You get a lot of "first openly gay" or "first openly…" something in the popular culture today. I think there is a Christian tendency to try to celebrate that, as if we want to signal, "well, we're not the kind of Christians who would tie Matthew Shepard to a fence and beat him to death." As if telling someone that homosexual relations are contrary to God's law is equivalent to murder. It is actually a gift for someone to tell you that you are a sinner, and that you need to turn around. There are lots of hateful people in the world, who can get an issue right, but with the wrong heart. That is true. But we are hopelessly naïve, if we don't think and recognize that "first openly gay" language is an invitation to celebration. It forms a liturgy of affirmation. It forms a counter-liturgy of alternate practices pertaining to the human body.
The best you'll ever get from me, in response to the homosexuality of some famous person is, "I don't care." In fact, for me to say that I don't care may reflect a lack of love on my part, because I don't say to that person that practicing homosexuality puts your eternal soul at risk of damnation.
I think that if people spent more time thinking about the implications of what they claim, we wouldn't sit here screaming at each other about whether "love is love," because we all know it isn't, in this case. Why have some people had to work so hard to convince their fellow citizens that how and with whom someone uses their sex organs is irrelevant, if it is so obvious to right-thinking people? We know better; maybe some of us want to be bold enough to say that we know better, to face the social stigma of saying, "There is one, ordinary, obvious way for two people to become parents. They are persons of the opposite sex, and they have conjugal relations."
I have met people before that were openly and obviously struggling with their gender identity. Personally, I have no direct experience of what that is like. I feel compassion for those people in that situation. I think of Bruce Jenner; I've seen the video footage of him as a young peak athlete; I have felt the patriotic pride at the memory of his accomplishments, albeit achieved before I was even born. Sometimes, I have been moved to tears at the thought of his personal struggle. I actually have enjoyed the various Kardashian shows at different points in time. They're still people, even if their success and visibility reflects something negative about our society. I still can never say truthfully that Bruce Jenner is a woman. I suppose that any of us has the right to change our names, especially for a sufficiently grave reason, like safety. But I don't think I could call him Caitlin, even if he wanted me to. We are heading into what I like to call "the limits of self-definition".
After the age of 16, I haven't really given much thought as to whether I thought homosexual relations were "disgusting." As a passionate seeker of pleasure myself, I don't think I have any firm ground to judge anyone else's mistakes, or at least make judgments of preference about the desirability of those mistakes. I don't think it prudent or wise for Christians to use a certain "gross-out factor" in arguments against certain alternative sexual practices. If any of us have ever sought sexual pleasure for its own sake, we immediately lose credibility, anyway.
If anything, I feel guilty for trivializing sexuality, in a way, normalizing the opposite of my own views, when the indulgence of homosexual desires can be and is very damaging. There a lot of people who have no interest in telling you about the health risks of doing those things, and they have no interest in hearing the stories of the emotional toll of that life. There are some people who can't even affirm the validity of one person's experience of turning around, and doing something else. People claim to believe that we can make our own way, and our own choices, but when other people actually make those choices in contravention to a certain narrative that they themselves have chosen, they often love to make those "rebels" into non-people.
I have no doubt that someone I respect and care for could convince me that they are happy, despite living in contradiction to a Christian vision of happiness and goodness. But what is "happiness"? In what does true happiness consist? Isn't that the real point of discussion? If the point of discussion were "the things that make Jason Kettinger happy, according to Jason Kettinger," I wouldn't be doing this right now. I wouldn't even think about praying. Praying almost never makes me happy, in that sense. Reading complicated books almost never makes me happy that way, either. Nor graduate studies in theology. But you get the idea. We can at least theoretically imagine difficult or unpleasant things that would be better to do than the things we want to do. And yet, some of us have enlisted the entire civil society in the affirmation of our momentary pleasurable whims. Somebody has to be rude about it, and tell the truth. The civil society had involved itself in male-female sex pairings, because we know that sexual relations between men and women tend to produce children. And children are the future of a society. In a pluralistic democracy, especially given to capitalism, we know that there are a few different ways to create a child. Fundamentally though, you need a man, a woman, and sex. I can't wait to find out whatever imperialism I happen to be involved in, at having simply said these obvious things. And I'm willing to be called a "hater," or a "bigot," as a result. Tolerance is one thing, and acceptance or affirmation is another.
If I see a counter-narrative that is counter to the vision of true happiness, I have to say something. It's actually been my pleasure lately to talk about the right-wing things that are counter to that vision of true happiness, but that true vision is assailed from all sides. I still think that my role in life is to tell the truth that most people see, but are afraid to say. I don't like it, at least not always. But I don't like a lot of things I have to do.
The best you'll ever get from me, in response to the homosexuality of some famous person is, "I don't care." In fact, for me to say that I don't care may reflect a lack of love on my part, because I don't say to that person that practicing homosexuality puts your eternal soul at risk of damnation.
I think that if people spent more time thinking about the implications of what they claim, we wouldn't sit here screaming at each other about whether "love is love," because we all know it isn't, in this case. Why have some people had to work so hard to convince their fellow citizens that how and with whom someone uses their sex organs is irrelevant, if it is so obvious to right-thinking people? We know better; maybe some of us want to be bold enough to say that we know better, to face the social stigma of saying, "There is one, ordinary, obvious way for two people to become parents. They are persons of the opposite sex, and they have conjugal relations."
I have met people before that were openly and obviously struggling with their gender identity. Personally, I have no direct experience of what that is like. I feel compassion for those people in that situation. I think of Bruce Jenner; I've seen the video footage of him as a young peak athlete; I have felt the patriotic pride at the memory of his accomplishments, albeit achieved before I was even born. Sometimes, I have been moved to tears at the thought of his personal struggle. I actually have enjoyed the various Kardashian shows at different points in time. They're still people, even if their success and visibility reflects something negative about our society. I still can never say truthfully that Bruce Jenner is a woman. I suppose that any of us has the right to change our names, especially for a sufficiently grave reason, like safety. But I don't think I could call him Caitlin, even if he wanted me to. We are heading into what I like to call "the limits of self-definition".
After the age of 16, I haven't really given much thought as to whether I thought homosexual relations were "disgusting." As a passionate seeker of pleasure myself, I don't think I have any firm ground to judge anyone else's mistakes, or at least make judgments of preference about the desirability of those mistakes. I don't think it prudent or wise for Christians to use a certain "gross-out factor" in arguments against certain alternative sexual practices. If any of us have ever sought sexual pleasure for its own sake, we immediately lose credibility, anyway.
If anything, I feel guilty for trivializing sexuality, in a way, normalizing the opposite of my own views, when the indulgence of homosexual desires can be and is very damaging. There a lot of people who have no interest in telling you about the health risks of doing those things, and they have no interest in hearing the stories of the emotional toll of that life. There are some people who can't even affirm the validity of one person's experience of turning around, and doing something else. People claim to believe that we can make our own way, and our own choices, but when other people actually make those choices in contravention to a certain narrative that they themselves have chosen, they often love to make those "rebels" into non-people.
I have no doubt that someone I respect and care for could convince me that they are happy, despite living in contradiction to a Christian vision of happiness and goodness. But what is "happiness"? In what does true happiness consist? Isn't that the real point of discussion? If the point of discussion were "the things that make Jason Kettinger happy, according to Jason Kettinger," I wouldn't be doing this right now. I wouldn't even think about praying. Praying almost never makes me happy, in that sense. Reading complicated books almost never makes me happy that way, either. Nor graduate studies in theology. But you get the idea. We can at least theoretically imagine difficult or unpleasant things that would be better to do than the things we want to do. And yet, some of us have enlisted the entire civil society in the affirmation of our momentary pleasurable whims. Somebody has to be rude about it, and tell the truth. The civil society had involved itself in male-female sex pairings, because we know that sexual relations between men and women tend to produce children. And children are the future of a society. In a pluralistic democracy, especially given to capitalism, we know that there are a few different ways to create a child. Fundamentally though, you need a man, a woman, and sex. I can't wait to find out whatever imperialism I happen to be involved in, at having simply said these obvious things. And I'm willing to be called a "hater," or a "bigot," as a result. Tolerance is one thing, and acceptance or affirmation is another.
If I see a counter-narrative that is counter to the vision of true happiness, I have to say something. It's actually been my pleasure lately to talk about the right-wing things that are counter to that vision of true happiness, but that true vision is assailed from all sides. I still think that my role in life is to tell the truth that most people see, but are afraid to say. I don't like it, at least not always. But I don't like a lot of things I have to do.
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