Gay, Catholic and Doing Fine

[LadyForCamus]

Why are you so angry?

Athrock asked this question of LadyforCamus, but I'd like to answer it too, because I think it'd be informative and might explain why I was so short with CL too, which I kinda hate to do for otherwise extremely nice people.

I'm a young person. I turn 25 this weekend, so I wasn't around for a lot of the really awful stuff, but I'm still a part of the LGBTQ community, and I've seen, and listened, and heard what others within it have to say. The gay/straight alliance at my university lost a member to suicide while I was there. Good friends shared their stories of dealing with bigotry, and the bruises (sometimes literal, other times not) that it left behind. Old girlfriends and boyfriends tell me of the adverse reactions of family, the hostility and dismissiveness that came simply from them living their own authentic lives. I've seen the suffering that comes of religious bigotry, not just in the suicides and deaths and beatings, but in the dislocation of families, the divisions between friends, the small, alienating moments that all add up into one big communal voice saying "you do not belong."

So when I see an otherwise lovely person like CL call her beliefs "just her opinion," or a gay christian shrugging their shoulders and saying that the church is just fine because their congregation is accepting of them, I just want to shake them. Not just because of the very real misery they're discounting out of hand with their nonchalance, but because they're apparently unaware of the valuable role they play in perpetuating the same bigotry they claim doesn't exist in their religion.

CL, you are the shield that the real bigots hide behind to escape negative responses to their actions. You are the "good christian majority" of kind, normal, compassionate human beings that mask the vitriol and hate of those causing real suffering, the crowd of good people that they retreat to after punching us in the gut, feigning the same smile that you genuinely wear. You are the empty cup in the shell game we in the LGBTQ community have to play with the religious, the one they look under when they force us to undergo their little "find the bigotry" test, whereupon they'll say "whoops, there's no bigotry under this cup! Sorry friend, maybe it just plum doesn't exist?"

You are what real bigots point to, from atop mountains of bodies and oceans of tears, from the wreckage of broken families and depressed young people and every gay couple struggling for acceptance, you are always there for them to point to and ask us: "what do you mean, the church's stance on homosexuality is harmful? Look at her! She wouldn't hurt a fly, and she's catholic!"

That's why I'm angry. You and all the good people like you are unwitting pawns in a manipulative game played by those in power within your religion, and every time you choose to say the words that make their case, or remain blind to the destruction both large and small being done in your name, the implication is that your church's beliefs are more important than the lives and well being of those being ground down on its behalf.

You're being used, and you choose not to see it.

That was a beautiful response, Esquilax. I'm glad you shouldered the burden of answering that question before I got to it. 'Blind' is a good way to describe what you are talking about, especially in the OP's case. It's like having a verbally abusive parent who tells you: 'you are a weird little misfit so you can't expect to have the same rights as other normal people, but don't worry, we will still love you as long as you understand that your place is over there on the outside.'

The Church might as well be calling him Quasimodo, and making him live in the bell tower, but instead of being infuriated and indignant, the OP is grateful to this church for accepting him despite his "damaged" condition, and happy to forfeit his natural born right as a human to personal happiness of the fullest extent possible.

This was somebody's self-worth, slowly and purposefully chipped away over many years, and he can't even see it. Blind is right.