|
|
I keep telling myself that all the Catholic Church sponsored anti gay marriage stuff going on in Massachusetts these days should not bother me. After all, I thought that I had quit the church. I thought that if I just quit going to Mass that the judgments and condemnations made by the Catholic Church about people like me would become irrelevant but they have not. No they still sting. They still hurt. They still make me mad as hell! I was especially angered on February 9 when I saw a photo of the Franciscan Archbishop of Boston standing on the stage at a big anti-gay marriage rally that was held in that city on February 8, 2004. A couple of weeks earlier the same Archbishop Sean O’Malley had shared the stage with old Judge Robert Bork, the author of the anti-gay attack named, "Slouching Towards Gomorrah." Judge Bork and Archbishop O’Malley were launching a major crusade in Massachusetts to make sure that queer folk in that commonwealth never wed. Why? Well to save our civilization of course. Don’t take my word for it. Here is what the Catholic hierarch in New York City says about queers wedding, "history assured us that no civilization can survive if marriage is rejected, humiliated." I guess since some queers want to wed that this would fall into the humiliation of marriage category. This would be laughable except that history has taught us that dictators and other demagogues often use such sweeping statements to encourage popular attacks on marginalized groups. Of course that is not happening now says Archbishop O’Malley. Over and over in recent days he has claimed that the Church is not a hate monger. There is not room here to write all the terrible things that the Church has written about queer people. The neat thing is that no matter what hateful things the Church says about queers, they have an out. No institution has mastered the art of drawing distinctions and fine lines better than Roman Catholicism. Here is one example: "who is the Church?" This is what people ask me when I complain about hateful Church teaching. "Oh, you give too much authority to the bishops," they tell me as they remind me that the Church is much bigger than the bishops. Well, first of all that crowd of 1000 chanting against people like me in the Boston Common on February 8 was not all bishops. No, the bishops just inspired them. Secondly, when I see the whole "people of God" stand up and tell the bishops to shut up then maybe I will buy this argument. The Church keeps saying that it neither teaches nor tolerates hatred of queers (homosexual persons in their lingo). They do this even as they make statements about our "selfishness" our "unnaturalness" our danger to children and of course how we will bring about the end of civilization. Then they have the nerve to say that this is neither incendiary language nor hate mongering? They distinguish between the person and the behavior. "Love the sinner but hate the sin", is how they put it. Well, this is an unnatural distinction. A cat cannot, not behave like a cat. I am queer and I cannot, not behave like a queer. Besides, I doubt that those who would use church teaching about queers to justify our bashing would make the distinctions that the bishops so easily invoke. I can handle being hated. What drives me nuts is to be attacked and then to have my attacker say that they love me. Hate me but please don’t lie about it. Hate is hate. Sorry Archbishop O’Malley you are a hate monger. Respectfully submitted - Stephen Donahue |