A Moral Triumph: Marriage Equality in New York

As I observed the blossoming gaiety via live feed from the floor of the New York State Senate floor last Friday night, I thought of every gay high school kid in New York State who'll find hope in the equal marriage rights legislation that passed into law in New York State this past weekend.  I thought of the power such legislation can have to erode bigotry and to open hearts. I thought of my own three teenagers who would celebrate the news the following morning.  And I thought of my gay brother Scott who died too soon to see this day in his hometown of New York City.  I'm not sure Scott was ever the marrying kind -- but the message this legislation sends is not just for the marrying kind.  Nor is it only for the gay kind.  This kind of lawmaking elevates us all.  It brings up our moral game.

A few Christmases ago I was talking schools with the mother of a friend of one of my daughters.  The name of one of the most selective schools in New York City came up.  I explained that even though my older daughter had been admitted there, I chose a less selective school -- for reasons having to do, in great part, with the school's ultra-conservative character. "I don't want my kids in schools like that," I said "if I can avoid it."

"I can't have my kid in a school like that," said the fellow mom, a married lesbian mother of two. For her, the aforementioned discretion was not a luxury.

Gay kids are not the only juvenile victims of homophobia. The children of gay parents are as well.

Even in New York City.

Which brings me to my next point. On any given day, I am a proud New Yorker, but having long harbored equal marriage envy, I am pleased to be enjoying a novel sensation of "Empire State" pride in being a same-sex marriage state. It delights me to imagine that my city, already a travel destination for so many LGBT people, should become a gay wedding destination.

I take pride in my governor, Andrew Cuomo, too, who grew up in New York City, and pushed like a New Yorker for equal marriage legislation.  In the course of his press conference Friday night, Cuomo called New York "a beacon of social justice." He was referring to the state, but the City of New York fits the description.

Progressive Catholics use it the term "social justice" a lot. I liked hearing my governor employ this (secular) term outside of church.  My guess is Cuomo grew up hearing about "social justice" in the context of his Catholic life.  The histrionics of the New York City bishopric notwithstanding, many New York Roman view the attainment of equal marriage rights in our state as Christ at work in mysterious, and not so mysterious, ways.

The demeanor of so-called "Christians" as they have fought to keep marriage discrimination in place this past year has been disheartening and disgraceful.  In his campaign to oppose equal marriage rights, New York State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., a Pentecostal Christian minister aligned himself with an other so-called "Christian" man of the cloth, Ariel Torres Ortega who stood on the Bronx Borough Hall steps and publically declared those who engage in homosexual sexual acts as "worthy to" (worthy of) "death." Watch and see  "Christians" in action.

New York Senator Diaz is one of those 'hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner' men of the cloth. Diaz has stressed that although he personally loves and respects some gay people, God just isn't on board with gay sexuality.  Diaz likes to point out that he has a gay person in his own family. By now it should go without saying -- but perhaps bears repeating -- that the "some of my best friends are" argument, in defense of prejudice, doesn't cut it in 2011.

Erica Diaz  would seem to agree.  In her June 5th, opinion piece which appeared in the New York Post the 22 year-old lesbian granddaughter of Senator Diaz (who publically outed his granddaughter when she was 20)  summed up nicely how even 'polite' bigotry damages families.

... I want him to know that every word he utters hurts his own blood.

Yes, every word he utters hurts his own blood. And silence like that Diaz the elder advocates calls for the blood of many.

You cannot tell someone that you love them and stay silent when people call for their death.

Maybe it's legal enough for a senator to consort with a man who calls out publicly for the death of gay people, but is a senator who declines to repudiate him fit to hold public office? Can a man who calls for the death of people on the basis of how they love be properly considered a "Christian?" And can any cleric who declines to distance himself from men like  Ariel Torres Ortega be trusted at all in the role of spiritual leader? I think not.

But I'll take an Ariel Torres Ortega over a Ruben Diaz any day. Both men despise gay people, and sure, a guy like Ortega has innocent blood on his hands, but even players on his own squad (NOM: National Organization for Marriage) know the raving of Reverend "gays-are-worthy-of-death" is all-out lunacy.  

In a game of "bad cop-good cop" one knows where one stands with the "bad cop." But kids are beaten up in schools, in bars, and on street corners every day for being gay as a result of polite anti-gay bigotry promulgated in God's name. Polite homophobia is likely every bit as sinister as its more blatant counterpart.

Roman Catholic bishops have fancier mouthpieces than do storefront preachers from the Bronx.  When it comes to communicating its message on homosexuality, the Roman Catholic hierarchy excels at the role of  "good cop," as it downplays its claim that all homosexuals are "disordered" and couches its whole take on things in rhetoric. Archbishop Timothy Dolan plays the "good cop" with impressive elan.  Read his blog entry concerning  an anti-gay demonstration that took place after a mass he celebrated at a church in Milwaukee:

...on an otherwise magnificent Wisconsin autumn day, were a couple dozen very vocal protestors, representing some off-brand denomination, shouting vicious chants and holding hateful signs with words I thought had gone the way of burning-crosses and white hoods.

Is he for real?  Are we really supposed to believe that the archbishop did not know such signs are used in modern day protests?   Does he read the newspapers?  Note how he side-swipes fundamentalists characterizing the protestors an members of an "off-brand denomination."  I have no wish to defend the Westboro nitwits (the group to which Dolan probably refers) but it seems to me Dolan's own religion got its start as an "off-brand denomination."

Dolan would do well to leave the "holier than thou" attitude (as it relates to the accusation that his church is too gay-friendly) to others. Let the churches without sin cast these particular stones, because in this, Dolan's church is far more sinning than sinned against.

In some ways the Roman Catholic Church really is gay-friendly. The disproportionate number of gay priests might explain this. But no amount of doctrinal spin can mask the Vatican's true views on gay people. According to current church doctrine, gay people are "disordered," and the way they make love is a grave sin. This is not, by any measure, acceptance.

Welcoming only celibate gay Catholics to the altar is anti-gay. Pathologizing the love gay people share is anti-gay.
 

We are not anti anybody; we are pro-marriage.  The definition of marriage is a given:  it is a lifelong union of love and fidelity leading, please God, to children, between one man and one woman.

The definition of marriage by no means a given. The definition of marriage has been in dramatic flux for two thousand years of Roman Catholic Church history.

History, Natural Law, the Bible (if you're so inclined), the religions of the world, human experience, and just plain gumption tell us this is so.  The definition of marriage is hardwired into our human reason.

The notion that the definition of marriage is "hardwired" into human reason is a figment of the archbishop's imagination. Gumption? Is gumption a sound basis for depriving people of equal marriage rights? The Bible?  Would he return to the multiple marriages of the Old Testament? Or to the thousand plus years during which men essentially owned their wives?

The Roman Catholic leadership speaks out of both sides of its mouth when it claims to love gay people while demanding lifelong celibacy of them. There'd be more honor in announcing thus: 'We love gay people, men especially, because they continue to prop up our priesthood. And we love that there are still LGBT Catholics willing to put money in our offertory baskets.'

Love the sinner, hate to lose the tithes.

The Roman Catholic argument that marriage is designed by God for the sole purpose of producing offspring is fallacious.  The church does not ask couples who are infertile to eschew marriage.  The church does not forbid post-menopausal women to engage in sex with their spouses.  As for the argument that marriage promotes order in families; do the children of gay parents not deserve these protections?

Catholic doctrine already upholds the sanctity of non-procreative, or what it calls "unitive" love in heterosexual marriage.  The "love the sinner, hate the sin" message Roman Catholic doctrine promulgates is little more than a more polite version of  "God hates fags," because it classifies even the most spiritually elevated lovemaking between committed partners as sin.

Dolan may love gay Catholics but he doesn't love them well enough to stop playing on the National Organization for Marriage team with the the Knights of Columbus who help to bankroll groups that hold rallies featuring men of the cloth who call for the death of gay people in God's name. According to a report in the Iowa Independent  $1.4 million into NOM for Marriage.

And in the role of "bad cop" we have the bishop in charge of Roman Catholic churches in Brooklyn and Queens (NYC). It would be folly to expect to see him in the role of "good cop," for he is one bad actor. He is, after all, that man who was fool enough to compare same-sex marriage to marriages made between people and their pets on journalist Fred Dicker's New York radio show about seven years ago. DiMarzio in the role of thug is nothing new to Roman Catholics from faith communities in Queens and Brooklyn. He's the guy who threatened to close down parishes that voted for politicians who supported legislation that promised to crack down on rapist priests. His most recent tantrum is just silly. DiMarzio has now called on Catholic parishes and schools to help him exact his pound of flesh. He asked that Catholics

refuse any distinction or honors bestowed upon them this year by the governor or any member of the legislature who voted to support this legislation. Furthermore, I have asked all pastors and principals to not invite any state legislator to speak or be present at any parish or school celebration.

Good luck with that.  In his quest for payback, the widely distrusted DiMarzio will be enthusiastically ignored, but for those Catholics who would aid the bishop in wreaking vengeance, DiMarzio's comrade in the anti-equal marriage rights crusade, Reverend Ariel Ortega Torres, might be available.

People like Dolan and DiMarzio underestimate the power of the examples set by Catholics like Governor Cuomo who show the world what putting Catholic primacy of conscience over blind obedience looks like. The Roman Catholic hierarchy is on the wrong side of this social justice issue, but in New York State on Friday night, morality prevailed. The secular government demonstrated the virtue today's Roman Catholic leadership lacks.  

As a practicing Catholic, I take pride in this moral outcome as well as in all the Catholic political leaders who made equal rights marriage possible in my state. 

Legalization of same-sex marriage in New York is quantum leap which promises to catalyze radical change in attitudes.  I'm glad the good guys won on Friday night -- I'm glad the 'gays-are-worthy-of-death' team of lost ground.

As I watched I thought about children. I thought of the hungry children all that Knights of Columbus NOM money might have fed. I thought of former students I've had who have struggled with being gay and closeted, gay and bullied, gay and rejected by their families. I thought of the many children in my life who have gay parents.

I thought of how my dead gay a brother has ten nieces and nephews; odds are, at least one is gay.

I thought of something the $172,100-a-year president of National Organization for Marriage said he feared might come to pass:

"New York schools will soon be teaching that it's just as good for Jimmy to grow up and marry Johnny as it is to marry Mary,"

Yup.

Because it is.

Halleluia.

Pentecost: The Flaming Dove of Upper Room Roman Catholicism

The Christian Feast of Pentecost fell last Sunday. With its scarlet flora and vestments, translation miracles, chrism and tongues of fire, with its focus on the intersection of courage, words and grace under pressure, Pentecost strikes me as the most poetic of Catholic holy days. 


This year, just in time for Pentecost, in Catonsville, Md., four Roman Catholic women were ordained. Proponents of a male-only priesthood are ever quick to point out that such women are not "real" priests. The real question is not whether they are "real" priests, but whether they are "true" ones.  


The "They can-call-themselves-priests-if-they-like-but..." logic used to irk me, but now it just makes me laugh. The only way anyone ever becomes a priest is by being "called" a priest by another priest. In conventional, by-the-book Roman Catholicism, this priest is bishop. However, throughout history all manners of priests have presided over ordinations. 


"I can wear feathers and call myself a duck," the anti-women's ordination set likes to say. Well, feathers are not vestments, ordinands are not birds and it's the chickens, really, who most desperately cling to the arguments against ordaining women. Their arguments feature semi-syllogistic structure and the illusion of logic but they are not grounded in anything verifiable or even unchanging. Facts are not truths. 


A conversation about women's ordination ensued at a dinner party I attended a few years ago at the home of a priest. It was not in the least contentious: A room full of Catholic progressives between the ages of 30 and 85, and our host, were all more or less OK with the idea of female priests. One guy at the party -- not the priest -- had spent most of the party "manning" the grill in the cement yard in 95 percent heat. 


"Want me to take over burger duty for a while?" I volunteered to spell the grill master.


An awkward stillness commanded the room. The grill master broke the silence. "A woman on the altar? Fine. But at the grill?" He laughed. "We're not ready for that." A joke, yes, but an illustrative one.  


The fear that to share power is to lose, the fear of women's power and the desperation to hold on to what belongs to boys alone -- these are the Vatican's real reasons for failing to honor women's call to ordination. "It's mine" is the thinking. The rest is finely wrought rationalization.  


The comfort in believing one's religion is tidy and contains straight immutable answers plays a role, too, but as one of my favorite Catholic friends, who happens to be a proper, "by-the-book" priest, says, "Catholicism is messy." What the "They-can-call-themselves-priests" set fails to recognize is that the same kind of argument they use to defend an all-male priesthood is employed by atheists to debunk the notion that God exists. 


"They can say a guy with a big white beard who made everything sits in the clouds..." 


"They can say a shrub on fire called out to the crazy changeling Jew in the desert saying 'I am' God." 


"They can say the 16-year-old girl conceived without having sex with a man..." 


Belief does not come from without. It radiates from within. Teaching is useful, but only when students are thinking. 


Canon law prohibits the ordination women but canon law has changed in the course of the history of the church. Canon law is man-made law which comes to us via an apostolic succession that is as lousy with weak links as it is gleaming with saintly paragons and enlightened thinkers. The "They-can-call-themselves-priests" set adheres (as they revere) to rules handed down by a lineup of men who have, throughout the history of the church, broken and altered canon law at will. Some of the popes who passed these laws down were married or polygamous; some were rapists, sluts, pimps, murderers, mass-murderers, extortionists, frauds, indulgence-peddlers, thieves, politicians and cheats. How impeccably beyond all challenging can the codes of such men possibly be? 


I find canon law edifying and canon experts intelligent, but they are smart in their own closed system of papist minutiae. To suggest that the letter of canon law reflects the in specific ways Jesus' specifications for his earthly church is idiocy. Canon law is comprised of notions extrapolated from what some of the aforementioned popes and their subordinates imagined select well-translated, mistranslated and re-translated Hebrew and Greek scriptures could maybe reveal about God's opinions on how righteous Christians ought to behave.  


Those who find comfort in looking at the church as if it were a corporation or a club often have the view that those who don't want to follow the rules ought to join another club.  (Usually, disrespectfully so, they specify the Episcopal Church.)  This argument is based on the false premise that the church is a corporation or club. The Roman Catholic Church is home to those baptized into it. The bully of the fourth grade class can say he's the king of fourth grade as often and loudly as he likes; that doesn't make him the king of fourth grade. 


On Sunday a mass scheduled to take place in a Roman Catholic Church in Boston was canceled at the last minute by the Boston Archdiocese due to fear that the mass might be seen as a "Gay Pride" mass. Is being proud to be the gay person God created some kind of Roman Catholic transgression?  Not according to the Vatican. The Vatican's regard for gay people, gay pride and gay relationships may be hateful (I believe it is), but technically speaking, there are no canonical, dogmatic or doctrinal impediments to celebrating a mass in honor of "gay pride." 


A few years ago I would have been outraged by the cancellation of this mass. Now? Not so much. Have I mellowed? No. I have, however, come to believe that this kind of blundering is good for the Church. This kind of cowardice fans the fires of the Holy Spirit in Catholics who are brave. Veni Sancte Spiritus, I say. Bring it on. It gets chilly in the Upper Room. 


The "upper room" appears in New Testament accounts of both the first Eucharist and the first Pentecost. In these accounts, the "upper room" functions as the ad hoc temple. The Last Supper takes place in an "upper room."  The disciples are visited in an "upper room" by the Holy Spirit on the occasion of Pentecost.  The "upper room" is a sanctuary wherein intense fear, love and bravery are transformed into power and faith.   


Those who are enjoy the privilege of worshipping in today's Roman Catholic Upper Rooms owe a debt to those who see the Roman Catholic Church as some kind of country club from which poorly behaved members should be expelled. Their misogyny, bigotry, selective quasi-fundamentalism and sexual dysfunction have given way to a perfect storm the likes of which Upper Room Catholics are well-fortified to weather. 


The mainstream Church is thriving in the third world, but the money comes from elsewhere.  Practicing Catholics are, in dramatically increasing numbers, declining to support parishes financially and leaving the church entirely. This as vocations dwindle. If the ultra-conservative extremists alone are left to bankroll the church, the money will soon run out.  In the context of secular, political world affairs, it is the progressive church that lends a papacy that would otherwise lack it, moral authority. 


The question of whether to leave or stay always looms, dogging progressive Roman Catholics. Both Catholics who stay and those who leave are affecting positive change in the church. Many of these are hard to see from the outside. 

I spent an hour so at a Gay Pride festival table this past (Pentecost) weekend. The table was representing the LGBT ministry of a Roman Catholic Church, and it wasn't the only Roman Catholic Church table at the fair. What surprised me was that for the first time in (my) three years attending this festival, no one stopped at the table to ask, "How can gay people go to a Catholic church that hates them?"


Some loud knuckleheads in the church hate them. Some ignorant Catholics who lack imagination hate them. Some Catholics who are are afraid of their own sexuality and who embrace bigotry beyond that based on sexual orientation hate them. The church does not hate gay people. 


Furthermore, some of the Catholics who hated gay people a year ago don't hate them now. 


One of the most profound religious experiences I've ever had took place about five years ago in the context my helping to plan an Catholic LGBT ministry event. We had planned to screen the excellent documentary, "For the Bible Tells Me So," in the parish hall of a Catholic church. We had the support of the pastor, who was acting in accord with the policy of his bishop. But on the day of the event, the pastor received word that an enraged Catholic homophobe had seen a poster for the event and was threatening to squeal to the Nuncio. 


A group of 15 or 20 gathered that night to watch the film in the home of a member of the group. Huddled around the television screen, we took in the film's belief-affirming message of hope spelled out beautifully in syllables and light. Never before had I been in a sacred space so illuminated, consumed and fueled by religious devotion. Thus, I first experienced the Roman Catholic Upper Room. 


The snitch had done us a favor. In this, for every mysterious action there is an equally mysterious reaction. The bullies of the mainstream Roman Catholic Church are feeding the gentle giant that is the Upper Room Church. 

When it comes to alienating Catholics, the papacy has been thorough. I think Ratzinger's credibility is shot. The Vatican is fighting the fever, but progressive Upper Room Roman Catholics are becoming a resistant strain.   


The number of male priests is declining. The number of female priests is increasing. The Knights of Columbus is squandering its money on losing battles -- fighting equal marriage rights legislation and Planned Parenthood -- while churches and schools shut down due to lack of funds.  


Gay civil marriage is here. The Vatican has lost the secular war on abortion. 


Meanwhile, the pope is harboring a fugitive of justice who has the blood of thousands of rape victims on his hands. Ratzinger has yet to man up and be held accountable. A papacy that should be begging for forgiveness and offering every nickel the Vatican hoards in secrecy to help its victims become survivors, responds by being self-serving and squirrelly. 


Formal excommunication is now reserved for heroes and future saints. (Beatifying people who have been formally excommunicated, as the Holy See did this year when it made a saint of Mary MacKillop has a way of reducing the designation's potency.) Then there's the lazier version of excommunication: self-excommuniation, whereby one does it oneself. Let it suffice to say that the communion lines are loaded with self-excommunicants.   


Some gay men and a women I know won't set foot in Catholic church on Sunday, but attend masses said through Dignity. Some eschew Dignity masses and stick with mainstream parish churches. Some gay people, feminists, survivors of clerical child abuse and those who sympathize with them leave. Some stay, feeling the church belongs to them as it belongs to Ratzinger. I believe it is rapidly becoming more clear to non-practicing Catholics and people outside the Church how monolithic Catholics are not -- or, alternatively, how genuinely "Catholic" we are. 


Many leave in a way that looks like staying. And many leave and stay simultaneously. It is the straddlers, as I think of them, who are catalyzing the greatest change in the church. They play both sides against the middle. They are the multitudes of priests of integrity who lend support to Upper Room Catholics in subtle Christlike ways under the papal radar. They are the nuns who work in mainstream parishes during the week and attend masses celebrated by female priests on Sundays. (At great peril. Their devotion and courage astonishes!) They are the married gay parents of toddlers who work as lectors and ministers of Holy Communion.


A tacit, in some ways unfortunate, de facto "don't ask, don't tell" policy is encouraged or tolerated by the hierarchy because it keeps dissenting Catholics a-tithing. Confessing that one supports the ordination of women, is unmarried (in the church) and sexually active, uses artificial birth control, supports legal abortion, renders one unfit for the sacraments. "Don't ask, don't tell" forces penitents to dissemble for their own protection. For many it forecloses upon the opportunity to be authentic in one's religious practice.  Another unfortunate side effect is that the need for discretion compromises the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 


On the other hand Jesuit Equivocation cuts both ways. It creates license and liberty. Some might think the priest who looks the other way when a remarried divorcee approaches the altar for Communion, the lay minister who leaves out that she takes Communion at a mass celebrated by a woman, the Pre-Cana couple who omit that they are sexually active and using birth control, the lesbian who declines to discuss her marriage with her child's catechism teacher are all disingenuous. Others believe they are saving a degrading church.   

Some think a new, more conscious, conscientious Christian Roman Catholic church is gestating.  I think it's already here -- an infant church, already flourishing in quasi-stealth.  John's "plain truth" is beginning to hide in "plain sight." 

No one enjoys the Latin Gloria more than I.  When it comes to musica sacra, I prefer organs to guitars. But Roman Catholic masses celebrated in Upper Rooms manage nakedly without such lavishments. Doing without the smells and bells often forces increased focus on prayer itself. Masses in homes were a bit of a trend in the 1960s. They were intimate and simple -- the Vatican clamped down on them. It's easier to control a Catholic when he or she is tethered to a pew. 


Because churches are expensive to rent, Roman Catholic female priests often celebrate masses in homes. These masses more than make up -- in purity and reverence -- for any pomp that may or may not be wanting. Roman Catholic Women priests are rigorously trained and bring the kind of Christ-like dimension to ministry that their church leadership needs. They epitomize Roman Catholic Upper Room essence and sanctity. 


Not long ago the pope decided it would be helpful to dissuade gay men from joining the priesthood.  (Is the pope Catholic? Then certainly he must know that there might not <em>be</em> a Catholic priesthood at all were it not for gay men! ) This hare-brained policy now forces seminarians into "don't ask, don't tell" mode. Many Roman Catholic priests do their best work under "don't ask, don't tell" policy in Upper Rooms of their own design. Onward Christian soldiers with targets on their backs, they try to reconcile primacy of conscience with the call to obey a billy-club bishopric. 


The desire to worship authentically is for most worshippers in any faith a cherished ideal, but the Upper Rooms are filled with Catholics forced to choose between primacy of conscience and the luxury of authenticity in worship.  For many years priests have celebrated mass at Dignity, have ordained women in secrecy, have blessed gay unions, have gotten married, have administered the sacraments to divorced and remarried or sexually active Catholics, have attended or presided over ordinations of women, clandestinely, but in good faith. 


At the mainstream Roman Catholic mass at the diocesan church I attended this past Pentecost Sunday, two prayers for loving acceptance of "homosexual" Catholics were incorporated into the Prayers of the Faithful. A woman active in LGBT ministry served as one of the lectors. Two gay people distributed the Eucharist. After the mass was over, I chatted with Ann, a straight woman and mother of two young children who works also as a teacher and an artist. 


"I want to do more to support gay people in the church," she said, connecting this wish to her understanding of the "upper room" featured in the Gospel to which we had listened 20 minutes earlier. I remembered that a few years earlier she had refused to be married in her hometown of New York City. Her husband and she wed in Massachusetts because there gay marriage was legal.   


"You're already doing it!" I said. "You're the mother of two Catholic little ones. You're teaching them full acceptance of gay people!" I said.  "That is Catholic GLBT activism!" 


The flaming dove of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate we associate with The Word, bravery, fortitude and discernment, was already nesting in Ann's Upper Room -- her home. 


Ann has a plan to bring her Catholic children to the courthouse on the day civil marriage for same sex couples becomes legal. She and her children will hand out flowers to gay newlyweds. Any day now, kids. 


Veni Sancte Spiritus.