I was at Urge Bar one night some months back and saw someone I hadn’t seen for a good couple of years. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, what-are-you-doing-these-days, and checked on each other’s drink levels before he let rip with a doozy:
“So, are you still virulently anti-church?”
I shook my head a little. “Excuse me?”
“Are you still really anti-church? I remember when you were writing for GayNZ.com you seemed to have a real chip on your shoulder about it.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond at first. For three years, between 2003 and 2006, I had been the senior writer for GayNZ.com. Many of the issues that I covered were political, and those years were the height of the debate in New Zealand around civil unions. The overwhelming majority of opposition came from religious sources: either churches, or lobby groups funded by church money.
At the Pan Pacific AIDS Conference, hosted by the New Zealand AIDS Foundation in Auckland back in 2005, I sat through session after session where discussions about how to curb the region’s burgeoning epidemic were hijacked by esoteric witterings from ministers about what Jesus would do and a complete unwillingness to face the issues of stigma and discrimination relating to a serious sexually-transmitted illness.
And while we’re on the subject of stigma and discrimination, what planet was this man living on? When it comes to discriminatory treatment by religious organisations, churches literally wrote the book on it – and quote it frequently. In fact, churches were granted an exemption (just like they’re exempted from paying tax like the rest of us) from the Human Rights Act 1993, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The churches fought for and kept their right to exclude gay men and women from their congregations and clergy based purely on their sexual orientation. And they accuse us of wanting special rights?
When I explained this to the man who I was now rapidly losing respect for, his response was quizzical and dismissive.
“Well, I’ve never had any problems with the church,” was the reply.
“You’re a very lucky man, then,” I answered.
Lest we forget, it is also religious organisations who are still the driving force behind “ex-gay” conversion programmes – long discredited by the psychiatric profession as not only unnecessary, but harmful.
During my research for a GayNZ.com piece on these, I came across two horrific stories that have never left me.
The first was about 46-year-old Jack McIntyre, a gay Christian in San Francisco who laboured for four years with ex-gay group “Love In Action” to change. After ending up in a hospital psychiatric ward, he took a lethal overdose - after giving himself Communion.
“I love life,” he said in his suicide note, “but my love for the Lord is so much greater, the choice is simple.”
The story of 32-year-old Mormon Stuart Matis is equally as haunting. He drove to his local chapel, and pinned a “do not resuscitate” note to his shirt before killing himself.
“Mother, Dad and family. I have committed suicide,” he wrote. “I engaged my mind in a false dilemma: either one was gay or one was Christian. As I believed I was Christian, I believed I could never be gay.”
Yes, there are men and women within living memory who are not only discriminated against by churches, and had their mental wellbeing adversely affected by churches, but are dead because of churches.
Dead men can’t talk, but fortunately I can.
So am I still virulently anti-church? If you want to put it that way, then yes I am. Happy to wear the badge as long as I’m still breathing.
Since the church is still, for the most part, virulently anti-me, I am quite happy to be percieved as virulently anti-them.
Any time they want to climb down off their high horse and apologise to me I am prepared to forgive ( but not forget).
After my ex became a born-again nutter and told me god was the most important thing in her life and not the kids (and certainly not me), I kind of felt like going around and removing all the nice collectables in the churches and then burn the building down. Just wanted to keep mementos to remind me of her! Then we could build some libraries, schools, theater centres, you know, useful buildings to help society that do pay taxes.
Sorry that happened to you, Rick. I think at that stage you described – religious devotion to the exclusion of family and loved ones – that it actually becomes a mental disorder in itself.
I got into so much trouble with a family member a while back for daring to suggest that the Bible is the single most dangerous book ever published. Outrage aside, they finally came to see my point when we talked about the wars and killings it incited, or the daily discrimination and abuse it promotes. Not to mention the hypocrisy of blindly following a select few ‘Laws’, but conveniently forgoing others. Giving kids a Bible to read is all good and well, but any parent who doesn’t properly teach their kids how to understand it and the context around when and how it was written are, in my eyes, just as bad as parents who neglect their kids. The Bible isn’t meant for stupid people.
I came out in July last year (at the apparently very old age of 25) and most of that was the church’s fault for instilling me with a fear of God’s vengeance, my family’s rejection and disgust and the prospect of going to hell. I didn’t even dare to say it loud until January 2011. Three years after I’ve stopped going to church. Last weekend my mum played the guilt card to get me and my brother to go to St Matthews (my dreaded coming out turned into a non-event and after hearing how the homophobic church we used to belong to didn’t like faggots around she signed up to the first gay church she could find) before he left for uni. The rituals and ceremony is a little pompous (but most of it is close to what I grew up with), but it was great being in a church where a proper intellectual pastor preached about acceptance and love for everyone.
And I just needlessly told you half my life story. But my point is that while I agree with everything you’ve just said and I generally hate the institution of churches too (God knows the Westboro Baptist Church is only there to serve as a lesson in irony), it’s not fair to condemn all of them. Some of my closest friends in the US are devout Christians too and they were the first people to embrace what most religious bigots still consider my unfortunate little affliction.
Telling your life story on here is *never* needless – thanks, mate.
I’ve always had an issue with the word tolerance, which to me reads as “to put up with through gritted teeth”. Acceptance is something that I think most GLBT people would be far happier with. Or even indifference, in some cases – like walking down the street holding hands.
preach it brother! love your blog
Was having a scarily similar, although with less graphic examples, discussion all throughout night shift with a colleague regarding the forgotten virtue of tolerance. All pun intended, Halle-fricking-luyah – wish I had this to print out then. Mind you we were both kinda in agreement.