Al-Anon pt 3: Fertile Ground

And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable: a sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold.
- Luke 8:4-7

Al-Anon's self defeatist message found fertile ground with me. There were so many of this cult's ideas I'd already absorbed from mainstream and fundamentalist Christianity.

Inherently Defective
Al-Anon taught me, like Christianity, that I am inherently flawed and defective, and only my Higher Power can fix this. No amount of effort, learning, therapy, wisdom, or charity I do can make up for the flaws I was born with - a sinful nature or codependency. However, confessing my powerlessness, my sinfulness is only the first step. In the case of both religions, this creates the need for the group or church to fill. I must attend meetings (or services) at least once a week if I expect God to fix me. After all, I must do my own part of my salvation too, even though my part will never be sufficient. I am fallen and I am powerless. It's up to God (as I understand him) to come save me now.

Learned Helplessness
"All have fallen short of the glory of God" and "We admitted we were powerless." Both of these messages, from Christianity and Al-Anon, take away our impetus to create positive change in our own lives. In Al-Anon I was told repeatedly to "Let go and let God" and to just leave other people to their own devices and character defects. I needed to keep "my side of the street clean" and not worry about that mote in my brother's eye (or bottle in my husband's hand.) At a time when I needed help and empowerment the most, I had my legs kicked out from under me by a bunch of bitter people who probably would have been far happier if they'd just left their alcoholic spouses and bypassed the Steps completely.

Acceptable Abuse

They had stayed, so I should stay. I "shouldn't make any major decisions for the first six months" - really the first year, but I had it wrong at the time. I found out, after telling my sponsor I'd finally broken things off with my husband who belittled, raped, and abused me, that I was really supposed to stick in there another six months before making that choice, since I hadn't yet completed the steps or attained Serenity. I remember feeling profound relief that no one had told me that before hand, because i didn't think I could take another six months of torture, but I was glad I didn't have to knowingly choose to go against one of Al-Anon's principles in order to escape it.

As a Christian child, I knew it was right and godly of my parents to abuse me physically and emotionally. After all, they were following the Bible and Focus on the Family, so they must be right. It simply wasn't safe enough to question authority for me to even consider it. My brother tried that, and he'd been kicked out of the house at 12. But the idea that I should take a certain amount of abuse as my lot in life, and what's more that I'd somehow earned the abuse through my own actions, was an idea I learned early and it took decades to break. My family treated me horribly, and I was fighting an uphill battle to become a person and not just a cult clone. I married badly.

But Al-Anon would have me believe that my fledgling, ill-conceived and frankly never willingly consummated marriage (spousal rape doesn't count) held the weight of my entire integrity, my word, my vow. They made it more serious than it was. I mean yes, I wanted to have a family with him. I married him. But I quickly learned that he was an absolutely horrible human being. He got so drunk one night, he peed out the living room window screen because he thought it was the bathroom toilet. And that wasn't the first time he'd made an error of that kind. (There was also, for instance, his ex-roommate's vacuum cleaner.)

Al-Anon told me I needed to take the focus off of him and his actions, and instead I needed to look for my part in his drinking. Bear in mind, we'd been married all of 10 weeks when I separated from him, taking my son and moving into my mother's. That's when I started going to Al-Anon. I wasn't even with him for three months before leaving, but because I thought Al-Anon told me to wait six months (really a year), I spent twice as long separated from him and trying to work things out as I did living with him as man and wife.

God Micro-Manages

I had been taught to believe in the power of prayer before I'd been taught to read. I believed that I had both free will and a sinful nature, and that the god who gave me free will would intervene in my life and others. Even though God had some overarching multi-millenial Divine Plan, he would fiddle around with the daily minutiae like lost keys, insufficient funds, or bad traffic, if I asked him to.

Bill Wilson's Higher Power is a meddling god. Free will is talked about much less often in 12 Step programs than traditional Sunday morning churches (sorry Adventists.) "Self will" is considered a sin in Al-Anon, the way that the "Adam nature" or "flesh" was sinful in my childhood brand of learned helplessness.

Perpetual Confession
In Christianity I was taught that when I "sinned", the real problem wasn't the people I may have hurt. No, no. The great offense of course was that I'd sinned against God. He was the one who I had hurt the most. Remember, he died for my sins, so the least I could do is make his death meaningless by never sinning again. Since that was bound to be impossible (as Christianity generally is), my only alternative was confession for each and every offense.

At deliverance camp the pastor had us write down a detailed list of all our sins, past and present, great and small. In Al-Anon this would be known as a "fearless and searching moral inventory" or the 4th Step. Christianity had already taught me that I have been judged, and found wanting in the balance. Al-Anon just continued the lesson.

Christianity was fundamentally destructive to my self-esteem as a child, teenager, and young woman. Original sin is a terrible weight to assign every newborn on the planet, and I don't see how I worshiped a god for so long who I believed did exactly that.

Marriage is Sacred (Except When it's Not)

My mother was divorced. My father was not a good husband so, well and good. He was feckless and unfaithful and on one occasion - and one only - he struck her. I could understand and at least some other Christians could as well. My mother had to write a letter to the Christian school we attended, justifying her divorce, in order to get a job teaching computer classes to the high school students. But they had given her the position, and treated her well once she was hired.

My grandmother had been divorced twice. She absolutely should have left her second husband, a darker version of my father's same sins, much sooner than she did. But my grandfather, her first husband, was a good man. She left him because their daughter died at 10 weeks old of a congenital heart defect, and she couldn't be in that house a day longer. Marriage is sacred, unless you've got a good excuse.

In Al-Anon it was the same. The pressure to stay was subtle but constant. The greatest success story couple at my home meeting had been married for 50 years - 27 of them abusive, 23 in 12 step groups. These were the role models of everyone in the room, and so all advice I got was tinged with this poison of the mind - that if you just followed the steps, even the worst marriage could become enviable. Yet if an old-timer, automatically respected for their longevity in the cult, had been divorced three times or more, it was none of my concern and I needed to focus on my self, and work a selfish program, and not try to control people and situations in my life. (Because after all, doing that makes your life unmanageable.)

Some Feelings are Wrong

As a child, I was taught it was a sin to fear, since fear meant not trusting God. Al-Anon told me the same thing. FEAR was nothing more than "false evidence appearing real" and I really needed to just focus on working my Steps and turning my will over to my Higher Power. There was no sense in recognizing fear as a useful warning emotion, and investigating why I had the fears I did (including fears of my husband's possible behavior.)

I was also told "in the rooms" that resentment was always, always, without exception or fail WRONG. The "defilements" of my demon-haunted childhood were replaced with the "resentments" of my 20s. These were the things (almost without fail, just as in Christianity, done by others or merely by environment) holding me back from my "spiritual awakening" and serenity. Resentments were so bad and so inherently self-destructive that I should not only get rid of all current ones, but should do everything in my (powerless) power to prevent them. I remember the day I first heard this sentence and thought it was brilliant.

"Expectations are premeditated resentments."

If I didn't place expectations on people, like the alcoholic, then I wouldn't be so disappointed. Al-Anon taught me, like Christianity, to lower my standards for how well I should be treated. After all, I was a sinner. I was sick - just as sick as the alcoholic, even though my "disease" of codependency had no physical effects at all.

It Will Never Get Better

Even though I was saved by the grace of Jesus (and certainly not by works, so that no man may boast!) I would still always struggle with sin. Being a Christian doesn't make you perfect, just forgiven, and so I would constantly fail at perfection. Al-Anon told me that I had a spiritual disease of codependency, that I was sick and that I would always be sick, and that the best I could hope for was to let go and let god, and hope he did a better job of running my life than I did. After all, my "best thinking got me here" so it was obvious I was not an empowered person capable of making good decisions for myself.

Al-Anon is not a self-help group. It is a self-annihilation group. And it needs to be stopped.

More soon. This post took a lot out of me. Writing about my ex-husband is always extremely difficult. I have a whole mixture of emotions like betrayal, and fear, and humiliation (what the fuck was I thinking marrying that creep?) But I know writing will make me feel better, and I'm at least more emotionally capable of approaching those dark and scary stories now than I was a few months ago. Hopefully the writing flow continues and improves. Much love to all my Anteaters!

* Throughout the 12 Step posts I'll use certain slogans and phrases that were spoken a lot "in the rooms" (like "in the rooms" which refers to 12 Step meetings collectively.) Sometimes I'll remember to put air quotes around them, but sometimes I won't. Cults use buzzwords and slogans as thought-stopping devices, and it's only by recognizing them as such that we can strip them of power over us. So I will use the cult-speak of those days, in the hopes that current and former 12 Steppers who find these posts will be able to recognize in their own meetings and literature the things I'm saying.

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My time in Al-Anon pt. 2

The first post is available here.

In Al-Anon meetings we hear the three Cs describing our powerlessness over alcoholism: we didn't cause it, can't cure it, and can't control it. We begin to learn the basic Al-Anon premise of taking our focus off of the alcoholic and keeping the focus on ourselves. Hard as it is to look at our own part in our problems, acceptance of Step One brings relief from impossible responsibilities. We were trying to fix a disease - and someone else's disease at that!

Powerlessness. The first step of Al-Anon, like the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous and a whole host of other 12 step groups, begins with powerlessness. The biggest problem in my life - my husband's drinking - was out of my control. I wanted to cure him. I didn't want to give in to the idea that he must drink forever, and these people seemed to believe their spiritual principles would help him quit and stay sober, and maybe even find this "serenity" they all spoke of.

But Al-Anon said, even though 12 Steps was the best shot at sobriety he had, I couldn't cure him or control him. But he wouldn't go to the meetings. He always had some excuse why he didn't want to go, even if I offered to drive him. For all his talk of not wanting me to leave him, he wasn't making any effort to keep me.

Still, it was time to take my focus off of him and turn it to myself. Like most of the advice I got from Al-Anon, this was double-edged. As a brand new mom in financial straits and poor health, I had a lot of my own stuff to focus on, and being away from Roni and his problems was good for me. But it also invited me to ignore his bad behavior. After all, I shouldn't worry about that mote in his eye till I'd done an exhaustive "moral inventory" of everything I'd ever done wrong in my entire life and confessed it to my sponsor.

Of course, I hadn't caused Roni's alcoholism or his "problem drinking" and Al-Anon was quick to tell me that. Just as quickly, Al-Anon let me know it was important that I look at "my part" in his drinking. Let me say that another way: I can't cause, cure, or control his drinking, but I need to focus on my part of his drinking problem.

They kept telling me alcoholism was a disease. My husband loved that. He would remind me, gleefully ad manipulatively, "You took a vow before GOD to love me in sickness and in health. I have a disease! It's not my fault." But even as I accepted most of what Al-Anon told me unquestioned, it seemed like an imperfect analogy to me.

Maybe some people do have an allergic or addictive response to alcohol. They shouldn't drink. It's just incredibly simple to me. Okay, that's probably over simplisitc. I know I'm not a big fan of people saying the cure for anorexia is to "just eat" but really, that IS what an anorexic must do to recover. The most I could ever swallow the "addiction as disease" model was to think it might be like diabetes. Some people really do just have to abstain from sugar, and some from alcohol.

Still, they stressed, it was a spiritual disease. I should treat him just the same as if he had lung cancer. But having lung cancer doesn't make people violent. Drinking alcohol did for my husband (even worse was when the buzz wore off.)

I tried to get myself in line with Al-Anon principles. I tried to accept my powerlessness, my lack of agency. Later steppers would assure me this would be freeing. Once I turned my life over to God and quit trying to run things myself (which I was obviously no good at, or else why would I have to come to Al-Anon?) everything would be great.

Having a "conscious contact" with a "Higher Power" has nothing to do with stopping drinking. Of course, at the time I was very religious. Nothing drew me closer to God than a desperate attempt to salvage my marriage and to be a good godly wife and mother. I hadn't meant to play the part so soon, but I was damn skippy going to do a good job of it, now that I'd landed the role.

So how could I be the best I knew how, while getting myself out of "denial" and accepting my own powerlessness? A sponsor would guide me on that path.

(More to come soon.) Excerpt from "Paths to Recovery: Al-Anon's Steps, Traditions, and Concepts and use under Fair Use terms.

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My time in Al-Anon pt. 1

I've answered a couple Formspring questions on AA and 12 Step groups recently, and I've talked about why I think they are cults. What I haven't talked about in any depth is my own experience with these groups. This will be a series of posts, mixing in current research and data and my own memories of my two years in Al-Anon. I will try to show why I believe they are a cult, and provide evidence to back up my claim.

Initial Impression

I knew Roni's drinking and drug abuse was a primary cause of our marital strife. I thought if I could just get him to quit drinking, then we could work on everything else. I could hold my marriage together through sheer effort and force of will. I picked up a book on "Seven Keys to Sobriety." Apparently, if I just spent a few hundred dollars on vitamin supplements and kept my husband locked up somewhere for a week, I could detox him through the healing powers of alternative medicine and make him a brand new man. Unfortunately, I didn't have the couple thousand bucks it would have cost to do such a thing, before even looking at the expense of an inpatient addiction recovery center. We were going to have to do this on the cheap.

So I looked at Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd only ever heard good things about the group, and I'd even recommended on a vague sense of their good reputation that a high school boyfriend attend Ala-Teen meetings, to get help coping with his dad's excessive drinking and the violence that went on in their home.

I decided to attend an Al-Anon meeting. I'd heard it was a support group for the family and friends of alcoholics, and I sure needed some support. I had, after all, just gotten married, had a baby, and separated from my husband to go live with my disapproving mother. I had also just undergone unanesthetized surgery at a walk-in clinic to remove a staph infection that was killing me, and I had a broken ankle I couldn't afford to have looked at by a doctor.

I had my mom go with me and the baby, since I couldn't exactly drive with my broken right ankle. We got to the Methodist church and school about a mile down the road and looked for the meeting. It was in one of the classrooms -upstairs. I had brought my son's stroller, because I thought that would make it easy for my mom to keep him placated while I listened, but I hadn't counted on stairs. Two AA guys, meeting in the room next door, were kind enough to hoist the stroller up the stairs while my mom carried my son, and I hobbled up the stairs with my crutches, in a too-large borrowed walking cast.

My first impression was that the people in the meeting were off somehow. I told my mom as we left that they seemed like cult members. Some things stood out as "not quite right" like the part one lady read aloud about "only conference approved Al-Anon literature may be read." I was reading everything I could on addiction and alcoholism, and it seemed weird to limit myself to just one possible course of action. But, the women assured me, there really was no other way my husband would get sober. He needed AA and he needed it now.

Well, it was worth a shot. They themselves advised that I attend six meetings before deciding whether or not Al-Anon was right for me. So, it wasn't like I had to make up my mind right away. I could just check it out for a few more weeks, and I could always leave if I didn't like it, right?

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No Preaching Zone

Why is it every other jackass who heard a Bible verse outside the bar one night thinks I want to be preached to? This is the entitlement I deal with from priviliged Christians.

Define 'good'. Some think good is killing those or at least confining those that don't agree with them. They view them as 'dangerous' to their idea of..ahem... 'good'. And as a result they become devils like Stalin, Mao etc. who mass murder 10's of millions of people.

Without some absolute all seeing discerner, one also might think they are doing 'good' by helping some person...who then takes the strength we give them and uses it to go destroy others.

There is a God who calls people from this mindset which, historically, has led to mass murder. People hijack anything that fits the culture and appears 'good'. People have done it with religions incessantly through the ages.

However that doesn't affect the fact that there is a God who loves people and came himself to sacrifice himself through his omnipresent spirit for any who would put their trust in him. That leads me to a goodness that allows others to live freely even though they hate me. In fact I help them if they are in distress rather then rejoicing in their doom. You can't find that kind of love outside of Jesus Christ who was God in the flesh.

No "hello, I am a Christian and I saw one of your YouTube videos." No "How are you?" Just "Define good." How about this jackass - go look it up in a dictionary! It takes less time to type a word + "define" into your Google search bar than it does to send me an email.

Next we've got, "Some people mass murder." Some people are serial killers, and it appears a strict religious childhood is what leads them to do things that make the rest of us scratch our heads in disgust and bewilderment. However, that's hardly a reason to paint all religious people as serial killers. (They're just *potential* serial killers. Relax, atheists!) Just one more reason to fight against childhood indoctrination and sexual repression, eh?

Ah, here I'm being told that atheism is somehow equivalent to being a "destroyer" (whatever that means, since Mr. Let Me Demand a Definition hasn't defined this.)

Let's see, well apparently an atheist mindset has historically led to genocide. Never mind that there is no dogma to atheism, no cause to die for, no paradise to go to. Never mind that atheism was not the motivation for either Stalin or Mao (and certainly not the Catholic Adolf Hitler.)

For the last paragraph, we've got the "he died for you, you miserable fucking sinner" guilt trip! Of course this only works on people who actually think being born human is something horrible to atone for. And he'd be remiss if this random person submitting unrequested preaching neglected to tell me what a good noble suffering martyr for his faith he is. People hate him. It must be because he's such a good Christian, and not because he's a bigoted anti-atheist jackass people don't want to associate with. Yeah, that's it.

Finally, we have complete rejection of ANY goodness that doesn't come from this guy's brand of religious faith. All those Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, and secular humanists who do good? They don't count. They don't even exist, after all.

Here was my reply. I'll admit, I'm cranky today, but preaching is never welcome. I don't email random Christians and demand they defend their faith to me. I don't go tell them why I think god is stupid. I do that on my own blog and in my own videos. People are free to find my opinion, but I'm not aggressively preaching.

Read on secular humanism, and take your preaching elsewhere. I am not receptive. I have blasphemed the holy spirit. I am irredeemable according to the Bible.

Go away you bigoted fuck head.

Short and swee-, er, concise. But I don't think I could have stated, "I'm done now" more clearly. Yet, he could not leave my irredeemable soul to the hell his god has already doomed me to. No, no. Good Christian defender of the faith that he is, he must continue his campaign of unwarranted preaching! He MUST throw pearls before "swine."

June 24 at 4:14pm
I'm not receptive to secular humanism. Later then bigot. bye. YOu are obviously the bigot since you can't reply with logic but rather insults

June 24 at 4:14pm
PS I think I'll post this conversation everywhere. lol!

June 24 at 4:14pm
PS I'll bet you're really a jr. high boy .

Oh yes, it was not one but three replies! Wow, he really showed me. Boy did he put me in my place. Well, you know what the Bible says.

"Ye shall know them by their love."

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June 28, 1998

I swayed to the music, my hands raised skyward, singing and crying out to God, with tears streaming down my face. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Oh, I needed to turn back to him. My chest ached and I felt the weight of my betrayal.

I was doing things a good Christian girl shouldn't. I was skipping school, smoking pot and cigarettes, and worst of all, flirting with witchcraft. But not right here in this moment, in a wood frame room with hundreds of other convicted and crying teens at a Vineyard Christian Fellowship teen Bible camp in Georgia. Here, it was just me and Jesus - a time to get right with God.

At the far end of the open room, the band played and sang out prayers into the warm June night, as fireflies lit up past the four corners or the open-walled building frame. I could feel the Holy Spirit moving through the crowd, and I was overcome with emotion. Outside, rain began to pour.

"Oh, please Jesus, forgive me," I begged. "You are holy, holy, holy," I said aloud. It didn't seem strange at all to speak out loud to God; everyone around me was doing the same.

I focused on all the ways I wasn't pleasing God. My mind ran over a litany of my sins and transgressions, and I felt polluted by my sinful nature. I considered my recent interest in the occult. I believed witchcraft was real, even if most people who dabbled in it were total amateurs. That didn't mean Satan couldn't use the occasion, that open door, to infest them with demons. Yet, I sometimes read my horoscope, which I knew was wrong.

I looked down at my left hand. On my middle finger I wore a wrong that I thought God might not like. It was a silver band with a raised moon and stars, and a clear blue lacquer slapped over the top. It came from Claire's and probably sold for about $8. I can't remember if I bought it or stole it. I did quite a bit of that at 15.

I confessed my treachery to Jesus, sobbing anew. I found myself face down on the pine floor, prostrate before my God and my youth group. Compelled, I rose up and walked to one side of the open air room, toward the benches that lined the edges between the thick wood beams keeping up the roof. Leaning out into the wind and the rain, I chucked the ring with all my might, and as it arced into the air, a stroke of lightning lit the sky. He forgave me.

Over the course of that opening night worship service, kicking off a week's long Christian summer camp program, I tried desperately to get back to the comfortable feeling of closeness with Jesus I'd once known. Kids from my youth group, and from a group in Greensboro, North Carolina laid hands on me and prayed for me. Prayed that God would be the father I'd never known, prayed that I would follow His will, prayed that he would shower me with His love and His grace.

I spent three solid hours crying on the hard wood floor that night.

I think this is the kind of experience most Christians don't realize I've had, when I say I don't believe in their god. I did believe. Every element of a "relationship" you believe you have with Jesus, I thought I had. And it's not because I really was overcome with some holy ghost. I just believed it. I believed in Jesus and in repentance and in conviction and in the Rules. I believed in the holy ghost and that God tried to talk to me through both music and the weather. I believed the things I needed to believe to create an emotional experience like the one I had "with Jesus" that summer night in Georgia. Without those beliefs though, there's really no chance of a holy spirit "moving" through any crowd. You never see Christians "slain in the spirit" at the checkout, or else overcome by the Holy Spirit in their cubicle. No. Experiences like this are almost always confined to highly stressful or highly religious situations. Because the ghost isn't real, but the memory of it is.

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Homophobia: The Untold Story pt. 10

Finally, at long long last we can finish this accursed book of bigotry! Today's post will be the completion of my longest series to-date (and for awhile. I'll be looking at short stuff next, I promise.)

Susan Brinkmann told us at the outset that open homosexuality was threatening the Christian (Catholic) way of life. She intimated there was a conspiracy amongst doctors, therapists, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and shadowy, nefarious "gay activists" to hide the TRUTH about homosexuality - that it is a deviant lifestyle of anal sex with strangers and AIDS and butt cancer. And wanting to adopt children because you're unfit and selfish and only care about yourself, unlike all those straight couples who spend thousands of dollars on in vitro fertilization because they absolutely have to have a kid with their own DNA and couldn't possibly use that money to support children who already are alive and starving to death in dusty countries. See, they can't be selfish because they're not gay. It's obvious!

We learned that the government is secretly pushing through two radically new kinds of families, which will of course bring about the destruction of American life and three separate "classes" of children. And they're doing it even though they know it will do these things (we aren't given their reasons, of course. That's top secret.)

Susan let us know that since two doctors said some things she and NARTH can quote mine, that proves definitively that there is absolutely no genetic cause to homosexuality. Actually, since this one guy Fitzgibbons told her so, she knows that the real reason people act gay is because they aren't following their god-given patriarchal penis-and-vagina roles. Oh, and of course they're all hurt and angry and their parents did a terrible job of raising them. Not as bad as she seems to think gay people would do though. I mean, after all, she found a priest who is neither a husband nor a father to explain why gay people should not get married or have children, because, after all, they are completely selfish people. I mean obviously, that's why they like someone with the same gonads!

Did I miss anything? Oh yes. Being gay will kill you and lesbians don't really exist. Gay people only want one-night stands and you really should just trust her on this and ignore all the gay couples fighting for their right to get married. Finally, Susan had to fill us in on the big "untold secret" about homosexuality - Church teachings. I mean, after all, they got their own section so obviously, Susan thinks these are secret and that we haven't all heard every hateful and bigoted thing ever preached from St. Peter's Square. Yesterday we looked at God's requirement for love - that it be "free, total, faithful, and fruitful."

Okay, time for the hate.

Union with God
But the meaning behind Church teaching on human sexuality goes deeper still.

"Experience attests that even in the most wonderful human relationship, that 'ache' of solitude isn't entirely satisfied," West writes. "We still yearn for 'something more.' If sex really was our ultimate fulfillment, then marriage would be nirvana.' . . . The marital embrace, as beautiful as it is, is only a foreshadowing of what's to come — only a 'sacrament' (sign) of something far greater . . ."

Union with God.

Look, the fact that some of us moan or bellow "oh god" mid-coitous doesn't mean sex is in some way "holy." Oh and as far as marriage being "nirvana" (interestingly Buddhist choice of words) married sex is comically and notoriously not as wild and passionate as single sex, overall.

Who ever said that sex "really was our ultimate fulfillment" and what does this have to do with your vain and desperate attempts to force homosexual people into heterosexual boxes? People aren't gay because they're sex addicts. They aren't gay because they don't know anything about love or fulfillment or connection with another person. Hell, plenty of gay people believe in gods, so it isn't even that they're "worldly." They're just gay. Despite Susan's best efforts to lie and distort the facts, I still don't believe homosexuality is a social ill or any of my fucking business. And when I say it's not my business, I don't mean "so keep it in a closet of shame." I mean, be free to be who you are as long as who you are hurts no one (which is why I encourage open homosexuality instead of open bigotry.)

This is what G. K. Chesterton meant when he wrote, "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God." Our desire for union with an "other" will never be ultimately satisfied until we are united with our Creator. "God created sexual desires as the power to love as He loves," West writes. "And this is how the first couple experienced it."

That may have been what Chesterton meant, but I'm pretty sure at least some men knocking on the doors of brothels are looking for a quick lay with a piece of strange.

Does the first couple mean Adam and Eve? Because, again Catholics, I thought you accepted evolution. How on earth can you say they are a myth and still expect me to treat them like historical figures simultaneously? At least creationists are consistent.

But remember, original sin robbed us of this ability to love as God loves. This is why we need a Redeemer. Jesus didn't die and rise again just to give us a kind of coping mechanism for sin. As the catechism states, "Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins." (CCC2336) He came to give us what we lost. That's why the Church claims that our longing for union can only be satisfied in Christ.

Okay, so God made us with this desperate need for love, but he also made us with original sin, so we're incapable of giving each other the kind of love we supposedly need. And you want to give Jesus credit for "giving us what we lost" when his Daddy was the one who rigged the game to begin with? Gee, that's swell. But none of this has anything to do with the lives of gay men and lesbians. Not even a little bit. It's just what you guys have decided god says, without, you know, actually proving he's real or anything. Kind of silly, really.

The good news is that through genuine conversion of heart to the message of life found in Jesus Christ, we can all be liberated from what John Paul II calls the "domination of lust." His grace can accomplish all that we cannot.

Gee, through the power of Jesus I can pretend I'll wait till I get married, and instead just wait an extra 18 months and then not use a condom? I mean, that's what happens to teenagers who take purity pledges at least. Jesus doesn't really seem to help them with their "domination of lust" and he certainly doesn't help pedophiles in the Catholic clergy. So why demand of gay men and women what you would never demand of heterosexuals - abstinence for life, with no calling, and no permission even if they do feel called to serve in the church? Because you are bigoted. Yes, Susan, it really is that simple. There is no vast secretive gay conspiracy and the gay agenda is just to be treated as well as straight people. Your hatred holds no place in that agenda. Your hatred is archaic and unwelcome and it is losing traction.

John Paul II said, "If we live according to the truth of our sexuality we fulfill the very meaning of life." God's plan for human sexuality is the answer. With it we can destroy the culture of death and bring a glorious new springtime to the face of the earth.

The truth of sexuality for homosexuals is that they are sexually attracted to people of the same sex (you know, they're gay.) So, if they live according to that truth, maybe they will fulfill their own lives, and damn your meanings all to that hell your so fond of telling me I'm headed to.

Never trust the Vatican on a culture of death when they're the ones keeping AIDS strong in sub-Saharan Africa. When they say they want a culture of life, they want a culture of no prophylactics, no birth control, and no abortion. No thank you!

We will have a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell signed into law (if not yet enacted) this year. We will continue to see more straight Americans stand up for the rights of their queer neighbors. We will grow as a society and accept these civil rights and we will be better for out. Our children and grandchildren will be astonished at the hatred we see today, like we are astonished at the treatment of African-Americans prior to and during the fight for their civil rights.

The best I can say is that Susan and her ilk are among the dinosaurs of thought, and their breed will grow endangered and hopefully one day extinct. Open racism like that displayed by members of the KKK is no longer socially acceptable, and I hope that one day very very soon open homophobia like the Catholic Church's is treated with just as much horror and disgust.

And, as I'd surely be remiss if I didn't include this

Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615

Peace to all and to all gay rights!

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Homophobia: The Untold Story pt. 9

I'm gonna try to wrap this up in the next two posts, because if I try to fit it all in today, this post will be about 50 paragraphs long, and that seems a bit much for even the most devoted Anteater. Let's dive headlong into the muck and bile that makes up "Homosexuality: The Untold Story" by Susan "Bigot" Brinkmann. (Previous posts can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

It's no accident that during this time of immense sexual confusion, God sent us the great gift of Pope John Paul II.

I didn't realize God gifted popes. (Can you return or exchange such a gift?) I thought the Council of Cardinals voted on them. Also, while the Catholic church certainly seems to be confused about sexuality, I don't think the rest of us necessarily are. I know I'm not.

Two-thirds of what the Church has ever said on the subject of human sexuality in her 2000 year history has been said by this Pope. Although he didn't change what the Church teaches, he expounded upon it and put it into a more contemporary language that might better equip Christians to carry the message of Jesus Christ into the modern world. This new way of teaching about human sexuality has come to be known as the "theology of the body."

Wow, that is an undue influence. The massively huge Catholic Church - claiming over a billion living souls as their own - tells people all across the globe what to do with their sex lives, and 2/3 of what it's ever said on the subject came from one solitary man? Did he have his Infallibility Drive turned on the whole time, or are some of these fallible pope statements?

God's Plan for Sexuality
"According to John Paul II, God created the body as a 'sign' of his own divine mystery," explains Christopher West, moral theologian, author and speaker, who is considered an expert on the theology of the body. "This is why he speaks of the body as a theology, a study of God."

Really? I don't remember the Bible saying anything about the body being a "sign" of god's divine mystery. (What is it with Catholics and mystery?) So, is this something Johnny Paul came up with on his own?

Because God Himself is the source of the complementarity of the sexes, when He created man in the image of Himself, he created both a male and a female. They were then directed to "be fruitful and multiply" by becoming "one flesh."

Now hang on a minute, this guy is quoting Genesis and the creation myth. You know - Adam and Eve, that whole thing the Vatican claims is just an allegory? How do you decide which of God's supposed edicts to Adam and Eve were literal quotes from God and which were merely parts of an allegorical myth? There's no discernible criteria I can detect, and I doubt a reliable one exists. Oh, and "complementarity" sounds nice and pleasant till you remember the Catholic church has no respect for women, so when they stress gender differences it isn't in a misguided by well-meant "separate but equal" kind of way. It's in a "Get back in the kitchen and start squatting out youngin's" kind of way. Charming, don't you think?

This was the original vocation of man and woman, to unite their bodies and produce life, but to do so in the "image of God" which means it must bear the following characteristics: it must be free, total, faithful and fruitful.

You know what isn't free? Love that's forced. Gay women love women, and forcing them into marriage and procreation with straight men (or "ex gay men") will not lead to a total or free love. (Likewise, forcing gay men into heterosexual marriage will not make them straight.) I wonder, at what stage in evolution (which the Vatican accepts) did man start to be "in the image of God" and no longer in the image of our evolutionary ancestors?

This teaching was not something invented by the Church but taken directly from Scripture. From the book of Genesis onward, "The Bible uses spousal love more than any other image to help us understand God's eternal plan for humanity," West writes. "God wants to 'marry' us. (Hosea 2:19) to live with us in an 'eternal exchange of love.'"

God wants to marry us like Hosea's cheating whore bride! (I remember reading that book of the Bible when I was about 13 and being absolutely baffled by it.) And what does any of this "God's plan" stuff have to do with the legal rights of homosexual persons to marry, adopt, and provide healthcare for their families? Unlike Vatican City, the United States is not a theocracy (despite the bleatings of many sheep who have no clue what our Founding Fathers thought or wrote on the subject.)

The marital analogy is used because it best describes what God intends for us — to love as He loves, and to be united in that love with an "other" as well as with Him. We were made for love and communion and this desire is inscribed into our very bodies. West calls it the body's innate "language," but it cannot achieve its desire without an "other." Male and female have a built-in desire for an "other"- not a "same."

Except for homosexual males and females who DO have a built-in desire for "same." That's kind of the definition of homosexuality, you twit. I've explained before in other posts why I would not want a love like God's, and why I think it is far inferior to earthly human loves. And I think it's important to remember that the Bible uses the Father analogy an awful lot, too. So, we're supposed to marry our dads, got that?

Authentic Love
But it goes even further. Because humans have a soul, their union should far surpass the mere sense level of animals, and should involve the spirit as well as the body. In other words, it should be love that unites them, not just a physical urge.

I am certain that the love my lesbian friends feel for their partners, and the love my gay friends feel for theirs, is more than "just a physical urge." Again, I wonder, at what point in the evolutionary process do Catholics believe humans aquired souls? Do bonobos monkeys have souls? They share 98% of our DNA. Is our soul located in that 2% of our genome they do not share? How about cows? Do cows have souls? Where on earth do you draw the line when God did not breathe into Adam's lungs after crafting him from the soil? If you accept that we evolved by natural selection (whether you think a god guided that process or not) the arbitrary introduction of a metaphysical supernatural soul for one specific species out of the millions which have ever existed seems suspect. Especially since there is no proof that such a thing as a soul exists.

And this love that unites man and woman is meant to mirror God's love, which has certain characteristics: it is free, total, faithful and fruitful.

Now honestly, where does it say sexual intercourse is supposed to be godly or god-like? Really, I'd like to know. And while you're at it, please give me a reason to suppose whatever book your referencing is worth believing.

As West writes, ". . . .This is exactly what spouses commit to at the altar . . . to give themselves to one another without reservations, to be faithful until death, and to receive whatever children God wishes to send them."

That may be what Catholics vow to, but it is not what all spouses do. According to NARAL, 98% of women in the US use birth control at some point in their lives (which seems high to me as well, given that some women are lesbians and some women don't use birth control for religious reasons.) That means almost all of us are trying NOT to be "fruitful" when we have sex, at least not every time. There are also plenty of loving child-free-by-choice heterosexual couples, who simply do not want or need biological children of their own. Hell, a third of us have even had abortions.

And (despite the Vatican's best efforts) none of those things are illegal in the United States. Birth control pills, condoms, and abortion are all allowed here, while gay marriage is very often not. I'll give the Catholic Church "credit" for being consistent (consistently wrong) on sex. They do oppose ALL forms of sex that aren't actively getting sperm into an egg, including masturbation (although the anal rape of children seems to be okay. I mean, it's gotta be better than spilling your seed on the ground like Onan, right? God killed that guy on the spot, but child rapists are allowed to live out their lives in comfort and anonymity.)

Every time this couple unites themselves in the marital embrace, they are, in a sense, renewing those vows. This is the proper reflection of God's 'marital' love for us, in the 'marital' embrace of those He created in His own image.

Sorry, but you haven't gotten to this yet. How exactly does God's 'marital' love for us result in sexual reproduction of live young, descended from single-celled organisms billions of years ago? While you keep insisting his love is "fruital, faithful" blah blah blah, you haven't shown it in anyway. Don't tell, show.

When one understands the "soul" of Church teaching about human sexuality, it becomes clear why she maintains that homosexuality, as well as adultery, premarital sex, contraception, do not image God's free, total, faithful and fruitful love.

Look, saying over and over again that's God's love is "free, total, faithful and fruitful" is one thing, but actually demonstrating your claims have any basis in reality or hell, even scripture, is quite another. Lazy freaking theologians.

Anything that is a true moral evil must cause some demonstrable harm. Contraception is a demonstrable GOOD. Family planning is good for children. It increases the odds that children born will be wanted, prepared for, and provided for. Masturbation hurts no one until you get a wrist cramp. Premarital sex is every individual's choice to do or not to, and homosexuality is just love pointed in another direction. It is love. How can you so hate love? I just don't get it.

Homosexual unions and the use of contraceptives are not "marital"as God's love is "marital" because they are not fruitful. Premarital sex is not 'marital' because without the self-sacrifice of commitment, it is not total. Adultery is not 'marital' because it is not faithful.

If love is not total without the self-sacrifice of commitment, why won't you let homosexual people get married? Why won't you LET them make that "self-sacrifice?" And, once again ad nauseum, where's the freaking evidence that your god's love is "marital" if "marital" means fruitful, total (which apparently means self-sacrificial), and faithful? Weren't the Israelites once his favorite chosen people and isn't that no longer true according to the teachings of the Catholic Church over several genocidal and anti-semitic centuries? That doesn't seem all that "faithful" to me.

But does it really make a difference if we follow God's plan? The answer to this question can be found in the sad global statistics on divorce, domestic abuse, sexual disease, abortion. "The truth of the Church's teachings on sex is confirmed in the wounds of those who haven't lived it," West writes.

Fact FAIL. It looks like India had the lowest divorce rate of selected countries in this table, with 1%. Perhaps following a Hindu god's plan for marriage is the real key? And let's see, sexual disease is certainly not helped by the Church's teachings on condoms. Oh yeah and abortion? Isn't a social ill, but even if it was, teaching abstinence rather than contraception increases the incidence of abortion. So if you want to prevent abortion, start promoting condoms, and stop trying to convince people that sex isn't fun.

The sacrifice of remaining chaste outside of marriage doesn't seem so bad when one considers the enormous social ills that a chaste lifestyle can prevent. But even more important, by remaining chaste outside of marriage, we keep sexual activity within its intended context.

Actually, remaining chaste does seem pretty bad to me. I don't think it's worth denying my natural healthy human urges and desire fpor intimacy because you think sex is always and only for procreation. I disagree, as do millions of birth control users around the globe.

Any other approach to human sexuality diminishes not only the nature and meaning of married love, but the nature and meaning of God's love as well. Sexuality is reduced to a mere sensation and lacks the true gift of self that constitutes authentic love. The longing for union that is stamped into our very bodies becomes distorted and confused, driving us hither and yon in search of a satisfaction that does not exist outside of God's plan.

Human sexuality does not equal marriage, and marriage does not equal sex. How many times do I have to spell this out? The "longing for union that is stamped" into the bodies of homosexual people is for a union with someone of the same sex. They're GAY, not "distorted and confused." There's a lot of satisfaction to be found in doing it like rabbits with condoms and contraception. There's a lot of satisfaction to be found in intimacy with the one you love. Stop fetishizing fetuses and remember that sex is about the two people doing it, not any gods or future children.

You are wrong on sex, Vatican. You are wrong, and you are rapists.


More tomorrow.

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