How does the church deal with homosexuality?
I recently saw an episode of "30 Days". If you haven't seen or heard of it, it's Morgan Spurlock (of "Super Size Me" fame)'s show about taking someone and putting them in a totally different situation for 30 days. Think of "Super Size Me" in different scenarios. For example, the premier episode was Morgan and his girlfriend trying to live on minimum wage for 30 days. Another one had two people living "off the grid", i.e., without electricity. Another interesting one was a conservative Christian who went to go live in a Muslim community in Michigan for 30 days. He got a wakeup call the first time he got pulled out of airport security. Some are simply interesting, others are quite the eye opener. And unlike most other reality shows, there's no "reality twist", and the people they pick are really quite ordinary, put in extraordinary sitautions.
So the show that really really moved me was a conservative, young, ex-military, midwestern, religious Christian who goes to live with a gay man in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood for 30 days. I was very surprised. He went into it with an open mind, but very very very deep in his convictions.
Over the course of 30 days, he met a lot of gay people. Well then again, he was living in the Castro, so you can't but help it. He mentioned several times about constantly feeling like he was suddenly the minority. His roommate was just a very ordinary gay man, nothing flaming (although he couldn't catch a ball worth crap; then again, eye-hand coordination wasn't my forte either). He met softball players, ex-military people, he even got a job at A.G. Ferrarri, a gay, Italian deli right on Castro street. The most touching moment was at the end when he met with members of P-FLAG, when one father said "How could I possibly treat my own daughter any less than a first-class citizen?" He agreed.
The part I'm getting to is he met several times with one of the pastors at the MCC church. As a deeply religious man, he wanted to know how could there be a gay church? Doesn't the bible say that homosexuality is a sin? Even after several sessions, he basically said unless there's somewhere in the bible that says homosexuality isn't a sin, he wasn't going to believe otherwise.
And he brings up a good point. I was raised in a quite religious family. Before I came out, I had to work it out for myself. At first, I didn't think I was a homosexual. I just liked guys. I couldn't be a homosexual. Everything the media (this was the early 80s), the church, the community (this was a small town in northern Minnesota) told me it was wrong, bad, evil, whathaveyou. Well, that's not me, I'm not a bad person. When I finally realized it did apply to me, I was pretty devastated. It wasn't until my senior year in high school when I started meeting other gay people (thank god it was at least a college town) and realized a) there was any other gay people besides just me (I honestly thought I was the only one) and b) these people aren't so bad, in fact, they're pretty cool (whew, what a relief!), that was when I came out.
A couple weeks after the show aired, I happened to run into the pastor from MCC at a restaurant in the Castro. Her point in the show is that people pick and choose what out of the bible to believe. For example, the guy in the show was in the military. The bible says "Thou shalt not kill." It's even a commandment. And yet, he would kill if necessary to defend our country. So how can he ignore a commandment, and yet believe that homosexuality is a sin?
To put it on more equal footing, my classic point is that, have you ever eaten lobster? Shrimp? Clams? Oysters? Well, in the eyes of God, eating Alaskan King Crab is exactly the same as getting f'd in the A. They're both an "abomination". (Note the quotes.) Look it up in Leviticus. And yet there's no constitutional amendments against it.
But that's not how I rationalized it at first. I just believed, I'm not a bad person. I'm not bad. As people go, I think I'm pretty darned nice. In fact, as far as I can discern, I was born this way. God made me this way. How could God make me to be bad?
To which others have said, well some people are alcoholics or kleptomaniacs or pedophiles. They're still a sin. I rejected that argument that I'm not ruining others lives being gay.
It wasn't until a few months ago that I finally came to terms with myself. I was taking a Philosophy/Ethics class for my degree program. It asks yourself, how do you know something is ethical? At that point, there said there are basically two kinds of ethics.
One kind of ethics is a rules-based ethics. This is exactly what religion is. There's nothing wrong with it by itself. And many rules are universal, such as you should honor your parents, do unto others as you would have done until you, don't murder, and so on. These are good rules, and I highly advise living your life by those rules.
However, there's a flaw in it. One, what do you do when you get to a situation where there is no rule? Secondly, should you follow the rules 100% of the time? Are there cases where it would be unethical even to follow the rules? The latter answer is actually, Yes. For example, honor your mother and father, but what if they tell you to kill? Or a killer is on the loose. He comes up to you and asks you where the person is he's trying to kill. You know where. Do you lie? All of would say, of course you do. But the rules say you shouldn't lie. Aren't you breaking the rules? Committing a sin?
And that's where the second kind of ethics comes in. It's called "utilitarian ethics." It's where you sum up all the good and all the bad out of the possible scenarios, and the one that does the most good is the one that's most ethical.
Of course, it is not without it's flaws. One flaw is that living entirely by that method, you would have to analyze every scenario. The other is that your analysis may be wrong, or may be skewed one way or another, perhaps towards your own betterment over that of someone else, or based on bad information.
But it would help you out of the "should I lie to save a man's life" problem.
And that's how I resolve the fact I'm gay. Many people can say being gay is bad. And I will admit, it's not without it's flaws. However, almost all of problems with being gay are that of how society treats gay people, not intrinsic to being gay itself. It's the old problem of keep telling a perfectly healthy person they're sick and eventually they're going to believe it.
And everything else in the bible is supported by that argument. Thou shalt not kill, because murder is just plain bad. Honor your father and mother, because they will raise you right.
But I can't do that with being gay. With that fact, it's "just cuz" the bible says so, and I've really come to reject the "just cuz" argument that being gay is bad. And in fact, if you remove the "just cuz" argument, the argument holds little ground. Some would argue that gay men have a difficult time forming relationships. It's partly true. Men have a difficult time forming relationships, straight or gay. Women on the other hand, the joke is that what does a lesbian bring to a second date? A U-Haul.
But on the contrary, I couldn't disagree more with the idea that heterosexuality is better, it's just more popular. I was in Macy's one day helping a friend pick out some furniture and saw a straight couple shopping. The poor husband looked miserable. It was a beautiful out and he was helping this chick pick out furniture. Men and women are so diametrically opposite, it's a sheer amazement to me as many straight relationships last at all.
On the other hand, with same-sex couples, it's much easier to find someone with similiar interests. How hard is it to for a guy find a girl that like sports, or a girl to find a guy that likes shopping or talking on the phone. It's a stereotype I know, but certainly there's more men interested in sports than women. I've often joked that the best thing about being a gay man is when you get done with sex, both of you just want to roll over and fall asleep.
In fact, most of the arguments are simply optimism/pessimism. All people have problems, and it's just projection that "those gays" have problems because they're gay, and straight people don't have them at all, because they just brush them under the table.
And thus, in the "utilitarian" ethics, being gay is no better, or worse, than being straight.
So my huge problem is this: I'm gay. I'm not bad. Should I just throw religion out entirely?
Unfortunately, that's all too often what gay people do. And I can't blame them. Their religion abandoned them. Pastors shake a bible at them because of what some guy said a few millenium ago. There's a line in the Davinci code that remarks that the Bible wasn't faxed down from heaven. And Jesus? Never condemned it once.
But he did say, Beloved. For love is of God, and everyone that loveth shall knoweth God.
Let us love one another.
People once used the bible to support slavery too. This argument has been universally rejected on the teachings of so many other grounds, including do unto others as you would have done unto you.
In the end, that's where the guy on the show left it. How can we not treat each other with respect and dignity? What if it were your brother or sister, or son or daughter? What if it were just another fellow human being?
I believe in God. It is my hope that one day all of us can get over this, and realize, We are all God's children. Love one another, and allow us to love.
Is that too much to ask?
So the show that really really moved me was a conservative, young, ex-military, midwestern, religious Christian who goes to live with a gay man in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood for 30 days. I was very surprised. He went into it with an open mind, but very very very deep in his convictions.
Over the course of 30 days, he met a lot of gay people. Well then again, he was living in the Castro, so you can't but help it. He mentioned several times about constantly feeling like he was suddenly the minority. His roommate was just a very ordinary gay man, nothing flaming (although he couldn't catch a ball worth crap; then again, eye-hand coordination wasn't my forte either). He met softball players, ex-military people, he even got a job at A.G. Ferrarri, a gay, Italian deli right on Castro street. The most touching moment was at the end when he met with members of P-FLAG, when one father said "How could I possibly treat my own daughter any less than a first-class citizen?" He agreed.
The part I'm getting to is he met several times with one of the pastors at the MCC church. As a deeply religious man, he wanted to know how could there be a gay church? Doesn't the bible say that homosexuality is a sin? Even after several sessions, he basically said unless there's somewhere in the bible that says homosexuality isn't a sin, he wasn't going to believe otherwise.
And he brings up a good point. I was raised in a quite religious family. Before I came out, I had to work it out for myself. At first, I didn't think I was a homosexual. I just liked guys. I couldn't be a homosexual. Everything the media (this was the early 80s), the church, the community (this was a small town in northern Minnesota) told me it was wrong, bad, evil, whathaveyou. Well, that's not me, I'm not a bad person. When I finally realized it did apply to me, I was pretty devastated. It wasn't until my senior year in high school when I started meeting other gay people (thank god it was at least a college town) and realized a) there was any other gay people besides just me (I honestly thought I was the only one) and b) these people aren't so bad, in fact, they're pretty cool (whew, what a relief!), that was when I came out.
A couple weeks after the show aired, I happened to run into the pastor from MCC at a restaurant in the Castro. Her point in the show is that people pick and choose what out of the bible to believe. For example, the guy in the show was in the military. The bible says "Thou shalt not kill." It's even a commandment. And yet, he would kill if necessary to defend our country. So how can he ignore a commandment, and yet believe that homosexuality is a sin?
To put it on more equal footing, my classic point is that, have you ever eaten lobster? Shrimp? Clams? Oysters? Well, in the eyes of God, eating Alaskan King Crab is exactly the same as getting f'd in the A. They're both an "abomination". (Note the quotes.) Look it up in Leviticus. And yet there's no constitutional amendments against it.
But that's not how I rationalized it at first. I just believed, I'm not a bad person. I'm not bad. As people go, I think I'm pretty darned nice. In fact, as far as I can discern, I was born this way. God made me this way. How could God make me to be bad?
To which others have said, well some people are alcoholics or kleptomaniacs or pedophiles. They're still a sin. I rejected that argument that I'm not ruining others lives being gay.
It wasn't until a few months ago that I finally came to terms with myself. I was taking a Philosophy/Ethics class for my degree program. It asks yourself, how do you know something is ethical? At that point, there said there are basically two kinds of ethics.
One kind of ethics is a rules-based ethics. This is exactly what religion is. There's nothing wrong with it by itself. And many rules are universal, such as you should honor your parents, do unto others as you would have done until you, don't murder, and so on. These are good rules, and I highly advise living your life by those rules.
However, there's a flaw in it. One, what do you do when you get to a situation where there is no rule? Secondly, should you follow the rules 100% of the time? Are there cases where it would be unethical even to follow the rules? The latter answer is actually, Yes. For example, honor your mother and father, but what if they tell you to kill? Or a killer is on the loose. He comes up to you and asks you where the person is he's trying to kill. You know where. Do you lie? All of would say, of course you do. But the rules say you shouldn't lie. Aren't you breaking the rules? Committing a sin?
And that's where the second kind of ethics comes in. It's called "utilitarian ethics." It's where you sum up all the good and all the bad out of the possible scenarios, and the one that does the most good is the one that's most ethical.
Of course, it is not without it's flaws. One flaw is that living entirely by that method, you would have to analyze every scenario. The other is that your analysis may be wrong, or may be skewed one way or another, perhaps towards your own betterment over that of someone else, or based on bad information.
But it would help you out of the "should I lie to save a man's life" problem.
And that's how I resolve the fact I'm gay. Many people can say being gay is bad. And I will admit, it's not without it's flaws. However, almost all of problems with being gay are that of how society treats gay people, not intrinsic to being gay itself. It's the old problem of keep telling a perfectly healthy person they're sick and eventually they're going to believe it.
And everything else in the bible is supported by that argument. Thou shalt not kill, because murder is just plain bad. Honor your father and mother, because they will raise you right.
But I can't do that with being gay. With that fact, it's "just cuz" the bible says so, and I've really come to reject the "just cuz" argument that being gay is bad. And in fact, if you remove the "just cuz" argument, the argument holds little ground. Some would argue that gay men have a difficult time forming relationships. It's partly true. Men have a difficult time forming relationships, straight or gay. Women on the other hand, the joke is that what does a lesbian bring to a second date? A U-Haul.
But on the contrary, I couldn't disagree more with the idea that heterosexuality is better, it's just more popular. I was in Macy's one day helping a friend pick out some furniture and saw a straight couple shopping. The poor husband looked miserable. It was a beautiful out and he was helping this chick pick out furniture. Men and women are so diametrically opposite, it's a sheer amazement to me as many straight relationships last at all.
On the other hand, with same-sex couples, it's much easier to find someone with similiar interests. How hard is it to for a guy find a girl that like sports, or a girl to find a guy that likes shopping or talking on the phone. It's a stereotype I know, but certainly there's more men interested in sports than women. I've often joked that the best thing about being a gay man is when you get done with sex, both of you just want to roll over and fall asleep.
In fact, most of the arguments are simply optimism/pessimism. All people have problems, and it's just projection that "those gays" have problems because they're gay, and straight people don't have them at all, because they just brush them under the table.
And thus, in the "utilitarian" ethics, being gay is no better, or worse, than being straight.
So my huge problem is this: I'm gay. I'm not bad. Should I just throw religion out entirely?
Unfortunately, that's all too often what gay people do. And I can't blame them. Their religion abandoned them. Pastors shake a bible at them because of what some guy said a few millenium ago. There's a line in the Davinci code that remarks that the Bible wasn't faxed down from heaven. And Jesus? Never condemned it once.
But he did say, Beloved. For love is of God, and everyone that loveth shall knoweth God.
Let us love one another.
People once used the bible to support slavery too. This argument has been universally rejected on the teachings of so many other grounds, including do unto others as you would have done unto you.
In the end, that's where the guy on the show left it. How can we not treat each other with respect and dignity? What if it were your brother or sister, or son or daughter? What if it were just another fellow human being?
I believe in God. It is my hope that one day all of us can get over this, and realize, We are all God's children. Love one another, and allow us to love.
Is that too much to ask?
posted by Joe Carlin at 11:14 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home