The Cruelty of Anti-Gay Catholic Conservatives

Anti-gay bigot Austin Ruse

Conservative Christians - including far right Catholics - maintain that clinging to their ignorant, fiction book, and hypocritical anti-gay religious beliefs doesn't make them bigots.  Rather, they claim that they are merely exercising their right to "religious freedom," a term so broad that almost any kind of nastiness and horrible treatment of others can be sanctimoniously justified. Let's not forget that religion and the Bible were once used to justify slavery and segregation.  Or that ISIS is using religious belief and the Koran to justify atrocities in the Middle East.  A piece in The Week calls out conservative anti-gay Catholics for what they are;  cruel bigots.  Here are highlights:

This has been a year of clashes, sometimes quite fierce, between the Catholic Church and the rapidly expanding rights of gays. In a series of skirmishes throughout the spring and summer, Catholics made the case for their freedom to uphold traditionalist teachings about sex and marriage. Then, in the fall, the Vatican's synod on marriage and the family provoked outrage among Catholic conservatives for, among other things, proposing to treat homosexual desires and relationships with a modicum of dignity and respect.

Even though I support same-sex marriage, I have taken a strong stand in favor of religious freedom. I have also made the case that opposing gay marriage is not prima facie evidence of anti-gay bigotry. I still believe that — though a recent egregiously anti-gay article in the conservative Catholic magazine Crisis is enough to inspire some doubts.

[Y]ou might think that Tushnet, Gonnerman, and other celibate gay Catholics would be treated as heroes or saints by conservative Catholics. Unlike the many who either denounce the church for its strictures against homosexuality or actively work to bring about liberalization and reform, here are gay Catholics who publicly affirm church teaching and actually live it.  . . . . Austin Ruse, author of the Crisis takedown, is not one of them.

Ruse's latest anti-gay rant was provoked by a positive profile of Tushnet and Gonnerman on the front page of the Washington Post's Style section. After some oddly nasty commentary on the photo that accompanied the Post story  . . . . , Ruse gets to the point. While Tushnet and Gonnerman — whom he dubs "the New Homophiles" — are "95 percent there when it comes to Church teaching," the "last 5 percent is a serious problem."

What exactly do they get wrong? First, they affirm a gay identity. Second, they think that this identity gives them distinctive spiritual gifts. Ruse thinks both assumptions are false, because they treat homosexuality as something fixed or given, and even as something positive in certain respects. The truth, for Ruse, is that homosexual desires are the problem — and they shouldn't be granted any from of validity. On the contrary, they should simply be overcome, transcended, cured. Like a disease.

As long as those who hold such starkly anti-gay views wield influence in the church, accommodation between Catholicism and homosexuality will be impossible. Gays will be faced with a stark choice: leave the church for good or somehow make their homosexual desires vanish. Exile or erasure.

This holds gay Catholics to an absurdly high standard — one far higher than any straight Catholic is ever expected to meet.  

Then there's the fact that Ruse's position blithely ignores a mountain of scientific evidence, not to mention a similarly vast testimonial literature by homosexual men and women, that same-sex desires are innate to certain individuals (across a range of species). They are not some temporary or imposed disorder that can be argued or prayed away. They are not a choice. They are not an excuse for perversion. They're real. Some people are just born with them.

In the end, the problem for Ruse and like-minded Catholic conservatives is that homosexuals refuse to disappear.

At one point in his essay, Ruse insinuates that in talking and writing about their experiences of coming out as gay, Tushnet and Gonnerman display narcissism. Perhaps so. But what about a man who sets himself up as the Grand Inquisitor, eagerly casting stones at people trying, however awkwardly, to abide by the extraordinarily demanding strictures of their church? I'd say that's a person so consumed by hatred of homosexuality that he's willing to risk looking like a complete jerk — and willing to make his church look like an institution deeply, almost existentially, devoted to cruelty.

Eve Tushnet, Joshua Gonnerman, and others like them show a different way. If the Catholic Church hopes to avoid seeing the gates of hell prevail against it, it will have to follow their example — and make abundantly clear who the real "bad Catholics" are."

Despite the schools and hospitals it runs, much of conservative Catholicism is based on cruelty.  Cruelty, judgment of others, hypocrisy and huge helpings of guilt and self-hatred for those of us born gay.  It took me several years of therapy - with an ordained Presbyterian minister with a Ph.D in psychology - to get over the psychological damage done to me by my Catholic upbringing.  Sadly, there are too many in the Church like Ruse and many of them are in the Vatican.  I chose exile from the Church and it was one of the best things I ever did.  I urge other gay Catholics and their families to do likewise - walk away. The Evangelical Lutheran Church and Episcopal Church offer wonderful alternatives for those who still want the liturgical experiences of a mass.