Clare's Story - Christianity, Sexuality, Transgender Life, and The Struggle to Self-Acceptance

There's a new issue of "Franciscan" out.  Normally I wouldn't be commenting on that.  But this issue was edited by a Franciscan brother I know.  The article that begins on the front cover is by Professor Helen Berry, one of the preachers at my church.  And inside there is "Clare's Story".

I wrote it six months ago and I have to say that such a lot has happened in the last six months that some of my perspectives on my own story have changed.  When I say at the end that "surprises keep coming," well they really do and they seem to happen with increasing regularity at the moment.  My faith is very different to how it was six months ago and at this point it could go in almost any direction - although I don't think it will ever move back to faith in the literalistic truth of the religious stories.

Also, six months on I do not identify as a lesbian.  I've been able, thanks to a lot of thought and discussions with friends, to be able to accept that I am asexual.  And when you're ace, words such as heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual and so on kind of lose their meaning in your life.  Yep, asexual.  This is me, coming out, yet again!

So this is Clare's Story.  I think it was edited a little to fit into the journal - I sent them something about 50% longer than the submission guidelines requested.

My name is Clare. I am transgender and lesbian, truths I only accepted in 2013, a process including great highs, difficulties, triumphs and an examination of every part of my life.

At an early age I knew I was different and didn't fit into the life I was meant to be living. It wasn't long before I'd worked out that I wasn't just different, but what was thought of as bad – in my gender and also in my neuro-diversity. From early childhood I knew shame about my identity and attempted to suppress everything I believed to be shameful, to create a persona to imprison the one already there and live as the kind of person I thought would be acceptable.

I managed to suppress myself so far that I didn't even know that I am female. Clues arose sometimes and because I felt so guilty I hastily squashed them. I would try make up, cross dress and have all kinds of dreams, desires, interests and fantasies but I'd learned such things were evil so I came to intensely hate myself. Inevitably this contributed to decades of mental health problems.

My upbringing was outwardly normal and balanced, a stable home with two parents and a brother. But that balance could not compensate for what was going on inside or for the way I was consistently told that certain things were wrong; the times I was told “Don't be stupid, that's for girls.” Life as a teenager became inner torture. Life cannot be good when every day there is an enormous shadow blocking out the sun. I turned from being a child who didn't smile much into an inwardly bound person with constant low lying depression and major depressive episodes.

Then I discovered Christianity. Or at least one version of it. I converted through an evangelical, Pentecostal, born-again experience. I hadn't expected that but it gave me much that I'd never had before: solidity, meaning, hope. But it wasn't all good. I didn't convert based on the conviction that God loved me. I couldn't really deal with that concept. I converted largely because that brand of evangelicalism was pretty much the only religion that agreed with what I already believed – that I was evil, some kind of monster, an aberration. My new faith taught me that I was right, that I was so evil that I deserved to burn painfully for eternity. But it gave comfort because it turned out everyone else deserved that too – but there was hope for all of us.

That form of Christianity wrecked any self-esteem I had left. When somewhere deep down you know you're transgender, queer, it's hard to be part of a faith that teaches how evil that is. Many can tell stories of how churches – not Jesus – have hurt them greatly. My first church had many ministry tapes from a so-called gay cure ministry. As a young, enthusiastic convert I swallowed the message and didn't dare to question it – because that would have been to question “God's word”, to despise God, to despise that one hope. I became thoroughly Biblically (as we saw it) homophobic and transphobic, hating myself even more. I don't condemn myself for my homophobia because with the inputs I had I couldn't have believed anything else. But I deeply, deeply regret things I've thought and said.

Coming to terms with accepting myself as female and lesbian took a long time and a series of near miracles. I almost don't know how I got from there to here. When I came out I had good and bad experiences in churches. The people in my local church were supportive, though I was told it would be “inappropriate” for me to continue to preach or lead anything. That hurt, but it worked out well, causing me to walk away from that life and find a wide open space to learn more about myself and about my faith.

I'd been attending another church too and got called in for a “talk” with the pastor. He called me an abomination (based on Deuteronomy 22:5) and said that he couldn't conceive that I was any kind of Christian at all unless I repented of my gender. He said lots of other things that were highly unpleasant. But by that time I was secure in myself and certain that I was not condemned for being who I am and his words did nothing to destroy me. In a way I'm glad to have experienced that because it gives at least some insight into what other people have gone through and continue to suffer in many churches. But I do worry and weep for LGBT+ people who are raised in places like that and endure sheer hell.

Overall I've been very fortunate in faith. My wife sent me to get support from Northern Lights Metropolitan Community Church. So in June 2013 I went to a service, one of the many scared people who come through the door. It's one of the best things I've ever done. MCC is now home and the people there are cherished family. It's been very difficult at times and through everything MCC has been a rock of support. No matter how low I've been, no matter how much I struggled with faith and dealt with the pain I'd lived in because of my faith, the people there have stood by me and held me.

I spent a year preparing to leave MCC and to walk away from Christianity forever. But in October 2014 that changed. I surprised myself and formally became a member of the church, publicly renewing my baptismal vows a week before, something that for me was a necessary step.

I needed this renewal for two reasons. Firstly, I was baptised under another name, another gender, and was a very different person then. My present is a changed life from my past. I'd love to be re-baptised as Clare but of course that's not a theological option because baptism is a one time event. I couldn't be baptised again but I needed to publicly express that, as Clare, those vows I made as “him” still stood, more firmly than they ever did in the past.

The second reason was even more important to me than the first. Over the previous eighteen months my Christian faith died a slow and painful death. Church services were torture for me. The church put up with my many words, my complaints, my deep pain through that process. I cannot thank them enough for supporting me through the death of my faith and through everything I said, and felt, and did.

My faith deserved to die. It really did. Good riddance to it! Not because of any doctrines or dogmas that were or weren't attached to it. But because the root of my faith was self-hatred, self-denial, self-rejection – arising from a firm belief that I was no good. Much of that came from received beliefs about my gender and consequently my near-constant urges to self-destruct. My faith helped to destroy me, helped me to eradicate myself, for twenty-three years. It was immensely important to me but it crushed me.

Eventually I was able to leave that faith behind, and rest secure in a faith that excluded any personal God. The plan was to leave MCC and never look back. That was the only future I could see. But throughout the whole journey I still believed in MCC, her vision, her people, and the place of healing that the church is. And, solely because of certain of the people, I stayed.

Many people noticed a not so subtle change in me since the start of October 2014. At church one evening everything suddenly clicked. I could sing the songs, pray the prayers and knew it was OK to receive communion again for the first time in a long while. And I was extremely surprised that night to find myself on my knees, hands in the air, lost in worship and thankfulness to the God I didn't believe in. The “God of Surprises” entered again and renewed my world, my heart.

Faith returned. It's a new faith. Brand new. It's a far healthier faith, one that accepts the love of God, and one that can honestly say with the Psalmist;

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

As I renewed my baptismal vows it was my freedom to be Clare, to be authentic, that I celebrated. But more than that I celebrated my return to faith. A purer faith. A very different faith than that I had before. Based on self-love rather than self-condemnation, on authenticity rather than self-squashing, on freedom, on love, on grace, on hope, on acceptance, on inclusivity, on joy, on light and life and on so much more.

The story continues. Surprises keep coming and my faith is going in unexpected directions. I am wildly unorthodox, have a spirituality that embraces all kinds of things that I would have condemned in years gone by. And yet I now seriously call myself more of a Christian than I ever have been. A Christianity of love, light, and life not constrained by dogma and doctrines. A Christianity of freedom and joy rather than my previous false Christianity of law and self punishment. In short: Hallelujah! For I am set free.

About My Breasts, Fucking Passing, And The Wisdom of Autism

Warning in advance:  This post contains completely honest, no-holds-barred, discussion of my breasts.  If that is going to offend you, stop reading.  Right now.

Not long after I had started wearing skirts publicly someone at church asked me an important question:  "Have you thought of chicken fillets? That's what I use."  The person who asked was cis-gender and was wanting to say that using them is OK, because plenty of women use them.  No.  I hadn't thought of that.  In the amazing rush of coming out to myself and going full time two months later, somehow I'd missed thinking of buying someone to give me the appearance of an obvious bust, the appearance of breasts that could have been there for years.

So.  I bought breast inserts.  I bought bras of the right size to hold the inserts in place and wore them with pride.  All of a sudden, the public Clare went from being flat chested to having C cup fake boobs that plenty of people told her looked good.

They really helped with confidence.  Because you know that when the idiots are staring at the shape of your fantastic chest they're not looking so much at your manly looking face so won't throw abuse at you as much.  Unless they look up and think they've just accidentally fancied a bloke and start worrying about their own sexuality.  At least that was the mental theory that boosted my confidence - whether it had any basis in truth is an entirely different matter.

But the time has come to change.

For the last couple of days I have ditched those inserts.  I've been walking with my chest being the shape it currently is naturally.  Yes.  This really is an entire blog post about my breasts.  There will be no photos included!

So.  Why?  Why have I taken the step of putting aside those confidence building, good looking, breast forms?  Am I mad?  Do I want to start getting more abuse again?  Why, Clare?  Why?  Isn't your life hard enough?

Three reasons.

One:  For the good of my own health.

I've now been taking oestrogen every day for seven months.  The dose is still low - in fact it's still lower than what the normal start dose would be in the USA.  And roughly two months ago I started to receive implants of goserelin, which is an anti-androgen.  Basically, it blocks the production of testosterone (and of oestrogen too but that doesn't affect me).

The hormone treatment is having an effect.  I am going through the soreness that any pubescent girl goes through when their breasts grow.  And the inserts affect this.  Yep, it all gets painful at times.  Not that I'm complaining, just laughing at the pain because it means the hormones are doing their job.

The inserts I have are designed to fit over breasts that aren't growing - either because someone wants to add to what they naturally have, or because someone has had a mastectomy and wants to appear to still have their previous appearance.

That's no good for me because my breasts are growing.  That process has begun, though just as in any other female puberty it will take years to complete.  (Too much information?!  If that's the case, why didn't you stop reading when warned at the start?!)  The inserts, because of what they're designed for have a concave back.  And that's no good.  To press growing breasts into them is to try to force them into a shape that they shouldn't have.  And now they're growing there is less room in that bra so the pressure is greater resulting in increased risk of growing misshapen breasts.

So for my own health - and my own comfort too because any woman can tell you that extra constant pressure on growing breasts isn't exactly a blissful physical experience - I have decided to ditch the inserts, regardless of how that changes my appearance or increases the perceived risks.  ("Perceived" is probably the right word, rather than "actual".)

Two:  Passing.  Passing.  Passing.

Readers of this blog will know that I recently have had to come to terms with being autistic, after so many years of denial.  This process has taught me so much and affected me in ways that I'll be working through for a long time.

I always knew that I had a tendency to rock, to stim, to do some of those typically stereotypical autistic things.  And I felt terrible about them and did everything I could to not do any of them.  Don't rock Clare.  Don't stim.  Stay still.  Stay very, very still in case the autism detecting T-Rex in your head sees you and devours you.  (Yes, autistic people CAN invent metaphor and play with words!  Even while often being over-literal about anyone else's metaphors!)

What I have noticed as I have begun to let go and let myself rock and pace and move and play with stim toys and so on - and I know that I have only begun, not finished - is that holding myself still was bloody knackering.  Letting go has been challenging but it's also being a source of freedom and I have a lot more energy through not fighting myself every moment of every day, consciously or subconsciously.

What I've realised is that for all this years I have been trying to pass as neurotypical.  And it's been such hard work even when denying my as yet unofficial diagnosis.  Passing.  Passing.  Passing.

And that realisation has come as something of a revelation and it's affected the way I can treat my gender presentation too.  Because I've been trying to pass there too - pass as reasonably cis-normative so I don't get abused, to look like what other people might think a woman should look like, so that I can claim the same privileges that any cisgender woman is automatically given.

With the autism I decided that, as much as I can manage it, I shouldn't try to pass anymore.  I should just be myself.  And that should be easy because I haven't got a lot to lose in my life and I know that the important parts of what I do have - my family, my church, my friends - are not going to be lost if I learn to be openly autistic, openly the person I am behind the masks.

With the autism I just haven't got the energy to pass.  I haven't got the energy to put on that act all day anymore.  To do so would be more crippling than it was when I didn't even realise how much I was doing it.  And I haven't got the desire to pass either.  I keep reading the writings of people who are proudly autistic and they have been influencing me so much.

So with the autism I came up with a catchphrase.  I penned it and proclaim it.  I used it in the last post on this blog.  I am massively thankful for the people who brought me to the point of proclaiming it.  And bear in mind that I never used to swear and would never have let such a phrase cross my lips in the past.  But ...

"FUCK PASSING"

Easier said than done. 

"Fuck Passing"

Because not passing is not conforming.  It's a risk.

"Fuck Passing"

 It's a letting go of security, of respect, of automatic privilege.

"Fuck Passing"

Yes, that's easier said than done.

"F.U.C.K P.A.S.S.I.N.G"

Because I'm still on the path of discovering what I am and what not passing might mean.

Yeah.

Fuck Passing.

I'm done with it.

I choose the harder life of standing out.

I choose the easier life of being free.

And that's fed back into my gender.  It's easy for me to say because I generally pass pretty well anyway.  I look reasonably like what people think a "woman" looks like.  But for gender too.  Fuck Passing.  I'm not going to get into all the discussions that could be made but these days my use of make up is minimal - far less than a lot of women wear every day.  And I realised.  In order to stay true to my little obscene slogan, the breast inserts had to go.

3.  Women.  What are they anyway?

To be brief:  Breasts do not make a woman.

That's obvious of course.  But if it's so obvious, why should I wear fake breasts?  Doesn't that imply somewhere along the line a view that breasts DO make THIS woman?  Aren't I just falling into some completely bullshit view of what a proper woman should be?

Yes.  At least to some degree - beyond all my concerns of security and self-confidence - that's what I've been doing.

So those breast inserts have to go in order to not stand against the misogynist world that would define a woman by her cup size.

That might be a bit radical.  And I know full well that in some ways that leads to questions about hormones and eventual surgery.  But there are other issues involved there and it's far more complicated than any discussion of sticking bits of silicon in your bra in order to appear "normal" or "acceptable".

So.  There you are.  My chest is worn as it comes.  And I walk with pride because this is who I am and this is what I am and this is the healthy, risky way to be.

And thus I had to buy new bras.  Those C cup bras will have to be put away, at least for the moment.  Who knows what the future will bring and what the medical treatments will do?  And thus I join the moans of all other women:  "Why are bras so expensive?" and "Why doesn't anywhere cheap sell them in my size?"  Honestly, I tried Primark.  Would anything fit?  Not a chance in hell!

It's a new day for my boobs.  What you see now is far less than what you would have seen a week ago.  But what you see is mine.  All mine.  And they are what they are and will be what they will be.

Fuck Passing.  Because the only person I want to pass as is me.

Responding to "The Toll of Our Christian Theology on the LGBT Community"

Last night I found a link to a Christian blog post about the way LGBT people have suffered at the hands of Christians.  That's not news to me but the blog post touched me greatly.  I wept about it last night.  I wept about it again this morning.

http://johnpavlovitz.com/2014/10/07/distorted-love-the-toll-of-our-christian-theology-on-the-lgbt-community/

It's worth reading.  I urge you to read it. 

John Pavlovitz hadn't expected to write this post - it's a direct response to the hundreds of people who wrote to him following another post, hundreds of people each with direct experience of suffering at the hands of Christians for their sexuality.  If I'd written the original post I wouldn't have expected that outpouring either.  But sometimes these things just happen - such as with a post elsewhere on "Post Traumatic Church Disorder".

The biggest of my tears this morning were when I read again the sentence "It certainly doesn’t look like love to the sweet, 12-year old middle school girl in your church whose been repeatedly told she’s an abomination; that God already despises her."

Now I've been told by a church minister that I am an abomination.  But I was 42.  I was totally sure of myself as a transgender woman.  I was totally sure that being transgender was not any kind of a problem for God - whether a "God of the Bible" (I'd already gone through the "relevant" verses) or any other God.  But I thought of this girl.  She was 12 not 42.  She didn't have all the adult experience or two theology degrees and the ability to research more theology.  She didn't have the wonderful support of a church like Northern Lights MCC here in Newcastle.  So I thought of her and what this perfectly "Biblical" treatment would have done to her.  And I wept.  I wept over other stories too.  I am very close to tears again now.

John Pavlovitz's post from two weeks previously is also worth reading.  It's about what he would do if he found that his son or daughter was gay.  To sum that up in a few words: He would love them.  That's what caused the outpouring of response.  Just that.  That a father would love his child.

I posted a link to the blog on a friend's facebook status asking whether she had seen it.  Part of my response to a speech by a Catholic Archbishop who said that "Homosexual relationships are destroying our human identity."

The report about the speech was posted by a good woman.  A Catholic who posts things from either side of the moral arguments currently raging in the Catholic church and expects responses and discussion - from both sides.  And she's good enough to put up with a lot of non-Catholic words from me which to be honest is quite impressive at times as I'm not exactly toeing the party line!  She's doing her best in life and seeks to walk in love of people and in devotion to her God.

Someone responded as follows:  "Hang on a second, acting on being gay and physically attacking others, are both sins in Christian Theology. So because others sin by attacking, it must be the fault of the Theology? That reasoning is beyond moronic..."

You can always tell a loving, rational person by the way they descend to calling someone's intelligent writing "moronic" within three sentences!

I responded to that.  Because yes, I believe it is the fault of the Theology.  It's a theology I once promoted too - much to my shame.  One day I'll write about that.  A post along the lines of Mea Maxima Culpa!

__________________________________________

Sorry - this is long.  A length borne of passion.  A length borne of seeing people hurt, again, again, again by Christians and so-called Biblical views and of Christians turning away again and again and saying "It's not OUR fault, our ways wouldn't hurt anyone."  I am so utterly sick of seeing LGBT people destroyed and then being blamed for their own destruction by the Christians who killed their spirits.

Acting on being gay is NOT a sin in Christian theology.  It is a sin in SOME Christian theology.  Get that right.  "Christian theology" is not a blanket term.  It's certainly not a sin in my theology.  Nor in the theology of a local minister who leads Bible studies on the subject covering every possibly connected verse in great detail, solely relying on the works of highly respected scholars.  Nor in the theology of a great many Christians and a great many skilled theologians and Biblical scholars too.

When the theology is that a dignified human being, made in the image of God, beautifully and wonderfully made is also an abomination merely because of who God has made them to be, then yes the theology is at fault.  Or to be more exact, the people who have such a theology and refuse to look beyond the preconceptions of the centuries of homophobic abuse into a more enlightened age where human beings are accepted for being who they are.

I have so many friends who know what the effects of homophobic theology are.  It's not just a matter of people attacking them but also a matter of the beliefs guiding that action.

So many scholars now have accepted that the anti-homosexual clobber verses don't in reality have anything to do with Christian homosexuals.  More will follow.  And in the end the churches will accept that this is a normal, and completely healthy, part of the range that makes up human beings (and many other species too - if like the Archbishop we want to bring in what is "natural").  

That day cannot come too soon.

A day when I as a transsexual married lesbian will never risk encountering a church where I am rejected, told to repent of being who I am, told that it is impossible even to be Christian unless I at least want to repent, told I'm abomination, told that the God of mercy will make me burn in pain for eternity if I don't stop being who I am.  I will never again encounter a Church where my very existence is said to be anti-God (such as the Catholic Church and the certain articles written on major Catholic websites as a perfectly logical result of the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI)

Jesus accepts me.  He accepts LGBTQIA people.  He loves us as we are and has called us to be who we are.  He made us this way.  Yes, God created gay people to be gay people.  He created transsexuals to be transsexuals.

It's just a shame that Christians turned the love of God for gay people into a sham.  The love they show is not love.  No matter how many flowery words are used.  No matter how much Christians try to justify themselves.  It's not love.  It's closed-minded, bigoted, hatred justified by years of doing the same thing.

And yes, I am a Christian.  And I firmly believe God called me to live the life I lead - as a happily married transsexual lesbian.  My wife would agree with that.  And I know the hell it was to believe what other Christians taught - that all these things were evil, disordered, unnatural.  That I should be someone else - and indeed I tried to do it for decades.  Misery.  And to my shame I believed the lies that my gender and sexuality were disordered, evil.  And I believed the same thing about the gender and sexuality of others.

The theology needs changing.  Precisely because the theology leads to the attacks.  The theology directly leads to a hell on earth for innocent people.

The theology needs changing.  Precisely because the theology leads to thousands and thousands of wounded, crushed lives, and not uncommonly even to suicide.

The theology needs changing.  Precisely because the theology forces people to run from Jesus because the Jesus of the theology does welcome people with open arms.

The theology needs changing.  Precisely because the theology gives a church that is not a place of safety but instead a place of death for people against whom other people have a prejudice that has no basis whatsoever in reality.

I see the results of the theology.  Regularly.  It is heart breaking.  I am so thankful for a better theology.  One taught by some of the churches here.  And I am so thankful for the MCC congregation here and for the way crushed people are healed there and enabled to find peace and fall in love with Jesus again after the pain caused by well-meaning Christians.  So, so thankful for the light and love in that place.

The Truth About Same Sex Attraction?

A priest today posted a link to an article by Joseph Prever, a gay Catholic with orthodox Catholic views on sexuality, intelligence and good taste in his reading.  I was meant to be doing other things this afternoon but allowed myself to be side-tracked by the post.

The article is titled "The Truth About Same Sex Attraction".  I looked up "transgender" on the site (Catholic Exchange).  Obviously that's a subject important to me.  The first post returned was about how evil it was for a transgender woman to challenge a school that sacked him for insubordination (she refused to dress like and act like a man).  The second repeatedly called a transgender woman, Amanda Simpson, a man.  I can't blame the site - it's Catholic teaching, as expounded at length just 18 months ago by Pope Benedict XVI, that I am a man and live in sin every moment I live as a woman.  Another article accuses people like me of "impersonation" and "deception".

So I didn't hold out too much hope that I'd be in full agreement with an article on the site about sexuality.

I can respect Joseph Prever.  He's devoutly Catholic and lives that life to the full with all the joys and challenges that entails.  He's pretty firm and steadfast in his faith.  And he's chosen, as a gay Catholic, to live that challenging life of celibacy, in obedience to the teachings of the church and in the conviction that his churches teachings on homosexual relationships are entirely correct.  I believe too that he's right that celibacy is a perfectly acceptable choice and that our society - including parts of the gay community - greatly overvalues sex.  Too often celibacy is seen as weird, cranky lunacy rather than a decent way to choose to live.  Prever has chosen celibacy and while I may not agree with the faith that aided that choice I in no way criticise him for that choice.

If I met him I'd probably like him and happily sit and drink tea (or his beverage of choice) with him.  Prever is doing his best, and doing his best to live in love and service in the ways he believes are right.  And that's a lot better than most of us do.  There are plently of Catholics like Prever.  We can't ever forget that they're good people seeking to follow a path they believe in, and believing that path to be fully based on love.

But I'm an ex-Catholic.  And so can disagree with Prever too.  And he can disagree with me.  And probably we'll never come to any agreement on this issue.  He would continue, if we debated, to stand on the view that "the Catholic Church is right and what it says about the Bible is right and this is dogma given to the Church infallibly by the Holy Spirit."  I recognise that view - I used to share it, my Catholicism was serious!  I would continue to affirm a view that homosexuality is normal, part of the range of healthy humanity and that it's not a consequence of our being fundamentally disordered or subject to any kind of original sin.

I started to wonder whether the priest posted the blog as a recommendation or just to cause discussion.  It's hard to tell as he made no comment.  I guess he recommends it and I know he would go along with the teaching that gay people didn't choose to be gay but should always choose to be celibate.  I know too that he wouldn't call himself "anti-gay" in any way, and has been involved in gay pride celebrations.  Combining gay pride with the teaching of his church and his faith is at times a balancing act but he usually balances well with a compassionate balancing pole.

I started to wonder too whether the priest would also recommend the websites and books that Prever recommends in his blog post.  I clicked on the first of these and it claims on its front page to teach how to "resolve" homosexual feelings and lead to "our innate heterosexual masculinity".  It teaches how homosexual or same-sex attraction is an unwanted thing.  It teaches that homosexuality is caused by "a longing for a father's affirmation, perhaps, or a peer group's inclusion, or our own internal sense of just being "one of the guys"".

The site looks to people being able to talk about their "former homosexual condition."  In other words, it's a gay cure site.  Pure and simple.  Get therapy - psychological or spiritual - and find a cure.  Become a proper man with proper attractions.  The site even has a page called "Who Succeeds at Change in Therapy?" written by a "reparative therapist".

I'm sorry but this is blatant homophobia.  It's doubly sad because Catholicism - in her Catechism, many leaders, preachers, publications and a proportion of the laity - continues to teach homosexuals to be homophobic, to reject themselves rather than embrace themselves and to believe their homosexual attractions, whether physical, romantic, or emotional, are a disorder.  Being taught to be a homophobic homosexual is a terrible thing.

Joseph Prever in his writings points out a belief that homosexuality is something he HAS rather than something he IS.  It is very sad that he's been taught this and has accepted that teaching.  Our sexual attractions are part of who we are, they're not something like an ailment that we have and can fight with.  It's very sad that he refers to same sex attractions as "sexual dysfunction".  To believe that being gay means you have a dysfunction rather than that you are as fully functional as anyone else is to bear an unnatural cross placed on you by a dogmatic religion.  It's a cross Prever knows well.

The sooner the Catholic Church and other churches realise that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality and that it isn't gravely disordered the better.  I've heard Catholics talk of how the Catholic Church is "gay friendly" because it's attitudes are better than some churches.  True, some churches are far worse but that doesn't imply the Catholic Church has good answers.

Prever writes of the sufferings of gay people, "Put the sexual aspect together with the other things that homosexual men and women often experience — depression, low self-esteem, loneliness, a sense (however false) of being utterly different — and you have a heavy cross."

The question is, why are these things so often experienced?  I believe the answer does not lie with homosexuality.  It lies with the way people treat homosexuals and homosexuality - and thus with the way homosexuals are taught to treat themselves.  It is not gay people who need to change.  It is a world that makes gay people feel second class, dirty, stained, disordered, for being gay.  It is not gay people not need to deal with a "sexual dysfunction".  It is religious people who need to stop calling homosexuality dysfunctional.   A banner at church here reads "Fabulous and Beautiful", two words taken from placards from the Stonewall protests nearly 50 years ago.  It is so sad that people still need to be told today that they are beautiful, having been told by religious people that they are not.

The cross is caused by the Church, not by the individual.  It is caused by the society the Church has helped to create, not by the individual.  The individual is fine.  The individual is healthy but so often has become convinced that he is not healthy or believes herself healthy but is weary from being told that she is unhealthy.  The Church imposes the cross, imposes the suffering.  The Church is the one that needs to repent and change, not the individual.

Gay people do not need to change their sexuality, their same sex attraction.  Churches need to change.  Political parties need to change.  Anyone and anything needs to change when they tell gay people their sexuality and attractions are bad things that need to change.

It will happen.  It is happening.  But even here there in our fortunate society where LGBT people have legal protections there is much homophobia.  A survey just published showed that only 73% of UK football fans would be comfortable with their national team including an openly gay player.  The Guardian article rejoices in the worldwide support for gay players to come out.  But consider, that's over a quarter of football fans who care more about a player's sexuality than their footballing skills.  Football fans were questioned in a number of nations.  The UK came third, behind Sweden and Denmark, but in the USA only 52% of people would be comfortable with an openly gay player on the team.

There is still such homophobia and such stupidity as to care about the sexuality of a football player.  Churches should be leading the way in the journey away from such homophobia and indeed away from any prejudice - another survey today revealed that 30% of the UK population consider themselves to be racially prejudiced in some way.  Nearly a third of us here thus admit to being racists.  That's a rise.  It's doesn't take much imagination to see why that rise exists - and that white British people hold the bulk of the blame rather than people of any other race, nationality or culture.

Churches must lead the way else they deserve the fate suggested in the book title "Why Christianity Must Change or Die".  Some churches are helping lead the way.  Too many are not.  And too many are proud of not doing it, blinkered into a view of their own rightness, blinkered into a view that regarding same sex attraction and so many other things they have "The Truth".

Come on Church:   Change.   Or just die, as is inevitable and deserved.