a work of fiction by Robin Reardon
FOREWORD
The only thing wrong with being gay is how some people treat you when they find out.
This blog entry is the eighth in a series of monthly installments that present the rationale behind Thinking Straight. The series is written from the point of view of a gay man—which I am not—so I'm labeling it as a fictional open letter to humanity, addressed to anyone who will read it and consider its points. My hope is that it will further understanding and acceptance.
The installments will be presented in logical order (Part I and the full list of installments was posted in April, 2008), and I encourage readers to start at the beginning and proceed through. The series will be highlighted each month on DREAMWalkergroup.com in the DREAMScene newsletter.
THE GOD CARD, continued: Situation (See Installment VI, I-Beam Strategy)
Just as it wouldn’t have been productive to examine every aspect of the differences in Situation between the lioness and the Thompson’s gazelle in Installment VI, it wouldn’t be productive to describe every aspect of our situation as we continue to apply the Strategy I-Beam to the God card. Because what we’re talking about here is our lives.
Instead of going into painful detail about what our lives are like, let’s compare our general situation today to the general situation of—say, two thousand years ago. This is rational, because when we’re applying our model, what will be important is understanding what the situation was when the plan was made (that is, when the texts were written), and how the situation has changed between then and now, so that we can figure out which tactics need to be reassessed.
“Tactics?” you say. “Tactics?” Yes. The Bible is chock full of tactics. Remember that the definition of a tactic is something you do or don’t do, based on your situation, to support your objective. Something you do or don’t do. Do you hear the phrases “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not” echoing through the corridors of time? Tactics. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
What was our situation when the plan was established? The answer to that kind of depends on whether you start when Jesus was wandering around Galilee or thousands of years before that, when the very first books of the Christian Old Testament were written—the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, which became the wisdom of the Jews. Remember that Jesus was called rabbi. And remember that his coming was prophesied by the Old Testament, so without it his followers would have no way to claim the title “Christ” for him. So how far back do we go?
For now, let’s start in the time of Jesus, reserving the right to delve deeper into the annals when we’re ready.
So what was our situation then? We’ll place ourselves in a settlement outside Jerusalem, with access to the hills and with our houses in a semi-urban cluster that serves as our community. Jesus has been crucified, and our community, having accepted his message, is doing its best to follow his teachings, good Jews that we are. Remember that most of the early followers were, in fact, Jews who had accepted Jesus as the fulfillment of the Jewish prophecy for a messiah. A Christ.
I’m living in standard housing for the time, one or two rooms with walls of dried earth and probably tiles for a roof, or maybe some other material; I’m no historian, so bear with me. It’s not these details that matter.
I live here with my wife, our three kids, and her parents. We have no electricity, no running water, no stove, no dishwasher, no microwave oven, no computer, no Internet—you get the picture. How can I be married, you ask? Aren’t I gay? I know this much about history: until the last couple of centuries, the homosexual orientation wasn’t recognized as anything other than an occasional aberration by certain heterosexual people. The very words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” weren’t coined until the late nineteenth century; no apparent need for a distinction, so no distinction. Everyone was straight by default so there was no word for it. No one had time to sit around gazing at his navel (haven’t been able to see mine for a while, but never mind) wondering what would make him happy. What would make him feel fulfilled. What his true destiny might be. Everyone was straight, because there was no other option. And two thousand years ago, you’d better believe everyone in our little community was living hand-to-mouth and barely surviving.
So. I got married as soon as I could find a biologically efficacious female (where have I heard that phrase before? Hint: we were examining the Unnatural card in Part II) from good stock who would have me, and I was glad to have her. Not many people had the luxury of marrying for love. Mostly they married out of necessity, and they did their best—if they were followers of Jesus, or of any similar philosophy—to find love in that relationship. And they started having kids just as soon as possible. Why? Read on.
As I said, in our situation two thousand years ago I have three kids. My wife gave birth to five in the past seven years, but two died. Pretty standard for the times; I was lucky not to lose her, too. She may have more, but we’ll have to wait and see; she’s getting old, at twenty-five. She married late.
My in-laws live with us. Why? Well, my mother-in-law had four kids, but only my wife survived. You say that doesn’t answer the question? Let’s explore. Just as we don’t have electricity or running water and so on, we also don’t have money. I’m really lucky if I have a shekel in a purse hanging from my belt. Same for my in-laws. And because no one has any money, there are no banks, no savings accounts, no retirement funds or pension plans. The exceedingly few people who actually have money have to pay guards to keep it safe. So if my wife and I didn’t take her parents in, they’d be out in the street, dying in the gutters. Not only do we not need any more flies and rats than we already have, but also this callous treatment would fly in the face of that second most important commandment. If you want a more secular reason, we need our kids to see that this is expected, or my wife and I will be in that gutter someday.
The parents-in-law pull their weight, as best they can. Mom cards and spins the wool from the goats in the herd I herd on those hills outside of town, and Dad knows how to make cheese with the milk and how to preserve the meat when there’s a slaughter or one of the goats dies, provided we can barter some wool or some cheese for salt. But Mom, at forty-two, and Dad, at forty-three (they haven’t got much longer on this earth) are way too decrepit to lug those heavy ceramic jugs to the well in the middle of town several times a day to get the water we all need, so my wife does that.
My parents were luckier than my in-laws; they had four of us who survived, and since I have to support my wife’s parents, my siblings support mine.
In the house next to us lives a nice couple. True followers of Jesus, very clear on the objective and how to get there. Last year, when the youngest of my kids got sick, my wife tried very hard to save her. Stayed with her every minute. And the woman next door was a saint. She fetched water for our entire family right up until my little girl died. And her husband? Another wonderful person. Two years ago, I broke my ankle chasing after one of those damned goats. He’s a shepherd, too, and he took care of my goats as well as his while my ankle healed. I have a permanent limp (no doctors), but I can manage.
Wonderful people. It’s a shame God hasn’t seen fit to bless them with any living children. We know they’re trying; we can hear them in there doing their best. But she’s had two miscarriages, and that was a while ago. So what’s going to happen to them when they get to be forty-two, and their teeth are falling out, and their bones are misshapen from overwork and undernourishment? Who’s going to take care of them? The answer is my kids. And the kids of everyone else in our part of this community. Why? Not just because they’re so wonderful, but because if we didn’t, we’d be disobeying the most important things Jesus told us to do. Will our kids resent it? Maybe a little, but they can complain only so much. It isn’t the fault of these terrific people that they don’t have kids. It’s God’s will, as far as we can tell. Plus, we want this protocol established; it could be one of our kids who goes childless in the next generation.
Let’s change the neighbor couple’s situation just a tad. Let’s say that not only do they not have kids, they don’t want them. They’re doing their level best to avoid them. The woman has said as much to my wife. “Kids. Noisy, dirty, too much trouble. Tell you what. If one of your kids gets sick, I’ll help you out as much as I can. I’ll even fetch your family’s water for days and days. Just don’t ask me to take care of any of your kids.”
Who’s going to take care of them when they get to be forty-two? You guessed it: my kids, and the kids of everyone else in our vicinity. Will they resent it? You bet your ass, they will. Because this couple deliberately, knowingly arranged their lives so that they would end up as charity cases on the backs of the next generation, without even trying to ease that burden. And our lives are hard enough as it is, thank you very much; the next generation will already be caring for their own parents, as well as the old folks who tried and failed to have living children. So who do these people think they are, that they can arrange their lives to their own convenience and everyone else’s increased suffering?
The word “sin” is used a lot in scripture. Literally, it means “missing the mark.” And what’s the mark? Our objective is the mark. Loving connection. Following those two most important commandments in everything that we do. So if we do something that we know full well will jeopardize our own ability to follow those commandments, or if we do something that we know full well will cause others to struggle in their attempts to follow them, what are we doing? We’re sinning. We’re missing the mark.
That couple who decided not to have kids? They’re sinning. In that situation.
Let’s change the neighbors one more time. Now it’s two men who have decided that they love each other emotionally, physically, spiritually, in every way they can. No one expects that between them they are going to produce children. So, just like the heterosexual couple who actively decided not to have kids, it doesn’t matter how wonderful these guys are while they’re able-bodied. At some point, they know full well that my kids are going to have to take care of them. Jesus never said the ten commandments that Moses presented were no longer in effect. In fact, the two he gave us make those other ten fall into place rather by default; if I love myself, and I love you just as much, how can I kill you? So, no adultery, which means neither of these neighbor fellows can have a few minutes alone with a woman he isn’t married to, in hopes of begetting a child. And forget the old turkey baster routine as well.
Those two men are sinning. In that Situation. They’re missing the mark.
I’ve heard a number of gay people say that they have no problem reconciling their homosexuality with their Christianity because Jesus never said anything about it. To these people I want to say, “So what? I’ll bet if we could go back two thousand years and ask him, he’d say, ‘Uh, gee, guys. No. You can’t really do that. Not the way things are now.’”
Look at it this way. As you read the New Testament, how many times do you see parables and anecdotes and metaphors that have to do with fishing? Why? Because so many of Jesus’s disciples had been fishermen. If he was the all-knowing, God-incarnate entity that the most devout believe, then he knew he had only a short time to get his disciples on board before they had to carry on for themselves, so he spoke in language and about situations that made sense to them.
I happen to think the Internet is a great metaphor for loving connection. I can just hear Jesus saying, “You know this Kingdom of God I’ve been telling you about? It’s great. It’s all about love. I know you look around you and see yourselves as different from each other, but here’s what you can have if you follow those two commandments I gave you. It will be a lot like the Internet. Each of you is a node on the Internet, and the bandwidth that connects all of you is made of love. There are different kinds of love, like the security layer and the http layer and all the other layers of this bandwidth, but altogether they make up the most wonderful network…” And either all the faces around him are totally blank at this point, or they’re clouded with thoughts of how to capture this madman and lock him up someplace where he isn’t a danger to anyone. No one would take him seriously, and his mission would fail. The moral of the story? Even if Jesus had known that someday the Internet would exist, and even if he agreed with me that it makes a great metaphor for his message, he couldn’t have used it. Not then. Not in that situation. And by the same token, even if he knew that one day our situation would have changed so that we didn’t all necessarily have to take our in-laws into our crowded little two-room hovels, if he knew that one day it wouldn’t matter if the two guys next door never had any kids, even if he knew that, he couldn’t have said it. It would have made no more sense to the people of our little first-century community than the metaphor of the Internet. So, in that situation, at that time, he could not have agreed to same-sex marriage. The tactic of everyone having children was essential because of the situation.
Need some more convincing about how situation has changed? Fine; let’s go farther back.
Oh, and by the way, everyone knows that all the raw material necessary to make a human is contained in male cum, and a woman’s only purpose in life is that of a human oven. This means you men can essentially treat her as property, as chattel, because the male is obviously God’s chosen sex. I mean, isn’t God a man, after all? Need I say more? So playing with yourself, young man, is a sin! You’re essentially killing people! If you’re ready to be shooting off, it’s time you were married; that is the stuff of human life you’re wasting. Abominable! And if you think you’re going to go at it with another boy, well that’s tantamount to murder. Abominable again, for the same reason! It wasn't the sex that was abominable; it was that both of them were killing someone. No one ever said one word in the OT about woman-on-woman action. It was only male cum they cared about.
If we go far enough back into the Torah, we see that it was common practice for a man to have several wives. And the law states specifically that he is allowed to rape his slaves, as long as they’re female. Today, this is the abomination. Today, most of us think the idea of owning another human being is abomination.
Um, what happened?
I’ll tell you. Shift happened. Remember Situation? It’s not absolute. It changes. Even if the objective doesn’t change, it’s practically a guarantee that situation will change, given enough time and enough influential factors. And what do you have to do when Situation changes, if you want to be sure you’re still working toward your Objective? You have to reassess your Tactics.
So why are so many supposedly loving Christians (and others, but we’re picking on Christianity right now) still condemning homosexuality? We’ll explore that next time: Tactics.
