From one side, I have people throwing rocks at me and accusing me of being unfair to poor Bishop Finn and to the Catholic clergy in general — accusing me of having an anti-Catholic animus that places me beyond the Catholic pale.
From the other side, I have people lobbing stones at me with accusations that I have blood on my hands for having any affiliation at all with the Catholic church, and accusing me of complicity in immorality because I believe in God.
The rocks feel the same to me, whether they come from this side or that side. They have the same effect, no matter from which side they arrive.
The hard, aggressive dogmatism that refuses to see me as a human being as it hurls the projectiles feels precisely the same to me, whether it comes from the right-wing religious direction or the equally adamant and belligerent anti-Catholic or anti-religious direction. It triggers the very same self-protective response in me that I have learned to listen to from very early in my life, as people have tried to force me to be what they wanted me to be, and not who I am.
As all this plays out on this blog site, I, and every other LGBT American, watch our lives hang in the balance at a Supreme Court hearing at which we're discussed as objects, and despised objects, at that, by some of the highest dignitaries in the land. This is not a happy situation in which to find oneself.
And so, until I feel I have recovered a bit of balance — a bit of myself, beyond the rock-hurling from various sides, the being weighed in the judicial scales with malicious intent — I'm going to take a step I haven't taken here in the past, and shut down comments for a while.
Thank you all for understanding my reasons for taking this unprecedented step.
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