For National Catholic Reporter, Jamie Manson has published a very good article today about the situation facing gay citizens of Russia. I won't summarize the article, but highly recommend that readers of this site read it in its entirety. It's comprehensive, well-balanced, and is already eliciting a string of responses at the NCR site. I'm grateful to Bob Keller for pointing me to the article in a comment here today, and needless to say, grateful to NCR for publishing information about the very serious situation facing gay folks in Russia, and the violent attacks on gay citizens of Russia that have been going on for some time now.
MSNBC reported yesterday that since Putin came to power in 2012, there have been over 5,000 people arrested in Russia at gay rights protests. Despite the huge number of arrests of anyone in the nation supporting the human rights of gay human beings, and despite the well-documented attacks on gay citizens now occurring on a routine basis in the country--we can all log onto the internet and see the actual faces of fellow human beings who have been knocked in the head--one Purgatrix Ineptiae is at the top of the thread following Jamie Manson's article right now, continuing to inform her fellow Catholics that "[t]he Russian [anti-gay] laws are not inhumane."*
Yesterday, the same contributor to Catholic conversations about human rights at NCR used her bully pulpit there to inform her fellow Catholics that there is simply no such thing as a gay sexual orientation, but that the concept has been invented by "powerful, rich" "gay" men who want to promote a self-serving agenda that's all about asking for special rights and privileges--when no such animal as sexual orientation exists. On a separate NCR thread at the same time, Purgatrix Ineptiae has been instructing her fellow Catholics about the virtues of the rhythm method of natural family planning, and predicting technology that will allow married women to breathe into a gizmo to chart whether they are fertile or not, and judge on that basis whether or not to permit sexual intercourse with their husbands.
Whether or not to permit "natural" sexual intercourse with their husbands, since the charts and thermometers and astrolabes and rulers recommended by those promoting "natural" family planning in the Catholic right often prove entirely predictable, and couples end up conceiving children when they had thought that the stars were in proper alignment after they'd consulted the charts, rulers, thermometers, astrolabes, etc. . . . .
Keep in mind that this natural family planning is all about having sex the old-fashioned, God-ordained way--this astrolabing and rulering and thermometering and examining the vaginal mucus to see how thick it is (yes, some of the "natural" family planning manuals recommend just that, to satisfy the rules about old-fashioned, God-ordinaed sex dreamed up by Catholic celibate hierarchs) is all about being natural. Unlike folks who use "artificial" means of birth control, and certainly unlike gay folks . . . . And breathing into a gizmo designed by engineers to determine when womenfolks are fertile will only enhance the naturalness of it all, Purgatrix Ineptiae maintains.
The religious right--Catholic and evangelical alike--is now purporting to be very concerned about the morality of contraception because those who belong to the Christian right recognize that they cannot credibly continue to bash gay and lesbian people by claiming that their sexual acts are non-procreative, while they ignore the huge percentage of married Christians who contracept. The underlying concern here is obviously not with contraception at all. Contraception hasn't worried these folks in the least, as it has become normative for Christian couples--and this includes Catholics, who have shrugged their shoulders, on the whole, about the huge percentage of Catholics who use contraceptives in their marriages.
No, the real intent of this rediscovery of the immorality of contraception by the religious right is to continue to claim the right to condemn, bash, and shove gay and lesbian human beings out of Christian communities--and certainly not to do the same to heterosexual couples who use contraceptives, and who have been virtually ignored by these right-wing Christians up to the point that gay people began to make human rights breakthroughs in many places in the world.
It's all about judging, condemning, and making unwelcome, and I'm going to take a break for a few days now, since I'm reaching one of those points at which I have to eliminate some of the toxins these people inject into my psyche and soul through their comments on Catholic blog sites. It is seriously destructive to the well-being of those who are gay to encounter the constant, unchecked barrage of open hate speech that continues to be welcome at almost any Christian blog site, when gay and lesbian people are the subject of discussion. This constant, unchecked barrage of hate speech is a kind of stream of toxins delivered to the heart, mind, and soul--and it's the precise intent of people like Purgatrix Ineptiae to inject those toxins and watch those they've poisoned squirm and hurt.
In many ways, in fact, the pope's recent statement about not judging our fellow human beings who are gay has opened a floodgate for a stepped-up vituperation of gay folks at Catholic blog sites. So I'm going to remove myself for a period of time from all of this, since I need to let the toxins out, and don't need to deal with these folks for a period of time--for the good of my soul.
*The thread just rearranged itself, and her comment is now second in the thread.
The graphic: a photo by Maxim Shemetov for Reuters, which appears with a June 2013 report by Andrew Kramer for the New York Times, stating that the man throwing eggs is a "radical Orthodox believer" assaulting people in Moscow who are trying to explain their opposition to the anti-gay legislation in Russia.
