IGF CultureWatch

Boston's Saint Anthony Shrine is not your typical Catholic experience. Scott Pomfret, a gay porn writer and SEC attorney who is a lay lector there, writes of when a blue-haired lady approached a Franciscan friar before Mass and pointed to the announcement for the Gay and Lesbian Spirituality Group in the weekly bulletin. She asked angrily, "What's next? You going to have a support group for prostitutes?" The friar replied, "Why? Did you want to join?"

Since My Last Confession is Pomfret's witty and probing account of his struggle with his faith in the context of the same-sex marriage fight in Massachusetts. He attempts to confront Cardinal Seán O'Malley over anti-gay dogma that includes a declaration that Rome's opposition to adoptions by gay couples cannot be disputed.

Along the way he encounters the organization Roman Catholic Womanpriests; O'Malley's motto, "Quodcumque Dixerit Facite" (Do Whatever He Tells You); the macabre reverence within the Church for relics of the saints; and a politically correct Dignity service in an Episcopal church basement. "Before approaching the sacred sawhorse for our consecrated pitas," Pomfret writes of the service, "the Marist reminded us that there was a gluten-free 'host alternative' as well as consecrated grape juice for those with 'special needs.'"

Pomfret provides sidebars explaining everything from Catholic vocabulary to clerical garb to excommunication to Butler's Lives of the Saints. He also lists clues as to whether Cardinal O'Malley is or is not gay (he calls it a draw), and gives a short history refuting the claim by the Massachusetts Catholic Conference that marriage has remained unchanged for millennia as a union between one man and one woman.

Mentioning that he and his partner commit what the 1878 Baltimore Catechism calls one of "the Four Sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance," Pomfret notes that putting consensual sodomy on a par with willful murder is "a tad extreme." He points out that the Vatican's chief exorcist in 2002 called the Harry Potter books "satanic," and observes dryly, "Nice to know the Vatican was holding high-level consultations about protecting children from fictional characters while subjecting the same children to predatory priests." Irreverence here is not just a way of dealing with pain, but a tool for eliciting the truth.

The book is filled with vivid observations, as when describing a spirituality group member whose "legs trailed away from his upper body like a nasturtium spilling over an iron railing." Pomfret can be unexpectedly moving: "An old woman in the second row skipped a whole decade of her rosary, raised her face to the altar, and revealed that she had once been very beautiful."

The testimony by some Jesuit priests against the proposed Massachusetts marriage amendment prompts Pomfret to recall a story about Jesuit missionaries: "So much did the Mohawk warriors admire the priests' bravery that they cut out the Jesuits' hearts and ate them so as to inherit the Jesuits' courage." Much of the book deals with his search for dissenters of similar courage.

He learns to get past his anger and value earlier contributors to the struggle, like the founders of Dignity/Boston in the 1970s. Epiphanies emerge in simple events around him, including a moment during an infant niece's baptism that reminds him why he's Catholic. In another incident, his atheist boyfriend drafts marketing materials for the boyfriend's brother and his wife, a devout couple seeking spare eggs from other couples' in vitro fertilizations, and coins the tag line, "Give us your leftover miracles." This act of grace by a nonbeliever paradoxically buttresses Pomfret's own faith.

Reminding himself that his ministry "is not about me," he finds wisdom among his fellow worshippers. A lesbian named Angela says of her parish in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, "It was the first place I could ever go into and worship with all my parts." A gay father of three explains why he is still Catholic: "It's a Rosa Parks thing. I'm just not moving. It's my Church, too, as much as theirs." Pomfret discovers a network of believers challenging the larger Church to replace its framework of static orthodoxy with one of living and discovering.

Pomfret realizes that Rome is too preoccupied with control issues to consider the value of dissent and doubt in the journey toward wisdom; yet many of its gay communicants abide. "Brokenness," Pomfret affirms, "is an opportunity for the Spirit to enter."

I've been thinking a lot about Anglicans lately, which seems only fair since they have obviously been thinking a lot about me. Not me individually, of course, but me generically-me as a gay man.

As you're probably aware, for the last few years the Anglican Communion has been wracked by conflicts over gays and lesbians as priests and bishops and the issue of whether to bless (much less marry) same-sex partners.

The conflict pits gay-supportive American and Canadian and some British bishops against bishops from Africa and Asia (along with a few fractious American bishops) who are adamantly hostile to granting any rights to gays.

The church recently held its decennial Lambeth Conference, which normally addresses church issues and might have made some determination about all this, but Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams managed to avoid having the conference take any position at all, thus avoiding the possibility of open schism in the church.

Ironically, the anti-gay fundamentalism of the Africans is in some measure the fault of the British and American churches. The British and Americans have supported the missionary work in Africa to convert the populace to Christianity. And both, especially the wealthy Episcopal Church in the U.S., have given the impoverished African churches considerable economic support.

Unfortunately, the missionaries seem to have taught a fairly primitive version of Christianity-stressing the Bible but not the Anglican tradition of the role of reason and compromise. In other words, they gave the Africans and Asians a rule book, and the Africans and Asians have followed it more literally than the British and Americans.

The African bishops are not necessarily well-educated. Many have had little or no seminary training, and little acquaintance with the problems of interpreting biblical texts, nor with reading them in their historical context. They certainly have no grasp of the current research on homosexuality as a basic orientation. And they clearly have no awareness of the native African tradition of homosexuality in the form of mature men with "boy-wives." A well-placed American priest told a friend of mine that some African bishops have little more than an 8th-grade education.

Archbishop Williams' efforts to preserve church unity were not wholly successful. Even though he vowed to uphold traditional (anti-gay) Anglican traditions and went so far as to ban openly gay American bishop Gene Robinson, about 220 of the 880 Anglican bishops met in Jerusalem to form a potentially separatist communion within the Communion and voted to declare that they no longer recognized Williams as the head of the Communion. Yet one wonders what more Williams could have done short of exclaiming, "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome bishop?"

Robinson said that Williams even refused to answer his letters. The Apostle Paul wrote that Christians should behave so that the world would say, "How these Christians love one another!" So where is Williams' love? What kind of pastoral concern does Williams show? His actions are neither cordial, nor collegial, nor Christian. They are petty, frightened and small-souled.

It seems to me that Anglican liberals should just allow the Africans and Asians to split off and leave the Anglican Communion, taking their poverty and ignorance with them. The North Americans and British would be well rid of them. What, after all, is the benefit of including people who may nominally be Christians but seem to lack any understanding of what Christianity means?

The only reason to try to keep the Africans and Asians in the Communion would be the hope that eventually the liberals can bring them around on such issues as female priests and homosexuality. But the chances of that happening seem slim. After all, they have their reading of the bible on their side.

Alternatively, the North Americans could withdraw and say, You go your way and we'll go ours. That might rattle some of the Africans who need the American subsidies. And it would certainly rattle Williams, who seems to have given little thought to this possibility.

The Anglican church has a strong sense of history. What Williams is probably doing is trying to stave off any open schism, hoping that things will somehow change over time. In any case, he certainly does not want to enter the history books as the archbishop under whom a major schism occurred.

But after all, the Anglican church was founded in the 16th century by an act of schism. So schism is a venerable part of Anglican history. Who is to say it would be worse than a conflicted and specious "unity"?

A recent Newsweek article ("Young, Gay and Murdered") about Lawrence King-the cross-dressing gay 14-year-old fatally shot by a classmate last February-has prompted many accusations of "blaming the victim." In it author Ramin Setoodeh asks:

How do you protect legitimate, personal expression while preventing inappropriate, sometimes harmful, behavior? Larry King was, admittedly, a problematical test case: he was a troubled child who flaunted his sexuality and wielded it like a weapon-it was often his first line of defense. But his story sheds light on the difficulty of defining the limits of tolerance.

And later:

For [many teachers and parents] the issue isn't whether King was gay or straight-his father still isn't convinced his son was gay-but whether he was allowed to push the boundaries so far that he put himself and others in danger. They're not blaming King for his own death-as if anything could justify his murder-but their attitude toward his assailant is not unsympathetic.

Let's start with the obvious. The murder of Larry King was wrong.

It's tempting, and maybe prudent, to end there. Because anything else said, particularly anything critical of King's behavior, will look like a "but": "The murder of Larry King was wrong, but…"

No-the murder of Larry King was wrong, period.

There is, however, more to be said, not with a "but," but with an "and." So here goes.

By most accounts, Larry King was something of an obnoxious presence at school, engaging in behavior that at least bordered on, and probably crossed the line of, harassment. Assuming these accounts correct, Larry King should be blamed. Not for his own murder, obviously, but for some of the behavior that preceded it. He wasn't perfect.

Yet there are many complicating factors. First, it is unseemly to speak ill of the dead, especially dead children, most especially dead murdered children.

Second, both King and his killer Brandon McInerney came from rather troubled backgrounds, and both were merely kids-factors that mitigate responsibility generally.

Third, some of King's obnoxiousness was an understandable defense mechanism against others' cruelty. (For example: tired of being taunted in the locker room, he got revenge by ogling the boys as they changed clothes.)

And fourth, any criticism of King will strike some people as homophobic or transphobic, as some of it certainly has been.

All of that said, one can criticize bad behavior without in any way suggesting that it warrants murder, much less premeditated murder. Such may be the case of Larry King.

The important thing now is not blame; it's learning from what happened. Doing so requires a candid look at what went on and why, with an eye to reducing the likelihood of similar tragedies.

In assessing the case, Setoodeh focuses on whether Larry was allowed to push too far. He's certainly correct that if teachers had reined in some of King's misbehavior, he might well be alive today.

Isn't that blaming the victim? Not in itself (though other aspects of Setoodeh's treatment are admittedly troubling). To say that King's misbehavior was causally connected to his killing is not to say that King was in any way morally responsible for his killing. (Technically speaking, even King's showing up for school was causally connected to his killing: had he not been there, he would not have been killed as he was.) A causal factor is not the same as a justifying factor.

But King's misbehavior wasn't the only causal factor, and we must be careful not to ignore others. Among these was teachers' discomfort in discussing GLBT issues, leading them to feel a false dilemma between "We need to let him express himself" and "We need to prevent disruptive behavior." Freedom of expression never justifies sexual taunting, gay or otherwise, just as sexual taunting never justifies murder.

Moreover, there was teachers' failure to rein in other students' harassment of King-a causal factor Setoodeh scarcely considers.

There were other factors as well, including troubled family backgrounds for both youths, and McInerney's access to a gun. Had any of these been absent, King might be alive today.

Most of all, let's not forget McInerney's apparent belief that it's better to be known as a killer than suspected as a homo. Why did McInerney kill King? Perhaps the simplest answer is that he was embarrassed by King's sometimes unpleasantly expressed crush on him. His "solution" was to shoot King in the head, twice, as the latter was sitting quietly in an eighth-grade classroom.

And that was wrong, period.

The conventional view about John McCain is that, on many domestic issues, he tries to appeal both to religious conservatives and to independents. I think the truth is often less calculated than that: he has good instincts but simply hasn't given many cutting-edge domestic issues much deep thought. In recent comments about gay adoption, for example, he began badly but ended up in a pretty sensible position.

It started when the New York Times asked McCain whether he supported allowing gay couples to adopt children. "I think that we've proven that both parents are important in the success of a family," McCain responded, "so, no, I don't believe in gay adoption."

The interviewer, apparently dumbfounded, asked whether McCain would still feel that way even if it meant the child would be placed in an orphanage. McCain, suddenly sensing a culture-war minefield, avoided the question and simply said that he believed adoption should be encouraged.

Lots of gay activists jumped on this exchange as if proved that McCain hates gays or, at the very least, proved that he has capitulated to the religious right. It proves neither.

I don't think McCain has given even a moment of thought to adoption policy. The second half of the quote is a non sequitur. Adoption is necessarily a context in which "both parents" are unavailable, so it makes no sense to cite the superiority of biological parents as a reason to prohibit adoption by gays.

In the context of the culture wars, I think McCain hears a question like, "Do you favor letting gay couples adopt?" as, "Do you think gay parents are just as good for a child as a mother and father?" I don't think he hears it as, "Do you think that, once a child is up for adoption because his mother and father are out of the picture, gay people should be allowed to adopt that child?"

There is considerable debate about whether children do just as well with same-sex parents as with opposite-sex ones. Studies comparing children of gay and straight parents, while supportive of gay parenting, are not yet conclusive. Reasonable people who don't blindly hate gays can believe that opposite-sex couples would be better for children on average than same-sex couples.

Hardly anybody thinks, however, that this means gay persons must be prohibited from adopting children. Certainly gay people are competent to raise children, and public policy throughout the country reflects that fact. Only one state absolutely forbids adoptions by homosexuals, and even it allows gays to serve as long-term foster parents. McCain can't be opposed to adoptions by gay people under any circumstances, which was obvious when he side-stepped the interviewer's follow-up about Dickensian orphanages.

But McCain's answer in the Times created enough doubt, and generated enough criticism in the blogosphere (including by me), that his campaign was obliged to explain what he meant. After noting correctly that adoption is a state, not federal, issue and that McCain was not supporting any federal legislation on the subject, the campaign explained his position thus:

McCain expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible. However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative.

(A week later, McCain was asked again about gay adoptions by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. He responded, again, by asserting that he supports "traditional families" but also supports adoption for kids with no alternatives. Despite repeated goading from Stephanopoulos, he did not repeat his statement to the Times that he "opposes gay adoptions.")

What to make of all this? By itself, the clarification was unobjectionable. Few doubt that children should be raised by their own mother and father "wherever possible." But where the biological parents aren't available or are incompetent, children should be raised by caring adoptive parents rather than shuttled from home to home in long-term foster care. For McCain, does "caring adoptive parents" include a same-sex couple?

While some gay writers and activists complained that McCain didn't go far enough in repudiating his earlier opposition to gay adoption, it's instructive to consider the reaction of anti-gay groups. The Family Research Council worried that McCain had "muddied the waters" of his earlier opposition. Focus on the Family fumed that he had "backed off." He was sharply criticized on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

And while McCain could have been clearer in his clarification, it does establish a couple of important things that all but the most zealous supporters of Barack Obama should appreciate. Whereas McCain had suggested to the New York Times that it's always best for children to be raised by mothers and fathers, he now acknowledges this often won't be possible since "there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes."

Also, his seeming insistence on allowing adoptions only by opposite-sex couples has been replaced by supporting adoptions into "loving and caring home environments" where there are "caring parental figures."

I would have liked an explicit acknowledgment that gay parents can be caring parents and provide loving homes. (That would be a good future follow-up question.) But it won't be lost on religious conservatives that the McCain campaign used the kind of gender-neutral language about families that could be found on the website of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force.

Taking his statements together, I think McCain's view is roughly this: when it comes to adoption opposite-sex couples are preferable, but same-sex couples are acceptable. That's not a crazy or necessarily anti-gay view. In fact, if that's his view he is near the forefront of adoption policy, since such "second-parent" adoptions by unmarried gay couples are now permitted in only some jurisdictions in only about half the states.

On the whole, after some uncomfortable twisting and turning, McCain came up with a generally supportive position on gay adoption. It won't appease gay partisans in an election year but it is defensible.