Sexuality, Gender and Catholicism 27 December 2008

As a bisexual, transgender Catholic, I feel it incumbent upon me to comment on Pope Benedict’s recent remarks in which he is reported to have affirmed that homosexuality and transgenderism are at least as great a threat to the survival of humanity as climate change.

I have to admit that when I first heard the report about this statement on the radio, I thought it sounded like a very ill-advised thing to say, at the very least: bound to encourage homophobia, and violence towards gays and transgender people. And it’s true, those words will inevitably lead some miguided people to feel they have a sanction to be even more discriminatory and hostile towards GLBT people.

That’s partly because utterances on controversial subjects such as this get reported only in part and out of context. That was certainly the case with these remarks. When you look at the Pope’s words in greater detail, he’s not in fact saying that homosexuality and transgenderism per se are a threat to the survival of humanity. What he appears to be repudiating is the undermining of the distinction between male and female that is expressed in active homosexuality and transgender behaviour, and the intellectual justification that is given to such behaviour through gender theory. He is reported to have said that it is not “out-of-date metaphysics” to “speak of human nature as ‘man’ or woman’”; and that blurring this distinction could lead to the ”self-destruction” of the human species.

This is a more complex and less judgemental point than some of the media reports appeared to suggest. I do actually agree that within the life of the Church – which is the model for the life of the whole world as transformed by the Holy Spirit – there are distinct roles for men and women. For instance, I believe that God confers authority in the Church on men, as expressed in sacramental priesthood and the authority of fathers in the family. I should stress, however, that this is an authority based on the service of God and of those over whom one holds authority; and it should not be – though often is – synonymous with authoritarian partriarchy. Similarly, women very often, but not always, have a vocation for more ‘maternal’, nurturing roles – whether motherhood itself, teaching, nursing / doctoring, etc.

However, these gender roles should not be interpreted in a narrow, exclusive way. E.g. because the Church, or much of it, believes that men have a leadership role and that women are suited to more caring, maternal roles, there should not be an automatic expectation that all men (biological gender) will be natural leaders (social gender, personality) or that all women will be natural mothers and care givers. Yes, one can insist on a fundamental distinction between male and female (although how does one deal with the real, empirically verified issue of intersex persons?); and one can legitimately expound a view of the Christian faith that promotes the exercise of certain roles on the part of each sex. But to assert that all men have to be (only) masculine as well as male, and all women should be feminine (only) as well as female, seems to me to ignore the rich and complex diversity of gender identity and roles that is simply an ordinary part of the make-up of human beings and societies.

I think there is a need for greater clarity and precision on the part of the Church in these matters. Pope Benedict is a highly intelligent man, and if he wishes to open up a debate about gender, and not merely about sexuality where the focus normally lies, then the Church’s position needs to be set out in a manner that does not appear to replicate the naive tendency to mistakenly equate gender with biological sex. Apart from anything else, much of the gender theory that the Pope’s statement seems to be castigating does not at all put in doubt the polarities of male and female, and masculine and feminine; on the contrary, these antinomies are integral to understanding and articulating a whole host of transgender and non-heterosexual personality and behaviour types.

And that includes my own: to abandon my self-understanding as bisexual and androgynous (part-female and part-male psychologically, and even neurologically – in terms of how my brain is wired) would be to abandon a hard- and long-fought struggle to come to terms with my inner complexities and contradictions in a way that has enabled me to remain true both to myself and to my faith.

One can be bisexual, transgender and a faithful Catholic. And if the Pope wants me to explain how, I’d be happy to enter into conversation with him.

The consecration of female bishops is a greater source of disunity than that of gay bishops 8 July 2008

Some of my readers might be shocked to read such a statement from me. In which case, let me explain.

The Church of England yesterday voted to ordain women to the episcopate. The arguments against this decision were the classic Catholic ones: that there is no precedent or authority for the move, either in Scripture, Tradition, or in the Anglican Communion itself acting in isolation from other churches that see their authority and the truth of their sacraments as based in the apostolic succession. The victorious women, on the other hand, or at least some of them, claimed that the vote in their favour constituted an end to the discrimination that had been practised against them. This sort of language is totally inappropriate, inaccurate and misplaced. It’s nothing to do with discrimination. Who do the women think were discriminating against them, and for what reason? It’s supposed to be about discerning the will of God, not untapping previously denied job opportunities. This sort of response shows a complete lack of concern for Church unity; and, in that, it seems to me to betray an absence of the Holy Spirit.

And the point is, this decision does introduce profound disunity into the Church. There are many bishops, priests and laypersons who just won’t be able to accept it, on theological grounds not those of discrimination. Many of these will end up leaving the Church. Many who stay will be faced by terrible dilemmas about who they can worship and serve under and with. It’s not just a case of some male priests being unable to accept the authority of a female bishop; but also, they and many laypersons won’t accept the authenticity of the priesthood of those ordained by a female bishop. Over time, this could spread enormous confusion and fragmentation into the day-to-day life of the Church; or else, the thing will just prove unworkable, and the men and women concerned will either just leave or split off to form their own continuing and – in their eyes – authentically apostolic church.

Now, I am sympathetic to the Catholic position and the people – women as well as men – who just can’t accept the validity of a female episcopate. I’m a Roman Catholic myself; and while I advocate a loving, compassionate and non-judgemental attitude towards those who have difficulty adhering to the Catholic Church’s moral teaching in all areas of sexual life (and that includes myself – a bisexual and transgender man), I do try, however imperfectly, to live out a life of faithful obedience. I feel I need to reiterate this to combat a reaction to my stance against women bishops that might make out I was being self-serving and hypocritical: being a gay (actually, bisexual) man, thinking it was absolutely fine for gay male bishops to be sexually active; while being misogynistically opposed to women bishops. This is completely not the case: I don’t think it’s just fine for a gay bishop to be sexually active; and I’m not opposed to women bishops out of aversion towards women – I don’t have an aversion towards women; I love and desire them, as it happens, and enjoy friendship and fellowship with them.

The thing is, the question of women bishops is a more fundamental issue of doctrine than that of gay bishops; and it introduces more disunity into the Church, in ways I’ve attempted to outline above. The teachings about the Church itself, and the apostolic foundation of its authority and sacraments, are absolutely integral parts of Catholic dogma. If you start introducing bishops who, by virtue of that teaching, cannot be regarded as authentic, then the whole edifice is literally subverted from within. A male bishop whose morality is questionable, and certainly would be regarded as sinful from the standpoint of traditional Catholic moral teaching, is nonetheless still an authentic bishop if he has been chosen by his peers and consecrated in accordance with tradition. (This is leaving aside, for a moment, the question of the Catholic Church’s denial of the belief that the Anglican Communion actually does have the apostolic succession!) So his morality is more a matter of discipline and moral example than fundamental dogma.

The fact that the issue of female bishops introduces more division into the church than sexually active gay clergy is illustrated, for me, by the fact that the breakaway conservative evangelical movement, GAFCON (discussed in my previous post), is potentially going to end up being just as divided over this as over the anti-gay-clergy sentiment that unites it. So far, GAFCON has glossed over this issue so as to prevent a united front. But there are undoubtedly going to be African dioceses and conservative evangelicals that will be unable to accept the authority of women bishops; and so you’ll end up with at best a two-track break-away GAFCON Church, with parts of it happy to accept women bishops and others who elect to come under the authority of male bishops only. The geographically dislocated character of the GAFCON movement – with some Western dioceses or individual churches choosing to come under the authority of bishops from other continents – could be the thing that facilitates this dual approach. However, it will break up the traditional association between a bishop and the geographical territory over which his pastoral mission extends.

This lack of engagement with the profound issues raised by women bishops is, for me, demonstrated by the one part of the GAFCON website where they engage with the question of female ordination. This is an interview with a Ugandan bishop, where – in answer to the question, “What is the Church of Uganda’s position on the ordination of women?” – the following answer is offered:

“The Bible is very clear that homosexual practice is sin. But, nowhere in the Bible is being a woman described as a sin. The ordination of women and the ordination of practicing homosexuals cannot be compared. They are not the same issue. People of equally strong evangelical conviction come to different conclusions about the ordination of women, but we in Uganda have understood the Bible to teach that God created men and women in His image and both can be ordained to serve God in His Church.”

Well yes, if this is the quality and consistency of theological understanding that is being applied to these issues, GAFCON is going to have problems! So women can become bishops because it’s not a sin to be a woman! Well, thanks a lot for the enlightenment! And gay men can’t be bishops because being a practising homosexual is a sin – well, a) that’s not very pastorally sensitive to the gay members of your congregation, and b) what about ‘out’ but non-practising homosexuals – is it a sin to be gay, and even if it is a sin (which the Catholic Church doesn’t teach), does that mean gay men can’t be bishops? We’re all sinners, after all.

And yes, people of strong evangelical convictions will come to different conclusions about the ordination of women – particularly, their ordination as bishops. And one wonders how united the GAFCON break-away Church will be able to remain as more Western, liberal dioceses introduce women bishops, while traditionalist evangelical and African dioceses won’t accept the authority of women.

You certainly can and should compare gay and women bishops: they’re both a product of the liberal West. But women bishops are a more fundamental threat to the Anglican Communion as a Church in the Catholic tradition. Admittedly, to evangelicals such as the Bishop of Uganda, this may not be such a problem. But then, GAFCON doesn’t seem to be too bothered about fostering the unity of the Anglican Communion, either.

GAFCON: Schism and the Repudiation of Homosexuality 29 June 2008

How significant are differences in belief about openly gay clergy and church blessings of gay unions? Very significant if you consider that such things are said to form part of a “false gospel”, and have contributed to the formation of an alternative episcopal hierarchy in the Anglican Communion at the GAFCON conference, which ended in Jerusalem today.

The gay issue has naturally dominated much of the press coverage of GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference). However, this movement is about much more than mere disagreements about marriage and sexuality, important though they are. It’s also about evangelical Anglicans, and those from developing countries (particularly Africa), finally making a break from a church whose compromises between evangelicalism, liberalism and catholicism are rooted in a long history (including the history of British imperialism) and in the moral uncertainties of modern Western society. These compromises and ambiguities are no longer perceived to be necessary or relevant to a confident African Christianity and a militant evangelicalism who base their certainties in Scripture and the traditional cornerstones of Anglican doctrine: the four Ecumenical Councils, the three Creeds, the Church Fathers, the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer.

The first thing to be noted is that GAFCON is a schismatic movement. It tries to make out that it will be able to co-exist with the ‘official’ Anglican hierarchy, and that it is just a movement and alternative discipline within the Anglican Communion. However, it is taking the classic form of a schism: seeing itself as the representative of true Anglican-Christian orthodoxy, tradition and liturgy; and setting itself up as able to command authority over all the Anglican faithful by virtue of its claim to uphold the ‘true’ Gospel over against the ‘false’ Gospel that the official hierarchy is unable to confound. It is hard to see how a single Church could survive with two organisations and groupings of bishops competing against each other to be accepted as the very basis for unity, and of coherence of belief and practice, within the Church. The truth of the matter is GAFCON really seeks to supplant the established Church hierarchy and, in a sense, re-launch the Anglican Church as a whole – and not just one movement within it – on its own foundations. It will doubtless take many millions with it, who will believe that it is the ‘true’ Anglican Communion. Many millions will not follow, however, and will retain their allegiance to the established church that has the Archbishop of Canterbury loosely as its head.

The question I would wish to ask is this: will such a schism strengthen or weaken the Church’s witness on homosexuality? Is it more powerful for people to have radically differing views on sexuality within the same community of believers, or to take a stand on the issue to the extent of breaking up over it and forming separate churches? I ask this because I think that gay clergy and blessings are a bit of a straw man. Or should I say they’re being made out to be the ‘last straw’, the final outrage, that’s forcing the hand of the dissidents. But this is really a pretext, and it isn’t necessary to risk splitting up the Communion for the so-called conservatives to express their concerns and their opposition to what is being done in certain parts of the Communion, particularly in North America. This is a matter of discipline not of fundamental Church doctrine: the common Anglican teaching remains that gay clergy should not be in actively sexual relationships, that marriage is an exclusively heterosexual thing and that there is no such thing as an ‘official’ blessing ceremony for gay unions, although these may be carried out by clergy as private occasions.

Admittedly, there are many in the liberal wing of the Communion – and not just in Canada and the USA – who have more affirming views on homosexuality, and consider that loving gay relationships are a positive thing, indeed a gift from God. And such people might even go so far as to sanction gay marriage. However, these views are not the mainstream; and in any case, the traditional Anglican way has been to accept that there is a diversity of beliefs within the Church, reflecting the plurality of beliefs within society at large. The fact that in some churches, they preach that it’s all right for two male or female clergy to share each other’s bed has never up to now been thought to prevent other Anglican churches from believing and preaching diametrically opposing views and still to consider each other as Christian brothers, united in their search for God and for truth. But now, the new organisation is saying that people who advocate and practice such a “false gospel” can no longer be in communion with them: effectively, they would exclude them from their version of the Anglican Communion – they would be excommunicated, meaning they had put themselves beyond the redemption won for us by Christ.

It’s the fact that it isn’t really necessary to set up a dissident church within a church in order to disagree fundamentally with the liberals on these points, and continue teaching the opposite, that makes me think that the gay issue is merely a pretext for a split that the evangelicals and African churches involved have wanted for some time. In reality, it’s the only issue of substance that divides the new proto-church from the old. The statement of belief issued by GAFCON, the Jerusalem Declaration (see above link), is essentially no more than standard traditional Anglicanism that most Anglican believers would have no difficulty in embracing – deliberately so, as the new movement seeks to impose itself as the true Church. The gay issue is being made out to be more extreme and threatening than it really is (because, as I say, the majority of believers do not follow the ultra-liberal line) to justify a split that is ultimately about re-centring the Communion on evangelical principles: Scripture and a specifically conservative-Anglican acception of Tradition; as opposed to the Trinity of (evangelical) Scripture, (Catholic) Tradition and (liberal) Reason that has provided the foundation for the co-existence of multiple interpretations of the faith within the Anglican Communion hitherto.

Ultimately, the new movement is not interested in the gay issue: they simply want out, and want it out of the church. No actively gay person will be welcomed within their Anglican Communion. And it’s in this refusal to exercise the Church’s pastoral mission to its gay followers, as much as in the schism GAFCON is bringing about, that the bishops behind the new movement are failing in their duty to act as a focus for unity in the Church and a witness of God’s love to the world.

Gay Clergy Wedding: A Storm In a Vicarage Teacup? 17 June 2008

Is all the fuss that erupted yesterday over last month’s blessing of the gay civil partnership of two Church of England vicars just a storm in a teacup? Clearly not from the point of view of the many furious reactions from senior conservative figures in the Church. Some of these have called the ceremony blasphemous and have claimed it breaks church rules, which prohibit formal blessings of gay unions. The blessing service in question did apparently use many of the forms and words of a traditional, heterosexual marriage ceremony, while adapting it to the gay context. So, to all intents and purposes, it looked like a wedding even though it did not formally claim to be one, or even to be an official blessing.

I have quite a lot of sympathy with the conservatives, based on the fact that I believe in the traditional Christian teaching on marriage and regard it as something sacred, mysterious and revealed. And heterosexual. Marriage has been handed down to us as such in Scripture and Tradition, and – in Catholic belief – through the teaching Authority of the Church. And we cannot change holy matrimony, and expand it to encompass gay unions, just because we wish it to do so. True marriage is a sacred thing that needs to be upheld; above all, modern, secular society needs the Church’s witness to the sacred character of marriage in a world where marriages and families are constantly being torn apart through personal failings and social pressures. The ceremony that is at the centre of the present controversy went too far in reproducing a traditional marriage service, which could indeed undermine some people’s faith in and understanding of the uniquely sacred character of the union in marriage of a man and a woman. And it is highly disingenuous of the vicar who conducted the ceremony to claim that it wasn’t a marriage or a formal blessing, and that he has technically not broken any rules; because it’s clear that the ceremony was making a strong implicit statement that the gay union at its heart was in many ways morally and spiritually equivalent to a traditional marriage.

Yet, at the same time, are not many of the objectors also going too far? To me, the whole thing appears trivial on one level, and it’s futile to waste so much time and energy over it. How does the Church think that the secular world it is trying to bear witness to will react to all this indignation over a ‘marriage’ that no one is technically claiming to be a marriage anyway while, at the same time, many – perhaps most – people would now accept that gay couples should have the right to get married, albeit in a civil ceremony? The whole thing does a huge discredit to the Church in the eyes of many who might otherwise be sympathetic towards its defence of marriage and other traditional moral values. As if the Church didn’t have other far more important and urgent things it should be concerning itself with, such as the social and spiritual deprivation of so many in our society, and the elimination of wars, famine and disease, and their causes and effects. Obsessing so much about the gay issue just makes many people dismiss the Church as a quaint, outmoded irrelevance – more interested in ceremony and petty rules than substance.

So the ‘gay clergy marriage’ story is important, in that the integrity and sanctity of marriage needs to be defended; but not that important that we should lose sight of the Church’s primary mission: to witness to and enact God’s compassionate love in the world. So how should the matter be dealt with? Well, if the policy of the Church is that there can be no formal services of blessing for gay unions, then church premises and property should not have been used in such a public ceremony: any blessing that was given should have been done properly in private, consistent with the claims of the vicar who led the service that it was just a personal response to a request from friends. The vicar should have been quietly reprimanded and informed that if he carried out another blessing for a gay marriage in church premises again, tougher action would be taken. Meanwhile, private blessings, held in non-ecclesiastical surroundings, should be tolerated, just as the fact of clergy entering into civil partnerships themselves is tolerated on the condition that the couple remain celibate. The gay vicar couple at the centre of the dispute are both still exercising their ministry in the church; and, to be honest, if they are truly expected to remain celibate while living together as civil partners, then they really need the blessing of the Church and any grace that that might bring!

After all, it’s not as if the church is sanctioning any gross immorality by giving its blessing to faithful, monogamous gay relationships. If anything, surely, they are to be encouraged in preference to a life of promiscuity. Indeed, does it really discredit – or does it not in fact honour – the tenets of Christian marriage if gay couples wish to place their relationship within the framework of the exclusive lifelong fidelity that marriage demands? At the end of the day – or at the end of life – I feel sure that gay persons will be judged more on the extent to which they lived up to their commitments to one another than by the fact of making those commitments in the first place. And so long as the commitment that remains in the first place for all Christians, gay or straight, is the commitment to Christ, then we need not have any fear. And that includes the misplaced fear of conservative, straight opinion that is worrying more about these issues than about bringing God’s love to a world that is starving for it.

A storm in a teacup, maybe; but one with a ripple effect that diminishes the Church’s stature and impact beyond the vicarage walls.

Male and female he created them 21 May 2008

Mexico was scandalised this week by the country’s first wedding between a male (female-to-male – FtM) and female (MtF) transsexual. Not surprisingly, the ceremony incurred the wrath of the Catholic Church in the country. However, as the bride’s sister was quoted as saying, “At the end of the day, it’s a marriage between a woman and a man, so what’s the problem with blessing this union in the eyes of God?”

This is indeed an intriguing question: if an FtM transsexual counts as a woman in the eyes of the Church, and an MtF transsexual is considered a man, then a marriage between both of them – so long as neither of them have been married before – is in fact a female-male union, even if it is the spouse who plays the male role who is the ‘woman’ and the bride is a ‘man’. However, the problem is not in the bare facts but in the spirit with which the couple are committing their lives to each other, which precisely does require that the husband should be a ‘man’ and that he should make the type of commitment that husbands make to wives in Christian marriage (to give himself utterly to the wife out of love, to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice his own life if necessary to save his wife’s life, as Christ died for humankind); and that the bride is a woman making a bride’s pledge to her husband: to love and obey him as she would Christ.

Of course, saying that a marriage involving an FtM and MtF transsexual couple does not comply with these defining parameters of authentic marriage does mean that one is asserting that the couple in question are really a woman and a man, and not – as they see themselves and appear physically to others – a man and a woman; i.e. that ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are terms that relate only to the ‘birth gender’ (the physical, anatomical sex the individuals were born with) and no other understandings of gender. Part of the reason for the insistence on this criterion is of course one of the integral purposes of Christian marriage, in the traditional understanding: that of having children and bringing them up as Christians. The ‘woman’ or ‘bride’ must, in this scheme of things, have been born with the bodily organs required for her to become a mother within marriage; and similarly for the husband / potential father.

I say ‘must have been born with the bodily organs etc.’ rather than simply ‘must have the bodily organs’ because an authentic marriage – one in which the spouses firmly believe that God has called them to commit themselves to one another – logically must have been intended by God for those individuals from all eternity, which therefore requires that one of them be born female and one male. This ‘authentic’ marriage would be contrasted, for instance, to ones in the future where it is theoretically possible that there might be genetic and / or stem cell-based treatments that would enable women to transition entirely into men, complete with functioning genitals; and for men to become women in every physical respect, including with functioning ovaries and wombs. In such a case, would the MtF ‘bride’ not in fact be ‘really’ a woman in every sense – physical and psychological, sex and gender – while the FtM ‘husband’ was ‘really’ a man?

On the other hand, would such an apparently total gender reassignment in reality be any less artificial and superficial than the treatments presently available? The fact that the transitioned woman and man would not just appear as such but would actually be fully female and male anatomically would not of itself invalidate the view that they were ‘really’ a man and a woman respectively, based on the bodies they had been born with – which was as God created them and therefore intended them to be.

But you’d now be paradoxically in the situation where a woman and a man were, in every normal sense of the terms, female and male (physically and psychologically) – and even, who knows, capable of conceiving children ‘naturally’ – but who would be denied marriage on the basis that they were really (‘spiritually’) male and female, and therefore not capable of fulfilling the roles of husband and father, and wife and mother, respectively. On this view, the fact of being female or male would depend not on what you as a person feel you are, nor on how society views you, nor on your present bodies, but on how God made you and what you therefore are in his (or her) eyes.

So one authentic Christian way of living out one’s vocation, as a transsexual, is to accept that, in some mysterious way, one is really – in God’s eyes – a woman even though one feels that one is really a man; and vice-versa for psychological women locked in men’s bodies. As a Christian, it might be better not to undertake a gender reassignment, if one were able in faith to accept the body one was born with as something that God wished one to take on – in the manner of a cross that had to be borne (in the other sense) as part of our sharing in Christ’s suffering for the sins of the world. But by the logic I have attempted to map out, whereby the appearance of gender (even, in theory, the actual possession of a fully female or male body) has nothing to do with the ‘real’ gender (psychologically or spiritually), a transsexual should in no way be condemned for seeking to transform her or his body to align it with her or his psychological gender. Nor – on the other hand – should transsexuals expect or demand that all Christians accept that their ‘new’ genders are their ‘real’ genders from the spiritual perspective, to the extent of authorising and carrying out Christian marriages of the sort discussed at the beginning of this post.

But equally, this does not justify the rejection or condemnation of transsexuals, whether transitioned or not, but calls for a new flexibility and openness of thought and compassionate understanding, whereby one accepts that the gender a person feels they are may be quite the opposite of how they were born or what they appear to be; and that the gender they appear to be may be quite the opposite of what as Christians we are entitled to believe they are. Perhaps this new expansion of the horizons of our thinking will help not just Christians but society as a whole to be more open to the plurality and shades of gender experience, including those which are found but so often suppressed in people who feel their gender identity is wholly ‘normal’ and aligned with their anatomical sex.

So in this life, it is legitimate to believe that we are called to accept the gender we were born with as something essential to what we are and are meant to be in God’s eyes and plan. But in the life to come, these gender differences – including those internal to the self – will no longer matter as we will be reunited with the God in whose image both male and female humanity was created; and, who knows, both the male and female sides of ourselves will be reunited and reconciled in him. After all, the biblical text says, ‘male and female he created them’; and not, as we so often interpret it, ‘male or female’.

Gay Sex and Vocation 9 May 2008

Hitherto, I’ve tended to the view that an active gay sex life is not consistent with, or cannot be considered an integral part of, a – or the – Christian calling. That’s gay sexual activity, as opposed to homosexuality (or bisexuality, or transgendered-ness) itself. By contrast, in a very thought-provoking post, Anita Cadonau-Huseby makes a powerful case for considering that a person’s homosexuality (or sexuality and gender identity of any sort) is indeed a / their holy vocation and divine calling. On one level, I wholeheartedly agree with this view: if one genuinely is gay, or in my case bisexual and transgender, then this is how God intended you to be – what he is calling you to be as part of his calling of you into being through his Word of creation.

Where I worry about this is the way it conflates two meanings of ‘vocation’: 1) what God’s purpose was in creating you (he made you as a gay person, by design and not by accident); 2) what God is calling you to, and calling you to become, as part of your new life in Christ: the life of the Spirit, of faith and of service. I have no problem whatsoever with the former meaning. But can God be said to be calling gay persons to assume their gayness as a gift of the Spirit, as part of their very Christian charism, when he first calls them to become his followers and share in the life of grace? Gayness may well be a gift of God in a similar way as our bodies, minds and very life are his gifts; but are these things, and therefore gayness too, also correctly described as gifts of the Spirit in the same way, for instance, as the gifts of healing, teaching, praise or prayer?

Are these merely semantic distinctions? Is it legitimate for us, in this all-too human way, to separate out what constitutes a gift of Creation (our bodies or our gayness) and what constitutes a gift of Grace? In Christ, and in our sharing in the life of Christ through the Spirit, these aspects of our humanity and his divinity are united. How can we make a distinction between our old selves – including our homosexuality – and our new selves, reborn in Christ, when our witness to Christ can be true only when it engages all that is true and distinctive about ourselves as human beings, which cannot but include our sexuality? As gay, bisexual and / or transgender, if we do not bear witness to our sexuality and gender identity, can we still be true to our vocation and be a reliable witness to Christ?

And yet, it is nonetheless legitimate to ask: are our sexualities and gender identities themselves graces; or are they not rather just part of our nature as mortal, fleshly, flawed and sinful human beings, which God still chooses to inhabit in the love of Christ and the life of the Spirit; and which he uses as the instrument of his grace to others who are seeking him – manifesting the truth that he loves us and dwells within us no matter who or what we are?

If this is so, why then should it matter whether we choose to consider that gay sexual acts are sinful or not if, notwithstanding these, God still loves us unconditionally, and still works in us and through us to spread the life of his Kingdom? But it is important to know what sin is. This is because sin is that which attacks and potentially destroys the life of Christ within us, and diminishes our ability to hear God’s call, to seek his will, and to commit ourselves to following it completely.

By why should gay sex in particular be considered sinful, even in the context, say, of a loving, monogamous union between two Christians of the same sex, who see their sex life as a celebration and expression of their love, and as therefore affirming and manifesting the love of Christ for and in each one of them? Can it be seen as a vocation for two such people to ‘consecrate’ their love for each other in this way, just as conjugal sex is usually seen as validating and manifesting the union in Christ of a husband and wife – Christian marriage being traditionally conceived of as a calling? God may call gay people to be gay; but does this mean he calls them to gay sex? Does an affirmation of one’s gayness always have to involve the affirmation of one’s sex life? Does God’s creation of gay people as gay provide moral justification for gay sex – exclusively, or merely preferentially, within monogamous relationships having the character of a marriage?

So many questions. Who can be confident of knowing all the answers? (There’s another one!) My own view: that an active gay sex life cannot be an intrinsic part of the Christian vocation of a gay person. This is in contrast to heterosexual sex – but, in the Catholic view, only one particular type of heterosexual sex; not heterosexual sex of any and every kind – which is an intrinsic part of the vocation to sacramental marriage. Nor is gayness in itself a gift of the Spirit in Christ. Homosexuality (and bisexuality, and transgendered-ness) is part of our old life, our fallen nature; but so is heterosexuality and, therefore, all sexuality and gendered life. These things are signs of our continuing dependency and attachment to this mortal life and to our carnal bodies; to individuation, and to identification with and attraction for only part of the human totality; to division and incompletion in our lives and in ourselves. And, in its very incompleteness, transitoriness, and diversity of form and expression (loving and unloving; promising lifelong fidelity and failing to live up to it), sex is a manifestation of the fact that man and woman have not yet, in this life, attained the perfect unity and reconciliation that is in Christ.

But by the same token, while all sexual desire – gay or straight – holds within it the potential to fail to consummate the perfect (marital) union of man and woman, male and female, in Christ in whom / which, and in whose image, all human life is created; yet, at the same time – when lived as an expression of true, Christian love – desire and sex are always offered as a prayer for perfect union and, thereby, an act of praise of the human heart whose longing for Christ is inseparable from its bodily desire for another.

Not a perfect love: sinful, therefore – the love of sinners. But, in that, so very human; and so very much in the image of Christ: the lover of sinners.

Sexual Guilt and Faith 6 May 2008

As a Catholic, I used to feel guilty about my gay side. I say ‘gay side’ not ‘homosexuality’ because I’m bisexual. So was it my homo-sexuality or my sexuality as such that I had a guilt complex about? Did I feel as guilty about my straight side: mixed up about being mixed up? Was it moral guilt or psychological guilt? And if there is a definite distinction that can be drawn between these two forms of guilt, is it ever in practice possible for the person who experiences that guilt to tell them apart? Or for any person for that matter?

However, this way of presenting the dilemmas I wrestled with over so many years does not do justice to my ‘story’. This was not quite as my intro might suggest: just another screwed-up Catholic pre-conditioned to think that sex was, effectively, in principle sinful and dirty unless ‘redeemed’ in marriage. But this is not how it was for me: I did not grow up as a Catholic, and it was my coming to faith that actually allowed me to get in touch emotionally with my gay side and begin to accept it.

Prior to the series of powerful experiences that led me into first believing, and then being baptised, confirmed and receiving my first communion, all at the tender age of 27 (!), I had always thought I was straight. It was the love of God that I was given in abundance at that time that unlocked the door that had kept my gay side profoundly repressed until that point: precisely because I  had felt profoundly unloved and had unconsciously identified my gayness as one of the main reasons.

And this, for me, has consequently been an unerring truth that has steered me through my struggles: that God loves me, not so much despite my (gay) sexuality but just as I am; regardless of my sexuality would perhaps be more accurate. The sexuality of a person is, in the eyes of God, of so little account set against the unfathomable immensity and mystery of his love that it’s almost belittling that love, and reducing it back down to our own petty horizons, to presume that our sexuality could in any way affect it.

That’s not to say that sexuality per se and our personal little windows on it – ‘our’ sexuality / homosexuality / bisexuality / heterosexuality – is not important, including in our relationship with God. But it’s important primarily in how it affects our ability to be open and respond to God’s love; to hear his call and follow it. If homosexuality is a sin, one of the most important ways in which it is so – and one of the ways, if I might use such language, the devil toys with us in relation to it – is precisely through our very agonising over it, which wraps us up in our own mental obsessions and emotional confusions, and crowds out that still, pure voice of God’s unerring love.

So in this, as in so many other areas of life, we’ve got it all upside down. The important thing – indeed, the only important thing – is always to come back to and go out from that centre of God’s love in our hearts; because that, and only that, will empower us to love others, and indeed love ourselves, as he loves them and us. And if we live in that love, then ‘our’ sexuality is truly of no matter.

Can One be Glad to be Bi? 28 March 2008

The bisexual pop musician and now BBC radio presenter Tom Robinson is famous for his campaigning on behalf of gay rights during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly through the anthem ‘Glad to be Gay’, written in 1976. Later, he fell in love with and married a woman, and is now a proud father. Writing of these experiences, and of the vilification to which he was subjected over his straight romance by an unholy alliance of the gay-hating tabloid press and many in the gay-rights movement, Tom states: “I called myself ‘gay’ because ‘bisexual’ seemed a bit of a cop-out”.

I’ve written previously about this tendency of the gay, and particularly the gay-rights, community to dismiss bisexuals as not having the courage of their convictions to simply admit that they’re gay and commit themselves to a more honest gay lifestyle. This may be less the case nowadays than before: ‘LGBT’ (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) is now the order of the day, and campaigns for the rights of the sexually marginalised now seek to be inclusive of the ‘cross-overs’ – the bi’s and the gender-queer.

But is there not still something of an issue about bisexuality, and about the transgendered (but I aim to come on to that subject in subsequent posts)? Bisexuality is not generally celebrated or affirmed as vocally and positively as gayness; and there are very few bisexual role models (despite the substantial Wikipedia list of bisexual musicians linked to above) for young people struggling to come to terms with mixed sexual feelings – arguably more difficult and confusing than less ambiguous gay desire. Indeed, when I went to university, I remember reading in what was somewhat coyly described as the ‘little blue book’ we were all supplied with (a mini-guide to sex, relationships and contraception) that indeed bisexuals often took much longer to come to terms with their sexuality and frequently found it less easy to establish happy sexual relationships as a result.

The years that followed provided ample illustration of the truth of this statement with respect to my own life, even though (or rather, precisely because) I was not able to be fully aware and accepting of my ambiguous sexual orientation until the age of 26! Until then, I’d thought I was straight. Existentially and experientially – in terms of the way I behaved, and responded sexually to women and men – I was straight to all intents and purposes; and I attributed the occasional and increasingly frequent momentary twinges of desire for other men to the Freudian concept of fundamental bisexuality: our latent potential to experience attraction for either sex, which in most cases is never realised (in both senses) because we find a way to adapt to social expectations of heterosexuality.

After I came to realise that my homosexual side represented not just an occasional erratic eruption of this latent universal bisexuality through the protective shell of the largely resilient straight personality I had constructed for myself, but corresponded to more deep-seated emotional needs and character traits, I then spent many more years attempting to work it all out – perpetually vacillating between thinking I was fully gay (and that my recurring heterosexual impulses reflected the continuing strength of the wish to suppress my homosexuality that had led me to believe I was straight in the first place), bisexual, or even in fact straight (when that continuing wish to not embrace my homosexual side really did make it difficult for me to open up to gay desire).

It’s only in fact in the last two or three years that I’ve finally come to fully accept my bisexuality; and this process has coincided with my being to resolve (largely) my inner conflicts regarding my mixed gender identity (both male and female); and between this bisexuality and transgenderism, and my Christian faith. It had in fact been my coming to faith at the age of 26 that had enabled me to accept my mixed sexuality in the first place: the love of God enabling me to love myself, perhaps for the first time, as I truly am. Given that this sexual self-revelation was one of the consequences of my encounter with divine revelation, one might think that I could have spared myself the agony of the years that followed: the sheer power and wonder of God’s love that I experienced at this time should have given me the trust that there was nothing I could do that could make God reject me, and that I would only lose his love if I deliberately and systematically turned my back on him. And yet, life and relationships do not always readily follow the blueprint that one might think was set out for them, and it’s taken me much, much longer to reach a point of relatively serene self-acceptance than it could have done, perhaps, if I were a more trusting person.

Perhaps it’s just middle age! Too late, now, to hurl myself into a life of bisexual promiscuity which, for all my avowed religiosity, never failed to fill my fantasies in the years since my conversion? Perhaps, for faith and for sin, it’s never too late! But it’s beginning to get late for me; and I’ve work to do, including God’s work. When I wanted to, I wasn’t sorted enough to do it; now I’m sorted, I’m setting my sights on his purposes. Perhaps my years of agonising were a sign of God’s mysterious Providence all along.

Embryos, Persons and the Mind of God 28 March 2008

“What one always has to bear in mind is that it’s the children that should come first – not chronologically or causally in this instance, of course, but in our thinking about what ultimately is in the mind of God for his children, as ‘our’ children have lived in his mind for all eternity. Does he want our children to be born of a father and a mother, and to grow up in the love of their father and mother? There can be no doubt, from the perspective of Christian faith, that the answer to this question is ‘yes’”.

The above is a quote from my last post, on gay marriage and adoption. This appeared first in my now discontinued (re-branded) blog, BTCP: Bisexual, Transgender, Christian and Proud Of It. There it inspired a couple of comments, which I haven’t copied over to the new format, one of which was to the effect that if it was in God’s mind to bring children into this world through the loving union of a father and mother, wouldn’t he just do this? My reply – paraphrasing myself – was essentially ‘no’: it might be God’s will that this should happen, but our sin impedes and distorts God’s will, and must therefore be allowed to damage creation (if our freedom to choose evil as well as good is to be genuine); and that God could not arbitrarily alter the laws of biology he had made to reflect and express his loving purpose in creation simply to prevent us from abusing those laws to create and destroy human life without regard to the moral law.

This got me thinking about how we live in the mind of God, both during our temporal existence as living and breathing human beings, and in His eternity (which we view from our time-bound perspective as ‘before’ and ‘after’ our mortal lives). And how does that relate to our human personhood, and the ethics of human reproduction and embryo research?

My point is this: from the perspective of faith, human life by definition is always personal in the sense that it is an embodiment – a bodily image or reproduction – of the personhood of God himself: Father, Son and the love of the Spirit that unites them and gives rise to the whole of creation as the expression and reflection of the divine love and self-understanding (the Word). In this light, insofar as any actual human life form comes into existence, it necessarily has this essential personal character – as part of its DNA, one might say. This is the case from the moment of conception: the human person that has lived in the mind of God for all eternity now also lives in a time-bound, physical form. The Concept (the Word) has manifested itself in a material body: conception; the Word becomes flesh; a human being is made in God’s image. That human personhood is therefore as complete in a single fertilised ovum or a collection of undifferentiated embryonic stem cells as it is in a newborn baby or mature adult: alive, and able to survive and prosper outside the womb.

When I say that this intrinsic personhood of human life is built into our ‘DNA’, this is also a reference to the fact that, with respect to our genetic inheritance, we are all the expression and product of the union of our biological father and mother, even if the loving moral and spiritual union of our father and mother that God wills for us was absent from the specific biological process of our conception. God loves us into being even when love is absent from the human reproductive processes involved.

Those who attempt to morally justify embryonic stem-cell research seek to do so by denying that undifferentiated embryonic cells do constitute a ‘human person’ or ‘human being’ that might have rights similar to those of born human beings or even foetuses, such as the right to life; the right not to have medical experiments conducted on one’s body / person against one’s will; or the right not to have one’s fundamental genetic structure manipulated and combined with that of other species. It is doubtless scientifically and descriptively true – looking at the question from a materialist perspective – that a collection of undifferentiated embryonic cells does not (yet) have the characteristics that one tends to think of as defining personhood: the beginning of the formation of a recognisably human body, with all the immensely complex variety of cell and tissue types, and bodily organs.

But firstly, the religious – or certainly, the Catholic Christian – moral objection to stem-cell research is not based on such a definition of personhood: the bodily characteristics that appear to denote our status as human beings and persons are in a sense only the ‘outer’ material form of our personhood that in essence lives and exists in God. Once those cells exist, a human person that lives in the mind of God has begun to unfold in time and space, and to reveal and be a small but integral part of God’s loving creative and redemptive purpose.

Secondly, from a purely logical perspective, it is quite arbitrary to declare that after, say, 14 days from conception, what had previously been regarded as a mere collection of undifferentiated cells is now to be regarded as an embryonic human person with rights that it did not have during the first two weeks of its existence. The embryonic person would not exist now had it not gone through 14, or however many, days of undifferentiated-cell existence. This is a continuous process; and to declare that in the later stages of its development, the embryo has a humanity or personhood (humanity defined as personhood) that it did not have in the necessary earlier stages that went before seems completely illogical and self-serving; and it flies in the face of our intuitive perception of when our lives as human persons begin: from the moment of conception when the DNA structures that define who we are started to be laid down.

Besides which, the time limit from which embryos and foetuses are recognised as human beings or persons with legal and human rights is arbitrarily moveable depending on the purpose that is being justified: 14 days in UK legislation with respect to regulating stem-cell research, but 24 weeks when it comes to the legal limit for abortions. When does an unborn human person become a full human being and, as it were, a citizen with full legal rights? It appears to be the case that what defines the threshold for an embryo or foetus to be recognised in law as a human person in this way is merely the point at which they become physically (visually) recognisable as viable, autonomous human entities from the particular perspective that is invoked: that of the medical researcher who recognises that, beyond a certain point, he is extracting cells not from an amorphous, undifferentiated mass but from an actual living embryo that is starting to take on the visual, albeit microscopic, form of a human body and person; or the perspective of medical practice and childbirth, where the 24-week abortion limit was based on the latest stage at which a foetus could not survive if plucked untimely from the womb – a time limit which, for that very reason, is being revised in the current UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, as medical advances have made it possible for foetuses to survive from an earlier age.

This really is a rather primitive and, indeed, material, irrational and superstitious way to decide when an unborn human entity becomes a human person: simply when it corresponds to our bodily image of a human being – paradoxically defining the humanness of unborn life purely in relation to the appearances and conditions for survival of born life. The unborn clearly don’t stand a chance if the odds are so heavily weighted against them. In reality, the vision of faith and the science in this matter fundamentally concur; at least when the science is logically understood as describing a process whereby recognisable bodily-human personhood (what we think of as our existence and personhood) necessarily begins in the undifferentiated (‘unrecognisably’ human) embryonic stem-cell state. If we are living human beings and persons now, that is because what we are now was already laid down and was potential within what we were from the moment of our conception – and, in the light of faith, within the eternal mind of God.

This is why, for me, it is so revealing that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which has provoked such heated debate in the UK during the last week owing to prime minister Gordon Brown’s initial refusal to allow his Labour Party MPs a free vote on its morally controversial aspects, should sanction such diverse measures as the creation of hybrid human-animal embryos for the purposes of stem-cell research, and the removal of a legal reference to the ‘need for a father’ on the part of children born to Lesbian couples through IVF or other assisted-conception treatment. This latter provision extends to the very birth certificate of such children, in which it will now be possible for both women to be registered as the real (biological) parents, even if neither of them actually are the genetic parents (for instance, if a fertilised egg from another couple is used as opposed to IVF using the eggs of one of the women). This means that such children are officially without a father. They retain their existing legal right to try and trace their genetic father as soon as they reach the age of maturity (18 in the UK); but they will never be allowed to officially recognise that person as their true father – in the eyes of the law, he becomes a ‘mere’ sperm donor and no more.

The thread that these two measures in the Bill have in common is that they involve a denial of those two aspects of unborn human life that are fundamental from its very beginning: that it is personal and a product of the union of a man and a woman, in the sense that, from conception, the human entity is an individuated, unique and living combination of the DNA of its parents – DNA which in turn defines their personhood. And from the faith perspective, the unborn human being is also of course sacred: a living human person ultimately made by God in his image, which we are therefore commanded to respect and protect. And such is, not just the vocation of the believer, but the true calling of science: not so much to determine the ‘mind of God’ through empirical and theoretical enquiry into the material world that is in God but is not God; but to seek ways to cure the ills of our mortal existence that do not violate the purity and beauty of human life that is called in Christ to share God’s mind and love for all eternity.

Gay Marriage and Adoption: the best possible for children in this less-than-best-possible of worlds 27 March 2008

My gay half-brother recently came out to our mutual father. I was very glad for him, as I think this was a healthy thing to do. Our father took it quite well apparently, claiming that he wasn’t disappointed and even stating his view that no one’s sexuality was ever totally clear-cut. Perhaps at some level, this opinion – which corresponds to Freud’s theories about inherent bisexuality – influenced my own.

On the other hand, my brother’s ‘confession’ to our father again saddened me, as I was reminded that I myself have not come out as bisexual to my family – not even to my brother. This is not (only) out of cowardice – moral or otherwise – but related to the fact that I’m in a long-term straight relationship. I know that my partner, who knows about my sexual ambiguities, would have a great deal of difficulty in coping with me deciding to announce to the world I was bisexual (which, of course, I’m doing here but in an anonymous form), and this might well end our relationship. I honestly don’t think that would be the right thing for us to do at the moment; nor do I think God wants me to do it.

I am concerned, however, that my half-brother’s affirmation of his sexuality appears to have hardened his attitude towards Christianity and the Church. It doesn’t help, perhaps, that he currently lives in Spain, where the positions are so polarised: the Catholic Church strongly backing traditional morals and family values, as well as (far-) right-wing politics, and the socialist party that was recently returned into power pushing through a secularising, liberal agenda. In the government’s last term in office, they legalised gay marriage (civil, not religious, marriage but called marriage nonetheless); and in their new four-year term, they plan to legalise adoption of children by gay couples. My brother would like eventually to get ‘married’ and to have children, potentially through adoption.

In the UK, where I live, gay ‘civil partnerships’ (effectively, gay civil marriage but just avoiding the use of the term ‘marriage’) were introduced about three years ago, I think. Gay adoption was legalised some while back, too; but at the end of 2006, there was a lot of controversy about an Equality Bill – eventually passed into law – that insisted that gay couples be given equal, non-discriminatory treatment by adoption agencies assessing their suitability to become parents. This provoked the Catholic Church into saying they’d have to close their numerous and highly valued adoption agencies, as they would otherwise be forced to take gay potential adopters onto their books, which would go against their religious principles. Subsequently, I believe that some Catholic agencies have indeed closed.

These are difficult, complex issues; and while on principle, as a Catholic Christian, I feel I should wholeheartedly agree with the Church’s condemnation of gay marriage and adoption, I have to balance such a stand – built on a would-be mature understanding of the profound basis of Christian teaching on sexuality and marriage – with acceptance of and compassion towards the feelings of the people involved, including my own. Do not condemn the wish of gay persons to marry and have children without considering whether I, too, under different circumstances, might not feel I wanted to get married to another man and maybe adopt children with him; do not judge the splinter in the other man’s eye without first removing the plank in my own.

It ultimately comes down to the injunction to put the needs of others ahead of one’s own. The need or wish of gay couples to have children – whether genetically theirs or adopted – can be seen as quite natural; indeed, this is the most commonsense, humane way to view it, despite the fact that the Church might label it as ‘unnatural’. It’s an (almost) universal human attribute to want to have children, or at the very least feel twinges of longing or regret about not having children, at some point in one’s life; being gay, straight or indeed bisexual changes nothing about that. But what one always has to bear in mind is that it’s the children that should come first – not chronologically or causally in this instance, of course, but in our thinking about what ultimately is in the mind of God for his children, as ‘our’ children have lived in his mind for all eternity. Does he want our children to be born of a father and a mother, and to grow up in the love of their father and mother? There can be no doubt, from the perspective of Christian faith, that the answer to this question is ‘yes’.

Put from a more human-centric point of view, this means that children need a father and a mother, rather than the indeed ‘unnatural’ combinations of father and father, or mother and mother. I am reminded of this every time I see my nephew and niece, whose parents have just split up. The little boy and girl are missing their daddy dreadfully, and they undoubtedly transfer onto me, and onto other male family figures and friends, some of the needs for a loving male parent and role model they would otherwise invest in their father. Better, in an ideal world, for children to have loving parents of both genders around them. But then, clearly, we don’t live in such a world, at least not yet; and the love of two new parents of the same sex can in some cases be the best alternative. In a world where so many straight people are so selfish with respect to their children’s needs, maybe it is a God-given blessing, including for children, that some gay people conform their lives to a greater extent to the loving pattern of Christ.

But gay families and gay marriage? We live indeed in a broken world. But before condemning gay people who seek, however imperfectly, to mould their lives around a template of love and commitment that owes much to the inspiration of Christian tradition and teaching, we Christians must consider the flawed patterns of our own lives from the perspective of faith. Let us not judge others for wanting to make life-long commitments to each other and to children if we are not prepared to do the same. And whereas, for a gay person, it might be morally a better thing to renounce adopting children by putting the children’s needs for a father and mother before their own need for children, it is better that those children know the love of a gay household than that they never experience a loving family home as a result of the selfishness or dysfunctionality of their biological parents.

(Originally posted on http://btcp.wordpress.com on 25 March 2008.)