Thought for the Day: Lewis Hyde on Maternal Virtues and Gender

[Walt] Whitman was a maternal man—a person who cares for and protects life—and the hospitals afforded him a chance to live out his maternalism, his “manly tenderness.”

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To make the wider point here, what we take to be the female professions—child care, social work, nursing, the creation and care of culture, the ministry, teaching (these last, when done by men, being done by effete men, as Vice President Spiro Agnew told us)—all contain a greater admixture of gift labor than male professions—banking, law, management, sales, and so on. Furthermore, the female professions do not pay as well as the male professions.

Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (NY: Random House, 1979): (p. 269, p. 138).

Women's Experience and the Humanization of Men

The following journal entry is from April 1990:

The scriptures often seem to use women’s experience as a critical vantage point for viewing social pretensions and power structures. E.g., Psalm 48:4-6 speaks of the haughty kings of the earth (who are male patriarchs), who think themselves impervious, being brought by divine epiphany to feel birth pangs. I don’t think the passage intends to demean women, but to imply that women know via female experience something that men ought to know, in order to be more adequately human.

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What men in this culture can talk about is limited. I listen to the philosophy department down the hall exchanging macho talk re: the latest football game. I’m reminded of that movie with John Candy and Steve Martin. They find themselves in bed together, and, not knowing that they’re in bed with another man, each wakes up affectionate. When they both open their eyes and see the other, they jump out of bed saying things like, “How about those Sox?”

I’m a real man. I talk sport.

Boring. One reason I prefer being with women—and this is true for many gay men, I suspect—is that they talk about so many more, and so many more important, things. Maybe gay men don’t have the crust from the loaf in this arrangement, after all—at least for once. At least we can talk, and talk we do.

Thought for the Day: Erik Erikson on Non-Procreative Generativity

There are individuals who, through misfortune or because of special and genuine gifts in other directions, do not apply this drive [i.e., of generativity] to their own offspring. And indeed, the concept of generativity is meant to include such more popular synonyms as productivity and creativity.

Erik Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycles (NY: Norton, 1959) (p. 103).

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I must add that as a principle [generativity] corresponds to what in Hinduism is called the maintenance of the world, that middle period of the life cycle when existence permits you and demands you to consider death as peripheral and to balance its certainty with the only happiness that is lasting: to increase, by whatever is yours to give, the good will and the higher order in your sector of the world. That, to me, can be the only adult meaning of that strange word happiness.

Erik Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity (NY: Norton, 1974) (as cited, Cheryl Merser, “Grown Ups”: A Generation in Search of Adulthood [NY: Putnam’s, 1987]. p. 205).

Gays and Generativity: The Significance of Non-Biological Generativity for the Human Community

From a journal entry dated September 1990:

People argue that homosexuality is abhorrent because non-generative. But generativity clearly occurs in non-biological, non-physical ways. When opponents of homosexuality encounter that recognition, however, they often retort that God has equipped humans to generate biologically, and that gays fly in the face of nature by not conforming to this divine biological plan. In other words, they respond with a tautology: God made human beings to procreate biologically; procreation itself proves that God made human beings to procreate. And so the assertion that God made human beings to procreate biologically must be true, because it proves itself true.

The idea struck me recently: God is the supreme model of non-biological generativity. “In the beginning was the Word”—the Word proceeds eternally from the Father, begotten, not made. Of course we birth others in non-physical ways. Gays are in the business of giving birth everywhere, in manifold ways, just as many others are in the business of giving birth who never conceive or bear a child physically. What incalculable damage does the human race do to itself when it allows generations of talented and loving people to be marginalized, shut out from contributing to society even when their gifts are apparent? What damage does the human race do to itself if it faces the ravages of AIDS on this generation of gay men with apathy or even glee that gay men are suffering and dying now, their talents, contributions, generative impulse obliterated from the face of the earth?

Thought for the Day: Thoreau on Implications of Diversity in Nature

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.

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No wonder that earth expresses itself outwardly with leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Thomas Aquinas on the Fecundity of Creation (and the Necessity of Gay Persons to Mirror God's Fecund Nature?)

These are two separate journal entries from the spring of 1990, on a similar theme:

A theological theme keeps popping into my mind. It has to do with the fecundity of creation. I have a notion that some classic theologians—Meister Eckhart? Julian of Norwich? Maybe even Aquinas?—have written on this theme. I don’t know that I’ve ever really seen this phrase: I’ve coined it in my mind to express the idea that the great diversity and richness of the created world points back to the diversity and richness of the creator.

I think this is significant as a theological grounding for Christian acceptance of sexual diversity—in accepting the much richer diversity of sexual orientation outside the bounds of natural law narrowly construed, Christians praise and acknowledge the largesse of the creator. I want sometime to study the theme of creation more specifically.

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I think I’ve written this elsewhere, but I believe Walden could be used as the basis for an interesting article on nature and homosexuality. Thoreau develops throughout the book a concept of nature as diverse, manifold, open-ended, that is at once philosophically profound and typically American (Transcendentalist).

This intersects well with the ideas I’ve sketched in previous journals on the fecundity of nature, as a basis for a gay-affirming ethic.

Brennan Hill, Paul F. Knitter, William Madges, in Faith, Religion, and Theology: A Contemporary Introduction (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third, 1990), pp. 373-4, cite Aquinas, Summa, pt. I, ques. 47, art 1, to say that the multiplicity of life forms is necessary for us to appreciate the grandeur and infinite nature of God, that God brought things into being in order both to communicate divine goodness to them, and be represented by them via all their diversity. Diversity, Aquinas thinks, is necessary because what’s lacking to one in representing God’s goodness is supplied by another.

A biocentric or creation-centered ethic of homosexuality would thus see acceptance of gays as a requisite for appreciating God’s lavish goodness, the fecundity of the divine nature.

Also apropos here is Newman, “Preface to the 3rd Edition,” The Via Media of the Anglican Church: “Still more readily will that true theology, which teaches that He ever was a Father in his incomprehensible essence, accept and proclaim the doctrine of the fertility, bountifulness, and beneficence of His creative power . . . . ” (lxxii-lxxiii).

Mr. Obama Wrestles with His Faith The President on Gay Lives and Gay Issues

As a follow-up to my post earlier today, a few notes about President Obama's recent meeting with Catholic journalists. Dan Gilgoff's God and Country blog at U.S. News and World Report recently summarized some of the president's remarks at this meeting.

Mr. Obama told the journalists the following, re: gay lives and gay struggles:

For the gay and lesbian community in this country, I think it's clear that they feel victimized in fairly powerful ways and they're often hurt by not just certain teachings of the Catholic Church, but the Christian faith generally. And as a Christian, I'm constantly wrestling with my faith and my solicitude and regard and concern for gays and lesbians.

My observations:

▪ I think it's clear that they feel victimized in fairly powerful ways . . . .

This is a misreading of the gay experience and of what underlies the current wave of repulsion against the new administration on the part of many gay citizens. Gay Americans do not feel victimized. We are victimized.

When your head is bashed in by police who tell you that the faggot is getting what he deserved, simply because you happen to be gay and in a gay bar, you're not feeling victimized. You are being victimized.

When you're a soldier harassed and eventually murdered because you're gay but have to hide that fact due to discriminatory policies, and when you appeal to the military authorities for help, but no one assists you, you don't feel victimized. You are victimized.

When your partner is dying in the hospital and you and your children are told you can't see the partner because you're in a homophobic state with homophobic laws, you don't feel victimized. You are victimized.

When you're fired solely because you are gay, you don't feel victimized. You are victimized.

When your right to marry your partner is recognized by a state's supreme court and then the citizens of that state vote to remove that human and civil right from you with the malicious and active assistance of churches, you're victimized in reality, not just in your "feelings."

When we reduce the real victimization of a demeaned group of human beings to feelings and perceptions, we let ourselves off the hook, morally speaking. Talking about how others feel victimized--rather than about how they are vicitimized--permits us to tsk-tsk and wring our hands about the hurt feelings of those poor others. This rhetoric also allows us to ignore the ways in which we can actually do something to assist those who are experiencing actual pain and actual oppression.

When a leader of a nation committed to democratic ideals engages in such rhetoric, he or she disguises the significant way in which, qua leader, he or she can do something powerful and effective to lift the oppression of a group of fellow human beings and fellow citizens experiencing unjust oppression.

▪ And as a Christian, I'm constantly wrestling with my faith and my solicitude and regard and concern for gays and lesbians.

In commenting on this statement, Dan Gilgoy thinks that the president wanted to set his faith and what the churches say about gay people over against his solicitude and regard for gay persons. If this is a correct interpretation, then Mr. Obama is implying that the churches require believers to oppose gay people and gay rights, while empathy tugs believers in the opposite direction, towards solidarity with gays and lesbians in their oppression.

This statement distorts the stance of many churches, including the president's own United Church of Christ, regarding homosexuality. There is hardly uniform condemnation of gay people throughout all churches and other communities of faith.

Many churches and faith communities have taken prophetic stances against homophobia. Prophetic groups within other churches and other faith communities whose stance is generally anti-gay resist their communities' homophobia and call for an end to discrimination.

It is also very unclear why the issue of homosexuality represents a unique exception in the thinking of President Obama. Regarding the many other issues with which he is now grappling--for example, the healthcare issue--there is a variety of viewpoints within various faith communities today, and the president does not appear to think he is compelled to respond to or incorporate all those church-specific viewpoints about these issues as he makes policy decisions.

It's only with regard to the issue of homosexuality that Mr. Obama appears to be struggling with the teachings of his and other churches. It's only in this area that he seems to have religious qualms that dictate what he thinks and does as a political leader.

Why, I wonder? What's unique, morally speaking, about the "problem" of treating gay human beings as human beings, deserving of the same rights and compassion other human beings enjoy? And if the president's mind, heart, and soul are conflicted regarding the morality of gay lives, then why his statements about his fierce advocacy for gay rights and the moral imperative to achieve equality for gay citizens?

What has changed since Mr. Obama's election to introduce such religious wrestling where his faith convictions previously led him to recognize the legitimate demands of gay citizens for an end to oppression? And why, in this area alone, should Americans who recognize that equality is a moral imperative because democratic societies are founded on that imperative bow to the will of some church folks regarding gay lives and gay issues?