Confessions of a Recovering Homophobe

Rexroth's Daughter, one of the frequent commenters to this blog, and mistress of her own blog, asked for more details about how my views on gays and lesbians were turned around. I was one of your garden-variety closet homophobes. I was not a gay basher, I wished them well; my encounters with gays and lesbians were cordial when our paths crossed. Along the way, I was casually friendly with a couple of gay men, whom I found to be quite simpatico. Of course, they were in the closet; I knew they were gay, but we never talked about it. I felt a vague sort of disapproval, even though I liked them a lot. I saw them as having a kind of shadow hanging over them.

In August of 2003, as the Episcopal Church met at the 74th General Convention, the issue that took center stage was the vote on whether to consent to the consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. The people of the state had chosen Robinson, a homosexual, who was in a committed relationship with another man, to be their bishop. My bishop voted against giving consent to Robinson's consecration as bishop. The motion to give consent passed, and Gene Robinson was subsequently consecrated Bishop of New Hampshire. At the time, I agreed with my bishop's vote; non-celibate homosexuals should not be ordained bishops. I did not think homosexuals should be priests, unless they were committed to lifelong celibacy. However, I could not quite put aside the thought that the people of New Hampshire had chosen Robinson to be their bishop, and why shouldn't they have him?

As the controversy continued to swirl around, I decided to search out the references to homosexual behavior in the Bible. The source that I found most helpful was from the website of Loren L. Johns, a Mennonite. The Gospels, which, to me, are the heart of the Bible, are silent on the subject of homosexual practice. Either Jesus did not mention it, or the writers of the Gospel did not think it important enough to include in their accounts of his life and teachings.

After the convention, on the local level, there was a good bit of unrest, much argument back and forth, and I soon became uncomfortable with all the focus on the private sex life of Gene Robinson. It started to look prurient to me. Folks would say, "Do you realize what 'they' do?" I would answer, "No, I don't; do you know what Gene Robinson and his partner do? Have they told you in detail what they do?" None of the other bishops were subject to this kind of scrutiny of their private lives, so I thought that maybe we should just let Gene Robinson's private life remain private. It was none of my business. I don't know what he or anyone else does in private, and I don't want to know.

Think about this: it was not people who were in favor of the consecration of Gene Robinson who brought me over to their side by their persuasive arguments. The folks who basically agreed with me were the ones who pushed me to the other side. I was just really put off by their intrusiveness into the sex lives of consenting adults. I could not stand with them, so where did I go?

By the grace of God, and in a rather astonishing evolution - to me anyway - I have come to take a totally different view of gays and lesbians, not to see them as "other", but as human beings like me. In my own church, I see the contribution my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters make. I use the phrase "recovering homophobe", because I believe that long-held prejudices do not die easily.

When Gene Robinson's name is mentioned in the media, it is often, "Gene Robinson, the practicing homosexual bishop." The phrase "practicing homosexual" becomes an ever-present appendage to his name. I see it as an affront to me to have Robinson's sex life thrust upon me every time his name is mentioned. Our local diocesan newspaper not only used this phrase, but did not even bother to use Robinson's name. He was just "the practicing homosexual bishop of New Hampshire"; he who is not to be named, I suppose. I asked the editor of the newspaper either to refer to other bishops as "practicing heterosexuals", or to stop using the phrase with Robinson.

As to the sinfulness of homosexual behavior, I'll leave that between God and the Christian homosexuals to work out. I believe this: we are all sinners. I believe the church is for sinners, for the lost sheep. Jesus said in Luke 5:32, "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

From The New York Times:

Leaders in the global Anglican communion have asked the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada to withdraw their representatives temporarily from a key governing body of the denomination, in an unprecedented move to avoid a schism over the American church's consecration of an openly gay man as a bishop and both churches' blessing of same-sex unions.

We'll see how that goes.

Where we live

The desktop of my computer displays an image called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. It is a photograph of a patch of sky, empty to the naked eye, that could be covered by a pencil eraser held at arm's length. It was produced by the Hubble Space Telescope, which is named for Edwin Hubble, the man who discovered the universe. Really. (Although he had lots of help).

The photo looks back in time 12 billion years. It contains thousands of galaxies, each consisting of 100 billion stars or more. Here's what this and other pictures and various kinds of evidence tell us.

There was a moment of creation, not perhaps of everything that is, but of everything that we can see. Everything in the observable universe, hundreds of billions of galaxies of hundreds of billions of stars, including our own, and all of space, occupied a volume the size of a single atom. (Maybe at one time it was even smaller than that, even infinitely hot and infinitely dense, but our mathematics won't allow us to look back that far.) Space started to expand. Over hundreds of millions of years the universe cooled enough that matter could condense out of energy, and atoms of hydrogen and helium could form. The universe became transparent to electromagnetic radiation, and the remnant of that moment, the so-called cosmic background radiation, is still observable today. Tiny ripples in the fabric of space created slightly denser than average regions, into which gravity pulled surrounding matter. Galaxies condensed out of the cosmic gas, and stars condensed out of the galaxies. In the first generation of stars, heavier elements were formed. Some of these stars ultimately exploded, expelling heavy elements out into the galaxies, so that as subsequent generations of stars condensed from the resulting gas clouds, planetary systems containing heavier elements formed around them.

Our own planet formed about 4 1/2 billion years ago. For the first billion and a half years or so it was largely molten, and under constant bombardment from meteors. Once it even got clobbered by another planet-sized object, knocking off a hunk of matter that formed the moon. But around 3 billion years ago, the earth was cool enough that stable complex chemical compounds could form on or near the surface. I'll want to talk about evolution later, but that's how we got here, 3 billion years later.

Now look back out into space. There is our star, one of 200 billion in our galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across. (Some people think there are 400 billion stars in our galaxy.) There is the local group of a few dozen galaxies bound together by gravity. Then there are something like 200 billion more galaxies within the volume of space that we can see. (The universe could be larger than what we can observe, but is not necessarily infinite. As space has expanded faster than the speed of light, there are probably regions of space whose light has not yet reached us. While it is true that nothing can travel faster than light, the expansion of space has nothing to do with motion.)

From our point of view, but from no other possible point of view, one of the most interesting facts about this universe is that it is utterly indifferent to our existence or our fate. If the earth were to be destroyed tomorrow, it would be of less importance to the universe than destroying a single grain of sand would be to all the beaches and ocean bottoms of the earth. Indeed, billions of planets are destroyed every day in cosmic cataclysms. Undoubtedly, many of them harbor life.

We matter only to ourselves. We know this because we have discovered it with our own senses, and our own reason. We know far more than the people who contemplated the cosmos thousands of years ago and made up stories to explain its mysteries. We will continue to learn, and perhaps one day we will even overturn some part of the story I have just told. But this quest for discovery is what gives our existence meaning -- only to us, to be sure, but that will have to be enough.

Spreading Compassion Around

Since I finished reading Jane Meyer's "Outsourcing Torture" in The New Yorker, it's been much on my mind. I knew we were outsourcing jobs, but I did not know that the job of torturer was being outsourced. The term for handing over "illegal enemy combatants" to countries in which torture is not illegal is "extraordinary rendition". The label serves to obfuscate and dehumanize the policy. The people are "rendered" to foreign countries for aggressive questioning of the kind that our laws do not allow. At least some agents of the CIA and FBI believe that this type of interrogation does not produce valuable information.

Again, the illegal enemy combatants are held without review, the same policy tried at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, which our courts have said cannot be done. Hundreds have been released from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Were these people innocents, mistakenly rounded up? Did we release terrorists? We don't know.

According to Meyer, the people who have been rendered can likely never be tried in court, because the way they were treated would "shock the conscience" of the court, and the cases would be dismissed. We have detainees in various countries in a kind of limbo, with seemingly no way out. Do we hold them until they die? Does our government believe that outsourcing torture relieves them of responsibility?

On Feb. 15, 2005, David Savage of The Los Angeles Times, had a story about the Bush administration fighting in court to keep US pilots, who were tortured by Iraqis during the first Gulf War, from being compensated. Iraqis who were tortured by the US military in the Iraq War are entitled to compensation, but our own pilots are not, because Iraq is now a friendly country. As Savage says, "The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government against its own war heroes and the Geneva Conventions." Indeed!

According to Douglas Jehl of The New York Times, Feb. 16, 2005, the CIA is looking for a way out of holding and questioning terrorist leaders. The Bush administration seems to be backing away from its legal opinions about aggressive questioning, leaving the CIA hanging out to dry. Both Alberto Gonzales, our new Attorney General, and Michael Chertoff, our new Homeland Security chief , "suggested in their confirmation hearings that others may have played a greater role in deciding how interrogations would be conducted." The government wants the FBI to take over responsibility, but the FBI wants none of it. Again, who is responsibile here?

It's my country doing these deeds. I make the mistake of thinking that I've reached the limits of outrage, but all these stories within a few days provide correction. Can't the leaders of our country not only declare torture wrong, but then stop doing it?


The Collect for the second Sunday of Lent from The Book of Common Prayer:

"O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, forever and ever."

Values

People often say that human life is infinitely precious, or that it is impossible to place a value on human life, or that human life cannot be valued in money.Of course they don’t really mean it. It is true that as a society we expend enormous resources on desperately ill people, so long as there is hope of extending their lives. We have no qualms about spending thousands of dollars a day for patients in intensive care, half a million dollars on heart transplants, millions of dollars over decades to keep people with severe brain damage alive, even when they cannot move or communicate. The state of Florida even passed a special law just to keep one such woman alive, even though her husband wishes to end her life, if that’s what it is, and believes that she would want the same thing.

According to a report called The State of the World's Children, 2005, issued recently by the United Nations Children's Fund, about 29,000 children under five die every day from readily preventable causes -- diarrhea, malaria, measles -- which are almost unheard of as causes of child death in the wealthy countries. Most of these children could be saved by mosquito netting worth a few dollars, a vaccination that costs $2.50, drilling a well in their village -- the price of coffee and a doughnut for each child’s life saved. So, what is the value of human life?

Where I'm Coming From

"Ah, love, let us be true to one another!"

Beautiful! Thank you, Matthew Arnold.

The enlightenment and science have indeed shaken the foundation of religious faith for many, but not for all. I have the greatest admiration and respect for those like Cervantes and Dread Pirate Roberts, who have formed a strong moral and ethical core within themselves without the aid of religious faith. In a sense, you could say that both are stronger than I. I don't know if I could have done that on my own.

My moral core comes from The Bible, with the central focus on the Jesus of the Gospels, who is the model for me as to how to live my life. Jesus has his roots very much in the Old Testament, therefore, I am eternally grateful to the Jews for preserving these books for us. There can be no real understanding of Jesus Christ without attention to his roots in Judaism. So it is, that the Old Testament stories and songs, and the prophets are another major source of strength and inspiration to me.

My hope is that the four of us can have a respectful dialog on the happenings of the day, and that we may find that we have much more in common than we may now know. We hope others out there will join in. The God I worship is the God of love, and forgiveness, and mercy, and justice. Cervantes and Dread Pirate Roberts are already, to me, godly men. Guys, I hope this does not offend you. I mean it as a compliment.

My blog name is Latin for, literally, "mistress of the household," named "Grace".

materfamilias gratia

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

ByMatthew Arnold