The fact no one lik to adm: many gay men uld jt have easily been straight | The Spectator

Contents:

• ANDREW GARFIELD FACG BACKLASH FOR SAYG HE'S GAY 'WHOUT THE PHYSIL ACT'
• THE GAY CHURCH
• ANDREW IS GAY HA
• NYC MAYOR HOPEFUL ANDREW YANG SLAMMED BY LGBTQ GROUP FOR ‘CRGE’ MENTS CLAIMG GAY PEOPLE ARE A ‘SECRET WEAPON’
• SOLDIER LEAV LEGACY MUCH LARGER THAN 'HE WAS GAY'
• THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT
• ANDREW YANG, LOOKG FOR ENDORSEMENT, OFFENDS GAY DEMOCRATIC CLUB

ANDREW GARFIELD FACG BACKLASH FOR SAYG HE'S GAY 'WHOUT THE PHYSIL ACT'

While answerg qutns about his role the ongog London productn of Angels Ameri, the 33-year-old actor allegedly stated that he is “a gay man right now, jt whout the physil act – that’s all, ” acrdg to Bra’s Gay Tim magaze. Garfield plays Prr Walter — a young gay man livg wh AIDS 1980s New York Cy — the revival of the Tony Khner play, a part he said he prepared for by watchg RuPl‘s Drag Race. In the Uned Stat, however, where there are 37, 000 prits, no pennt study has found fewer than 15 percent to be gay, and some have found as many as 60 percent.

A church that, sce 2005, bans prits wh “ep-seated homosexual tennci” and officially teach that gay men are “objectively disorred” and herently disposed toward “trsic moral evil” is actually posed, ways very few other stutns are, of gay men. The llapse of the closet public and private life the past three s has ma the disproportnate homosexualy of the Catholic prithood much ls easy to hi, ignore, or ny.

This cultural and moral shift has not only changed the nscns of most Amerin Catholics (67 percent of whom support civil marriage for gay upl) and gay prits (many of whom are close to qutg) but also broken the silence that long shroud the subject.

THE GAY CHURCH

“I replied wh another qutn: ‘Tell me, when God looks at a gay person, do he endorse the existence of this person wh love or reject and nmn this person? ” In the fal draft of the 2014 Synod on the Fay, Francis clud explic mentn of the “gifts and quali” of homosexuals, askg, “Are we pable of welg [them]? Alarmed by the possibily that divorced and remarried people might be weled as well as gays, tradnalists lnched a fierce rearguard mpaign agast the new papacy, wh a foc on what some lled a “Lavenr Mafia” nng the church, and broke new ground nnectg this directly to the horrifyg revelatns of sex abe that me to light 2002.

ANDREW IS GAY HA

In creasgly direct ways, they have argued that the root of the sndal was not abe of power, or pedophilia, or clerilism, or the distortive psychologil effects of celibacy and stutnal homophobia, but gayns self. “There is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even wh the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root, ” the Amerin rdal Raymond Burke clared Augt. “It is time to adm that there is a homosexual subculture wh the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreakg great vastatn, ” he wrote.

“If you’ll perm me, what the church needs now is more hatred” of homosexual sexual behavr, “a s so grave that cri out to heaven for vengeance. ” Michael Hichborn, head of the ge-right Lepanto Instute, lled for a “plete and thorough removal of all homosexual clergymen om the church … It is gog to be difficult and will likely rult a very ser prit shortage, but ’s fely worth the effort.

NYC MAYOR HOPEFUL ANDREW YANG SLAMMED BY LGBTQ GROUP FOR ‘CRGE’ MENTS CLAIMG GAY PEOPLE ARE A ‘SECRET WEAPON’

Here, seemed, was a pedophile and an abive gay man, at the very apex of the church, known to be sexually active wh semarians, protected by his peers, and tolerated for s by many the hierarchy, cludg the last three pop.

New onle media anizatns — led by Brebart-style webs such as LifeSe News and Church Milant — now routely pounce on any cints volvg gay prits and have an fluential dience the Vatin. As a rult, almost all gay prits are closeted, for fear of beg targeted or termated, which mak them uniquely barred om enterg the discsn. At one pot as we spoke the next day the hospal, he was greeted by a woman who asked for an on-the-spot nfsn and he shooed me asi; later I met an anguished gay man om an ultra-Catholic fay he was unselg; and for a few hours on Sunday morng, he was wh the wife and teenage sons of a dyg man.

SOLDIER LEAV LEGACY MUCH LARGER THAN 'HE WAS GAY'

It is that ntext of nurse to patient, pastor to flock, that today he manag his nflicts as a gay prit.

It has bee a double stigma: targeted by the hierarchy for beg gay and by the general public for beg pedophil.

THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT

Many of the people I spoke to, Catholics and non-Catholics, about the subject of gay prits rolled their ey and asked about the abe of children. The news environment is saturated wh stori about sex abe — and rightly so — yet there are hardly any public exampl of the overwhelmg number of gay prits who would never dream of preyg upon the powerls.

Many good gay prits, of urse, fail om time to time, breakg celibacy nsensual adult affairs or trysts. “But how do you e to a posive unrstandg of your sexualy when the church won’t say you even have a sexual orientatn, jt ‘same-sex attractn’ or ‘ep-seated homosexual tennci’?

” After the 2005 ban on gay prits, Father Mike beme attracted to nversn therapy and unrwent a year and a half of tryg to be cured of beg gay. For example, as the late historian John Boswell monstrated his groundbreakg, ntroversial book Christiany, Social Tolerance, and Homosexualy, a fourth-century Christian wrer, John Chrysostom, attacked the lears of the church for beg too acceptg of same-sex love and even sex: “Those very people who have been nourished by godly doctre, who stct others what they ought and ought not to do … the do not nsort wh prostut as fearlsly as they do wh young men … None is ashamed, no one blh … the chaste seem to be the odd on, and the disapprovg the on error.

ANDREW YANG, LOOKG FOR ENDORSEMENT, OFFENDS GAY DEMOCRATIC CLUB

” There was nsirable Christian ncern about sex general — followg the teachg of sats Pl and Augte — but no nsens that homosexualy, if kept to tense mutual love and celibate iendship, was specifilly problematic. ” Some have speculated that Augte’s starkly Manichaean divi between the spir and the body is rooted his disgt at his own homosexual tennci.

The historil rerd, however, reveals that for all Augte’s fluence, the practice of tense homoerotic iendship among the clergy was mon over the followg centuri, pecially monasteri.

The masterpiece on the subject of “spirual iendship” was, fact, wrten by a gay man, Sat Aelred, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Rievlx England the mid-1160s. By the 12th century, prits and monks were wrg love poems to one another what Boswell scrib as an “outburst of Christian gay lerature still whout parallel the Wtern world.