David Shepherd commenting on Thinking Anglicans.
I'm feeling too ill today for another flame war.
Mark Bennet comes in a close second as runner up for the rhinestone tiara.
Erika Baker is my new hero.
EXTRA:
I present the anti-gay Christianists with the artistic tribute they deserve. Here is a scene by that great and insightful master of modern avant-garde cinema, Mel Brooks;
Folks, I think this beats Monty Python.
Yes, I read that exchange and agree with you about Erika Baker.
ReplyDeleteI happily checked out of that thread a while back [Sanity Break!]
ReplyDeleteHave you seen that guy at Episcopal Cafe/The Lead (w/ the compound Polish {?} name)? He'd be my nominee...
Flames aside, Priority 1 is get healthy, get well again.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Dave
What David said: please get well quickly.
ReplyDeleteI feel much better today, Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI'm not changing my mind or my argument.
Nor should you, Doug. You were not playing the game of whose oppression is worse or even equivalent, only that the mechanics of bigotry work in similar ways. And you are quite correct.
ReplyDeleteErika is very patient, and I certainly admire that. However, sometimes you need to simply put a rabid dog down.
ReplyDeleteMy husband, Gary Gilbert, thought of this last night:
ReplyDeleteGays aren't piggybacking on the victim status of blacks. We're just saying that gay rights is the civil rights issue of the moment. Melanin may be more obvious than sexual orientation, but same-sex desire isn't a matter of self-definition but of self discovery. And consider this: black kids are born into families like themselves, experienced in preparing them for the prejudice they'll encounter in life. Gay kids are born into families unlike themselves, which often teach them self-hatred, and reject them when their orientations become known. There's no comparison with the centuries of suffering inflicted on black people by self-righteous white Christians; but there's no comparison with the predicament of the gay kids -- black and white -- born to people who don't understand them, don't teach them how to survive, and often reject them as changelings. Different victimhoods, but plenty to go around.
I posted this on Thinking Anglicans last night at 11:15 but it hasn't appeared yet.
So David Shepherd is black? I took him for a tradition-besotted Anglo. Unfortunate when experience of discrimination leads to resentment, not empathy.
Your husband is right and articulates it well.
ReplyDeleteI usually don't see my comments, if at all, on TA until the next morning.
I think Shepherd's blackness is ultimately irrelevant to the point I was making. I'm not about to be pulled into a game of competitive suffering.
I'll listen to accounts of black experience anytime with a view to political action. We hear constant reports in Queens from black parents about how their kids are stopped and harassed by NYPD and it's not right. Filling upstate prisons with inmates from NYC neighborhoods is not right. Cold-blooded killing of unarmed black and Latino men because NYPD officers got nervous around them is outrageous, as is the lack of accountability.
ReplyDeleteObviously I have no first-hand experience of such discrimination, and we were unable to prepare our two black adopted sons to meet such injustice. All we could do was raise them in university community environments where they were comparatively safe -- and teach them to be wary when they were older. (Even so, my youngest was twice stopped near Indiana University for being brown in the wrong neighborhood.)
But I would expect people with different backgrounds to listen to my experience, and the experience of my community, and make common cause against injustice. As you say, the point is not competitive suffering, but equal standing for all.
Indeed, this is about freedom and dignity for all.
ReplyDeleteCompetitive suffering is just a New York City real estate developer's tactic to clear out low rent minorities by pitting them against each other.
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ReplyDeleteRight, JFC -- Black/African-American families have gay kids at the same rate as everyone else. It's a natural variation, not an individual aberration as the Tradition has supposed.
ReplyDeleteBut conventional man/woman marriages are most likely to involve heterosexuals to whom "gay" is an unpleasant rumor -- until a cowbird turns up in their little wrens' nest. Information is becoming more widespread, so the shock may not be as catastrophic as previously, but black parents KNOW black; straight parents usually have to do quick remedial courses on gay while having their former assumptions turned inside out.
Delete if you wish. The Thinking Anglicans censors have done the same to limit genuine debate.
ReplyDeleteYes, I am black: the rabid dog that needs to be put down and the quisling gay sister of the week. In contrast, I wished you good health in spite of our vastly different views.
I'm sure the legacy of gay prejudice justifies everything.
In the face of such a wonderful litany of contemptible epithets(that you feel are no doubt inspired by God), enjoy these comments that read like the minutes of a mutual admiration society meeting.
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ReplyDeleteMaybe David Shepherd, if you didn't pass such summary and dismissive judgment on the lives and loves of other people, trivializing their experiences, then your attempts to appear courteous (and therefore superior) would not seem so hollow and self-serving.
ReplyDeleteMy position was in reference to using the black parallel. I don't parallel my experience with discrimination against women, or gays. Regardless of the actual mechanics of bigotry, your experience as gay is not mine as black. That's what I challenged: the use of unjustified equivalence.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I wrote to Mark's comment that didn't get published:
To return to the original debate, I've stated that the DADT policy and disparate demands on gay candidates should be challenged. We should maintain equally rigorous expectations of all candidates for preferment.
I wouldn't assume that any race, gender or sexual orientation should be an automatic beneficiary of 'populist sympathies'. I certainly have no need for them.
A person's self-concept is never the complete result of choice and certainly not genetically pre-determined. However, there are many factors, including positive and negative stereotypes and experiences, parental expectations and peer pressure that influence how we self-identify.
The gospel identifies the level of transformation that the human self-concept should undergo when it responds to the grace of Christ. He clearly distinguishes the kind of genetically determined characteristics that we should leave alone: 'Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?' #Matt. 6:27#.
We know that the gospel challenges and changes every aspect of the human personality. Bar none. Even if many of those factors are far too deep-seated for anyone other than God to transform, the Christian gospel consciously addresses them. It is because of this, that worldly mistreatment is unjustified.
Nevertheless, the challenge is only the start. It takes the ongoing internal wrestling between our consciences and Christ on all fronts to complete the work of salvation.
To assert that there is no more sin in being gay than being black is no slight to blackness or to gayness. It is only accurate. They are each manifestations of the variety of life on earth, both created by God and proclaimed by Him to be good.
ReplyDeleteI feel every reason to stand up for my dignity, for the dignity of others of my kind, mindful of the many others of my kind who stood up and paid the ultimate sacrifice before me (Harvey Milk, Fanny Ann Eddy, among many others). I'm grateful for their courage and selflessness. I'm mindful of the many many of my kind who continue to suffer violence and death encouraged by the superstition and bigotry of religious leaders determined to maintain a worldly patriarchy with dubious spiritual sanctions.
I know, and every gay person knows in their heart of hearts (whether they acknowledge it or not), that their orientation was no choice, and is no crime. To say otherwise is to declare God the Creator to be unjust and unworthy of our worship, that the Gnostics of old were right, that we are only prisoners of an evil creator in an evil creation. The beginning of liberation is the understanding that what we suffer is arbitrary and unjust.
And where did we learn how to free ourselves and to struggle for our own dignity? From the struggles of black folk. Indeed, many of my kind were involved in that struggle, for example Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin (both of whom struggled for gay liberation as well).
Maybe instead of asking what "causes" homosexuality, maybe we should ask what causes heterosexuality and all sexuality.
Perhaps it is time for Christianity to move on. In the USA and Europe (and in many other parts of the world), this matter is effectively settled. Even younger evangelicals and conservatives are reconciled to gays and lesbians (primarily through friends and family) and are ready to move on.
Instead of tearing itself apart over a half dozen ambiguous verses of uncertain meaning concerning same sex acts, maybe Christianity should return to the theme of social justice, to the idea that no one is entitled to live well off the suffering and degradation of others. Not only is there an abundance of verses about this very issue, but it is an unambiguous and central theme of the whole of Scripture, a theme that the churches historically have ignored in their desire to be embraced by the state, and in their eagerness to play the role of enforcer for established power and social convention.
The only reason that any kind of comparison between black and gay liberation is an issue for you is because you find me and and gays and lesbians like me to be loathsome.
ReplyDeleteThat is your problem, not mine.