I was born gay, but since I was not born into a religious family, I dodged the bullet when it came to direct religious trauma. It might not have turned out that way. I hate to think what would have happened to me had my Irish-American father been a "good Catholic" and raised me in the faith in a suffocating Irish-American Catholic community including Catholic school. For reasons unknown to me, Father was a lapsed Catholic during my childhood. I had the added advantage of being a member of an expat family. There's nothing like living overseas to break toxic cultural patterns. There weren't enough Irish Americans there to form a stifling and controlling American-style Catholic ghetto. Also, my mother, who was not Catholic, was not religious, did not belong to a faith or religious community and did not consider it her duty to make us into believers.
Having said that, like most gay and lesbian people who understand the forces that shape our society, I consider myself an indirect victim of religious abuse. I am well aware that organized religion has always been, and continues to be, gay people's greatest adversary. It isn't an abstraction. Religious bigotry is the reason why I have only been married to my life partner since 2003 even though we got together in 1981. Freedom to marry is just one of the civil rights that we've wrested from the grip of hateful pastors and priests since Stonewall. Unfortunately, our progress has triggered a powerful backlash from our greatest foes, evangelical Protestantism and the hard-core doctrinaires within the Roman Catholic Church such as Princeton's professor Robert P. George. The clearer that becomes, the angrier I get. For example, I am furious that my status as a married person is threatened by far-right religious activists such as Professor George and that I am almost powerless to obstruct their plans.
Two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases that stripped gays and lesbians of civil rights pissed me off so thoroughly that I decided to get to the bottom of the religious hatred behind the declaration in the Catholic Catechism that same-sex sex acts are "intrinsically disordered." In those cases, the Court ruled that the owner of a bakery and the owner of web design company, respectively, were exempt from laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Both enterprises did business with the general public, but the baker and web designer each refused to work with would-be customers who desired their services in connection with the couple's upcoming same-sex wedding. The business owners did not attempt to disguise their anti-gay bias. To the contrary, both business owners came right out and said that same-sex marriages violate the teachings of their religion. For the first time in history, the Supreme Court ruled that so-called religious freedom trumps laws protecting gay people from discrimination in public accommodations, which is the general term for enterprises that are open to the general public. That high-falutin' language in the opinion about artistic freedom and the First Amendment? It was just a pretext to give the justices the result they wanted.
What was it, I asked myself, that was so repugnant about a marriage between two men or between two women that the faithful were willing to battle gays all the way to the highest court in the land for the right to discriminate? The answer could fill volumes, but I will limit myself to a few sentences.
Many centuries ago, Catholic thinkers decided that the Catholic Church should have a moral monopoly when it comes blessing or condemning humankind's sexual practices. I suspect it is because pursuit of sexual pleasure was competing too effectively with God's message, but I could be wrong. From then on out, Catholic teaching forbade the faithful from having orgasms in ways that precluded the possibility of producing a new life naturally within a marriage between a man and a woman. To inspire the necessary respect and awe for this arbitrary rule, the Church decided to dress it up by calling it Natural Law. Well, no amount of love or lust will cause two men or two women to conceive a child together naturally. Hence Natural Law forbids same-sex marriage. And for the sin of not being able to conceive babies through sex, the Catholic Church has considered practicing gays and lesbians sexual outlaws ever since. Worse still, far-right Catholic activists can and do impose their rules on everyone regardless whether they're Catholic. End of story.
Well, not quite. As my mother used to say, you can't breed the son-of-a-bitch out of the human race. Whenever humans get together in groups, the son-of-a-bitch in us makes us really good at picking out the people who don't fit in and making their lives hell. So while the seminary-educated priest may understand the fancy philosophy that makes gay people religious outcasts (hint: our sexual encounters don't produce babies), the message the average church goer will get is that gay people are bad. Really, really bad. Sure, they may say that they hate the sin and love the sinner, but who needs that kind of hateful love? As we know all too well, too many religions have elevated the sport of othering and hating others to a high art. I tend to think that it was gays' and lesbians' otherness that first attracted abuse from the straights and that Natural Law stuff came later as a way to put a high-minded veneer over their base hatred. Since I wasn't there, I have no way of knowing whether I am right.
In closing, it is a vile form of religious intolerance and oppression in our constitutional liberal democracy for a baker to be able refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple's wedding for the sole reason that their orgasms take place under different circumstances than his. It is a gross assault on human dignity. It is only a matter of time before far-right religious groups take advantage of the terrible legal precedents mentioned above to deny gay couples and then gay individuals access to other types of goods and services. Housing is the first thing that comes to mind. There's word for this sort of thing: religious trauma.
Changing subjects, your comments about gender critical individuals who are blind to the religious bigotry of their church-going allies in the fight to reverse the excesses of trans activism prove that the enemy of our enemy is not always our friend, especially in these highly politicized and polarized times. As a sex realist, I look for sex realist allies who have the same general vision for society that I do. Consider the cause of fairness in women's sports. I would rather work with the gender critical person who also supports women's reproductive health than with the anti-trans activist who is also an anti-abortion crusader.
When it comes to the baker situation I believe it’s completely in their right to refuse service. They are a private business. They provide no crucial services. They receive no government money. I don’t believe the law should force people to bake a cake for someone they don’t like. That just ain’t the hill I’m going to die on.
There does have to be room for religion to exist in our culture and for those folks to have their beliefs. Boundaries should be respected on both sides.
When it comes to laws that govern everyone that where we have to make sure fairness and equality is implemented. It can be a fine line no doubt.
I was born gay, but since I was not born into a religious family, I dodged the bullet when it came to direct religious trauma. It might not have turned out that way. I hate to think what would have happened to me had my Irish-American father been a "good Catholic" and raised me in the faith in a suffocating Irish-American Catholic community including Catholic school. For reasons unknown to me, Father was a lapsed Catholic during my childhood. I had the added advantage of being a member of an expat family. There's nothing like living overseas to break toxic cultural patterns. There weren't enough Irish Americans there to form a stifling and controlling American-style Catholic ghetto. Also, my mother, who was not Catholic, was not religious, did not belong to a faith or religious community and did not consider it her duty to make us into believers.
Having said that, like most gay and lesbian people who understand the forces that shape our society, I consider myself an indirect victim of religious abuse. I am well aware that organized religion has always been, and continues to be, gay people's greatest adversary. It isn't an abstraction. Religious bigotry is the reason why I have only been married to my life partner since 2003 even though we got together in 1981. Freedom to marry is just one of the civil rights that we've wrested from the grip of hateful pastors and priests since Stonewall. Unfortunately, our progress has triggered a powerful backlash from our greatest foes, evangelical Protestantism and the hard-core doctrinaires within the Roman Catholic Church such as Princeton's professor Robert P. George. The clearer that becomes, the angrier I get. For example, I am furious that my status as a married person is threatened by far-right religious activists such as Professor George and that I am almost powerless to obstruct their plans.
Two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases that stripped gays and lesbians of civil rights pissed me off so thoroughly that I decided to get to the bottom of the religious hatred behind the declaration in the Catholic Catechism that same-sex sex acts are "intrinsically disordered." In those cases, the Court ruled that the owner of a bakery and the owner of web design company, respectively, were exempt from laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Both enterprises did business with the general public, but the baker and web designer each refused to work with would-be customers who desired their services in connection with the couple's upcoming same-sex wedding. The business owners did not attempt to disguise their anti-gay bias. To the contrary, both business owners came right out and said that same-sex marriages violate the teachings of their religion. For the first time in history, the Supreme Court ruled that so-called religious freedom trumps laws protecting gay people from discrimination in public accommodations, which is the general term for enterprises that are open to the general public. That high-falutin' language in the opinion about artistic freedom and the First Amendment? It was just a pretext to give the justices the result they wanted.
What was it, I asked myself, that was so repugnant about a marriage between two men or between two women that the faithful were willing to battle gays all the way to the highest court in the land for the right to discriminate? The answer could fill volumes, but I will limit myself to a few sentences.
Many centuries ago, Catholic thinkers decided that the Catholic Church should have a moral monopoly when it comes blessing or condemning humankind's sexual practices. I suspect it is because pursuit of sexual pleasure was competing too effectively with God's message, but I could be wrong. From then on out, Catholic teaching forbade the faithful from having orgasms in ways that precluded the possibility of producing a new life naturally within a marriage between a man and a woman. To inspire the necessary respect and awe for this arbitrary rule, the Church decided to dress it up by calling it Natural Law. Well, no amount of love or lust will cause two men or two women to conceive a child together naturally. Hence Natural Law forbids same-sex marriage. And for the sin of not being able to conceive babies through sex, the Catholic Church has considered practicing gays and lesbians sexual outlaws ever since. Worse still, far-right Catholic activists can and do impose their rules on everyone regardless whether they're Catholic. End of story.
Well, not quite. As my mother used to say, you can't breed the son-of-a-bitch out of the human race. Whenever humans get together in groups, the son-of-a-bitch in us makes us really good at picking out the people who don't fit in and making their lives hell. So while the seminary-educated priest may understand the fancy philosophy that makes gay people religious outcasts (hint: our sexual encounters don't produce babies), the message the average church goer will get is that gay people are bad. Really, really bad. Sure, they may say that they hate the sin and love the sinner, but who needs that kind of hateful love? As we know all too well, too many religions have elevated the sport of othering and hating others to a high art. I tend to think that it was gays' and lesbians' otherness that first attracted abuse from the straights and that Natural Law stuff came later as a way to put a high-minded veneer over their base hatred. Since I wasn't there, I have no way of knowing whether I am right.
In closing, it is a vile form of religious intolerance and oppression in our constitutional liberal democracy for a baker to be able refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple's wedding for the sole reason that their orgasms take place under different circumstances than his. It is a gross assault on human dignity. It is only a matter of time before far-right religious groups take advantage of the terrible legal precedents mentioned above to deny gay couples and then gay individuals access to other types of goods and services. Housing is the first thing that comes to mind. There's word for this sort of thing: religious trauma.
Changing subjects, your comments about gender critical individuals who are blind to the religious bigotry of their church-going allies in the fight to reverse the excesses of trans activism prove that the enemy of our enemy is not always our friend, especially in these highly politicized and polarized times. As a sex realist, I look for sex realist allies who have the same general vision for society that I do. Consider the cause of fairness in women's sports. I would rather work with the gender critical person who also supports women's reproductive health than with the anti-trans activist who is also an anti-abortion crusader.
When it comes to the baker situation I believe it’s completely in their right to refuse service. They are a private business. They provide no crucial services. They receive no government money. I don’t believe the law should force people to bake a cake for someone they don’t like. That just ain’t the hill I’m going to die on.
There does have to be room for religion to exist in our culture and for those folks to have their beliefs. Boundaries should be respected on both sides.
When it comes to laws that govern everyone that where we have to make sure fairness and equality is implemented. It can be a fine line no doubt.