Sex in Power

I found it! I found it! I found the elusive chimera, that rare creature thought to be mythological by so many for so long!

I found good news! Bless your heart, Andy Towle!

Take THAT, Pope Benedict Arnold

Some years ago I converted to Catholicism. I may have mentioned I’m a serious masochist before. But I’ll admit it; there are parts of the faith I suck at. Believing in hell for example. Never could pull that off. I’m more in line with what Company of Thieves says about such things. “We are all our own devil… and we make this world a hell.”

But one of the reasons I hopped on board and started participating as a lector in my church is the wonderful, loving, wise priest who listened to me and understood my need to confess. As a long time Vincentian monk, he was part of the really old school movement for social justice in the church, now being denied and shit on by the likes of Glenn Beck. When I say old school, I mean several centuries old, though he was also a huge proponent of Romero’s liberation theology.

True, I was politely asked to leave by the new priest after that wise man passed on. He was fine with me coming back to the church after transition, but not during. Couldn’t afford to alienate people. Make them uncomfortable. Services no longer required. I didn’t give up the faith though. Just the church.

And this is the church we’re probably used to hearing about nowadays. The church that kicks people out, decides who’s Christian and who isn’t, often while protecting pedophile priests. These things are both entirely real and, as my students might say, “some ol’ bulllllllshit”.

But by heaven, it is NOT all of us. When the Denver archdiocese removed a young girl from their school, not for being gay mind you, but for her PARENTS being a lesbian couple, Christians stood up. And they’re still standing up. They’re telling their own leadership that this is not Christlike. That this is not acceptable.

And I’ll be damned (likely for many reasons) if there isn’t more evidence of good people in community reaching out to do good things. As an update to previous posts on Mississippi and Utah respectively, we get examples of honesty and love being rewarded and hypocrisy being exposed.

Constance McMillen and ALL her peers will get their prom, due to a couple big donors, even as the facebook page created to support her and her girlfriend has garnered 250,000 followers.

And those fine upstanding gents in Utah who spend their days thinking up new and creative ways of strangling civil liberties? The pharisees out west are “shocked” and “stunned” by one of their own confessing to a skinny-dipping excursion some years ago with a minor.

I need to add a couple things here for balance. I know as a blogger I don’t really have a responsibility to be fair in the way journalists might. It’s just my own ethics that beg for at least lip service.

Truth is, if we believe people can change, that they can learn from mistakes, then I think any ethical adult would have to admit that there’s going to be more to this Utah story than the scandal. We need to listen to the grown woman’s story and his. We need to extend what we’re so often not given ourselves: the chance for forgiveness and healing. It seems like the world could use a lot more of that in general.

But it doesn’t necessarily mean we need to extend them legislative authority while a legitimate question about their ethics remains unanswered. I have no illusions of being voted in as Texas governor as a sex worker. Maybe Illinois governor, but not the Lone Star.

For now though, I’m just gonna bask in the fact that there’s still a great big chunk of hope out there, growing in the hearts of loving people, that we can all take a bite of. I’ve even given the flying monkeys the day off.