American William Blaine-Wallace writes in the latest edition of The Witness about what he sees as a connection between a love for war and opposition to same-sex marriage. Australian is not America (yet) but this piece gives us Australians pause for thought about our own nation and its ways--especially under the Howard government.Love of war and true homophobia have the same root cause--fear, fear that comes from lack of faith in the God of peace.

... What, you may ask, does the solemnization of same-sex marriage have to do with the war in Iraq? The church comfortably, routinely, calmly tolerates an ill-conceived war and is fitfully, constantly, fanatically intolerant of homosexuals. Our tolerance of war and intolerance of homosexuality are chips off the same old cultural block.

America loves war as much or more than other first world nations. ... America hates homosexuals as much or more than other first world nations.

... There is a fundamental connection between our nation's love of war and hatred of homosexuality. War, over the course of history, has accentuated and ensured dominance of the strong over the weak. Peace, at best, has been something like sleeping with one eye open and both hands on the rifle.

... War and heterosexual marriage are icons of the same power imbalance. Peace, homosexuality, and, by extension, same-sex marriage, shake the foundations of patriarchy. Fear reigns. Fear is seized upon and capitalized on by those sentinels of tradition who have the most to lose.

America's war is not working at the same time that America rants that her most beloved institution, marriage, is endangered. Not a coincidence. In both cases, the power base of the privileged race, gender and sexual orientation is at stake.

... Jesus was always and expressly against war. Jesus was, at best, lukewarm regarding heterosexual marriage, never against homosexuals, not concerned that they might marry. Because Jesus was against dominance and for mutuality, we are precluded from prospering Jesus as one for war and against same-sex marriage.

Could we please get over and beyond this marriage issue? There is a much larger and closely related fish to fry: WAR.

The cost of frying the much bigger fish is high. The work is sacrificial. In today's gospel, three times the disciples flinched, asking if they might take care of their unfinished business before heading to the seats of power imbalance in Jerusalem. Each time, Jesus said that the time was at hand . . . now.

Support the church's solemnization of same-sex marriage and you are considered by many to be un-Anglican, whatever that means, and by more to be un-Christian, for what it's worth. Stand up against war and you are denigrated as un-American, unpatriotic.

... Let us continue our struggle for the right of gays and lesbians to partake of the sacrament of marriage. And, let us understand the struggle as a reflection, a manifestation of the larger, more consequential struggle against war and for peace.--William Blaine-Wallace, Kicking the dog Luke 9:51-62.

In the same issue of The Witness, Tobias Haller notes the "dis-ease" in the American Anglican Council as some who ardently oppose the ordination of women and of gays find in their company a "tiny but visible" minority of women priests.

Bishop Robert Duncan ... has noted this as a matter of some concern for the future success of his movement, whose cohesion depends not on any particular virtue within its members, but rather upon their collective opposition to what they regard as vice in others. Thus unity is to be achieved in the new-found friendship spawned by animosity: the enemy of my enemy is now, if not a strange bedfellow, at least a very close friend.

The other factor I cannot help but note is the vocabulary of fear and the need for safety expressed by these anxious ideologues. They feel wounded by the mere presence of those with whom they disagree, and institute protective measures against being welcomed by the bishop of the diocese in which they hold a meeting. Paul Zahl, a leading spokesman for this point of view, has harped on the theme of safety repeatedly.

But why fear? Why safety? It would never occur to me to use such a vocabulary in an ecclesiastical context. And were I, as a gay priest, to do so, it might well be warranted as a legitimate reaction to the murderous language of bigotry that comes so easily to the lips of Fred Phelps or Archbishop Peter Akinola and his colleagues. I very much doubt that Bishop Duncan or Dr. Zahl have ever had to pass a gauntlet of pickets assuring them of their everlasting damnation, been told they should not even exist, or that the best way to deal with them is to kill them.

So what are they afraid of? When one suggests, however cautiously, the politically incorrect word homophobia they rise in a chorus of lament that all discussion has been cut off by this labeling - as if there were any dialogue to cut off, or other labels had not already been sufficiently plastered about. So let me clarify: I'm not talking about those who simply hold the intellectual belief that homosexuality is morally wrong. I think it is quite possible to hold that position without being homophobic. I'm talking about those who use the language of fear and the need for safety, and if that is not precisely homophobia, then what is it?

. . . whatever the foundation, this is the architecture of fear, and it is not a happy place to live. I do not know to what extent the current crisis may be nourished by such fears, whatever their source. But it is fear and the need for safety that effectively cut off any chance for real dialogue--quite literally when it is impossible to "sit at the same table" or worship in the same church.

What can we do to assure those plagued by such fears that they "have nothing to fear but fear itself," that "perfect love casts out fear," and that there is no safer place than in the company of those who honor and worship the Sacred Victim who gave himself for the life of the world? If we cannot raze the architecture of fear and build the abode of peace, then Christ died for nothing. --Tobias S. Haller. "Sacred victims and the architects of fear" The Witness

"Suppose", a friend once challenged me, "that you were offered a big red pill called a 'Straight pill' which, if you took it, would make you completely and permanently heterosexual. Would you take it?"I pondered long and hard over the question, but eventually my answer was, "No". For I felt grateful to God for making me who I am, a desire to honour that, to accept it, rejoice in it and give thanks for it.


Enough

After the church dramas that James and I have experienced in the last year, we are heartily sick of the 'sexuality question' and simply want to get on with life. Though I may change my mind, right now I am much in sympathy with John Fortunato, a Christian and psychotherapist who, some years ago, wrote of 'The last Committee on Sexuality (Ever)'.Fortunato found a place of ministry outside the institutional church. But his chosen path, though not an easy one, isn't open to gay and lesbian people whose personal vocation is service in the church, in prayer, liturgy, preaching, teaching, encouragement and fellowship. So James and I are glad that we have found a local church home where it seems this can happen for us.

The last Committeee on Sexuality (Ever)

My tolerance for debating whether I am sinful or sick by virtue of being homosexual has, after sixteen years before the mast, reached nil. My intolerance is the result of an intentional, uphill journey toward, a purging of the internalized self-hate that all gay and lesbian people ingest at the hands of a hostile society.

It is rather like an allergy. A single sting of homophobia, and I see I hold the unrealistic belief that gays and lesbians deserve to live in a wasp-free environment.

In any event, even though this last-in-an-unending series of sexuality committees (which inexorably become homosexuality committees) was clear that it was not to come up with a definitive statement did ask us to "respectfully hear one another." In addition, to encourage "open-minded dialogue" in the diocese, it asked any who wanted to speak with us to come and have their say.

More, the Bishop appointed to the committee someone who was help us maintain "balance."

I scanned several of his articles on sexuality. He was, among other things, an articulate and rigorous homophobe. While he did not make the first meeting of the committee, I could not imagine respectfully listening to him. Nor could I imagine listening "open-mindedly" to the couched or flagrant antigay sentiment that gallops through the diocese. The more I thought about these scenarios, the more I realized I did not want to do this to myself.

I have two objections to being asked to put myself in this position. The first is that no self-respecting gay man or lesbian should have to listen to his or her ontology debated ever again, and the church should be the last institution to sponsor such a forum.

Imagine, if you will, asking black clergy to sit on a "Committee on Race" and listen open-mindedly to a discussion of whether or black people are by nature intellectually inferior to white people (discussions that have not been unknown in South Africa). No one with a conscience would ask a black person to sit through that, and no self-respecting black person would agree to do it. Or again, imagine asking Desmond Tutu to sit with Pieter Botha and engage in a "balanced" dialogue about the pros and cons of apartheid.

The appropriate response to injustice is outrage and protest--not polite dialogue. But I am even past the point of protest, and that brings me to my second objection.

I simply cannot be bothered with these endeavors. If the church needs to continue its "tempest in a tabernacle" about sexuality for another 150 years, so be it. But I have no energy for it.

Curiously, at a time when people are becoming increasingly tolerant of varied expressions of sexuality, only the church still clings tenaciously to a sex-negative worldview stemming from its dogged commitment to Docetism. Let it live with its heresy--and obsess over it if it must.

Myself, I take seriously my baptismal call to be faithful in kingdom making. Sadly, the church is one of the last places I can find companionship on this mission lately. It is too busy consuming its gifts and graces--resources both human and financial--feeding ego mills and dysfunctional parishes and agencies, fostering "edifice complexes" and learning to "hate all the people our relatives hate." I am bored with it. The kingdom is at hand.

So I shall continue to embroider at the institutional edges, ministering with dying crack babies and their ruined parents while rejoicing in my sexuality and the rest of God's phenomenal creation; suffering with my sisters and brothers as they die of AIDS and training others to minister to those who are ill; joining people who come to me for psychotherapy in the abysses of their souls as we try to heal unbearable brokenness.

And in the meantime, the church has my full permission to continue debating whether I am sinful or sick, worthy of being ordained or even to sit in the pew. --- Christianity and crisis, 18 February, 1991, pp. 204-205.

Two pictures of the same slightly famous person tell how revealing yet misleading a single image can be. But both show the same complex human person. Ambiguity is more interesting and more truthful than sterotype -- and more fun. Perhaps one's outward appearance says more about the inner person than I like to admit.

Good for a guffaw are the entries in The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, "where WWW means 'Wretched Writers Welcome'."

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years . . ."

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." --Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830).

"The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life." - Adolf Hitler, Speech to the Reichstag, 23 March 1933.