Faith, Freedom and Faggotry

Jean Cocteau says it best in Le Livre Blanc in the 1920s- one of my
favorites-

"I refuse merely to be tolerated for it damages both my love of love and my love of liberty!"

Vive la France!! :-)

Understand too that with his age and consciousness, R IS the example of the kind of "radical" activism that in large part made it possible for all the queers to sip lattes, drink martinis, talk about shoes and watch Glee today... honestly- we are completely assimilated and that is a whole other topic. There is no artsy intellectual avant garde anywhere which I wanted to be apart of my entire life. Just baseball and beer which have replaced any chance of the community of rebel friends bound by difference. Tis the ultimate quality of democratic freedom that with every increase in freedom, there is a decrease in quality- the Great Leveling- or more prescient- the Pet Shop Boys "Being (Totally) Boring!"

As most of the Chicago gay folk of both sexes I know are having brunch, buying condos and having and adopting children- most of whom nobody in our overly self-righteous society wants, and becoming more and more "heterosexualized" esp. in more urban areas, I see the gay lifestyle actually starting to buttress the established familial order- family is like love- indivisible.

I think the larger and more macro politically correct solutions you are concerned about are a very different and separate issue.

Gay aside, the overwhelmingly destructive component of my upbringing was what one conservative thinker Frank Meyer- another favorite- notes in that "we don't suffer from a lack of community, but rather from an excess of religious and political state-enforced community." This scourge of fundamentalism is what is wracking our world at home and abroad. There simply must be freedom to be an individual person and make choices in exploring the world- including sexuality- without the presupposition of "sin" or some type of wrongdoing. There is no power on earth that can protect your children from the bad things in the world so that is a failed mission from the start and a cause of a lot of unnecessary parental and societal stress in my opinion. Aside from Trust, all you can do is teach them to access their own souls and conscience, find the Divinity within and make good choices from that place. And speak openly and honestly to them about sex- removing the temptation to experiment unhealthily by dragging it all out on the dining room table and into the light. It's not like sexual desire is ever going to leave the scene so why not communicate it in the proper loving context? As John Milton said (an ultimate Christian) in his Areopagitica, "That which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is Contrary." And Jesus saw the obstacles for people and removed them with love offering transcendence not judgment. There is no protection in Fortress America- compelling though that may be- and despite it being a powerful ancient miserable castrating hold-over from our youth- that pleasure in lonely righteousness of our mother's version of the circled (wagon) which only which gives support to Nietzsche's (the greatest anti-Christian of all time but whom every Christian should read every word of) contention that the power of Christianity lies in its transfiguration of the victim into the victor. No Self-overcoming. I believe we need both divine guideance and the ability to allow it to work through free will. I think they must be inseperable for human survival- physical and spiritual! You already know what I think of the either or scenario. Being taught you are bad but then saved so then better than everybody else is an insideous alchemy which produces a mild sociopathic state. No wonder I had no friends growing up and people shunned your courderoys- that was not about fashion- that was a reaction to the version of holiness we were taught. Being better, separate, apart and ultimately ALONE. It's impossible to keep it all out and maintain a morality bubble in our interconnected world- and it precludes a role for outside and competing influences which push us to growth. We used to talk about this during Star Trek- how will be ever get out to the stars when we take such extreme and self-satisfying comfort in tribalism?

With regard to any fears of gay people taking away non-gay rights (a troublesome thesis given that rights of equality and freedom should not differ based on the group or we have nothing), I just think that's a red herring who can't swim an an albatross that won't fly! Again, love only increases the pot- all this nonsense about family values (which is the most non-Christian, new age, politically correct and impotent verbiage I ever heard- Jesus Christ had knowledge, belief and Faith- values are for making change in the temple!) makes me reel. No family right that GLBT people claim- family, children, marriage, equal taxes, insurance, property rights- if secured- takes one single molecule of what str8 families have away, and not extending those rights and basic privileges and blessings of the state is a violation of the Declaration, Constitution, the laws of human freedom and conscience. As our outrageously liberal founding Father said- "and the pursuit of happiness"- individually and not collectively defined. Gay people have family values- they are families and they have values. There is zero evidence in history of gay discrimination against non-gays occuring- save for sometimes shallowly oppressing ourselves! Those who have been taught from birth that their inner souls are evil and that they are not of value as people and who endure decades of condoned familial and societal psychological warfare against which they have no defense until they can access others with their experience rarely have the strength after crawling out of that Socratic cave to turn to oppressing others. Nope on that.