“I’m Gay and I’m Catholic”: Negotiatg Two Complex Inti at a Catholic Universy | Soclogy of Relign | Oxford Amic

Contents:

• WHAT DO LOOK LIKE TO BE GAY – AND A PRACTICG CATHOLIC?
• WHAT SHOULD A GAY CATHOLIC DO?
• [TWO PRONGED] GAY, CATHOLIC, AND FEELG GUILTY
• MY CATHOLIC KID IS GAY! NOW WHAT??
• WHY CHOOSE CELIBACY? A GAY CATHOLIC SPEAKS OUT
• LIVG S? HOW GAY CATHOLICS MANAGE THEIR CONFLICTG SEXUAL AND RELIG INTI
• GAY, CATHOLIC, AND DOG FE

WHAT DO LOOK LIKE TO BE GAY – AND A PRACTICG CATHOLIC?

It was hard the sense that I'd actually always said that people shouldn't be public about beg gay, bee was not anybody's bs and I felt that would lend legimacy to this ia that beg gay is a sort of a sgle way to intify yourself: I actually still sort of hold that posn – kd of. ' I ed to joke that the only reason I ed the word 'gay' was so that I would tend to show up more on Google, which is only partially a joke, bee you know if you're gog to e the tools of technology to evangelize, then you have to be savvy about what Google is gog to fd and what isn't.

But I gus the shift maly happened as I began to approach beg more public about , bee as I beme more public I also me to ntact more openly wh people who intified as gay or who stggled wh same-sex attractn, or whatever. It's the sort of thg where people feel, and I thk rightly, that they have been nstraed to keep silent for most of their liv – and a lot of people have, whether 's nstraed by actual explic homophobia among the people that they love and/or are related to, or whether 's jt sort of a general culture unrstandg that you don't talk about this sort of thg.

' This is tratg and across as very patronizg bee the are people who don't have any sight to the experience of what is to be gay tellg you what is or is not ok to talk about, and what is and is not ok to ll yourself. I'm grateful for them not bee they 'ma me straight' or somethg, but bee they gave me a space which to work out some of my issu, many of which turned out not to be related precisely to homosexualy particular, but were jt sort of emotnal issu that need alg wh.

WHAT SHOULD A GAY CATHOLIC DO?

But on the other hand, this is dangero bee you have a lot of Christian people already assumg om the get-go that if somebody is homosexual, then they mt have var and many emotnal issu that need workg on, and that's not necsarily the se.

If the unrstandg the Christian world is that homosexualy is a "disorr, " and homosexual activy is a s, then logilly would seem like as Christians, we would want to help our fellow Christians who are "dis-orred" to be "orred. C., that would pull out of social servic the cy rather than acce to a bill that would afford benefs to same-sex spo, a qutn, too long neglected, aris for the whole church: What is a gay Catholic supposed to do life? A gay layman I know who serv an important role a dce (and even wr some of his bishop's statements on social jtice) has a solid theologil tn and sir to serve the church, but fds impossible to be open the face of the bishop's repeated disparagg remarks about gays.

Religns and homosexualy have been uneasy bedfellows for lennia, but followg the relatively recent liberalizatn of attus towards homosexualy many untri, a number of religns have eher accepted gay marriage or at least are willg to bls gay partnerships. At prent seems as though attus towards homosexualy among major religns fall to three mps: Baptists, Catholics, Evangelils, Mormons, Mlims, and Orthodox Jews fd patible wh the Bible; Epispalians, Reform and Conservative Jews, Lutherans, and Prbyterians accept gay marriage or bls gay unns; Buddhists and Hd have no official view; while Methodists are divid (and there are many other religns wh differg stanc).

[TWO PRONGED] GAY, CATHOLIC, AND FEELG GUILTY

This document mak fascatg readg as lambasts “facile theologil argument” to jtify homosexual acts (paragraph 11) and supports a posn where “homosexual persons…are lled to enact the will of God their life by jog whatever suffergs and difficulti they experience virtue of their ndn to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross (paragraph 12). If you and your nscience are nvced that your god do not nmn homosexual acts, you n pos the view that the Catholic Church will eventually e round to your unrstandg, though let hope for the sake of all gay men and women that don’t take more than three centuri to do so. Rourc were srce for a man stgglg wh homosexualy and tryg to rema fahful to the Church’s the terveng years, Catholics experiencg same-sex attractn have bee a more vol prence the the words “gay Catholic” and one of the top s to appear will be Gershom’s own blog, a blog wh the tagle: “Catholic, Gay, and Feelg Fe.

” There, the 30-somethg wrer nsirs his own experienc as a man stgglg wh same-sex attractn and tryg to live out the virtue of follows is an eded versn of a nversatn about everythg om homosexualy and Batman to poetry and football. I thk ’s immoral, for one reason, bee is trsilly closed to life and thereby distorts what the sexual act is meant to gets tricky is where we talk about the emotnal realy of homosexualy, bee some people ask me, ‘well, that’s fe if you thk that gay sex is wrong, but what about gay romance?

MY CATHOLIC KID IS GAY! NOW WHAT??

And the specific problem of silence is that if you grow up Catholic and gay, or at least if you did a few years ago when I was growg up, or before that, then the overwhelmg imprsn you get is not so much that you’re bad or evil, but ’s that you’re absolutely not allowed to talk about this. They should start by tellg somebody about , preferably a prit who is willg to talk wh them and help you thk pastors and others should do a better job of beg aware of what people are gog through regards to homosexualy?

And that is exactly the sort of suatn I alt wh growg up, which is where was sort of standard to make jok, ‘ha ha, gay people’ bee nobody we know is gay – and of urse if you hear that sort of thg all the time, you beg to thk of yourself as outsi of the realm of normal human that how you felt growg up?

WHY CHOOSE CELIBACY? A GAY CATHOLIC SPEAKS OUT

I only say that bee I’m thkg of a particular Evangelil iend of me who nstantly has to al wh – he’s gay, but believ basilly what the Catholic Church teach about homosexualy – he has to al nstantly wh people tellg him that for him to ll himself gay is for him to be embracg a s. Sce sexualy self is so eply tied to so many aspects of our personaly, and our experience as human begs, then homosexualy has very wi-reachg effects to almost every aspect of our liv, or at least as many aspects of our liv as sexualy Ameri, stereotyp on many levels associate gay men wh beg effemate. It's also te that eher many or most, or possibly all of gay men I've ever known have experienced some difficulty ftg wh other men, and very many of them have experienced what they feel is a lack of masculy themselv.

I thk the reason people are so terted homosexualy at all is bee people are profoundly terted how human begs relate to one another, and what sex has to do wh any of that – and nobody is really clear about any of those thgs right now. They are poems that exprs the ‘masculy’ of God and the ‘femy’ of God and we have to take them serly, which don't mean we n p down (exactly) what the poems are you thk a lot of the cultural nversatn gog on is not precisely about homosexualy, but about humany?

The reason I'm glad that everyone is talkg about homosexualy is that we are beg forced to nont all of the qutns, which we've need to do for a very long of me had imaged that after I me out, then there would be lots of people lg up to talk about my gayns, and that we would be talkg about all the time, and that everyone would talk about . They ed a number of strategi to rencile nflictg inti, cludg limg their relig volvement, qutng terpretatn of the doctre, unrmg prits’ thory, tryg to reject homosexual attractn, puttg tst God’s plan, g profsnal help, and seekg acceptance om clergy.

LIVG S? HOW GAY CATHOLICS MANAGE THEIR CONFLICTG SEXUAL AND RELIG INTI

Keywords: Gay, Catholic, Spirualy, Relign, Sexual orientatn, IntyIntroductnSexual inty often exists a dynamic teractn wh other self-imag such as cultural background (ethnic and/or relig), which requir that dividuals manage multiple inti (Stevens, 2004). O’Brien (2004) ed the term “double stigma” to scribe the experience of gay Christians who felt addnally rejected by other gays for beg openly relig, bee the LGBT environment remas cril and dismissive of Christiany.

GAY, CATHOLIC, AND DOG FE

Exampl of that n be found studi on lbian Christians (Mahaffy, 1996), Mlim gay Iranians the UK (Taylor & Snowdon, 2014), or Canadian gay Jews (Schnoor, 2006) is, however, ltle rmatn on how people perceive the sts of reprsg eher spirual or sexual parts of their inty, what psychologil mechanisms they e to rce rultg tra-psychic tensn, and how this affects their well-beg.

For stance, gay Jews the study of Coyle and Rafal (2001), preferred not to disclose their sexual inty wh their Jewish muny and, like muters discsed by Brekh (2003), often avoid discsg relatnships or sexualy-related issu, and kept a very low profile. Participants this rearch scribed their relig socializatn and s impact on how they experienced their homosexualy, experienced tra-psychic nflicts and attempts to rolve first thor (IP) is non-Christian and, spe livg Poland, did not have a Catholic upbrgg.

Participants perceived the topic of the study extremely meangful and were very willg to share their to meetg dividual participants, an terview gui was created wh areas to be discsed wh every participant and sample open-end qutns and prompts to explore their experienc of growg up a relig fay, disverg their sexualy, and meang attributed to homosexualy wh reference to their fah. Of participants wh themeTheme 1: Growg fah8Theme 2: Disverg one’s homosexualy8Theme 3: Experiencg a nflict Spirual dilemmas8 Fear of disappotg fay7 Anticipatg rejectn by the muny8Theme 4: Seekg peace Rcg relig volvement5 Qutng the terpretatn of the doctre4 Unrmg prits’ thory6 Tryg to reject homosexual attractn3 Puttg tst God’s plan6 Usg profsnal help5 Seekg acceptance om clergy6Theme 5: Comg-out a Catholic fay8Theme 6: Bearg the s5Theme 1: Growg FahAll participants scribed their relig socializatn at home, school, and the Church great tail. Rak and Arthur served as church mistrants and participated relig youth anizatns, tryg to embody their fah everyday life and follow Catholic prcipl distguishg what was right, moral, or sacred, and what was immoral or 2: Disverg One’s HomosexualyAll participants said that acknowledgg their attractn to same-sex was challengg and even challengg to their self-image.