ATTENTION: ¨Those who would strip us of our rights and human dignity...¨

Father Geoffrey Farrow is a longtime Catholic priest who revealed recently that he is gay and opposed to Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that would overturn the California Supreme Court's decision earlier this year allowing same-sex marriage. As a result, Farrow has been stripped of his job as a parish priest in Fresno, including his salary and health benefits*

November 17, 2008

Address to The Mayor, The City Council of West Hollywood, California
By Geoff Farrow, Roman Catholic Priest

¨On November 4th, we experienced a breakthrough in our history as a nation. We elected the first African American president of the United States of America. With this exceptional act, we turned a corner in our history as a nation and helped to realize the dream of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A dream in which a person would not be judged by the color of their skin but, by the content of their character.


As if this accomplishment was not enough, the character of President-elect Barack Obama and his vision for our nation have given birth to a new found spirit of hope and optimism. A spirit has been enkindled in our nation which we have not experienced since the election of the JFK.

We need to draw strength, inspiration and courage from this new spirit of hope and optimism because on that same night of November 4th, something unworthy of the spirit of America happened with the passage of Proposition 8: a hateful law. In the tradition of the Nuremberg laws and Jim Crow laws, a slim majority of the electorate of our state was manipulated by what is arguably one of the most deceptive and unethical election campaigns in recent memory.


And yet, something remarkable has happened in the wake of this attempt to enshrine discrimination in our state’s constitution. Across our communities, our state and our nation, people have poured out onto the streets, campuses, civic centers, and government centers to voice their support for equal rights. I was privileged to participate in Sabbath services at Kol Ami synagogue here in West Hollywood on Friday evening. After the services, a woman who had been at Stonewall came up to me and said: “This is a second Stonewall.’ The movement has begun.


The Spanish mystic, Theresa of Avila once observed that: “God writes straight with crooked lines.” I believe that what is happening now is an illustration of that wisdom. Perhaps, losing on this proposition initiative is precisely the catalyst that our community needed to energize us and give us a renewed strength and vision. Those who would strip us of our rights and human dignity are quick to invoke their idealized social order and the name of God. Whether racists of 40 years ago, or the bigots of today, they have unwittingly pushed us too far and have given life to a new movement. We will fight harder than ever before; we shall overcome.¨


Read the entire Los Angeles Times featured story about Father Geoff Farrow, click here:

Read the blog of Father Geoff Farrow at the right side bar, or click here:

Thanks to The Los Angeles Times
Thanks to Father Geoff Farrow
Thanks to The Chicago Sun Times
Thanks to The City of West Hollywood, California
Thanks to Saint Theresa of Avila
Thanks to Martin Luther King
Thanks to Flickr Photosharing
Thanks to Archbishop Desmond Tutu (at the top of the sidebar)

GOOD NEWS: The Episcopal Church Diocese of Western North Carolina WELCOMES Everyone at ALL levels of Churchlife!

The Episcopal Church Diocese of Western North Carolina

Bishop Taylor of Western North Carolina, TEC

BREAKING GOOD NEWS:

"Resolved, that the Eighty-Seventh Convention of the Diocese of Western North Carolina, believing that our commitment to the Anglican Communion and our commitment to dismantling structures of discrimination are expressions of the same inexhaustible love, call upon the 76th General Convention to enact legislation to insure that sexual orientation cease to be a barrier for full inclusion in The Episcopal Church¨


The Episcopal Church Diocese of Western North Carolinas lovely Camp Henry at Lake Logan

Read the entire Convention Statement and more about the WELCOMING Episcopal Church Diocese of Western North Carolina, click here:

The Dogwood Flower, the State Flower of North Carolina...North Carolina, where FULL BLOWN inclusiveness and anti-discrimination are blossoming before us daily!

Thanks to Bonnie
Thanks to The Episcopal Church Diocese of Western North Carolina
Thanks to Flickr Photo Sharing
Thanks to Official State Emblems and Flowers of The State of North Carolina

EQUALITY FOR LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER U.S. CITIZENS! A Call To Action, Now is the time...read/sign below:

SIGN THE EQUALITY PETITION FOR ALL AMERICANS

SIGN HERE Endorse the Call to Action

CALL TO TAKE ACTION NOW!


We call on all supporters of equality to sustain and intensify the nationwide campaign of mass protests and non-violent civil disobedience, for seven weeks, starting on November 27, 2008, the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk, and to then gather together in mass, from all corners of our country, in Washington, DC on the morning of Tuesday, January 20, 2009, to honor the inauguration of our President, Barack Obama. Read on and act:

NOW IS THE TIME

By Cleve Jones and Dustin Lance Black

On November 27, 1978, gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk was assassinated in San Francisco City Hall. Thirty years later, his struggle continues.

On November 4, 2008, millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans of all races proudly cast their ballots for Barack Obama, helping to elect the first African-American President of the United States.

On that same day voters in Arizona, Arkansas, California and Florida approved initiatives denying basic civil rights to GLBT citizens.

Like other Americans who voted for Barack Obama, gay people of all backgrounds supported our President-elect because we share his vision of a united America and want to move forward to address the critical challenges facing our country and our planet.

We have always been willing to serve our country: in our armed forces, even as we were threatened with courts-martial and dishonor; as teachers, even as we were slandered and libeled; as parents and foster parents struggling to support our children; as doctors and nurses caring for patients in a broken health care system; as artists, writers and musicians; as workers in factories and hotels, on farms and in office buildings; we have always served and loved our country.


We have loved our country even as we have been subjected to discrimination, harassment and violence at the hands of our countrymen. We have loved God, even as we were rejected and abandoned by religious leaders, our churches, synagogues and mosques. We have loved democracy, even as we witnessed the ballot box used to deny us our rights.

Like Barack Obama, we never abandoned hope in the American dream of equality and freedom. We never stopped believing that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights included us.

We have always kept faith with the American people, our neighbors, co-workers, friends and families. But today that faith is tested and we find ourselves at a crossroad in history.

Will we move forward together? Will we affirm that the American dream is alive and real? Will we finally guarantee full equality under the law for all Americans? Or will we surrender to the worst, most divisive appeals to bigotry, ignorance and fear?

It has been thirty years since Harvey Milk gave his life in our struggle for equality. We will not wait thirty years more. We demand that the Federal Government act immediately, decisively and unequivocally to ensure equal protection under law throughout the United States of America.


We can accept no compromise.

Speaker of The House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi
Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid

We call on President-Elect Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to draft and submit to the Congress comprehensive legislation protecting the civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens in all areas including civil marriage, military service, adoption, social security, taxation, immigration, employment, housing and access to health care, social services and education.

We can wait no longer.

We call on President-Elect Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to speak out against the escalating campaign of harassment, violence and murder directed against our communities and pass legislation extending hate-crime protections to GLBT citizens.

Now is the time.

We call on President-Elect Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to take personal responsibility for involving our nation’s religious leaders and the GLBT community in a national dialogue to encourage understanding and reconciliation.

We also call on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to heed the call of Harvey Milk, when he spoke thirty years ago on the steps of San Francisco City Hall: “You must come out, my brothers and sisters, you must come out!”

We call on gay people everywhere to seize this moment, to understand that freedom will not come until we are willing to commit the full strength of our own voices, minds and bodies to the struggle. We must personally introduce ourselves to those who would discriminate against us. We must make ourselves visible.

We call on all supporters of equality to sustain and intensify the nationwide campaign of mass protests and non-violent civil disobedience, for seven weeks, starting on November 27, 2008, the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk, and to then gather together in mass, from all corners of our country, in Washington, DC on the morning of Tuesday, January 20, 2009, to honor the inauguration of our President, Barack Obama.

We call on all our people and all our allies to carry this message of hope and equality to every corner of our nation, to every place of worship, to every school and factory and shopping center, every city, suburb and farming town. We call on you to march together, demonstrate together, pray together and dream together of a future America where, finally, all are free.

There are rare moments in human history when, suddenly and unexpectedly, the opportunity for great change and progress becomes possible. Barack Obama has shown us the power of hope and the urgency of seizing that moment. Harvey Milk has shown us the power we possess when we make our voices heard.

We can accept no compromise.
We can wait no longer.
Now is the time.
We are equal.

Endorse the Call to Action, click here:

Thanks to Seven Weeks to Equality
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Thanks to Flickr Photosharing

The Sodomy Problem: Time to resolve the question of civil rights for homosexuals, our families, our friends and coworkers...

A little something that's been bugging me ...

Sodomy and civil rights
David R. Weiss*
November 7, 2008

¨This country has a sodomy problem. And until we have the wisdom and the courage to be honest about what that means we’re not going to resolve the question of civil rights for homosexuals. We need to be clear about why sodomy is such a threat to the common good of civil society, why it undermines the family, and why it is such an evil when afoot in faith communities. It’s not going to be easy. But it needs to be done.

The word “sodomy” comes from a biblical text (Genesis 19) where the ancient city of Sodom is marked out for divine destruction because its evil ways so angered God. Sodomy names those who act like the inhabitants of Sodom.

Fine. But listen carefully. Not in this text—nor in any other biblical text—is there a condemnation of committed same-sex relationships. Not one. Not anywhere. There are a small handful of texts that condemn same-sex prostitution in pagan temples, and perhaps military rape and pederasty. But nowhere in the Bible is there a single word that condemns committed same-sex relationships.


To vote on Proposition 8 in California, or on any of the other state initiatives seeking to ban same-sex marriage, based on the Bible is the moral equivalent of using biblical texts to support slavery or apartheid. It is obscene.

So having cleared that up, let’s talk about the real problem here: sodomy. Acting like the inhabitants of Sodom.

The prophet Isaiah (1:10-17; 3:9-15) knew something about the reputation of those who lived in Sodom. He says they despised justice, especially for widows and orphans—those at the edges of family structures in the ancient world. And he says they built an economy that stole the goods of the poor. Likewise, the prophet Ezekiel (16:49) was also acquainted with the sodomy “lifestyle.” He rails against them because in the midst of their abundance they were indifferent to the needy.

Even Jesus, some 2000 years after its destruction, can employ a reference to Sodom with full effect. Twice (Matthew 11:19-24 and Luke 10:12) he invokes the memory of Sodom as a city condemned for its treatment of the marginalized and its lack of hospitality to sojourners.


For both the Hebrew prophets and the Christian Messiah sodomy is not about acting on same-sex attraction; it is clearly and unequivocally about social injustice and horrendous breeches of hospitality, of which the attempted gang rape of Lot’s guests is simply one final bit of damning evidence.

Sodomy, understood biblically, is the sin of creating social structures that systematically isolate those already at the margins of society. It is roundly condemned by the prophets and by Jesus. And for good reason.


It destroys the fabric of families by teaching even the youngest children to dehumanize persons simply because of difference. It undermines the common good of society by scape-goating a minority in ways that contradict the very ideals we claim to hold in a democracy. And it is simply an unforgiveable evil in faith communities where it betrays the very messages of justice, mercy, and compassion that are at the heart of religious faith.

So let’s be clear: the desire to close off the protections afforded by marriage to persons living in committed same-sex relationships (and to their children) is itself an act of sodomy and it has no place in civil society or in communities of faith.

Further, when African-Americans and Hispanics vote in large numbers alongside conservative white Christians to ban same-sex marriage they ally themselves with the same strand of Christianity that in the past quoted other biblical texts just as effectively to justify genocidal policies toward Native Americans, xenophobic laws toward immigrants, and abominations like slavery, Jim Crow, and apartheid.


So, yes, this country has a sodomy problem. But so long as we think it has anything to do with gay sex we’ve missed the point of God’s outrage. Sodomy happens when any group uses their majority or their power to abuse and marginalize another group. That’s what happened in California, Arizona, Florida, and Arkansas on November 4. And it’s time for us, as citizens and as Christians, to stop acting like the inhabitants of Sodom.¨

*David Weiss is a member of the ELCA. He is also a professor, husband, father, Sunday School teacher, an amazing friend and a gifted poet, hymnist and theologian, in no particular order

A Season For Everything, read it all, click here:

For further understanding/reference and translated REAL MEANINGS on the subject of Sodom and Gomorrah please read the writings of Göran Koch-Swahne, click here:

Musings of an Episcopal Padre, read it all, click here:

Thanks to The Episcopal Padre, Alaska
Thanks to The Reverend David Weiss
Thanks to The Reverend Göran Koch-Swahne, Sweden
Thanks to Flickr Photosharing

OBAMA-BIDEN: Will not discriminate against LGBT workers! Will The Episcopal Church discriminate against LGBT priests, bishops and laity Summer 2009?

Obama transition team bans LGBT discrimination
By 365gay Newscenter Staff
11.10.2008 1:21pm EST

(Washington) The Obama-Biden transition team is telling prospective employees in the new administration it will not discriminate against LGBT workers.

“The Obama-Biden Transition Project does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by law,” the Transition team says on its official Web site.

Although the commitment pertains only to transition team workers, LGBT civil rights activists say they believe Obama will issue an Executive Order shortly after being sworn in to extend that throughout the administration.

“The inclusion of gender identity is a bold departure from the past – and it sends a clear message,” said Christopher E. Anders, ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel.

“By including sexual orientation and gender identity in its non-discrimination policy, the Obama-Biden transition team makes clear that it will focus on the relevant qualities that actually predict an applicant’s success on the job – professional experience, character, skills and education.”


Although President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 11478, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, there are no explicit federal protections from gender identity bias in government hiring.

During the Bush administration, U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch refused to protect LGBT workers. The Office of the Special Counsel is supposed to protect whistleblowers and investigate complaints of discrimination by federal workers.

Bloch’s stonewalling of complaints of discrimination by LGBT federal workers dates to February 2004, when he ordered references to sexual orientation removed from the Office of the Special Counsel website.

A month after the references disappeared from the OSC website, Bloch said gay workers were no longer protected.

After intense pressure from Federal Globe - the LGBT organization for federal civil servants - and from Democrats on the Hill, the White House said it would honor the Executive Order signed by Clinton that assured LGBT workers of civil rights protections.

But with Bloch’s approval, several union contracts negotiated with various branches of the government removed the list of categories that are protected, replacing them with the more nebulous phrase “any class protected by law.”

Bloch said in May 2005 before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee that his interpretation of the Clinton executive order cannot be used to protect gay workers, because it does not specifically name LGBT workers.

“President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden, by explicitly rejecting the bigotry and intolerance of the past, are committing that gay, lesbian, and transgender professionals can serve in government without fear of discrimination,” said Anders. “This is a critical next step in securing the basic rights of LGBT community.”

The ACLU and other rights groups are calling on Obama to make passage of a gender-identity inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act - known as ENDA - one of his priorities.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, passed the House in 2007, but without protections for the transgendered.

The legislation would make it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring, firing, promoting or paying an employee.

ENDA as originally introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) included transpeople, but Frank removed those protections in committee, saying it would be impossible to pass.

More than a dozen LGBT groups immediately distanced themselves from the legislation. Frank and the Human Rights Campaign now say they will fight to ensure an inclusive ENDA is passed.

The bill expected to be reintroduced with gender identity protections in the next session of Congress.¨

read it all plus comments, click here:


Attention House of Deputies and House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church:


Will The Episcopal Church please remove ALL temporary and/or ¨prudent¨ discrimination acts/statements (B033?) and ¨secret agreements/understandings¨ and or ¨special requests¨ that have been ¨intentionally¨ leveled against LGBT Christians/Episcopalians...please clean up the pending issue of JUSTICE and EQUALITY for all Episcopalians at The General Convention, Anaheim, California, Summer 2009.

Thanks to End Bigotry in Venango County Blog, at the sidebar or click here:

Thanks to Obama-Biden
Thanks to Flickr Photosharing
Thanks to End Bigotry in Venango County
Thanks to 365 Gay Newstaff
Thanks to Juan Carlos C. Fuentes for the Volcanos Pictured

Reclaiming OUR Country, can reclaiming The Episcopal Church be far behind?

By Frank Rich for The New York Times:

¨On the morning after a black man won the White House, America’s tears of catharsis gave way to unadulterated joy.

Our nation was still in the same ditch it had been the day before, but the atmosphere was giddy. We felt good not only because we had breached a racial barrier as old as the Republic. Dawn also brought the realization that we were at last emerging from an abusive relationship with our country’s 21st-century leaders. The festive scenes of liberation that Dick Cheney had once imagined for Iraq were finally taking place — in cities all over America.

For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k). Few wanted to take yes for an answer.

So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.

The most conspicuous clichés to fall, of course, were the twin suppositions that a decisive number of white Americans wouldn’t vote for a black presidential candidate — and that they were lying to pollsters about their rampant racism. But the polls were accurate. There was no “Bradley effect.” A higher percentage of white men voted for Obama than any Democrat since Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton included.

Obama also won all four of those hunting-and-Hillary-loving Rust Belt states that became 2008’s obsession among slumming upper-middle-class white journalists: Pennsylvania and Michigan by double digits, as well as Ohio and even Indiana, which has gone Democratic only once (1964) since 1936. The solid Republican South, led by Virginia and North Carolina, started to turn blue as well. While there are still bigots in America, they are in unambiguous retreat.

And what about all those terrified Jews who reportedly abandoned their progressive heritage to buy into the smears libeling Obama as an Israel-hating terrorist? Obama drew a larger percentage of Jews nationally (78) than Kerry had (74) and — mazel tov, Sarah Silverman! — won Florida.

Let’s defend Hispanic-Americans, too, while we’re at it. In one of the more notorious observations of the campaign year, a Clinton pollster, Sergio Bendixen, told The New Yorker in January that “the Hispanic voter — and I want to say this very carefully — has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” Let us say very carefully that a black presidential candidate won Latinos — the fastest-growing demographic in the electorate — 67 percent to 31 (up from Kerry’s 53-to-44 edge and Gore’s 62-to-35).

Young voters also triumphed over the condescension of the experts. “Are they going to show up?” Cokie Roberts of ABC News asked in February. “Probably not. They never have before. By the time November comes, they’ll be tired.” In fact they turned up in larger numbers than in 2004, and their disproportionate Democratic margin made a serious difference, as did their hard work on the ground. They’re not the ones who need Geritol.

The same commentators who dismissed every conceivable American demographic as racist, lazy or both got Sarah Palin wrong too. When she made her debut in St. Paul, the punditocracy was nearly uniform in declaring her selection a brilliant coup. There hadn’t been so much instant over-the-top praise by the press for a cynical political stunt since President Bush “landed” a jet on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in that short-lived triumph “Mission Accomplished.”

The rave reviews for Palin were completely disingenuous. Anyone paying attention (with the possible exception of John McCain) could see she was woefully ill-equipped to serve half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. The conservatives Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy said so on MSNBC when they didn’t know their mikes were on. But, hey, she was a dazzling TV presence, the thinking went, so surely doltish Americans would rally around her anyway. “She killed!” cheered Noonan about the vice-presidential debate, revising her opinion upward and marveling at Palin’s gift for talking “over the heads of the media straight to the people.” Many talking heads thought she tied or beat Joe Biden.

The people, however, were reaching a less charitable conclusion and were well ahead of the Beltway curve in fleeing Palin. Only after polls confirmed that she was costing McCain votes did conventional wisdom in Washington finally change, demoting her from Republican savior to scapegoat overnight.

But Palin’s appeal wasn’t overestimated only because of her kitschy “American Idol” star quality. Her fierce embrace of the old Karl Rove wedge politics, the divisive pitting of the “real America” against the secular “other” America, was also regarded as a sure-fire winner. The second most persistent assumption by both pundits and the McCain campaign this year — after the likely triumph of racism — was that the culture war battlegrounds from 2000 and 2004 would remain intact.

This is true in exactly one instance: gay civil rights. Though Rove’s promised “permanent Republican majority” lies in humiliating ruins, his and Bush’s one secure legacy will be their demagogic exploitation of homophobia. The success of the four state initiatives banning either same-sex marriage or same-sex adoptions was the sole retro trend on Tuesday. And Obama, who largely soft-pedaled the issue this year, was little help. In California, where other races split more or less evenly on a same-sex marriage ban, some 70 percent of black voters contributed to its narrow victory.


That lagging indicator aside, nearly every other result on Tuesday suggests that while the right wants to keep fighting the old boomer culture wars, no one else does. Three state initiatives restricting abortion failed. Bill Ayers proved a lame villain, scaring no one. Americans do not want to revisit Vietnam (including in Iraq). For all the attention paid by the news media and McCain-Palin to rancorous remembrances of things past, I sometimes wondered whether most Americans thought the Weather Underground was a reunion band and the Hanoi Hilton a chain hotel. Socialism, the evil empire and even Ronald Reagan may be half-forgotten blurs too.

If there were any doubts the 1960s are over, they were put to rest Tuesday night when our new first family won the hearts of the world as it emerged on that vast blue stage to join the celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park. The bloody skirmishes that took place on that same spot during the Democratic convention 40 years ago — young vs. old, students vs. cops, white vs. black — seemed as remote as the moon. This is another America — hardly a perfect or prejudice-free America, but a union that can change and does, aspiring to perfection even if it can never achieve it.

Still, change may come slowly to the undying myths bequeathed to us by the Bush decade. “Don’t think for a minute that power concedes,” Obama is fond of saying. Neither does groupthink. We now keep hearing, for instance, that America is “a center-right nation” — apparently because the percentages of Americans who call themselves conservative (34), moderate (44) and liberal (22) remain virtually unchanged from four years ago. But if we’ve learned anything this year, surely it’s that labels are overrated. Those same polls find that more and more self-described conservatives no longer consider themselves Republicans. Americans now say they favor government doing more (51 percent), not less (43) — an 11-point swing since 2004 — and they still overwhelmingly reject the Iraq war. That’s a centrist country tilting center-left, and that’s the majority who voted for Obama.

The post-Bush-Rove Republican Party is in the minority because it has driven away women, the young, suburbanites, black Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, educated Americans, gay Americans and, increasingly, working-class Americans. Who’s left? The only states where the G.O.P. increased its percentage of the presidential vote relative to the Democrats were West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas. Even the North Carolina county where Palin expressed her delight at being in the “real America” went for Obama by more than 18 percentage points.

The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of “patriotism.” What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That’s not who we are.

So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country.¨

Next Year, Summer 2009, The Episcopal Church will fully reclaim OUR integrity at General Convention, Anaheim, California...¨we are the ones we´ve been waiting for¨ sounds good to me!

¨People who have erroneously operated out of the belief that homosexuality was environmentally caused...¨

By Dr. James E. Walton
For more information on sexual developement and orientation, click here for L.A. Therapist:

¨In 1991 Simon Le Vey, the well known neurobiologist, discovered that homosexuality was biologically determined, as opposed to environmentally caused. He discovered that the hypothalamus of the average homosexual man was smaller than the one found in heterosexual men. This discovery lent strong credence to the biological theory of homosexuality in opposition to the old idea that homosexuality was caused by the environment or as choice made from a side effect of “weak” morals. People who have erroneously operated out of the belief that homosexuality was environmentally caused have cause irrespirable emotional and psychological damage to their gay children in a futile attempt to usurp nature.

This erroneous and archaic understanding implied, if not outright stated, that homosexuality is caused by poor parenting skills, something that anti-gay parents abhor. This belief maintains that homosexual men did not have a "normal" development and are therefore unhealthy. Certainly, no parent wants to be held responsible for causing such damage to their very own child.

Gay men have been made to feel as though they were somehow flawed right from the beginning of their childhood. If only they had the right and normal experiences when growing up, maybe they would have turned out "normal" in their sexuality like their heterosexual counterparts. This labeling and looking for causes for homosexuality has done more harm than good for the self-esteem of gay men and women. Just the suggestion of a cause for homosexuality implies the possibility of a "cure" for their "disorder." The self esteem of gay men and women is not served by such implied beliefs.

According to Richard A. Isay, M.D., the strained relationship between a gay child and the family may be a result, rather than the cause, of a child's development of homosexual orientation. It is a widely held belief backed by research that gay males experience a high proportion of hostile or withdrawing fathers. Isay, however, proposes that it is the fathers who are reacting to their sons' homosexuality with withdraw and hostility, rather than the hostility and anger causing the homosexuality. It is from this withdraw and hostility that the gay child begins to develop a lower sense of self-esteem.

Fathers of gay sons may become aware of their child's differences at some time in the early development of the child and have a sense that the child is closer to them than what they expected or for what society deems normal. Some fathers grow very uncomfortable with this sense of closeness or difference and reject the child through either withdrawing or by becoming hostile towards the child. It is the father's initiative to reject the child not the other way around. The reasons for this rejection has more to do with the father's sense of insecurity than with the child's actual "deviant" behavior.

It is also probable that the father feels some sense of responsibility and guilt for his son's being gay. It might be difficult for a father to face the son or even be able to stand the feelings that might be associated with the thought of having caused his son to be gay. Isay proposes that gay male children do go through an Oedipal phase of development, but it differs from the heterosexual experience in that the love attachment is to the father rather than to the mother. It is at this point that the father becomes uncomfortable with his son and begins the hostile or withdrawing behavior. Most gay men would deny this original erotic attachment to their fathers. This is apparently a natural aversion response children, straight and gay, have to incest. Rejection by the father is very confusing to a young gay child.

Gay sons have been accused throughout history as being mama's boys. Society shifts as much blame on the mother as on the father for raising a gay son. The mothers of gay sons are viewed as dominating, doting and castrating women. Popular belief has it that these women squelch the masculinity out of these boys so much that they do not know how to behave as men. It is also believed that gay men are afraid of women as a result of the behavior of their mothers.

Any way one looks at it, the mothers of gay sons are condemned by society, as much as, the fathers. It is no wonder that parents of gay sons feel a tremendous amount of shame when they discover that their child is gay. They are very much aware of how society will view them as parents. In many instances, they feel shame and anger over the child's admission of being gay which they direct to the child. Often they feel as failures having let their child and family down and that they have caused this to happen in some way.

If it were true that gay men had such oppressive mothers, they would probably not be able to handle relationships with women of any kind because of having projected the bad part of their mothers onto them. However, many gay men are able to seek out and enjoy healthy and fulfilling relationships with women. As a result, gay men have long been fervent supporters of women's rights. In a recent survey of 312 homosexual men three quarters of them had at least 1 heterosexual experience since puberty and 98 of those men were either married or living with a female lover for three months or longer (McWhirter & Mattison, 1984, p. 270).

In reality, the mother becomes the only ally the child has when the father rejects him. A mother may or may not be able to sense the child's latent homosexuality, but she can clearly recognize when the father is rejecting or hostile to the child. For these reasons, the mother may find herself defending the gay child in front of the father more often than she might with the other heterosexual children in the family. It is only common sense that if the child has been rejected by the father, he would seek out his mother for the attention he could not receive from his father. In many cases, it is actually the mother who requests that the son not tell the father. Although this may appear on the surface as a manipulation of the mother to distance the father from the son, in reality, the mother has been witness to the hostility of the father and in most cases is probably trying to protect the son from further assault and harm from the father.

If environmental causes are paramount for the creation of a gay child, then we would expect to see evidence of such a belief by a high rate of homosexuality in the other children who are growing up in the same environment. This has not turned out to be the case. Out of a study of 312 gay men, only two and a half percent of the siblings were known to be gay (McWhirter & Mattison, 1984, p. 182). That is one half to one quarter of the estimated percentage of gay people in the general population, which is estimated to be somewhere between 7% and 10% of the population. Such widely held beliefs beg the question, if environment is the cause, why are all of the children within this type of family not gay? Such a question seems to expose the unreasonableness of these archaic beliefs.


These kinds of experiences can be very damaging to a developing gay boy. As the child grows up and develops into an adult, the models he has had for relationships have been fraught with hostility, rejection and shame. The child now leaves the home, and hopefully at some point acknowledges his homosexuality and may desire to enter into a relationship with another man.

In conclusion, the hostility of the father and the protection of the mother are the result of the parents' reactions to the child's latent homosexuality rather than the cause of the child's gay orientation. It is the dysfunctional family constellation that pathologizes his future love relationships. However, a gay man who has experienced a tumultuous childhood, can overcome his liabilities of the past and enjoy a rich, fulfilling and healthy love relationship as can any human being.¨

REFERENCES

Clark, D. (1978). Loving someone gay. New York: New American Library.

Isay, R. (1989). Being homosexual: Gay men and their development. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

Lewes, K. (1988). The psychoanalytic theory of male homosexuality. New York: Simon and Schuster.

McWhirter, D. & Mattison, A. (1984). The male couple. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Beebe, J. (1993, March). The individuation of homosexuality. Unpublished lecture, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA.

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Breaking News: Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obamas 86 year old grandmother, passed away in Hawaii today...May God Bless Madelyn and all loving Grandparents who have added so much to our everyday lives...both those grandparents still with us as they help us, teach us and love us....and also, the dearly remembered souls of our departed loved ones...prayers of gentle peace and thanks for a greatlady and greatgrandmother, Madelyn Dunham.