Chicken of the See

I used to be a cantor for the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Saint Joseph, in Columbus, Ohio. It was by far the most well-funded church music program in the city at that time, and employed many of the most talented classical singers in the area. I sang with them for several years, and really did enjoy much of it. I met some lifelong friends in that group, and got to perform some beautiful music (including the baritone solo for the Brahms "Requiem", with orchestra).

The monsignor of the Cathedral at that time was a very lovely man... CLEARLY gay... who showed me nothing but hospitality and kindness during my entire time there. Of course, as a relatively immature young man in my twenties, I had the luxury of being able to focus on the music and the not-insubstantial amount of money that I was making in that position, rather than the obvious conflict between my personal moral convictions and those of my employer.

I rather think that I would not be able to perform for such an organization again... as evidenced by my subsequent conscientious refusal to sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Utah. But back then, I recall myself as a much less politicized person, and I recall our culture as being characterized by a much less polarized nature compared to the sociopolitical environment with which we are currently challenged. So when I think of the catholic church, St. Joseph's is the first thing that pops into my mind. It's a good memory. What follows that memory is not such a great image... the hypocrisy and homohatred that the church has shown throughout its history, most obviously exemplified by the many scandals associated with pedophilia and sexual predation among its priesthood.

The man pictured above is His Excellency Robert Finn, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City and Saint Joseph. He is the very first in what I hope will be a long string of high church officials to be indicted by a grand jury for his role in obstructing justice and covering up of evidence related to the sexual abuse of young people. He has been charged with withholding evidence, in this case lewd photographs of young girls taken by the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, a priest under his supervision. Bishop Finn delayed reporting the photographs to the police for six months, during which Ratigan allegedly abused yet another young girl.

Adding to the justifiable outrage is the knowledge that three years ago the very same Bishop Finn settled lawsuits with 47 local plaintiffs in sexual abuse cases for $10 million and agreed to a list of 19 preventive measures, among them to immediately report anyone suspected of being a pedophile to the law enforcement authorities. Finn has, not surprisingly, been described as a "staunch theological conservative" and a "polarizing figure in his diocese".

More information on the many-years-long history of priestly abuse can be found here.

This case illustrates the long history of absurdity among religious conservatives, which very much includes protestant and evangelical loudmouths as well. Those who are willing to demonize and dehumanize minority groups (like women, racial minorities, and GLBT people) using the literal "bully pulpit" afforded to them by organized religion are most likely hiding their own transgressions that are far more damaging to society than anything some gay guy could dream up. It's also important to remember that the catholic priests involved in this business cannot be considered part of the gay community... they aren't gay... they're pedophiles and sexual predators. These men are living illustrations of the very big difference between the two.

No, not all catholics are pedophiles, and not all christians are maniacal bible-thumping hatemongers. But it's the quiet parishoners and churchgoers who deserve the second-largest heaping helping of the blame. As long as we sit there quietly and do nothing, we are complicit in the injustice and crimes of the organization to which we belong. If one breathlessly protests "but but but... we're the GOOD Christians... ", one's protestations are moot if not followed by a full-throated public outcry against the unforgiveable and often-criminal actions of church leaders.

Quit sitting there and letting it happen. Complain. No matter how pretty the music is.

Separated at birth?

Hateful bigot Sally Kern continued her ride on the "victim" train the other day. Speaking on some random Christian radio station (of which there are legion in my home state of Oklahoma), the crazed state representative said this:

"I have to be honest with you Rick, when I was sitting there in my car that day and when she told me that those emails were coming from homosexuals, honestly, fear gripped my whole body, because I was very aware of the homosexual lobbyists and the power that they have. And people say, 'oh you're so brave, so heroic,' but I'm not, I'm just a sinner saved by grace and I was gripped with fear that day. I just said, 'Lord, what have I done?' It entered our mind but honestly, and I mentioned this in the book, the Saturday night when my husband and I sit down and really talked about this and prayed about it, when we asked ourselves the question, are we willing ot even lose our lives over this?"

The answer to your question, you revolting twat, is this: what you have done is what so many other Christian supremacists have done. You've made ridiculous accusations against whole swaths of people, all of which are demonstrably false to anyone interested in looking at the actual evidence rather than bitching and moaning about non-existend Christian persecution. Show me one Christian bigot who has been killed by a homosexual activist. There aren't any. But I can do a quick Google search and show you HUNDREDS of GLBT people, children and adults alike, who have been bullied, attacked, tortured, oppressed, and murdered by God's Gentle People (TM).

If there were any justice in the world, you'd lose what tiny bit of influence you have over the low-information bigoted population you represent, and continue your unwitting career as a lookalike for Aughra, the one-eyed seer from The Dark Crystal.

Republicans remove their masks yet again.

You'd think I would need to scour the internet for clips showing this kind of bigoted, know-nothing ignorance. I wish I could say that I had to dig around for a few isolated video clips showing the true core of the Republican party. In actuality, I've had to pick and choose from many video clips, all of which make me sick to my stomach.

With the rotten elements of America's conservative party so often laid bare, I say again... to which group do you want to belong?

Bronze and blue

My high school reunion is next month. How is it possible that we graduated 20 years ago? I don't feel that old.

When I think of good times at school, I think of college. High school (and before) was quite another matter.

It seems like a lifetime ago. I was 17, newly-out, and living in small-town Oklahoma. I knew nothing of the world beyond the confines of Stillwater. I had no gay friends (at least not out ones). Until my senior year, my single goal was to get out. Just get through the day without getting harrassed or assaulted, and then get out. Thanks to the choir group (Amber, pictured above with me, was a fellow member and is still a good friend), senior year was a bit brighter. But that didn't change the fact that my grades suffered tremendously as a result of spending so much energy avoiding people who wanted nothing better than to get in their truck and run over a fag in the parking lot. I was hoping that my auditions for various music programs would be good enough to balance my shockingly poor GPA.

Luckily, it worked. Because I loved my singing teacher, I ended up staying in Stillwater for my undergrad work at Oklahoma State instead of heading off to Juilliard, and it was a wonderful experience. Juilliard would have been fun, but I chose against it... I said it was because it was too expensive and because no one in music cares where you got your undergrad degree (which is, for the most part, true), but really I just thought that the mid to late 1980s, with the AIDS bloodbath in full swing, was a bad time for a brand new gay kid to move to New York. Again, I was right... though I do sometimes wish I'd done it anyway. Regardless, I count my college years as the time when I began the process of growing into an adult. I was too focused on survival during high school to allow for emotional maturation and experimentation. (Didn't Maslow talk about a hierarchy of needs? My needs during high school were simple... get through the day without injury. How refreshing it was to graduate to the higher needs in college, even if it was still in my home town.)

I did go to the 10-year reunion. It was underwhelming, though my friend Scotty made it tolerable through his ebullient presence. He was the only other out gay guy in my class of over 350 (he came out later than I did), so we had a great time hanging out that weekend. Other than that, the event was populated by people who weren't necessarily overtly hostile, but who certainly know what to do with me, and who didn't care to hear anything about my then-four-year-old relationship.

So I wasn't overwhelmed with glee when I heard about the 20 year reunion (to be held, incomprehensibly, over the 4th of July weekend). I figured it would be the same old people hucking the same old homo-hating words at me... or perhaps they'd hold their tongues out of a sense of maturity and quasi-sophistication. I politely declined, posting a picture of Chris and me holding Chris' gorgeous 3-year-old son on the website as a not-so-tacet "screw you" to those people who, in their green youth, made my life so unhappy.

Around that time, I was persuaded to join Facebook. I'd tried other similar sites, such as MySpace and Friendster, but those never really took off for me. Facebook, on the other hand, is apparently where everyone from my high school class has been hanging out for the past 20 years. I've gotten back in touch with people from choir, people from band, and lots of others. Old classmates who never spoke three words to me growing up were suddenly sending me invitations to join their friends lists. I always accepted, despite my lingering confusion as to what their motivations could possibly have been. There's always the possibility that over the last 20 years these small town minds have been opened to the possibility that calling people "faggot" is wrong, and not because it's simply no longer socially acceptible. I like to think that this is the case. I'm not the same person I was when I was 17, and would hope that others from my home town experienced the same emotional growth.

I'm still not going to the reunion though. Maybe I've grown enough to forget these people, who are still 17 when I picture them in my head. Or maybe I've just learned avoidance strategies that allow me to maneuver through life without coming into close contact with small, bigoted minds. Whether it's through growth or evasion, I find that I have no need for the approval of those with whom I grew up. Perhaps someday I'll allow myself to return home to participate in future gatherings of these children of the 80s. Maybe someday I'll be able to think of them without immediately recalling the hatred and fear that they caused me.

Maybe someday I'll be able to forgive them. That day is not today.

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause. (M. Ghandi)

After the crazy rantings of Sally Kern spread like a rash all over the internet, many of the good folks in the comments section have responded (in broken grammar and syntax, usually) to the flood of criticism and outrage by accusing progressives and gays of being intolerant of Mrs. Kern's right to free speech. A representative example of a great many similar comments:

"I don't see anything she said [sic] is soo [sic] bad. Why is it okay for the gay community [sic] can voice their belief but get [sic] offended when the straight world takes a stand and accuses us as [sic] a hate crime.. By the way the gays need to read the bible [sic] front to back and see it [sic] stand on gay people. I teach my children that being gay is unaceptable [sic] and a sin against god. [sic] I'm proud to be a straight woman and proud that I am raising god fearing [sic] law abidding [sic] staight [sic] citzens. Yes I am ANTIGAY. I applause [sic] Rep Kern for being true to her beliefs and not allowing the gay community to bully her. "

This is an extremely common response by the right wing when their bigotry is exposed and reflected back to them. They move from aggressive crusader to aggrieved victim at the slightest whim, and without any hint of awareness or irony. The question then becomes one of how to discuss this issue of being "intolerant of intolerance" in a way that makes sense and allows no room for misunderstanding.

Dan Savage, the popular gay sex-advice columnist who writes "Savage Love", has addressed this issue many times in the past. While I don't normally consult sex-advice columnists when it comes to political and ethical thought, he makes excellent points with which I agree wholeheartedly.

Being intolerant of intolerance is not the same as being intolerant. Yes, it's a crazy sentence, but think about it. Being tolerant of someone (or a group of people) doesn't necessarily mean that you like them, or that you agree with them. It means that you are willing to put up with them in exchange for being left alone in return.

For example, despite their painfully hateful and inaccurate rhetoric, I am willing to put up with Ann Coulter, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, George Bush, and Jerry Falwell (and their ilk) out of my respect for our first amendment that guarantees their right to free speech. I am not organizing marches on Washington to outlaw straight marriages. I am not lobbying school boards to implement an anti-straight educational curriculum. I am not running for office on the promise to introduce legislation to prevent Christian people from adopting children or holding certain kinds of jobs or visiting their partners in the hospital. I don't like most right-wing Christians or their religion, but am willing to put up with them out of a sense of tolerance.

In stark contrast, right-wing Christians don't like me either, and have no intention of putting up with or tolerating me. They're not willing to just speak their piece... they want to follow that by actively persecuting people like me. They want to make my loving relationship of 14 years invisible at best and illegal at worst. They desire nothing more than to restrict my right to privacy, my job options, my adoption opportunities, and my civil rights. The legislation that they and their elected supporters have introduced in state and federal governmental bodies over the past decades have shown this to be true without question. They also have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the violence that their rhetoric has engendered, resulting in a tacit support of attacks on people like me.

These facts show that anti-gay religious zealots have moved past the point where their disdain for me is protected by the first amendment. They have, for many years now, resided in a decayed moral netherworld where their bigotry, wrapped in the American flag and their interpretation of a cherry-picked and deeply messed-around-with Bible, is no longer simply free speech with which I don't agree. It is instead hate-filled rhetoric that is backed up by real attempts to legislate me into second-class citizen status. And it has often worked, thanks to the tendency of the uneducated or the down-on-their-luck to feel better about themselves and their lot in life by dehumanizing and then scapegoating a minority... a minority that is clearly identified to them by those with whom they share religious services every Sunday.

Dan Savage said it best:

Try putting it to your idiotic friends this way: Do they think violence is wrong? Of course they do. Then ask them if there are times when violence is justified. Unless they're pacifists, they'll say yes, violence is justified in self-defense.

Well, being intolerant of the intolerant is employing intolerance in self-defense. It's justified, a necessary measure for self-preservation, and is the only reasonable response to people who argue that we are bad, wrong or immoral. They are wrong, we are right, and we shouldn't be conned into tolerating them or their lies under the guise of "tolerance."

Furthermore, I'm sure your friends would not hesitate to express their intolerance for other forms of intolerance: racism, for example, or sexism. People who can't tolerate blacks or Asians or Jews are not to be tolerated. They are unacceptable, they exist outside the bounds of decent human conduct and discourse, regardless of how they justify their hatred.

The same standard applies to homophobia. It is irrational, it is unacceptable, and we should demand, in no uncertain terms (even if it brings down deeply hypocritical accusations of intolerance), that homophobia be cast out of the bounds of decent human conduct and discourse.

Remember[, once] upon a time -- a recent time -- racism, sexism and xenophobia were commonly accepted [points of view]. Ironically enough, "deeply held religious views" were often used to justify all three. (There are biblical arguments to be made in favor of all of them.) All three were defeated, cast out, because people in the West made it clear that they would no longer tolerate them. We didn't stamp them out, of course, but we've come a long, long way, and it's clear where we as a society, however imperfectly, stand on these issues.

The challenge for us, for our movement, is to continue to battle the same forces of intolerance that once argued for the subjugation of women and the inferiority of African Americans until homo-hatred gets added to the list of biblically-justifiable-but-no-longer-acceptable biases. (my emphasis)

It also goes without saying that any criticism of the religionist "neo-know-nothing" movement in America today will result in the simpering, whimpering complaints of progressive Christians, saying "We're not all like that, you know." Yes, I know. What I don't know is why they're saying that to me instead of to the bigots who claim to represent them. Why aren't the progressive Christians out there, who claim to be the silent majority, acting like frightened kittens hiding under the sofa while nutjobs like Rod Parsley and Fred Phelps and John Hagee go all over the television and internet telling their sheeple that gay people are pedophiles, bestiophiles (is that a word?), degenerates, criminals, or worse? The answer is that they either haven't been presented with enough of a stimulus in their personal lives to create the impetus for action (the more hopeful response), or that deep down in the dark corner of their souls, they actually agree just a little tiny bit with the homohaters (the more realistic response).

It also is true that the haters will bring up the argument that their hate speech is simply "free speech" and should be tolerated as such. Yes, they are welcome to say whatever they like. What they should be careful to realize is that free speech does not mean speech without consequences. The consequences can and should include social isolation, political ridicule, and other such comeuppance. And what Mrs. Kern should realize is that her hate speech does have consequences... her free speech is not free when GLBT people have to pay for it in blood and fear.

So... yes. I am intolerant of intolerance, and for good reason. I will not be lured into accepting homohatred as an acceptable point of view out of a fundamentally flawed and insanely hypocritical accusation of bigotry, no matter how much those accusations might give my little liberal bleeding heart a prickly heat rash. I'll continue fighting back, and will never allow homohatred to be a point of view that some rhetorical mumbojumbo posits as morally equal to mine. Sally Kern and her ilk are railing against a societal sea-change that has already happened. There's no going back. I'll keep bitching, and time will show that I'm on the right side.

The waving wheat doesn't smell so sweet.

Mrs. Sally Kern, the wife of a Baptist preacher and a representative to the Oklahoma state legislature (representing southern Oklahoma City), gave this speech to a small group of consituents. She didn't think anyone would hear her say these things outside of this small gathering. She was wrong. The speech was recorded, and was posted to YouTube by the good folks at The Victory Fund.

As an Oklahoman, I'm utterly disgusted. Where does one begin? Do we start with the litany of lies? Or should we talk first about how words are translated into action? What about the GLBT people in this woman's district... how is it possible that she can hurt them this way and not suffer any consequences? Or perhaps we should talk about how the baby boomer generation's steady march from the left wing to the right wing to the boneyard has caused such deep harm to our society that it will take generations to heal?

Despite the obvious difficulties one has when growing up gay in such a backward place, when I think of Oklahoma I think of my family, red clay dirt, long hot summers by a muddy lake, big skies, pickup trucks, football games, and burgers at Eskimo Joe's. I think of old friends and a life that, once I got out of high school, was really quite pleasant. This woman makes me ashamed to be from Oklahoma. I never thought anyone would be able to do that.

Keep this bitch on your radar. Whoever runs against her in the next election will get a check from me. I hope you agree.

On McCain, bigotry, and "social conservatives".

Now that the septuagenarian John McCain has won the Florida primary, we're hearing all kinds of "coming together" words coming from him. It's all about "reaching out" and "working with the Democrats and independents", and all that. Sounds nice. Sounds Obama-esque. Sounds like he's a "compassionate conservative", whatever that means. (I always say that if you have to tell people you're compassionate, you're probably not.)

The following message was sent via telephone to the voters in Florida before yesterday's primary. Before any of you Log Cabin guys get all excited about McCain, be sure to read every word. The Democratic front-runners are all disappointing in their tepid support of basic civil and human rights for GLBT folk, but none of them would have stooped to such squalid and craven manipulation of the bigotry and prejudice of the right-wing. Don't call them "social conservatives". They're bigots, plain and simple. They hate it when they're called that, but that's because deep down in the dark, quiet, chilly core of their being, they know it's true too.


American political maneuvering leaves such a noxious miasma of bitterness and hatred in its wake that we'll all soon need gas masks.

The transcript of the uber-offensive phone call is as follows:

"We care deeply about traditional values and protecting families. And we need someone who will not waver in the White House: Ending abortion, preserving the sanctity of marriage, stopping the trash on the airwaves and attempts to ban God from every corner of society. These issues are core to our being."

"Mitt Romney thinks he can fool us. He supported abortion on demand, even allowed a law mandating taxpayer-funding for abortion. He says he changed his mind, but he still hasn’t changed the law. He told gay organizers in Massachusetts he would be a stronger advocate for special rights than even Ted Kennedy. Now, it’s something different."

"Unfortunately, on issue after issue Mitt Romney has treated social issues voters as fools, thinking we won’t catch on. Sorry, Mitt, we know you aren’t trustworthy on the most important issue and you aren’t a conservative."

"Paid for by John McCain 2008."

Don't be fooled by the kindly old grandpa and war veteran acts.