Sex as Mystery, Sex as Light (Part 2)

Following is a second excerpt from Robert Jensen’s book, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. In this excerpt, Jensen, in an effort to deepen our understanding of self, other, and sex, explores sex as light as opposed to heat.

(For Part 1, click here.)

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A common way people talk about sex, especially in the past decade, is in terms of heat: She’s hot; he’s a hottie; we had hot sex. In the world of hot, it’s natural to focus on friction, which is what produces heat. Sex becomes bump-and-grind; the friction produces the heat, and the heat makes the sex good. There are plenty of books on the subject, including a series by Tracy Cox, who describes herself as “an international sex, body language and relationship expert.” She began in 1998 with Hot Sex: How to Do It and continued with Hot Relationships: How to Know What You Want, and Keep It Red Hot!; Hot Love: How to Get It; and the Hot Sex Handbook. In 2006, she increased the temperature with Superhotsex. Welcome to a world in which everyone is hot and happy.

But we should take note of a phrase commonly used to describe an argument that is intense but which doesn’t really advance our understanding; we say that such an engagement “produced more heat than light.” As someone who grew up on the frozen prairie of the upper Midwest, I’m aware of the need for heat to survive, but in terms of expanding our understanding of self and other, it seems that light is more helpful than heat.

So, what if our sexual activity – our embodied connections – could be less about heat and more about light? What if instead of desperately seeking hot sex, we searched for a way to produce light when we touch? What if such touch were about finding a way to create light between people so that we could see ourselves and each other better? If the goal is knowing ourselves and each other like that, then what we need is not really heat but light to illuminate the path. How do we touch and talk to each other to shine that light? There can be no recipe book for that, no list of sexual positions to work through so that we may reach sexual bliss. There is only the ongoing quest to touch and be touched, to be truly alive. James Baldwin, as he so often did, got to the heart of this in a comment that is often quoted: “I think the inability to love is the central problem, because the inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And, if you can’t be touched, you can’t be changed. And, if you can’t be changed, you can’t be alive.”

But what about when touching becomes, well, boring? A friend raised this question. This talk about mystery and light is all well and good, she said, but in the real world it’s not so easy to keep sex in such a lofty position. People in long-term relationships may have kids, jobs, and other stress in their lives that may lead their sex lives to become routine and unsatisfying for both partners. In such a situation, why not use an outside stimulus such as pornography to jump-start the sexual aspect of the relationship?

The question is important, in part because so many people face exactly that situation, but also because it reinforces my point. When sex becomes, in this formulation, boring, when a couple even stops having sex, why must we assume that the goal is to immediately resume sexual activity? If the goal is intimacy, sex is not the only route to that. If for some reason the sexual path to that connection is no longer open in the way a couple has known it in the past, would not a period of trying to understand that change be appropriate? Before prescribing a treatment, such as sexually explicit media, would it not be better to spend some time on the diagnosis? In a culture that is compulsively sexual in public, it’s not surprising that people feel the need to be constantly sexual in private. We can understand sex as a natural and healthy part of human existence and also understand that it also can be healthy for people to go for periods of time without being sexual.

When one doesn’t rush to reestablish sexual activity, other ways of knowing another person and oneself have time to emerge. For example, couples whose frequency of intercourse or genital sex drops often find that a sense of intimacy can come from other ways of touching that typically aren’t thought of as sexual but can take on an erotic and sexual quality. Couples may also find out that not immediately rushing to re-create an established pattern of sexual behavior can create new space for talking, which can lead to a new sense of connection.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Sex as Mystery, Sex as Light (Part 1)
Relationship: The Crucial Factor in Sexual Morality
Making Love, Giving Life
The Non-Negotiables of Human Sex
Human Sex: Weird and Silly, Messy and Sublime
A Wise and Thoughtful Study of Sexual Ethics
What Is It That Ails You?
It Happens All the Time in Heaven
The Holy Pleasure of Intimacy
Just Now and Then
Charis

Winter Arrives!

The image above shows my street this afternoon after a day and a half of intermittent snowfall. Yes, after a longer than usual period of fall weather, winter has arrived!

Following is how today’s Star Tribune reports on the recent wintry conditions here in Minnesota.

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As the first major winter storm of the season roared eastward away from the Great Lakes, snow was diminishing today across Minnesota, only to give way to wind-whipped whiteouts and brutal windchills.

By noon, the snow had largely quit falling in Minnesota.

The National Weather Service described it, simply, as “an extremely dangerous winter storm.”

The storm left nearly a foot of snow could be on the ground in the southern metro area and as much as eight inches will cover the metro area’s northern reaches.

In Minneapolis and St. Paul, roughly in the middle of recorded snowfall depths, city officials declared the first snow emergencies of the season, to begin at 9 tonight.



. . . Across the metro area this morning, the commute slowed to a crawl, with travel times double or triple the normal average. Congestion was widespread on most metro freeways.

By late morning, well after rush hour had ended, crashes and spinouts continued to plague motorists across the freeway system. With snowfall dwindling, the evening commute was expected to be less white-knuckled.

. . . With 24 mph winds from the north gusting to 40 mph and beyond, the afternoon temperature of 8 degrees will feel like 15 below zero, according to the weather service. . . In some parts of northern Minnesota, the high temperature is expected to remain below zero throughout the day, with wind chills of minus 30 degrees.

The cold will continue through the week, with highs in the single digits through Thursday.
And Minnesota is hardly alone. The storm hammered more than a dozen states Tuesday with dangerous ice, heavy snow and vicious winds creating drifts up to 15 feet high in parts of the Upper Midwest.



Above: My home in St. Paul. I took this photo shortly before I started shoveling snow from the sidewalk and the paths and steps around the house.



Above: A photo I took yesterday, just as the snow was beginning to fall.


It’s strange to think that in less than a week I’ll be experiencing summer in Australia! Yes, on Sunday evening I leave the Twin Cities for a two month-long visit to my homeland. I’m very much looking forward to sending time with my family and friends - my parents in particular.

I’ll continue blogging, of course, though perhaps not as regularly. I certainly look forward to sharing images of the beautiful and unique Australian landscape - especially the coastal landscape around Port Macquarie, New South Wales, where my parents and my younger brother and his family live. I also look forward to visiting my hometown of Gunnedah at some point during my time in the Great South Land.

Letting God Loose

Following is an excerpt from the homily delivered last Sunday at the Spirit of St. Stephen’s Catholic Community by my friend Kathleen.

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Advent reminds us of change, of deep paradigm change as happened in the religious world during the era of Jesus, at the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, and after the Second Vatican Council in the 20th century. Our world is in constant evolution which we experience daily through ecological, social, economical and political change. As anthropologist Jean Huston said at a world forum on ecology, “We find ourselves at present in the midst of the most massive shift of perspective humankind has ever known.” It is an exciting time to be alive and to be an active part of this change on many different levels.

As members of the Spirit of St. Stephen’s Catholic Community we are immersed in evolution within the Catholic Church as a phenomenon we did not wish for but we recognize as a movement of the Spirit who has involved us as “Emerging Church” and “will never let us go” as we state [every Sunday] in our final blessing. We rejoice that this renewal, although bittersweet, is widespread throughout the United States and in many parts of the world. I see this as part of what is unfolding in the large universe story and it does not end with us.

When John the Baptist was calling out for change quoting from Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord, clear a straight path,” and when he pointed to Jesus who was turning unjust social and religious norms upside down, his message was met with strong resistance; so strong that it led to John's beheading and Jesus' crucifixion.

In Liberation Theology, Gustavo Gutierrez defines a prophet as one who “announces the good (God with us - Emmanuel) as justice through right relationships, harmony, peace and joy, and denounces evil as injustice seen through systems of oppression and exploitation.” In [our second reading today] Rabbi Heschel says: “To us, a single act of injustice - cheating in business, exploitation of the poor - is slight; to the prophets a disaster.”

Was Jesus really understood when he proclaimed the beatitudes as guidelines to a religion in transition? Did the people catch the depth of his transformative teaching? “Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, who weep now. Blessed are you when people hate you and exclude you; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6: 20-27)

A significant rebirth is taking place in many parts of the world and I would like to draw attention to Latin America, especially as we remember our four women martyrs in El Salvador. This year Cuba celebrates 50 years of resistance to the Goliath of the North. That was a paradigm shift that is still barely accepted in the North. Other nations such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and, until recently Honduras, are embracing their own destinies as they link with other cultures to tap into the potential of their unique histories and cultural riches many of which are indigenous. This paradigm shift is in great contrast to the policies of Manifest Destiny which gave the U.S. the presumed right to exploit the resources of Latin America, building up a lucrative first world society and leaving Latin America in poverty and ignorance.

On a personal level we can also see paradigm shifts in our lives and those of our friends and families as we pass through multiple experiences of birth, death and rebirth. It is not so much that God comes to us, rather we discover God present deep within us and in our life-giving experiences with others. During Advent and Christmas we bring God forth and even give birth to God through our acts of kindness and reaching out to others close to home or in other lands.

Sometimes God has lain dormant within us for years as we refuse to forgive old hurts or relate to others. Why do we choose to connect with others at this time with a card, a visit, a gift, or a telephone call? Is it that we are searching for a deeper union, a communion with those we love and who love us? Is it a time to level the rough paths and let God be known and seen through us? We oftentimes describe it as frenzy when we get caught up in the consumer society but might we think of it as ecstatic as we push ourselves to “let God loose” in all her generosity with special foods and music, decorations in the home and neighborhood. And then afterward there will be the quieting down, the return to the ordinary. We cannot sustain the intensity of this season for long, just as we cannot sustain ecstasy in our frail bodies.

St. Augustine has said: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” Isn’t that exactly what we attempt to live during this season more than at any other time of year?




For previous Wild Reed posts about the Spirit of St. Stephen’s Catholic Community, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts
Thoughts of Waiting and a Resolution
Advent Thoughts
My Advent Prayer for the Church
Thomas Merton on “the Advent Mystery”
The Centered Life as an Advent Life
Advent: Renewing Our Connection to the Sacred

Image: “Paradigm Shift” (artist unknown).

CPCSM and the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis (Part 1)

CPCSM co-founder Bill Kummer (at right, holding Skipper)
and Archbishop John Roach in 1998.

As most readers of The Wild Reed know, I’ve served for the past six years as the executive coordinator of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM). Formed in 1980, CPCSM is a Twin Cities-based independent, grassroots coalition dedicated to creating environments of justice and respect for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and their families.

CPCSM is currently in the process of relocating to a new office space, and so I’ve been rather busy these past few days with sorting through papers and files. In the process I’ve come across some important historical documents concerning the relationship between CPCSM and the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. Given the fact that there are some who would like to downplay or even deny such a relationship, I’ve decided to share the contents of some of these documents in a new series at The Wild Reed.

In this first installment, however, I share an excerpt from a relatively recent article by CPCSM co-founder David McCaffrey. It’s Part III of David’s “My Journey with a Prophet” series – originally published in the Spring 2008 issue of CPCSM’s Rainbow Spirit journal. In this series, David honors CPCSM co-founder Bill Kummer (1948-2006). In the excerpt below, David recalls the meeting that took place on May 9, 1980 between the six people* who would soon form CPCSM and the then-archbishop of St. Paul-Minneapolis, John Roach.

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[An] apparently providential event leading up to the listening session involved the pre-meeting correspondence between Bill and Archbishop Roach. A number of days after the meeting had occurred, Bill needed to do a follow-up call to one of the archbishop’s secretaries. During their chat, the secretary had made reference to the letter that Roach had written in response to Bill’s letter listing the meeting’s participants and agenda. When Bill expressed his surprise to the secretary that he had never received Roach’s reply letter, the secretary recalled an event that provided a plausible explanation for the lost letter. One the day that the letter was to be mailed out from the chancery, a large box or bag of outgoing mail had been stolen from the foyer of the chancery building where it was placed every day for pick-up by a mail carrier. However, the secretary did have a copy of the lost letter and immediately made a duplicate of it and mailed it to Bill.

On receiving the copy of Roach’s lost letter, Bill, who was usually quite unflappable, was quite shocked as he read it. In his original letter, Bill had indicated that the agenda would include at least five requests that our group would like to make of Roach at the meeting. One by one, in his reply, Roach had adamantly refused to even discuss any of our requests. After absorbing Roach’s reply, the six of us all agreed that had we received the original reply prior to the listening session, the group’s mood would have been much less upbeat and hopeful. Also, we most likely would not have discussed all of the intended issues, which had resulted in the positive outcome from the meeting. Finally, we also all concurred that our not having seen Roach’s reply before the session had probably accounted for the archbishop’s angry red face as we had addressed, one by one, the very topics that he had refused to discuss.

As I recall, the listening session had been scheduled for 1:00 p.m. in the large conference room in the chancery building, which stood across Summit Ave. from the Cathedral. Bill and I met at noon at the front doors of the Cathedral. We then decided to visit the small chapels behind the rear of the edifice’s main sanctuary, six of which are dedicated to the patron saints of the European ethnic groups that had settled the area around St. Paul. Besides St. Therese of Lisieux, who was Bill’s favorite saint, I do not recall from which of the patron saints there we had sought intercession.

I do recall, though, that once again we joined hands and quietly prayed aloud for the success of the meeting and for God’s blessings upon the local Catholic gay and lesbian community and upon their families. In effect, we were laying claim to our LGBT community’s status as another minority group that was seeking acceptance and support from the arms of the Church – the same security that Bill had first received from the CSJ sisters, as one of the local Church’s last orphans, later as a child in one of their grade schools, and finally among the Benedictine monks in St. Louis.

The three lesbians from our group met us at the front of the Cathedral about 40 minutes later. After a bit of chatting and engaging in some “gallows humor,” we proceeded across the street for the long awaited meeting. One of the archbishop’s secretaries met us at the chancery door and directed us to the large conference room. She asked us to take our seats around the huge, well polished hard wood table. Soon after we had been seated, the archbishop entered the room, accompanied by Father Robert Carlson, then the vicar general of the archdiocese (now the bishop of the Diocese of Saginaw, Michigan).

After quickly shaking everyone’s hand in a perfunctory manner and introducing the group to Father Carlson, Roach asked that all be seated. Noting that Herb Hayek of our group had not yet gotten to the meeting, he quipped, “Father Hayek can catch up when he gets here.” Then, in his customary firm and direct manner, the archbishop firmly slapped his hand on the table and—in an apparent reference to his reply letter that we had not yet seen—said in his gruff voice, “It is my understanding that the purpose of this meeting will be to discuss only issues of morality.” Then, he asked us to proceed with our statements.

Being unprepared for the archbishop’s prefatory admonition, we launched into our presentations, as if we had not even heard what he had said. We proceeded just as we had rehearsed, telling the archbishop of our journeys of growing up within the Church as lesbians and gay men. We took turns sharing with him our pains as well as our joys of having grown up in the Church, our fears as well as our hopes. We reported to him what our experience of the Church’s ministry to GLBT persons, both to ourselves and to others, had been and described for him what we hoped it could become. As he listened to our stories, the vicar general, Father Robert Carlson, sat at the far end of the table, taking notes.

We would learn later that the archbishop was at first not sure what to expect from our group with the memory of the pie-throwing episode of 1975 and its Dignity connection still fresh in his mind. He had wondered if our group would engage him in some kind of political confrontation. We also found out later that he had asked Father Carlson to be in the room more as a witness and to provide security should there be any problems.

However, once the archbishop realized that our purpose for meeting with him was primarily pastoral, rather than political – that we were there to share with him from our hearts – and once he realized how much we all loved the Church and wished to continue to serve God and its people, his tough exterior seemed to soften. His initial gruffness was replaced by more of a relaxed receptiveness to us, and he began to listen more carefully to our personal stories.

To the best of my recollection, following our personal story-telling, the requests that we made of the archbishop at the meeting (again, without knowing that he had written to us that he did not want to discuss any of them) and the outcome for each of them are as follows:

1) Would he appoint a liaison to meet with our group on a regular basis? (He agreed to do so, requesting then auxiliary bishop John Kinney to do so, followed later, in chronological order, by Father Robert Carlson, Father Michael O’Connell, and Bishop Larry Welsh.)

2) Having been recently appointed as president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (then known as the NCCB, and more recently as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops – the USCCB) would he use his influence to encourage his fellow US bishops to create pastoral outreach ministries to gay men and lesbians and their families in their respective dioceses? (He said that he was not prepared to respond to this request at that time, and he never did respond to it. He held the position as president of the NCCB from 1980 to 1983.)

3) Would he create such a pastoral ministry within the local archdiocese? (He did not say he would not. Instead he said that he would let his various department heads know about us and that if they were willing to meet with us, we were free to contact them and explore how we might best educate the staff members in their respective departments about the pastoral needs and concerns of the local LGBT Catholic community. Every department head that we later approached was receptive to us and met with us. We used the results from CPCSM’s Needs Assessment Study, completed 4 years later, as a starting point for each of those meetings.)

4) Would he issue a statement in the archdiocesan newspaper (then The Catholic Bulletin, now The Catholic Spirit) calling for pastoral sensitivity toward and ministry with families of gay men and lesbians within the archdiocese, if we would draft such a statement for him? (He reluctantly said that we should go ahead and draft such a statement and that he would look it over and determine how he might use it. With encouragement from Bill, more than a year later, I did eventually draft the statement and mailed it to him. The archbishop did acknowledge, by letter, that he had received the draft, but added that he did not recall why we had sent it and what he was to do with it. In spite of my reply to him to refresh his memory, the statement never appeared in the Catholic Bulletin — or elsewhere for that matter.)

5) Would he allow us to provide an in-service about gay-lesbian pastoral sensitivity and ministry within the archdiocesan priestly and permanent diaconal formation programs? (As he had said earlier about our work with other departments of the archdiocese, he would let the appropriate administrators know about our group and if they were willing to work with us, we could do so. We had productive meetings with the rector of the major seminary and the director of the diaconal formation program. We did make a few presentations to the major seminarians, but that was discontinued when the administration and climate at the seminary became more conservative. However, CPCSM did play an important role in the diaconal training program for a period of almost 20 years. )

At the conclusion of the listening session, we informed the archbishop that there were literally thousands of other gay and lesbian persons like us living in the archdiocese – such as my former classmate who had unexpectedly called me the previous night – who would never be able to speak with him face-to-face about their needs and concerns. Therefore, as we were preparing to leave the meeting, we promised to come back at a later date with the results of a needs assessment survey that we would conduct with other archdiocesan area gay and lesbian persons from a Catholic background, as well as with local Catholic families who had a GLBT member, so that he could hear their stories and opinions as well. I recall that the archbishop simply nodded to his approval to our final request. In doing so, he had set in motion CPCSM’s Pastoral Needs Assessment Study, which would be the first major project of the infant organization, following its inaugural board meeting two months later.

– Excerpted from My Journey with a Prophet (Part III), David McCaffrey’s reflection on the life and ministry of CPCSM co-founder Bill Kummer, Rainbow Spirit, Spring 2008.


* These six people were David McCaffrey, who at that time was serving as Dignity Twin Cities’ pastoral coordinator (1980-1981); Bill Kummer, Dignity’s pastoral coordinator and outreach director from 1977 to 1980; Father Herb Hayek, OP, a Dignity Twin Cities co-founder ans regular Mass presider; Cindy Scott, then a staff member of the Archdiocesan Urban Affairs Commission and later an editor and writer for various local LGBT and women’s publications; Donna Kurimay, then vice-president of the local chapter of the Association of Pastoral Ministers; and Karen Chicoine, then an administrative assistant in the Archdiocesan Catholic Education Center and a former religious for 15 years.

It should also be noted that the first stirrings of CPCSM’s outreach and pastoral efforts predate its May 9, 1980 founding by almost two years. In the fall of 1978, in an attempt to help educate ministers working in parishes, Bill Kummer, David McCaffrey, and a number of other members of Dignity Twin Cities began a series of monthly speaker-luncheons. Over the next two years, these meetings were held at various parishes, usually hosted by a local pastor whom Dignity had contacted and who, in turn, invited other priests who were known to be hospitable to LGBT persons and sensitive to their pastoral needs.

Initially, 20-30 priests attended these monthly events where they would listen to a local professional speak on some aspect of the lives, needs, and gifts of LGBT people. Seated among the priests. Dignity members attempted to make their guests feel welcome as they chatted with them over lunch. More than a few priests remarked that this was the first time they had met psychologically and spiritually healthy gay men and lesbians. Most of their previous encounters had been either in the confessional or in a counseling situation.

Eventually the speaker-luncheons were expanded to include the non-ordained Catholic pastoral professionals in the archdiocese. It was in the midst of the hope and enthusiasm generated by the success of these luncheons that the six co-founders of CPCSM attended the “listening session” with Archbishop Roach documented above by David McCaffrey.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
History Matters
How Times Have Changed
For the Record

The Affirmation Declaration

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Yesterday I signed, as executive coordinator of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM), the Affirmation Declaration.

This declaration was written to counter the Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto written by an assortment of fundamentalist Christians, including restorationist-minded Roman Catholics. Andrew Gerns notes that the Manhattan Declaration “links the preservation of religious freedom to the need for a government ban on all abortions and any sort of same sex marriage.”

The Affirmation Declaration aims “to correct egregious errors” contained in the Manhattan Declaration, “errors that have been preached in the pulpits of many local churches for far too long.” In short, the Affirmation Declaration seeks to “serve Christ, defend love, and build bridges.” The official website of the Affirmation Declaration also contains a “Rebuttal to the Manhattan Declaration in Relation to Same-Sex Marriage” written by Romell D. Weekly, Pastor of New Revelation Christian Church (Saint Louis, Missouri), and founder of the Gay Christian Fellowship.

Outlining further the purpose of the Affirmation Declaration, the website states:

With the growing notoriety and support for the Manhattan Declaration, our Affirmation Declaration reflects an urgent need to respond to the portion of the Manhattan Declaration dealing with issues related to sexual orientation—specifically, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. We strongly disagree with the contention that same-sex attractions and the oft-resulting romantic activities are immoral.

Because of the large number of people affected by this serious issue one way or the other, we felt it expedient to respond formally, both by submitting our Declaration to the drafters of the Manhattan Declaration, as well as by releasing our Declaration to the public, allowing Christians to show their support for love and affirmation, just as so many have shown their support for the propagation of false doctrines of oppression and inequality against the GLBTI (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgered, and Intersex) community.

We also desire to let the world know that not all Christians are locked in what we believe to be an ancient worldview regarding homosexuality. We want to give people hope — hope to know that God loves them just as they are; hope to know that their gay loved ones are not destined for Hell; hope to know that although some Christian churches will never accept them or their same-sex unions, a great many will.

May the signatures we garner serve as a fire that will never burn out, lighting the way through the darkness of bad theology, and setting Christ's Church back on the right track as it relates to matters of sexual and gender orientation, and gender identity.

Following is the main part of the text of the Affirmation Declaration.

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First and foremost [we] emphatically state that God does affirm homosexuality as a natural state, and homosexuals as His beloved.

We reject the theological abuse of antigay doctrine, which has resulted in the spiritual and physical harm of countless people. Human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, have been made to feel lower than low because of the fear of diversity within our human family, and because of theology founded not upon rightly interpreted Scripture, but upon traditionalism with no substantial basis in sound hermeneutics.

Historically, humans have always had an aversion to diversity. That which is not like the norm has always frightened or offended, and we acknowledge with great regret that the Christian body is not innocent of this charge. But, we also readily acknowledge that God is calling us in this generation to be restorers of the breach — to identify and correct the errors that so many Christians have accepted as foregone conclusions, and to reconcile those who have been ostracized and rejected back to the loving arms of their holy God.

Jesus was well acquainted with the great harm that “spiritual leaders” so easily dispense in the name of God. Our own Holy Scriptures tell us that He was “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” He knew what it was to be around people who claimed to love God, but couldn’t stand to look upon people who were created in God’s image. He knew what it was like to be held in low esteem just because He did not toe the line that the religious leaders demanded.

We take heart in the knowledge that Christ has been where so many in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (GLBTI) community are. He has gone through the pain of rejection — particularly, the pain of being rejected by the very ones who should have been a wellspring of living water. We are thankful that the God of all comfort has been a keeping power to countless GLBTI Christians, who could, at many times, turn to no one but Him for love, affirmation, and support. We proclaim that He has been enough; but we also unwaveringly declare that He has more in mind for His children than spiritual and emotional isolation — that He desires all of His body of believers to be in fellowship one with the other.

We assert that the pain brought upon our GLBTI brethren in the name of God is not an expression of love. It is not love to bring shame and self-loathing upon people. It is not love to tell parents not to accept their gay children because their affirmation will supposedly make their children not want to change. It certainly is not love to teach the damnable heresy that GLBTI people cannot be saved or go to Heaven until they have been delivered from their natural orientation.

We also call attention to the horrible spiritual effect that antigay theology has had on the secular world. We are deeply troubled by the number of people who have been made to despise Christianity because of the oppressive and tyrannical acts of our Christian brethren. However well intentioned they may believe themselves to be, they continue to short-circuit the gospel of Jesus Christ by imposing their religious beliefs upon the general population. Whether homosexuality is sinful or not, opposing same-sex marriage is not only counterproductive to evangelistic ministry, but it is diametrically opposed to the concept of religious freedom — something that the proponents of the Manhattan Declaration claim to cherish. It appears that what they, instead, champion is their freedom to impose their religious beliefs on others. We reject this hypocritical opposition to same-sex marriage, and stand for true religious liberty in the United States of America and the world.

These ever present sins against the GLBTI community are not faithful expressions of God’s love, as is so often claimed. The attestation to the contrary expressed in the Manhattan Declaration only demonstrates the blind religious fervor that so many of our brethren are lost in. Like the Pharisees of old, they continue to believe that such cruelties actually serve the God who is love. But, this is not the type of love that Scripture defines for us.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast,
it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily
angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil
but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres.

- 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Although opponents to affirming theology would likely point to verse 6 [“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth”] as justification for their treatment of GLBTI people, we stress that love necessarily requires hesitancy before accusing someone based upon face value readings of texts that were never meant to be interpreted in such a haphazard way. 2 Timothy 2:15 commands us to diligently approach Scripture in order to “rightly divide the word of truth.” Face value and diligence are not faithful friends; and we rejoice in this fact, lest we be contented to force women to adhere to a strict dress code (1 Timothy 2:9-10) and keep their mouths shut in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35; 1 Timothy 2:11-12), or men to keep their hair a certain length (1Corinthians 11:14).

Times change, and with them biblical pronouncements about acts that were, themselves, perceived through a culturally subjective lens. This fact does not make Scripture wrong; but it does make certain passages obsolete, and their application to modern Christians inappropriate and unfaithful to the intent of the text. It is time for the Church to stop acknowledging this only when it suits a given purpose (as in the case with women’s rights or what makes for a “manly” appearance). Love requires an honest examination of this principle’s application to the issue of homosexuality. Such an examination has led many people, both gay and straight, to affirm the GLBTI community.

Finally, we assert that no godly end is served by the cruel treatment of GLBTI people. While we are certain that some among our opponents are bigots and cannot be changed or reasoned with, we humbly challenge those who sincerely disagree with homosexuality for theological reasons to reexamine this most serious issue. For the love of Christ, and the GLBTI population that He so dearly loves, give this issue the due diligence that it is deserving of. Expose yourselves to the other point of view and see, if perchance, Scripture actually does not say what you always believed it to say. If you engage in such an effort sincerely, and emerge with your existing beliefs affirmed, we will bid you Godspeed and pray that Christian fellowship can be maintained while we agree to disagree.

In closing, we humbly beseech God for the strength to stand against the theological oppression of those who wish to keep His Church in the past, as they, aforetime, did to women, to Blacks, and — looking back into the early history of the Church — even to Gentiles. It took the experience of Spirit-baptism to convince many Jewish Christians that the way of salvation was, indeed, open to the Gentiles. That God has granted our generation so great a cloud of witnesses of GLBTI people who love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, it stands as a strong rebuke that we find ourselves still doubting the place of redeemed people in the body of Christ.

As Christians stood against other Christians in appealing to the conscience of man in the liberation of slaves, of women, and of other groups throughout the history of the Church, we who now affix our signatures to this emphatic declaration of affirmation stand against those Christians who refuse to love without precondition. We oppose not with hearts of hatred or ill will, but with the very love that we demand of those who continue to sin against us. We commit ourselves to the virtues of humility and forgiveness, and anxiously await the time when one of the last prayers of our Lord and Christ may be fulfilled at last.

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also
which shall believe on me through their word;
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me,
and I in thee, that they also may be one in us:
that the world may believe that thou hast sent me . . .
And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it:
that the love wherewith thou hast loved me
may be in them, and I in them.

- John 17:20-26

To sign the Affirmation Declaration, click here.


Recommended Off-site Links:
The Affirmation Declaration
The Manhattan Declaration – Full text and commentary at GoodAsYou.org.
The Manhattan Declaration and 500 Year Cycles of Energy - Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, December 7, 2009).
Manhattan Declaration of Religious Traditionalism – Andrew Gern (Episcopal Café, November 20, 2009).
Statement of Conscience: Just Give Us the Money - Bruce Garrett (TruthWinsOut.org, November 20, 2009).
Can a Culture War Manifesto Reach a New Generation of Evangelicals and Catholics? - Dan Gilgoff (U.S. News and World Report, November 20, 2009).
A “Hierarchy of Issues”? - Thom Curnutte (Ad Dominum, November 20, 2009).
Two Catholic Bishops, Conscience, and the Common Good - Paula Ruddy (The Progressive Catholic Voice, June 14, 2009).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
First They Take Manhattan
Timothy Kincaid Reviews the “Manhattan Declaration”
America’s New Civil Rights Battle

Don Gorton on the Significance of Maurice (Part 2)

Following is Part 2 of Don Gorton’s excellent article, “Maurice and Gay Liberation,” from the November -December 2009 issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review. It’s accompanied by images from the 1987 film adaptation of E.M. Forster’s landmark novel, starring James Wilby as Maurice and Rupert Graves as Alec. (For Part 1, click here.)

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[T]he positive impact of [E. M. Forster’s] revolutionary portrayal of gay love was withheld for 57 years due to Forster’s decision to publish [Maurice] only posthumously. Forster has been chided by gay commentators for failing to publish Maurice during his lifetime, though his fears of censorship, defamation, and even prosecution were not unwarranted. Consider the experience of the less gay-affirming portrayal of lesbianism in The Well of Loneliness, published in 1928, which was censored and used to stigmatize its author, Radclyffe Hall.

It should also be noted that the happy endings in Maurice are limited to the pair of lovers, Maurice and Alec. Clive is tormented in old age after a lifetime wasted in a loveless marriage. Dr. Steven Centola, a Jungian psychologist, argues that Maurice fails to complete the final stage of the developmental process of “individuation.” Instead of re-emerging into the world and engaging society as a fully self-aware person, Maurice disappears with Alec into the greenwood. They save each other by hiding in darkness where their love will be left alone.

For Forster, it was enough that
“when two are gathered together
majorities shall not triumph.”

The focus of the happy ending on Maurice and Alec suggests that Forster’s artistic purpose was carried through with the completion of their relationship. Associated with the free-spirited Bloomsbury Group, Forster was a disciple of philosopher G. E. Moore, who assigned transcendent value to “the pleasures of human intercourse.” In Howards End, with its famous epigram “only connect,” Forster seems to say that the right personal relationships can sort out larger social tensions, namely in the Schlegel–Wilcox alliance. The resolution in Maurice comports with the Bloomsbury Group’s emphasis on personal feelings and defiance of repressive social conventions as the path to fulfillment in life, unaccompanied by a program of wider social and political change. For Forster, it was enough that “when two are gathered together majorities shall not triumph.”


It is safe to assume that the author had no concept of how larger society could be transformed to free GLBT people from repression. Parliament appears in the novel only as another setting where Clive’s drift into heterosexual conformity will play itself out. Of course, there was no plausible model of political agitation for the atomized gay population of Forster’s time to draw upon. While a nascent gay rights movement was emerging in Germany in the early 20th century (snuffed out by the Nazis in the 1930’s), there was no correlate in the English-speaking countries until much later.

It is only when the modern GLBT civil rights movement adopted a strategy of community organizing that larger social and political transformation became conceivable. Coalescence gave rise to “gay power,” which in myriad iterations succeeded in redirecting the course of history. Theoreticians in New York articulated and disseminated an ideology of gay pride that GLBT people could incorporate in individual and collective acts of radical self-definition. Soon a new and potent discourse had developed that equipped gay men and lesbians everywhere to accept themselves, to demand respect, and to fight for fairness and equality.

It was amid the rapidly evolving subculture of gay liberation in 1971 that Maurice finally appeared. Emancipation had not progressed so far that Maurice was welcomed without controversy. Even after Stonewall, the novel was ahead of its time. A forthright portrayal of gay love that ended rapturously for the protagonists was more than some critics could stomach. Typical of the initial negative reviews was that of Philip Toynbee, writing in The Observer, who pronounced Maurice to be “novelettish, ill-written, humourless and deeply embarrassing.” Toynbee maintained that Forster’s literary gift depended upon the sublimation of his homosexual feelings, evident in the novels he published during his lifetime. Other early commentators were even more bluntly homophobic. The flavor of Julian Mitchell’s scathing review in The Guardian was captured in its title: “Fairy Tale.” The convention that fictional gay relationships must end badly for the protagonists was still regnant at the time.

The fact that gay and lesbian couples
can love long and selflessly enough to unite for a lifetime,
a shocking idea when Forster conceived of it,
now enjoys wide currency.

In the 1980’s, Maurice was gaining some prestige among critics. Robert Martin undertook a reassessment in a 1983 article, the first significant reading of the novel by a gay reviewer, in which he emphasized the protagonist’s progress from a “false solution” to the challenge of being gay with Clive, to more authentic self-actualization in the consummated relationship with Alec. By 1990, Maurice was being hailed as the “first gay liberation masterpiece” by Claude Summers. Even as he criticized what he referred to as “Forster’s self-erasure”—assuming Clive was the character the author most resembled—commentator John Fletcher stated in 1992 that Maurice “should now be recognized as the one classic portrayal of ‘masculine love’ . . . and the one explicitly homosexual bildungsroman produced within the mainstream of English literary tradition by a canonical author.” Meanwhile, in 1987, Merchant and Ivory released a sumptuous feature film adaptation of Maurice, which brought the story to the rapt attention of gay and lesbian audiences worldwide.



Maurice has found perhaps its greatest resonance in the 21st century, when the cause of same-sex marriage is on the march, a cause that Alec and Maurice poignantly emblemize. The fact that gay and lesbian couples can love long and selflessly enough to unite for a lifetime, a shocking idea when Forster conceived of it, now enjoys wide currency.

By 1990, Maurice was being hailed
as the “first gay liberation masterpiece”

Perhaps there is something of what psychologist Jung termed “synchronicity” in the fact Maurice was published at a time, soon after Stonewall, when it could dovetail with events that Forster never imagined. By 1971, society had progressed far enough and GLBT people had entered mainstream discourse with (still-subversive) demands for equality, so that the novel was no longer in danger of censorship. Gay people were coming out in large numbers, hungry for a literature which would acknowledge and validate their existence. Maurice and Alec’s departure from the darkness of the greenwood and Forster’s own posthumous self-outing symbolized our collective emergence from history’s dark closet. Over the 38 years since its publication, Maurice has made significant contributions to gay self-actualization, not as a political treatise but as an inspiration for individual readers.

____________________________________

The following music video highlights and celebrates those scenes from the film version of Maurice that beautifully depict the love that is possible between two men. Enjoy!




Note: This music video was created by Muttzrock777. The song featured is “Perfect” by PJ and Duncan (aka Ant and Dec).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Don Gorton on the Significance of Maurice (Part 1)
Celebrating Two Pioneers

Recommended Off-site Link:
Merry Old England - Michael D. Klemm (CinemaQueer.com, April 2009).

Ah, the '70s!

For this evening’s “music night” at The Wild Reed I share a classic Australian pop hit from 1975. Yes, it’s “Denim and Lace” by Marty Rhone.

In the video below, Rhone is performing (okay, lip-synching - as was the practice back then) “Denim and Lace” on the popular weekly Australian music show, Countdown (1974-1987). For most kids growing up in Australia at that time, Countdown was a show not to be missed. And as a little gay boy way back then, I was quite taken by the handsome Marty Rhone. But then who wouldn’t appreciate that beautiful smile, that hair, those clothes, and those goofy but endearing dance moves! Ah, the ’70s!

Hey, there you go
pretending you are fancy free.
But you don’t know,
one day you are gonna be with me,
Yes, with me . . .

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
A Lesson from Play School
One of These Boys . . .


Musical artists previously featured at The Wild Reed:
Don Henley, Propeller Heads and Shirley Bassey, Stephen Gately, Nat King Cole, Enrique Iglesias, Helen Reddy, Australian Crawl, PJ and Duncan, Cass Elliot, The Church, Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield, Wall of Voodoo, Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy, Pink Floyd, Kate Ceberano, Judith Durham, Wendy Matthews, Buffy Sainte-Marie, 1927, Mavis Staples, Maxwell, Joan Baez, Dave Stewart & Friends, Tee Set, Darren Hayes, Suede, Wet, Wet, Wet, Engelbert Humperdinck, The Cruel Sea, Shirley Bassey, Loretta Lynn & Jack White, Maria Callas, Foo Fighters, Rosanne Cash, Jenny Morris, Scissor Sisters, Kate Bush, Rufus Wainwright, and Dusty Springfield.

Happy Birthday, Mum!

In Australia today my mother celebrates her 71st birthday.

Happy Birthday, Mum!

My two brothers and I are very fortunate to have Margaret Anne Bayly (nee Sparkes) as our mother. She’s a beautiful, wise, and strong woman, who extends care, kindness, and love to everyone she encounters. I love you, Mum, and can’t thank you enough for who you are and for all you continue to be and give to me, my brothers, our family, and so many others whose lives are touched by yours.

Following are some photos of Mum from the Bayly family archives!


Right: My mother as a child. Mum was born in Gunnedah, New South Wales, Australia. She was the first of four children of Valentine and Olive Sparkes (nee Millerd). She also had two older half-siblings, Eric and Fay, from Olive’s first marriage to Eric Louis.

For more about Mum’s family and Gunnedah, click here.



Above: Mum with her brother Michael in the mid-1940s.



Above: My maternal grandmother, Olive Sparkes (1906-1997), celebrating her 90th birthday in 1996 with her children (from left) Fay, Margaret, Ruth, and Michael. (Two of Nanna Sparkes’ children, Eric and Catherine, died when they were young.) This particular photo was taken to accompany an article about Nanna’s birthday that appeared in Gunnedah’s newspaper, the Namoi Valley Independent.




Left: Mum in the 1950s.

As a girl, Mum played netball, played in a marching band, and later, after graduating from high school, worked as a secretary in a accountant’s office.




Above: My parents Gordon and Margaret pictured together during their courtship - sometime in the mid-late 1950s.



Above: My parents on their wedding day in Gunnedah, November 7, 1959.

Recently, Mum and Dad celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.



Above and left: My parents on their honeymoon at Surfers Paradise in Queensland.






Below: One of my favorite pictures of my parents. I can tell by the setting that it was taken in a church hall of one of the numerous farming districts around Gunnedah. The occasion may have been the annual Kelvin Ball, sometime in the 1960s.



Right: Mum looking very glamorous in the early 1960s.



Below: Mum with friends in Gunnedah during the 1960s. I recognize in this photo the interior of the Gunnedah Town Hall, so the event was probably the annual Catholic Ball or some other type of social event.


Above: With Mum at left is Heather Sills, who with her husband John and their three children lived next door to my family on Beulah St., Gunnedah.



Above: Mum and Heather in 1981. For more images of the Sills family, click here.



Above: The Bayly family in 1967. From left: Chris, Dad, me, Mum, and Tim.



Above: I think this photo is just classic! Mum’s standing at right with women and children from our Gunnedah neighborhood. That’s Heather Sills standing at left. This photo was probably taken sometime in the mid 1960s.



Above: Mum and Dad at a wedding dinner - probably sometime in the late 1960s.

Oh . . . to see the famous singer that Mum was often told she looked like, click here.



Above (from left): Poppy Smith (Dad’s stepfather), me, and Mum at our home in Gunnedah - 1982.



Above: The Bayly family in 1984. From left: Me, Chris, Mum, Dad, and Tim.



Above: With Mum and Dad in Gunnedah - 1987. I was home from college for Easter.





Left: Mum and Dad at my older brother Chris’ wedding to Cathie Hardie in 1988.

Chris was my parents’ first of three sons. He was born in January 1963. I followed in October 1965, and my younger brother Tim was born in July 1967. Both my brothers and I were born and raised in Gunnedah.






Above: Mum keeping warm while watching her youngest son Tim play Australian Rules football in Wagga Wagga. Pictured with her from right is me, my older brother Chris, and Chris’ wife Cathie. This photo was taken by Dad in 1990. Tim was living at that time in Wagga Wagga and we’d all gathered there from different places (my parents from Gunnedah, Chris and Cathie from Melbourne, and I from Goulburn) to visit him and his fiancée Ros and her family.



Above: Mum and Dad with my brother Tim at his wedding to Ros in 1990.



Above: Mum with (from right) her mother Olive Sparkes (1906-1997), and mother-in-law Belle Smith (1919-2005) at Tim and Ros’ wedding - Wagga Wagga, 1990.



Above: Dad took this photo of my Mum and I with Fr. John Brandes during my parents’ July 2005 visit to the Twin Cities. John was kind enough to take my parents and I out to lunch one day and to later give us a tour of Northeast Minneapolis. In the photo above, we’re standing on the historic Stone Arch Bridge.



Above: Mum and I with some of my Minneapolis friends. From left: Sue Ann, Mum, me, Kathleen, Carol, and Ken.


Left: My parents with Rita McDonald, CSJ, and Marguerite Corcoran, CSJ, at my St. Paul home - July 2005. Rita and Marguerite were my “companions” during my two-year-long candidacy program to become a Consociate of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet - St. Paul Province.


Right: My parents with (at left) Tom and Darlene White and (at right) Alice and Chuck Rice.

Along with a number of other parents of gay children, the Whites and the Rices were co-founders of Catholic Rainbow Parents in July 2005. My parents, too, are Catholic Rainbow Parents - and have, over the years since my coming out, shown their love and support of me as a gay man. (See, for example, here, here and here.)



Above: While in the Twin Cites in July 2005, my parents joined me in attending the weekly Wednesday morning peace vigil outside of the corporate headquarters of Alliant TechSystems - the largest Minnesota-based weapons manufacturer and the primary supplier of landmines, cluster bombs, nuclear missile rocket motors, and depleted uranium (DU) munitions to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Pictured above from left: Marilyn Schmit; Betty McKenzie, CSJ; my Mum; Pepperwolf; and Brigid McDonald, CSJ.



Above: During my parents' July 2005 visit to the Twin Cities, Mum and I attended the weekly Wednesday afternoon peace vigil on the Lake St./Marshall Ave Bridge. This bridge spans the Mississippi River and links Minneapolis and St. Paul.



Above: With Mum and Dad in the Bavarian Alps - August 2005.



Above: Mum with her youngest grandchild Brendan - July 2006.

Mum and Dad’s other grandchildren are Ryan, Liam, Mitchell, Layne, and Sami.



Above: Mum and Dad - December 2008.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Congratulations, Mum and Dad!
Happy Birthday, Dad!
Catholic Rainbow (Australian) Parents
The Bayly Family - January 2009
The Bayly Family - July 2006
Good Times, Happy Memories

Sex as Mystery, Sex as Light (Part 1)

I recently bought a bookcase from a second-hand store just around the corner from where I live. I have a lot of books – probably too many books - and for quite some time now many of them have been stacked in piles all around the house. So it felt good to finally gather them all together in this new bookcase.

Another benefit was that in the process of bringing these books together I discovered a number of titles that I had completely forgotten about. One such title was Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. It’s a powerful and insightful book, and I’d like to share an excerpt from it in two installments here at The Wild Reed.

In today’s installment, Jensen, drawing on the insights of Audre Lorde, contends that when discussing ways of connecting to our erotic (and I’d say sacred) power, it’s not so much about specific sexual acts but rather how we relate to one another. Jensen then explores sex as mystery as opposed to something magical.

________________________________

The concept of the erotic is useful in thinking about the role of sex in human life.

But “erotic” should not be seen as merely a synonym for “sexual activity.” An influencial essay by the late poet Audre Lorde reminds us that . . . the erotic is a life force, a creative energy: “Those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.”

Lorde writes about expressing her erotic power in some ways that the culture does not define as sexual and others that the culture might call sexual; she writes of the erotic power flowing both in the act of writing a good poem and in “moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.” Whatever the expression of that erotic power, what matters is that “reorganizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.”

When I have talked about the quest to transcend that weary drama, people have often asked me what kind of sex acts I imagine will connect us to our erotic power. I always hesitate to respond, not simply because I’m unqualified to offer a sexual recipe book to people, but because I think it is the wrong question. It’s not a question of specific acts as much as it is a question of how we relate to each other. Toward the deepening of our understanding of self, other, and sex, I found two other distinctions helpful: magic vs. mystery, and heat vs. light.


Magic vs. Mystery

People often talk about sex as being magical, imbued with a capacity to take partners to some higher state of consciousness. A more formal sense of “sex magic” in various traditions attempts to turn sex into a spiritual ritual of sorts, though most people use the term “magic” or “magical” to describe something short of a sacred rite.

I find “magic” to be an unfortunate term to use in connection with sex, because it implies the act can be understood. Though “magic” is used to describe things that most people don’t understand, magic is a process that can at least potentially be understood. When magicians perform magic tricks, we may not at first understand how they were done, but we know that the magicians understand and that we could, with enough study, figure it out for ourselves. Magic depends on misdirection, on the performer training our attention away from the secret of the trick.

I don’t think of sex as magic, as something one can ever really learn. Rather than conceptualizing sex as tricks that can be analyzed, sex is more mystery, something beyond our capacity to understand. When we feel truly connected to another person and express that sexually – when we truly touch another person – it isn’t really magic; it’s not something we can fully grasp. It is mystery, and it is that mystery – or the hope we can connect to that mystery – that keeps us alive sexually. Without it, our sexual lives tend to fall into routine. Though magic can be entertaining, even it can become routine.


NEXT: Heat vs. Light


Recommended Off-site Link:
A Review of Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity - Terry Ornelas (Austin Chronicle, December 7, 2007).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Relationship: The Crucial Factor in Sexual Morality
Making Love, Giving Life
The Non-Negotiables of Human Sex
Human Sex: Weird and Silly, Messy and Sublime
A Wise and Thoughtful Study of Sexual Ethics
What Is It That Ails You?

Christmas Baubles

Bauble (noun)

1. A showy, usually cheap, ornament; trinket; gewgaw.
2. a jester’s scepter.


I recently brought my Christmas Tree up from the basement. It stays assembled all year in the darkened depths of my home. It’s not decorated, of course. All my garlands of tinsel and shiny baubles are neatly stored away in a nearby box.

I must say I love the more “vintage”-type baubles. They remind me of the Christmases of my childhood in Gunnedah, Australia – and especially of how my brothers and I would assemble and decorate Nanna Smith’s tree.

Anyway, following are some images of the decorations on my tree here in St. Paul, Minnesota. Each year I seem to find one or two more vintage-type ornaments – though I’m yet to find a star that I really like!












See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Out and About - December 2007
Out and About - November 2008
Out and About - November 2009

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Don Gorton on the Significance of Maurice

.

. . . and its relationship to the cause
of gay liberation

These tough economic times have meant a cut back on the number of magazines to which I subscribe. Two publications that I consider indispensable, however, are: The National Catholic Reporter and The Gay and Lesbian Review.

In the most recent issue of the latter is a well-written and illuminating piece by Don Gorton on E. M. Forster’s groundbreaking novel, Maurice. I’ve taken the liberty of reprinting Gorton’s article (in two installments) - accompanied by relevant links and by images from the novel’s 1987 film adaptation. (Maurice, described as “a rich filmgoing experience and one of the most beautiful films in all of queer cinema,” made the top ten in a recent poll conducted by AfterElton.com to ascertain the 50 Greatest Gay Movies of all time. These films are considered the most endearing and honest when it comes to celebrating and exploring lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender themes in cinema.)

So without further ado, here is Part 1 of Don Gorton’s excellent article, “Maurice and Gay Liberation.” Enjoy! (And, if you can, subscribe to the Gay and Lesbian Review! You won’t be disappointed).

_________________________________________

Maurice and Gay Liberation

By Don Gorton

The Gay and Lesbian Review
November-December 2009

Written in a burst of inspiration in 1913 and ’14 and set in the England of the Edwardian Age, E. M. Forster’s Maurice was “dedicated to a happier year,” though the author had no conception of when that might be. Forster shared the manuscript with trusted friends, including D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, T. E. Lawrence, Lytton Strachey, and Paul Cadmus, but would not publish the novel during his lifetime. Only in 1971, a year after Forster’s death, would the novel appear in print.

A hybrid of the traditional marriage novel and the bildungsroman genre, Maurice was revolutionary for its presentation of same-sex love culminating in a “happily ever after” ending. Forster later declared that the “happy ending was imperative. I shouldn’t have bothered to write [it] otherwise.” In the Edwardian Age the suggestion that gay people were capable of forming loving unions to last a lifetime was blasphemous, subversive, and probably criminal.

The theme of Maurice can be described as
essentially the search for a compatible social construct
by which the protagonist can understand himself
and go on to self-actualization.

Even in 1971, it was the happy ending, dubbed the “greenwood idyll,” that came in for the severest criticism when the novel was finally published. Indeed, the notion of Maurice abandoning his family, friends, and career to build a life for himself and Alec in the primeval woods of England, like Robin Hood’s merry men sheltering in Sherwood Forest, stretched the imagination of even the newly arisen gay liberation movement. Although difficult to defend as plausible fiction set in the years leading up to World War I, Forster’s insistence on the triumph of same-sex love, reflected in his hopeful dedication to “a happier year,” forms the foundation of Maurice’s significance for the modern GLBT civil rights movement. On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, which catalyzed that movement, and a century after the Edwardian Age, an examination of the novel’s relationship to the cause of gay liberation is timely.

Maurice is the prototypical gay-affirming coming-of-age novel. The title character, a conventional upper-middle-class Edwardian in every respect down to his class snobbery, confronts unconscious desires that begin to make themselves felt in adolescence. It is not until his second year at Cambridge University, when he meets Clive Durham, that Maurice begins his long, arduous climb to self-understanding. His realization that he’s attracted to other males, weeks after Clive confesses that he has fallen in love with him, comes only after vehement denials and a bout of “madness.”

Maurice is the prototypical
gay-affirming coming-of-age novel.

Maurice differs strikingly from post-Stonewall gay novels in that the protagonist from the beginning lacks access to any conventional discourse with which to frame his same-sex desire. In the aftermath of the highly publicized trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895, English society doubled down on the view that “the love that dare not speak its name” was something so vile that it couldn’t even be mentioned. Whether Maurice looked to education, law, medicine, or religion, homosexuality was spoken of only elliptically, in the merest “scraps of language,” which made the condemnation of it all the more baneful. An unreflective man ill-equipped to comprehend this challenge, Maurice spends most of his time in a “muddle.”

The theme of Maurice can be described as essentially the search for a compatible social construct by which the protagonist can understand himself and go on to self-actualization. At Cambridge, Maurice becomes acquainted with a character named Risley (based on Forster’s Bloomsbury friend Lytton Strachey), who challenges the compulsory silence imposed on unconventional subjects by insisting that people should “talk, talk, talk.” Risley stands as an antidote to the repression of authentic feelings, including those that are taboo, and it is through Risley that Maurice meets Clive.

Clive had found a model of homosexual affirmation in the culture of ancient Greece and the writings of Plato, and adhered to the stylized ideal of male bonding acclaimed in The Symposium and The Phaedrus. Clive assists Maurice’s self-discovery by giving him the referent he seizes upon when he says “I have always been like the Greeks and didn’t know it.”

Clive extols homosexuality as a higher form of love, a spiritual connection that must be left physically unconsummated to uphold its surpassing nobility. Yet a love so beaten down by over-intellectualization will starve for lack of sustenance. Maurice is left to burn, while Clive, according to the narrator, somehow becomes attracted to women. Commentators have labored to make sense of the cryptic and enigmatic report of Clive’s re-orientation, with the view that he is yielding to proscription and class pressure being the most favored. To give Clive’s sudden change context, Merchant and Ivory added a scene to their film version in which Risley is entrapped by a handsome police decoy and convicted of “gross indecency” in a case parallel to that of Oscar Wilde. The fear spawned by Risley’s ruination motivates Clive in the film version to recant his love for Maurice and seek a wife.

The loss of Clive devastates Maurice, who’s left to struggle with his homosexuality without his partner and mentor. Three sexual encounters with other men alarm him. In hope of changing, he confides to his doctor that he’s an “unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort,” but is told his situation is “rubbish” and must not be discussed. He turns to an American psychiatrist, who coolly labels his condition “congenital homosexuality,” which can be “cured” in half of the cases he sees. Hypnotic suggestion is this doctor’s methodology, but the treatment is doomed once Maurice has his first sexual liaison with Clive’s lusty young under-gamekeeper, Alec.



Alec energetically pursues Maurice as he continues to visit Clive’s country estate Penge, chasing after his carriage, grabbing him to get away from the local rector, and then watching the window of the room where Maurice is sleeping. Scarcely aware of what he’s doing, on two separate nights Maurice calls out his window: “Come!” On the second invitation, Alec climbs the conveniently available ladder and joins Maurice in bed.

To find their way to fulfillment, Maurice and Alec must get past the class difference. Alec thinks Maurice is treating him disrespectfully by not answering his letters, while Maurice grows fearful that he’s being set up for blackmail. The climactic encounter tellingly occurs in the Bloomsbury section of London, at the British Museum, where the two thrash out powerful and warring emotions flanked by Assyrian winged bulls. Spending the night together afterward, they progress toward understanding their love, with the “flesh educating the spirit,” as Forster describes it. Maurice formulates a plan, and the men make heroic sacrifices to be together. At last glimpsing self-realization, Maurice takes his leave of Clive, and he and Alec disappear into England’s “greenwood,” never again to separate. In a counterpoint to the happy ending, we catch a glimpse of a wistful Clive, toward the end of his life, haunted by a mystical vision of his lost lover beckoning him from an eternal Cambridge spring to “come.”

Maurice asserts the truth
that gays cannot become fully human,
fully alive, unless we embrace who we are.

When Maurice declares his love for Alec to Clive’s “thin sour disapproval,” he speaks with such an uncharacteristic clarity that Clive asks him, “Who taught you to talk like this?” Maurice’s reply, “You, if anyone,” begs the question, because Clive himself has never attained this kind of self-awareness. In fact, the unmentioned source of Forster’s idea for an enduring love “outside class, without relations or money” was the relationship of proto-gay-activist Edward Carpenter and his working-class partner George Merrill, who lived at Milthorpe in rural Derbyshire. Carpenter, in turn, took his inspiration from Walt Whitman and the ideal of a democratic “love of comrades.” We know this connection only from Forster’s “terminal note,” in which he described an affectionate touch on the backside by Merrill at Milthorpe as the spark for Maurice.

“Muddled” Maurice would have been unfamiliar with Carpenter or Whitman, so the four corners of the novel do not fully explain how he came to the insights that enabled him to plan a lifelong relationship with Alec. With an inspired push from the author, Maurice travels the last leg of his metaphoric journey from valley to mountaintop in an unseen leap. Through this brilliant authorial intrusion, Maurice foretells a post-Stonewall liberationist sensibility. Forster affirms gay self-acceptance and same-sex love that can thrive despite social reprobation. Maurice asserts the truth that gays cannot become fully human, fully alive, unless we embrace who we are. Forster bears witness to the centrality of coming to terms with one’s homosexuality in the formation of character for gay people. In the England of Forster’s construction, acceptance of being gay can take one outside of the dreary, suburban conventions that stifle authenticity. Homosexuality offers an escape from the suffocating English class system, anathematized as toxic to healthy relationships and human happiness.


Forster exposes the willful ignorance of his times when he has Clive announce that “[a]s long as they talk of the unspeakable vice of the Greeks they can’t expect fair play.” Elsewhere, he lays bare the scientific backwardness of earlier medical understandings of homosexuality and argues that it’s useless and pointless to try to change someone’s sexual orientation. With subtle irony Forster pillories the pretentiousness of established religion and deftly exposes the incongruities pervading society’s attitudes toward sex. His fiction provides a gay-positive discourse for individuals needing a framework to comprehend who they are, the idea of same-sex relationships, and a place for themselves in society.


NEXT: Part 2


See also the previous Wild Reed post:
Celebrating Two Pioneers

America's New Civil Rights Battle

I found the following excerpts from a commentary by Richard Cohen (pictured at right) on Michael Hamer’s always informative blog, Michael-in-Norfolk.

I must say that when first reading it I was struck by the realization that, like the Republican leadership (which Cohen writes about), the clerical leadership of the Roman Catholic Church are totally irrational in their fixation on and fear of all things gay – especially gay marriage. (Possible reasons for this are discussed previously at The Wild Reed here, here, here, and here.)

________________________________

The truth is that if Maj. Nidal Hasan, the accused killer of 13 people at Fort Hood, had entered the officers club there with a nice handbag on his arm, perhaps a Gucci tote, he would have been out of the Army by the end of the week. But since he was merely anti-social, a misfit, an incompetent psychiatrist and a likely Islamic fanatic, he was retained and promoted. This says something about America. On the subject of gays, we are a tad nuts ourselves.

That irrationality comes at me on an almost daily basis. One of the most prominent and strongly held planks of the Republican Party’s right wing - its only wing, it seems - is opposition to same-sex marriage. I know this from the sheer huffy-and-puffiness of commentators such as Bill O’Reilly.

In a recent column, O’Reilly directed us to read something called “The Manhattan Declaration,” . . . the longest section of the declaration - applies to same-sex marriage. It amounts, really, to a confession of confusion, a cry by the perplexed who have come to think that same-sex marriage is at the core - the rotten core - of much that ails our society. Everything from divorce to promiscuity is addressed in this section without any acknowledgment that same-sex marriage, like all marriage, is a way of containing promiscuity (or at least of inducing guilt) and that not having it would not reduce promiscuity in the least. This I state as a fact.

The reasoning in the declaration is so contorted that it brings to mind the dire warnings from years past of what would happen if blacks and whites were allowed to marry - not to mention similar references to what the Almighty purportedly intended.

In the end, the courts will decide this question. That’s what they’re there for. Then, I suspect, wedding bells will ring through the land - and, after a pause, America will wonder what the fuss was all about.

To read Richard Cohen’s commentary, “The Fight for Gay Marriage is America’s New Civil Right Battle,” in its entirety, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Same Premise
Why Civil Rights Leader Julian Bond Marches for Gay Rights
The Same People
Steve Chapman: “Time is On the Side of Gay Marriage”
What the Republican Leadership & the Catholic Hierarchy Have in Common
“Fr. Tony” and the U.S. Bishops’ “Compulsion” re. Gay Marriage
First They Take Manhattan
Timothy Kincaid Reviews the Manhattan Declaration
A Christian Case for Same-Sex Marriage
Dr. Erik Steele and the “Naked Truth on Same-Sex Marriage”
John Corvino on the “Always and Everywhere” Argument
Patrick Ryan on the “Defense of Traditional Marriage” Argument
The Changing Face of “Traditional Marriage”

Out and About - November 2009

.

Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky,
how beautiful it is?
All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness
there is a poem, there is a song.
Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring.
When the spring comes, it again fills the tree with
the music of many leaves,
which in due season fall and are blown away.
And this is the way of life.

– Krishnamurti

Above: On the evening of Tuesday, November 3, I hosted a “dinner and movie night” for my friends (from left) John, Rick, Brian, Jairo, and Bob. It was actually the first of two dinner and movie nights for this month! On November 3 we watched that perennial gay favorite, Auntie Mame.

And why is Auntie Mame a “gay favorite”? Well, I think the film’s camp sensibility is particularly appealing to many gay men. It’s a sensibility conveyed through over-the-top outfits, sets, and situations. (Hmm . . . Catholic High Mass, anyone?). And then there is Mame’s efforts to remain ever open, accepting, loving, and defiant in the face of individuals and societal forces that seek to restrict, censor, and pigeon-hole out of ignorance and prejudice. I think gay people can definitely relate to such efforts, to such resistance.

I appreciate Gary F. Taylor’s Amazon.com review of this classic film:

The Patrick Dennis novel was a runaway bestseller – and it was soon followed by a stage version starring Rosalind Russell, who was born to play the madcap Mame in this story of an eccentric, fast-living society woman of the 1920s who “inherits” her nephew when her brother died. Determined to “open doors” for her adoring nephew, Mame exposes him to everything from bootleg gin to oddball characters – all the while doing battle with her nephew’s ultra-conservative trustee, who is equally determined that the boy’s life remain free of “certain influences.”

This is a knockout show, and Rosalind Russell delivers a knockout performance in it – easily her finest comedy performance since 1939’s “The Women.” She is extremely well supported by the sadly under-acknowledged Coral Brown in the role of Vera Charles, an actress who passes out in Mame’s apartment with considerable regularity, and Forrest Tucker as the Southern gentleman who becomes her knight in shining honor; the supporting cast, which includes Fred Clark, Peggy Cass (particularly memorable as Agnes Gooch), Jan Handzlik, Roger Smith, and Joanna Barnes is equally flawless.

The infamous “production code” was still somewhat in force when “Auntie Mame” was filmed, and consequently several of the play’s most famous lines had to be re-written – but this scarcely gets in the way of Russell and company, and director DaCosta offers a brilliant compromise between the art of cinema and the “set piece” nature of the stage show. The production values are rich, the score is memorable, and everything about the show is a tremendous amount of fun; by the time it ends, you’ll wish that Auntie Mame was yours.

Indeed! (Although, truth be told, my friend Jairo wasn’t in the least bit enamored by the madcap comic style of the film!)



Above: Standing at left with (from left) Philip Lowe, Jr.; Dr. Simon Rosser; and CPCSM co-founder David McCaffrey at the November 17 CPCSM event “Holding the Courage Apostolate Accountable: The Catholic Church, Homosexuality, and Reparative Therapy.”

For more about this event (and the brouhaha over a quote attributed to me in the Star Tribune article about it), see the previous Wild Reed posts:
Gay Catholics, the Courage Apostolate, and Reparative Therapy
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Courage
For the Record
My Response to Archbishop Flynn




Above: My friends Phil (right) and his parents Noelle and John, with whom I shared a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner on the evening of November 26.

Left: Phil putting the finishing touches to the delicious dessert he made.

My meal with Phil and his parents was actually the second Thanksgiving dinner I enjoyed! On Thanksgiving eve I shared a great meal with my friends Ken and Carol; Paul, Carrie, and Cass; and Kathleen, Sue Ann, Tom, and Marianne at Ken and Carol’s home in Minneapolis.



Above: The inspirational Polly Mann at her 90th birthday celebration in Minneapolis on November 28, 2009.

Right: With friends Mary and Rita at Polly’s birthday party.


My dear friend Polly is a longtime justice and peace activist and co-founder of Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) – a non-profit organization dedicated to dismantling systems of militarism and global oppression, and one of the most active and influential justice and peace groups in the Midwest. Not surprisingly, she’s been described as a “relentless speaker of truth to power.”

For more images and commentary on Polly and her 90th birthday celebration, click here.



Above: My Christmas Tree, which I put up the night after Thanksgiving.



Above: The second “dinner and movie night” I hosted this month took place earlier this evening, November 30. From left: Freeman, John, Bob, and Brain.

We watched tonight the 1961 British film Victim, starring Dirk Bogarde. It’s notable in film history for being the first English language film to use the word “homosexual.”

Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video notes the following about Victim.

A landmark film for its bold, complex, and sophisticated treatment of homosexuality, this exceptional thriller was quite controversial in its day and was instrumental in changing the existing British law that made being a homosexual a criminal act. Bogarde stars as Melville Farr, a married homosexual barrister who risks his reputation by confronting a gang of blackmailers responsible for the death of his former lover (Peter EcEnery). Sylvia Syms is also remarkable in the role of Farr’s supportive wife. Bogarde, whose matinee idol reputation was shaken by the portrayal, always maintained that accepting the role of Melville Farr was “the wisest decision I ever made in my cinematic life.”

For more about Victim, see the previous Wild Reed post:
Dirk Bogarde (Part III)

Recommended Off-site Link:
The Private Dirk Bogarde, Part 2 [1/8] - Arena (YouTube.com).



Above: Bob, John, Freeman and me - November 30, 2009.

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colours are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and it’s content.

– Lin Yutang

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.

– Andrew Wyeth

Missing Comments

I recently discovered that there are missing comments from previous posts. Take for instance this post. It says at the bottom that there are four comments, when in fact there are only two - both from me addressing “Mark” whose comments are now missing!

Does anyone know what’s going on?

Could Mark have deleted his own comments? If so, why does it still say there are four comments?

If he didn’t delete them, who did? Are they gone forever?

If anyone can explain what’s going on it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Thoughts of Waiting . . . and a Resolution

I appreciate the following Advent reflection by Sallie Latkovich, CSJ, taken from the Congregation of St. Joseph publication, Winter’s Wisdom: Advent 2009. For one thing, it renews my commitment to deepen my prayer life this Advent. And how does it do this? Simply by reminding me that God is indeed waiting for me to create sacred time and space whereby I can immerse myself in God’s loving and transforming presence.

One time that I do this is before retiring for the night. During this time I sit before my altar (pictured above) in my attic room. The icon that serves as the focal point of this sacred space is that of the Compassionate Christ (right) - his arms extended in loving welcome.

Often my prayer is one of silence, of simply letting go and allowing myself to be open to God’s presence within and around me. God waits for me, I know, to enter this sacred time and space. And I wait for the awareness of God’s eternal presence to rise up within me. I try to think of this experience as creating time and space to be with my Beloved. And, really, that’s what it is.

The challenge, I’ve discovered, is in establishing and maintaining the practice of creating that special time and space within which my Beloved and I can experience our shared, intimate, and sacred embrace. So many things distract and keep me away from such intentional practice, even though I know I’m better for it.

Strange as it may seem, it’s a bit like physical exercise. I often find myself putting off doing a work-out, even though I know I feel better once I get started into one.

So this Advent I’ve going to do my very best to develop and maintain both a renewed spiritual practice and a physical exercise routine! Yes, I’m going to get into both spiritual and physical shape!

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The mention of Advent always stirs thoughts of waiting . . . waiting for Christmas. Theologians always speak of reflecting on the three ways of Christ’s coming: in history in Bethlehem, in the daily events of our lives, and the second coming in the future.

I’ve been thinking that we’ve got it all wrong. We need not wait for God. God is always present, always with us. That’s what the name Emmanuel means: God-with-us. And, that’s the primary truth we hear in the Scriptures. God created us, and calls us into relationship. God is indeed present with us, and especially in the person of Jesus the Christ.

No, this Advent I’ve come to see that it’s GOD who waits for US . . .




. . . waits for us to notice that we indeed created by God. We are born with unique gifts and qualities as well as deficiencies and lack of qualities. God only sees our goodness, and waits for us to notice too.

. . . waits for us to notice the myriad ways in which God is with us, always. We know the Creator in the beauty and amazing capacities of creation, both earth and human. We know the Creator when we experience love. We know the Creator when we cannot explain or understand mystery.

. . . waits for us to notice when we observe people acting in the image of God: in covenant with one another, both those known and unknown, both those alike and those very different.

. . . waits for us to notice the emptiness in our hearts that can only be filled by God’s own Self.

. . . in the season of Advent, as Christmas approaches, God waits for us to notice the wonder and innocence of little children. How God must long for us grownups to be more like them, without guile.

It is true that in Advent we wait; but really, it is God who waits for us. May we savor and revel in that reality.

- Sallie Latkovich, CSJ
Cleveland, OH

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Advent Thoughts
My Advent Prayer for the Church
Thomas Merton on “the Advent Mystery”
The Centered Life as an Advent Life
Advent: Renewing Our Connection to the Sacred

Recommended Off-site Link:
Some Thoughts for the First Sunday of Advent - Colleen Colkoch-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, November 29, 2009).

Images: Michael J. Bayly.