Thankful, Thoughtful

I complain a lot – by which I mean, of course, “express perfectly reasonable positions about issues which you should be concerned about, too!” It’s a good thing, really. Almost noble.

But sometimes, it’s also good to see the other side. And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, that’s what I did last week. I took a few minutes to write about all the things I’m grateful for, as a married gay man, in our current world.

I pounded out a first draft and then went off to stuff my face, of course, making the strategic choice to spend time with my husband, parents, niece, and friends rather than to hunch over my laptop polishing the blog and posting it. So I’m a little late on this one, but for good reasons. I think that’s about thanks-giving, too. I was enjoying the life I’m grateful for, and, I hope, helping some of my nearest and dearest enjoy it more, too.

But the important fact to get back to is that, for all the issues which still face us as gay people and as same sex couples, the world has changed mightily in our favor recently. When I was a teenager and just figuring out who I was sexually, same sex couples could not express themselves publicly. Holding hands was a serious political statement. Talking about your relationship, or even about your sexual identity, could get you fired and thrown out of your home – or even physically abused with little legal recourse.

The very idea of a committed gay relationship, public or private, used to be inconceivable, and the suggestion that gay commitments not only existed but deserved the same legal recognition and protections as heterosexual ones was so far out of the discussion no one even suggested it.

So the world has changed – and mightily. The iPhone was introduced in 2007 and now hundreds of millions of us surf the Internet and communicate with each other as we walk down the street (I went Christmas shopping for Phil on BART last night as I rode home.) And Lawrence vs Texas, the Supreme Court decision decriminalizing sodomy, came down in 2003, and same sex couples now have marriage rights in multiple states, adoption rights in even more places, and the freedom to serve openly in the armed forces. And majority public opinion has gone from ignoring or reviling us less than a generation ago to supporting us as full equal partners. It’s amazing what’s happened.

So I’m thankful, and I hope you are, too, whether or not you’re gay and whether or not you’re married. It’s good to have rights. It’s good to have a public discourse where we can share our ideas, argue for our convictions, and air our complaints. This is all good.

In spite of whatever turmoil you may see on TV this week, we live in an improving world. There is good cause for thankfulness.

The Skank-tity of Marriage

So, it turns out Kim Kardashian's wedding was either a completely fabricated-for-TV event or, at best, perhaps the most ill-considered, frivolous set of nuptials since Britney Spears' drunken two-day first marriage. And yet not one right wing pundit I've seen has decried this distasteful travesty for cheapening, demeaning, or in any other way damaging the institution of marriage as a whole (my serious commitment to Phil, on the other hand, remains, in the minds of these same people, a terrible threat to tradition and societal stability everywhere. Sigh.)

My dear friend, Grace, pounded out an outraged message to me about this when the Kardashian news broke. I didn't think, I admit, that there was much to write about there. Surely, nobody in America expects the Kardashians to be anything but shallow, self-consumed, and utterly disrespectful of anything that doesn't profit them? And anyway, who cares? The irony of Kim, Britney, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, and tons of other trashings of the sanctity of marriage getting respect while same sex commitments get, well, trashed, is old news.

But then I read another story, and my blood did begin to simmer some. This one was about a new announcement from my favorite hate group, the Family Research Council. They slobbered all over a select group of congressmen who have done things like fight to defund Planned Parenthood, supported DOMA, denied LGBT rights, and worked in various other ways to turn back the clock on equality and good sense. FRC president Tony Perkins said he applauded these congressmen’s “commitment to uphold the institutions of marriage and family.”

The problems here are legion. First, without medical care or education from Planned Parenthood, even more young women are likely to become teenage mothers — especially in the Bible Belt, which perennially has the highest rates of unwed pregnancy, teenage marriage, and divorce of anywhere in the U.S. And without other family planning services, those unprepared mothers’ offspring are going to have even less chance of growing up in a whole or financially solvent family.

In other words, this “upholding the institutions of marriage and family” really means working to destroy marriage and family by encouraging ignorance and trapping more and more people in poverty and desperation — not to mention the resulting higher odds of single parenthood. Nice work, congressmen. And thank you so much for noticing them, Tony.

But none of that is the best part of this story. Oh no. The congressman Tony Perkins really, really loves is Joe Walsh (R-IL), who shows his dedication to marriage and family not only by fighting to destroy other people’s chances for success, but by abandoning his own children and stiffing his ex-wife for more than $100,000 of child support. Joe Walsh is one of the most famous deadbeat dads in the country at the moment, but in the eyes of the FRC he’s showing “unwavering support of the family.” That's "support of family" in the extreme abstract, theoretical, completely divorced-from-reality sense, apparently. Not actual support of any actual family, especially his own.

Walsh claims the debt should really be reduced because during some of the years he was racking it up he was having a really tough time and not making much. No word on why he hasn't paid that lower amount, either, or what his excuse is for this year.

Don’t get me wrong – I do not mean to compare Kim Kardashian to Joe Walsh or his good buddy Tony Perkins. Although I’ve called her shallow and I seriously question her intentions, sincerity, and comprehension regarding her own wedding, she’s certainly never displayed the kind of callousness or cruelty of these guys. The only reason she's in the same blog as them is because these are parallel examples of how terms like “sanctity of marriage,” and “support for marriage and family,” really turn out to mean the exact opposite of what they’re saying. Kim Kardashian’s marriage was not sanctified or, in any way I can discern, a blessing upon the world. Joe Walsh and Tony Perkins’ efforts to destroy family, equality, and young people’s future lives is not supportive of family, marriage, or any tradition anyone in their right mind would want to defend. Yet, because of right wing propaganda and big money, these are the evils that get paraded on TV and in politics as good things, while Phil’s and my endlessly loving, committed, hardworking, happy and healthy marriage gets marginalized and Federally negated even here in San Francisco.

This stuff is so glaring and offensive, you’d think there’d be no need to point it out.

What Fundamentalists Get Wrong — Even When They Almost Get It Right

Love In Action is the world’s oldest and largest organization dedicated to converting gays to heterosexuality. Recently, John Smid, the longtime leader of Love In Action, following in the footsteps of countless of his own graduates (and lots of grads and leaders of other, similar programs) came out as gay. In fact, he announced not only that he, personally, is gay, but that he never saw a single gay man changed into a heterosexual in all the years he ran the program.

Hallelujah. Smid’s personal story is striking evidence that this kind of “therapy” is utter nonsense, but his statements are more than that. As a former perpetrator of these practices, he can speak definitively about the entire system and call out the mistaken ideas it’s based on. After years of shouting that sexuality was only a behavior, Smid now says he’s learned it is an identity, something fundamental to the very core of who we are and how we relate to the world.

Again, hallelujah. I encourage everyone to read Smid’s words and commit his remarkably clear arguments to memory. Believe me, next time you find yourself debating with someone who thinks being gay is a choice, this will be the best ammunition you can have.

But at the same time that I’m excited about Smid’s statements, I find something about his approach incredibly off-putting. See what you think.

First of all, Smid remains married to his straight wife, although he’s perfectly open about the fact that they have no sexual interests in common. He doesn’t describe the nature of their current relationship or say why it still has value to them, or even whether what she thinks. He’s gotten some flack for that. He’s also annoyingly vague about his new stand on sin and how he now thinks God feels about gays. As someone who spent so much time declaring that God hated homosexuality and that gay relationships were worse than hellish, these are issues you’d think he ought to address.

But even more than these problems, I sense an underlying self-centeredness and lack of compassion about his whole approach. This is what drives me crazy about fundamentalism in general, and if I’m right it’s both sacrilegious and the very thing that makes reasoning with these people impossible.

Here’s what I’m talking about. Smid now runs a personal blog designed to minister to other gay men and women who identify as Christians. The question about whether anyone who’s so radically changed his own worldview and politics has any business ministering to anyone is a big one. But the more specific problem is Smid’s attitude toward the people whom Love In Action (and he, personally, as its leader) mistreated over the years. Some of their stories are horrific, but while Smid has expressed a general sort of remorse, he doesn’t really address the seriousness of the damage he has caused, or even own up to just how inappropriate and outrageous his own personal actions were in some cases.

Worse, he wants all of Love In Action’s survivors to contact him so that he can apologize personally.

Does this strike anyone else as grossly intrusive and selfish? I don’t care how sorry John Smid is, he has no right to suggest that anyone should get in touch with him at all, let alone anyone he victimized in the past. In other words, it’s not about you, John. Get out of the way, accept your own guilt, and leave Love In Action’s former victims find their own healing. Make public statements, by all means, and please tell the world that you and your organization were wrong, wrong, wrong and never had any “change” to offer anybody. But do not dare suggest that those you and your organization once abused have any responsibility, or even anything to gain, by getting in touch with you now.

To my mind, John Smid’s callous call for his former victims to help him out with his own repentance reveals a stunning lack of humility. His statements have tremendous value, and I think they’ll be a powerful tool for bringing down programs like Love In Action and the misguided beliefs that support them. But the man himself needs to learn when to shut up and listen. Listening is the very core of repentance. And John Smid, like all too many Christian Fundamentalists, seems much more interested in making sure everybody else is listening to him.