Cartoons are wonderful venues for religious satire. One of the best is Slap Upside the Head by “Mark,” a 28-year-old Canadian.
Mark’s August 20th post was about a story reported by LifeSite, conservative website that oozes sex in the same type of sensational reporting as the average supermarket tabloid.
One of their recent stories had all the elements guaranteed to whip their readers up into a frenzy: sexual perversion and demonic possession!
The article quoted an English Roman Catholic priest who is also a self-styled exorcist. He completed a 4 month course of training offered at the Vatican (details were a little fuzzy).
“Promiscuity, as well as homosexuality and pornography, says 73 year old Fr. Jeremy Davis, is a form of sexual perversion and can lead to demonic possession. Offering what may be an explanation for the explosion of homosexuality in recent years, Fr. Davis said, ‘Among the causes of homosexuality is a contagious demonic factor.’”
“Fr. Davis’ comments come in conjunction with the publication of his new book, Exorcism: Understanding Exorcism in Scripture and Practice published earlier this year by the Catholic Truth Society (CTS).”
“He also said that Satan is responsible for having blinded most secular humanists to the ‘dehumanising effects of contraception and abortion and IVF, of homosexual ‘marriages’, of human cloning and the vivisection of human embryos in scientific research.”
“Fr. Davis also warns in his book against so-called New Age and occult practices, as well as trendy exercise and ’spiritual healing’ regimens derived from eastern religions.”
“‘The thin end of the wedge (soft drugs, yoga for relaxation, horoscopes just for fun and so on) is more dangerous than the thick end because it is more deceptive–an evil spirit tries to make his entry as unobtrusively as possible.’”
U.S. bishops, in New York and California especially, have had plenty to say about same-sex marriage in the last couple of months.
“Sexual intimacy between persons of the same sex does not pass muster,” Bishop William Murphy wrote in the Diocese of Rockville Centre newspaper. Homosexual relationships “do not serve the common good. They cannot do so because they contradict biological teleology and the natural law.”
The L.A. bishops added, “When marriage is redefined so as to make other relationships equivalent to it, the institution of marriage is devalued and further weakened.”
But after pages of obfuscating over benefits and gender, the bishops finally got to the main point of their objections: “…the movement for ’same-sex marriage’ is less about such benefits than it is about societal acceptance and approval of homosexual relationships.” 
They’re right. As society more and more accepts gay and lesbian couples and families as friends and neighbors, the church has less and less of a sure footing to ignore or condemn us.
This past spring, Governor David Patterson of New York signed an executive order directing state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries.
Patterson related to a NY Post reporter that most of the people who had come up to him to express their appreciation were not gay couples–but parents of a lesbian daughter or gay son.
The church is sunk.
While gay and lesbian couples made the issue visible, it is their parents, friends, siblings, neighbors and co-workers that are making these couples and their children a normal part of the family and community fabric.
The greatest adversaries the church will have to contend with are Catholic parents–the mothers and fathers, husbands and wives they have sworn to honor and defend.
How ironic.
One of the best statements I have read on gay marriage was a letter in Commonweal Magazine. Written by a man named Jim McCrea, it is prophetic in describing how legal and legislative battles will eventually transform the institution of marriage; not by making it inclusive, but separating its legal standing from religious vetting.
This compromise on same-sex marriage will not force the blessing of organized religion on gay couples or attempt to do so. Instead, it will substantially reduce the legal and cultural clout of clergy and the institutions they represent on the issue of marriage.
“The legal debate about same-sex marriage will be played out in voting booths and in the courts for a long time to come,” McRea begins. “Even if those of us who advocate same-sex marriage prevail, religious communities will not be forced to change their norms for marriage. If anyone attempts to force Christian communities to bless gay marriages, I and other Californians will vigorously oppose it.”
“Still, religious proscriptions masquerading as cultural norms should not be imposed on those who do not accept them. I have yet to hear a persuasive explanation on how my thirty-six-year relationship with my partner diminishes family stability or the value of anyone else’s marriage.”
“I recommend a familiar solution: Anyone who wants to get married should have to enter into a state-sanctioned civil union that confers all the legal rights and privileges that come with marriage.”
“After that, anyone who wants a religious ceremony can have one. This is what most of Europe has done for many years, and life as they know it has not come to an end.”
Lori and I are now a happily married couple.
We were married at Smith College (her alma mater) on Friday, August 15th in the morning by The Honorable J. Mary (JM) Sorrell, a Justice of the Peace in Northampton, Massachusetts. “JM” was a wonderfully kind and caring, and made the ceremony joyful and relaxed.
Before she married us, JM read selected text from the Goodridge decision, a ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court which found the state may not “deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry.”
“…as matter of constitutional law, neither the mantra of tradition, nor individual conviction, can justify the perpetuation of a hierarchy in which couples of the same sex and their families are deemed less worthy of social and legal recognition than couples of the opposite sex and their families.”
“…(These couples) are members of our community, our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends…We share a common humanity and participate together in the social contract that is the foundation of our Commonwealth. Simple principles of decency dictate that we extend to the plaintiffs, and to their new status, full acceptance, tolerance and respect. We should do so because it is the right thing to do. The union of two people contemplated by the laws of Massachusetts “is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. (These couples) should no longer be excluded from that association.”
JM also married that day two young men that couldn’t have been older than 21 or 22. They looked so young! As we waited to receive our marriage licenses at the town hall the four of us exchanged congratulations and good wishes.
Lori and I were happy and excited and nervous, even though we have been together for over 20 years.
I am happy for those young men, that they have the opportunity to start life together as a young married couple; and for Lori and I to finish it the same way.
Our red bouquets were inspired by the huge bouquet of flowers Lori bought for me the first night she stayed over. On her way from Brooklyn to my apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan, Lori stopped off at the 72nd Street or 79th Street (we couldn’t remember which one!) subway station and bought every red flower she could find.
When I opened the door she presented me with a gorgeous red bouquet. Our wedding bouquets were in remembrance of that first romantic and passionate gesture. 
On July 27, 2008, a man walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville and opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun. He killed two people and seriously wounded seven others. Around 200 people were packed in the church for a children’s rehearsal of “Annie.”
The man, David Jim Adkisson, 58, was motivated by a hatred of “the liberal movement,” and he planned to shoot until police shot him, said Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV. 
The police found a four-page letter Adkisson wrote, in which he stated his hatred of “liberals in general, as well as gays.” He targeted the church “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they have ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.”
Adkisson said that “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement” so he would “target those that had voted them into office.” Police Chief Owen said Adkisson specifically targeted the church for its beliefs and its political advocacy, including gay rights.
Inside his house, officers found Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage; Let Freedom Ring by political pundit Sean Hannity; and The O’Reilly Factor by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly.
All three of these books didn’t prompt a madman to kill people. But in all three of them a madman who hates liberals and gays found words that resonated, sentiments to take comfort in, and nothing to make him think twice before going out to engage in domestic terrorism - violence and murder against fellow Americans holding different political beliefs. The same kind of behavior these three men condemn when perpetrated by Islamic terrorist groups.
I went to see if Bill O’Reilly (Roman Catholic) or Sean Hannity (Roman Catholic) said anything about the incident, had any expression of compassion or grief for the Knoxville victims and their families, or any condemnation of the shootings at all. No quotes turned up on Google or on their websites.
Michael Savage has no search function on his site and no mention of the story either. But his site did feature a link to a Daily Mail story about how an “Islamic ban on ’suggestive’ cucumbers’ cost al-Qaida public support in Iraq.” 
Huh? Well, I guess he has his priorities.
I was disappointed in all three of these entertainers/commentators that they couldn’t spare one word for the dead in Knoxville and the assault on freedom in Tennessee. One man in particular, an usher, shielded others with his body and took the brunt of the first shotgun blast. This is ususally the type of person these talk show hosts love to laud - an American who died for others.
I hope O’Reilly and Hannity have enough left from a Catholic upbringing to be a little shaken up that this nut looked to them for inspiration. They should continue to disagree furiously and passionately with liberals and others they feel are mucking up America, but they need to stop de-humanizing people they don’t like or disagree with. That gives murderers a license to kill.
A long lost radio interview with John Lennon, in which he calls himself “one of Christ’s biggest fans” was broadcast by the BBC on July 13, 2008.
The 1969 interview, with Ken Seymour from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, was taped during a bed-in for peace in Montreal.
Lennon’s remarks about Christianity drew international headlines in a March 4, 1966 interview in the London Evening Standard when he said: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I do not know what will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. We’re more popular than Jesus now.”
Asked to clarify his remarks, Lennon said: “It’s just an expression meaning the Beatles seem to me to have more influence over youth than Christ.”
“Now I wasn’t saying that was a good idea, because I’m one of Christ’s biggest fans,” he went on. “And if I can turn the focus of the Beatles on to Christ’s message, then that’s what we’re here to do.” 
He said: “If the Beatles get on the side of Christ, which they always were, and let people know that, then maybe the churches won’t be full, but there’ll be a lot of Christians dancing in the dance halls.”
Two years after the “we’re bigger than Christ” interview, Lennon released a song, “Imagine,” that drew the ire of churchgoers. The song contains the lyrics, “Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try…Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.”
Now, the recovered 1969 may shed some light on Lennon’s thoughts behind the famous song.
“I haven’t got any sort of dream of a physical heaven where there’s lots of chocolate and pretty women in nightgowns, playing harps,” he said. “I believe you can make heaven within your own mind. The kingdom of God is within you, Christ said, and I believe that.”
Why wasn’t this interview released back in the ’60s or ’70s? It would have been a huge support to grassroots Christianity.
“Homosexuality is a disordered behavior.”
Walter Cardinal Kasper made the remark during a July 31, 2008 address at the Lambeth conference, the once-a-decade gathering of the world’s Anglican bishops in Canterbury, England. Cardinal Kasper stressed to the bishops that the dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church had been seriously compromised over the issues of women’s ordination and homosexuality. 
Kasper, who is president of the pontifical council for promoting christian unity, reminded the delegates of the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church on homosexuality: “This teaching is founded in the Old and New Testament and the fidelity to scripture and to Apostolic tradition is absolute.”
Maintaining a common approach on homosexuality is not the main Vatican concern with an Anglican split. It is the issue of married priests; and with it, the ordination of women priests and bishops.
As more married Episcopalian priests flood into the Catholic church, Catholic parishioners and priests will become more and more restive about the issues of married clergy and women priests.
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, countered Cardinal Kasper’s remarks by pointing out the Vatican’s view would uphold only “a particular interpretation of those texts which supports Catholic teaching. Many scripture scholars, Catholic and Protestant, find that those texts do not refer to our contemporary understanding of homosexuality or to the concept of a loving committed relationship. The texts only refer to abusive sexual activity.”
As for the claim of apostolic tradition, DeBernardo said that tradition “has been evolving constantly over the centuries, even in regard to homosexuality. ” In an earlier era, he said, the church did not claim, as it now does, that homosexuals “had to be respected because of their instrinsic human dignity. That was an evolution in the tradition.” If that sort of evolution can occur, he asks, “why can’t it also change in the area of sexual activity in the context of a committed relationship?”
After 20 years of honeymooning, Lori and I are getting married. 
We’ll be legally wed next Friday, August 15th in Northampton, Mass. In a quirk of fate, not only is it my parents’ anniversary, it is also a holy day of obligation - the Feast of the Assumption.
While we’re among the first wave of New Yorkers who plan to marry in Massachusetts, California or Canada; we are certainly not the first gay Catholics to publicly vow eternal love and commitment. Not by at least 700 hundred years.
In fact, at one point, vows by same-sex couples were made and immortalized in church.
Wedded Friendships, an article by Alan Bray, appeared in The Tablet, a Catholic newspaper in the U.K., in August 2001. Bray discussed examples of spiritual same-sex friendships that have been celebrated in the history of the church with rites that gave them a status akin to marriage. The result of his research was The Friend, published posthumously in 2002 by the University of Chicago Press.
“In the chapel of Merton College in Oxford,” Bray writes, “I gazed on the great monumental brass above the tomb of John Bloxham and John Whytton, who were buried together at the end of the 14th century. It shows two figures standing side by side under canopies with their hands joined together in prayer and looking straight on to the viewer. This is the familiar iconography employed in the fourteenth century for the common tomb of a husband and wife.”
Bray posited that the liturgical form of the vows used in England and France appears to have been for the two friends to receive Holy Communion together after they had exchanged their promises outside the church.
One of the last sights of this practice was Easter Day 1834 when Anne Lister (the mistress of Shibden Hall in Yorkshire) and Ann Walker solemnized their friendship - described in Lister’s diary as a marriage - by receiving Communion together in Holy Trinity Church in Goodramgate, York.
At Mass, during the sign of peace, Lori and I always turn to each other for a kiss of peace - osculum pacis - the holy kiss. Little did I realize how this act of love and bonding would be reminicent among some in the Communion of Saints.
Tully Satre is 19 years old. He’s a nationally known gay rights activist and writer. He got his start in Catholic school. 
At 16, while he was a student at Notre Dame Academy in Middleburg, VA, he founded Equality Fauquier-Culpeper, a gay rights organization in the rural suburbs of northern Virginia. It was the gay rights group in the area. While at Notre Dame, he also established a gay-inclusive diversity group, and volunteered for People of Faith for Equality in Virginia, a pro-gay religious organization.
Satre embarked on a career as an LGBT activist: writing, speaking, blogging, networking. He became a columnist for The Advocate, and a reporter for the Windy City Times. Both websites maintain an archive of his stories and articles.
He discusses his experiences with Catholicism in at least two of the articles for the Advocate: “Confirmed as a Solitary Christian” and “Religion is Our Friend.”
I felt so sad for him–and so angry at rigid, heartless clerics–reading “Confirmed.” A 30-year-old priest bullied a 13-year-old boy about his sexuality, denying him the rite of Confirmation. “The church does not welcome you,” he said.
“I attended Catholic school since third grade up until high school graduation in June 2007,” Tully wrote in the Advocate. “The church has had a profound effect on my life, especially when it comes to being gay. It was largely responsible for my coming out. But I received negative feedback from my local community and was informally kicked oout of the church, after which I became bitter towards organized religion of any kind and identified as an agnostic.”
“It wasn’t until I met my friend Donna, a devout Catholic who works for the church, that I realized it wasn’t religion that was responsible for my hurt, it was people. Yes, the church, along with other religious organizations, teaches that homosexual actions are sinful; however, church doctrine clearly states that the harsh treatment of any person–homosexual or not–is strictly forbidden. And just because the church’s teachings are clear about homosexuality does not mean each member has to adhere to this belief. My parents are evoute Catholics, as are many of my relatives. They all have been supportive of me, going so far as to donate time and money toward advancing equality for LGBT people. In fact, their reasons for supporting me and gays in general were the direct results of their faith in Jesus Christ, who serves as a model for compassion.”
PZ Myers is a biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris and author of the blog, Pharyngula. The blog is eclectic, and Myers writes about science, education and religion. Raised a Lutheran, Myers is now an atheist. 
But he cares deeply and passionately about Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, to have pulled his latest stunt. He made good on his protest pledge to desecrate a Communion host. “I pierced it (the Host) with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash.”
Saying he did not want to “single out just the cracker,” Myers also tore pages from the Koran along with a few pages from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and nailed them to the Host. He then said, “They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet.”
Myers was given consecrated Hosts by an unknown person in response to his appeal:
“Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them - my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, glady, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address.”
What he did–the desecration of a Host–is an offensive and deliberately provocative gesture of contempt to people for which the Eucharist means something and is sacred. It was a violent act. I would certainly say it was a hateful act, but not necessarily a hate crime.
The University has received calls for his firing, and Myers has received hundreds of emails protesting his action. Myers sighed, “There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion.”
He summed himself up very well.
There aren’t many instances when I’m in accord with conservative Catholic bloggers Jimmy Atkin and Mark Shea, but we all agree today.
Batman and Robin hide in plain sight much like another famous couple-Xena, Warrior Princess and her young companion, Gabrielle. The gay subtext is flagrant in some stories, barely hinted at in others. Sometimes, the characters have a fleeting involvement with members of the opposite sex - a date to keep up appearances.
Is Batman gay? I found this gem by Tyrion Lannister on The Bilerico Project.
“The accusation that Batman was a homo, strange as it might sound to our own ears, was taken quite seriously by government and public alike. It wasn’t leveled by a marginal nut or crank, but by a world-renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Frederic Wertham.”
“In 1954, Wertham published a scathing indictment of comic books, The Seduction of the Innocent, which argued that comic books were an invidious influence on American youth, responsible for warped gender attitudes and all manner of delinquency.”
“Batman and Robin, Wertham charged, inhabited ‘a wish dream of two homosexuals living together.’ They lived in ’sumptuous quarters,’ unencumbered by wives and girlfriends, with only an aged butler for company. They care for each other’s injuries, frequently shared quarters, and lounged together in dressing gowns. Worse still, both exhibited damning psychological characteristics: proclivities for costumes, dressing up, and fantasy play; secretive behavior and double-lives; little interest in women; and most damning of all, neurotic compulsions resulting in their violent vigilantism. Indeed, Wertham argued, depictions of Batman and Robin were frequently homoerotic, visually emphasizing Batman’s rippling physique and Robin’s splayed, bare thighs.” 
“‘Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and psychopathology of sex can fail to realize the subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervades the adventures,’ wrote Wertham. ‘The Batman type of story may stimulate children to homosexual fantasies.’” 
