Meandering Manifesto, Part 4: Stability

This is part four of my Meandering Manifesto series.

Last year, Grace and I went to a second wedding in Michigan. It was much more pleasant than the first one. This time the priest didn't say anything that made me apoplectic with rage. But he did say something that got me thinking.

He began with a statistic that something like one in two marriages end in divorce, then worked his way down a line of increasing religious context of the marriage. I don't remember the following numbers exactly, but that's not the point.

• Of the couples who were married in a church ceremony, about one in fifty get divorced.
  
• Of the couples who were married in a church ceremony and who attend church regularly, one in several hundred get divorced.
  
• Of the couples who were married in a church ceremony, who attend church regularly, and who pray together at home, one in about twelve hundred get divorced.
  

As a left-leaning agnostic this made me squirm a bit. Those numbers made me uncomfortable. I found myself wanting to read up on the research to see if they were skewed.

Later, I realized that the degree of accuracy didn't matter. Because whether those numbers were spot on, or off by an order of magnitude, there's no doubt in my mind that he's right.

He's right.

A religiously involved marriage brings stability to the married couple and to their society.

Just stop for a minute. Don't react. Just breathe.

Now. Hear what I'm saying. We are adults. Not only can we hold contradictory ideas in our heads, we can also parse wildly disparate ideas that at first seem as inseparable as the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water.

We can admit that folks on the other side of the political divide are right to call the bathwater dirty. That admission in no way implies that we favor throwing out the baby.

I admit that religion, marriage, and the potent combination thereof bring stability to our society. I do not, however, agree that the stable structure that we gain is worth the cost. I believe that the foundation stones of that structure rest on the backs of my gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends.

Stability always demands unity. Unity always eschews variance. People don't like what is different. Communities and societies and countries develop a collective animus against the unusual. This animus may well have served a vital purpose in primitive marginal communities which could have gone extinct if members had strayed from the norm. But today we are no longer primitive, or so we flatter ourselves. Today our hard-wired animus against sex and gender variance is out of all proportion to any conceivable harm that such variance could cause.

Traditional religious marriages bring valuable stability to my country, my community, and my life. I admit that freely.

And I don't care.

I don't want that much stability. I don't want stability at the cost of hatred. I don't want a life so stable that, while I'm hiking with my good friend Mel, we have to worry that someone might overhear her talking about her girlfriend. I'm not so ravening after peace and quiet that I want Vikrant to be anything less than himself, because I find Vikrant's himself to be quite a delightful one. And I sure as hell ain't willing to pretend that another person's sex life is any of my damned business, let alone that it could somehow threaten my wobbly-ass secular marriage.

Keep your stability. It's covered in blood and lies. My hands ain't the cleanest, but I'll be damned if I'll dip 'em in shit.

My Letter to the White House about the National Prayer Breakfast

This is the letter I just wrote using the contact form on the White House website.

Dear President Obama:

During your campaign you promised to be a "fierce advocate" for gay rights. Since then, as many LGBTs and allies lost their patience with you, I stayed hopeful. I told myself that you can't be expected to fix every problem at once. I listened to people who said that, like Lincoln, you want to be forced to move forward on gay rights. I saw how few people were putting that kind of pressure on you, and told myself that you could hardly be expected to make a suicidal expenditure of political capital in its absence.

All that has changed. I've now joined the camp that has had it with you. You're planning to sit at the National Prayer Breakfast and pray alongside David Bahati? The thought is disgusting. If you do that, you will never reconcile your actions with your promise.

Please. Don't let history remember you as just another lying politician. And if your faith truly means anything to you, don't dirty it by sitting in the same room with an author of genocide.

Bahati Go Home

President Obama is planning to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC on February 4. That's cool. Prayer is important. I don't believe in God, but I still say prayer is important. As a matter of fact, I think that the primary weakness of atheism and agnosticism is the absence of a focus for gratitude. I need to count my blessings, because they are great and they are many. It's always a challenge to do that without an entity to thank. I end up offering thanks to the universe, which always feels awkward and vague.

So I have no problem with Obama going to the National Prayer Breakfast. But I do have a big problem with some of the other attendees. David Bahati, M.P. of Uganda, is planning to come. He's the author of Uganda's "Kill the Gays" act. He'll be praying alongside members of The Fellowship Foundation, a U.S. conservative Christian group which influenced Bahati's murderous policy.

I hope that, regardless of your religious beliefs, you agree that this man does not belong in our country, and that our president does not belong in the same prayer session with him. Would you please sign the online petition to disallow entrance into the United States of David Bahati, and tell the White House that President Obama should not be attending the National Prayer Breakfast?

Ignore Them.

Since yesterday I've seen a lot of internet chatter about the Westboro Baptist protest at Brooklyn Tech and the counter-protestors who vastly outnumbered them. The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Brooklyn Paper and GLSEN had some interesting material. But it was the reader comments on these stories that made me think further into the situation and, eventually, act on it.

Just about anyone who hears about those sad, impacted agent provocateurs from Kansas gets outraged. I sure did. But the more righteously indignant responses I saw, the calmer I became. Righteous indignation has more to do with me than with the injustice against which I purport to stand. It's not useful. So I looked for a useful response, and noticed something interesting: a lot of people were talking about the people being protested, but no one seemed to be talking to them. That's significant. It indicates a self-defeating propensity for self-righteousness. Be careful with that self-righteousness, folks. I've handled plenty of it, and let me tell you, that shit gets in your eyes and blinds you.

I love the idea of attending any and all Westboro Baptist protests in order to stage a peaceful, silent counter-protest in which I stand with my backs to them and shine all my love on the objects of their hatred. It's a beautiful image. But before galloping to the rescue it behooves me to first consider whether I am, in fact, a knight in shining armor. Even more important is the question of whether my rescuee needs or wants to be rescued. So I got the Westboro Baptist protest schedule from one of the commentors...

I want to stop here a minute to let that sink in: Westboro Baptist publishes a protest schedule on GodHatesFags.com. They publish a sodding protest schedule. Doesn't that tell you something right there? There is nothing more valuable to these wankspouts than attention.

So I got the Westboro Baptist protest schedule, Googled the institutions about to be protested, and made some calls. The results didn't surprise me. Specific responses follow, but they can be summed up thusly: We don't want help. Ignore them.

NY Chabad of Great Neck: "We don't want help. The more we respond, the more we achieve their goals."

Dr. Vitow, Principal of North Shore Hebrew Academy High School: "It takes two to tango. In this case there's only going to be one because we're not going to be here."

Principal Kaplan of Great Neck North High School: "Our kids are going to leave and ignore them completely. We've responded vigorously to ourselves to be tolerant, compassionate and loving."

Great Neck Synagogue: "The consensus of all the synagogues and schools is to ignore them.

There you have it. I'm left with a warm feeling of channeling my mother that's right up there with making a batch of apple pies. She sure wasn't right about everything, but she was right about this: "Ignore the bullies."

Please pass this message along to anyone planning a counter-protest of a Westboro Baptist protest: Don't do it. Those being protested don't want your help, and you'll only be giving them the attention they so desperately want.

The Circus Is In Town

As a media contact for NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn, I got the following via e-mail today.

Statement by Speaker Christine C. Quinn

Re: PLANNED PROTESTS IN BROOKLYN BY WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH

"We accept and welcome all forms of speech in our City, except one - hate. When a group plans to meet out of hatred towards another group, we must speak out and say no. The act of spewing foul racist remarks towards the Jewish community will not be tolerated in Brooklyn or anywhere in our City. We need to stand against the Westboro Baptist Church and any other group who are under the misapprehension that they can come into our neighborhoods and home and stand in hate against any community. I condemn the very nature of this group and what they stand for and hope that soon they will realize the acts they carry out daily are not for the good of any society."

Being new to all this gay advocacy stuff, the name "Westboro Baptist Church" was not immediately familiar to me. Then I Googled it and said, "Ah... they of GodHatesFags.com fame. Great. What kind of trouble are those nutty kids stirring up in Brooklyn?" Well, it turns out that they got a cold reception that vastly outnumbered them at Brooklyn Tech. While reading a second article I was tickled to suddenly be reading a quote from a friend of mine who teaches there.

At Brooklyn Tech on Wednesday, there was a calm before the impending anti-gay attack. A teacher, Sean Shaynak, vowed to be ready.

“I’ll be sure to wear pink tomorrow, maybe some stretch pants,” said Shaynak.

The exploits of Westboro Baptist demonstrators read like a "TO DO" list of folks who are out to prove, once and for all, that they have cornered the market on childishness. "You jumped into a sandbox, threw sand in a three-year-old girl's face, and stole her Barbie doll? That ain't nothin'! Why, I just got back from picketing a soldier's funeral!" Man, where does that get fun?

And yet.

My mother taught me to ignore bullies. I wish I was able to embrace that philosophy entirely; I wish I was entirely sanguine, and not sanguinary. But I am my father's son. There was a moment or two this evening when I relished the thought of feeling blood spurt past my knuckles as they shattered the facial bones of a Westboro Baptist demonstrator.

These violent thoughts came like an occasional backwash in the midst of their direct antithesis. I needed to visualize how I would respond to such hatred with love, so I thought of visiting one of their protests, turning my back to the demonstrators, and completely ignoring them while focusing all my love on the targets of their hate.

I like the thought of being a force of love amid the hatred: of interposing myself between the hate and the hated. But I imagine it's a damned hard game to play, so I wonder if it's always best to just flat-out ignore them. I suspect that's the case: like my mother said, "Ignore the bullies."

Straight Ally Seeks Christian Ally For Friendship, Activism

I've been obsessing over my blog to the detriment of the rest of my life, including my health. So during the last few days I've made a conscious effort to return to my historical pursuits. I've spent some pleasant hikes listening to The History of Rome podcasts, picking up where I left off with Marius and Sulla. This morning I picked up another dropped thread: an actual honest-to-goodness paper book about my favorite subject, the Spanish Armada of 1588. I hadn't gotten three pages when, on the train this evening, I found something that practically screamed "Meet Adam and Steve!" Here's the excerpt, from pages 60-62 of Felipe Fernández-Armesto's The Spanish Armada: The Experience of War in 1588.

Not every army chaplain exhaled pure Counter-Reformation spirit. The Franciscan Fray Antonio de Granata, for instance, who had done six years in the job by 1588, was an unregenerate pre-Tridentine figure, who sang profane songs to the sound of his lute, conducted bogus and prurient visitations of convents, extorted gifts, wore furs and gold chains, and battered his denouncers. He claimed at his trial for these offences to be a martyr who spoke the truth and converted sinners. His persecution, he suggested, was 'to force me out, and my Franciscan brothers with me and replace us with Jesuits. But St Francis will punish the persecutors of his order.' He may have been voicing a genuine Franciscan anxiety. Certainly, the Jesuit mission in the army was growing more important, as the need for a more active evangelization of the men became increasingly felt among their commanders. The new, evangelically aware orders of the Counter-Reformation, of whom the Jesuits were the most conspicuous and dynamic, were attracted to the army for the same reason as they felt drawn to the slum-ringed boom towns like Seville and to the dense, servile native populations of the New World. Rootless masses were at once an easy and urgent target for their ministry. Commanders interested in the spiritual welfare--or, at least, concerned for the dogmatic instruction--of their men seem to have recognized the Jesuits' special gifts. In 1587, Parma's call for a central Jesuit mission to the Army of Flanders was answered by his personal confessor, Thomas Sailly. Within a generation, the Jesuits could claim to have enhanced the morals and galvanized the strength of the corps of chaplains as a whole.

Reminded of how the Jesuits were successful because they focused on the "rootless masses", anxiety welled up in me at the thought of all the evangelical Christians currently peddling hatred to folks full of fear and despair and anger. That's a high-yield operation; how can I ever compete with that? Answer: I can't--at least not just by blogging. I need to keep my eye on my ultimate goal: to move on to outreach. That scares the crap out of me for several reasons: I have no idea how to do it; I'm not great at confrontation; and I'm an agnostic!

Speaking of despair, I felt my mind inclining in that direction as I made my way west through Manhattan for a walk along the Hudson. But as my feet got going, my mind got going too. (I love how that works.) I thought of the websites that Grace found for me when I was looking for Biblical quotes about nature for my letter to the editor about the Link Trail. In particular, Fund for Christian Ecology came to mind. I'd been impressed with their expressed goal of "...reaching the Evangelical and Conservative Christian churches with a scriptural message of environmental stewardship." That sort of outreach can't be easy, and I admire anyone with the courage to do it. When I thought of this in the context of Meet Adam and Steve, I realized that these are the type of people I need to be talking to! After all, I doubt I'll be very effective at outreach by myself; can you imagine me walking into a church and saying "Well, you should know I don't believe in God, but listen, I still think... where are you going?" To do Christian outreach, I'd better enlist the help of Christians. To be an ally, I need... allies!

So I called and left a message with Bernard Daley Zaleha, President of the Fund for Christian Ecology. A long, rambling message. Bugger. I need to get better at dealing with answering machines. That's OK, though; it felt good to make a start. and it got me rolling. Now that I'd recognized my need for Christian advice and Christian allies, a plan started to coalesce. I thought back to some potential resources I'd skipped right past in my frenzy to get daily faces, such as The Church of St. Luke in the Fields and the Society for Ethical Culture. Then there are the gay and gay-friendly Christian bloggers I've met through Twitter such as @Tahlib and @strt_notnarrow. And let's not forget Steve, who is a Triangle Speaker. I need to talk to all these people to get advice and help in strategizing.

I can't pursue all these contacts in one night, but I did get started: I left a message with the Reverend Caroline Stacey, Rector of St. Luke's. This message was a bit less rambling than the previous one, I'm happy to say. Then I sent her an e-mail. So hopefully I can get rolling with the Christian connection soon, so that I can hit the ground running on the day when I feel ready to start outreach.

An Open Letter to Sally Kern, from Philip II of Spain

My dear Representative Kern,

My most felicitous salutations to you. Would that I could speak truly of my hope that this letter finds you happy and healthy, but alas I know all too well your current sorrow. Forgive me my presumption, but I feel I cannot but know your heart, and its heaviness in the face of God's inscrutable trials. After all, your recent public statement of faith exactly mirrored my own exhortations given during one of my greatest trials.

In the beginning of 1588 I sent to inquire of the Marquis of Santa Cruz why my Enterprise had not already delivered God's wrath unto the heretic astride England's throne. The news was far worse than I feared: not only was the Armada a hopeless shambles, but Santa Cruz himself was feebly directing operations from his death bed! Knowing myself to be the instrument of God's will on earth, I never wavered. Upon the poor Marquis' demise I appointed the Duke of Medina Sidonia to lead the Enterprise.

I remember well that, even at this stage, my ministrations echoed your recent statement of faith. Time and again the Duke implored me to appoint someone more appropriate. More appropriate! As though there were any man better suited to leading my Enterprise than one accustomed to administering great swaths of Andalusian countryside, and having blood noble enough to arouse piety in even the roughest seaman! For it was not wooden timbers or iron and brass guns that formed the heart of my great Armada, my dear Representative Kern. It was piety.

Many times I sighed upon opening another thick missive from Medina Sidonia. But each time I smiled, because I knew that this limited man was one of God's instruments in my hands. In response to his endless complaints of logistical conundrums I patiently repeated the simple truth: that, if the men of the Enterprise were pious, God would not allow it to fail. As I wrote to him in the spring of that year,

In the first place, as all victories are the gifts of God Almighty, and the cause we champion is so exclusively His, we may fairly look for His aid and favour, unless by our sins we render ourselves unworthy thereof. You will therefore have to exercise special care that such cause of offence shall be avoided on the Armada, and especially that there shall be no sort of blasphemy. This must be severely enforced, with heavy penalties, in order that the punishment for toleration of such sin may not fall upon all of us. You are going to fight for the cause of our Lord, and for the glory of His Name, and, consequently, He must be worshipped by all, so that His favour may be deserved. This favour is being so fervently besought in all parts that you may go full of encouragement that, by the mercy of God, His forces will be added to your own.

The eyes of the world looked to me on that day. That autumn, when the first of the tattered remnants of my Armada limped back to Santander, those same eyes rolled in derision. And the eyes of history look upon my trials and see nothing but irony. But even when that first messenger spoke to me of the Armada's ruination, I did not falter. For I knew that I was His most Holy Catholic Servant, and if he allowed this Enterprise to fail it was only to make His future victories all the more glorious. And in you, Representative Kern, I see that final, long-awaited glorification of His Name.

I drained the Spanish treasury in my attempts to extirpate the Protestant scourge from God's earth, yet even after my Enterprise was smashed and scattered, Flanders remained in heretical hands. I did not despair, and today I find my faith renewed. I see now that God, in His wisdom, stayed his hand in anticipation of a greater victory: the extirpation of the homosexual menace. God, in His wisdom, will work through you to expunge all Sodomites from your lands, which will blossom into a new Catholic Kingdom that shall surely not suffer the Protestant menace to stand.

In the confident hope of a miracle,

The King

Go in peace.

Last Sunday I attended the 10:00 AM worship at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in my town of Millburn, NJ. I'm an agnostic, and I have no plans to change that. But, since St. Stephen's was on the list of gay-friendly churches in New Jersey that I'm contacting in hopes of getting faces for this blog, I figured the least I could do was hear what they had to say. The notion of coming over after the service and saying "Hey, wanna hear about my blog?" seemed disrespectful.

I happened to come on an auspicious day for the church: the Bishop of the Diocese of Newark was visiting, and delivering the sermon. He had a warm, amenable and disarming nature, and the sermon he gave actually choked me up. Man, what is happening to me? I'm so emotional lately.

The Bishop preached about Mark 4:35-41, in which Jesus and his disciples are in a boat, a terrible storm whips up while Jesus is asleep in the stern, Jesus calms the storm and rebukes his disciples for their fear, and they're duly impressed. What impressed me was how close the Bishop was coming to presenting this passage as a parable. As an agnostic I expect that from my own brain, but coming from a pulpit I expect more or less a literal (excuse me while I go find a shoehorn, because I really want to squeeze in that word that I had to look up this morning) hermeneutics. (Um. Doesn't quite work, does it? All right, all right.) I expect a more or less literal interpretation.

The Bishop went from talking about the actual storms in Mark to the metaphorical storms inside us. And this is what got me choked up, because boy do I have storms in me. I am so damned angry. Ever since that wedding I've been railing in my head against that minister.

Ever since my teens when I "came out" as an agnostic, I've struggled to own a sense of spirituality. If I hadn't had good friends who saw the spiritual in me despite my unbelief in conventional religion, I think I'd still not have the wherewithal to think of myself as a spiritual being. And here I was, in my thirty-ninth year, contributing my spirit to a consecration of love.

And that miserable shitheel turned the ceremony into a political forum. He couldn't have cheapened it more if he'd slapped Pennzoil stickers on the bridesmaid's dresses. And since that moment, when I think of that minister, a single thought fills my being: "Oh, it's on now, bitch." I didn't have a political bone in my body, but he made me a part of something I consider unclean. He picked up one of those brass measuring weights and put it on one side of a metaphorical scale. And by god, I will put a cinderblock on the other side. Because he brought me into it.

These thoughts were coalescing in my mind as the Bishop spoke. And tears were welling in my eyes because, for the first time, I was acknowledging the force and the weight of my anger. I've worked for fifteen years to divest myself of anger, and there are all too many moments when I feel like I have depressingly little to show for all that work. I get so self-righteously angry at inconsequential things, such as people not respecting my personal space on the commuter train, that it makes me feel small, and terribly unworthy of all my blessings. I don't want this anger. I have to transform it. I have to. That's what this blog is about.

Sunday was also Father's Day, and the church was giving out carnations to fathers and father figures. Proud of the source of stability I've been to my daughter, I took one and wore it. I don't know if the following thoughts were influenced by this or not.

My Dad died last year, and I miss him a lot. He wouldn’t know what to make of this gay advocacy blog; he’s probably snort disdainfully and shrug his shoulders. I’ve started to wonder if part of my passion for this project stems from my feeling that, if I can’t do something my father would agree with, I can at least do something he’d respect just by virtue of the sheer effort and dedication I’m putting into it.

All this was going through my head, and then came the passing of the peace. It was the most sincere and thorough such ritual that I've ever witnessed. It felt great. These folks have a good thing goin' on. And in the middle of it, I met Reverend Cornelius C. Tarplee, the Rector of the church. I'd left him a message about this blog the previous week, so I told him who I was and that I was a bit apprehensive because I wasn't sure if it was appropriate for me to be there. He responded warmly, saying "I'm glad you're here" and promising that we would talk sometime soon. So I'm hopeful that there will be some synergy between this, the project of an unbeliever, and the wishes of his congregation.

After the service, there was a coffee hour. The spread was top-notch; one of the congregants told me that, owing to the Bishop's visit, it was superior to their usual fare. As people were eating, the Bishop gave a talk about four tenets of being a good Episcopal witness. I don't remember them, but what I do remember is his exhortation to tell others "Go in peace." Not only that, but do it when it seems least possible, e.g. when someone cuts you off in traffic. Again, this struck very close to home. I've got a lot of anger where there should be purpose, a lot of self-righteousness where there should be righteousness. Gotta work on that.

We must love our enemies.

Squee!

I am nearly positive that today was the first time I even considered typing the word "squee", or making the noise it represents. But, see, this afternoon I got a lovely e-mail from my favorite poet, Julia Kasdorf, in response to a message I sent her this morning. Squee!

I wrote to her for two reasons: one old, and one new. I'd been trying for years to find the words to tell her how she had affected me: how I heard her poetry for the first time when Garrison Keillor's reading of "Mennonites" made me cry, and how the rest of her book Sleeping Preacher affected me similarly. I put all that into this morning's message to her because now I had a request: I wanted to ask if I could use "Mennonites" on this blog.

Ms. Kasdorf's response was thoughtful, kind and gracious. God, I'm such a groupie, but... SQUEE!!

I regret the necessity of beginning this post in such an undignified way. But the point is that I have the author's permission to reprint this beautiful poem.

Mennonites
by Julia Kasdorf

We keep our quilts in closets and do not dance.
We hoe thistles along fence rows for fear
we may not be perfect as our Heavenly Father.
We clean up his disasters. No one has to
call; we just show up in the wake of tornadoes
with hammers, after floods with buckets.
Like Jesus, the servant, we wash each other's feet
twice a year and eat the Lord's Supper,
afraid of sins hidden so deep in our organs
they could damn us unawares,
swallowing this bread, his body, this juice.
Growing up, we love the engravings in Martyrs Mirror:
men drowned like cats in burlap sacks,
the Catholic inquisitors,
the woman who handed a pear to her son,
her tongue screwed to the roof of her mouth
to keep her from singing hymns while she burned.
We love Catherine the Great and the rich tracts
she gave us in the Ukraine, bright green winter wheat,
the Cossacks who torched it, and Stalin,
who starved our cousins while wheat rotted
in granaries. We must love our enemies.
We must forgive as our sins are forgiven,
our great-uncle tells us, showing the chain
and ball in a cage whittled from one block of wood
while he was in prison for refusing to shoulder
a gun. He shows the clipping from 1916:
Mennonites are German milksops, too yellow to fight.
We love those Nazi soldiers who, like Moses,
led the last cattle cars rocking out of the Ukraine,
crammed with our parents—children then—
learning the names of Kansas, Saskatchewan, Paraguay.
This is why we cannot leave the beliefs
or what else would we be? why we eat
'til we're drunk on shoofly and moon pies and borscht.
We do not drink; we sing. Unaccompanied on Sundays,
those hymns in four parts, our voices lift with such force
that we lift, as chaff lifts toward God.

This poem gets me every time because I have a lot of useless anger that I can't seem to get rid of, and when I think of people like Ms. Kasdorf's uncle forgiving his enemies, it makes me feel awash in a pool of emotion of which "humble and small" form only the barest beginning.

I can't think of a better emotional core for this blog than this poem, and it ties into something I realized last week: If I'm telling people that GLBT folks are normal people just like them, then it has to work both ways: I also have to be telling GLBT folks that those who harbor prejudices and discriminate against them are normal people just like them. If circumstances had been different, each might be just like the other. No one is The Other. The Other is us.

Yeah, that one is going to be hard for me too. Believe me.