I know why Stonewall happened.
First of all, l want to make one thing abundantly clear-I
view one’s sexual orientation to be the most trivial part of one’s identity
right up there with eye color and hair color.
I believe everyone who is lgbtq+ is a child of God and deserve to be
treated with the innate human dignity all human beings deserve. (In other
words-no abusing/persecuting lgbtq+ people just because they are lgbtq+, people!). I believe someone who is lgbtq+ has a right
to work in 95% of the jobs that are out there and the 5% where it would be OK to
discriminate the employer has to have a tax-exempt status and believes that God
is their ultimate boss. I don’t think someone
who is lgbtq+ should be denied housing, food, or life-saving medical treatment
for life threatening diseases[1]
or even peeing/pooping in a public bathroom because they are lgbtqi+ alone. I think Iran is wrong to sentence people to
death merely for being lgbtq+. I am just
as offended by any homophobic slurs/insults that are hurled at the lgbtq+ community
as much as they are. I at one point
even thought it was OK for same sex marriage to take place legally but for an
odd reason (I wasn’t so much in favor of same sex marriage as much as I felt a
need for legal protections of same sex couples when those same sex
relationships eventually soured and ended in same sex divorce and I’m ok with
people who aren’t ok with same sex marriage as well). In other words, I want to
make it abundantly clear I do not hate anyone in the lgbtq+ community merely
because they are lgbtq+.
Having stated all the politically correct stuff I believe in-
I’m about to write a bunch of stuff that will probably get me cancelled by the
lgbtq+ community if not society as a whole.
We are done Pride
month where we celebrate anyone/anything associated with the lgbtq+
community. The lgbtq+ community has been
around since at least biblical times with Leviticus 20:13 being perhaps the
only other bible verse a Catholic can quote verbatim besides John 3:16. This
probably means lgbtq+ Israelite community while wondering in the desert for 40
years longed to gather at places where some men could wear their mom’s tunic
& veil and play that funky lute music all night long. Ergo, clubs like the Stonewall Inn in NYC
where that lgbtq+ community could gather probably also go back to biblical
times. Back in the 1960’s when the
world was more religious, Americans wanted their legal laws to reflect their religiously
moral ones. Naturally being a homosexual
was illegal as well as immoral and you had to make sure your clothing/hairstyle
conformed to the conservative gender stereotype listed on your birth
certificate. Unfortunately, when the
NYPD decided to raid the Stonewall Inn because the club was clearly flaunting all
anti lgbtq+ laws in the state of NY on June 28th, 1969, the raid
didn’t go as planned. Filled with the
spirit of the hippie rebellion of the 1960’s the Stonewall community fought
back and won. One year later Gay Pride Day was celebrated on
the anniversary of the Stonewall riots with parades in several major
cities. Eventually the American
Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from their list of psychiatric
illnesses in 1973, the US Supreme Court struck down same sex prohibition laws
in 2003 & recognized same sex marriage in 2013. So, now someone being a member of the lgbtq+ is really no big deal, right?
Uh, why is my Catholic guilt trip suddenly rising up? Like I have this overwhelming fear that I’m
going to Hell because I’m not warning how the lgbtq+ community is going to Hell
if they don’t repent of their sinful ways?
Maybe it’s because I don’t feel confident in that optical surgery of
removing that sinful splinter from my lgbtq+ brethren’s eye with this massive
sinful 2 X 4 in my own that I still need to clobber myself a few hundred
thousand times with 1st.
I guess the reason why I haven’t gotten all fiery &
brimstoney with the lgbtq+ community is because I am a post-sexual-revolution
child and thereby been propagandized into spiritual numbness with the
philosophy of “live and let live” and course “love is love is love”. So, even though I was raised strongly
Catholic and agreed to follow all of the Catholic church’s teaching upon my
confirmation to the Catholic church, I wasn’t about to hold anyone else up to
that chaste standard. An outing I had to the Field Museum in the mid
1990’s after the Field Museum had renovated its’ famous hall of prehistoric
fossils illustrates this point of low those sexual chaste moral standards may
have fallen.
Like many a child in Chicagoland I was 1st
introduced to the Field Museum via a school field trip in the late 1970’s. The one thing that vividly stood out in my
young mind was the Field Museum’s prehistoric hallway were the brightly lit
cases full of various fossils from various epochs of earth’s history contrasted
with a darken long corridor leading guests to the highlight and brightly lit up
room of the dinosaur bones & wooly mammoth & mastodon skeletons. All seemed to be well for this prehistoric
exhibit, except well, one day back in the 1990’s the Field Museum decided the
100-year-old prehistoric hall needed a makeover. So, they made it over into a fun adventure
primarily aimed at kids. The planet’s
history of life unfolded like a children’s storybook accentuated by videos in
the exhibit done by legendary CBS 2 news anchor Bill Kurtis who presented major events in earth’s pre-history as
breaking news stories. The exhibit
started out explaining in childlike action dioramas how carbon atoms came
together to form proteins and then single cell organism and then the exhibit led
patrons past a room with a dark curtain drawn over the entrance. There was a sign above the doorway that had
just one word -sex.
Now, the Field Museum
wasn’t about to put some pornographic images of creatures having sex up for
little kids to see. No, you draw back
the curtain, entered the room and the exhibit then began to explain how life
evolved into two specific sexes-male & female and why this was good. Why?
Because two different sexes allowed different DNA to enter into a new
life form that may allow it to come up with something genetically different to
get it through the next mass life extinction that has plagued our planet since
its’ beginning.
So, before I can talk about why I know Stonewall happened, I
have to talk about how perhaps we got to that point where the prestigious Field
Museum could put a blatant sex joke aimed at adults (or at least giddy
pre-teens & teens) on full display in an exhibit primarily aimed at kids.
My alma matter is Montini Catholic HS in Lombard IL. But really Montini wasn’t another mother per
se as much as it was an alma patter.
Montini got its’ name from Giovani Batista Enrico Maria Montini but
eventually he dropped all of those names in 1963 and became simply known as
Pope Paul VI. Pope Paul VI is famous
for stating that Catholics cannot use the birth control pill for birth
control. Now, Pope Paul forbidding
Catholics from using the birth control pill was a big surprise to most
Catholics since one of the pioneers of the birth control pill was Catholic physician
John Rock. The pill itself didn’t
stop the sperm from entering the vagina or uterus. The pill just tricked a woman’s body into
thinking it was pregnant thereby preventing the egg from being released from a
woman’s ovaries. This led to a lot of Catholic bishops to concur the pill was
OK to use in the 1960’s. However, after hearing both the pro pill
arguments and the anti pill arguments Pope Paul VI realized a few things as
stated in his papal encyclical “Humane Vitate” 1. Sex is meant to reproduce a
species per God & Genesis 1:28 [i]2. Men are pigs and the pill could
lead to “……man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices,
may finally loose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical
and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as the
as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer his respected and
beloved companion” [ii]
aka the #MeToo movement (including yes, #MeToo). 3. Chastity is the best policy sometimes
even during marriage.
Obviously, with
70 million baby boomers undergoing puberty/adolescence in the 1960’s the ideal
of being chaste was frowned upon as as a bowl of borsht during that
decade. Then, you add the adding of
mass to mass media with all of them employing the old adage “sex sells”. So, you had movie studios touting the
physical attributes of a Marilyn Monroe or an Elizabeth Taylor instead of Ms.
Monroe’s or Ms. Taylor’s considerable acting talents. Speaking of Marilyn Monroe, magazines such as
Playboy came out blurring the lines between pornography and art (seriously, if
Playboy has such good articles why the need for a naked model in the center to
literally titillate a potential customer?).
So, with the so-called sexual revolution in full swing and nearly 70
million people flaunting their sexuality in public it’s no wonder a few hundred
thousand lgbtq+ people in 1969 felt that they should have the right to flaunt
their sexuality openly and publicly as well.
Except that
there were consequences of that sexual revolution. I vividly remember the fear of the AIDS
epidemic when it broke out in the 1980’s and how people were dying, especially
a lot of that lgbtq+ community of that horrible disease. Maybe God in his infinite wisdom realized
that perhaps it’s not a good idea for one man to put the most sensitive part of
his anatomy into the germiest part of another man’s anatomy. If
love is love is love then as Bishop Robert Barron frequently states “to love is
to will the good of the other as other”[iii] and
that doesn’t mean engaging in someone on a mere sexual basis. Heck, Jesus in Mathew 5:28 states
anyone who views pornography is going to Hell[iv]
and maybe the most loving thing I can think of to say is that perhaps we all
should shove our sexuality back into a closet. There is a ginormous difference between sex
and love and the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Just ask the poor victim of prostitution who, well let’s get real, men
pay her to rape and rape is hate not love.
Not to mention the bigger sin in pride month
isn’t the lgbtq+ part but the pride part.
Bishop Robert Barron recently reminded me in another YouTube
short the capital sin of capital sins is pride[v]
because “Pride turns myself into God” which is why I should never say I’m proud
of something. I should really be humble
and say “I’m grateful to God that I was born in the United States of America”
or “I’m grateful to God he gave me the skills/talent/patience to do a good job
with XYZ task,” or “Yes I’ll support the Cubs even when they suck and thank you
Lord for 2016.” So yes,
I understand in a predominately heterosexual cisgender world a need for those
who aren’t heterosexual/cisgender to express themselves. But part of me still is praying they humble
themselves in prayer before God and realize the lgbtq+ part of themselves
shouldn’t be their main focus. Their
focus should always be on others and following God’s way.
[1] I
am not 100% sure if transgender treatments would be considered life saving at
this point. And I’m Ok with someone denying
wedding cakes, flowers, swan ice sculptures, hand embossed invitations, and
catering opportunities for same sex weddings in the wedding business because
they believe marriage must take place between a man and a woman.
[i] “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful,
and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing
that moves upon the earth”
[ii] Humane Vitate Paragraph 17
[iv]
MT 5:28-But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already
committed adultery with her in his heart.
