You could say these are hard times to be gay, let alone have a conscience, and be a Catholic Priest.  But then…you could say these are hard times to be gay and be sitting (or standing) in a lot of churches…

Fresno priest’s stance against anti-gay-marriage proposition roils church

A week ago, Father Geoffrey Farrow stood before his Roman Catholic parishioners in Fresno and delivered a sermon that placed him squarely at odds with his church over gay marriage.

With Proposition 8 on the November ballot, and his own bishop urging Central Valley priests to support its definition of traditional marriage, Farrow told congregants he felt obligated to break "a numbing silence" about church prejudice against homosexuals.

"How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives?" he asked parishioners of the St. Paul Newman Center. "I am morally compelled to vote no on Proposition 8."

Then Farrow — who had revealed that he was gay during a television interview immediately before Mass — added a coda to his sermon.

"I know these words of truth will cost me dearly," he said. "But to withhold them . . . I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian people not only of their civil rights but of their human dignity as well."

…after which the parish Bishop had him burned at the stake.  Well…not Literally…

Parish leaders concluded two morning Masses on Sunday with an apology to parishioners.

Farrow’s statements, they said, were not in accord with church teachings. Also, the priest did not inform church elders about his plans before delivering his sermon, said Deacon John Supino, who read a letter from Steinbock reaffirming the Catholic Church’s support for Proposition 8.

Quoting Steinbock, Supino said the church teaches that sex is a gift from God to be acted on only by a man and a woman within marriage. But Proposition 8, he insisted, does not represent a condemnation of gays or lesbians.

"The teachings of the church on these matters did not arise with Proposition 8 but have been in place for over 2,000 years," Supino said.

There’s something else that’s been in place for over 2,000 years.  They call it antisematism.  Or as James Carrol put it at the beginning of his history of antisematism, Constantine’s Sword:

We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between "anti-Judaism" and "antisemitism"; between Christian Jew-hatred as a "necessary but insufficient" cause of the Holocaust; between the "sins of the children" and the sinlessness of the Church as such.  These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal.

Ten years ago yesterday, a five-foot, two, 105 pound gay college kid died after being tortured and beaten by two thugs almost twice his size.  He was beaten so badly the hospital staff who received him after the police cut him from the fence he’d been tied to, compared his condition to that of automobile accident victims.  But it was no accident.  His killer’s knew that while God might hold them accountable for stealing his wallet, He would look the other way while they tied that kid to a fence, beat him to a pulp, put their cigarettes out on his body and left him to die slowly in the cold plains night.  In most American churches, today still, the sermon is that Christ’s call to love your neighbor ends at the doorstep of your homosexual neighbor’s house.

Farrow became a priest 23 years ago, working in parishes in Visalia, Merced, Bakersfield and the nearby town of Arvin. A graduate of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, he also served as a chaplain in the Air Force Reserve at Edwards Air Force Base near Palmdale in the early 1990s.

Farrow, who said he realized that he was gay in boyhood, revealed his sexual orientation only to close friends and family. He told his parents just four years ago.

"This was the secret I was going to take to my grave," he said.

That changed when he received a June 30 "pastoral letter" from Steinbock’s office in which the bishop condemned the California Supreme Court’s ruling in May that legalized same-sex marriage, and supported the passage of Proposition 8, calling marriage between a man and woman the "foundation blocks for society." He compared the court’s action to efforts by Nazi Germany and the Communist regimes in Russia and China to alter family arrangements.

Only Nazis or communists would want a society that treats homosexuals as the equals of heterosexuals…right?  That’s what these righteous men of god are saying there isn’t it.  And never mind that this is what the Nazis actually did to homosexuals…

…er…along with something like Nine Million Jews.  Which is pretty much what you’d expect after…what…two-thousand years of calling Jews Christ killers and waving Leviticus at homosexuals.  And the communists weren’t, and aren’t what’s left of them, any better. 

Russia is not the only post-Communist country with a gay problem. In Poland, authorities have recently undertaken an initiative to outlaw all discussion of homosexuality in schools, and a high-level official in charge of children’s rights, Ewa Sowinska, followed in the footsteps of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell by expressing concern about the sexuality of purse-carrying purple Teletubby Tinky Winky and its possible effects on young viewers.

A few days before his personal experience with homophobia in Moscow, Tatchell wrote about the problem of anti-gay bigotry in Eastern Europe on the blog of the British newspaper, The Guardian. "With the demise of communism," Tatchell noted, "religious fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism are filling the void. Homophobia is the hallmark of these reactionary movements."

But this argument is not entirely accurate. Far from being a new phenomenon in the former Soviet bloc, homophobia was also a hallmark of communist regimes. In the Soviet Union, male homosexuality was punishable by up to eight years of imprisonment; while sodomy laws in American states required proof of specific sexual act, a gay man in Soviet Russia could be jailed if his neighbors testified that he had no female company and frequent male visitors who stayed overnight. Castro’s Cuba has been notorious for its persecution of gays.

–Reason Magazine – Anti-Gay Russia

This isn’t rocket science.  The totalitarian state cannot allow you to own your heart.  Your heart must belong to the state.  Orwell understood the puritanical nature of totalitarian states.  In this passage of 1984 he captures it perfectly:

Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was:

"When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?"

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.

But this is the essential nature of sexual puritanism as well.  The theocrats claim to be merely serving God’s will…but what king didn’t also claim exactly the same thing?  What dictator?  When the leaders of the Catholic church complain that Nazis and communists were trying to bend the shape of the family to their liking, they are the pot calling the kettle black.  Totalitarian states have always sought to dictate the nature of family life.  And they have always needed their scapegoats.

Let it be said, the Catholic church isn’t now, and wasn’t then, the only righteous house of god busy campaigning to purge society of its deviants.  A lot of fine, upstanding protestants were and are doing exactly the same thing.  Proposition 8 isn’t about protecting marriage.  It is about protecting the stigma theocrats have placed on gay and lesbian people.  That’s it.  That’s all that it is about.  Because when the day comes that Americans take for granted that the homosexual is a fellow American and neighbor too, then America’s tinpot dictators won’t have any scapegoats left to rouse the passions of the mob toward.  We have always been at war with homosexuality…

What kind of America do you want to live in?  The one where the dream of liberty and justice for all still lives, or the one where only the dream of theocrats are allowed?  Would you rather live in an America where neighbors can look each other in the face as equals, or the America of James Dobson and Karl Rove and Pope Ratzinger, where some are more equal then others? 

Do you dream the dream of freedom…of a world where totalitarianism is just a distant, ugly memory?  Where everyone is free to follow their hopes and dreams wherever they lead? Do you believe in liberty and justice for all?  Do you believe in love?  Please help fight the good fight.  Donate Here, to No on 8.  Or Here, to Arizona Together.  Or Here, to Say No On Two. 

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