roommie who had been a bridesmaid in my wedding, whom I had lost contact with. It said something like: "Hi Misty! Guess what? I'm a part of such-and-such church in Northern CA, and I just found out we are in the same denomination. God has reconnected us through the OPC! I'm so excited! I'm doing this and that now. Write me back, etc." So I wrote back, pretending like nothing was going on: "Hi So-and-So, I'm so glad to hear from you! That's great you joined the OPC, too! We should definitely get together soon, blah blah. Can't wait to reconnect. Let me know when, etc."

After that: Cricket. I never heard back from her. I wrote once more just to inquire if she got my email and reiterate my excitement about our reunion plans--but nothing. She'd only joined the OPC recently. I'd known her for years. We'd been through some major things together. I figured she'd know better than believe any of the stuff people were saying about me in her new denomination. But the bottom line is, she didn't write back.

I had been doing a better job of keeping in touch with my other college friend, who lived only half an hour away. Even when we were overwhelmed with our growing families, we'd still get together once or twice a year and exchanged Christmas cards. Then the controversy broke out and I sent out the annual Christmas card and didn't hear back from her. I played it cool, waited until the following Christmas and sent her another card. Still nothing. My controversy was all over the Internet and she was aware of my website, so I wondered if that had anything to do with her silence. Maybe I shouldn't have interpreted two years of missed Christmas cards as a rejection, but it was hard not to when pretty much everyone else who I thought had been my friends in the OPC were treating me the same way. At the time it was all related in my mind. I still wonder if I gave up on her too soon.

I know what I've experienced is similar to what happens to people who come out of the closet. There are good things about having the guts to say, this is who I am. Or, in my case, this is wrong and here's why I think so. You do move on, and you do make new friends with people who can appreciate you for what you're all about. For that reason, your new friendships can take on a value that in many ways surpasses the old ones. But there's also something that radically changes about your life when you lose the people who connect you with your past, a good past that was worth hanging on to. Friends that I make as an adult can't entirely replace them.

I read much of my experience into gay people I know who have had it rough coming out. We encourage each other and can emphasize the good things. But some of this other stuff . . . I don't know if it is worth talking about except to know in my heart that it exists.

Rev. Fred Phelps

Looks like someone has finally won big in court against Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church. The Phelps family is normally on the offensive when it comes to legal battles. Armed with their numerous law degrees, they are known in Topeka for continually harassing people with their legal threats and lawsuits, in addition to their famous picketing against gays. You can read the details in Chapter Six of this report, a court document written by former reporter Jon Michael Bell in 1994. (See here for the story on how this document became public.)

I came across this document a couple of years ago, but I couldn't stomach reading it all the way through. Mainly because the lengthy accounts of physical and psychological abuse, reported by Fred Phelps' now-grown children, Mark and Nate, are so horrifying.

One brief example is this Chapter Two excerpt where Mark Phelps describes his father beating him and his brother using the handle of a mattock (a pick-hoe):

"After 40 strokes, I was weak and nauseous and very pale. My body hurt terribly. Then it was Nate's turn. He got 40 each time. I staggered to the bathtub where my mom was wetting a towel to swab my face. Behind me, I could hear the mattock and my brother was choking and moaning. He was crying and he wouldn't stop." The voice in the phone halts. After an awkward moment, clearing of throats, it continues: "Then I heard my father shouting my name. My mom was right there, but she wouldn't help me. It hurt so badly during the third beating that I kept wanting to drop so he would hit me in the head. I was hoping I'd be knocked out, or killed...anything to end the pain. After that...it was waiting that was terrible. You didn't know if, when he was done with Nate, he'd hurt you again. I was shaking in a cold panic. Twenty-five years since it happened, and the same sick feeling in my stomach comes back now..."

Of the 13 Phelps children four, including Mark and Nate, have left what is called "the family cult." In Mark Phelps' opinion,

"My father is a very unstable person who is determined to hurt people. And because he is so bound to be hateful and hurtful, and because he's so untrustworthy, I believe it's a good idea to respond to him with caution much like the caution used when dealing with a rattlesnake or a mad dog. You see, the causes that he crusades for, including the Bible, are not the issue here. He simply wants to hate and to have a forum for his hate . . . If it weren't the homosexuals, it would be something else."

I appreciate that Mark Phelps says neither the Bible nor the issue of homosexuality is what is really driving his mentally disturbed father. Still it's amazing to me that conservative Christians don't do more to expose and denounce this psychopath. Try reading any portion of that court document and tell me if you can walk away without feeling physically ill and heartbroken over what the Phelps children, and all the other victims of Fred Phelps' rage, have suffered.

Wildfires

Fires have been contained to the west (Malibu) and north (Stevenson Ranch) of us, but are still burning at a distant east (Lake Arrowhead) and southeast (Orange County) from where we live. Fortunately we are located in Van Nuys, a central urban area away from the dry brush and forest areas, so we are safe. But the air is extremely unhealthful. The sunlight filtering through the atmosphere casts a strange, orange-gray light upon us.

Sound like the Christian counselor you've been seeing lately?

HT: Matt Morgan

What we talked about

Our discussion last night went better than I expected.

In my last two posts I called it a "community discussion" and apparently left the impression that this was a discussion open to the community. My bad. What I meant (and expected) was that community representatives who were concerned about reaching conservative religious communities with gay and lesbian issues were invited to share experiences and discuss strategies. So I was basically invited to a brainstorming committee.

I expected to come and find that I was the most conservative person there. That turned out to be true. (The moderator of the meeting jotted down "ultra-conservative" on the white board when it came to representing my concerns.) I was afraid I might come and find that I was the only conservative there. That turned out not to be true. There was one other person, an American Baptist minister, who thankfully said most of the things I wanted to say. All I had to do was agree with him and share some supporting anecdotes from my personal experience. We didn't talk about celibacy, but it was just as well since that idea would have been too advanced for this group.

Two people from CA Faith Equality moderated the meeting, my friend Kerry who is lesbian and Jewish, and her colleague who (I think) is transgendered and was raised Hindu. The pastor of the UCC church that hosted the meeting attended along with a number of Japanese American congregation members who were parents or friends of someone gay. There was also a long time gay activist from the Chinese community, a representative from a GLBT legal organization, a Buddhist parent of a gay child, and a Washington D.C. activist who had recently relocated to L.A.

As I said, I was on board with just about everything the American Baptist minister shared. He emphasized that in order to talk to conservatives about gay or gay-related issues, it doesn't work to set up panel discussions and bring in outsiders who have credentials that people would consider questionable. A graduate of "So-and-So School of Religion" isn't going to cut it. It had better be Dallas Theological Seminary or some place people have heard of and respect. He joked that had enough trouble getting respect for being a graduate of Fuller Seminary, and I was the only one in the room who laughed. That in itself said something about where the divide in the group lay.

He talked about the importance of understanding people's fears, being able to name them and openly discuss them. Are these fears rational? If our country is in moral decline, would supporting gay civil marriage hurt or help the situation? Are homosexuals dragging marriage down the tubes . . . or have heterosexuals been doing that on their own? He also talked about how these discussions often don't mean much to people until they are facing a crisis moment, such as when a son or daughter comes out as gay. That's when people come back ready to revisit the issues with you, now that they themselves are feeling like outsiders in the church.

Somehow we got onto the topic of theology. One of the UCC members asked me why I couldn't just tell the members of my church that God created people to be gay. I had to explain that our denomination held to a theological tradition that included an Augustinian view of original sin and the fall. Since the fall affected all of humanity, the burden of proof would lie with whoever wanted to demonstrate that homosexuality is not a part of that fallen condition. I also explained that according to this view, unchosen conditions such as sickness or suffering (such as the pains of childbirth) are manifestations of our fallen condition. It seemed to me homosexuality could be presented as falling into a related category.

The UCC people responded as if they had never before heard of the doctrine of the fall. That puzzled me, because I wouldn't know how to understand the joy and wonder of the gospel without it. But of course I didn't pursue it with them. This meeting was on their turf, not mine.

The group concluded--perhaps after hearing enough of the bizarre, conservative, insider lingo from the American Baptist minister and me--that it was probably best to allow the people who are already within conservative circles to carry on these discussions with their own. I couldn't agree more. Still, they want to meet again to talk about actions we could take. I'm not sure what actions those would be, except for me to sit around waiting for the people who already know me to approach me in their own time with their own questions about these things. But sure, I'll go to the next meeting if I can.

Thoughts on reaching conservatives

With Ann Coulter going around saying offensive things like "America would be better off if everyone were Christian," I wonder whether anyone in the gay community would care to "reach conservatives" at all about a better understanding gay issues. The tension (and discouragement) mounts as I look forward to attending the community discussion this Wednesday, co-sponsered by API (Asian/Pacific Islander) Equality and CA Faith for Equality.

I have no idea what strategies we're going to talk about. But one thought I'd like to bring to the table is this: as with liberals, conservatives tend to trust only their own. Particularly conservatives in the Christian community. Unless you're willing to open up your Bible and cite chapter and verse, and are willing to work with a theological framework built upon the key points of creation, fall, redemption and consummation, you are not speaking their language. Your arguments simply won't make sense to them. If you start talking about "inclusion" or "love" apart from the ideas of divine mercy, forgiveness and atonement, then as far as they are concerned you are just babbling some liberal, idealistic, world-peace, hippie language that is out of touch with reality as they understand it.

I know. Jesus loved people. Jesus included people. But if you read the Gospel accounts, his love and inclusiveness embraced those people who looked to him in faith for the forgiveness of their sins. You simply can't get around that, especially if you read the account of Jesus' last supper with his disciples, where he plainly says that his imminent death is to be accomplished "for the many for forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:26-28). He laid down his life not merely because he loves us--though that is true--and not merely because he wants to include people of every tongue, tribe and nation in his kingdom--though that is also true. But the basis for his love and inclusiveness is his own atoning sacrifice on behalf of sinners. It is not merely that we must believe ourselves to be sinners. It is that we must believe that Jesus views us as sinners, and that he came to us for no other reason than to save us from the condemnation we have brought upon ourselves.

That is the conservative Christian view of things. Which means that when it comes to discussing homosexuality with them, there is little value in taking them to task on their position that homosexuality is a part of humanity's fallen and sinful condition. At best, you might try to convince people that while humanity certainly is corrupted by sin, homosexuality is not one of those sins for which Jesus died. But even I have not been convinced by such arguments.

Instead, I would suggest approaching conservative Christian leaders with a challenge to be open to the policy of celibacy for their homosexual church members. While that may seem like a big concession for more liberal-minded gays and lesbians to make, it is a much bigger concession for church leaders to accept, because it would be admitting that homosexuality might be a permanent condition that ex-gay ministries can't fix. And yet if leaders put up resistance to a celibacy policy, this is where we can challenge them: How can the church not tolerate celibate gay members? If people aren't acting upon their orientation, what sin have they committed in the church's eyes that would justify putting them out of the fold?

If celibate homosexuals are allowed to exist and be supported within the church, a natural education process would take place as people get to know what a gay or lesbian person is really like, apart from the media stereotypes and right-wing propaganda. Caring personal relationships are what change people's minds, not outreach programs or advertisement campaigns.

In my opinion, this is the blueprint for reaching conservatives within the faith community. But will I have the guts to share it?