A CHRISTIAN VOICE FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: ROMAN CATHOLIC CLERGY SEXUAL SUPPRESSION IS OFTEN TOXIC TO OTHERS

Saturday, October 24, 2009

ROMAN CATHOLIC CLERGY SEXUAL SUPPRESSION IS OFTEN TOXIC TO OTHERS

I'm 5'6" tall and have never played professional basketball! What kind of credibility would I have in your eyes if I lectured you on the proper way to play professional basketball? Clearly, the answer is likely, "none."

Now, Roman Catholic clergy presumably do not engage in romantic/sexual relations, so why do people give credibility to those RC clergy who would dare teach us on the subjects of romance and sexuality?

Compounding this bizarre scenario where gullible people do take seriously the toxic pontifications of assorted RC clergy and the Vatican regarding sexual matters, is the fact that there is so much condemnation emanating from all too many RC sources regarding sexuality that they view as "normal" and also sexual expression that is, in their eyes, "disordered" or even "intrinsically evil."

So, we have the hateful rhetoric of the Archbishop of Guam regarding same-sex love and its protections:

Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. This is why they repress such behavior by death...It may be brutal at times, but any culture that is able to produce wave after wave of suicide bombers...is a culture that at least knows how to value self sacrifice.

[For the full text, see here.]

So, Gay people must suppress their God-given sexuality because of the "damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture," damage that is elusive to any rational person. And this Archbishop's statement goes so far as to applaud Islamic fundamentalists who "repress such behavior by death."

And this egregious pronouncement is done in the name of "Christianity?" This is not any type of Christianity to which any Christian can relate!

Fundamentalists of any stripe, be it from the RC Church, the LDS Church, or from any denomination, church, or secular authority are birds of a feather who flock together. Hence, the Vatican holds its arms open to reactionary Anglicans, even going so far as to allow them to have their own liturgy and married clergy within the context of Roman Catholicism, some doctrines of which are antithetical to those of Anglicans and protestants in general.

Just as I wouldn't trust someone like me to lecture you on the finer points of professional basketball, I wouldn't trust presumably celibate clergy who (unless called by God to do so) suppress their God-given sexuality and seek to impose the warped values and questionable psychological dynamics they possess onto others who have no reason to see any contradiction between sexuality and spirituality.

The Apostle Paul said, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." (Romans 8:6) I wholeheartedly agree with his statement!

That's why when those who succumb to enforced celibacy seek to impose their own sexual views and values onto others, they are projecting their preoccupation with sex borne of its daily suppression; their condemnation of others' sexuality and sexual expression is likely a projection of their own sexual frustrations borne of sexual suppression that is not healthy unless one is gifted by God to be celibate.

Moreover, by suppressing such a primal urge as sex, sex is what is largely thought about in that person's daily life, even more than when one is free to express him/herself sexually. We all think of sex quite frequently (Yes, even at my age!), but can you imagine the preoccupation with sex when one suppresses this very God-given primal urge?

Therefore, one is carnally minded particularly when one is forced to be celibate; the healthy integration of sexuality with one's spirituality allows one to live a full, abundant life that partakes of all of the gifts that God has bestowed on God's children! So, one can truly be spiritually minded when his/her sexuality is integrated into his/her life that, for the Christian or for any religious person, has been dedicated to God.

Moreover, to enforce celibacy, as occurs among RC clergy, contradicts the Apostle Paul's admonition:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. (1Timothy 4:1-5)

Paul well knew, as do most of the rest of us, that carnality is borne out of repression and suppression, and that whatever God has created is good! And God created sexuality for our pleasure, as well as for procreation for those for whom that is possible. And no person or institution should be in the business of "forbidding to marry!"

Why would God make sexual activity so pleasurable if God wanted us to abstain from it, or restrict it to only one type of relationship that is not natural for a given person? For a heterosexual it is unnatural for him/her to want to marry someone of the same sex; for a homosexual it is unnatural for him/her to want to marry someone of the opposite sex. This is not rocket science!

Since God created Gay and Straight (and bisexual and transgender) people, God wants us to live abundant lives that only comes from living lives of authenticity that comes from partaking of the unique gifts, among them our sexuality, that God has conferred upon us.

And like being Straight, being Gay is a gift from God, and to deny that gift is to not only stunt the spirituality of that person but is tantamount to throwing that gift back in God's face.

The Archbishop of Guam, the Vatican, and all religious homophobes are advocating that others throw God's gift of sexuality back in God's face, and by so doing are helping to create lives of self-loathing manifested in untold suffering, suicides, assaults, and murders of LGBT people.

And this suppression of sexuality, the projection of one's warped views of sexuality onto others, and the condemnation of the sexual lives of Gay people bears no relationship to Christianity!

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4 comments:

genevieve said...: The RC church believes a priest or nun can better serve God by being celibate. However, unless God gives that person the gift, it is not biblical. The RC church for ages tried to link transgenderism with witchcraft. Many transgender people were brutually murdered in the middle ages.

What is not mentioned is that many homophobes, rapists, and child molesters are sexaully frustrated. It seems that in this society anything sex is a dirty thing. People have made something that God created dirty.; October 24, 2009 at 2:54 PM
Leonard said...: Thanks Jerry, I love your matter of fact, fearless approach...the reason for pontificated nonsense, it seems to me, is that a great many ¨fundamentalist¨ clery/laity are scared sh*tless of reality (or simply are way beyond brainwashed)! I mean, why take a chance on understanding Gods TRUTH and TRUST in God when one can be safely tucked away indulging in chronic/dogmatic insanity!; October 24, 2009 at 4:53 PM
Jerry Maneker said...: Hi genevieve: I like the line I heard somewhere: "Sex is dirty. Save it for someone you love." (As long as they're Straight!) Where these ideas come from would take a Freud to figure out, save to say that people who are emotionally and sexually intact don't feel the need to condemn other consenting adults' relationships and gender expression. Best wishes, Jerry.; October 24, 2009 at 4:54 PM
Jerry Maneker said...: Thanks Leonardo. Beautifully put! Take care, Jerry.; October 24, 2009 at 9:05 PM

FROM "THE CHRISTIAN LEFT"

"It’s easy to see the sinfulness and corruption of “the world” for what they are when you spend enough time reading what Jesus said. It has nothing to do with abortion and gay marriage. It has everything to do with the lust for money, power and control. Starving the poor and depriving the sick of health care, not caring for the least of these among us, is what angers God the most. It’s easy to see why the road is narrow. The world is very efficient at convincing even Christians that its agenda is good. When people try to carry out God’s agenda they’re labeled “Socialists” and demonized."

MUST-READING FOR THOSE INVOLVED IN THE LGBT CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE

In most Native American history, Gay, Lesbian, and/or Transgendered individuals were considered holy and treated with the highest respect. They were the historians, the healers, and the people of empowerment. They possessed the delicate balance of male and female, and were often honored for being unique and having a different spiritual calling. For their tribes, they were the mediators between the spirit world and the natural world. They were known in their separate languages as “naadle” (nad le) They who love their own kind, translation from the Navajo language; “winkte” (wink-day) would be woman, translation from the Lakota Sioux language; and “bade” (bah-day) male/female person, translation from the Hidatsa language. (By the staff of the Two-Spirit Society of Denver.)

CIVIL RIGHTS ARE NOT TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ELECTORATE!

We can't spend our time and tremendous amounts of monies trying to get the majority of the electorate to vote for equal rights. If integration of African Americans was put on the ballot in each state during the civil rights era, we would still have segregation and Jim Crow laws! There must be meaningful, coordinated, and aggressive grassroots, street, and organizational activism, coupled with the filing of civil suits at the federal level, to achieve equal rights. "Separate is not equal," and that fact must be, and undoubtedly will be, affirmed by the Judiciary in regard to Gay people, as it was for African Americans, and not left to the will and whim of the majority of the electorate, for to do so demeans Gay people, and puts each and every minority group's rights up for grabs. We would never think of putting one or more civil rights of Jews, of African Americans, of Asians, etc. on the ballot to be voted upon, and Gay people's civil rights must not be treated any differently.

Christianity Is A Lifestyle

Christianity is a lifestyle -- a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into a clever "religion," in order to avoid the lifestyle itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain, and still believe that Jesus is their "personal Lord and Savior." The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great. - Richard Rohr

THE BIBLE IS NOT GOD

The Bible is NOT God! To elevate the Bible to the status of God, not only is an injustice to scholarship and logic, but is a direct offense against God Himself. We are to have no idols other than God, and biblical literalists and many of those who seek to counter them, both use the Bible as an idol, elevating it to the point where they explicitly or implicitly believe that it contains all of God's Word to us. Jesus is God's Word, and Jesus makes very clear what God expects of His followers: to trust God over and above seen circumstances, and to love other people! That's what puts the lie to homophobic professing Christians' selective use of certain biblical passages to "justify" and impose their hateful prejudices on others; their re-defining Christianity, and God Himself, in their own image, thereby using not only the Bible, but themselves, as their idols; ignoring Jesus' words, work, ministry, and life! The Bible is best viewed as a "finger" that points us to a couple of the many dimensions of God. What the biblical literalists do is equivalent to the following: If I ask you where you live and you point in a given direction and I just keep staring at your finger, I'll soon come to know everything about your finger, its size, shape, fingerprint, and every single detail about your finger, but I won't come any closer to knowing where you live. I have to look to the place where your finger is pointing in order to know where you live. The same holds true for those who elevate the Bible as being the "inerrant word of God." No! Only God is the Inerrant Word!

LGBT PEOPLE AS "EUNUCHS SO BORN FROM THEIR MOTHER'S WOMB."

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb.... (Matthew 19:12)

I don't think any scholar who is truly spiritually sensitive can not see that "eunuchs so born from their mother's womb" refers to Gay and Transgender people who, on this earth, most closely reflect God Who is Spirit and Who transcends gender. LGBT people are God's gift to this world, and to His Church. Too many of the former largely reject that gift; Christ's Church, unfortunately, seems to comprise very few within the institutional Church.

THE CONFUSION OF "HEDONISM" WITH "GAY."

In my opinion, a distinction has to be made between "hedonism" and "Gay," and much public persona of Gay people, and the commentators on all too many LGBT-oriented sites, seem to be more hedonistic than Gay. Frivolity, indecency, and use of hateful epithets as self-identifiers tell us far more about them than it does about Gay people. They use "queer" because they feel "queer," and don't see being Gay in any other terms than being "indecent" and "abnormal." And many of them pride themselves on being outsiders! This reflects their psyches, and they are too dense to accept that fact, let alone change their rhetoric and self-perceptions. They resent anyone who tells them that they are not "mistakes," and that dignity is essential in living one's life, and they undoubtedly thrive on lack of such dignity. I learned a lot from a transgender woman, for example, when she resented the fact that I said that she wasn't a mistake! She tenaciously hung on to the fact that she is a mistake and resented any other possibility. The same is true for most Gay people who comment on assorted Gay-oriented sites. Blindly accepting the oppressor's rhetoric and actions has done inordinate harm to many LGBT people, and that's a great deal of what we must fight against.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AUGUST 4, 1857

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.

A NOTE ON THE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE USE OF PEJORATIVE SELF-IDENTIFIERS

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GAY RIGHTS ACTIVISM, BY DON CHARLES

1. Thou shalt not address thyself or thy kind with inaccurate, disrespectful or dehumanizing labels, nor shalt thou do or say anything to marginalize thyself or enable thy own oppression.

2. Thou shalt not treat thy moral crusade like a political campaign. Thou shalt not value the welfare of political parties over the welfare of LGBT folk, nor shalt thou bind the equality movement to any political party.

3. Thou shalt not disrespect transgender identity or transgender bodies, and thou shalt not kick thy transsexual brethren to the curb for political advantage. Thou shalt endeavor to rid thy movement of transphobia as well as biphobia, sexism, heterosexism, racism, sexual racism, ageism and class bias.

4. Thou shalt not defend, attend or fund any religious institution which preaches genocide against LGBT folk, and thou shalt pursue separation of church and state with all thy mind, heart and soul. Thou shalt directly confront religious institutions that preach LGBT genocide, and thou shalt use authentic, inclusive theology as a weapon against hateful doctrine.

5. Thou shalt not use the equality movement as thy vehicle for exhibitionism, hedonism, political ambition or self-promotion.

6. Thou shalt not excuse any form of inequality (such as exclusion from marriage or military service) on ideological grounds, and thou shalt not give LGBT equality less importance than other social issues.

7. Thou shalt vigilantly police media representations of LGBT folk for demeaning, ridiculous and vilifying portrayals, and thou shalt not fail to include Gay media in thy policings.

8. Thou shalt preach the gospel of comprehensive sex education. Thou shalt promote intelligent conversation about human sexuality, express thy own sexuality without shame, be considerate of thy sexual partners, and shun sex practices that are unhealthy, irresponsible or illegal.

9. Thou shalt access public and private education systems and use those systems to diminish fear and ignorance about LGBT people. Thou shalt not be turned aside from this goal by scurrilous accusations of "recruitment".

10. Thou shalt protect, nurture and serve as role models for LGBT youth, and thou shalt protect, honor and provide for LGBT elders.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

ROMAN CATHOLIC CLERGY SEXUAL SUPPRESSION IS OFTEN TOXIC TO OTHERS

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