It Gets Better With Both Time and Action

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/05/01/it-gets-better-unless-you-disagree-with-dan-savage-2/

Dan Savage is fairly well known in the popular GLBT culture and community. He’s a very controversial figure to boot, going so far as to coin a term related to anal sex with the surname of former Senator and Presidential candidate Rick Santorum. He’s also put together more condonable advocacy for gay teens in the form of the “It Gets Better” project and writes a column syndicated in many newspapers for sex advice called “Savage Love”. His advocacy on gay rights stems in part from being raised traditional Catholic, which has an especially strong opposition to homosexuality in practice. Allegedly, Savage is a bit skeptical about monogamy, which has brought some issues from other gay rights activists, likely because it reinforces the stereotype of gay people being promiscuous. He’s also been noted for supporting the use of offensive words in a positive light through his column, such as faggot, in a similar way that queer and gay have been in the last 50 years or so. Nonetheless some activists find this objectionable, which seems a bit backwards to me in that he’s not taking it offensively if it’s already recognized that he’s gay and it’s used as an identifier.  Recently at a high school speech he made, many Christian students walked out as he called for people to ignore the “bullsh*t” in the bible regarding gay people. He also made a statement about those that left, calling them “pansy-assed” for not being able to take criticism when they could easily be called bullies themselves for calling homosexuality a sin and being insulting to their fellow classmates that might be gay. This isn’t the first time Savage has made verbal attacks at people, but this one cuts closer to home in that he’s directly involving himself with anti-gay proponents and engaging them on a level that many, myself included, might consider a bit immature. Fundamentally, the man seems fairly civil, but he does have a temper that flares up from time to time, which he has a problem with controlling. But his general intent is still reasonable in that it directly brings Christians, one of the main advocates of anti gay bigotry and discrimination, to the forefront, and makes them recognize that they are being hypocrites if they can’t take even a bit of abuse and direct criticism from the minority they persecute in one form or another. 

Not all Christians bully GLBT people, but when they stand by and do nothing about it, they are making themselves partly as guilty and responsible for not trying to change how GLBT individuals and groups are treated by believers in Jesus. Gay Straight Alliances in high schools are discriminated against and gay students are verbally and physically bullied and little seems to be done about it, to the point some of them commit suicide, which is what Dan Savage is trying to avoid with his project. Christians aren’t expected to necessarily agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual acts, but treating even homosexual attraction as a disease or dysfunction is not helping gay teens and young adults understand what love is. If you have a child or a family member who thinks they might be gay, listen to them. Don’t dismiss their confusion as a phase or rebellion, but take it seriously and try to figure out why they feel this way. Is it recent or has it been a pattern for a while? Perhaps the child isn’t gay, but bisexual, but perhaps they are gay. If this is the case, you have to be prepared to accept it in one way or another. But don’t ever push them away to try to save yourself the insecurity of coming to terms with someone you love happening to be attracted to people of the same sex. Raising a child is never easy and coping with your own problems is a good step to do before you start considering children. Otherwise, you risk putting more stress and problems upon your offspring as you raise them with your own warped sense of right and wrong. It’s far better to accept your child for what they are if there is no evidence they can change that quality. Behavior that can be molded and shaped in some form or fashion is different. Being male/female, gay/straight/bisexual, transgender, etc are not things you should fault your child for or make them feel distressed about. If it’s a problem to you, then it is not something to take out on your child, but work it out yourself.

While supporters of GLBT rights and equality shouldn’t insult people, beliefs and traditions are not subject to the same limitations. If people cannot take criticism of their belief systems for the heinous things they bring forth or try to do something about it, then they shouldn’t engage in debates with people about something that is still fairly polarizing politically and religiously. There is a fine line to walk between insulting individuals or groups in terms of their personal identity that are immutable qualities and insulting things that are quite mutable, such as political or religious beliefs, especially if those convictions defame a person based on immutable characteristics, such as sexual orientation, skin color, sex, etc. It’s one thing to insult beliefs and bigotry as horrible and reprehensible things, but to call those who hold them such a thing goes too far in not treating those whom you want to be equitable and compassionate to others with that same equity and compassion. If you’re insulted by such people that oppose gay marriage, kill them with kindness, I say. Even a bit of humor can make things less tense than they’d be if you try to talk reasonably with people that don’t think reasonably in a situation where their social norms are being threatened by an imagined enemy of progress. 

Dan Savage’s methods aren’t perfect, but they aren’t absolutely useless in being confrontational to people that think every supporter of gay rights is going to roll over and take abuse like a saint. Some people will get angry, some people will be emotional, but those feelings should be tempered with peace and self control. I can be incensed at the hatred and ignorance people spew towards those they either claim to love or don’t know from the person sitting next to them on the train, but I shouldn’t stoop to the level of those I oppose unless I can back it up with a sincere intent to help people. Sometimes people should be left to their own devices, but direct action can make change if the situation is ripe for it, if someone is willing to consider that they might be wrong or that their position can be softened a bit. Treat people with a mixture of yin and yang, mind and heart, deliberation and intuition. Gay people do not deserve to be treated like sub humans, but they don’t need attention brought to their differences all the time either. If they are regarded as equals, then people’s positions on them may change from what they perceive as those who feel entitled. It’s a give and take method, but you can’t keep taking without giving something back. Hatred should be returned with not only passive love, but active love, tough love. And that’s what Dan Savage does. Until next time, Namaste and aloha. 

Christians Changing Gears on Changing Gays

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/18/amid-bachmann-controversy-many-christians-cool-to-conversion-therapy-for-gays/

While Michele and Marcus Bachmann seem to have an approach to homosexuality that, at least in part, includes the troubling practice of reparative therapy, forcing gay people to change their sexual orientation through various means that hope to work a miracle, not all Christians, thankfully, regard homosexuality as something that can just be turned off like a light switch. Southern Baptist President Albert Mohler admits in part that sexual attraction is something much deeper than our conscious minds and has to be approached with more nuance than the attitude that permeated the 80s and 90s of trying to pray away the gay, “turn it off” or just change it outright. The trend of opinion towards the use of “change therapy” has other evidence. Focus on the Family stopped funding a group that says that people “unhappy with the same-sex attractions” can be cured. Also, there was a study this year by the Public Religion Research Institute that suggested people in later generations, like my own, are more accepting of gay marriage and associated rights, even if the trend of moral opposition to abortion is similar to previous generations in coexistence with abortions’ legality. Even Exodus International, a group notorious for their practice of reparative therapy in the news, has changed their tone, partly in response, no doubt, to the evidence that homosexuality may be, for the most part, innate, but even if it isn’t, as well as the bullying and pressure many gay teens feel pushing many of them to commit suicide without intervention and support. Christianity is certainly trying to shift its practice to becoming gay friendly, but how successful can it be?

One of the biggest factors to this shift in public relations on homosexuality and its permissibility might have to do with slight declines in church attendance, particularly with fundamentalist or evangelical circles. The combination of young people that disagree strongly with the strong condemnation against homosexuality; suggesting that people who practice it should be treated like lepers; along with many gay Christians or Christians unsure about their sexuality also leaving for fear of persecution makes for an unlikely survival beyond the present generations of churchgoers. All the more “liberal” churches draw in new membership in the gap that’s being made between younger members as well as gay members and thinning the flock of more conservative churches. It’s not necessarily that either of these groups moving on to other churches completely disagrees with the Bible’s position on homosexuality as something disapproved by God in some sense. Both younger generations and Christians who just happen to be gay might still believe it is wrong, but it is the particularly antagonistic strategy many churches still use that feels isolating and therefore pushes attendance down. So instead, preaching about Jesus’ love of even homosexuals is emphasized more, even if there is also the insistence that homosexuality is a sin. In that way, the idea appears to be to draw the people in with acceptance, which would then apparently slowly wear away their resistance to the “truth” that the church still teaches in terms of homosexuality.

There’s also a new approach in psychology that Christians are trying to use, which has a more therapeutic angle to solving the “problem”. It’s called congruence paradigm and tries to harmonize one’s religious beliefs and one’s sexuality. If one believes homosexuality is sinful and is gay themselves, then celibacy can be a solution to the dissonance if the person wishes to do so. If they are bisexual and struggle with homosexuality as a problem, then the solution may be to focus on heterosexual desires instead. There are some issues I see with this, since even if you can’t change someone’s mind about such a thing as the morality of homosexuality, not everyone can do celibacy, for instance. But since the amount of solutions for homosexuality apart from acceptance of it and acting on it in some sense are so limited, the congruence paradigm won’t work as effectively with many patients, since celibacy would remove what is an intrinsic and natural part of the human condition from one’s life. If one is a monastic of one type or another, it’s a different thing entirely to take a vow of celibacy in terms of homosexuality. But laypeople aren’t expected to take things nearly as strongly in terms of devotional practices as monks, so this practice has holes in it even if we just limited it to strictly homosexual people.

If nothing else, the change of attitude at least acknowledges that there are better ways to approach homosexuality from a Christian perspective than the stereotype of hoping God will cure people of their homosexuality. Even if the reparative therapy is still believed by some groups to be a good practice, many people are both shying away from and outright rejecting the efficacy of this method. Accepting homosexuals as people with problems like the rest of us, in terms of the Christian perspective that everyone is “sinful” is already a much better way to encourage engagement and to create a community of mutual support. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.