Given pause

[avevale_intelligencer]

If, having read this post, you click on the link below and read the essay to which it links, I ask you as a courtesy not to comment there. I don't know this person and he doesn't know me, and I don't want him to get grief that I've earned. If you want to shout at someone, shout at me, all right?

The essay is a defence of the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality and marriage. It hasn't changed my mind on either of those issues, so there's no need to get on my case about that. I still think any two or more adult human beings who love each other should be able to express that love in whatever way they want, including marriage. I still think the Catholic Church is wrong.

What's given me pause--apart from the fact that this essay is incredibly well-written, closely-reasoned, and gives references--is that it makes it harder for me to believe that the Catholic Church's position is not supported by Christ's doctrine. The very first paragraph knocks the usual argument ("Jesus never condemned homosexuality") out of the court with a basic counter that even I should have been bright enough to see. It's only in the final paragraphs, where he suggests that liberals "deny that any difference exists at all" out of "disguised hate," that he goes completely off the beam. The rest of the article is uncomfortable reading for someone like me who, while not being a Christian, has always believed in a core of rightness under all the corruption and politicking. If this writer is correct, that belief is unfounded.

I don't know what to think now. I don't agree with the writer, obviously. I would very much like to know what my Christian friends think about this. (I think I can predict what my atheist friends will say, and I fancy the words "so," "you," "told," and "I" will feature strongly. I would like to take that as read, but I expect there's little chance of that.)

If you'd prefer not to get involved, that's fine.

http://fpb.livejournal.com/84324.html

EDIT: thank you very much to everyone who has commented so far. These comments have made the whole thing much clearer and put it into perspective for me. I'm glad I posted this, rather than just worrying about it on my own.

Comments

[eintx.livejournal.com]

Much nonsense there.
I'm not going to comment in your piranha basin of a livejournal (and no, I'm not going to yell at the writer, although it's hard!), but if you like we can talk about it in a quiet corner. :)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I'd like that very much.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

What's clear is that the author is perfectly prepared to attribute to Jesus a far more systematic theology of sexuality than is actually present in the Gospels. There is a circular argument going on - it is possible to derive something like current Church doctrine as consistent with Jesus' sayings AND the Church's teachings are divinely kept in line with Jesus' teachings THEREFORE Jesus's sayings are the same as current church doctrine.

What is of course absent from Jesus' teachings is any statement that homosexuality is an especially bad sin. It is all very well for him to cite those penitential manuals which treat it as equivalent to heterosexual fornication, but it is also highly disingenuous given that for most of the history of Christianity it has been regarded as the sin of sins and punished accordingly.

The idea that there is some sort of moral equivalency between LGBT militants using harsh language and bullyboys kicking people to death or hanging them with the active or tacit support of their preachers is profoundly dishonest and hypocritical.The churches have two millennia of violence to repent before there can even be a conversation.

He is also being selective in his position in respect of the question of spiritual pride. Jesus was harsh on Pharisaism, as he termed any doctrine which encouraged people in moral smugness and feelings of superiority to other sinners. That is clearly present in his argument and not repented of in any serious way - as is evinced by his attempt to claim moral equivalency.

I suppose I should go over there and say some of this, but he clearly has a little chorus of cheer leaders and I don't see any point in going there to be shot at.

And I find his attitude to women quite staggeringly an example of how male sexists put women on pedestals in order to regard them as inferior.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yes, this. Plus his argument around divorce misses another core issue -- which is that divorce in many early societies was purely a way for men to dodge economic responsibility for women they had previously had relationships with (and for the children of those relationships). So the prohibition can be seen as being about responsibility and not treating women as disposable. Certainly, that seems to have been how some early Christians interpreted it -- the Irish saint and abbot Adomnan explicitly made laws to protect women from exploitative, male-centric marriage practices and from abuse when they had been cast aside. The interpretation this lj writer puts on it is, as Roz notes, deeply male-centric and misogynistic, and the whole piece is, as she also notes, riddled with straight privileged male blindness, which doesn't need to think about why it might be questionable or to wonder if its assumptions might not be the truth.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I think the author's gender essentialist views are naive, sexist and silly. I suspect he does not know a very large variety of women.

I did not experience my first menstruation or the 'loss of virginity' in the dramatic sense he suggests, and I know plenty of other women who feel the same. Similarly, for some men, puberty, first sex, and first fatherhood can be a huge change.

I have no idea whether there are biological factors involved in women being in general eager to look good. I do know, however, there are lots of social ones.


The identification of elegant and sexy is a modern one

No it isn't. He should read some classical and Renaissance descriptions of Helen of Troy.


never does a female conversation get sharper than when discussing the failures in taste of a common acquaintance.

Ugh. Just ... no.


Instead of looking at the wide variety in what people are like, he has reduced men and women to two sets of stereotypes and then made up some reasons for why they are like that.

Women are from earth, men are from earth. Deal with it!

[baka-kit.livejournal.com]

FYI, fpb is a fairly well-known as a troll, at least in the circles where I hang out. But I'll answer anyway, in lieu of feeding him.

In the Bible, Jesus stressed the importance of marriage and opposed fornication. The logical solution, to me at least, would be to support marriage equality.

I find fpb's notions of gender to be essentialist to the point of surrealism, and more than a bit creepy in his objectification of women. Though I might be letting what I know of him from other things he's said prejudice me.

What I find especially offensive about his post is the notion that LGBT people's quest to be treated as equal under the law (what he calls "pushing an agenda of disguised hate") is somehow equivalent to the physical violence that we have to worry about every day. I have never once heard of someone murdered for saying that LGBT people should stay in the closet.

(I don't identify as Christian anymore, but I was raised Episcopalian, btw.)

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

By his reasoning, my marriage is a sin because my wife is divorced. I am sure you can work out my opinion of his reasoning.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

If the parts of the bible that condemn homosexuality can be wrong and not part of True Christianity, then surely the parts of the bible that imply Jesus condemned homosexuality can be wrong and not part of True Christianity.

Not that I agree with you about the nature of True Christianity as you are well aware, but since you are already willing to contemplate that parts of the bible can be wrong, and that people who identify as Christian can be wrong about what Christianity Really Is, I don't understand your distress.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

He strings an awful lot of points together into a fairly lengthy loop, to get from his interpretation of what Jesus said about divorce all the way to his eventual conclusion about homosexuality. There's wiggle room at every single one of those joints (both in the ones that have been hammered into shape by generations of theologians, and the ones where he seems to be relying on his own inferential logic) - enough that I doubt it would take much effort to construct a similarly long chain of points that ended up pointing to the opposite conclusion.

I have some experience of what happens when you build your personal theology/worldview on such long chains of deduction, without doing enough cross-checking with other arguments or, indeed, the real world... It's a lot like living at the top of a tower block built out of vertical stacks of identical lego bricks, and little or no cross-bracing. Those little plastic corners can really dig in when you land on top of the rubble... =:o\

[smoooom.livejournal.com]

I couldn't finish reading this bunch of twaddle. I would hate to be this guys wife or girlfriend.

It strikes me in a strange way that he's defending his churches stance on homosexuality and marriage. He must feel the same way or else why would he bother. What bothers me is this. Why does he feel such a need? I find my self occasionally in the position of having to say "well yes the church I belong to says that gay marriage is wrong, but I have no problem with it." No place I know of is saying that any church has to allow gay marriage in their organisation.

All that aside I still don't understand why their is so much hate towards the GLBT community. After all the second greatest commandment is Love your neigbour as your self. And every one is my neighbour.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"No place I know of is saying that any church has to allow gay marriage in their organisation"

Actually, some proposed legislation has implied that in its wording. In both the UK and US early forms of "equal rights" legislation has been worded in such a way that a church would not be permitted to refuse to perform a marriage, for instance, even if they disapproved of it (a Catholic church having to accept a divorced person being married, or gay marriage if that was legalised). In a similar way, laws have banned "men only" clubs, Scouting groups have been forced to have mixed troops. In my view I would happily allow groups to exclude whoever they wish, on the proviso that those excluded are permitted to form their own groups of the same nature (so if the Scouts don't allow girls you set up the Girl Guides -- oh wait, that was the case).

I can see such legislation putting people in a difficult situation, where they either have to discard their principles or break the law. Imagine if a law decided that women being denied the priesthood was discrimination, what would a number of churches do? They'd fight back because it's part of their core beliefs and that law would be a denial of freedom of religion. (Note that there's nothing stopping people from making a breakaway version of the church with different ideas -- it's how the Church of England started, after all, and many others including non-Christian ones.)

The same with things like gay marriage. It's hateful because it often looks as though people who believe that it's wrong would be forced to accept it, not just for other people but in their own communities (a proposed UK version would have forced mainstream churches to perform gay marriages; I'm not sure that it got to actual proposed law but certainly some groups were talking about it and it seemed a possibility).

So yes, as well as the subset of any population who are xenophobic, hating anything of "the other", there are some genuine reasons why people will think some things are wrong, and if they feel attacked they'll defend them. Ofen they'll go over the top in a "pre-emptive defense" (which looks rather like an attack), but there's also a possibility that some of it may be a response to something most of the rest of us can't see (the article in question here may have been in response to some criticism elsewhere).

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

In both the UK and US early forms of "equal rights" legislation has been worded in such a way that a church would not be permitted to refuse to perform a marriage, for instance, even if they disapproved of it (a Catholic church having to accept a divorced person being married, or gay marriage if that was legalised).

Evidence? UK equality law has always been stand-based, meaning that you're only protected from discrimination on certain grounds (e.g. race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability etc.), and 'being divorced' isn't one of them. And no UK "equal rights legislation" mentions same sex marriage at all.

The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regs 2007 and the Equality Act 2010 both have exceptions for religious groups, so you can't force churches to ordain gay priests, or mosques gay imams, though (quite rightly!), a church couldn't refuse to employ someone as a cleaner or accountant because they're gay.

No place I know of is saying that any church has to allow gay marriage in their organisation either.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I find my self occasionally in the position of having to say "well yes the church I belong to says that gay marriage is wrong, but I have no problem with it.

*hug* I wish there were more like you.

No place I know of is saying that any church has to allow gay marriage in their organisation.

Yes. Exactly.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

The idea that Jesus "never condemned anything" is beside the point (and it's wrong, because he did condemn/rebuke regularly - for example, the moneychangers). The point is, if it had been important enough to condemn, he would have condemned it. The piece is sound and fury, and signifies exactly nothing.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

So murder is not important enough to condemn either, then? =:o}

The author's point was that there are an awful lot of things Jesus could have quite rightly condemned - including murder - but didn't. I think a better answer as to why he didn't is that he didn't *need* to condemn those things: There were already prohibitions in place against them. Jesus only gave time to condemning the things that specifically needed *him* to condemn them - chiefly, the practice of people in positions of privilege and authority condemning the less fortunate/educated/pious around them.

I think the guy's quite right that Jesus' focus - and his intention for *our* focus - was on promoting the good things people can do in future, rather than condemning the bad they happen to have done. Unfortunately, the piece then ties that with a set of assumptions about sexuality and gender that don't strike me as the least bit biblically supported (though the are very much a part of several mainstream church traditions).

(He's also quite wrong, IMHO, that the point about Jesus not specifically condemning homosexuality is "the usual argument"; I've always seen it more as the obligatory first bullet point: "let's just get this silly little red herring out of the way, before we get onto more serious discussion of the issues".)

[baka-kit.livejournal.com]

(He's also quite wrong, IMHO, that the point about Jesus not specifically condemning homosexuality is "the usual argument"; I've always seen it more as the obligatory first bullet point: "let's just get this silly little red herring out of the way, before we get onto more serious discussion of the issues".)

*nods* That's been my impression, too. The discussions I've seen have been more about intent, about the meaning of the words "fornication," or "neighbor," the cultural context the Bible was written in, Jesus's message of love and reconciliation vs. his treatment of the moneylenders in the temple. None of which I saw given more than a glancing treatment in fpb's post.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I spotted at least three glaring logical errors in the first two paragraphs. I'm not bothering to read any further. Even if you start with the assumption that both Old and New Testament are literal truth, his arguments do not hold water, and I'd suggest you stop worrying about them.

[howeird]

Let me take a step to the side here for a moment. If we go by the theory that he advocated a return to the teachings of the Old Testament, homosexuality would have been so taboo to him he would not have talked about it, let alone advocated it.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I looked at it. I thought it would take careful reading, for which I currently ain't nohow got the spoons, to deal with properly, so I skimmed the first half and skipped the rest. Judging by most of the comments to your post, my decision was even wiser than I realized.

Sis made a very good dinner. Now I go do cleanup.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

For the most part, I found myself reading disjointed essays about his beliefs on diverse topics that hardly constituted a coherenet argument. Maybe it's because I haven't read the Bible. Maybe because I started drifting off. The only conclusion I found convincing is that you can't be sure that Jesus approved of homosexuality.

The best I could assemble:

Jesus never said homosexuality was OK in the Bible.

Jesus thought marriage should be permanent.

Women are as weird as extraterrestrials.

It's good to expand your horizons by hanging out with weird people.

I'm not a bigot because I know gay people who got the crap beaten out of them.

Gays sometimes say mean things about people who hate them.

zzzzzzZZZZZZ...oh wait, was there a concludion there? Did I miss something? Maybe I should have read it more closely.