Gays in the Scouts

I'm going to preface this by pointing out that, being from the Soviet Republic of Canuckistan, I can't recall a time where our local scouting divisions had such a ban. As a further disclaimer, I was never actually a scout - I was in Beavers for a while, but by the time I was old enough to actually Scout, I wound up in the Royal Canadian Army Cadets instead. So, I've never had to deal with being a member of an organization that promotes homophobia. Also, apparently I'm full of poorly-thought-out pith and vinegar tonight, so if you're the type of person who is offended by dissent, do me a favour and light up my inbox.

A tiny voice somewhere shouted "But you're Catholic!" That's true. I wouldn't call the catholic position on the morality of homosexuality homophobia and more than I would call catholic sexual morality sociophobia (from the root sociosexual, which is a real word!). The question of whether or not your sexual conduct and preferences override your religious beliefs is a personal one, and if you're serious about your faith it's a conversation you're going to have to have with yourself, regardless of your orientation or paraphilias. It's a conversation for another time and another place, and once again, we've confused two variables that I think people have a hard time with.

I wouldn't call myself a moral relativist. I'm pretty clear-cut on what I consider to be right-and-wrong, and while I have various caveats, corollaries, and loopholes, they're all fairly well-founded and static. I make room for change to the overall code as I grow older and wiser - as even the staunchest moral absolutist would.

Actually, the last one isn't true, as this
man can tell you. (FAIR USE!)

However, I exist in a strange overlap between liberalism and faith where I have come to recognize two constructs: social morality and eumorality. Social morality falls under the category, to put it into Christian constructs, of the golden rule, the admonition against judgement, and similar ideas. Social morality covers the things that belong in a civilized body of law. Bans against those things which tend to annoy people, like killing or raping them, and protections for those things we feel should be our right, like being grippingly sarcastic while trying to make a point, wearing bright plaid shirts, and using cream in your coffee. The rest, the eumorality or true morality, are the things you personally find moral, like only eating responsibly-ranched meat products, refusing to be embalmed upon death, or not trimming your beard - cotton/polyester blends are, obviously, right out.

The question for lawmakers, politicians, and wonks like myself is where eumorality begins and social morality ends. Once upon a time in the United States everyone who wasn't european was only 3/4ths of a person, the Kitten and I could not get married, and in most states, it was more legal for my landlord and his horses to get shady in the back yard than it would have been for my friend and her girlfriend to get married. In the case of the last point: it was yesterday.

So, when we're using the excuse of trying to maintain the moral high-ground as the only real justification for taking exclusionary action, we have to consider the reality that even though morality can look absolute, from a strictly societal position, it's relative. Take a hundred people and you're going to get about 120 moral codes. The best you can do as the architects of society is to try and make the law reflect morality as much as humanly possible.

Shown: Gay bunnies. But it's
more like prison-gay, so does
it "count"? I don't think it
matters...

I'm not gay. Not even a tiny bit, and I'm pretty damn sure of that. Homosexual rights actually have no bearing on my life whatsoever. But Adam and Steve being able to marry whoever they want is how I know I'm going to be able to marry whomever I want. Once upon a time, the love of my life and I would not have been able to. If you ask some churches - some mainstream, very well-accepted churches, we still can't. The point is though, states aren't churches. Sure, some are. Canada isn't. America isn't. Churches are more like... NGOs.

Okay, so, the BSA is an NGO. In many cases, it's even funded and run by local churches and parishes of the same. So, it's understandable that there would be some resistance to allowing gay scouts. And that is all we're talking about. Gay scout masters are actually still banned. It's just the kids, they're letting be gay.

Being a gay kid is not the walk in the park even in liberal areas. Besides any conflict at home, there's students (because teenagers are so enlightened), authority figures, media in general... if anyone's wondering why suicide rates are high among teens and doesn't stop to think that sexual identity might be involved, they're either preteen, or a moron.

All these are people are asking is that their sons, whether gay, straight, or whatever, can go ahead and be scouts. Since the scouts have nothing to do with sex (and rightly shouldn't, youth group that they are!), I feel like whether or not the scouts are gay is about as relevant as how good they would look in drag.

Logical Consistency (Marriage and the State)

Prom night. Feels like an age ago.

Something many people seem to forget is that the Catholic viewpoint is that state marriages don't count - at least the way state marriages are conducted here in canuckistan, where the language is as theologically clean as humanly possible. I've been to enough weddings involving justices of the peace to know that there's an identifiable difference between these and just about any other, Christian-conducted ceremony. As it happens, I personally don't have a problem with state marriages - it's a pretty good way to do interfaith weddings when you stop to think about it, or to marry people with no actual religious views.

If you already consider something invalid, do you really get to put energy into deciding how that invalid thing should be administered? I mean, you've pretty much already declared it to be make-believe.

That's exactly what Catholic Answers, one of the largest catholicism-related websites on the English-speaking internet (mostly due to having captured the Catholic.com domain name) is doing. Recently, they sent around a mass email to all their members (by the way, you can't unsubscribe from their mailing lists or delete old forum accounts) doing precisely that. Entitled "Stop Same-Sex Marriage!", the email goes opens with a bombshell.

This Is OurLast Chance to StopSame-Sex Marriage

Formatting and emphasis is theirs, of course. Not two lines further down is a hyperlink for "mak[ing] a gift... that will help you defend marriage!"

I recognize that the Church teaches a very narrow view of the parameters of marriage for straight couples, never mind unorthodox ones. I also recognize that the general population over at CAF works mostly in conservative or ultra-conservative circles and that rather liberal views about secularization such as my own are alien and, to be fair, completely heterodox.

The fundamental problem seems to be that CAF and its operators can't understand the difference between Church and State, or else don't seem to understand why the separation is important or why it exists. I'll go on to demolishing the email itself in short order, but I've got to address that point first, otherwise there's no point in going forward, because my arguments aren't grounded in theology and a basic understanding of civics is necessary.

In the USA, which is where this email is primarily targeted just by tone and subject, there exists a right to the free exercise of religion. That is true in Canada too and my point stands for both countries. In a country where all religions are to be freely exercised, there cannot be a state faith. There just can't. Strictly speaking, Canada has a state faith - a function of our head of state being the head of the Anglican faith - but that faith does not inform state procedures, laws, regulations, codes, or (except loosely) ceremonies.  It's a cute little window dressing. There's a very good reason for that. As soon as the state acknowledges primacy of one religion over the others, and lets that inform their legal system, freedom of religion slowly begins to erode for other religions. Remember: what is morally just is not always legally just and what is legally forbidden can often be a moral act.

Now, out of the general and into the specifics...

First and foremost, if you basically lead by asking me for money, I'm more inclined to be an antagonist. You could be the Canadian Alzheimer's Society or something and I'd still be inclined to laugh in your face and dispute your statistics... at least until I forgot what I was doing and remembered that you're working on my single most-feared disease. It's rude, it looks greedy, and it's just plain gauche.

"Despite the fact [California Proposition 8] was a constitutional amendment, they got key judges—using tortured legal reasoning—to strike it down as unconstitutional."

This species exhibits
homosexual behaviour

 This is an apples-and-oranges fallacy. Prop 8 was a constitutional amendment to the constitution of the State of California, which was overthrown in US courts (not California Courts) and is undergoing appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States because it's unconstitutional under the federal Constitution, which has primacy in the US. "State's Rights" is really more perfunctory than anything else to my understanding of American law.

"It would be just like in 1973, when Roe v. Wade swept away all state laws protecting unborn children from abortion."

It really wouldn't. I can accept abortion as a moral ill sweeping aside tens of millions of lives as something being easy to oppose but I... just don't see that here. Millions of gay couples suddenly being able to be married gay couples is only going to bolster certain industries, like my own, by providing a new market to tap. It's not like gay couples will break up if they're told they can't get married. That's not really how it works here.

Given the mostly-conservative composition of the court, I can't really see an open field being declared. I just see more of the same "state's rights" declarations.

We’re on Our Own . . . So It’s All Up to Us!

Except for just about every other conservative faith group operating in the USA at the moment.

[Our Amicus brief] focuses on the disastrous effects that imposing same-sex marriage would have on religious liberty in America. Here’s what would happen. . . .

A Nightmare Future

As the brief to the Supreme Court bluntly puts it, anyone who upholds true marriage will be treated like a bigot, regardless of his faith:

“To be a devout Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, Muslim, or Orthodox Jew will become the moral equivalent of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Furthermore, our brief points out:

“The Court would correspondingly consign traditional religious beliefs regarding marriage and the family to the same circle of constitutional hell as racism and sexism.

“Thus, simply by accepting the principles that their religious groups have publicly supported for thousands of years, tens of millions of religious believers in the United States would be branded as the legal equivalent of racists, a result that will subject believers to such burdens and acrimony that many will be forced to hide their faith.”

Those burdens will be felt in all parts of society.  

 I realize Amicus curiae briefs are rhetorical by their very nature but... really? The moral equivalent of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan? You feel that that is your strongest possible argument?

The argument you took out of your brief as your best fundraiser has no merit. None, whatsoever. I'm not saying that it won't happen - I'm merely saying that it's probably the weakest argument you could make. What if the KKK had made that argument when intermarriage was legalized? "You can't make [moral issue] legal - It'll make us look like idiots!"

The fear-mongering actually gets worse from here. The following section, entitled "How You, Your Children, and Your Granchildren Will Be Punished", basically threatens that gay marriage will be the downfall of Christendom. I'm to get into specifics in a second but... I thought the gates of Hell could never prevail against the Church?

Employers will fire people—or not hire them in the first place—if they speak out in favor of true marriage. (Some are already doing this.)

Fish species, like A Heckelii, don't derive pleasure from
sex. Like true Catholics, they do not exhibit homosexual
behaviour.

 Of course, this would be illegal under employment nondiscrimination laws protecting the exercise of religion, where such laws exist. And you can't have it both ways - if I had a nickel for every time I personally was turned down for a job because I was going to the wrong church according to the management, I could probably buy a single french-fry from MacDonalds.

Lawsuits will be brought against small business owners to compel them to provide services to homosexuals as married couples. (That’s already happening, too.)

 From what little research I could manage to pull reliable results regarding this is mostly happening in states where gay marriage is legal - it's basically forcing small business owners to acknowledge state functions rather than live in an imagined Theocracy.

Public schools will indoctrinate children against the beliefs of their parents—and against the Catholic Faith itself—in a way that dwarfs what’s happening in the school system today.

This is only true if you consider the entire Catholic Faith to be consumed in this sentence "Homosexuality is wrong." I suppose the Apostles Creed doesn't count for much these days.

From there, the email pretty much devolves back into asking for money, and I'd be happy to send it along to anyone else who wants to see it.

Fundamentally, the argument is the same as the argument I used on this post at A Woman's Place to explain why, if you're going to have a draft, you have to draft anyone.

IF the state is going to be conducting marriages, they have to marry everyone.

All Opinions are Sacred, Except Those That Aren't

I sometimes have difficulty talking to people who haven't worked in a kitchen. Being a professional cook is a lot like cooking for a 70 person dinner party, and everyone is arriving at different times and wants different things. You have to juggle multiple trains of thought at once, and if you can't do that, you simply won't keep up.

Chik-Fil-A, which I understand to be a fried chicken chain (I really haven't spent all that much time south of the border), is the subject of a recent boycott by some on the left after their president made a statement, while stalking to a religious reporter, no less, that they supported the biblical order of marriage. Film at eleven.

In seriousness, such a statement, made inside a church, isn't exceptionally rare. Neither is the position, within churches, that marriage should be of the biblical variety. The only reason this became an issue is that the speaker has what passes for notoriety in the States, and that, for the most part, the entertainment media leans left (in contrast to every other business, which inherently leans right). Cue an uproar. Chik-fil-A is anti-gay! Film at eleven.

Thing is, Chik-fil-A hasn't actually done anything wrong. They do not discriminate (on protected grounds) in hiring or in service. President Dan Cathy wasn't necessarily speaking for the entire company, and even if he was, there's nothing wrong, legally, with what he said. The problem with this particular boycott is that it is the result of a difference of opinion, which I suppose is ultimately true in all cases, but this particular difference of opinion is predicated upon an unwillingness or inability to understand the opposing point of view.

To the boycott-supporters, I can only say that you're fighting this one stupidly. Taking the things that people honestly believe on religious grounds and bigotry is fine. You're allowed to do that, both here and in the US. The problem is that it doesn't work. You aren't going to change minds. You aren't going to pursuade anyone. You're just going to piss them off and set their heels more firmly into the muck. This has to be made clear: you must frame the issue properly.

There is a fear, a palpable fear, whenever any ground is lost, that the Churches will somehow have to change their teaching in order to coincide with the new laws. It must be made clear that this fear is unfounded. "Congress shall establish no law establishing a state religion or abridging the freedom of religion", I believe is the line. Religious Marriage and Civil Marriage are two different but often entangled things. The church marries you spiritually, and the marriage licence marries you legally. That's all gay marriage is. Civil marriage.

To the others, as is said, I disagree with what you are saying but will fight with my death to defend your right to say it. I hold that the old covenant has been fulfilled (as we are taught) and that includes the abolition of homosexuality. For those who insist that homosexuality is still a sin, I have a few questions, and must nod generously to Aaron Sorkin.

My mother-in-law is thinking of auctioning off her daughter as permitted in Exodus 21:7. She's special to me and if anyone's going to own her I'd rather it was me. What price should I offer? My team lead insists on doing work on the Sabbath; Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death - do I have to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? There are 90,000 people in this city: do they all have to gather to watch me be put to death for planting different crops side-by-side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing clothes made from two different threads? And one more thing: you like shrimp, right?

While we all have generally forgotten that morality comes from within and justice comes from without, I want to make it clear that we can't pick-and-choose which proscriptions in the bible we get to follow. If you're a Christian who thinks they have supreme moral authority, then speaking as a Christian - Go to bed, would you please?

A Rare Frown at a Cardinal

There is a bill before the Ontario Legislature today called the "Accepting Schools Act". While it isn't a national issue and I try to stay within my own province, the bill came to my attention today when a buddy of mine sent me a link about protests of the bill on the Legislature grounds. Among the leaders of the protests are Thomas Cardinal Collins, Cardinal Archbishop for Toronto. His grievance? The bill would allow students at all schools receiving funds from the Province of Ontario to form clubs similar to what is known as the Gay Straight Alliance - a group built on finding common ground between heterosexuals and their homosexual friends.

The main problem is that public schools are governmental entities. Not allowing groups such as the GSA to form chapters in their schools would be a violation of their Section Two rights. There's a concern that this would also affect catholic private schools, since many do in fact receive provincial funding.

Here's my take: your religious freedoms (under Section Two) as an institution don't trump the rights of your students. If you want to take provincial funding, you must be willing to accept that there is an extent to which the government has to cover their liability. Charter Rights only apply to protecting you from government action. If His Eminence would prefer not to allow his students to form these groups, he is more than welcome to refuse the provincial funding.

What's more, the Gay Straight Alliance is being misrepresented as an organization that promotes homosexuality. While there's a way to make that argument, it's intellectually dishonest. The state goals of the GSA is to promote tolerance of all sexualities. That is to say, as an anti-bullying group, their aim is to prevent harassment. It is an exercise in politeness, a value I rarely get to harp about given how rough-around-the-edges I usually am. We can ask the students to change the name if you like, but there's nothing any thinking catholic (or any other Christian, for that matter) should find objectionable in their aims.

I admit that I stand well to the left of the Church on just about everything. Let's take as read that homosexuality is immoral... so is bullying. We can't pick and choose our favourite evils. If a group wants to cut down bullying, let them cut down ALL of it.

Homosexuality from a Young Perspective

One of the strongest arguments in opposition to the Church is also the byproduct of a misunderstanding. She finds herself berated in every avenue for her stance regarding homosexuality. It is said that Catholics believe that homosexuality is a choice, a sinful choice made by unrepentant folk, who deliberately turn their back on God, and should not be allowed to receive communion because they are evil and sinful! Oh my, someone save the LGBT community from this adult bullying!

This is not the Catholic stance, and the misunderstanding is rooted in the difference between the colloquial meaning of the term and a more narrow, focused definition. When we think of homosexuality as secular North Americans, we call to mind the entire lifestyle, from the attraction to people of the same sex, right through to that couple's act of lovemaking, and all the various behaviours ascribed, often erroneously, to homosexuals. Not every Lesbian is butch, and not every Gay man is a ninny or obsessed with chaps. Within the descriptions of doctrine, Homosexuality refers simply to the sexual portion of this broad definition. Attraction, what we as a society call "being gay", is just that: Same Sex Attraction.

Homosexual Sex [i]is[/i] proscribed against in various places through the bible, and not just in Leviticus. It is a misuse of Sex, whose proper form is unitive and procreative between married couples. Homosexual sex likely shares the unitive portion, but does not share the procreative. This is what is meant when it is called [i]disordered[/i].

Same Sex Attraction, on the other hand, is a difficult cross to bear, as difficult as any inclination away from Chastity (which, by the way, is not virginity, but the proper sexual state for one in one's current state of life. Married couples remain chaste even in the sex act itself), or any other strong inclination to sin, such as kleptomania. It is not the position of the Church that people must choose to be gay. Quite the contrary, it is they who choose to act upon that instinct, God-Given as it is. It is no greater a sin than the sin of a young man and young women who like to have sex out of wedlock.

The idea of sexual sin has become taboo to discuss in our sexually-liberated society. If a man, of Faith or Not, suggests that he would rather see women modestly dressed than otherwise, he is often seen as less than totally masculine, or somewhat backward or outdated. Similarly, we have taken homosexuality and made it an issue akin to racism or sexism. Those who speak against it, for the protection of those with SSA, are seen as backwards and bigoted.

I strongly urge everyone to consider the Stations of the Cross. What is your cross to bear? Sins of the Flesh? Sins of Anger? There is no man alive who doesn't have something to contend with. The difference between one and another is whether they choose to bear it, or to let it master them.