What Will We Tell Our Grandchildren?

I’m sixty-three. Just a few days ago, it seems, I was twenty-three. A day or two later, I was thirty-three and got married. A day later, I was forty-three and yesterday, fifty-three. I’m sixty-three and have a grandson and those two little girls I had are colleagues now. Sometimes, I ask myself how all this happened and so quickly?

I remember asking myself as a young man how the world got so crazy. The nuclear arms race, the Cold War, Vietnam, pollution; where in hell were the adults and how could they let this happen? Then, POW! JFK is dead. POW! MLK is dead. POW! RFK is dead. Then, like I said, four days or so go by and I’m sixty-three and have a grandson pushing three! What will I tell him when he asks the inevitable question: “Pa, what did you do while the soils were being destroyed, while the water and air were made foul, while the corporations responsible for it were given complete control of the Republic, while the poor were left to suffer and die without insurance and the medical care it provides? What did you do, Pa, while the sick egos of old men brought the government to a standstill, while the cowardice of others vacillated and procrastinated while the country languished and lurched toward fascism? Pa, what did you do when the Great Man, the black Abraham Lincoln was made powerless by the stubborn and petty will of moral midgets, persons in miniature? Pa, why did you let them ruin my world? Did you know about it? Did you do anything? Did you care? Did you just hide in churches and temples and refuse to hear the cries of the weak and the helpless? What about the Prophets, Pa? What about me, Pa?

What do I say when he asks me if I have ever heard this song by Bob Dylan?

The Times They Are A-Changin’

Come gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a changin’

Tell me Mr. Boehner, Mr. Cantor, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Lieberman, Mrs. Bachman, Mrs. Lincoln and all the rest of your liars and cowards… What will I tell him? You’ve made a hell of heaven Sarah Palin! Tell that to Jeeeesus! What will I tell him? What will I tell Jesus?

We've Been Betrayed

Isn’t it a form of treason, really, this collective lying policy on the part of the Republicans? The Constitution which is not yet owned by them has certain clearly articulated roles for the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch. The gang of five on the Court has recently ratified the sale of our election system to the corporation and now, the duly elected President and duly elected majority has been stopped dead by these legislative equivalents of Brown Shirts. They have taken a vow to uphold the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of all the people, by all people, for all people. Instead they have stopped the functioning of government for all the people. How have they done this?

Had it been done by brilliant people formulating brilliant policy, one would have to conclude that their creativity has won out, fair enough! Instead, they have created individual and collective lies which are their only policy. I saw Mr. Boehner sitting to Obama’s right on t.v. the other night. It was a joint meeting of one kind or another. The look of hatred and disgust on Boehner’s face told the whole story. They’ve made it clear; the only goal they have is Obama’s failure. Obama is our President. Hatred, thinly disguised by a veneer of political policy is my definition of fascism. Sale of the electoral process is corporatism in Mussolini’s definition of fascism. We have been betrayed by the Court operating in collusion with the Republican party. How many times have you heard this question about Germany in the thirties: How could it have happened? This is how it happened. No person or party has the right to stop the government. We’ve been betrayed.

We’ve been pretending, and I include the President here, that the Republicans have a different set of principles and policies which makes them come up with different conclusions. That would be nice if it were true but it simply isn’t. The agreement to lie is not a policy; it is a lie! Obama is a truly gifted person brought forth from us to lead us. The rest of these sneering and smirking pretenders are clever if that… but only clever if that.

We’ve been betrayed by those who have betrayed our Constitution. The Democrats are sick with cowardice and the GOP is rotten with lies. We’ve been betrayed. Why be in either party? What is the point?

More thoughts on gay rights...

Recently, I had the occasion to watch a show on the History Channel called “The History of Sex.” The first 1.5 hours I saw would be more accurately called, “The history of sexual confusion and hypocrisy in Christianity.” It was accurately noted that in the Gospels, Jesus makes few mentions of sexuality and when He does, it is to express non-condemnation. He makes no reference to homosexuality whatsoever. So called Christian teachers on sexuality are drawn from Paul’s letters and a convenient “cherry picking” reach backward into the Hebrew Bible with little to no attempt to embrace the larger truth of Hebrew tradition regarding sex and procreation, in a single word, “blessing”.

Homosexuality as an “abomination” presents itself again and again during periods of time when homosexuality overran the priesthood. At those times, prostitution was not only tolerated but at times encouraged in the hope that it might stem the ride of homosexuality. At times, either or both homosexuality and prostitution overran the Church, reaching all the way to the Papacy. In my own experience of being born and beaten up Catholic, I took the “abomination” teachings to heart. They were underwritten by a feeling of revulsion for homosexual behavior. I argued that homophobia was a misnomer in that I felt no fear or samesex-ness! I felt disgust. Homo disgust seemed more accurate. Well, I had a genuine awakening upon finishing the History Channel show.

This awakening has come in three parts. The first came over me when I wrote Chapter Twenty-Nine in my book The Modern Christian Mystic. The second came when I wrote in my Godblog about considering homosexuality “at the species level”, a term coined by Thomas Berry. The third came following the above-mentioned History Channel experience. As I sat in the dark thinking, my thoughts came like this: “Well it’s clear that the Christian Church has zero authority regarding sexuality and clearly never has had any. I am grateful to have Gene Robinson as a Bishop and when I saw him the other night on MSNBC with Rachel it was clear what a good guy and genuine teacher he really is. But what about that gut feeling of revulsion? It really does feel like an abomination! Wait a minute! It is an abomination if you are truly a heterosexual; it’s repellent in the way that trying to force two positive or two negative poles of a magnet is repellent. But… what if at the species level there are two kinds of men and two kinds of women?”

I’ve had gay men who were hitting on me trying to convince me that “heteros” were in denial, that we are all gay but some of us repress that truth. “Heteros” like myself who tell them again and again that they have never had a homosexual encounter… nor have they had even a single homosexual fantasy even when no one else would know. We “heteros” all the while want to gag with the thought of having a sexual encounter with a buddy… literally, want to vomit! What if we have all been wrong because we are projecting our own experience on others?

In that case, it would not be an abomination when two samesex people male or female are drawn together into love, sex and marriage not would it feel like one. It would be as natural for them as it is for men and women to enter into bothsex unions. The problems lies in thinking that the experience of the other sort of human is as our own.

So here’s the deal. I am asking all my gay brothers to please not try to convince me that I’m in denial when I tell you that I have no interest in you sexually. I have deep, very deep, friendships and it is precisely the absence of a sexual motive which makes them such a comfort. In return, I will not think of your sexual behavior with other samesex men in the way that it would be for me as a “hetero”. If we can both do that, we can accept each other as different and equal. If that boundary became secure enough, we could be friends. In any case, at sixty-three, I am convinced that samesex unions are not abominations. They are a different form of human love.