About 10 years ago, my friends Helen and Alex found jobs in the same city after a five-year commuting relationship. They were devoted to one another, deeply in love and married, all but legally. They sacrificed career plans to live together and bought a house. A few months later, Helen was hit by a car, fell into a coma for several days and finally died.
Helen’s family would not allow Alex to enter Helen’s hospital room and later banned Alex from the funeral. Such cruelty was painful, even to witness from a distance. For Alex, it was a crushing blow when she was down, one she took years to recover from. And why? Why was she treated this way? Because her full name is “Alessandra,” and a gay lover (even a committed and loving one), in this instance, was just trash to be discarded.
Such viciousness is a pathology, one that has been justified by almost every religion. It is the task of compassionate people to find our way out of such pathology.
No doubt many will be offended by my use of the word “pathology.” Let me be clear: I have little but contempt for the idea that an all-powerful being – a supremely loving creator of the universe – spends his time worrying about how mammals have sex and then torturing for eternity those who do so in the wrong way. But however bizarre and distasteful I find religious-based heterosexism, homophobic pathology has quite another source.
Let’s for the moment take seriously Biblical condemnations of minority sexuality, as well as Catholic natural law arguments. The question that remains is why such injunctions are so all-consuming in so many minds. Why are there no protests at the funerals of cattle farmers (cross-breeding is an abomination according to Leviticus)? Why are there no laws to exile and deny marriage benefits to those who have sex during the woman’s period (also Leviticus)? Why do Christian colleges that ban homosexuals from employment not ban women from teaching men (Paul), or defenders of unrestricted markets and opponents of just-war theory (Catholic social teaching) or men of excessive wealth (the Gospels)?
Why are war profiteers, greedy capitalists and people who use condoms never dragged behind cars or tied up with barbed wire and left to die? Why, given the Ten Commandments, seven deadly sins, hundreds of Levitican laws and detailed Catholic social theories on virtually every issue, does someone e-mail me in response to my column on immigration saying “Shut the fuck up you little cock-sucking queer!” Can you imagine any other stand-in for generic evil? “Shut the fuck up you gluttonous wearer of mixed-fabric clothing!” – an act condemned by the Bible with as much fervor as homosexuality.
Since no religion – and certainly no rational argument – places the “sin” of non-traditional sex above any of these other sins, the source of hatred of sexual difference is a pathology independent of the religion that is used to justify it. But since pathological fear is rarely cured by rational argument, wherein lies hope for a more compassionate world?
Here’s another story:
When I was in high school, I became friends with a man who played in the Ohio youth orchestra with me. Kelly was from the Cincinnati area, and rehearsals were in Columbus, so he would stay with my family over weekends when we rehearsed. Over time, my parents became close to Kelly, who was estranged from his own abusive family, and my parents eventually came to think of him as a second son. My father did not learn that Kelly was gay until our sophomore year of college, and when he did, he took it very badly. Dad was deeply homophobic and avoided Kelly for several months. But at the same time, he genuinely loved Kelly, and one could see the stress caused by the conflict between the love and the fear. Finally, one day, something broke. Dad came downstairs to the room where I was visiting and said, “You know, I think that who someone has sex with is no one else’s damned business.”
And that was that.
He could go no further than this, but things went back to where they were. Dad never talked about Kelly’s relationships, did not celebrate his commitment ceremony to the man he remains non-legally married to 20 years later, but he allowed his fear to die so that his love could live. And when my father died years later, it was Kelly, of all my friends, who went with me to the funeral in southern Ohio, who talked with me about losing a father.
In my last column, I asked that we look honestly at U.S. history before forming views on how to treat immigrants. I urged a move from awareness of our own fortunate access to an economy built on theft, slavery and exploitation, toward a corresponding compassion, even love for those without such access. Such love, I hoped, might begin to challenge the fear exhibited in much of the hate mail I received – “when the brown people come to kill your family, don’t expect us to save you!” – for it is always love that is the only real bulwark against fear.
In my next column, I’ll ask that we do the same across divisions of sexuality, that we move beyond the sort of tolerance that my father found, that we embrace genuine love and solidarity, for the sake of us all.
ark Lance is a professor in the philosophy department and a professor and program director in the Program on Justice and Peace. He can be reached at lancethehoya.com. COGNITIVE DISSIDENT appears every other Friday.
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