CHRONICLE OF AN ANNOUNCED GAY DISASTER

at least I think they understood it, no one has ever talked about it, neither us nor them, but they should have understood it, I think. Among the friends there are some very outgoing, both guys and girls, and some a little more reserved. I and my "companion" we are radically secular, I mean that we are not believers, the Church seems to us something completely foreign and even hostile. With this Pope, perhaps a little less, but it is still a world very far from our way of seeing things. In the group of friends there are also Catholics, let's say so "normal" that is without too much enthusiasm but who still recognize themselves in those environments, but there is also a guy, whom I will call Paul here (because he always mentions St. Paul!) With whom the speech, both on my part and on the part of my "partner" has always been very difficult. He had had a girlfriend for years, always known in a Catholic environment. I would like to make a premise: my "companion" and I don’t feel Catholics but we don’t hate anyone and don’t have radically secular and priest-eating presuppositions. We also met priests worthy of the utmost respect, I mean worthy of the utmost respect even from non-believers like us, because in the end what matters is not what you say but what you do. I say this to clarify that we don’t have a spirit of repulsion towards all Catholic circles, because saying Catholic can mean everything and the opposite of everything, as on the other hand also saying gay can mean everything and the opposite of everything.

I go back to Paul. Ever since I met him, Paul has shown me a kind of detachment, let's say of splendid isolation. There was also talk, every now and then, but only about trivial issues, he, in the group, had his friends, the most radically Catholic ones, and since he had heard me say my opinion and didn’t like what I said, he kept me at a distance, but it was only he who behaved like that, with his "Catholic" friends I had an excellent relationship, we joked and talked about everything, with him no, the dialogue was minimal and limited to obvious things, he did not mix with those whose thoughts were more or less different from his opinions. Then my partner joined the group and Paul had a minimum relationship with him, because my partner is much more prudent than me, and having understood immediately who Paul was, he was careful not to say what he thought. My partner considered Paul a somehow closed guy, a little fixated on religion, but all in all a "pretty nice" guy. With our group of friends we didn't say we were a gay couple, I think most of the friends didn't care about it, so we didn't talk about it, but we had with each other a behavior a bit too loose to be just a couple of friends. Paul always came with his girlfriend but he did things that I didn't understand and that bothered me, he scolded his girl in public for things that seemed completely meaningless to me, he silenced her by making her look stupid,

I asked myself why the girl tolerated all this, if I had done with my partner the tenth part of what Paul did with his girl, my partner would have made me fly out of the window. One day we begin to talk about life as a couple, "normal" Catholic friends said things that were all in all acceptable or almost even for me and my partner, but those things at a certain point triggered Paul who left in a hurry against a girl who dared to argue that premarital experiences are fundamental and can avoid "bad marriages". Paul jumped at the very expression “wrong marriages” and began to quote Saint Paul. At which my partner and I exchanged a look of understanding, as if to say: "But this really comes from the Moon!" Then the girl told him that one must not passively suffer the attitudes of parents and at this point Paul got really warm saying that "honor your father and mother" is a commandment and that we must never forget it, etc. etc.. A girl said to him: "if my mother wants to meddle with my business and wants to tell me what guy I have to put up with, I can't sit and listen to her ruining my life, she has had her life, mine is mine!" Then Paul slipped on the gay topic and said really absurd things, that straight couples must be "serious" because they have to collaborate in God's plan by putting children into the world and they cannot do "like gays" who only think about "having fun". This expression really got on my nerves, I exchanged a knowing look with my partner and then I said to Paul: “Do you realize what a nonsense you are saying? But do you have gay friends? " He looked at me and said, "I've never had gay friends!" and I said to him: “No! It's not true! You have a gay friend and it's me!" My partner intervened and said:" You have two gay friends, the other is me!" Project, you won't believe it, but Paul thought we had agreed to make fun of him and he didn't believe in the slightest that we were gay… for him, gays are just another zoological species. Then, carried away by his incredulity, the others also considered our declaring ourselves as a way of making fun of Paul. All this happened about two years ago. For a few months now, things have changed a bit, Paul considers my partner and me to be two jokers friends, but 100% straight, otherwise he would never have accepted our friendship, but we had the opportunity to talk to him even a little more seriously. Project, my partner and I are really thinking that Paul may be gay. He always goes around with the girl behind him, or rather in tow, but I see our straight friends what behavior they have with their girls, well Paul's behavior is totally different: never a caress, a cuddle, but never even a nice word for the girl, who evidently doesn't count for anything in Paul's world, or rather counts as something that brings him back to a heterosexual model, with whom, however, it is evident that he has nothing to do. My straight friends, both guys and girls also talk about sex, they don't talk too much about it but it happens and they talk about it as the most obvious thing in the world, Paul never talks about it, he avoids the topic in a systematic way. The others talk about homosexuality as well. In Paul's speeches the words: gay or homosexual never appear, not even by mistake and the call to religion is only seen in terms of restraint and limitation, never in terms of liberation or enthusiasm. I talked about it with my "partner" and we came to the conclusion that we could "maybe" tell him about us, assuming something that wasn't granted at all, that is that he was able to understand that our statement was not a joke. We also tried, but every time he noticed that something like this was about to happen he disappeared immediately. My partner and I don’t go to church, but a couple of our friends who go to the parish instead told us about a sermon given by one of the priests who said that “marriage is the remedy for concupiscence” but did not refer the speech to straight people, as usually, but he generalized it by saying that “marriage is also the remedy for homosexuality”, an expression that manifests the most radical ignorance in matters of sexuality. The couple of our friends who were present had the impression that the speech was not generic but that it was meant for Paul who was there in the front row and didn’t move an inch until the end. My two straight friends probably thought what my partner and I had suspected, but in a similar situation what do you do? Do you face Paul directly? Or do you tell the girl to be careful and figure out whether or not it’s worth going further? My partner and I talked about Paul with this couple of friends and they told us that the priest who had said those things was considered a "somewhat strange" and problematic character even by the parish priest who had tried to limit his sphere of action. Everyone in the parish avoided him, except Paul, who was enthusiastic about him. What evidence did we have? Virtually no hard evidence, but the four of us had the same feeling. We concluded that taking Paul head on was not feasible and that we could only bring the discussion to these topics to see Paul's reactions, and we did, but there was no reaction at all. The straight couple of friends started from the need for absolute honesty in marriage, saying that each of the spouses must know everything about the other and that deceiving the spouse means using him/her and ruining his/her life, but Paul was a rubber wall, he didn’t even listen. We noticed another thing, for quite some time, every now and then Paul made some shots at gays even in our presence because at the beginning he thought that we were actually straight, then the phrases about gays disappeared completely and the topic was 100% censored. The straight couple tells me that Paul says the same things that the somewhat strange priest says and that the idea of marriage as an "ideal of chastity" is starting to become one of Paul's workhorses. One day my partner and I talked seriously about it and decided to take action, but before putting our project into practice, the straight couple of our friends told us that "during mass" the priest a little strange announced the date of the marriage of Paul with his girlfriend. At which, after having meditated for a long time, thinking that by now Paul was no longer recoverable, we decided to desist, and we said to ourselves: “Can we prevent an announced disaster? … Unfortunately not! Everyone is free, even to make mistakes and do damage.“ We also told ourselves that basically we didn't have any proof or admission from Paul, but seeing his face after the marriage banns, the answer was more than obvious. A guy who's about to get married should be beaming but he wasn't like that at all. Paul somehow knew he was going to trap himself and was going to throw the girl too into the same trap. Paul told us that he intended to limit the ceremony only to close family members, evidently he knew well that for his friends, and in particular for four of his friends, going to the wedding would be embarrassing and therefore he avoided any embarrassing situation a priori. The wedding was officiated outside the parish by the somewhat strange priest. Of course, our assessments can be completely wrong ... we will simply never know, because " What God has joined together, no person is to separate!" Although sometimes this phrase is a real blasphemy. After the wedding we didn't get any news about more about Paul and his wife. They have disappeared into thin air.

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This email (some contents of which have been deliberately omitted for privacy reasons) would not in itself require any comment. I will therefore limit myself to a very few lines. As I read the story, I was reminded of the romantic relationship between the poets Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake. Fitz-Greene Halleck (July 8th, 1790 – November 19th,1867) was five years older than his friend Joseph Rodman Drake (August 7th, 1795 – September 21 th, 1820).Drake in 1816, still very young, married Sarah (daughter of Henry Eckford, a naval architect) with whom he had a daughter. He died of consumption at the age of 25. Halleck never married, he fell in love at the age of 19 with a young Cuban, Carlos Menie, to whom he had dedicated some of his first poems. Hallock, 1) Halleck’s biographer, hypothesizes according to the common sense and a lot of evidences, that Halleck was in love with his friend Drake. James Grant Wilson underlined the way in which Halleck, who was present at the wedding as the best friend of the groom (a formal role at the time), described the wedding: 

«[Drake] has married, and, as his wife’s father is rich, I imagine he will write no more. He was poor, as poets, of course, always are, and offered himself a sacrifice at the shrine of Hymen to shun the ’pains and penalties’ of poverty. I officiated as groomsman, though much against my will. His wife was good natured, and loves him to distraction. He is perhaps the handsomest man in New York, — a face like an angel, a form like an Apollo; and, as I well knew that his person was the true index of his mind, I felt myself during the ceremony as committing a crime in aiding and assisting such a sacrifice.» 2) 

Here we are dealing in all likelihood with a homosexual who has chosen the path of marriage for essentially economic reasons, in the case of Paul’s story the marriage “seems” to be due to religious reasons, but it is really obscene in the first place that a priest encourages a homosexual guy to marry a woman with the idea that marriage is even the remedy for homosexuality! But perhaps it is even more obscene that attempts are made to consecrate such a union, with the words “What God has joined together, no person is to separate.” A phrase that has a very important meaning that has been distorted and abused to justify an abuse of the marriage piloted by a priest. If it is true that the parish priest had noticed that something was wrong, it is also true that he didn’t do anything to avoid such an obscenity. “He who has ears, let him hear.” 1) Hallock, John Wesley Matthew. “The First Statue: Fitz-Greene Halleck and Homotextual Representation in Nineteenth-Century America.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Temple University; DAI, Vol. 58-06A (1997): 2209, Temple University. And also Hallock, John Wesley Matthew, “American Byron: Homosexuality & The Fall Of Fitz-Greene Halleck” (Madison, Wisconsin: U. of Wisconsin Press, 2000).2) James Grant Wilson, “The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck”. New York: Appleton and Company, 1869: 184.

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GAY MARRIAGE: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

This post is aimed at comparing two different opinions about homosexual marriage, the first one emerging from an inter-religious conversation between Jorge Mario Bergoglio  then-archbishop of Buenos Aires (now pope Francis), and rabbi Skorka, and also from an interview with Monsignor Juan Vicente Còrdoba, secretary of the Columbian episcopal conference, and the other coming from the legislative solutions definitively adopted, on April 23, 2013, by the French National Assembly.

The comments in square brackets used inside quotations are by the author of this post.

Bergoglio and Homosexuality

On March 13, 2013, the day of the election of Pope Bergoglio, GayProject published a letter addressed by Cardinal Bergoglio to the Buenos Aires Carmelite nuns in 2010, when the same-sex marriage law was going to be approved in Argentina. http://gayproject2.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/pope-bergoglio-and-homosexuals/ .

In 2010 a book by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, titled “Sobre el cielo y la tierra” was published by Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires.

This book is a compilation of the conversations between the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis and Abraham Skorka, rabbi and rector of the Latin-American Rabbinic Seminary in Buenos Aires. The inter-religious conversations are about different topics, such as God, fundamentalism, atheists, death, holocaust, homosexuality and capitalism and took place alternatively in the bishop seat and in the Jewish community Benei Tivka.

In the sixteenth chapter, “Sobre el cielo y la tierra” deals with “marriage between people of the same sex”. So rabbi Skorka opens the conversation: “In my opinion, same-sex marriage has been considered in a very partial manner, compared to the depth that the topic deserves. Cohabiting same-sex couples are matter of fact and are entitled to legal solutions to problems such as pensions, inheritance etc.. (which may be part of a new juridical figure), but equating homosexual couples to heterosexual ones is something totally different. It’s not just a belief question, but we must be aware that this problem concerns one of the most delicate elements our culture is based on.”

Bergoglio replies: “Religion, being at the service of the people, in entitled to express its opinion. And if somebody asks me for advice, I have the right to give it to him. Sometimes the religious minister calls attention to certain points of the private or public life because he is the mentor of the faithful.” Up to this point we can find the usual reaffirmation of the duties and  obviously also of  the consequential rights that religions are entitled to claim, nevertheless Bergoglio introduces a new element pointing out what “is not for religious minister, as he doesn’t have the right to interfere with anybody’s private life, and that’s for sure. If, during the Creation, God faced the risk of making us free, who am I to interfere? We condemn the redundancy of spiritual influence, which occurs when a minister imposes the guideline, the behaviour to follow, depriving people of freedom”. These statements, however, are not intended for possible approval of choices different from those suggested (not imposed) by the church because Bergoglio is quick to point out that “God let us free even to commit a sin. Talking clearly about values, limits, commandments is something absolutely necessary, of course, but spiritual or pastoral interference is not allowed”.

Skorka reminds that in Judaism there are some currents in which prescriptive approaches prevail, but he underlines that in Jewish Law there’s no place for homosexuality, and he adds: “On the other hand, I respect any individual who maintains a reserved and intimate approach to the theme”, then he refers to the Argentinian law of 2010 about civil marriage between same-sex people and access to adoptions by same-sex couples; he reminds the worth that scientists like Freud or Lévi-Strauss attribute to the prohibition of incestuous relationships and to sexual ethic, and he admits to be worried about the consequences for society that laws like that approved in Argentina in 2010 can produce.

Bergoglio considers the Argentinian law approved in 2010 as an “anthropological regression”, since it weakens “an institution millennia old, created in accordance with nature and anthropology”; this way the rejection of homosexual unions considered as equivalent to marriage loses the quality of religious precept, in the name of which church is not allowed to deprive anybody of his freedom, and  assumes the meaning of safeguard of the natural law in opposition to anything unnatural, and also of safeguard of a principle of anthropology, which affirms that heterosexuality is an intrinsic characteristic of the man as such.

Bergoglio then states something apparently open-minded: “Fifty years ago, co-living before marriage was not as common as nowadays. It was something degrading. Then things changed. Today, co-living before marriage, although it’s not right from a religious point of view, does not have any more the extremely negative social weight it had fifty years ago. It’s a sociological fact that clearly is not comparable to the completeness and  greatness of marriage, an institution millennia old that has to be defended. […] We too consider very important what you have just highlighted, that is the base of the Natural Law mentioned by the Bible: the union between a man and a woman”. Shorly, Bergoglio underlines that Bible recognizes the “real” Nature Law, which is identified, in sexual matter, as heterosexuality.

Bergoglio continues: “homosexuality has always existed. The island of Lesbos, for example, was well known for having homosexual women. But it had never happened in history that somebody tried to give it the same status as marriage. It was tolerated or not tolerated, it was appreciated or not appreciated, but never considered equal.” Bergoglio doesn’t even conceive that homosexuality can be considered equated with heterosexuality, because he said it doesn’t embody the Natural Law (strange concept of nature!).

Bergoglio continues with a statement: “We know that during some epochal evolutions the phenomenon of homosexuality sensibly increased”. Actually, in those periods of changing the repressive power of some institutions like Catholic Church weakened, that’s why homosexuality became more visible.

Bergoglio adds: “But in our age, it is the first time we face the problem of assimilating it to marriage, and I consider this as a bad value and an anthropological regression”.

Immediately after, Bergoglio presents the most convincing argument, according to him,: “A private union doesn’t hurt anybody nor the society. Instead, if this union is considered under the category of marriage and the right of adoption is allowed, there is the risk of damaging children. Each individual needs a male father and a female mother who help him shaping his own identity”. The idea of homo-parenthood as something dangerous is taken for granted, though many serious studies about the issue have demonstrated that those are only prejudices.

Bergoglio adds: “I insist: our opinion on marriage of same-sex people does not have a religious basis but anthropological”, and for this reason the limitation of the sphere of the individual freedom would be justified as well as the non-equalization of homosexuals with heterosexuals.

Bergoglio reminds that, for the first time after 18 years of being bishop, he had to draw the attention of a public officer when the major of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, refused to appeal against a first grade judgement that had authorized a homosexual marriage. But Bergoglio points out, twice, that he never talked about homosexuals or used derogatory terms against homosexuals and remarks that he confined himself to the legal issue.

Skorka then widens the subject on the natural law and he reminds that “in the discussion before the approval of the law, somebody invoked the “natural law” thanks to which Nature has in itself the rule leading the human behaviour. So, God himself infused this rule in the Creation. Now, a homosexual may rightly object it was God or Nature that made him that way. On the other hand, somebody declared that love between homosexual people has a multiple nature, because female love and male love co-exist together, although this does not implies a suitable condition to create a family”. These last statements of the rabbi, related to a generic “somebody”, are in fact quite curious.

Skorka introduces the question of the parental figures in the educative field and Bergoglio answers that “generally, people say that it would be better for a kid to be grown by a same-sex couple rather than living in an orphanage or in an institute for minors. Of course, neither of these situations is optimal”.

Bergoglio searches for a different solution which could allow to avoid adoption by same-sex couples. He states that “the problem is that the State does not do what it should, […] We have to consider the situations od children who live in public structures or institutes where everything is done but recover those children. NGOs, the different religious confessions or other kinds of organisations should take care of those minors”, but Bergoglio concludes: “a mistake from the State’s side [the excess of bureaucracy and corruption] does not justify another mistake by the same State [the legitimation of adoptions for same-sex couples]”. In this sense, if regulations and procedures for the adoptions were speeded up and bureaucratic rules “whose actual application encourages corruption” were eliminated, there would be no justification for adoptions by same-sex couples.

Skorka goes on quoting Bible and Maimonides, looking for images that compare the relationship between God and men to the matrimonial relationship between a man and a woman, then he concludes: “A homosexual person loves somebody he knows, a fellow. It is easy for a man to know another man, on the contrary it is much more difficult to know a woman, because he needs to decode her. A man perfectly knows what another man feels, and a woman perfectly knows what happens in the body and in the mind of another woman. Discovering the other sex, instead, is a true challenge”.

Bergoglio ends up this way: “Usually, in the homily for a marriage I tell the groom he must make her more woman, and I tell the bride she must make him more man”.

Monsignor Juan Vicente Còrdoba and the adoptions by homosexual people

Here below you can read, translated into English, an article appeared on the Columbian newspaper “El Tiempo”. The article is titled: “Monsignor Juan Vicente Còrdoba thinks that entrusting two boys to a homosexual man was a mistake”.http://m.eltiempo.com/gente/iglesia-rechaza-adopcin-de-homosexuales/10913132

The secretary of the [Columbian] Episcopal Conference, Juan Vicente Còrdoba, a professional psychologist, questioned the adoption of two little brothers authorized by the Columbian Institute for Family Wellness (ICBF) to an American homosexual man. It’s the case of the journalist Chandler Burr, who has taken back with him the two brothers after a long dispute, consequent to the fact that the adoption had been suspended when his sexual orientation was known.

What do you think about this case?

“I don’t want to judge that man or the ICBF, and I imagine there was a good intention behind. But what kind of investigation was carried out on the personality of the future dad? You have to be sure the adopters are a couple, a man and a woman, or a single man or a single woman with a stable psychology, if you want to entrust a child to somebody”.

Is homosexuality a psychological problem?

“It is not an illness, but a gender identity disease, about the identification of the gender. This is what universal psychiatry says”. [Homosexuality objectively has nothing to do with diseases or with gender identity problems, as World Health Organization confirmed many times.]

What do you know about Chandler Burr?

“I don’t know him and I’m not accusing him of anything, but one thing is clear: he has a homosexual tendency and a ten-year old boy and a thirteen-year old boy will be entrusted to him, among them there is a father-son relationship, they entrust him two boys of an age in which they can be attractive for him and so they can be a temptation”.

Do the children risk something?

“One says: why not giving him two girls? Why right two boys to a homosexual man? He wouldn’t feel any attraction towards two girls, if heterosexual fathers abuse of their daughters and even of their sons, then there’s more to worry about a homosexual man. It would have been better to give the children a father and a mother”.

So a homosexual man can’t house an orphan?

“He can, but he has to be a person with an internalized ability of controlling his tendency, his drives, his passions. It’s very hard not to fall in temptation if somebody has diabetes and he lives in a candy shop”.

What is you proposal?

“I believe that things have been made in a hurry, but it is possible to invert the trial as there was a fundamental fact nobody knew. Thus, revising the trial and bringing it back to a previous phase is something absolutely necessary. It will be very difficult for this man to be impartial and give a pure and transparent affection. Colombia cannot supply its citizens to another country like if they were just goods”.

The Prosecutor’s office investigates Chandler Burr’s couple life. The control authority expressed a negative opinion on Burr’s case, “especially about the psychological valuation test, according to which there are some evident inconsistencies about the existence of relationships with same-sex people”.

The control authority confirmed its request to ICBF for obtaining the revision of the adoption requests by mono-parental families or singles and announced that the case will be followed and this proceeding of adoption will be contested.

The choices of the French Republic

On March 24, 2013, Gay Project published an article: GAY MARRIAGE IN FRANCE AND STATE SECULARITY

http://gayproject2.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/gay-marriage-in-france-and-state-secularity/

The French law has finally closed the phase of the double track: marriage only for heterosexuals and other forms of cohabitation also for homosexuals. Without giving any “definition of marriage” was adopted simply a new text of art. 143 of the Civil Code which now reads:

“Art 143 – Marriage is contracted by two persons of different or of the same sex.”

All contrary provisions must therefore be considered amended accordingly. So the secular France has honoured the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.

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