Turn Your Head and Scoff – Redux

I look at myself and my life as rather ordi­nary, really. I live in a coastal city, in a neigh­bor­hood dom­i­nated not by beach, but by med­ical cen­ters. Day & night I am regaled by sirens and heli­copters. From cer­tain van­tages, walk­ing the dog at exactly 10:00 pm, I can see the apex of the fire­works from Sea World; on a very clear morn­ing, the shim­mer of the ocean. The neigh­bor­hood itself has “had its day,” so to speak, and it is trendier and “mid-citier” in sev­eral other direc­tions. Nev­er­the­less, you can walk to shop, to cof­fee, to the pub­lic library, to the park, to the Greek Ortho­dox Church, even to trou­ble, should you wish.

This lit­tle “com­plex” is six units: a young les­bian cou­ple with a new baby, one mother study­ing clin­i­cal psy­chol­ogy; a newly divorced mother with a daugh­ter try­ing to get into grad school to study clin­i­cal psy­chol­ogy (what is up here?); a young cou­ple – oddly I’ve never even seen; a vacancy that broke my heart; and finally, a middle-aged les­bian cou­ple – One Black, one Puerto Rican from (for real) Ford­ham Road in the Bronx! I first met her as I was get­ting the mail, her par­ents were vis­it­ing, and I was wear­ing a hoodie from my days on Rose Hill.

Maybe six months ago, I ran into a hand­some young black man as I came through the gate; he was polite, but shy and averted his eyes as we exchanged greet­ings. He turned out to be the grand­son of my neigh­bor, and he was hav­ing some prob­lems back East. Mother asked grand­mother for some help, and here he was. Grand­mother was set on help­ing him suc­ceed. Next I saw him, he was dressed nicely, tak­ing temp jobs until some­thing else arose, she had got­ten him a car, he was an “expec­tant father” sav­ing money to return home. His plan was to bring his girl­friend & child back to CA, so he left as close to the date of the expected birth as pos­si­ble. And to be hon­est, I had totally for­got­ten about him. I was told today he had killed him­self, leav­ing a new­born son and a girl­friend preg­nant for the sec­ond time. His grand­mother, my neigh­bor, and her part­ner are leav­ing to bury him. His name was Arthur.

I was jok­ing around with a nurse half my age on Thurs­day evening, try­ing to explain the “nature of tragedy” with the anal­ogy of the “Sorcerer’s Appren­tice” from the movie Fan­ta­sia: you really want to help, and you really want to make a dif­fer­ence, but they just keep com­ing… And they came before you arrived, and they will con­tinue after you’re gone. And you slowly begin to real­ize that God does, in fact, pro­tect you from see­ing the good you do, if only to pre­vent you from imag­in­ing it’s about you. So, I force myself to be “faith­ful over a few things,” (Mt. 25:21), and I cry at my inabil­ity to have helped Arthur, and I ask God to be mer­ci­ful to him. And I ask this of any­one who might chance upon this.

Where have I seen that face? Where have I seen that face… Oh, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Thomas. Thomas Jef­fer­son that is, and he had his day in in court – two days, in fact – as the Supreme Court of the United States enter­tained two his­toric arguments:

Hollingsworth v. Perry

Issue: Whether the Equal Pro­tec­tion Clause of the Four­teenth Amend­ment pro­hibits the State of Cal­i­for­nia from defin­ing mar­riage as the union of a man and a woman; and (2) whether peti­tion­ers have stand­ing under Arti­cle III, § 2 of the Con­sti­tu­tion in this case.

and

United States v. Windsor

Issue: Whether Sec­tion 3 of the Defense of Mar­riage Act (DOMA) vio­lates the Fifth Amendment’s guar­an­tee of equal pro­tec­tion of the laws as applied to per­sons of the same sex who are legally mar­ried under the laws of their State; (2) whether the Exec­u­tive Branch’s agree­ment with the court below that DOMA is uncon­sti­tu­tional deprives this Court of juris­dic­tion to decide this case; and (3) whether the Bipar­ti­san Legal Advi­sory Group of the United States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has Arti­cle III stand­ing in this case.

Now, if you are not famil­iar with the details of either or both of these cases – which hap­pen to have orig­i­nated in my state of Cal­i­for­nia – or not con­sid­ered the poten­tial of these case, or flat out not been inter­est in the course of these cases: J’ACCUSE! While I main­tain & sup­port every sin­gle con­tention I have pro­posed on this site in regard to homo­sex­u­al­ity as con­sis­tent with the Holy Scrip­ture, the Patris­tic Fathers, the Holy Canons, and our Holy Tra­di­tion, this inevitable aban­don­ment in stark indif­fer­ence of our moral author­ity to the “civil author­i­ties” is shock­ing. And the Ecu­meni­cal Patri­arch (among oth­ers), the Pri­mate of four grungy blocks by four grungy blocks in a run-down sub­urb of Istan­bul he refers to as “Con­stan­tino­ple?” Googly-eyed over receiv­ing a Cross from the new Pope. “Quanto dura la garanzia?”

To any of you jack­asses – ECOUTEZ: jack­asses – who in self-righteous temer­ity stated to me, “Do not be deceived: God can­not be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Gal 6:7), sleep now in the fire. Read the tran­scripts of the oral argu­ments and see how our God was not only mocked, but our Faith – so tri­umphantly cel­e­brated but two days pre­vi­ous – was sys­tem­at­i­cally par­o­died, as “found­ing fathers” assumed the author­ity of the Holy Fathers, not to “join with the Holy Fathers before us…” but to pledge “fidelity” to men whose god was “nature,” the mere hand­i­craft of the Master.

Indeed, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

My wife had gone to the dog park with neigh­bors and their dogs and I decided to go out and take pho­tographs, walk­ing around for 90 min­utes or so as I often do. As I walked passed the house on the cor­ner, there were a lot of peo­ple around, cars try­ing to park, and I finally saw the yel­low hand-drawn signs say­ing “estate sale.” There were things lined up on the lawn, con­tain­ers filled with toys and school sup­plies, Christ­mas lights and dec­o­ra­tions, children’s books and fur­ni­ture. I knew from walk­ing the dog late in the day that the woman who lived there had a day­care, and fre­quently par­ents in very expen­sive vehi­cles were often double-parked, pick­ing up their chil­dren. She appeared to be in her for­ties, was quite obese, had bright dyed-blond hair, and was very loud – you could hear her “speak­ing” a block away. But I must say that I fre­quently smiled at how much she cared for the chil­dren in her care and how much they cared for her, and like­wise the par­ents. These lit­tle chil­dren would run to hug her, and they would wave to her from the car. But as I passed, I had to move into the street because the street was crowded with peo­ple rum­mag­ing through con­tain­ers. I thought, “Who needs other people’s junk?”

I got home and was read­ing when my wife came in with assorted spices she picked up at the farmer’s mar­ket, and she had a small bag of school sup­plies. I said, “You bought other people’s junk!” She said, “There is an estate sale up the street, the woman who had the day­care died sud­denly.” WHAT! “What hap­pened? I just saw here a few days ago.” “They just said she died sud­denly, and her par­ents and brother are sell­ing her things to help pay for her funeral.” And it is in these nau­se­at­ing moments I am the Phar­isee, and the shal­low­ness of my char­ity, and the depths of my sick­en­ing judg­men­tal mind is shown to me like a hor­ror film. And I sat down at my desk, and in the cor­ner of the screen is a still unsaved “An inter­view with Met­ro­pol­i­tan Hieroth­eos of Naf­pak­tos and St. Vlas­sios by Pavel Chir­ila, Pro­fes­sor and Doc­tor at St Irene’s Hos­pi­tal in Bucharest (Romania)”:

I was ashamed. I told my wife I was walk­ing over to the house, and it was a very long walk of a half-block. I felt like a fool, and I was, and thank­fully there were very few peo­ple left. The “house” is part of a “row” of very small one-bedroom con­struc­tions built with mil­i­tary per­son­nel in mind, and they are numer­ous in my neigh­bor­hood. Her home, in fact, was given over to her day­care. I went to the older peo­ple I cor­rectly pre­sumed to be her par­ents, and I started to tell them my story: I had never met her, never spo­ken to her, “you know how it is these days…” blah, blah, blah, bull­shit. And they smiled, nod­ded, and my voice started to crack, and my heart was pound­ing, and I started to cry, and I sim­ply told them about the hap­pi­ness of the those small chil­dren. From there I have no idea what I said except I was sorry for their loss, I would pray for her and them, and I would try to stop back tomor­row. I cried on my way home, and then it struck me: I never asked her name. I must go back.

ADDENDUM: Her uncle told me her name was Mary Lou. I would ask you, if you are so inclined, to say a prayer for her and her family

A recent occu­pa­tion con­cerns the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion as a “flu­id­ity” that will nec­es­sar­ily lead to the aban­don­ment of the “pri­mary bina­ries,” male and female alto­gether. Need­less to say, at face value, the idea is dis­con­cert­ing. Yet, while there is cer­tainly an abun­dance of dis­cus­sion regard­ing sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion as an anthro­po­log­i­cal (and do not con­fuse this with any the­o­log­i­cal, Ortho­dox con­struct of the human άνθρωπος as we would under­stand it), soci­o­log­i­cal, the fem­i­nist, the queer, and no dis­cus­sion would be com­plete with­out Claude Lévi-Strauss, for whom it was all bina­ries, there is noth­ing of the bio­genetic. In fact, human med­i­cine would point us to the vari­ety of dis­or­ders that con­sti­tute the bio­log­i­cal con­fu­sion that is inter­sex dis­or­ders. This, it would seem to me, answers the ques­tion as to whether homo­sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion has any bear­ing what­so­ever in regard to – not an onto­log­i­cal real­ity – a purely social con­struct, “pri­mary bina­ries.” It seems you can have your bina­ries & be homo­sex­ual too… or some­thing like that.

The emer­gent state of human genet­ics is the exam­i­na­tion of the com­plex, and at this point in our in knowl­edge and tech­nol­ogy, nearly impos­si­ble task of the role of the inter­ac­tion of genet­ics and every­thing out­side the genome: human beings as psy­cho­log­i­cal, envi­ron­men­tal, social, and spir­i­tual beings. And this is referred to as epi­ge­net­ics. We are begin­ning to under­stand that many – per­haps if not the major­ity – of what we oth­er­wise under­stood as “famil­ial,” inher­ited, or genetically-influenced human char­ac­ter­is­tics are “acti­vated” only by, or in the absence of, an exter­nal, extra-genomic event(s). While this dis­cus­sion is not specif­i­cally focused on epi­ge­net­ics, as we shall see, I will point out one recent exam­ple uti­lized by Dr. Richard Fran­cis, who weaves the theme of the epi­ge­netic effects of the Dutch famine of World War II on their cur­rent rate of obe­sity through his exam­i­na­tion of the emerg­ing sci­ence. We will undoubt­edly see more and sim­i­lar data explored.

The point is that we will describe, then, three dis­tinct stages; two that we know for cer­tain are essen­tial for the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of gen­der: 1) the genetic (mean­ing the com­bi­na­tion of equal genetic mate­r­ial con­tributed by each par­ent to form our com­plete genomic code), and 2) the post-genetic but still pre-natal (intra-uterine) stage, notably hor­monal. The third stage, the post-natal, epi­ge­netic, prob­a­bly has no direct bear­ing on the deter­mi­na­tion of gen­der ¹, but it appears, as has been sug­gested to play an essen­tial role in far reach­ing human char­ac­ter­is­tics and dis­ease, includ­ing homo­sex­u­al­ity. This last point is for another sep­a­rate discussion(s).

With such an intro­duc­tion it seems ludi­crous to to even point out, but to date, there are no sig­nif­i­cant data that would sug­gest that there is any peri­na­tal, post-natal, or post-delivery envi­ron­men­tal event(s) with a puta­tive role in the for­ma­tion of sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion in men or women. Mind you, there are those who have can­on­ized what are hall­marks of psy­cho­an­a­lytic the­ory – and I refer here to those engaged in repar­a­tive ther­a­pies – by plac­ing them in cheap suits and cre­at­ing a “treat­ment indus­try.” Exam­ples of these post-natal “events” are same-gender psy­cho­an­a­lytic (absent, dis­tant, inva­sive, or “boundary-fluid” par­ent); sim­i­larly char­ac­ter­ized but oppo­site–gen­der par­ent; attach­ment dis­or­ders; child­hood trauma (phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal, sex­ual); absent or poor same-gender mod­el­ing (e.g. a boy raised by a homo­sex­ual father(s), a girl by a les­bian mother(s)); or (same-gender) sib­ling “mod­el­ing” homo­sex­u­al­ity to younger sib­lings. The prob­lem is that can­on­iza­tion in sci­ence requires evi­dence, repli­ca­tion, repli­ca­tion, and… more repli­ca­tion. In other words, to the best of our knowl­edge, it is true (read the dif­fer­ence between sci­ence & anec­dote here). There is no clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence that any­thing that hap­pens after you are born influ­ences your sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion. In that we have invested some time in explor­ing the genetic influ­ences involved in both gen­der dis­tinc­tion and sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, I would like to focus on the sec­ond stage of devel­op­ment, post-genetic intra-uterine events occur­ring prior to birth.

As was the case with the basic human genet­ics, this, again, is not the appro­pri­ate venue to teach human embry­ol­ogy & endocrinol­ogy. Suf­fice it to say that the basic knowl­edge and mod­els upon which we will draw rely upon knowl­edge com­mon to the ani­mal world in gen­eral. In mak­ing this acknowl­edg­ment, we there­fore have access to a tremen­dous body of “can­on­ized” sci­en­tific data. Thus, we can clearly state that in the over­whelm­ing major­ity of cases, the process of sex­ual gen­der dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in the course of the devel­op­ing fetus is rel­a­tively “unre­mark­able,” in as much as we are con­sid­er­ing an extra­or­di­nar­ily remark­able process. How­ever, in what was seen as the process of hormonally-induced dis­tinc­tion result­ing in a con­cep­tual “binary” of gen­i­tal mor­phol­ogy (aye!) – the cul­mi­nat­ing, even­tual internal/external gen­i­talia that dis­tin­guish males from females – is any­thing but sim­ple. Wow. And to what, exactly, might we refer?

We have long known that the hor­monal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of gen­der is the result of the pres­ence or absence of “cas­cades” of steroidal sex hor­mone (testos­terone), but impor­tantly, this hor­monal event will not deter­mine sex­ual behav­iour. ² This is most likely the result of two dis­tinct, sep­a­rate peri­ods in ges­ta­tional life where gen­i­tal struc­ture and steroidal action in the brain are other than simul­ta­né­ous; for exam­ple, a male embryo could the­o­ret­i­cally be exposed to ele­vated lev­els of testos­terone early in ges­ta­tion – result­ing in nor­mal devel­op­ment of the gen­i­talia – but a decreased level at a point of the final devel­op­ment of typ­i­cal sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion. ³ A num­ber of recent stud­ies com­par­ing homo­sex­ual and het­ero­sex­ual pop­u­la­tions exposed to atyp­i­cal hor­monal con­di­tions dur­ing their devel­op­ment sug­gest a likely pos­si­bil­ity. ⁴:

We com­bine these data with exist­ing data regard­ing the genetic influ­ences in the hor­monal influ­ences of female fecun­dity of “moth­ers, mater­nal grand­par­ents, and mater­nal aunts), [of homo­sex­u­als] com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing rel­a­tives of het­ero­sex­ual con­trols” ⁶ such that “The num­ber of women with extreme skew­ing of X-inactivation was sig­nif­i­cantly higher in moth­ers of gay men (13/97=13%) com­pared to con­trols (4/103=4%) and increased in moth­ers with two or more gay sons (10/44=23%). Our find­ings sup­port a role for the X chro­mo­some in reg­u­lat­ing sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion in a sub­group of gay men.” ⁷ . It seems rea­son­able to con­clude that a sep­a­rate, dis­tinct process of post-genetic, yet pre­na­tal hor­monal events are respon­si­ble in a yet unde­ter­mined fash­ion to sug­gest it is “pos­si­ble that the hor­monal imprint­ing that takes place at these two time peri­ods is sub­stan­tially dif­fer­ent” ⁸ :

It would seem appro­pri­ate to con­clude that the bina­ries are safe, for the moment, and that we have added insight into the com­plex fac­tors that may result in the genetically-influenced hor­monal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of both sex­ual gen­der dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, as well as sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion differentiation.

We have now returned to where I began this brief, and weak expo­si­tion in regard to those whose respon­si­bil­ity it is to admin­is­ter “jus­tice,” and to uphold the truth: “For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have com­pas­sion on whom I will have com­pas­sion.” (Rom. 9:15) It seems to me essen­tial to deter­mine every step of the process that leads to, what at times, is unavoid­able: sep­a­ra­tion from the “soci­ety,” the com­mu­nity, the very facil­ity of sus­te­nance and fulfillment.

There are com­men­ta­tors, some gay, some not, who sug­gest that the pro­po­nents of repar­a­tive therapies/SOCE abhor homo­sex­u­als – not sim­ply homo­sex­u­al­ity, homo­sex­u­als – offer­ing mes­sages of unfounded, unproven “hope and change”: you can change; we can help you change; and if you don’t change, it’s because you don’t want to change. And, with­out change, you don’t belong among us. It is said that, while the words are “love the sin­ner, hate the sin,” lean­ing a bit on the maxim pro­vokes the music of “sodomy,” and the “filthy busi­ness” of anal-receptive sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted dis­eases, the unleash­ing of the scourge of HIV/AIDS on human­ity, pub­lic expres­sion of homo­sex­ual affec­tion, the “obscen­ity of gay pride parades,” the “recruit­ing of our chil­dren in class­rooms, sports, & scout­ing,” and the “gay agenda.” Per­son­ally, I refuse the com­mon usage of a very his­tor­i­cally spe­cific clin­i­cal term, homo­pho­bia, as a catch-all for any and all lifestyle/value dis­agree­ments, and just set­tle for the com­men­ta­tors abhor­rence.

The argu­ment to which I had alluded as I began this weak expo­si­tion had to do with a lesser-cleric uni­lat­er­ally sep­a­rat­ing a homo­sex­ual from the sacra­men­tal life of the Church with­out any fore­warn­ing to this per­son, and impor­tantly, to the cler­ics under whom this lesser-cleric served in obe­di­ence. What ensued was a scan­dal on sev­eral lev­els. The argu­ment being made is that this was a nec­es­sary action, pur­suant to the teach­ings of the Church; in fact, not to have per­formed this action would have con­sti­tuted neg­li­gence; and finally, given that the lesser-cleric had been pre­vi­ously instructed not to per­form this action by those to whom he served in obe­di­ence, it con­sti­tuted an heroic act. OR, he sim­ply “had enough,” was angry enough, abhorred the homo­sex­ual enough, and acted. So, what to make of it?

The Church itself has relied heav­ily on the con­cept of Epitimia [ἐπιτιμία], mean­ing “penalty,” or “pun­ish­ment,” and such is its impact even though that it is men­tioned only once in the entire Scrip­ture: “But if any­one has caused sor­row, he has caused sor­row, not to me, but in part (that I press not too heav­ily) to all of you. It is suf­fi­cient that such a per­son receive this [ἐπιτιμία] punishment/penalty which was imposed by the many.” (2 Cor 2:6) Through­out the his­tory of sal­va­tion, we are shown the exam­ples of many who were penal­ized and pun­ished; what is sig­nif­i­cant here? While the Church under­stands St. Paul’s use of the word epitimia to con­vey a penalty, it bet­ter under­stood its impli­ca­tion: a penalty suf­fi­cient to turn some­one around. No more, no less. And a deriv­a­tive, epiti­mao [ἐπιτιμάω] means “to mea­sure out, to prop­erly value, to fit a situation.”

It is this same pas­sage that leads St. Chrysos­tom to con­tem­plate “flee­ing” the priest­hood, as he tells Basil:

For all his com­mon “ver­biage,” St. Chrysos­tom offers noth­ing by way of instruc­tion or guid­ance, cri­te­ria or “action plan” that would result in such a con­se­quence. None. I sup­pose there are numer­ous pos­si­ble expla­na­tions for his lack of com­ment, but I am assum­ing his fun­da­men­tal trust of the ordained Chris­t­ian min­istry, “which always ful­fills that which is want­ing through the laying-on of hands,” is suf­fi­cient. And this leads me to con­clude with Fr. Thomas Hopko, renowned and respected Ortho­dox the­olo­gian and pas­tor, Dean Emer­i­tus of St. Vladimir’s Ortho­dox Sem­i­nary and the author of Chris­t­ian Faith and Same-Sex Attrac­tion: East­ern Ortho­dox Reflec­tions:

Pas­toral deci­sions are those founded in the wis­dom of know­ing what is proper – mean­ing suf­fi­cient enough to pro­voke a “turn­ing” – and can be borne with­out dis­cour­age­ment and a sense of defeat; that there is an “instruc­tion,” a “cor­rec­tion,” but there is a “nur­tur­ing”; and while “accom­mo­dat­ing” for our dis­tance from the times of Grace, nev­er­the­less does not com­pro­mise the under­ly­ing Truth. The Church does not need our piti­ful defense, and it is con­trivance to sug­gest we sep­a­rate indi­vid­u­als to main­tain the integrity of the “sanc­tity” of the Church. In our times, we we sep­a­rate indi­vid­u­als from the Church for their sal­va­tion: “For what fel­low­ship [κοινωνία] has light with dark­ness?” (2 Cor. 6:14) And the fun­da­men­tal absence of dread, the absence of fear, and the pres­ence of “jus­ti­fi­ca­tion,” and the pres­ence of “boast­ing” alone is a mes­sage to us to ques­tion the wis­dom of hav­ing placed such indi­vid­u­als in such posi­tions of author­ity to begin.