The Other Catholic Theology

After my brother, Jonathan's, request for a non "pro-gay activist" acknowledgement of the separation of homosexuality and pedophilia I have been doing research. Several post's I shall be 'pinning up' here will deal with different sources for this information, as well as expressions of positive support from many professional organizations, eduactional facilities and fine intellectuals with plenty of credentials supporting the beliefs of the gay community that we are not active, criminally or otherwise, in the horrific abuse of children by some Catholic priests. We will also see Catholic theologians who find that the Church's own language brings sharply inot question a prohibition on committed same sex loving relationships and gay marrriage.

I hope that my reprint of this article here will be seen as the non-profit attempt to eduacate readers and not misuse of the writing of others. You may clickk on the blog title to take you to the original site.

The Vatican, Theologians, and Same-Sex Marriage

By Francis DeBernardo

The American Catholic, Farmington, Connecticut April 2003

"A union between a man and woman is the only true one in God's eyes," Pope John Paul II said during his message to the Pontifical conference on Families held in the Philippines in January this year. A family, he added, is “certainly not that inauthentic one based on individual egoism. Experience has shown that such a 'caricature' has no future and cannot give future to any society."These most recent remarks from the pontiff are the latest example of several statements condemning same-sex marriage that have issued from the Vatican and from the mouth of the pope himself over the past few years. Opposition from the Catholic hierarchy has grown more vocal as the worldwide movement for gay and lesbian rights has made some strides in gaining recognition for same-sex couples. Most recently Belgium has granted equal recognition for lesbian/gay couples, and the European Union has urged its members to enact similar legislation. In the U.S., Vermont is the only state in the union that does so, yet many other local governments have been granting some benefits for domestic partnerships—a “lite” version of same-sex marriages.

It would be a mistake, however, to view this clash as simply a battle between Catholics and gay rights political groups. While the pope holds up the heterosexual standard of marriage as the only acceptable norm, theologians within the Church have been challenging many of the assumptions upon which this standard is based. Support for the approval of same-sex marriage is not simply a position of the secular gay-rights movement, but of a growing group of moral theologians in the U.S.

The Church hierarchy’s opposition to same-sex marriage is based more on its marriage teaching than on its teaching about lesbian/gay people, though the two areas are intimately related. The definition of marriage is found both in canon law and the Catechism: “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of the offspring” (#1601). The Catechism goes on to state, “the vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes” (#1603).

Relevant themes that emerge from these quotations are that procreation is an essential part of marriage and that gender complementarity is the only natural combination of partners. Both of these principles would eliminate same-sex couples from the definition of marriage. In fact, the Catechism’s review of Church teaching on homosexuality states that homosexual acts “...are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” The Catechism doesn’t state a policy about same-sex marriage. A negative policy automatically follows because of a disapproval of sexual activity between people of the same sex. This disapproval flows from the elements of complementarity and procreation.

It is exactly these two elements in the Church’s teaching on marriage, however, which theologians have been finding problematic. Complementarity is based on the idea that men and women have distinct “essences” and that they need each other for completion. Complementarity is at the basis of much of Catholic thinking about the sexes and also about the Church. The bride and bridegroom metaphor for the Church governs some important policy in Catholicism, including the ban on women’s ordination. If men and women have different essences given to them by nature, then they have different social roles that they need to fulfill. More importantly, only the proper gender can perform each one’s distinct roles.

The Catechism explains complementarity this way: “Man and woman were made ‘for each other’—not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a community of persons, in which each can be ‘helpmate’ to the other, for they are equal as persons...and complementary as masculine and feminine (#372)...Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life” (#2333). The Catechism uses Scriptural references to support this view of complementarity, most notably the Genesis story—“male and female he created them.”
Since the 1970s, theologians influenced by feminist thought have challenged complementarity because of its sexist bias. Rosemary Radford Ruether explained that complementarity “demands the continued dependency and underdevelopment of women in order to validate the thesis that two kinds of personalities exist by nature in males and females and which are each partial expressions of some larger whole. Such a view can allow neither men nor women to be whole persons who can develop both their active and their affective sides.”

More recently, Susan Ross, a theologian at Loyola University, Chicago, has pointed out that much of John Paul II’s view of women, marriage, Mary, and the Church, are deeply rooted in the idea of gender complementarity. She points out that this view is based on a narrow interpretation of Scriptures, and has not taken into account the advances made in historical criticism or the natural and social sciences. She argues that the concept of complementarity does not allow for the myriad possibilities of relationships of love which fill the world: parents and children share love, friends share love with other friends, and siblings share love with siblings. She argues that a more familial model of love is needed.

Mutuality in relationships, instead of complementarity, is the antidote that feminist theologians have offered as a model for love. Mutuality stresses equality between partners, each one sharing the gifts they have received as individuals. These theologians argue that the change in gender roles that has taken place in society and in the Church, and the resultant awareness of gender oppression, call for a more just conception of partnership than the one that gender complementarity offers.

Intimately connected to the idea of gender complementarity in Catholic teaching is the role of procreation in marriage. For obvious biological reasons, it is probably the largest obstacle to Catholic approval of same-sex marriage. The Catechism states: “The spouses’ union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and compromising the good of marriage and the future of the family” (#2363).

Yet, according to Yale theologian Sister Margaret Farley, RSM, the procreative element of marriage has been eroded by Church teaching itself. She points out that with the allowance of natural family planning methods in Humanae Vitae, the Church has not kept procreation as an indispensable requirement of all sexual activity. By allowing heterosexual couples to regulate their sexual activity with their fertility cycles, Catholic teaching, in fact, has acknowledged that the reproductive element is not as important as it once was. Why, she asks, does the hierarchy hold out the procreative norm as a reason to ban homosexual marriage when it doesn’t require that all heterosexual marital acts be open to procreation?

Historically, the place of reproduction in marriage has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the early Christian days, heavily under the influence of Stoic philosophical values, reproduction was seen as the only moral justification for sexual union. The unitive factor, i.e., bringing the couple closer to each other, was later accepted as an important factor in marriage, but seen as a secondary purpose. The Second Vatican Council elevated the unitive factor to an equal status with the procreative element. Some theologians saw this as an important development in understanding marriage, emphasizing that the unitive function may be more important than the procreative element.

Sister Farley is one theologian who has argued that the important guidepost for developing an ethic for marriage is the quality of the relationship. Principles such as free-consent of the partners, equality between partners, a sense of commitment, and permanency, she argues, provide a better basis for evaluating the good in a partnership than the Church’s current teaching with its heavy biological emphasis. For example, one of the principles she argues for is that a couple’s relationship does not have to be procreative, but should be generative. In other words, the issue is not whether the couple’s marriage results in procreation, but that their relationship produce integration in the partners so that they can be creative in their lives for the good of the larger community.

Finally, another area of theological discussion is the need to affirm gay/lesbian relationships. John McNeill, a psychotherapist and moral theologian, was the first Catholic scholar to raise this issue in his landmark treatise, The Church and the Homosexual, originally published in 1976. Through scriptural interpretation, a re-evaluation of the moral tradition on sexuality, and psychological insights and evidence, McNeill showed that, in justice, the Church needed to abandon its traditional opposition to committed, sexually active lesbian or gay relationships.

McNeill proposed that “The same moral norms should be applied in judging the sexual behavior of a true homosexual as we ordinarily apply to heterosexual activity.” Additionally, he made the perhaps more challenging proposal that “there is the possibility of morally good homosexual relationships and that the love which unites the partners in such a relationship, rather than alienating them from God, can be judged as uniting them more closely.” In 1976, discussion of same-sex marriage was non-existent, yet though that vocabulary was not used, in effect, McNeill was proposing a theology of marriage for lesbian/gay people.

Since that time, other theologians have followed suit. They argue that since the Church has developed a new understanding of homosexuality as a God-given state, then the Church needs to make accommodations for this type of love. Often they will use evidence and testimony from lesbian/gay people about their experience of the goodness of their committed relationships to support their view.

More importantly, lesbian/gay theologians themselves have contributed to the dialogue about marriage and sexuality which has been flourishing in the Church. These contributions have emphasized that assumptions about lesbian/gay people as promiscuous, unstable, immature, and selfish are not true.

Like many lesbian/gay issues, the issue of same-sex marriage is connected to other issues in the Church. Whether or not to allow same-sex marriage is connected not only to issues of justice and equality for lesbian/gay people, but also, more fundamentally, to questions of the definition of marriage itself, the role of the family, and the definition of sexuality. Continued discussion of this topic will certainly be a growing pain for the Church, but one that will help us examine some of our biggest fears, our greatest joys, and our most intimate needs for connection.

The Truth Ratzinger Hates

Homosexual Activists Cheer Appointment of New San Francisco Archbishop

By Hilary White

SAN FRANCISCO, December 22, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Archbishop George Hugh Niederauer, soon to be installed as the new Archbishop of San Francisco, has told a local news outlet that he is opposed to the Vatican’s prohibition of homosexuals in seminaries.

“Some who are seriously mistaken have named sexual orientation as the cause of the recent scandal regarding the sexual abuse of minors by priests,” Niederauer said Monday in an interview with the Intermountain Catholic News.

Niederauer referred to the “sexual orientation” of homosexual men, what the Vatican document on ordaining homosexual men called “deep seated homosexual tendencies” as merely “a structure of human personality,” that does not preclude such men from being ordained.

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, says he is worried that Niederauer is “gay friendly.” Speaking to MichNews.com’s Matt Abbott, Euteneuer said, “If the pro-gay attitudes, policies and statements of the new Archbishop of San Francisco have been reported accurately—and we have no reason to believe they have not—then his opinions run counter to the spirit and intent of the Vatican instruction on homosexuals in the seminary.”

The evidence that Niederauer is a supporter of the “gay” cause in the Church and in civil society is overwhelming. Glowing recommendations from the homosexual activist movement are flooding the internet news sources.

Francis DeBernardo, who leads pro-gay New Ways Ministry, a movement that has been prohibited by the Vatican as opposed to Catholic teaching, said that he expects great things from Niederauer’s appointment to San Francisco.

“With his pastoral experience in an overwhelmingly gay Catholic parish in West Hollywood, and his political experience dealing with extremism from anti-gay forces in Utah, I think that Bishop Niederauer is one of the best candidates to lead the heavily gay-populated Catholic community of San Francisco,” DeBernardo said.

From 1992 to 1994, Niederauer resided in West Hollywood's St. Victor's parish which is identified in the homosexual press as “sizably gay.” “Gay men never felt ill at ease dealing with him,” said Monsignor George Parnassus, a St. Victor pastor emeritus. Parnassus added, “We would be invited to their homes in West Hollywood.”

Niederauer, ordained to the priesthood in 1962, is a prominent member of what some Catholic writers have dubbed the “Camarillo Mafia,” a group of liberal and dissident prelates who graduated from and/or taught at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California, and who were ordained in Los Angeles in the 1950’s and ‘60’s.

The LA Times wrote that the “trail of abuse” in the Los Angeles Archdiocese and its surrounding area dioceses “leads inevitably” to St. John’s. According to the Times, 10% of St. John's ordinands for Los Angeles from 1950 to ‘65 have been accused of molesting minors. In two classes, 1966 and 1972, a third of the graduates were later accused of molestation.

The group of bishops includes Roger Cardinal Mahony the Archbishop of Los Angeles who has been praised by the homosexual activist group, the Rainbow Sash Movement, for his support for their cause; Patrick Ziemann, the disgraced former bishop of Santa Rosa who was dismissed from his diocese after sex abuse allegations from one of his own priests and Tod Brown, bishop of LA’s neighbouring diocese of Orange whose letters and instructions to priests on homosexual issues have been called “confusing” and whose diocese has been used to house a number of notorious homosexual abusers.

Perhaps the most prominent member of the group is Archbishop William Levada, formerly of the now-bankrupt Portland diocese and lately of San Francisco whom Niederauer will be succeeding. Levada’s appointment by Pope Benedict XVI as head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – making Levada among the three most powerful prelates in the Church – came as a shock to many Catholics aware of the problems stemming from Los Angeles.

Jim Bretzke, chairman of the theology department at the University of San Francisco, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Niederauer’s appointment, “rather than someone more doctrinaire or conservative,” is evidence of Levada’s power in Rome.

When Niederauer was made a bishop in Los Angeles in 1995, the prelates acting as principal and co-consecrators were Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop William Levada and Bishop Tod Brown. Niederauer was a graduate and former English professor, spiritual director and rector of St. John’s from1972 to 1992.

Niederauer is a long-time political activist in the “gay” cause. In 1986, Niederauer wrote a letter to an Orange County judge asking that a priest convicted of 26 counts of felony child sexual abuse be spared prison time. He wrote that the boys involved might have mistaken “horseplay” for molestation. Niederauer later admitted that the letter had been a “mistake.”

In 1996, as bishop of Salt Lake City, he helped form a coalition of religious leaders opposing the ban on high-school “gay-straight alliances” proposed by the Utah legislature.

In 2002, Niederauer told the National Catholic Register, “What I don't want is some kind of link between being homosexual and being a molester of minors.”

In 2004, he joined other clergy leaders in publicly opposing a Utah ballot initiative that constitutionally banned same-sex marriage. Niederauer said he was troubled that the amendment banned any union beside marriage, a position in direct opposition to Catholic teaching.

Sam Sinnett, national president of Dignity USA, the dissident homosexual activist organization that opposes Church doctrine on chastity and marriage, said, “He is seemingly coming from a position of clearer knowledge of human sexuality than we're hearing from the Vatican.”

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Vatican 'Gay' Priest Ban Forcing Dissidents Out of the Closet
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05112307.html

Read LA Times exposé of St. John’s Seminary:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news/2005_11_17_Pringle...

Patrick Ziemann's Cover-up By George Neumayr
http://www.losangelesmission.com/ed/articles/2000/0500gm.htm

From the Family Research Couoncil
Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS02E3


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Interiors

These photos represent some of my design work. The wide living room shot is from the flat in West Hollywood, while the close up of accessories comes from the duplex in Beverly Hills. The breakfast suite is Orange Drive. The photos are also my work, and have been played with a bit in Photoshop.

Tulips for Mint

Tulips Deux, Digital Photograph, D. Larson, 2006

Tulips, Digital Photo, D. Larson, 2006

Am I a Bigot? Part I

I have recently been told I am a bigot. Racial bigot. And of course the idea that I would be such a miserable creature is particularly gruesome for me and others due to my long and very vocal fight for gay equality, which is of course based in part upon fighting bigotry. that would make me a hypocrite as well, which actually is, I think worse. It is not an easily accomplished task to truthfully examine ones' own thinking, words and actions to determine the validity or not of such an accusation. In my temper at being accused of something I detest and do not believe myself to be I've lost someone from my life whom I cherish., and that is indeed the tragedy.

I recently posted a column on this blog which bemoaned my fate at being forced by mark's employer to take up residence in a middle class working neighborhood which is slowly being gentrified. I quite rudely and wrongly expressed my strong distaste for the "local color" and the "rat children" of the neighborhood. It was an unkind and uncharitable statement for which I apologized to the people who may have read the posting and immediately withdrew it from my blog.

I will leave to others to decide if I am the bigot I'm accused of being but I would like to defend myself. Oh, not for the unkind words. I suppose if that is the basis and only criteria for my judgement than I am indeed guilty.

However, bigotry is not as simply defined or verified by an emotional outburst regarding a situation one does not like and of which one does not wish to be a participant, namely living in an economically challenged area with persons who do not share your own values and beliefs. I come from a working class family of very moderate means and I have no regret or shame of my past or my family. I do not, however, share the general values or beliefs of the rest of my family and I had and still have every wish to leave that world behind me - and for very good reason. I don't 'fit in'.

It's many years now that I have lived on my own, and then with my spouse, Mark, striving to build a very different life with very different expectations of what is worthwhile in having and working towards. That is not a criticism of my parents or brothers and sister and the lives they've chosen. I know each of them has given the best of themselves to the lives they've built and to their families. Mom and Dad have given to me the very best of what they had and one of those gifts was the encouragement to become in life what God meant for us to be. Have I used the gift well and been successful?

I am a gay man. Living in a small town in southern Arizona with a strong Catholic community did nothing for my self esteem or ability to express myself and who I am. I'm not here to debate the issues of growing up gay and being catholic or from a small western town. There are reams of papers describing the horrors and traumas of being completely outside the mainstream of a heterosexual family lifestyle and what happens to the young people who are faced with this situation which entails self hatred, verbal and physical brutality in one's peer group and ostracism on a large scale. That is if you don't hide and deny whom you are and appear different from others outwardly.

I suppose I flitted - it's a good word for this - in and out of being myself and hiding myself. As a child i knew nothing of homosexuality, or any sexuality for that matter, and never even identified as being 'gay' until my mid-twenties when living in Phoenix. I simple knew that I was not attracted to girls other than as friends, and when puberty hit like a Mack truck found I WAS definitively attracted to men. And I do mean men - I wanted to be with someone older and wiser than myself and had no interest in boys my own age. In some ways I longed for a father figure, for I was not in an intimate relationship with my own Dad growing up.

But back to growing up. My interests in art, design, literature and fashion were not the interests of the other boys my age. I was quite alone all through puberty and my teens. In high school I never once had lunch with a friend in the cafeteria but spent every noon hour reading in the library. I slowly became proud of my learning and knowledge and found it extremely useful in defending myself against the many attacks perpetrated by kids who saw me as different and taunted me and attempted to pick fights. If I could make it clear to these bullies that they were not educated, had no world vision and would always be small town insignificant redneck twats than I could manage one more day of being alone and lonely. Hating those who hate you for no particular reason other than you don't like football is a shallow and empty gesture. Nevertheless, I had no guidance in becoming forthright and open, loving and accepting of others differences for I had a secret.

Secrets are terrible things. I don't mean a surprise party of Christmas present sort of secret. I mean a secret about whom you are, and I was homosexual. I was so terrified of being different in this way that I would do anything to avoid being around boys. I was excused form P.E. - showering with the other boys was so terrifying a prospect that I would lie awake every night before the days we had the class and stare at the ceiling of my bedroom until I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. I awoke daily sick to my stomach all through high school, dreading every moment that I was not in the safety of a classroom. The bus stop, on the bus, milling before and between classes, lunchtime, dismissal, after-school were all times of fear for me of either verbal or physical harm. There was plenty of both. I never, or rarely told, because I might have to say something about my secret. It was a deadly cycle for mental health, and it didn't do much for my physical wellness either.

Mom and Dad had some inkling I suppose. i was taken to a therapist at one point and Dad would regularly have temper fits over my playing with dolls and rearranging the furniture. I was happier with mom. She allowed my reading and let me bake,a great delight, and was helpful in letting me draw and paint, which Dad disliked for a long time. If i spoke of art lessons or someday being an artist i was quickly reminded they all starved. I grew discouraged and at some point something in my spirit broke and it has never healed.

Don't misunderstand, as I did for a long time; Mom and Dad loved me and wanted me to have a life that was safe and normal and happy. As adults they knew i was on a journey without a foreseeable happy ending. Once Mom was talking to Aunt Jerry about how 'it' ran in the family and I knew what they were talking about. They reassured each other that devout prayer would bring me and my cousins back into the fold of heterosexuality. It seems the prayers weren't heard.

So, my secret grew. The scope of it became larger and larger as I had near misses with other boys and men. I never actually had sex with anyone until I was in my mid-twenties. But I so wanted it - to be loved and touched. My first boyfriend, Dennis, from St. john's kissed me once and asked if it bothered me. I told him no. i so wanted him to kiss me. Yet the guilt of it caused my first attempt at self harm. i took a razor and daily slashed my thighs with it - I still have a few of the scars on my left thigh. This frightened me enough to look for help. I tried hinting broadly to Mom by writing poetry about Jonathan and David. It made her cry, but she never spoke to me about what was happening to me. Fr. Trupia apparently said it would all resolve itself and not to speak to me. I had a terrible crush on Trupia and wanted to be with him. It never happened. Apparently he preferred those who didn't want to be with him.

At St. John's I admired a Fr. Windsor. He was a great Anglophile and I was well developed in my love of all things French by that time. I was too shy to spar in jest with him openly, but I grew to respect his knowledge. I approached him regarding my self harm, unwittingly exposing Dennis and several others, and I was sent to see a psychiatrist in the little town (at that time anyway) of Camarillo. The visit was overwhelming for me. It was secretive and hidden and shameful - all of what I was already experiencing and I told Fr. Windsor I couldn't go back. He never spoke to me about it again, it was as if nothing had happened. I knew I must be terribly evil to have warranted being ignored and shunned, as i thought it was at the time. I see now that they were probably far more concerned about publicity and a law suit. It's too bad the statute of limitations has run out.

That summer, to be near Dennis, I took a mission post at a parish in California along with two other seminarians. It was during that summer that I tried at last to be with Dennis sexually, but it never worked - at least I don't think it did, I don't remember everything. I became very despondent. Having access to a parish car I went to the drugstore and bought several bottles of Unisom and, along with a bottle of Vodka, 120 proof, I downed the liquor and the pills in the Camaro in the drugstore parking lot.. As they started to take effect I drove back to the Church hall where we were bunked and laid down to die. but I heard noises in the parking lot - I got up and went to the window and saw thousands of little demons laughing and dancing and beckoning me to join them in hell. I woke of Fernando and he raised the pastor and i was transported to the hospital and had my stomach pumped. I became agitated as I slowly recovered -- and when the pastor tried to see me and became upset and asked them not to let him in - I had my precious secret! that was when they transferred me to County Hospital (no use wasting money) and left me sitting upright in a wheelchair all night. Every-time I tried to be pleasant to a nurse they would ignore me. Later Mom said she read them the riot over the phone. I never noticed any particular change in demeanor.

I was transferred to a psych ward and at last someone tried to talk with me, but I was locked in and I didn't know this person and I resisted. Mom and Dad arrived and whisked me out, visibly embarrassed. I followed them and the last thing I said was to a nurse watching us leave: "Don't worry, I make my own decisions". Her look of compassion was the first i had had through the whole incident, at least that I could remember.

The drive home was long. When I got home it wasn't long before I heard from Dennis. He was willing to come and get me. being 19 I could go and did. I'm sure it hurt Mom and Dad terribly. I'm sorry for that - but I was still hiding my secret and at home it was no longer possible. dennis took me to lake Tahoe and I thought all would be grand. In some ways it was. Dennis was a deal maker, he always knew someone who had something - in this case a cabin. We stayed one night. I don't remember anything about it, maybe we did and maybe we didn't. I do remember seeing a deer caught in our headlights and trying to lay my head in his lap on the drive - that frightened him and so i slid back to my side. He had tried. he helped me find a job and i stayed at his home in Long beach. At some point his father, who was terminally ill, shot himself in the head. Not long after I learned Dennis was married and expecting a child. I wrote him once and he wrote back saying he was married now and not to write again. So goes my first love.

I asked if I could come home again and was allowed. It worked for a bit, but Dad and I were always at each other and i at last got my own apartment. I worked for a time as a busboy, than managed a social service job at the Boy's club. I bought a car and my first sofa and chair and tried to date one of the Wilhelmy girls.

I think things are out of order, actually. I've been up all night and am tired. I'll finish the story later.

You may rightly ask what this all has to do with the charge of bigotry. I will make my point, be not afraid!

Ghosts of Versailles

Mark and I have been relegated to being part of the "Bridge and Tunnel" crowd and an apartment complex called 'Avalon'. First off, naming a vertical trailer court after King Arthur's final home, or the Book, whichever it was, is ludicrous. Some of Mark's staff think this building is the coolest thing going and I have to laugh. My goodness, just because one can't afford Park Avenue doesn't mean one needs to be ignorant of what is of acceptable aesthetic quality and that which is most certainly not! I will say the park is rather pretty, but nothing else. And, yes, I'm a snob about it. I haven't lived with this lack of quality since I was broke in college. I miss my funiture, my cat and L.A. If we must live in New York than there is only one New York: Manhattan. Everyone knows that, everyone. Give me a falling down brownstone, just let me back across the river! We have no friends in New York. I am terribly lonely here, and Mark is, too. Especially since he must live with an old sour thing like me! I can't quite believe I've become what I despise. A silly old Queen who's shuttered off alone and morosely grotesque in the process. I haven't even my own things to console my belief that in my cutting myself off from others I'm comtent. Maybe I better change! I read other gay and lesbian blogs and they all seem so full of talent and promise and life: even if they have nothing much and live in Astoria. Ah, well, my journey is my journey. Mark wants me to see a therapist. I told him I would. I owe him that. I should really like to be one of those heros one reads about in books. You know, the sort of intrepid never giving up adventurous sexy leading man type of guy who rescues everyone else with no thought to his own needs! Maybe the depression is due to my inherent belief that I really am supposed to be that man and I keep mucking it all up. Lately, I can't even seem to manage to cook a decent dinner! Ha Ha! So much for the CCA. >Peppermints death has really shaken me. I never deamed it could happen. Mom is dying, too. Dad is ill. Mark is pale and can't even get to Denver for the surgery to have the cancerous testicle removed and the implant put in - his employer is unwilling to sign the contracts and make everything (like the salary) she promised him legitimate. One cannot travel without money. I cannot find work of any decent salary that will help, fuck all I've been is a housewife for 17 years. (Sorry, Julia, it;'s the Truth). It was a great job, I loved it, but what do you do when it isn't needed anymore? Lisa sent me a lovely note about Pepper (and my dear Julia phoned immediately) and included a little stuffed Calico cat toy. I'm nearly fifty and that silly toy means the world to me. I guess I'm terribly lucky with my friends. I have no right to be loved so, but there it is, they do. And my dear Mark. Seventeen years of flying sparks and quarrels and hot sex and praying together; what more can I ask for in life. I have it all and I forget it quite regualarly. Such a stupid prick am I! (Though I miss my gilt bronze clocks, can't help it!) Everyone says I have so much talent, they always have; it's just that I don't believe a frigging word of it - being gay what else can I be but a decorator anyhow. My artwork isn't good enough, I'll never be a profitable artist.



My design work is better, but there are plenty with the skills I have and they actually - as Mark points out - know how to be nice to people. I used to throw some decent parties - black tie, the works. I remember them vaguely through the haze of cocktails. Gorgeous tuxedos, gowns and cigars! It was fun. The bureau plat draped in antique bronze silk damask and the tubs of Veuve. The string quartet on the stair landing. Amsterdam was lovely, Cobbled streets and a seveteenth century house on the Keizersgracht. Fabulous neighbors and friends. I used to watch the local boat races from my loft(y) bedroom, papered and hung in tutqouise silk and toile. I smashed a parian figurine one day when Mark was yelling about the clutter! Ouch! I regret losing it far more than it made an impression on Mark. On Joy's birthday we filled the apartment with silver balloons floated to the ceiling and strung with trailing ribbon. The old French farmers table laden with gorgeous flowers and cakes and sandwiches - and lots of Veuve. Julia and Maarten came for their aniversary dinner one year while Mark was in the States and she brought a bottle of fake champagne in a bright pink bottle - it was great fun contrast with the Herend and Yeoward and Buccelati. Mint and Tig used to sit with me on the daybed in the living room and we'd watch the snow fall on the canal. Dusk was the lovliest, that particular deep blue just before the utter black, the candles lit and the lights begining to twinkle in the townhouses opposite. I think I miss San Francisco most of all. It was the only time Mark and I broke up really. I took a flat in the Castro for a while; but it was our grand apartment on Pacific Avenue that I loved the best! That's when Mark had the drapes made - that have now travelled around the world - Houles fringe and olive green silk! Yummy. The bureau plat sat on a leopard carpet and the white damask chairs and sofa looked brilliant against the faux boisery I painted. I bought a suite of what I though were 19th century Louis XVI dining chairs. I was ripped off! Mark was furious with me, and for years remarked on the chairs, which I still have if we ever get them out of storage in Los Angeles. Gilt stamped cognac leather on creamy white frames.



My favorite spot in San Francisco is Sutro Park. There is a statue of Diana left on one slope of what used to be formal flower gardens. It is in disrepair and the stag at her side has lost a leg. It was our 'mini honey-moon' to drive to the park after our wedding at City Hall. (Mayor Newsom's grand gesture!) When the fog comes into the park, amongst the great and towering cedars, I love to wander from the view of the crashing sea to Diana's statue and beg her to bring us home. Bring us home! San Diego, Paris, New York, Provence, England, San Francisco, Los Angeles - a great and glorious life has Mark given to me - I hope I've made it worthwhile for him, too. Josh Groban (glorious vocal range) sings a heartbreaking song that is on repeat while I type. "You're Still You"

Through the darkness, I can see your light. And you will always shine and I can feel your heart in mine. Your face I've memorized, I idolize just you.

I look up to... everything you are! In my eyes you do no wrong! I've loved you for so long, and after all is said and done - you're still you. After all. You're still you!


You walk past me.... I can feel your pain. Time changes everything! One truth always stays the same. You're still you, after all, you're still you!


I look up to... everything you are! In my eyes you do no wrong! And I believe in you although you never asked me to... I will remember you and what life put you through. And in this cruel and lonely world I found one love!

You're still you, after all, you're still you...

I love you, Mark! Darling Mark.

l'Etoile Antinous

Bust of Antinous, Digital Photo, 1999, D. Larson

Starry, Starry Night

Day after day is a struggle of the heart, the mind and the soul to somehow find a way to live together in harmony and beauty within the temple of of my body. I find the ability to juggle what the world requires and what my spirit seeks and what my heart desires a battle which is never won, never lost and never ending.

I can never seem to live without the past and the future, though neither exist. They are only ghosts in the mirrored halls of my mind. They flit here and there, haunting with regret or promising happiness, and while I listen and watch the ghosts I forget that they exist not at all; there is only this very moment, second, some tiny unnamed particle of existence smaller yet. What a marvel is an intellect, that shrouds my pain or paints brightly glowing pictures of nothing. How do I leave the dreaming and the hope and the cherished remembrances to live in the now. When and where is now?

I live to find Beauty. The beautiful is all I seek - for it is all I know. Beauty takes so many forms; the feeling of silk upon your skin or the breathlessness of an orgasm in your lovers arms or the light of faith in God. It is the collection of objects which make a well loved room, the paint upon a canvas and the notes of a melody winding in and out of your eardrum and into your soul. The kiss of a friend. The sharp crisp breath you draw in winter and see as mist upon the air is beauty, a single leaf: the tiny feline carcass still warm with the fleeting spirit of my dearest friend is beauty, too. I grasp Beauty tightly for it flys like an arrow shot from the bow and when it strike your heart it wounds with such amazement and joy, pain and sorrow.

The last moment I saw my friend she knew that I had finally seen her through the darkened glass as she hastened to be in from the winters chill, and in this great haste to greet me, to run to the beauty she saw in me, silly child, she slipped. She slipped. She looked with such surprise as she slipped, such surprise that anything could take us from each other... She had utter faith in me, how carelessly she loved!

How careless I was with her beauty.

The fragility of all which is beautiful is why we seek it, I know. Perceiving a crystal glass will shatter or a fire shall consume a forest or that our loved ones may be taken without a breath full drawn; beauty is beautiful for it is fleeting. Remember me, it cries, remember me! I will still be here as long as you want me, as long as you hold me, in your memory; just remember me!

Remember me. So cry my ghosts.

Nihil Obstat?

A dear and generous friend has reminded me today that God often chooses for us where we are 'planted' in life and asks only that we 'bloom' in that unique spot. I am reminded of the parable of the seeds: we all land on different soils. Some are rocky and some are rich and fertile - yet we are still asked to bear fruit. (Whew! Is there one original sentence in there!)

I mention these bibical parables, despite jumbling at least a couple together, for I have recently had to close the door to a relationship which means a great deal to me. It is not easily done, for I genuinely respect and love this person. And I believe to some extent this person attempts to love me; but can't quite.

You see, when one loves a person one knows that this person has failings; sometimes lifelong failings which are not easily changed or resloved. This is true of all persons no matter the arena of the fault. But this is all blah, blah, blah. Anyone with life experience who attempts to have even minimal self knowledge understands this, don't they?

So, why must one resolve with some people to say "No more, not again. Good-bye"? There is only one reason. The individual you are leaving can never see anything that is good or decent in you. You can never earn their respect and you will never receive their genuine love. They may proffer a hand, but it is only there to explore whom you are, for a time, until they can find the reason why they cannot forgive you, trust you or love you. When such a person reveals this to you about their motives you must, I believe, cut that person out of your life. The relationship is cancerous and can never bring about anything healthy, creative, vibrant or loving. One simply finds oneself constantly having to defend and explain ones core being - and more than that, and this is what is crucial - always finding that this person sees nothing, absolutely nothing beautiful in that essential you.

You have no control over this person's views or beliefs about you. When the beliefs are set, they are set. Like cement. It is something like the cliche of the 'first impression'. Their impression is negative and always shall it be. And, so, when you realize that is how an individual now sees you, when you misstep and the reaction is an all out lethal attack upon you, I believe in a swift retreat. Surgery, if you will. You must end the relationship. Cut quickly and well.

It is painful to do so, but you must sever the tumor or you will probably not survive. Worse, though, that you do survive and utterly surrender to being damaged. Capitulate to what someone else believes you to be: the least and most repugnant person a mind can create? If you allow this circumstance for yourself, if you come to believe what others say you are you will vanish. The person in you whom is good and decent, who tries to better his faults, who is special, loving, creative, genuine and unique will indeed die. The relationship has become diseased and all the explanations, pleadings and hopes for understanding of whom you are and desire to be will fall upon that rocky soil.

Pick yourself up, brush yourself off and run. Run to the arms of those who believe in you, even when you stumble and make a fool of yourself; there you will find both hands outstretched to lift you up and bring you near and embrace you fully, without reserve. Those people are your family, even if you share not one drop of the same blood.

It is not easy to see through another's faults, to be fair, especially if those faults have injured you, perhaps deeply; but to be a friend, a parent, a brother or sister or spouse - to truly love another person - you must. When you can no longer see the good of a person, well, than you no longer can offer them life or hope. Despair is a hellish legacy, as we are taught, literally.

I believe that the few individuals I have had to leave behind for my own sanity are good men and women. They have their own struggle with belief in themselves, just as I do. I may well have failed them - failed to help them to see the very best of themselves. I am deeply sorry for this and I ask their forgiveness. I should not wish and do not want to injure anyone in such a manner. Please forgive me, if any of you are reading this now.

But also please know that no one, neither you or I, can spend a lifetime apologizing for whom we are by nature and personality. None of us can ever know all another person has experienced which makes them whom they are today. Perhaps those who manage to love us as we are can somehow understand and see enough of our journey to say:

"Wow! That fellow is a pretty amazing and marvelous guy, despite this and that, and I really WANT and NEED them to be a part of my life!"

I believe that is the requirement of loving someone. It doesn't happen nearly as often as you might think. And it doesn't happen just because you may be related. That, of course, is the most painful reality. We grow up believing that as part of a family we will always be loved by our own blood relatives. Not so, not even possible. The first time that ever 'hit home' for me was the day I first saw the film, Ordinary People. The primary character, a young man, unloved by one of his parents because, well, just because, despairs and attempts suicide. His phsycatrist tells him something to this effect: "Don't blame her for loving you as much as she is able." In other words, it is her limitation, hers alone. He cannot change her, no matter how much he wishes to be loved by her. This is the truth for each of us. We can none of us alter another's perception of whom we are, only they may choose to do so.

I would like to believe, and do hope, that nothing is impossible to change. I believe that Christ can bring about the seeming impossible. I am open to it, I hope. But for now I find myself overly vulnerable to some people; my own belief in myself is fragile and my self-esteem is easily crushed. When you are told over and over agin that you have little intrinsic value you may well begin to belive it - we far too often become what we are told we are. Presently, I see my own failings as if they are great flashing neon lights, blinding me to any other reality about my person. The people I allow in my life now must be those who see beyond my obvious and many faults and perceive the man of worth beneath. He is there, too, I'm told. I need to believe in him. I want to see him bloom.

An Open Letter for My Joy Belin

Dearest Daughter Mine, I've been thinking about you all day today and hope that you are feeling well and are happy. I think of you every day, but today I feel as though you might be sad, and so I'm sending you in this note a huge big squeeze of a bear hug and lots of smoochy kisses! (That should frighten you out of your being blue, at the very least!) I am still being silly and cry each day several time about our dear Miss Mint. I know that you will understand that just hearing your voice sometimes takes me back to our years together on Arista Drive, when Mint first came home. I remember your being in your car seat in the back of the Mercedes after dance class and you were excited because I had told you in school that there was a surprise in the car for you. When we arrived at the car the yet unnamed Peppermint Melissa had gotten out of her box and was underneath the drivers seat in the electric motor! I was so excited and so worried that I wouldn't be able to coax her out and she's be injured. You were still in your ballerina costume and were very excited, clapping, giggling and laughing - and when I told you that you were to name her and that she was yours (I did try to let go of her!) you laughed and tried to climb out of your seat. At last P.M. came out and she went right up to you and started purring. She would climb in your lap on the drive home and then climb out and crawl up the seat to my shoulders. We had such fun taking her home together - it's a wonder I didn't have an accident for I was looking at you most of the drive! All those years ago, my darling daughter, and how I miss those fanciful times of taking care of you - yes, even when you would lose your dinner in our bed at night. Each memory is etched in my mind like a reel of a motion picture. Do you remember the Christmas she had her kittens and how they climbed the 17' tree in the entry? At least they couldn't knock it over? I think it was Rascal who especially liked to climb and he would weave in and out of the big wooden nutcrackers and the sparkling glass and everything tinkled. I was so proud and happy that you and Daddy were my family. I still am, darling girl, I still am. I am told you will be coming to visit soon. Please please do - and please, dearest one, consider coming home to stay. We can get you into a good school in NYC and also help you with contacts in the music business or whatever work you hope to do. But come home. I would so love to be able to take care of you once more in this lifetime. Besides, in April, a new kitten is arriving. She will be one of the Chartreux kittens in the photos below. Two litters, a month apart in age. I can't promise I'll be any better about sharing, but I will try! I am thinking of calling her Pamplemousse... but at least if not that her name must be French. All My Love, Vous

The Vanity of Queens

I've been given the impression by a number of persons in the last few months that having being a homemaker and someone who has worked without public recognition or a substantial income for many years is somehow not "up to par". Well, just as my own bigotries get the best of me, as I think they do all of us at times, their is no shame in having been a parent to a chid not my own for seventeen years or providing her and her father with a home that was and is the best that I can make.

Despite this belief, apparently by many, that I have somehow led a life of luxury, and then not of my own hand, I will find that both are far from true. Mark and Joy would not have known the life they had with me if I were not the individual I am, having put to use the talents I have been given. Most of our 'wealth' was 'smoke and mirrors' and the devices I used to help make Mark successful and appear successful are the fruits of my own education; some public and much self-taught. Mark indeed brought in the bulk of, though certainly not all, the income we have had, and still every penny I have had in my name has been given to our household. But more than this is the time I gave, which did not allow for a viable outside career of my own; and this time was not wasted.

I have a spouse who, however misguided in his fondness for me, loves me more today than when we first met and is true to me. And I have a daughter who is beautiful and charming, well educated in all things of value: learning, faith, politics, arts, science, independent and critical thinking; wary of undo authority and loving and open as far as is sensible.

As with most spouses who stay at home I have observed in other couples who have both spouses working outside the home an attitude of jealousy for a life they seem to think is not arduous or challenging, but almost it apparently seems to them, must be an easy and undemanding existence of relaxation and amusement. I do not understand this thinking process, for whether one drives a Mercedes or a Ford, or lives in a great house or lowly apartment (and we've had both) the duties of running a home never end. My spouse wished for a home in which a parent was home at all times - and so I gave it to him.

I am proud of the works I have accomplished in my life, whether they are known to others or not. Yet the constant questioning regarding my lifestyle has led me to at least remind those who may see the grass as greener in my yard to remain content with what they have earned. I presume it is what they wanted. I certainly have labored for what I could never have hoped for and yet have indeed earned: a family of my own and a life full of treasured memories of embracing the world and what it has to offer.

I sometimes forget this space is not a diary of my own thoughts and frustrations, private from the world. Rather it is a open testament of how I have and do live. So, for those of you whom have seen the dark side of my person, the self pity and cruel parts of my nature, remember you may well have them in abundance yourselves; merely rearranged to support your own theory of how life is or should be; and what is right or wrong, kind or mean spirited, good or evil. Most of the failings we each have as individuals become a life long struggle to change.

I have learned to be caustic, untrusting and on the offensive against most of the world. That is a sad thing, yet at times it preserved my safety and the safety of those I love. Perhaps I shall do better one day, or perhaps not. Yet I will persist in the belief that I have done more good than harm and that recognizing my errors is more than most people e're achieve.

It is a sad thing to utter unkindnesses about others, yet perhaps it is not just simple bigotry but a knowing understanding of how you have and will be threatened and hated for whom you are by nature. It is a Christian belief to turn the other cheek - it is sometimes a survival technique to not - and sometimes I choose to survive.

An Apology

To anyone offended by my posting of the 19th of this month, my apology. It has been deleted and rightly so.

Miss Mint Hath Died & Left Me

Here my darling love, lies, wrapped in her cashmere Burberry muffler, a favorite snuggle spot since it was purchased at Harrod's in London so long ago. It breaks my heart to know she is dead in this photo, her soul having left for Heaven.



The glorious Fire Parrot Tulips were Mark's gift to her memory and they are as bright and cheerful as any she played with in Amsterdam, often chewing them and batting at them when she was bored. How I wish she were here and bored now. This horrid dark hole into which I have been thrust would be at least lighter if she were here to snuggle and press to my breast. How many time that breast stiffled my sounds of weeping and sopped up the tears I let fall. Oh, God, Thou art unkind to deprive me of my solice upon this earth too soon. What is there left worth living for? Naught that I can see, naught that I may bear with grace or dignity. All goodness hast now past into Hades for my soul however bright my dear Pepper's soul may shine upon Elesian Fields I can only clamor, lost amongst the crags and dark black slippery stones of the river bed of Styx. My soul is lost is despair, wandering in this unholy place, it cannot go forward - yet - yet will not return to the light of Apollo in his chariot nor even Diana in her softer glow. I do not wish it anymore. I wish only to lay down amongst the others whom are dead and sleep that sleep which from no one awakens again. Let my heart's pain be numbed and silenced of the beating of despair.

Oh heavenly Gods of yore; Antinous, you especially, hear my plea. As thou were lost to thy Hadrain and He enshrined you throughout the world and deified you, please also take my darling chatelain, Pepper, the most precious soul of all of Egypt and the Nile and raise her to be a Star, affixed as was Chiron in His pain by Zeus, that at least I may see her each night above the brow of the river's bridges, above the cities skyscrapers, above the planes which wing and the satellites which spin , always higher into the heavens unto the planets where she will be crowned princess of good will, and, my star, shine soft in splendor evermore.

New Years 2006

Until We Meet Again My Sweetness & Light

This is the last photo I took of Miss Mint and myself, about 4 days ago is all and yet it seems long ago in another life.

Miss Mint fell from our balcony eight floors tonight and died. I have been holding her for two hours and my grief is so great I think I shall die. We'll have her body cremated tomorrow and then keep her earthly remains with me always. She is now with Jesus and romping and playing full of life and love in heaven. I wish I were with her! I really do. She has been my true, steadfast and dearest friend for sixteen years, almost as long as Mark and I have been married. I know if you two get to heaven before me that you'll look her up and hold her tight, so tight for me and tell her I'll be there soon! Mark says she died instantly and felt little fear and no pain. I wish I could say the same for me. mark was so wonderful and went down and brought her up to me, he was weeping, too, and we blessed her, wrapped her in her favorite cashmere scarf which I bought in London years ago - she was a world traveller! - and we each wrote a goodbye note to her, and I smother her with kisses and scratched between her ears. I feel so guilty that I didn't notice she was outside until she walked on this little ledge and looked throught the glass and meowed for me to let her in - when she saw me coming she got excited and turned, but the ledge was too narrow and she was to eager and she lost her footing. I saw her little face go over, and my heart sank. The parking lot was lit and I could see her frail broken body in the slush of the snow, darkening red. I couldn't even cry for a bit because I knew this could not be true, it's a bad dream, not real. Please God it can't be real. But it is, Mom. It is Dad. My most precious gift I've ever received is gone for a little while only and perhaps the shortness of the parting will see me through. I'm telling you because I know you understand when you had to put down your puppy. A little part of you dies, too. Or, maybe, a pretty big bit of you. Well, ask Jesus to snug her tightly to his Sacred Heart and scratch her at the root of her tail and especially the little glands on either side of her mouth, she likes the feeling of the secretion - which is how she marked her territories. I was her biggest territory and I loved it... she was just sitting with me an hour ago, purring, recovered from her surgery, full of life and pep. It was just about our evening playtime after dinner. She loves ribbons to chase and bags to pounce upon! Oh, God, let me awake from my dreadful nightmare.

A Place for Us

It is almost the day of Christ's birth and the world is unfit for His coming yet never needed him more. Tonight, tonight I watched West Side Story and spent most of the two hours weeping.The story is just as relevant today as when Shakespeare first penned its predessesor, Romeo and Juliet.

As Christmas Day approaces the Christian Religious Right rants and raves yet again with hatred. They do not know this is what they are wrailing with, they do not glimpse that hate is their tool. I believe they feel certain that they are protecting their faith. But Christianity needs no protection for it is real, genuine, beyond the grasp of any human end. And so, as I watched a film in which hatred triumphs over love and death is all about I see the world in which I now live memorialized in technicolor and song begging for change from the depths of the writers hearts.

Perhaps I don't make myself clear. The hatred and fear of other faiths and beliefs has led a group of Fundamentalist Christians to use this moment of Our Lord's birth to spew forth the simple fact that they have no understanding of the feast they are celebrarting. The issue, for them, is the increasing lack of the greeting 'Merry Christmas' in our commercial world. One group has even compared the loss of the use of this greeting in a commercial multicultural world as the beginning of a new Nazi regime in America. It is not so.

Merry Christmas is a Christian greeting which may hold no meaning and perhaps even offend those of other beliefs. There is no wrong or evil in understanding and respecting our brothers and sisters differences by choosing to say instead 'Seasons Greetings' or 'Happy Holidays'. Several other faiths celebrate different feasts at this time of year. It is simply good manners - manners and respect for customs that Jesus Himself understood and gave credence to, for He admonished His Mother for asking Him to stray from decorum at the wedding feast at Cannan and he understood the Roman Centurions request not to enter the warriors home, yet still cured his son while praising such faith; He only once strayed from the respect of others and that was in a just rage overturning the money changers tables who insulted the sanctity of His Father's House. Yet, here we are two thousand years later and the issue of import in this country is the fear that somhow our Christian faith can be stamped out by respecting others. I can only believe that Jesus must be weeping, too. I'm certain that He is little concerned with whether a Wal-Mart greeter utters 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas'. The world of sales is not of much import to our Lord.

Courtesy is a blessing, not an abomination. We are not asked to withhold our greeting of Merry Christmas from those we love for to share it especially with those whom we know to be of our own faith enhances not diminishes its meaning. Why do we wish to make others ashamed of their beliefs, their cultures? Jesus would not do so, He crossed those barriers as with the woman at the well. That is His example to us, how can we do less?

Yet we do less and we use his birth not to celebrate the coming of our Saviour but to politicize God and generate fear in our country of foreigners and their religions. Just as the Puerto Ricans and the Polish feared and hated each other in West Side Story.

A place for us. A place for everyone. Love conquers all these fears and doubts. Jesus conquers them and He does so with His defenselessness as a newborn babe that relies on OUR protection; how do we forget this, how can we?

It is personal, I know. A place for us.A place for Love. Somewhere, someday. Please God. A place for my fundamentalist brother and sister whetther, Christian or Muslim, Buddist or Jew.. A place for those of the same sex to love without fear, for my dear Mark and me. A place for Jews and Palestinians to extend a hand of friendship and not a bomb or gunshot. A place for and Iraqi and an American to live together in peace without Jhiad and premetive strikes. Does such a world have a possibility? I weep with hope that it is so.

And so in my home I will wish Merry Christmas to my family and to those whom share my belief and love of Jesus - and to those whom I do not know I shall proffer a non-demoninational greeting of the season so that I may respect that their love of God may be expressed in different words.

If I do so, will those of good heart of other beliefs not do the same for me - and you?

Tonight, tonight!

An Open Letter to My Father

Dear Dad,

I read the letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons as soon as Ratzinger published it, as well as the new document/instruction about gay seminarians and priests - I always read both sides. And I've read what the L'Observator Romano has had to say as well as listening to (one too many) homilies by right-wing priests and bishops. I've read all the Churches teaching about homosexuals and find it arrogant, ill informed, deliberately attempting to confuse homosexuals with pedophiles, and most disturbingly the deliberately unloving and un-Christ like alienation of an entire group of the Faithful in a most politically advantageous position for the Church. If the Inquisition's devices, teachings and motives had been defended by the teaching of infallibility they would just as easily have been horrifically defended by the Church (In fact if you 'Google" for 'Spanish Inquisition' these days you will find more neo-conservatives defending the Inquisition (much as neo-nazis defend the purity of the Third Reich) even denying that torture took place (just as some GOP senators say gays were not massacred by the Nazis and that it is an invention of the liberal left.

I suppose my error is to hope, when I feel particularly despondent about my Church abandoning me and my gay brothers and sisters to civil discrimination and abuse and weep at the tacit approval given by the Church leaders in their silence for the violence of both the tongue and the 'sword' (translate: ropes, pick-up bumpers, piles of burning tires, Wyoming fences, baseball bats, hangings, home evictions, job firings, refusal to end attacks on gay youth in our schools, pension and SS benefit refusals, hospital visitation refusals, inheritance refusals, job firings, associations with the destruction of the WTC to hurricanes in New Orleans and Florida, the destruction of the Sacrament of Marriage and the family (I find heterosexuals have been doing just fine on destroying marriage and the family quite on their own!) and all of the other absurd and revolting justifications given to the attempt to push us out of sight and deny us civil rights, even by desecrating our Constitution, and now no place in the Church even if you play by the Church's rules all very nauseating, vile, repulsive and very, very sinful. This Pope and this hierarchy will have a great deal to answer for before God. Silence equals death, and the Church's play at politics in the West against equality for us, (while, incidentally, denying equality for the poor in the third world and calling priests and religious there guilty of liberation theology and forbidding political activism) a severe case of 'having your cake and eating it too'.

Under this pope and under his influence during the last pope's papacy a shrill high cry of Hate masked as a holy song of Truth has filled the Basilica of St. Peter's and is reverberating throughout the world Church. John Paul the Second has undermined the work of John XXIII with Ratzinger at his side spewing forth venomous false piety from the side of his evil mouth.

St. Joan of Arc faced a corrupt Church as have many other great saints throughout the ages. Perhaps we will be sacrificed now as these saints have been, as the Jews were by the Church to Hitler, as so many innocents were upon the rack for four centuries in Europe. The pope lightly slaps the hand of Gorge Bush for an unjust war in Iraq while underwriting his re-election in the United States with pastoral letters on how to vote. Now the inquisition continues with a fancy renaming of the Office of the Inquisition and a new set of 'heretics' to martyr. I have been frightened and silenced by the Church too long and when I see evil at work must now speak out about it. Ratzinger has in his search for power in and of the world brought the money changers to the temple steps and I have every belief and hope that Jesus will overturn the tables and scatter the hate-mongers and their hypocrisy.

Until He does I will obey the teachings of not being able to receive Him in Holy Communion, of weekly Mass, of confession and all the beliefs I have been taught lovingly, most especially these two: that the Church is the People of God, (even us fags), and that God is Love, first and foremost. I pray for the pope that he may remember not the Nazi teachings of His youth nor continue to depend upon his mecurical need for a closed box of rules without love or compassion for ALL of Christ's (and therefore his) flock and that, perhaps even this Christmas remember Christ's admonition to those who would not work on the sabbath to save a man's life (the paraplegic): for his silence has justified our brutal murders worldwide. This pope forgets in his splendid halls and robes the struggle of those who must live under constant attack in the world, including even Mark and me in America - or should I say especially America as it is rewritten by Bush, his money grubbing cronies and the Saudi Royals - much less the millions in Africa, China and India dying of AIDS while condoms are condemned - or youths being hung, imprisoned and/or physically mutilated in the Middle and Far East for having been given by God the gift of their homosexuality.

America must be a democracy and in doing so must serve all faiths and all citizens - she cannot be a protestant Christian country any longer and fulfill the Constitution. Every judge is an 'activist' whether liberal or conservative. It is their job to be so and interpret the laws of our great country for the present society in which she finds herself.

The Catholic Church must remember Charity is her first concern and all else is secondary, for this is the teaching of Jesus in the New Testament, which REPLACES the Old Testament. When She returns to the humility of Francis of Assisi and abandons her new quest for influence and power in this world her flock will return, Those of us in the first world who benefit from education can no longer say the world is flat and the sun and planets revolve around us or that God is incapable of instituting evolution; nor can we say any group of men and women created by God are by their nature, given by God, "intrinsically disordered" or "morally evil" simply by this 'accident' of birth. If we do we might as well say again that slavery is justified because the black man is by nature inferior to the white. Homosexuality is my gift from God while it is my Cross, but like all Crosses this one is only a Cross because of other men's ignorance and fear.

Love,

Donnie

Amaryllis!

World AIDS Day

World Aids Day has just passed and what have I done to help? Well, not very much. Battling this disease for fifteen years has taken a toll. The last few days when I should have liked to be connected with my brothers ans sisters whom are PWAs I've found it is a challnege, sometimes beyond my coping skills, to just take the medications every time they are required. I suppose this is a product, at least in part, for a soft upbringing in the West. So much is just given to us in the industrialized world and we forget what poverty, true poverty, is really like. A beautiful film titled Yesterday was shown on HBO the last few days. It is about a small bu beautiful African family and the struggle of a mother, dying of AIDS, to fight the stigma f her also infected and dying husband, her strength in seeking help against odds to insure her daughter's survival, which make booking an appointment here in NYC with an AIDS specialist (not a simple task) seem as if it were of no consequence or difficulty at all - and perhaps it isn't.Perhaps I add the burdens it seems to entail myself.

Not entirely. It is an upward fight to receive medical care in the United States, especially on an income which is insufficent for independance from charities and welfare in order to stay alive. Mark has taught me that one must fight the system, which is in place to allow those whom are a burden, to die. So, with his great help, we have done so for nearly two decades, beating the odds time and time again. yet, I can only feel ashamed of my worry and sckeptasism when i see how so much of the world has literaly no way to win against this disease. A disease which is managable if one has access to medication and the medical community. I am angry when i see people, such as the African family illustrated in the film, die wastefully and uselessly for a manageable disease. yet, how does one efect change?

Mark and I fight, and it is a fight, to maintain our health; secure the medications which are unafordable to us, as well as the treatment at hospital and with our doctors. Sometimes it seems almost strongarm techniques are needed to survive, for to be pleasently quiet and humble in demeanor will insure one's death. All of this costs tens of thousands of dollars for us yearly. Without ADAP and APLA and like organizations fighting constantly for our benefit no personal strategy or effort upon our part would have kept either of us living to date. So, you must fight for the funding and for the access. It takes so much time. It is no wonder so many of my gay friends give up and die. And with this a fact in the West, imagine how futile it must seem to a young mother in Africa or India, nations we send even less help than we do to care for or own though these countries have hundred thousands of such PWAs.

As Asdvent continues it becomes simply a duty to prepare for Christams with a solemnity, stillness and fall of gentle tears, begging with hope to the coming Child, that inHis Love and Mercy he will open the hearts and coffers of the world to save each precious life.