An LGBT Perspective: Losing One's Faith Trying to "Pray Away the Gay"

Tomorrow is Easter and I will not be going to church - not because churches are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic but because I largely lost my Catholic faith as I struggled to "pray away the gay," something I began to do around age twelve and continued for decades without success.  As a child, I loved Easter, especially at my grand parents' beautiful church pictured at left. That was, of course, before I realized god had made me gay.  Early posts on this blog look at my faith struggle and I talk about it from time to time, usually when I see religion being used to deliberately harm LGBT people.  A piece in an Irish LGBT publication struck a chord with me because the author's experience so closely parallels my own.  

Like me, the author left Catholicism and largely walked away from organized Christianity (I remain technically a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America - they liberal Lutheran denomination).  Many in the LGBT community have had a similar experience once they shake off the self-hatred their religious upbringing had instilled in them as they come to comprehend the cruel lie that god supposedly loves you and made you in his image yet made you intrinsically disordered per Church dogma. I continue to worry about LGBT youth currently engaged in the fruitless struggle to pray away the gay, likely suffering from self-hate as a consequence.  Here are highlights of the piece which may help straight friends who remain churchgoers to understand why I find religion to be a harmful force for so many:  

I had a number of theories about my sexuality in my early years. At one point, I believed that God had made me gay as a challenge to see if I could overcome my same-sex desire. Later, about a year and a half into my efforts to pray myself straight, I thought that he might have just made some horrendous mistake. But even believing that was difficult, because I knew that God didn’t make mistakes. So, the theory I ultimately settled on was that my attraction to other boys was actually just a phase – it would pass in time and then, finally, I would be just like everybody else. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. 

Today, I am 26 years-old and I am openly and confidently gay. But I still look back on that teenager who so desperately wanted to change who he was and wonder: how did it get to that point? There were many reasons, of course; homophobic bullying, a hostile society – but my intense Catholic faith also played a big part in making me hate myself. My parents, while not exactly devout Catholics themselves, brought us to mass most weekends. We were cultural Catholics, but religion was also a big part of our lives. It was how we came together and it allowed us to connect to something bigger than ourselves. At 11 years-old, when most boys my age started having crushes on girls, I started having crushes on boys. By the time I was 12, my sexuality was in full swing – and I despised myself for it. I ventured onto Google and quickly established that being gay was not only socially unacceptable, but my church – the religion I cared so passionately about – strictly forbade it. I became increasingly aware of just how hated gay people were within Catholicism. It was an incredibly isolating and alienating feeling, to feel rejected from a place in which I had always felt so at home. I was too young to see the Catholic church’s anti-LGBT+ views for what they are: bigoted, normative, hateful. Instead, I told myself that I was the problem – that I needed to be fixed.

It was in that context that I started asking God to help me, to try to pray myself straight. My efforts were not without their complications; by that point, my faith was starting to crumble around me. I had backed myself into a theological corner, and it was patently clear that there was no easy way out of it. If God never makes mistakes, and makes us in his image, how could he have gone so far wrong with me? Why would he voluntarily create somebody who was intrinsically disordered when he makes everybody in his image? And if he truly loved me, as I had always been told he did, then why would he put me through this unbearable suffering? These questions did not have easy answers, and even while I continued to pray myself straight, they pushed me gently towards the exit door of atheism. 

When I was 13, I finally came up with a plan of action – I decided I would ask God to take this burden from me. To my dismay, my efforts to pray myself straight only made me more miserable. I felt utterly hopeless, and started to wonder if I would be better off dead. I contemplated suicide on numerous occasions as a teenager; whether to die or stay alive became a constant grappling point. I often wondered which would hurt my parents more: me dying or me coming out as gay.

Just before my 15th birthday, as I yet again tried to pray myself straight, I told God it would be the last time I would ask him to fix me. I told him I had had enough – I had tried hard enough to rid myself of these feelings. I asked him to rescue me – and he didn’t. That finally put an end to my belief in a higher power.

It is an intensely alienating feeling, standing in a beautiful Catholic church, remembering all the times I tried to pray myself straight, all the times I asked God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary to rescue me.

Today, I am firmly an atheist and the only masses I attend are the odd Catholic wedding. I’m not necessarily happy I’m an atheist, but I am happy that I’m no longer part of an organisation that is not just intolerant, but is actively hostile to LGBT+ people. I now understand that I, like all queer people, deserve so much better than what the Catholic church is prepared to offer us. I still hold out hope that one day, the church will change its teachings on LGBT+ issues, but that hope dims by the day. Every time it looks like Pope Francis is starting to move towards greater acceptance, he imminently throws more discrimination our way.

I no longer care what the Catholic church thinks of me. I keep my hope alive for all the other children growing up in that institution. It breaks my heart that they have to learn that they are not loved unconditionally like their straight and cisgender peers. I hope that one day, young queer people will no longer contemplate suicide because the church that was supposed to love them rejected them. I hope that they will be able to go to mass and won’t feel alienated in the way so many queer people do.

But right now, change looks a long way off. The Catholic church of today is an intensely backwards organisation that endeavours to keep people inside tiny boxes. But queer people cannot – and will not – thrive inside boxes.

 Unlike the author, I do not see myself as an atheist.  Rather, I am perhaps a deist like Jefferson and some of the other founding fathers.  There is a higher power - just not the god of the bible or the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Francis Opts to Choose Ignorance With Respect to Sexuality

The Catholic Church has a centuries, if not millennium, long history of rejecting science and modern knowledge rather than admit that its antiquated dogma is flat out wrong. In the past, the Church's leadership refused to concede that the Earth revolved around the Sun instead of vice versa, it insisted that the Earth was flat, previous Popes supported slavery, and now, fast forwarding time-wise, Pope Francis is rejected modern medical and mental health science on sexual orientation and gender identity.  

Other than quacks funded by right wing groups or religiously affiliated institutions, the consensus among the medical and mental health professional community is that both sexual orientation and gender identity are set in utero BEFORE children are born as a result of hormonal influences that impact on both physical development as well as brain development that sets once sexual orientation and ones gender identity - the latter being the cause of individuals being transgender.  Like it or not, some people ARE born with mismatched physical attributes and gender identity.  Others are born gay.  Now, Pope Francis in true knuckle dragger form has dismissed the fact that a person’s gender can differ from the assigned sex at birth.  Anything rather than admit that the Church's ignorance based 12th century dogma on sex and sexuality is simply wrong.  No one "chooses" to be gay or to be transgender.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Francis' decision to place the Church once again on the wrong side of science and, down the road history.  One can only hope that Francis' wrongheaded decision will only serve to accelerate the flight from the Church.  Here are article excerpts:

ROME — Warning of a society “without sexual differences,” the Vatican on Monday dismissed the idea that a person’s gender can differ from the assigned sex at birth and said a fluid idea of identity was not “based on the truths of existence.”

The right to “choose one’s gender,” the Vatican said in an official document, is in “direct contradiction of the model of marriage as being between one man and one woman.”

The document, released as a guide for Catholic educators, held firm to the religion’s traditional teaching on gender and sexuality. But ­LGBT members of the faith said it put an official and updated stamp on viewpoints they had hoped were changing.

“This casts everything back to the Dark Ages,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of ­DignityUSA, a group that advocates for ­LGBT equality and inclusion in the church. “I think it is incredibly insensitive, to be talking still about gender and sexuality as a choice and a momentary whim rather than a fundamental God-given identity.”

The document, released by the Vatican office that deals with education, coincided with a month of Pride festivities in many countries around the world. It was not signed by Francis, but rather by two high-level officials — Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi and Archbishop Angelo Vincenzo Zani — in the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s bureaucracy.

The church’s retrenchment hints at one of the challenges it faces at a time of growing secularization — when many of its teachings on sexuality are being ignored as out of date. Francis has expressed an interest in outreach to ­LGBT followers, but he has also taken a clear stance on gender identity, decrying that children are taught in schools that “everyone can choose his or her sex.”

The church made a case that children had the right to grow up in a family “with a father and a mother,” and the document quoted an earlier Francis speech about how children benefit from seeing masculinity represented by the father and femininity represented by the mother. Traditionalist groups lauded the 31-page Vatican document, titled “Male and Female He Created Them.”

The Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit who has advocated for the church to more openly welcome ­LGBT members, said on Twitter that the document calls for dialogue and listening “but sets aside the real-life experiences of ­LGBT people.”

“Sadly,” Martin wrote, “it will be used as a cudgel against transgender people, and an excuse to argue that they shouldn’t even exist.”

The good news is that the Church is hemorrhaging members.  In my youth, all of my family was made up of church-going Catholics.  Now, none of us remain in the Church and the newest generation has not been baptized at all.  This experience is not unique to my family.  Francis seems hell bent to cling to ignorance and, if it continues, the Catholic Church will one day be a church centered in the most ignorant and uneducated parts of the world, namely Africa and limited parts of South America. Given the evils the Church has done in the past, the collapse of the Church in the developed world will be a positive development.

Utah Mormon Republican Comes Out as Gay: He "Could Not Continue to Live a Lie”

Nathan Ivie — Photo: Facebook

Those of us of older generations and/or raised in anti-gay religious traditions often struggle for years trying to "pray away the gay" or even undergoing fraudulent "conversion therapy" in order to meet family or religious denomination expectations.  Having undergone this struggle myself for decades, I can assure straight readers that it is a living hell filled with self-hate and self-loathing and, at least in my own case, constant thoughts of suicide which eventually lead to two serious attempts which landed me in the hospital.  Eventually many of us - unless one is Rick Santorum or Ken Cuccinelli - reach a point where we simply no longer have the strength to continue to live a lie and live our lives as actors on a stage playing an assigned role. To say that it is exhausting and soul killing is an understatement.

This is not to say that those of us who married spouses of the opposite gender did not love that other person as much as a gay can romantically love an  opposite gender spouse.  I/we did love them, yet felt guilt because in our heart we could not be what they deserved. This damage to both the gay spouse and the straight spouse is the direct fruit of right wing Christians' - and Muslims' - rejection of modern medical and mental health knowledge on sexual orientation.  Rather than admit that their cherished religious dogma is wrong, these fundamentalist prefer to ruin countless lives. 

As Metro Weekly is reporting, a Mormon Republican  from the state of Utah finally reached the point I reached 18 years ago where he simply could no longer live the lie.  Here are article excerpts:

A Republican lawmaker in Utah has come out as gay after working with families who lost their LGBTQ children to suicide.  Nathan Ivie, a Utah County Commissioner, posted a four-minute video to his Facebook page saying that he had been fighting his sexuality since age 9.

The forty-year-old also detailed a suicide attempt in his early 20s, and said he wanted to help struggling LGBTQ youth know that life is worth living.

“There’s no easy way to say this, I might as well just jump up and say it — I’m gay,” Ivie, who is also Mormon, said. “That’s my reality and that’s what I need to talk to you about today.” Ivie said he had spent “decades…wrestling with who I really am,” and that accepting his sexuality had “not been easy.”

“I understand the impact my discoveries have had and will have on others, yet I’m still the same person I’ve always been,” he said. “I hope, to you, this part of my life doesn’t become my defining trait.”

Ivie said that, when he first realized his sexuality at age 9, he “believed there was something wrong with me.”  “I fought from the beginning to find some way to change myself,” Ivie said. “That battle resulted in a failed suicide attempt when I was 22 years old.”

After recovering from what he called a “near tragedy,” Ivie said he “tried to live the life that was expected of me.” “The truth is, I never felt comfortable in my own skin,” he continued. “I felt I was living someone else’s life rather than my own.”

Ivie said that while he was “as committed today as I have ever been to my faith, family and freedom,” he realized he “could not continue to live a lie. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right for anyone.”

The politician noted that he and his wife had separated, but that she remains his best friend and they have discussed at length how to “move forward as a different kind of family to fulfill the responsibilities we took on together to our two amazing children.”

Ivie said he was aware that some would neither understand nor accept his announcement, but that he would “continue to serve my county as Utah County commissioner with all of my heart. I know there are haters in every area of our lives, but we cannot let that be what defines us as a community.”

Ivie said his decision to come out was inspired by working with families who have lost LGBTQ children to suicide.  “That really makes you reevaluate your life, and what you’re doing as a leader to prevent that kind of stuff,” he said.

He added that he wanted young LGBTQ people to know that “it’s OK to be different, it’s OK to live authentically. You can be gay and a Republican…. You need to trust that people will love you for who you really are.”

Speaking to the Salt Lake Tribune, he noted that “somewhere out there” is a younger version of him, who is contemplating taking their own life, and that he wants them to know that it’s worth continuing to live.  “They need to know that it is,” Ivie said. “They need to know they’re valued, they’re loved.”

Tanner Ainge, who serves alongside Ivie on the Utah County Commission, tweeted his support for Ivie’s announcement.

“My instinct is just to embrace [Nathan],” he tweeted. “Today I stand with him as a friend, valued colleague, and fellow Republican. His story will provide strength and hope to those feeling the lonely despair that almost took his life and has taken too many in our community.”

Utah has one of the highest youth suicide rates in America - in my view probably in no small part due the the Mormon Church's historic homophobia.  In my own case, I think I knew from around age 12 that I was gay, but my Catholic upbringing in then conservative Central New York  and family expectations - not to mention the fact that homosexuality was at the time classified as a mental illness - made accepting my true self impossible.  Suicide seemed a far better solution to my problem. Kudos to Ivie for coming out and striving to stop LGBT youth suicides. 

Straight Spouses: the Other Victims of Conversion Therapy Fraud

In pushing to keep gay conversion therapy legal - increasingly a lost cause - both so they can rake in money and use the "gays can change" lie for political purposes, there is one group that Christofascists consistently ignore: straight spouses of gays who will never be able to change their sexual orientation despite lies to the contrary.  While I was never subjected to conversion therapy per se, I fully bought into the Catholic Church's lie that one could "pray away the gay," got married with the best of intentions, and had children.  Ultimately, that marriage ended, causing pain and chaos for years. Am I bitter that I believed a lie?  You bet I am.  But I am even more angry that right wing "Christians" continue to push the lie caring nothing about the harm done to gays, but especially the straight spouses and children of doomed marriages. To these foul people, all that matters is making money through fraud, political messaging and, in some cases, not having to face the reality that their faith construct is built on a lie.  A piece in Queerty looks at once family harmed by this pernicious lie.  Here are highlights:

There’s more than enough evidence out there to show things like conversion therapy and trying to “pray the gay away” doesn’t work. Yet there are still those who continue to try because faith, they say, is blind.

In a new blog post published on Love What Matters, a woman by the name of Ali Anne details her nine year marriage to a man named Kyle, and how she spent nearly a decade trying to pray his gay away to no avail.

Ali says she knew Kyle was gay before they wed, but she agreed to marry him anyway.
“One day, Kyle had pulled me aside and told me that he ‘struggled’ with homosexuality. My response: ‘Wow, you’re going to need a really strong wife!’ Ali writes.

Both she and Kyle were raised in religious households where they were taught being gay was wrong and, if a person did experience same-sex attraction, they should “either live a celibate life, or, deny yourself and marry someone of the opposite sex and do your best to live a heterosexual lifestyle.”

“Kyle always knew he wanted a family, so living a heterosexual lifestyle was the only option for him–we were both under the assumption we would be able to pray the gay away.”

So Ali and Kyle got married. A few years later, they started having kids.

“Being parents was the highlight of our life,” Ali recalls. “Everything we did, we did with them in mind. Life was busy and beautiful.”

Except not. Because eight years into their marriage, she says, “Kyle began feeling the weight of not being true to himself as a gay man.”

[I]tbecame obvious to both of them that praying the gay away wasn’t working. So they went to a marriage counselor.

“One of the ideas, was for Kyle to ‘come out’ as gay, publicly, while still remaining in our marriage,” Ali writes. “I was hopeful. I liked the idea.”

Kyle, however, didn’t. One evening he told her, “If I am going to be around gay men, I’m going to want to be with a man. This is not just about sex with a man, this is about loving a man and being loved by a man. Ideally, I want to have a relationship with a man.”

That’s when Ali says she knew her marriage was over.

“It has been two years since we made the decision to end our marriage and our lives have drastically changed,” Ali writes. “Through our decision to end our marriage, coming out as gay (Kyle) and becoming an LGBTQ ally (myself) we lost 95% of our friends and family.”

Although Kyle and I don’t choose each other romantically anymore, we still have a deep love and a deep connection with one another,” she continues. “He is my best friend, and I am his. We are committed to our family, as non-traditional as that may look.”

Replicate this story over and over again and one begins to see the harm that this deliberate lie causes.  Conversion therapy needs to be banned in every state in America - indeed, across the globe. Sadly, this truth is ignored by the Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church and other denominations. 

Michigan Ends Funding For Anti-LGBT Adoption Groups

In a move that needs to be followed in every state in the country, the sate of Michigan will no longer provide state funding to adoption and foster care agencies that refuse to work with LGBT individuals as adoptive parents or foster parents citing "religious belief."  Expect shrieks and flying spittle and claims of persecution from those who want to gorge themselves at the public taxpayer funds trough yet want to discriminate against taxpayers.  The choice is simple, if you take public funds, you work with all of the public.  If you are unwilling to do that, then do not take public funds. The reality is that many of these bigoted agencies cannot make a financial go of it without taxpayer funds - something that ought to tell them that their bigotry and exclusionary policies are not wanted in the public market place.  The Detroit Free Press looks at the development.  Here are excerpts:

Michigan will no longer financially support adoption and foster care agencies that refuse to work with same-sex couples and LGBTQ individuals because of religious beliefs under the terms of a settlement of a lawsuit negotiated by Attorney General Dana Nessel.

The settlement, which was announced Friday, sets up a battle with the Republican-led Legislature, which passed a law in 2015 that allows adoptions agencies to refuse to work with members of the LGBTQ community.

The terms of the settlement require that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services agrees to maintain nondiscriminatory provisions in its foster care and adoption agency contracts. It also calls for the department to enforce the nondiscrimination provisions by terminating contracts with agencies that either discriminate against same-sex couples or LGBTQ individuals who would otherwise qualify to become foster or adoptive parents or that refer them to other agencies.

In exchange for the policy, the plaintiffs in the case — Kristy and Dana Dumont of Lansing and Erin and Rebecca Busk-Sutton of Detroit — have agreed to dismiss their claims and pay their own attorney fees and costs.

In 2015, Republicans in the Michigan Legislature, voting mostly along party lines, passed a controversial bill that allows adoption and foster care agencies to cite religious convictions when refusing to work with same-sex couples who want to adopt  or foster a child.

The two couples filed a lawsuit in 2017 challenging the MDHHS contract with taxpayer-funded and state-contracted foster care and adoption agencies that refused to work with same-sex couples.

The couples said they approached St. Vincent Catholic Charities and Bethany Christian Services to adopt children the agencies had accepted through referrals from MDHHS.  They said the agencies refused to work with them.

The state contracts with 59 private adoption and foster care agencies across the state and while the MDHHS wasn't able to say specifically how many don't work with same-sex couples or LGBTQ individuals, 20 of the agencies are affiliated with religious organizations.

During her campaign for attorney general, standing up for the rights of the LGBTQ community was a major theme.

“Discrimination in the provision of foster care case management and adoption services is illegal, no matter the rationale,” Nessel said in a statement. “Limiting the opportunity for a child to be adopted or fostered by a loving home not only goes against the state’s goal of finding a home for every child, it is a direct violation of the contract every child-placing agency enters into with the state.”

The ACLU said the settlement was a victory for the 12,000 children in foster care in Michigan.

“Our children need every family that is willing and able to provide them with a loving home," said Leslie Cooper, deputy director of the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project. "When agencies choose to accept taxpayer dollars to provide public child welfare services, they must put the needs of the children first.”

Leading the way in whining was the Catholic Church which routinely acts like a hog at a trough when it comes to seeking taxpayer funds to prop up its discriminatory agencies. 

France Introduces National LGBT Anti-Bullying Campaign

As in the United States, right wing violence and agitation are on the rise, some of it fueled far right parties aligned with and/or funded by Russia (e.g., Marie Le Pen's National Rally political party (previously named National Front).  In addition to being anti-immigrant, these forces are also stridently anti-LGBT and want to inflict far right religious views on all citizens.  In France, a national effort has been launched to fight the homophobia and bullying that are part and parcel with the far right agenda. A piece in Gay Star News looks at this effort which should be implemented in Virginia and across the USA to counter the hate and untruths disseminated by Christofascists literally daily.  Here are article highlights:

France introduced a national campaign in the fight to eradicate anti-LGBTI incidents in middle and high schools across the country.

Starting today (28 January), France’s Ministry of National Education and Youth launched All Equal, All Allies. It’s a campaign that ensures all state schools put up anti-bullying posters, as well as provide accompanying guides about LGBTI students for teachers.

SOS Homophobia spearheaded the campaign, which aims to make LGBTI youth in France feel more included at school.

They found an increase of reports of anti-LGBTI incidents by 38% in the last year.
Their recent report also said this causes decreased self-esteem, isolation and dropping out of school. The risk of suicide attempts remains four times higher for LGBTI youth than for the rest of the population.

They wrote in a press release: ‘SOS homophobia hopes that all institutions, public and private, will open their doors to this campaign so that it can reach a maximum of students and complete the work of prevention and awareness provided by SOS volunteers.’

Across France, complaints of homophobic attacks increased by 15% since the beginning of 2018.

A number of French LGBTI rights activists also believe that the number of people to experience homophobic attacks or abuse is widely underreported.

‘This is just the tip of the iceberg,’ said the spokesperson for rights group Inter-LGBT, Clémence Zamora-Cruz.

‘On the ground, many attacks go unreported. Often, victims don’t complain for fear of reprisals, or because they’re afraid of speaking to police officers who aren’t aware of issues relating to LGBT identity.

He then added: ‘They’re scared of not being listened to.’

Last month, a handful of French artists got together to release a song to help tackle homophobia.

De l’Amour tells the story of gay refugee Azamat, with all proceeds raised going to French charity Urgence Homophobie (Emergency Homophobia).

Among the artists volunteering to sing on the track and appear in an evocative video were Emmanuel Moire, Christophe Willem and Muriel Robin.

There's No Making the Catholic Church "Great Again"

The Roman Catholic Church is facing perhaps its greatest crisis since the Reformation in the wake of a never ending cascade of sexual abuse by clergy and cover ups by high ranking Church officials, some of whom engaged in abuse themselves. Recently, it was disclosed that Opus Dei, an extreme far right element in the Church, had paid a $1 million settlement in respect to one of its most visible priest in response to abuse allegations. Over a dozen state attorneys general are investigating clerical sexual abuse and Church cover ups in their states and bomb shell stories hit the press nearly daily (my Google search agent delivers numerous stories every day).  The response of the far right elements in the Church such as "Church Militant" - which would bring back the Spanish Inquisition if it could - is to call for a return to the the Latin mass and blaming gays for all of the sins of the Church.  They want to make the Church "great again" in the same blind and fraudulent way that Trump has convinced his white supremacist followers that he can take them back to a better time that never really existed. A piece in the National Catholic Reporter looks at the foolishness and dishonesty of this approach.  Here are highlights:

Despite political slogans to the contrary, there has never been a time when America was "great." The same thing could be said about the Roman Catholic Church.

There has never been a "great" time, a "golden age," a context in which the church was actually a "perfect society" or anything apart from what it always has been and remains: a pilgrim community of the baptized. It has always been simultaneously holy and sinful (a theme theologian Brian Flanagan takes up in his recent book Stumbling in Holiness: Sin and Sanctity in the Church) because it is composed of imperfect, weak and ordinary human beings like you and me and everybody else.

While many Catholics, especially those in ecclesiastical leadership, have focused a lot of attention on the sanctity of the church over the centuries, the real sinfulness of the church can no longer be merely brushed off or avoided altogether. 

In the wake of the crises of faith and trust renewed by the revelations of the abuse and assault allegations against former-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and witnessed in the Pennsylvania grand jury report, women and men of faith have had to grapple with why they continue to identify as Catholic and what that identity means to them. And the responses have varied.

A lot of attention has been paid to those who have opted out of Catholicism entirely. . . . . I understand this decision and the feelings that precipitate such a serious choice. I, too, have had my own struggles with how to square my faith in the God of Jesus Christ and the church with the darkest and most-disturbing criminality of some of its leaders.

[S]ome Catholics have proposed constructive pathways and calls for change. Among these, I think increased lay leadership and ministerial oversight in numerous forms makes tremendous sense and its implementation is long overdue.

Others have suggested dramatic and, at times, unrealistic responses. While well-intentioned, calls for widespread episcopal resignations or even just that of Pope Francis alone do not adequately address the structural issues that were the conditions that make possible such egregious abuse, assault and cover-up. 

And still others have taken a different approach entirely. Which brings me to what we might call the ecclesial equivalent of the Trumpian rally cry to "Make America Great Again."

While not an overwhelming number, there is a small but vocal group of Catholics who have taken the latest revelations as an opportunity to suggest the source of the crises in the church are the theological and liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. This sort of conjecture is as incredible as those who claim gay clergy are the problem (a preposterous assertion that has been incontrovertibly disproven by scientific research).

What I find extremely disturbing with this sort of logic — and it is not limited to Roman Catholics, as one recent piece in The Times of London showed — are the ahistorical and untenable theological foundations it presupposes.

Change can be a terrifying prospect. So too is the realization that what so many of us generally presumed about the goodness, virtue and moral standing of our religious leaders might not be as accurate as we rightly hoped. But change in itself is not the problem and reactionary attitudes of yearning for a greater time that never was is also not the answer. The desire to return to what some see as past liturgical perfection, for example, reflects the fear of change in unfamiliar times seen today in broader society. It is a symptom of something more troubling: a desire for control presented as authentic reform.

There's no going back to this reverie of some past great church, because the only church that exists is the pilgrim one composed of all the baptized on a journey forward. The question for us this year is how exactly do we let the Holy Spirit lead us forward?

Rigid doctrine that ignores modern science and knowledge and condemnation of anyone who disagrees is not going to solve the current Church crisis.  Just as Trump's chanting MAGA is not going to sweep the nation back to the segregated and often brutal 1950's. 

The 10 Biggest Homophobes and Transphobes of 2018

Homophobes Dallin H. Oaks, Mary Fallin, and Roger Severino.

As is common as December 31st approaches, many news outlets are looking back for significant events of the past year as well as heroes and villains.  In the last category should be included those who peddle hatred of others, especially LGBT individuals, under the smoke screen of religion or political self-prostitution to haters and hate groups.  A piece in The Advocate looks at some of the worse homophobes and and purveyors of hate towards those who are transgender.  Not surprisingly, the faux "Christian" Alliance Defending Freedom, the Roman Catholic Church, the Mormon Church and Republican politicians and apparatchiks that the prizes as the most hate-filled groups/individuals domestically.  The following are article highlights that look at these hate merchants and religious zealots:

LGBTQ people have made great strides toward equality in the U.S. and around the world, but we still have homophobes and transphobes trying to roll back our progress, and unfortunately some of them are running the country. We of course have had the usual suspects to deal with -- Mike Pence, Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, Louie Gohmert, Pat Robertson, and many more -- but here we'll spotlight some of those who particularly made news this year. 

Alliance Defending Freedom  The year's top Phobie Aware goes to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit that specializes in causes important to the religious right. . . . . The ADF is still fighting for the right to discriminate. It's asked the Supreme Court to take up cases where ADF is trying to end a Pennsylvania school district's transgender-inclusive restroom policy and advocating for a funeral home's right to fire a trans employee. Oh, and it's got another case involving Masterpiece Cakeshop, for a refusal to make a birthday cake that celebrates a trans woman's gender transition. The ADF contends that the state of Colorado is harassing Philllips by expecting him to obey the antidiscrimination law.

Dallin H. Oaks [Mormon Chrch]  It's not news that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known informally as the Mormon Church, isn't accepting of LGBTQ people, but one of its top leaders, Dallin H. Oaks, took the homophobia and transphobia to new heights this year. “Our knowledge of God’s revealed plan of salvation requires us to oppose many of the current social and legal pressures to retreat from traditional marriage or to make changes that confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women,” . . . . Those pressures, he said, come from none other than Satan, who “seeks to confuse gender, to distort marriage, and to discourage childbearing, especially by parents who will raise children in truth.” . . . . There's an epidemic of suicide among LGBTQ youth in the church's home state of Utah, and much of the blame can be placed on the denomination's hatred.

Right-wing Catholics  It has been a banner year for homophobia in the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis, who once said “Who am I to judge?” about gay priests, said gay people don’t belong in the clergy. Not that the church has ever been truly accepting of gay clergy, but their presence has been an open secret for eons. With the church rocked by sex abuse scandals, Cardinal Gerhard Müller blamed gays for abuse, even though there’s no correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Roger Severino [Trump Appointee] Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, is overseeing the Trump administration's effort to define transgender people “out of existence,” as The New York Times put it in an October story breaking the news of a memo circulating among federal government agencies to legally define gender as something immutable and fixed at birth, as indicated by a person’s genitalia. He's also spearheading HHS's "conscience protection" efforts, aimed at aiding health care workers with religious objections to serving certain patients, which could well result in denial of care to LGBTQ people. Severino has a long history of working for far-right groups and opposing LGBTQ rights. He has opposed marriage equality, defended “ex-gay” therapy, and objected to allowing transgender people to serve in the military.

Mary Fallin and Jeff Colyer [GOP Governors]  As governors of Oklahoma and Kansas, respectively, Mary Fallin and Jeff Colyer signed bills into law that will allow adoption and foster care agencies that provide state-funded services to reject prospective parents who offend the agencies' religious dogma. They could be interfaith couples, single parents, or, yes, same-sex couples or single LGBTQ people. That's discrimination funded with tax dollars. For Fallin, the action was one more notch in a long record of anti-LGBTQ governing.

Texas Republican Party  Whenever the Texas Republican Party approves a platform, it's sure to be anti-LGBTQ. This year's may be its most hateful yet, though. At its biennial convention in June, the party adopted a platform that again endorses “ex-gay” therapy, as it has since 2014, as well as opposing marriage equality and supporting business owners’ right to discriminate against anyone who offends their religious sensibilities. It makes a new call for the state to repeal its hate-crimes law and opposes all efforts to recognize transgender people’s identity. 

Supreme Court Rebuffs Catholic Social Services' Right to Discriminate Against Gays

With all the problems that the Roman Catholic Church is facing ranging from declining membership (which at least so far has been partially masked by the growing Hispanic immigrant population) to the once again exploding sex abuse scandal, one would think that things other than discriminating against LGBT individuals would take a higher priority.  Not so apparently in the Diocese of Philadelphia where the diocese Catholic Social Services sued the City of Philadelphia claiming that compliance with the City's non-discrimination laws would restrict its religious beliefs.  If Philadelphia is like other jurisdictions, it likely had been paying Catholic Social Services for foster care placement services - money, the organization happily accepted.  Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take Catholic Social Services' appeal and the organization was left with the choice of ending its discriminatory practices or losing access to the taxpayer funded money trough.  Reuters looks at the the ruling.  Here are highlights:

In a decision that Catholic Social Services had said would force its foster care program to close, the justices refused the religious agency’s request for an injunction compelling the city to allow it to place children in foster homes while litigation over the dispute continues in lower courts.

In the brief order that did not give any reasons for the decision, three conservative members of the court, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, said they would have granted the agency’s request.

Five of the nine Supreme Court justices are needed to grant an injunction, but the court is one member short since Justice Anthony Kennedy retired at the end of July. The court is split 4-4 between liberal and conservative justices. President Donald Trump has nominated conservative federal appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Kennedy.

“We hoped for a different decision today,” said Lori Windham, a lawyer at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the agency. She said she was encouraged that three justices agreed with their position.

The dispute arose last March after the city suspended referrals with Catholic Social Services following a newspaper report on the agency’s policy to turn away same-sex couples.

At issue is Catholic Social Services’ policy of refusing to perform home studies on same-sex couples to evaluate and certify them as foster parents, which it says would amount to a written endorsement of same-sex marriage, according to court papers.

The case underscores increasing tensions in the United States between advocates for religious groups seeking exemptions from anti-discrimination laws, and gay rights proponents who say such exemptions would be a license to discriminate.

Philadelphia says that as part of its foster care contract with Catholic Social Services, the agency must follow a city anti-discrimination law, which covers sexual orientation.

Catholic Social Services, which is part of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, filed suit in federal court arguing that the city had violated its religious and free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution.

I have zero sympathy or Catholic Social Services and similar groups that want to gobble up taxpayer funded money yet then think they should have a license to discriminate against some of the very same taxpayers who are footing the bill.   If the agency cannot survive without public funds, then maybe that ought to send it message that the public doesn't support its exclusionary agenda.  Currently in Virginia, similar groups have a license to discriminate thanks to Republicans who are always willing to perform the political equivalent of fellatio for The Family Foundation and similar anti-gay hate organizations.  Hopefully, this state of affairs will end if Democrats retake control of the House of Delegates (and possibly the Senate) in the 2019 Virginia elections.

Episcopal Church: Same-Sex Couples Can Marry Anywhere

Christ & St. Luke, Norfolk, VA.

Again demonstrating that it provides a good alternative for gay Catholics who remain burdened by a hypocrisy-filled, stridently anti-gay Church hierarchy, the Episcopal Church now allows same sex couples to marry in their home parish even if the local diocese remains homophobic.  I have long advised LGBT individuals raised in homophobic religious traditions to walk away and, if they feel compelled to still go to church, to find an LGBT friendly denomination.  Having been raised Catholic, I know too well the soul killing atmosphere of Catholicism.  I opted to leave the Catholic Church and after a stint as an Episcopalian, found a church home in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  UPI looks at this development in the Episcopal Church.  Here are highlights:

The Episcopal Church removed restrictions on same-sex marriage, a move that allows all couples to wed where they worship, even if their bishop disapproves.

The action came out of discussions at the General Convention, which wrapped up its triennial meeting in Austin, Texas, on Friday.

Same-sex couples are already allowed to marry across most Episcopal Churches in the United States, but a few U.S. dioceses had not permitted religious wedding ceremonies for this type union.

Friday's decision overrides previous decisions by local dioceses to not allow the liturgies, which currently includes eight of the of the nation's 101 Episcopal dioceses -- Albany, N.Y.; Central Florida; Dallas; Florida; North Dakota; Springfield, Ill.; Tennessee; and the Virgin Islands.

No one spoke against the resolution during a short debate by the House of Deputies, the news service affiliated with the Episcopal Church said.

The Rev. Scot McComas, a deputy from the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, had told his colleagues if they passed the resolution they would be acting as pastors to all the people of the Episcopal Church.

"For 40 years our LGBT brothers and sisters have been at the back of the bus and, every so often, they are invited to move forward one row at a time," McComas said.  The resolution, while being designed to allow same-sex couples to be married in the church, also does not alienate traditionalists.

Dallas Bishop George Sumner told The Dallas Morning News if the circumstance should arise in his diocese, he would reach out to a neighboring bishop to oversee the ceremony, something that is allowed under the resolution.  "We're probably more traditional than other dioceses in the Episcopal Church," Sumner said. "The convention has given us a space to do that."

"It also preserves the ministry of bishops as chief pastors and teachers in our dioceses," Bauerschmidt said. "We will be working out what it means for our diocese with clergy and congregations in the coming days."

Virginia Republicans Kill LGBT Bills, Give Amazon the Finger

Anti-gay bigot Del. Jason S. ­Miyares (R- Virginia Beach)

One hears Republicans ad nausea claiming to be the party of business and economic growth yet yesterday a small cabal of  Republicans on the House of Delegates General Laws subcommittee (i.e., Delegates Fowler, Wright, Knight, Bell, Richard P., Miyares) voted to kill four pro-LGBT bills and prevent them from getting a vote by the entire committee much less the full House.  And this was done in an atmosphere where Amazon is under growing pressure to turn down sites for its second headquarters with 50,000 jobs and a $5 billion investment. One of the bills killed would have afforded non-discrimination protections in housing. Another would have protected state employees from employment discrimination.  The excuse for action?  The usual bull shit about "protecting religious liberty" as if protecting bigots isn't a form of attack on those with differing religious beliefs.   With today's GOP, it is all about self-prostitution to the modern day Pharisee Christofascists.  The rights of so-called "Nones," Hindus, Muslims and others not subscribing to Christofacist hate and bigotry simply do not matter.  The lesson from this is that LGBT Virginians, their allies and Millennials MUST get organized and turn out at the polls in November, 2018, and again in November, 2019, and defeat Republicans in every election contest possible.  Locally, Del. Jason S. ­Miyares (R-Virginia Beach) and Barry Knight (R-Virginia Beach/Chesapeake) need to be targeted for defeat in 2019.  The Washington Post looks at yesterday's disgusting event.  Here are highlights:

Bills meant to protect gay and transgender people from housing and employment discrimination died in a Republican-dominated House panel Thursday, prompting jeers of “Shame!” from activists who packed a Capitol hearing room.

On a straight party-line vote, members of a General Laws subcommittee voted 5 to 2 to kill four bills, some of which had already cleared the Republican-controlled state Senate, which tends to be more socially moderate than the House.

“The vast majority of fair-minded Virginians support these long-overdue protections that were passed with strong bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled Senate,” said Marty Rouse, national field director of the Human Rights Campaign. “House Republican leaders are completely out of step with what voters made clear at the ballot box in November.”

Opponents of the bills contend that they could have interfered with religious freedom, with some suggesting that religious institutions such as Liberty University could be forced to let gay couples occupy its dorms for married students.

Only one Republican on the panel spoke to the measures before the votes. Del. Jason S. ­Miyares (R-Virginia Beach) said he was torn between the desire to “treat everybody with dignity and respect” and the need to protect religious freedom. He said he would be willing to work toward a compromise, but not this year. The four bills were all brought by Democrats, Sens. Adam P. Ebbin (Alexandria) and Jennifer T. Wexton (Loudoun) and Dels. Marcus B. Simon (Fairfax) and Mark H. Levine (Alexandria). Ebbin and Levine are two of only a few openly gay lawmakers. Last month, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) signed an executive order shortly after his inauguration banning such discrimination in government employment. One of the bills would have codified that into law. Jeff Caruso of the Virginia Catholic Conference said the bills could force faith-based colleges and organizations to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. . . . Bill Janis of the Family Foundation suggested the measures were unnecessary because the largest employers in Richmond already prohibit anti-discrimination in hiring. 

Note the toxic influence of the Catholic Church which remains an enemy of LGBT individuals and The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group, to whom Virginia Republicans bow and genuflect. 

Poland Seeks to Outlaw References to Polish Complicity with Nazis

A Polish police officer checks a Jewish man's documents at the Kraków Ghetto, 1941

A story in the Washington Post shows just how far tight wingers will go to rewrite history in the hope of erasing references to their complicity in moral turpitude or even war crimes.  The story relates to a pending law in Poland that would make it a crime to acknowledge the fact that even though Poland was occupied by Hitler's Nazi regime, there were plenty of Poles only to willing to participate in the genocide against Jews and other horrors.  Yes, there were many Poles who tried to do the right thing and oppose the Nazi agenda as resistance fighters and by other means, but the shocking truth is that a large number were complicit - something the right wing wants to wash away from public memory and rewrite history so that only Germans were involved with, in the case of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the murder of over 1 million men, women and children. With the Trump/Pence regime pushing a racist, bigoted and homophobic agenda, will Trump loyalists including morally bankrupt evangelical Christians want to sanitize history to delete their own complicity, if not active engagement in moral wrongs?  The effort in Poland shows the critical need that history tell the whole story lest future generations forget just how horrible individuals can be when confronted with evil - especially those who park themselves in church pews on Sundays and seemingly forget the Gospel message the moment they walk out the church door.  Here are article highlights:

A diplomatic crisis between Israel and Poland appeared to be deepening on Sunday as Poland’s deputy chief of mission, Piotr Kozłowski, was summoned to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem over a law approved by the Polish parliament making it a criminal offence to mention Polish complicity in crimes committed during the Holocaust.

Polish lawmakers voted Friday for a bill that would fine or jail people who blame Poland or Poles for Nazi atrocities committed on its soil during World War II, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The law still needs final approval from the Polish Senate and the country’s president.

It comes as the country has become more nationalistic. Tens of thousands of people chanted and marched through Warsaw last year in an annual gathering of Europe’s far-right movements, and the majority party has sought to protect Poland's image.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Kozłowski the vote's timing was “particularly surprising and miserable," pointing out that Friday was the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was also the 73^rd anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in southern Poland.

Polish officials say the law would not limit Holocaust research or the freedom of expression.  Even though several death camps, including the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau, were built on Polish soil, Poles say they should be referred to as Nazi extermination camps or camps in occupied Poland, disassociating Poland from the Nazi crimes committed there.

The bill, which would jail even foreigners for up to three years for using terms such as “Polish extermination camps,” passed the lower legislature overwhelmingly. For the country's ruling Law and Justice Party, it's part of a years-long effort to prevent people from “slandering the good name of Poland,” as officials once put it.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Center, . . . . said the law was “liable to blur the historical truths regarding the assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust.” . . . . restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion,” read the Yad Vashem statement.

[B]etween these broad strokes of Nazi genocide and Polish heroism, some Poles also turned on Jews — or at least helped Germans kill them. . . . Villagers in Jedwabne, for example, reportedly locked about 300 Jewish residents in a barn and burned them alive in 1941, the BBC wrote. Some modern-day Poles deny the story or blame Germans for pressuring the villagers, but others see evidence of willing complicity throughout the occupation.

Jan Karski, a famed Polish resistance fighter, once told an interviewer of the “ruthless, often without pity” attitude some of his countrymen held for Poland's large Jewish population.

“The truth is that local authorities were often left intact in occupied Poland, and many officials exploited their power in ways that proved fatal to their Jewish constituents.”

Some Poles welcomed the forced removal of their Jewish neighbors from their homes, he wrote. Some happily enriched themselves at the expense of their dispossessed neighbors, and some “did not recoil from committing acts of murder, rape and larceny — not always orchestrated by the Germans.”