Freedom of (and from) Religion

In his Draft for a Bill to Establish Religious Freedom in Virginia (1779), Thomas Jefferson eloquently explained why religion needed to be separated from civil legal rights and, by extension, politics. As a graduate of “Mr. Jefferson’s university,” I may be somewhat biased about the founder’s ideas. However, I doubt few today can as beautifully describe what this country should be about. Here’s the preamble to his draft of what became the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom:

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

How the Christianists can possibly claim that their theocratic agenda is true to the intent of the founding fathers simply defies belief. This also applies to the members of Virginia's General Assembly that supported the anti-gay marriage amendment which flies in the face of Jefferson's vision. A full copy of the draft of Jefferson's bill can be found here: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_vsrf.html

The Increasingly Insane GOP

There’s a great story in the April 29, 2007 Daily Herald serving central Utah (http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/220065/4/) that does a wonderful jog of showing just how badly the GOP has been taken over by the lunatic fringe of the “Christian” Right. It was precisely the growing influence of this element in the GOP that caused me to resign from the Party as a matter of conscience a number of years back. This stuff is impossible to make up. Here’s the pertinent part of the story:

Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants. The group was unable to take official action because not enough members stuck around long enough to vote, despite the pleadings of party officials. The convention was held at Canyon View Junior High School.

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty. In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people" and "are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won't do."

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact," Larsen said. At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as "Joe," said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because "they are not going to become Republicans and stop flying the flag upside down. ... If they want to be Americans, they should learn to speak English and fly their flag like we do."

Even though I set up the original incorporation documents for the Virginia Beach GOP, now it is increasingly dominated by folks like brother Pat shown above.

Divorce Wars - Continued

The divorce wars continue. Now I have learned that my estranged wife wants to have her attorney take the depositions of both me and the b/f. She has a fantasy that I/we are hiding money from her. Needless to say, the b/f is not happy and her sitting by as her attorney questions him will be drama of the highest caliber. The reality is that her expectations of what I should pay her (ideally forever) far exceed my financial reality. In her mind – I guess much like that of former Gov. McGreevey’s wife – I should be endlessly punished for “what I did to her.”

Especially abhorrent to her is the idea of a full time job, even though she has an M. Ed. from the University of Virginia and all but a dissertation for a Ph.D. from UVA. I guess nearly 30 years of being supported in a rather decent style counts for nothing. Our next hearing on the spousal support issue should be interesting because it is again before the judge who cut her Pat Robertson Regent Law School grad attorney off at the knees when she tried to “play the gay card.” Fortunately, my ex-wife has fired that attorney (who appeared to enjoy gay baiting me) and has hired a new attorney who hopefully will be more able to grasp my financial reality.

While I greatly love and value my kids and would not want them not in my life, my advice to closeted gays who have not yet married and are debating what to do is: REALLY THINK TWICE ABOUT IT!!!!! The pain, sense of guilt (which, on the plus side, my ex-wife has thoroughly killed in me from her viciousness and refusal to be realistic) and emotional baggage may be more than you bargain for. The "ex-gay" advocates of the Christianist far right seem to care nothing for the damage done to the both the straight spouse and the gay spouse when the doomed battle to make one's self straight inevitably fails.

I so want this process over so that I can fully go on with my new life as a gay man. And, in all sincerity, I truly do want my ex-wife to move on in her life and for her to find happiness. In my view, dwelling on punishing me, keeps her from reaching that goal.

Gay Parent Child Rearing

There's an interesting story on 365gay.com concerning a Canadian study that compared children raised in same-sex couple homes and "traditional family" structured homes. The results: little or no difference in the children. That's no surprise to me. What is a surprise is that the Conservatives tried to bury the study. I guess they are no different that the christo-fascists of the GOP: never let the truth get in the way of your agenda. The photo is a picture of the b/f and my two oldest children at a happy time before their mother began using them as pawns in the divorce wars. The other is a photo of my youngest daughter a year ago Christmas. Here's part of the story:

(Ottawa) A study prepared for the Canadian government shows children do as well, perhaps better, when reared by same-sex parents as they do by opposite-sex couples. The study has just now become public even though it was commissioned by the government in 2003 leading to accusations that the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper attempted to burry the research.

When the study was ordered the Liberals were in power and courts across the country were beginning to strike down federal restrictions limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. The Liberals went on to legalize same-sex marriage in 2005. The party was defeated the following year by the Tories who promised to revisit the vote. The study on child rearing was not complete until after the Conservatives came to power.

The Shattered Closet

In a couple of recent posts, I have been attempting to describe my experiences and mindset during my many years in the closet. In the wake of the Lord Browne resignation from BP, Andrew Sullivan has a great column in the Sunday Times of London (see the Timesonline at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article1752275.ece) that does a good job in describing Lord Browne’s apparent mindset and my own back then. The pertinent quote is as follows:

“Try to think of it from his perspective. Think of the world that the 59-year-old Browne has inhabited in one lifetime. When he was a teenager, homosexuality was literally unspeakable in polite society. British authorities were injecting the great Alan Turing with hormones to “cure” him of his orientation just as Browne was leaving primary school.

For the first 19 years of his life Browne could have been imprisoned for a relationship with another man. During his formative years of adolescence, Browne learnt what every gay boy or girl had to learn at the time: if you do not keep this a terrible secret you will perish.

Even after being largely de-criminalized in 1967 the culture remained a strong force sustaining the stigma that Browne internalized. In the 1960s and 1970s it was far from easy for an ambitious scientist and businessman to have a life – that is, a mature relationship with another man – while having a serious career. The secrecy and fear that were soldered onto a gay man’s psyche were not as easily detached from the world as a piece of Victorian legislation. And as the gay rights movement first blossomed as a countercultural force, it did not easily include Browne and his ilk – Establishment, mannered, private men and women. . . .

Gays are a unique minority because we are almost all brought up as if we were heterosexuals in heterosexual families. We learn what it is to be gay from the general culture we imbibe as children and teens. As it changes, gay kids change. And quickly.

The difference between a culture that can safely mock “the only gay in the village” as comedy and a culture that would have beaten that gay to a pulp five decades ago is a vast one. And yet we have forgotten it so easily. A gay man who has lived through each of those decades is not in such an easy position.”

One of the commentors on Andrew’s article also had insightful remarks the power of denial and of the self-imposed closet:

“These influences on behaviour are difficult for heterosexuals to understand and even many gays (particularly gay rights radicals and younger gays) have little time or patience for understanding how one's formative experiences can create a glass (or in some cases, concrete) closet of one's own making from which it becomes impossible to break free due to - by adulthood - fundamentally ingrained psychological and behavioural traits.”

While I am not as old as Lord Browne, I am more or less of that generation and can identify closely with some of the societal and emotional constraints that kept him feeling that he could not truly admit parts of his life. Here in Virginia, until the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, homosexual sex, even in the privacy of one's home, was a felony. I will continue my posts about my own experiences and, perhaps if I am successful in my narrative, the mindset of that shackled me and, I suspect many others.

Surfing

The wind and waves did not allow me to get out surfing. Sustained winds of 25-35 knots today have turned the waves and shoreline into a washing machine of wind whipped spray and chop. Anyone folish enough to venture out will get beat and surely not get any good rides. Just to prove that I am in fact a surfer, here's photo taken down at Cape Hatteras.

My Closet Years – Part Two

Picking up where I left off, in the fall of 1974 I started law school at the University of Virginia’s School of Law. At first it was daunting, since everyone was in the top of their undergraduate class, and there were plenty of Ivy League grads. The first semester “Paper Chase” hysteria was compounded by the fact that a new law school building had been built (in fact it was not yet completed), so for the first semester only first year students had classes in the new building, although the library was complete. Among my classmates was George Allen, former U. S. Senator for Virginia, Evan Thomas (who was hot in law school), now with Newsweek and the author of a number of books, Congressman, Randy Forbes, and Cynthia Kinser, now on the Virginia Supreme Court.. Many other of my classmates have had likewise distinguished careers.

Meanwhile, my life in the closet continued and, true to form, I soon had a crush on one or more of my classmates. My first year, I lived in a large house with eleven other guys I had known to varying degrees from my undergraduate days, one of whom was a major crush interest. Twelve guys sharing eight bedrooms and three bath rooms led to frequent occasions of seeing each other in the shower and so forth. Seeing my crush interest (who I will call WG) in the shower left me almost dizzy – he was so gorgeous and a sweet guy. When he started dating a girl from the parish college group, I was green with envy. WG graduated at the end of the year and basically left my life forever, although I can still see him clearly in my mind. Socially, I still was involved in the frat house scene and often socialized with undergrads or friends of two of my sisters who were also students at UVA at the time.

As first year progressed, I moved on and eventually had another object of unrequited love in the form of one of my classmates (MP) who ended up being one of my roommates during my second year of law school. First year was very stressful and at numerous times I thought of dropping out as did MP, since both of us had been somewhat pressured by our fathers to go to law school. Talking about our feelings about law school and other things, MP and I became very close. The fact that he was 5’11”, had beautiful dark blues eyes and dark hair, was a former college swimmer, and had the looks of a model obviously did nothing to dissuade me from becoming increasingly infatuated. The long and short of it, we helped each other to remain in law school and spent much of the following summer together since we both had summer jobs in the same city. At times I so wanted to share my feelings with him, but was too afraid of losing his friendship to take the risk. Sometimes looking back, I wonder what would have happened if I had done so. My other roommate second year was equally beautiful, except he was blonde. He likewise was and great guy and I was not lacking for gorgeous surroundings that year.

It was during my second year of law school that I met the woman who would turn out to be my wife. On Fridays, Graduate Student Happy Hour (with $0.25 beer) was the spot one found out what parties were going on for the weekend. Along with one of my law school class mates, one Friday in September, my friend picked up a girl from Charlottesville and I was saddled with having to be the date for one of her friends. One the way to the party hosted by some law students (where we saw future Senator Allen from our class, who was quite the party boy) we stopped to buy some beer and my friend’s date said sheepishly that “she might get drunk.” No truer words were ever said. She got completely inebriated and, to this day, I do not believe I have ever seen a woman so drunk and out of control. My friend soon was trying to act as he’d never met her and did not know her. Meanwhile, her friend and I had definitely NOT hit it off and she ended up picking up another member of our class who she ultimately married.

It was during this disastrous dating adventure that I met my wife to be and ended up talking to her most of the evening. She was beautiful, smart, and better yet, not a law student. I was definitely impressed – or as impressed as a closeted gay 23 year old male (who is still a complete virgin) can be by a woman. Most of the night she stood with her back to the fall since moments after entering the house, she was bit on the butt by a second year law student who now is a member of one of South Carolina’s most prominent law firms. Our next encounter was once on one of the University buses as I was headed to the frat house for a road trip to a local women’s college. I did not even sit with her in my preoccupation with getting to the frat house in time (my car was in the shop and I was running late) before the chartered bus pulled out. Then we met again at another law school party sponsored by a guy in my class who wanted to get people dancing to disco music. After that, we began dating and made a great pair dancing together. We even went to a law professor’s costume Halloween Party as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Indeed, we had fun together and I fell in love with her to the fullest extent a closeted gay ever could.

Never, ever did I let out anything about my secret track record of same sex attraction and crushes on other men. My religion, my family, and society (especially in Charlottesville and conservative UVA) made fully admitting these attractions even to myself something that just could not be. Throughout law school, I continued to attend daily mass and try as hard as I might to “pray the gay away.” If nothing else, the Catholic Church is without rival when it comes to instilling guilt and the hope that somehow God will work a miracle.

After graduation from law school, my former wife and I got married in New York City in a full blown Italian wedding. I remember as clearly as yesterday standing up on the altar as she came down the aisle and thinking to myself, “can I do this.” Due to my religious brainwashing, I told myself that, yes, God would get me through it and that I would be able to suppress my same sex attraction forever. Given my history of crushes on guys, I should have known, I guess, that such thinking was delusional. However, the desire to be what was expected and to deny what I knew deep down somewhere within me was simply too strong. After getting married, we lived in Mobile, Alabama for four years and – as I will describe in another post – the same old attractions soon arose.

3:00 AM Musings

It’s 3:00 AM and I am at my office rather than go home (my office is minutes from my house) and face a fight with the b/f. I went out to The Wave and danced to lose myself in the music. I find it a sort of catharsis to dance and let the music take control. Saturday nights are pretty packed and somewhat erotic with all the cute guys dancing, sometimes shirtless. I so want a stabile relationship in my life, but it seems elusive.

Everlasting Love

I have too much drama in my life at times. One of my goals in coming out of the closet was to find a stable everlasting love with a guy. Am I looking for the unobtainable? Sometimes I wonder.

Blogging Unites Us

I hope people will check out the links on my page. As Greg at Evviva Male has noted (http://evvivamale.blogspot.com/), blogging unites us gays and provides an outlet for those still in the closet or those living in less than gay friendly areas. Each of the blogs I have linked to seem to have authors who have brains, are aware of current events, and good taste in hot guys based on the photos on their blogs. In fact, it was reading The Pink Elephant (http://pinkelephant2closets.blogspot.com/) that spurred me to get back to my own coming out story. The photo above is from http://salsaparapecar.blogspot.com/ Some of the other links are to great news sources.

I would also recommend Family Acceptance (http://www.familyacceptance.com/) as a good reference to parents who are trying to come to terms with having a gay child. I asked my own mother to look at the site after I came out to my parents almost five years ago.