MAKING ROOM: Same gender love belongs in the Roman Catholic catechism
An apologia pro vita mea (this time against a more formidable opponent, the Vatican, and although not in the majestic prose of Cardinal Newman, nonetheless an honest exposition of my truth about owning my same sex orientation)
by Tom Luce Oct. 14, 2009
Let’s see. Thirty two (32) years a virgin. Fourteen (14) years committed successfully to a celibate priesthood. Thirty-nine (39) years still faithful to my vows from my only marriage to my wife and to my family of three children. At least sixty-six (66) years same gender oriented. Whoa! Some might consider this madness. I’d like to think, though, that I’m part of a large group of humans -- and I’m writing this especially for Catholics-- who accept and live life according to the rules and achieve a reasonable amount of fulfillment in life. But I’m not going to be completely fulfilled and content until one rule in the catechism is changed: no same gender married love is allowed.
I’ve set these stats down not as some machismo braggadocio. Throw in a Licentiate in Sacred Theology and a couple of masters degrees, one in counseling, one in teaching French. No, these are the facts which I feel authorize me to campaign at age 71 to change the rules and make room for same gender orientation as a God-given nature in the Roman Catholic church; to gain the right to marry in the Roman Catholic church for people like me who have been deprived of this right and, worse, who have been persecuted for being who they are, and still being persecuted now by my church as it sticks to an outmoded taboo.
Now, looking backward with a lifetime of experience, degrees in theology, counseling and languages, lots of experience in sexuality, both personal and professional, I can pinpoint my early awareness of same gender attraction to about the 4th grade--pictures on the back of comic books of Charles Atlas, the guy who gets back at bullies kicking sand in his face through “dynamic tension” exercises to build amazing muscles on his body. I remember distinctly to this day a couple of local male high school basketball players who attracted me by their faces and their bodies. But my best friend of those days, a male, a pip-squeak, wasn't attractive physically. Bodies with well developed muscles and distinctly male proportions--wide shoulders, big biceps, small waist, thick thighs, substantial glutes. There were bodybuilder/sports magazines that had an attraction as well. I remember collecting them and keeping them out of sight of my parents. I have no recollection of collecting pictures of females. Of course I remember being cautioned to beware of getting too close to girls, once even reprimanded for being alone with a girl without her parents’ permission. I can assure you that there was absolutely no danger from me!
At this early time I think I thought I was comparing myself--in the bathtub--with these physiques as models, aspiring to be like them. I have a very vague memory of some erotic physical arousal but no follow-through physically. The feeling was part of what I’ve come to think of as male puffing up like the peacock, something of a precursor to sexual engagement. At the time I had no awareness of what same-gender-homosexual attraction was and I’m sure that I thought it was just a learning process about myself. There was a more than usual, a special physical attraction, nonetheless, and matched with what I know of myself today at age 71, it is definitely proof of my same gender orientation that now, I believe, was fixed early in life.
It may seem pretty bizarre to today’s youth -- even maybe to some of my contemporaries -- that throughout my young years, preadolescence and teen years especially, that I kept the rules of abstaining from any sexual relationships. And didn’t feel deprived. Did having a same gender orientation have anything to do with this? I don’t think so. Born in 1938, graduating from 8th grade in 1952, I don’t remember anyone talking about “gay”, definitely not about “homosexual”. I hung out with a mixed crowd, went to parties, danced, can’t remember really “dating” anyone. Later on I’ll lay out my moral “upbringing” governing my social behavior which I took very seriously. I didn’t attend Catholic school. My classes in “Saturday-catechism" school gave me the basic “rules” that would guide me for a long while. This included, of course, rules about sexuality. My mother told me years later that as an infant/toddler she would tie a sheet around my waist to keep my hands from “playing” with my “private parts” when I sat on the potty chair. I, of course, have no memory of this, but certainly this “training”, along with subsequent rules from her and the church about “chastity” produced an unconscious, and I would still hold today, healthy, inhibition with regard to controlling any sexual urges. It will be obvious by the end of this essay that I have several modifications of these rules to propose. For me when I needed them, these inhibitions kept me sane, relatively happy, and made possible a life uncomplicated unlike many people whose lives have been hurt or even derailed by sexuality. I am, though, painfully aware that too many people did not make it through to adulthood due to suicide, distraught and agonized about their evil nature as homosexuals.
This is getting ahead of myself and perhaps putting an emphasis on sexuality that wasn’t there. From early in life--elementary school, before 8th grade--there have been two very significant factors that stirred solid directives in my life. First factor: in the church we call it a “vocation”. Sometimes I call it an “obsession.” In any case at an early age, certainly by first grade, the feelings, attractions, the kind of love force that would, and still does, propel me to serve the church, its mission of social justice, was well established as a focal point in my being. Earlier than my memories of being attracted to the male physique, the memories of reading “The Field Afar”, a monthly magazine by Maryknoll (continuing to this day as “Maryknoll Magazine”) are imprinted deep within my soul. As naïve as thoughts can be at age 5, 6, 7 or 8, I saw myself dedicating my life as a priest (no sex, no wife/children) to serve the poor, the outcast, of the world. I “played” priest with an altar that my father had carpentered for me and a doll for which my mother sewed priest clothes. At church my spirits would soar at the sound of the music (in French, St. Mary Star of the Sea, Newport Vermont, photo above).
O.K. the second factor, another divergence from so many of my contemporaries and even of my own children’s generation: the beauty of sex. Sex for many people especially trained in some religions is a “dirty” word. Or it carries with it lots of guilt feelings. Shame. “Nasty” is even a regular adjective used. For me, somehow, sex was always something, yes, mysterious, but beautiful. Something connected directly with the power of God, something to be guarded as a precious power to be discovered carefully, to be prepared studiously, for life, for the improvement of life. Something wild yet possible to integrate into a divine plan for good. Yes sexuality was tied to procreation, no doubt about that. But the preparation for being sexually responsible entailed a whole host of skills that needed to be in place for the right time and the right person. Developing a healthy body--exercise, physical abilities--that could handle the demands of being a husband, a father, this in itself was plenty to keep anyone busy. Taking the physical aspects of sexuality out of the context of a full embrace of life such as I did see in popular culture to some extent seemed inhuman. Seeing or hearing about girls getting pregnant without being ready underscored this potential derailment. Because of my sense of “rightness”, it was the moral preparation for full sexual activity that was even more demanding. Along with both physical and moral development were the intellectual skills to be developed that would enable me to achieve the best possible trade/profession that would stand me in good stead to provide for the new life gifted to me. Call me a hopeless romantic, but that is the way I thought/felt about sex from my early days, something so precious that it was worth following all the rules guarding it’s enfolding into full human bloom. Fortunately this concept of sex was what served me well as a same-gender oriented male in undertaking a heterosexual marriage that I would contend has been successful and fulfilling. Make no mistake about it, I want to make room for same gender love in the catechism and to encourage people like me to have an equally blissful and successful marriage. My rule change is that heterosexual procreation is not of the essence of married love. Because I know what an awesome, sexual, ethereal experience engendering new life can be, I want same gender lovers to be able to integrate their sexuality into the sacred, nurturing powerhouse that marriage was meant to be. I know same gender lovers will do as well as hetero lovers in bringing children to maturity or by providing the same basic nurturing love power to people of all ages.
Back to high school. At age 14 I had to enter high school in a new town. It was not a strange one since it was my home town and my parents had friends and family there, but still I was bereft of my own friends. I loved to dance and was pretty good at it. This was my door to getting a date in those days. I was the farmer from out of town, not an athlete. The girls loved to dance with me. Dance is physical and brings people in close touch. My moral “upbringing” seemed to work automatically regarding controlling urges to do anything about erotic stirrings. But with girls I really didn’t have any such urges. Without the “upbringing” I’m sure, however, I would have experimented just to be naturally inquisitive. Of course this moral “upbringing” kept me from having any erotic physical contact with the boys either. Certain characteristics-- many of them stereotypical that I share with some homosexuals-- of hanging out with girls, being a “sissy”, not into athletics--certainly created relational issues. Several of my classmates, friends, were definitely the non-masculine type, but all of us seemed to socialize pretty well. Being “gay” simply was never part of my conversations with close friends, nor did I hear anyone talking about it.
Another significant factor: I put my “vocation” on hold during high school and enrolled in the premed, college track. A combination of wondering whether I really wanted to serve the world as a priest, and not have a family was the thinking that I followed until the end of my senior year--already accepted to premed as recorded in my yearbook --when I was compelled by my conscience nagging unmercifully about my “vocation” to contact the bishop and turn my life toward the seminary and a life of celibacy. Some will suspect that this nagging to head to the priesthood was an unconscious, or even conscious, psychological ploy to deal with my same gender orientation. I strongly disagree that I headed to the seminary out of some self-protective mechanism to take care of my same gender orientation. No, just as I explained about my early “obsession/vocation” to serve the world as a catholic priest, a celibate one to be sure, this continued to be the driving force in my life, one that I put to the side in high school while I looked at alternatives to service like being a doctor. I truthfully can say that my discernment process did entail looking at the “sacrifice” of celibacy, that I would give up ever having any sexual relations let alone a family. In addition to the rather idealized view of marriage including the ecstasy I envisioned through a sexual, incarnated love, I also can say I did have some real experiences of sexual pleasure--I’m not totally asexual. I remember clearly in the bedroom during my high school days of totally enjoying wet-dreams that I don’t remember as having had any particular gender orientation at all. My “upbringing”, of course, kept control of actively seeking out this pleasure and if I thought I ever gave in to seeking the pleasure, I confessed this and vowed to save the pleasure for the appropriate stage in life. Wow! What a prude! It’s embarrassing! (Not really.) I didn’t feel shamed or evil, or obsessed with temptation-- maybe at most, sad/angry, for having indulged, but also challenged to do better and feeling fulfilled when I exercised control. So I can truthfully say I had some idea of what promising celibacy forever entailed. It was to last 14 years, strictly by the rules, thanks to my “upbringing” and my own conscious vigilance.
What about same gender attraction? In high school I do remember having a “crush” on one lanky, ripped, basketball player, actually going out of my way to look at him. I remember to this day being sexually aroused by this guy. But ever so remotely within my innermost self and because of who I was and the built-in restraints against engaging directly in sexual activity, I never acted on this. Nor did I pursue any experiments with girls. One girl in particular who was my “girlfriend”, someone I shared a lot of interests with, Latin in particular, was shattered for years after I made my decision to go into the seminary. We “dated”, went to dances, parties, spent time alone together in her house. I never had any temptations at all. But please don’t read backwards into this time and wonder why in the world I didn’t come to grips with an obvious problem, my same gender orientation. I had no information or training about sexuality and discovering what it was all about, namely sexual diversity. My rules said that sexuality was for mature hetero adults who had made a lifetime commitment of marriage and the heavy duty responsibilities of raising a family. I truly had no conscientious conflicts going on in my head/body that there was something “wrong” with me. And I was dealing with a far more compelling calling to qualify myself for the priesthood that in one sense made the sexual issue moot. It wasn’t until I was married and back home in Barre, Vermont, supporting the drive in Vermont to legalize same sex marriage that I actually heard about someone from Barre, a gay man, who was so distraught about his orientation that he moved to New York city and there committed suicide. This was a man probably 20 years ahead of me, a friend of a politician who tried to unseat me as chair of the city Democratic party because I was in favor of gay marriage. But in my own high school time nothing, but nothing, was ever discussed about gays. I didn’t have anything to divert me from my “upbringing”. And although today I believe the church’s teaching on homosexuality has been directly--and continues to be--responsible for the horrific persecution of LGBTQ people, in my own case I was spared of the anguish of dealing with contradictions over sexual orientation.
It has, off and on, occurred to me that maybe I’m undersexed. Merriam Webster says, “deficient in sexual desire.” My hunch is that the answer lies not in a physical handicap but in the study of the effect of taboos/rules which have been, after all, the way all cultures have approached dealing with life and death challenges. I have to say that this desire and capability has not withered in my old age and as I now have the power to relax the taboos, I think my hunch is correct. I understand the word “taboo” in the sense of the Pacific Islanders where the word originates, as a “sacred, holy, life saving prohibition.” I am fully in favor of reassessing taboos and changing them as warranted. I do see the need for rules and their usefulness in society. The old approach to taboos, though, has to be scrapped in favor of science and intelligent evaluation.
In the case of homosexuality, I have come to be convinced that the taboo is a prohibition of certain behaviors understandably objectionable in the Hebrew-Christian early days, but unfortunately behaviors that have completely and erroneously, I have to say, sinfully, conflated/confused with a perfectly normal, God given nature, same gender orientation. I use the word “sinfully” because of the fact that it has been the male patriarchal domination heresy that is behind the manipulation of scripture and the misconstruing of “pagan” sexual practices that have been used to condemn homosexuality in total contradiction to modern science and the witness of so many honest people that have kept this perverted grip--too long in the Catholic church--on otherwise intelligent, caring people. This same sinful domination by adherents of patriarchal, heretical, theology is at the root of the domination of women and the justification of slavery of humans considered inferior. It’s the prejudice in favor of a male world view that has no problem with King David having a thousand wives, but can’t deal with any put down of male superiority like male on male rape. It has to stop in the case of homosexuality and the related sexual minorities. It took the church more than 200 years to take Galileo’s heliocentric teaching off the forbidden reading list and another 200 to get the Vatican to put a statue of Galileo in the Vatican gardens and to apologize for its treatment of this son of the church who died under house arrest for heresy. We have the same struggle to wage now regarding same gender love.
Keeping the rules of celibacy after high school didn’t seem to be causing me the amount of difficulty I could see in other people. Going off to seminary in Boston in 1956 I had as one of the express goals as that of being able to forego any sexual pleasure for the rest of my life. It was framed as an abiding sacrifice that priests made as a sign of their utter, bodily commitment to be 100% free to serve others. It was not a negative attitude or rejection of something “yucky”. It was a conscious, aware bonding with the “normal” people, family people-- people who have to make far more sacrifices than sexual abstention--whom I would serve. The rules were simple, keeping control of the eyes that might trigger sexual feelings either in seeing real people or people in magazines, of daydreaming, of leisure time. Staying true to the vocation to live for others, especially the most needy, this was the stronger motivating feeling that kept me going ahead and eventually after 8 years proved to myself and the authorities that I should be, could be, ordained.
My last four years in seminary were spent in Rome Italy with travel around Europe. I remember having what today I would call a “crush” on a German seminarian. It was his face, his sexy nose, chin, his enticing smile, that fascinated me. Bodies looked pretty much the same under our “cassocks”, the floor length robe everyone wore. Most cassocks were held in by sashes, or waistbands, that could give a hint of the male symmetry that I now realize is basically significant to my plumbing/wiring. At that point finishing up graduate studies, convinced that I was serious about my vocation, this phenomenon was of little consequence. At the time I don’t remember it being a problem at all. At most it was a way to check on my commitment to celibacy. Since we had absolutely no contact with females during this whole time, I didn’t particularly read much into it. Now I do and it can serve as one of the anchors to my convictions about same gender orientation and the absolute necessity of making room for it in the catechism.
Moving forward to 1970, fourteen (14) years into my dedicated, successful celibate life, I was content that I could live this way, that it was in fact a freeing of myself to get involved in risky work, supporting social justice in far away lands, the places and the people in such dire need of human rights activism. I asked my bishop in 1967 to be released to join the Maryknoll missionary society. This was the group that whetted and fed my appetite since I was in elementary school with their stories about priests and nuns living side-by-side with the oppressed of the world. If anything celibacy was a key-- historically -- to being free to take on such assignments. No family to be responsible for. No expectations on anyone else’s part that I should have to relate in any way sexually. (This notwithstanding that when I was in Italy it was rumored that priests in general observed the celibacy law in the breech.) I was convinced of the practicality of, and the absolute saving grace, that this life was for others in such need. In Vermont I was actually bored with the routine work of an assistant parish priest. Relatively speaking there were few demands on me such as I knew about from the 2/3’s World (I like this calculation better than the Third World) that I knew about from my associating with people from all over the world in Rome. I did get involved and in some trouble with the church (not worth the years of the sacrifice of celibacy, I must say) over the Vietnam war which I came to believe was wrong and had to be stopped.
I landed in Hingham, Massachusetts in the fall of 1967, ready to go off to the missions. Hingham was not the center of Maryknoll but a retirement home for old brothers. I was a young, gung-ho ordained priest who had to twiddle his thumbs with the old folks there and some recent college graduates planning to go on to theology for Maryknoll. It was just the wrong time for me and Maryknoll. They weren’t yet out of the old mold where they could discuss the problems that church missionaries created for natives in their own lands. I wanted to talk about that. I knew through first hand seminarian friends about the oppression of the poor which gave rise to the powerful theological program, Vatican-approved and organized by the bishops of Latin America, the “Preferential Option For the Poor”, meaning that the church and its workers should concentrate on the poor in the 2/3’s World, their right to life and a decent living that was being suppressed by dictators and oligarchs with the collusion of powers in the U.S. So I parted ways with Maryknoll and moved into the inner city of Boston where I could have first hand access to working for the poor of our inner cities at least. Still my sexuality, celibate, was intact and really freed me to energetically tackle the urban renewal, the scattering of the poor and elderly and Blacks, out of the South End of Boston to make way for the Yuppies and their condos.
It dawned on me fairly soon and in a powerful way that what the church needed in the inner city (where the poorest were left abandoned) were priests who could bear witness to the values of life as committed married men (I never got to the point of promoting married women priests). I wasn’t the only one. We numbered in the thousands and organizations were formed for support. We never intended to stop being priests. Celibate priests especially not from the minority groups were simply preaching truths but not having to live these truths about sexuality, about parenting, about building community and justice for the poor. Sure, I was “free” to serve, and was ready to do so, but it was imperative in my mind that the church place married men from out of the local population who would be committed to the same ideals of the priesthood as mine who could serve as leaders of the community. That was to be my undoing as a priest, at least in the ordinary sense. I never intended to marry. But I wrote a public letter announcing that I favored allowing priests to marry. This caused a rather unmistakable reprimand and punishment. The bishop wrote to me and withdrew all the permissions to function that he had granted as a priest on leave in Boston. But the real impact came a few months later when I went to the hospital to have a chest pain checked out that I had given myself with a ski pole around Christmas back in Vermont. I had paid regularly into the “Priests’ Benefit Fund” that had recently been set up for retirement and health insurance. My bill for the chest exam was refused by the diocese of Vermont. I was literally cut off just for taking a conscientious stand with no explanation or recourse. The first instance of “breaking the rules.”
Because this is a personal memoir substantiating my convictions about the normalcy of same gender orientation, I want to put on record here one instance of homosexual experimentation. I moved into an abandoned apartment in the South End of Boston and ended up having an apartment mate, a male, whom I found attractive. This was in 1968. I found myself aroused at one point just thinking about him. And because I was already prepped to begin questioning taboos, I allowed myself to give myself pleasure sexually (I refuse to use that perfectly awful Latin, “M” word) in total privacy, never having said or done anything to/with this person. I ascribed it to an entitled bit of exploration of one of God’s given pleasures in life that I had given up and should begin exploring again because of my stand on married clergy, even though I had no intention of marrying myself. I had too many handicaps for getting into married life, the least of which--honestly--was this thing of same gender orientation although I hadn’t seen this as a fixed state of being as I do now. I was older, set in my ways, a single child, oriented to the missions. No way was I fit or ready to take on marriage. I continued to live in Lower Roxbury by myself. The Boston priests I had worked with told me I had to leave the parish because my stand on married priests would get them into trouble. At the time one of these priests was already dating a woman and eventually got married. In the last several years I have heard leaders for the married clergy criticize church leaders’ opposition to such an action, “just because they fell in love.” To me this became an undermining of at least my own conviction that priests should be encouraged to marry. We obviously shouldn’t marry “just because we fell in love.” rather it should be as complete a discernment of a “vocation” as the priesthood, maybe more so because it involves another person so intimately and such a precise commitment to raising children. It isn’t just a matter of “falling in love.”
Then came the wedding of a priest friend in the movement for a married clergy. He married a nun. It was at their wedding reception that I met my wife. She was physically attractive in all the ways that women can be. But more than that she was on fire with the same passion I had for justice. She had left her convent to form a team of nuns to work in the inner city. She joined the Cesar Chavez Grape Boycott, taking local grocery stores to task for selling grapes marketed by non-union firms. She even went to jail for this behavior. So this developed in me a bit of room for the idea of marriage. Maybe the sharing of such passions about social justice could overcome, compensate for the shortcomings I would bring to a marriage. For some time I had been totally awestruck by Protestant clergy, married, with families, who were able to carry out their pastoral duties, many in foreign missions without seemingly damaging their marriage or their children. O.K. so why not
A little bit of my professional studies are in order here. Although I would not want to claim I was in any way competently trained in psychology to be a capable priest counselor for married people, I did do reading on my own. Now I was going to put it to use in my own case. The Kinsey revolution had spread by the 1950’s-60’s but not in my seminary or in my catholic readings. I found it very helpful for my own situation to learn that Kinsey’s research refuted the popularly held notion that heterosexuality and homosexuality were exclusive behaviors. What is more Kinsey “found” that a person’s sexual orientation could change over the period of a lifetime. (Just to check my memory I consulted a website today to confirm what I had read from Kinsey: (http://health.discovery.com/centers/sex/sexpedia/alfredckinsey.html). Of course, this theory has been refuted in subsequent years, including in my own mind, but at that time it was a powerful theory to work at in my own life.
So there it was. Sexual orientation was a fluid thing, people could go from hetero to homo and back to hetero it seemed. I figured that my attraction to women, or lack of it, was the result of the taboos I had absorbed before I was aware of them and the result of my overpowering attraction to the priesthood that precluded having anything to do with sex relations, male on male. Thanks to these unconscious controls I was spared of any angst or sense of deprivation and was able to get on in life not having to deal with the real thing.
The way was now open to my pursuing a sexual relationship with a woman whom I had every reason to love and that is what I did. The question of my sexual orientation was still not in the context of fixed forever. I actually thought that it was a combination of factors--physical, intellectual, psychological, spiritual--that would turn on my sexual self. I took the same serious discernment process as I did for celibacy, but because it involved another human being, an honest-to-goodness person, I found it much more demanding, scary actually. And I was still going to follow the rules. No premarital sex. (I’ve changed my mind on this also although I think there have to be serious rules governing this aspect of sexuality.) It was only after August 22, 1970 on our honeymoon that I made myself completely open to a real sexual-- full of awe and love and splendor-- union with my wife and ended my virgin and celibate career of 32 years. It has been worth it. It hasn’t been easy. It has been more demanding than the life of a celibate. Nine months later we had our first child, and then again 14 months later our second child. Loving was a totally integrated blissful adventure, body, mind, spirit, a family affair. Tears as well as laughter. Joys as well as sorrows. Ecstasy punctuated by orgasms. Labor pains and changing diapers along with the sheer awe of the silly smiles and laughter of uninhibited toddlers . The way it was supposed to be.
I’ve set these stats down not as some machismo braggadocio. Throw in a Licentiate in Sacred Theology and a couple of masters degrees, one in counseling, one in teaching French. No, these are the facts which I feel authorize me to campaign at age 71 to change the rules and make room for same gender orientation as a God-given nature in the Roman Catholic church; to gain the right to marry in the Roman Catholic church for people like me who have been deprived of this right and, worse, who have been persecuted for being who they are, and still being persecuted now by my church as it sticks to an outmoded taboo.
Now, looking backward with a lifetime of experience, degrees in theology, counseling and languages, lots of experience in sexuality, both personal and professional, I can pinpoint my early awareness of same gender attraction to about the 4th grade--pictures on the back of comic books of Charles Atlas, the guy who gets back at bullies kicking sand in his face through “dynamic tension” exercises to build amazing muscles on his body. I remember distinctly to this day a couple of local male high school basketball players who attracted me by their faces and their bodies. But my best friend of those days, a male, a pip-squeak, wasn't attractive physically. Bodies with well developed muscles and distinctly male proportions--wide shoulders, big biceps, small waist, thick thighs, substantial glutes. There were bodybuilder/sports magazines that had an attraction as well. I remember collecting them and keeping them out of sight of my parents. I have no recollection of collecting pictures of females. Of course I remember being cautioned to beware of getting too close to girls, once even reprimanded for being alone with a girl without her parents’ permission. I can assure you that there was absolutely no danger from me!
At this early time I think I thought I was comparing myself--in the bathtub--with these physiques as models, aspiring to be like them. I have a very vague memory of some erotic physical arousal but no follow-through physically. The feeling was part of what I’ve come to think of as male puffing up like the peacock, something of a precursor to sexual engagement. At the time I had no awareness of what same-gender-homosexual attraction was and I’m sure that I thought it was just a learning process about myself. There was a more than usual, a special physical attraction, nonetheless, and matched with what I know of myself today at age 71, it is definitely proof of my same gender orientation that now, I believe, was fixed early in life.
It may seem pretty bizarre to today’s youth -- even maybe to some of my contemporaries -- that throughout my young years, preadolescence and teen years especially, that I kept the rules of abstaining from any sexual relationships. And didn’t feel deprived. Did having a same gender orientation have anything to do with this? I don’t think so. Born in 1938, graduating from 8th grade in 1952, I don’t remember anyone talking about “gay”, definitely not about “homosexual”. I hung out with a mixed crowd, went to parties, danced, can’t remember really “dating” anyone. Later on I’ll lay out my moral “upbringing” governing my social behavior which I took very seriously. I didn’t attend Catholic school. My classes in “Saturday-catechism" school gave me the basic “rules” that would guide me for a long while. This included, of course, rules about sexuality. My mother told me years later that as an infant/toddler she would tie a sheet around my waist to keep my hands from “playing” with my “private parts” when I sat on the potty chair. I, of course, have no memory of this, but certainly this “training”, along with subsequent rules from her and the church about “chastity” produced an unconscious, and I would still hold today, healthy, inhibition with regard to controlling any sexual urges. It will be obvious by the end of this essay that I have several modifications of these rules to propose. For me when I needed them, these inhibitions kept me sane, relatively happy, and made possible a life uncomplicated unlike many people whose lives have been hurt or even derailed by sexuality. I am, though, painfully aware that too many people did not make it through to adulthood due to suicide, distraught and agonized about their evil nature as homosexuals.
This is getting ahead of myself and perhaps putting an emphasis on sexuality that wasn’t there. From early in life--elementary school, before 8th grade--there have been two very significant factors that stirred solid directives in my life. First factor: in the church we call it a “vocation”. Sometimes I call it an “obsession.” In any case at an early age, certainly by first grade, the feelings, attractions, the kind of love force that would, and still does, propel me to serve the church, its mission of social justice, was well established as a focal point in my being. Earlier than my memories of being attracted to the male physique, the memories of reading “The Field Afar”, a monthly magazine by Maryknoll (continuing to this day as “Maryknoll Magazine”) are imprinted deep within my soul. As naïve as thoughts can be at age 5, 6, 7 or 8, I saw myself dedicating my life as a priest (no sex, no wife/children) to serve the poor, the outcast, of the world. I “played” priest with an altar that my father had carpentered for me and a doll for which my mother sewed priest clothes. At church my spirits would soar at the sound of the music (in French, St. Mary Star of the Sea, Newport Vermont, photo above).
O.K. the second factor, another divergence from so many of my contemporaries and even of my own children’s generation: the beauty of sex. Sex for many people especially trained in some religions is a “dirty” word. Or it carries with it lots of guilt feelings. Shame. “Nasty” is even a regular adjective used. For me, somehow, sex was always something, yes, mysterious, but beautiful. Something connected directly with the power of God, something to be guarded as a precious power to be discovered carefully, to be prepared studiously, for life, for the improvement of life. Something wild yet possible to integrate into a divine plan for good. Yes sexuality was tied to procreation, no doubt about that. But the preparation for being sexually responsible entailed a whole host of skills that needed to be in place for the right time and the right person. Developing a healthy body--exercise, physical abilities--that could handle the demands of being a husband, a father, this in itself was plenty to keep anyone busy. Taking the physical aspects of sexuality out of the context of a full embrace of life such as I did see in popular culture to some extent seemed inhuman. Seeing or hearing about girls getting pregnant without being ready underscored this potential derailment. Because of my sense of “rightness”, it was the moral preparation for full sexual activity that was even more demanding. Along with both physical and moral development were the intellectual skills to be developed that would enable me to achieve the best possible trade/profession that would stand me in good stead to provide for the new life gifted to me. Call me a hopeless romantic, but that is the way I thought/felt about sex from my early days, something so precious that it was worth following all the rules guarding it’s enfolding into full human bloom. Fortunately this concept of sex was what served me well as a same-gender oriented male in undertaking a heterosexual marriage that I would contend has been successful and fulfilling. Make no mistake about it, I want to make room for same gender love in the catechism and to encourage people like me to have an equally blissful and successful marriage. My rule change is that heterosexual procreation is not of the essence of married love. Because I know what an awesome, sexual, ethereal experience engendering new life can be, I want same gender lovers to be able to integrate their sexuality into the sacred, nurturing powerhouse that marriage was meant to be. I know same gender lovers will do as well as hetero lovers in bringing children to maturity or by providing the same basic nurturing love power to people of all ages.
Back to high school. At age 14 I had to enter high school in a new town. It was not a strange one since it was my home town and my parents had friends and family there, but still I was bereft of my own friends. I loved to dance and was pretty good at it. This was my door to getting a date in those days. I was the farmer from out of town, not an athlete. The girls loved to dance with me. Dance is physical and brings people in close touch. My moral “upbringing” seemed to work automatically regarding controlling urges to do anything about erotic stirrings. But with girls I really didn’t have any such urges. Without the “upbringing” I’m sure, however, I would have experimented just to be naturally inquisitive. Of course this moral “upbringing” kept me from having any erotic physical contact with the boys either. Certain characteristics-- many of them stereotypical that I share with some homosexuals-- of hanging out with girls, being a “sissy”, not into athletics--certainly created relational issues. Several of my classmates, friends, were definitely the non-masculine type, but all of us seemed to socialize pretty well. Being “gay” simply was never part of my conversations with close friends, nor did I hear anyone talking about it.
Another significant factor: I put my “vocation” on hold during high school and enrolled in the premed, college track. A combination of wondering whether I really wanted to serve the world as a priest, and not have a family was the thinking that I followed until the end of my senior year--already accepted to premed as recorded in my yearbook --when I was compelled by my conscience nagging unmercifully about my “vocation” to contact the bishop and turn my life toward the seminary and a life of celibacy. Some will suspect that this nagging to head to the priesthood was an unconscious, or even conscious, psychological ploy to deal with my same gender orientation. I strongly disagree that I headed to the seminary out of some self-protective mechanism to take care of my same gender orientation. No, just as I explained about my early “obsession/vocation” to serve the world as a catholic priest, a celibate one to be sure, this continued to be the driving force in my life, one that I put to the side in high school while I looked at alternatives to service like being a doctor. I truthfully can say that my discernment process did entail looking at the “sacrifice” of celibacy, that I would give up ever having any sexual relations let alone a family. In addition to the rather idealized view of marriage including the ecstasy I envisioned through a sexual, incarnated love, I also can say I did have some real experiences of sexual pleasure--I’m not totally asexual. I remember clearly in the bedroom during my high school days of totally enjoying wet-dreams that I don’t remember as having had any particular gender orientation at all. My “upbringing”, of course, kept control of actively seeking out this pleasure and if I thought I ever gave in to seeking the pleasure, I confessed this and vowed to save the pleasure for the appropriate stage in life. Wow! What a prude! It’s embarrassing! (Not really.) I didn’t feel shamed or evil, or obsessed with temptation-- maybe at most, sad/angry, for having indulged, but also challenged to do better and feeling fulfilled when I exercised control. So I can truthfully say I had some idea of what promising celibacy forever entailed. It was to last 14 years, strictly by the rules, thanks to my “upbringing” and my own conscious vigilance.
What about same gender attraction? In high school I do remember having a “crush” on one lanky, ripped, basketball player, actually going out of my way to look at him. I remember to this day being sexually aroused by this guy. But ever so remotely within my innermost self and because of who I was and the built-in restraints against engaging directly in sexual activity, I never acted on this. Nor did I pursue any experiments with girls. One girl in particular who was my “girlfriend”, someone I shared a lot of interests with, Latin in particular, was shattered for years after I made my decision to go into the seminary. We “dated”, went to dances, parties, spent time alone together in her house. I never had any temptations at all. But please don’t read backwards into this time and wonder why in the world I didn’t come to grips with an obvious problem, my same gender orientation. I had no information or training about sexuality and discovering what it was all about, namely sexual diversity. My rules said that sexuality was for mature hetero adults who had made a lifetime commitment of marriage and the heavy duty responsibilities of raising a family. I truly had no conscientious conflicts going on in my head/body that there was something “wrong” with me. And I was dealing with a far more compelling calling to qualify myself for the priesthood that in one sense made the sexual issue moot. It wasn’t until I was married and back home in Barre, Vermont, supporting the drive in Vermont to legalize same sex marriage that I actually heard about someone from Barre, a gay man, who was so distraught about his orientation that he moved to New York city and there committed suicide. This was a man probably 20 years ahead of me, a friend of a politician who tried to unseat me as chair of the city Democratic party because I was in favor of gay marriage. But in my own high school time nothing, but nothing, was ever discussed about gays. I didn’t have anything to divert me from my “upbringing”. And although today I believe the church’s teaching on homosexuality has been directly--and continues to be--responsible for the horrific persecution of LGBTQ people, in my own case I was spared of the anguish of dealing with contradictions over sexual orientation.
It has, off and on, occurred to me that maybe I’m undersexed. Merriam Webster says, “deficient in sexual desire.” My hunch is that the answer lies not in a physical handicap but in the study of the effect of taboos/rules which have been, after all, the way all cultures have approached dealing with life and death challenges. I have to say that this desire and capability has not withered in my old age and as I now have the power to relax the taboos, I think my hunch is correct. I understand the word “taboo” in the sense of the Pacific Islanders where the word originates, as a “sacred, holy, life saving prohibition.” I am fully in favor of reassessing taboos and changing them as warranted. I do see the need for rules and their usefulness in society. The old approach to taboos, though, has to be scrapped in favor of science and intelligent evaluation.
In the case of homosexuality, I have come to be convinced that the taboo is a prohibition of certain behaviors understandably objectionable in the Hebrew-Christian early days, but unfortunately behaviors that have completely and erroneously, I have to say, sinfully, conflated/confused with a perfectly normal, God given nature, same gender orientation. I use the word “sinfully” because of the fact that it has been the male patriarchal domination heresy that is behind the manipulation of scripture and the misconstruing of “pagan” sexual practices that have been used to condemn homosexuality in total contradiction to modern science and the witness of so many honest people that have kept this perverted grip--too long in the Catholic church--on otherwise intelligent, caring people. This same sinful domination by adherents of patriarchal, heretical, theology is at the root of the domination of women and the justification of slavery of humans considered inferior. It’s the prejudice in favor of a male world view that has no problem with King David having a thousand wives, but can’t deal with any put down of male superiority like male on male rape. It has to stop in the case of homosexuality and the related sexual minorities. It took the church more than 200 years to take Galileo’s heliocentric teaching off the forbidden reading list and another 200 to get the Vatican to put a statue of Galileo in the Vatican gardens and to apologize for its treatment of this son of the church who died under house arrest for heresy. We have the same struggle to wage now regarding same gender love.
Keeping the rules of celibacy after high school didn’t seem to be causing me the amount of difficulty I could see in other people. Going off to seminary in Boston in 1956 I had as one of the express goals as that of being able to forego any sexual pleasure for the rest of my life. It was framed as an abiding sacrifice that priests made as a sign of their utter, bodily commitment to be 100% free to serve others. It was not a negative attitude or rejection of something “yucky”. It was a conscious, aware bonding with the “normal” people, family people-- people who have to make far more sacrifices than sexual abstention--whom I would serve. The rules were simple, keeping control of the eyes that might trigger sexual feelings either in seeing real people or people in magazines, of daydreaming, of leisure time. Staying true to the vocation to live for others, especially the most needy, this was the stronger motivating feeling that kept me going ahead and eventually after 8 years proved to myself and the authorities that I should be, could be, ordained.
My last four years in seminary were spent in Rome Italy with travel around Europe. I remember having what today I would call a “crush” on a German seminarian. It was his face, his sexy nose, chin, his enticing smile, that fascinated me. Bodies looked pretty much the same under our “cassocks”, the floor length robe everyone wore. Most cassocks were held in by sashes, or waistbands, that could give a hint of the male symmetry that I now realize is basically significant to my plumbing/wiring. At that point finishing up graduate studies, convinced that I was serious about my vocation, this phenomenon was of little consequence. At the time I don’t remember it being a problem at all. At most it was a way to check on my commitment to celibacy. Since we had absolutely no contact with females during this whole time, I didn’t particularly read much into it. Now I do and it can serve as one of the anchors to my convictions about same gender orientation and the absolute necessity of making room for it in the catechism.
Moving forward to 1970, fourteen (14) years into my dedicated, successful celibate life, I was content that I could live this way, that it was in fact a freeing of myself to get involved in risky work, supporting social justice in far away lands, the places and the people in such dire need of human rights activism. I asked my bishop in 1967 to be released to join the Maryknoll missionary society. This was the group that whetted and fed my appetite since I was in elementary school with their stories about priests and nuns living side-by-side with the oppressed of the world. If anything celibacy was a key-- historically -- to being free to take on such assignments. No family to be responsible for. No expectations on anyone else’s part that I should have to relate in any way sexually. (This notwithstanding that when I was in Italy it was rumored that priests in general observed the celibacy law in the breech.) I was convinced of the practicality of, and the absolute saving grace, that this life was for others in such need. In Vermont I was actually bored with the routine work of an assistant parish priest. Relatively speaking there were few demands on me such as I knew about from the 2/3’s World (I like this calculation better than the Third World) that I knew about from my associating with people from all over the world in Rome. I did get involved and in some trouble with the church (not worth the years of the sacrifice of celibacy, I must say) over the Vietnam war which I came to believe was wrong and had to be stopped.
I landed in Hingham, Massachusetts in the fall of 1967, ready to go off to the missions. Hingham was not the center of Maryknoll but a retirement home for old brothers. I was a young, gung-ho ordained priest who had to twiddle his thumbs with the old folks there and some recent college graduates planning to go on to theology for Maryknoll. It was just the wrong time for me and Maryknoll. They weren’t yet out of the old mold where they could discuss the problems that church missionaries created for natives in their own lands. I wanted to talk about that. I knew through first hand seminarian friends about the oppression of the poor which gave rise to the powerful theological program, Vatican-approved and organized by the bishops of Latin America, the “Preferential Option For the Poor”, meaning that the church and its workers should concentrate on the poor in the 2/3’s World, their right to life and a decent living that was being suppressed by dictators and oligarchs with the collusion of powers in the U.S. So I parted ways with Maryknoll and moved into the inner city of Boston where I could have first hand access to working for the poor of our inner cities at least. Still my sexuality, celibate, was intact and really freed me to energetically tackle the urban renewal, the scattering of the poor and elderly and Blacks, out of the South End of Boston to make way for the Yuppies and their condos.
It dawned on me fairly soon and in a powerful way that what the church needed in the inner city (where the poorest were left abandoned) were priests who could bear witness to the values of life as committed married men (I never got to the point of promoting married women priests). I wasn’t the only one. We numbered in the thousands and organizations were formed for support. We never intended to stop being priests. Celibate priests especially not from the minority groups were simply preaching truths but not having to live these truths about sexuality, about parenting, about building community and justice for the poor. Sure, I was “free” to serve, and was ready to do so, but it was imperative in my mind that the church place married men from out of the local population who would be committed to the same ideals of the priesthood as mine who could serve as leaders of the community. That was to be my undoing as a priest, at least in the ordinary sense. I never intended to marry. But I wrote a public letter announcing that I favored allowing priests to marry. This caused a rather unmistakable reprimand and punishment. The bishop wrote to me and withdrew all the permissions to function that he had granted as a priest on leave in Boston. But the real impact came a few months later when I went to the hospital to have a chest pain checked out that I had given myself with a ski pole around Christmas back in Vermont. I had paid regularly into the “Priests’ Benefit Fund” that had recently been set up for retirement and health insurance. My bill for the chest exam was refused by the diocese of Vermont. I was literally cut off just for taking a conscientious stand with no explanation or recourse. The first instance of “breaking the rules.”
Because this is a personal memoir substantiating my convictions about the normalcy of same gender orientation, I want to put on record here one instance of homosexual experimentation. I moved into an abandoned apartment in the South End of Boston and ended up having an apartment mate, a male, whom I found attractive. This was in 1968. I found myself aroused at one point just thinking about him. And because I was already prepped to begin questioning taboos, I allowed myself to give myself pleasure sexually (I refuse to use that perfectly awful Latin, “M” word) in total privacy, never having said or done anything to/with this person. I ascribed it to an entitled bit of exploration of one of God’s given pleasures in life that I had given up and should begin exploring again because of my stand on married clergy, even though I had no intention of marrying myself. I had too many handicaps for getting into married life, the least of which--honestly--was this thing of same gender orientation although I hadn’t seen this as a fixed state of being as I do now. I was older, set in my ways, a single child, oriented to the missions. No way was I fit or ready to take on marriage. I continued to live in Lower Roxbury by myself. The Boston priests I had worked with told me I had to leave the parish because my stand on married priests would get them into trouble. At the time one of these priests was already dating a woman and eventually got married. In the last several years I have heard leaders for the married clergy criticize church leaders’ opposition to such an action, “just because they fell in love.” To me this became an undermining of at least my own conviction that priests should be encouraged to marry. We obviously shouldn’t marry “just because we fell in love.” rather it should be as complete a discernment of a “vocation” as the priesthood, maybe more so because it involves another person so intimately and such a precise commitment to raising children. It isn’t just a matter of “falling in love.”
Then came the wedding of a priest friend in the movement for a married clergy. He married a nun. It was at their wedding reception that I met my wife. She was physically attractive in all the ways that women can be. But more than that she was on fire with the same passion I had for justice. She had left her convent to form a team of nuns to work in the inner city. She joined the Cesar Chavez Grape Boycott, taking local grocery stores to task for selling grapes marketed by non-union firms. She even went to jail for this behavior. So this developed in me a bit of room for the idea of marriage. Maybe the sharing of such passions about social justice could overcome, compensate for the shortcomings I would bring to a marriage. For some time I had been totally awestruck by Protestant clergy, married, with families, who were able to carry out their pastoral duties, many in foreign missions without seemingly damaging their marriage or their children. O.K. so why not
A little bit of my professional studies are in order here. Although I would not want to claim I was in any way competently trained in psychology to be a capable priest counselor for married people, I did do reading on my own. Now I was going to put it to use in my own case. The Kinsey revolution had spread by the 1950’s-60’s but not in my seminary or in my catholic readings. I found it very helpful for my own situation to learn that Kinsey’s research refuted the popularly held notion that heterosexuality and homosexuality were exclusive behaviors. What is more Kinsey “found” that a person’s sexual orientation could change over the period of a lifetime. (Just to check my memory I consulted a website today to confirm what I had read from Kinsey: (http://health.discovery.com/centers/sex/sexpedia/alfredckinsey.html). Of course, this theory has been refuted in subsequent years, including in my own mind, but at that time it was a powerful theory to work at in my own life.
So there it was. Sexual orientation was a fluid thing, people could go from hetero to homo and back to hetero it seemed. I figured that my attraction to women, or lack of it, was the result of the taboos I had absorbed before I was aware of them and the result of my overpowering attraction to the priesthood that precluded having anything to do with sex relations, male on male. Thanks to these unconscious controls I was spared of any angst or sense of deprivation and was able to get on in life not having to deal with the real thing.
The way was now open to my pursuing a sexual relationship with a woman whom I had every reason to love and that is what I did. The question of my sexual orientation was still not in the context of fixed forever. I actually thought that it was a combination of factors--physical, intellectual, psychological, spiritual--that would turn on my sexual self. I took the same serious discernment process as I did for celibacy, but because it involved another human being, an honest-to-goodness person, I found it much more demanding, scary actually. And I was still going to follow the rules. No premarital sex. (I’ve changed my mind on this also although I think there have to be serious rules governing this aspect of sexuality.) It was only after August 22, 1970 on our honeymoon that I made myself completely open to a real sexual-- full of awe and love and splendor-- union with my wife and ended my virgin and celibate career of 32 years. It has been worth it. It hasn’t been easy. It has been more demanding than the life of a celibate. Nine months later we had our first child, and then again 14 months later our second child. Loving was a totally integrated blissful adventure, body, mind, spirit, a family affair. Tears as well as laughter. Joys as well as sorrows. Ecstasy punctuated by orgasms. Labor pains and changing diapers along with the sheer awe of the silly smiles and laughter of uninhibited toddlers . The way it was supposed to be.