I really have to write about this because it has happened to me, an 85-year-old, mild-mannered, but opinionated blogger, and you all (all two or three of you) are supposed to share in my joys and trials.
Yesterday was a Sunday like any other Sunday except that my local paper was kind enough (or brave enough) to run a shortened version of my previous post on same-sex marriage which I had submitted as a Community Forum offering. As you might recall, I am not in favor of same-sex marriage. In fact the newspaper titled my article “Same-sex marriage should not be permitted.”
I thought I’d look at it online at the News-Times website. Lo, and behold, at the end of the piece there is a line saying “Post your comments,” and an inviting square to fill with one’s thoughts. Many people had things to say. When I first looked at the site there were 139 comments, just about all of them negative. As I look at the site today the number is up to 188. The last comment from “Horrified,” in the neighboring town of Ridgefield says:
The world has no place for hateful, bigots like you.
What if I were to espouse the same hateful remarks about Italians, Jews or Blacks. It would not be tolerated. You need to take a look at your own issues instead of spreading ignorance. The world is the horrible state it is because of people like you.
The previous post was from someone named Jesus Christ, of AOL, in response to another comment from “Devout”, which read:
You are assuming two things… First that I truly existed as the Bible suggests. Second, That my Father and I really care about this place anymore.
Each time I go back to the site there are new posts. We are now up to 191. Still complaining about something in yesterday’s newspaper! There are posts from all over the United States, and one each from Germany, Spain, and Canada. Obviously, my article was picked up by some “gay is good” site and responses invited. The vast majority of them call me homophobic, bigoted, ignorant, hateful and intolerant.
I was particularly impressed by the politeness of the post from a local resident saying:
Dorothy Vining, go to hell. Thank you.
We are now up to 224 posts. A recent one from Sue in Pittsburgh reads:
I wish a tornado would touch down in Danbury and blow Dorothy away to Oz. And her equally close-minded, repressed, and perpetually unhappy little dog, too.
Someone else opines that Jesus was gay and is rather vulgar about it.
Post 232: Dum from Danbury posted my name, address, and phone number. With neighbors like this, who needs enemies?
Post 238:
You probably shouldn’t have put your first and last name on this article because you should be ashamed for publicizing you clearly discriminatory opinion. It is people like you that shouldnt be allowed to procreate, not the gays, lesbians, etc.
At this point I decided enough is enough. It reminds me of Michelle Malkin’s book, Unhinged, which is essentially a compilation of vile things folks on the left have written or said about her. You read a few pages and decide enough is enough. They are unhinged. They are not coming from a good place.
I took St. Francis and his little animals off the front lawn. These people are definitely not coming from a good place.
There’s a cute cartoon strip in the National Catholic Register. Umbert, the Unborn, is talking to a little red devil.
“How do you do it,” he says. “How do you get people to do such evil things?”
Devil answers: “It’s easy. First you convince the most gullible ones that evil is good….” “Then you simply persuade every one else to look the other way.”
Umbert says: “You’re despicable.”
Devil: “I know.”
Maybe I should join the silent majority and look the other way. When this vocal minority gets on your case, watch out! This is getting uncomfortable.
TUESDAY MORNING: I confess. After I said I’d had enough, I went back to the newspaper site to see if there were new posts. The last one, #253, is one I will cling to. Dr. Bill, of Lawndale CA says:
Wow. Only the truth could illicit such vehement responses. Obviously, everyone called his husband and her wife to comment on this courageous writing! Normal people have every right to express their opinion, but it is painfully obvious that homosexuals are not normal. Not one person has ever been born gay, they LEARN it.
But what does a doctor know who can’t spell “elicit”?
—-
For information on the medical consequences of homosexual actions, click here.
For help in leaving the homosexual lifestyle, visit Courage.
John 15:8 No slave is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
Hi Dorothy,
I appreciate that you are absolutely entitled to your own opinion, but it makes me sad.
I’m not gay. I spent the first 8 years of my life as a blissful only child, my Mom and Dad’s pride and joy. THEN my baby brother was born. Eight years difference — oh how we fought! Over the territory of our rooms, the backseat of the car, the big comfy armchair in the family room, you name it.
But as we got older, the fighting turned to bonding. My baby brother (well, now 32, so not such a baby) became one of my most treasured friends. He’s such a good person, so full of life and humor, always there for his many friends. Some of my happiest memories are of times spent with him.
But when I think back on that day around 15 years ago, over Christmas, when my brave young brother had the courage to come out to me, I cringe.
Yes, my baby brother is gay. But that’s not what makes me cringe — To this day my reaction at that life-changing moment for him makes me cringe for my own conduct. Now I didn’t have the same feelings that you do about homosexuality. I was raised Catholic, and my family always said that we should be tolerant of all, although living in a suburb there really wasn’t much out there we needed to be tolerant about. I didn’t know anyone who was gay, and I really hadn’t thought about it much. I don’t even remember exactly what I said to him when he told me he was gay, I think I was tepidly supportive. But what I DIDN’T do was immediately hug him and tell him how much I loved him. Oh boy, it’s making me tear up again just thinking about it. He’s never said anything, but I know I hurt him.
But years passed and we repaired the damage, although it took much, much longer for my Mom and Dad to even be able to say the words, let alone show the unconditional love that we were raised to believe was without saying — causing him even more pain. These days everyone has come around, our family holidays are filled with love and laughter, and a mention of my brother’s boyfriend no longer throws a raucous family dinner into stilted, awkward discomfort. But it took time.
Truly, I’m not trying to change your mind about your faith and what you believe is right or wrong. But just imagine, for a moment, that a person that you loved SO much, that you knew absolutely was not only a good person, but one of the kindest hearted people you’ve ever known. And imagine how that person would feel if they read your article.
I didn’t find the link to your article on a “gay is good” site, but it was on a left-leaning liberal political site. And while you’re going to get hateful people responding to you whenever you post on the web (what is it about anonymity that brings out the worst in humanity??) please remember that not all of us out here immediately hated you. 🙂
I suspect some of the responses you are getting are from those who are gay. But some are also from people who have loved ones, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters who are, and just for a moment, they imagine how your article would make their loved one feel — and undergo a moment of deep empathy and pain, and respond accordingly. Not pretty, often. But not necessarily the Gay Agenda, just people who happen to truly love their gay family members and friends.
Anyway, I wish you the best, and I hope the ugliness of some people doesn’t blind you to the mostly silent but still present majority people that wish you could understand how they feel, but ultimately respect your right to your own opinion.
Take Care,
M
Two points:
The article is based entirely upon a religious belief that being gay is “wrong”. Second, the religious belief totally contradicts the teachings of its Founder, Jesus Christ, mainly “There are two Commandments above all others—“, and “That which you do to the least of these, you do to Me.”
Ms. Vining takes a religious belief, cherry picked from the Old testament (ignoring other ones right next to it that allow selling of the oldest daughter, not touching pork, wearing two different types of cloth, etc.), and tries to bend the Constitution with it, the Constitution that says all men are equal in the eyes of the law and are guaranteed the same freedoms.
And Ms. Vining totally ignores the biggest threat to marriage, a threat that even Jesus spoke against: Divorce. Why has she not been as equally vehement about divorce?
This is all quite simple: If her religion does not think that gays should marry, that is her right. BUT her religious values stop when she tries to force them upon others. Just as she would howl if forced to observe the Sabbath on Saturday and not operate machinery, or not eat red meat or wear head to toe veiling. This is the American way. If gays want to marry, that is their right under the Constitution, and if they want religious recognition of such marriages, then that is their right, too, as long as they belong to a religion that does recognize gay weddings. Everyone has a right to there own spiritual beliefs, believing in a God or not, and, until one’s personal God or group of gods, is proven to be better to other gods, then no one has the right to say which religion is superior. And that principle is what this country was founded upon.
Tell you what, Ms, Vining. you clean up your own back yard, make sure you are right with your version of God, and I’ll work on being right with mine. But you might want to go back and study the teachings of Christ and do a little souls searching..
Thank you, M, for the tone of your comment. I think we can talk. You say you were “tepidly
supportive” of your brother when he came out. Perhaps that was how you truly felt. I can
imagine your Catholic parents were not happy to see their beloved son going down a dead-end
road (no possibility of grandchildren) and, from a Catholic viewpoint, entering a sinful lifestyle.
I’m sure they knew that the Church taught that ANY sex outside of marriage was wrong, but
perhaps did not know the scriptures relating to homosexuality, the main ones being, from the Old Testament, “do not lie with a man as with a woman,” and in the New Testament, Romans 1:26-
27. I’m glad that at the present time the family relationship is amicable because we don’t, after all, know if your brother is sinning. Only God knows his heart and if he has convinced himself that the gay lifestyle is OK, maybe God is saying, “Well, it’s not according to my precepts but he doesn’t know any better.” We are to love the sinner, but tell him what, to us, seems true.
Leaving religion aside, you think I should not say that same-sex marriage is impossible because it makes people feel bad? I think it makes people feel bad, and even angry, because they know in their hearts that homosexuality is disordered. Just as alcoholism is a drinking disorder, and bulimia is an eating disorder, so homosexuality is a sexual disorder. There may be a genetic inclination or predisposition to alcoholism, overeating, or homosexuality, but, in the end, there is (at least at first) the choice to act on that inclination. Eventually you can have a seriously ingrained habit, but still, with God’s help, overcomeable (if that’s a word). There’s even a scripture that says so, which I don’t recall at the moment.
Homosexuals do not like to hear about people who have come out of the gay lifestyle but the fact remains that some do. Log onto couragerc.net for information on Courage, a Catholic ministry to homosexuals.
(As an aside, did it ever occur to you that humans are the only animals that mate face to face? It makes it seem that human sexuality is supposed to be more than an animal union but a deep personal relationship. Face-to-face is only possible in a male-female union.)
Finally, unnatural actions tend to have harmful bodily consequences. For a doctor’s insight into the medical hazards of gay sex, see http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0075.html
Do you really think I shouldn’t say these things because they might make someone feel bad?
What I wonder about is this.
If God did not want people to be gay, would he take the long way of making his point heard by sending you / Ms.Vining to spread the word and judge these other children of God….or would he ask you to have faith in his abilities to fix the supposed issue by himself? and use his power to do so.
If it is Gods law..shouldn’t he be able to take care of it. Does he really? need help handling sinners?
Didn’t he do well enough with his handling of the sinning world and the flood, pestilence and plagues of locusts with Pharaoh and poor Job, not to mention the testing of Christ..who by the way won the test and got to be powerful right next to him in Heaven.
Or did you just think he needed you?
What about Faith?
Don’t you believe enough?
I personally think God is capable of doing all that is necassary without me. Let go and let God.
I would truly like to know what you feel about this and how you explain your position.
Of course God does not NEED me. But after Jesus ministered for three years he left the teaching
and preaching, caring and curing to his followers, to be his hands and feet and voice. Since I
doubt that you really care about the biblical texts against homosexuality, I’ll give you just one:
Romans 1:24-28, which reads in part: “God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women
exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with
women and were consumed with passion for one another, committing shameless acts with men
and receiving in heir own persons the due penalty for their error.”
Let me put scripture aside and appeal to your common sense. If you knew someone who
persisted in putting food into their rectum you’d think their appetite for food was disordered.
Likewise, a penis in the rectum makes as little sense. The rectal sphincter is injured (compare
with the vagina which has almost infinite stretchability and can accommodate 9 lb baby’s head).
The colon lining is designed to absorb and can easily pick up infections (compare to the vagina
which is thickly layered and practically impenetrable). The sperm deposited in the rectum is not
only out in left field, it’s not even in the right ballpark (compare the sperm in the vagina which
somehow knows to swim upstream and find and penetrate and egg and do the job it was made
for.) Clearly anal sex is against nature and disordered. And causes disease. Lately gays are admitting that AIDS in the United States is a gay disease (as compared with Africa where it is heterosexually transmitted). No better way transmit HIV than by gay sex.
Sorry, but while love between any and all people is wonderful, sex between people who do not
have complementary sexual organs is just plain dumb, and fruitless, and, according to Scripture,
sinful. .
I agree with you, Dorothy. Although I did not see your letter, I am sorry that some brave person did not come to your defense. Or not your defense, actually, but to the defense of the teachings of the Church. What I don’t understand is the anatomy of the human body speaks for itself. Even if you don’t believe in God and think we came from muddy puddle, look at the anatomy!
God bless you Dorothy. Being Catholic is not easy.
Thank you, Nancy. I think we cannot say too often THE ANATOMY OF THE HUMAN BODY SPEAKS FOR ITSELF!!! Another comment that I’ve seen lately, very much to the point, is that those advocating gay “marriage” are trying “to tie a knot that cannot be tied.”
Hello. Well, I made it this far, read the post and most of the comments, so I feel obligated by responsibility to fellow human beings to post a comment.
One can make all the cerebral arguments one wants either way, so it seems to me that it comes down to a pretty arbitrary choice about what to advocate. (After one makes a choice, then one can go ahead and justify that choice by all sorts of arguments and make it seem like the only logical or objective choice.)
So, I guess I am being a pragmatist of some kind, not a ethical absolutist.
But my ethics comes from love, which means that I want people to feel okay and accepted and that they are free to be themselves and all possible aspects of life, except when it eclipses the ability of others to do the same…
I have always thought of this as a an ethical fractal result of the Golden Rule… sort of hard to explain. It’s also not exact like a fractal on an x-y graph (google for “mandelbrot set” for images), because it’s too multivariate. Every person has a different viewpoint, i.e. interpretation of reality. But there are some core things that 99.99% of people do agree on, like not taking another person’s life unless it’s in self-defense or defense of others… murder is clearly rejected by the equation.
So, I mention this, because I feel pretty confident that based on this pragmatic maximization of human freedom and happiness, that allowing people to express whatever sexuality they feel is a good thing.
I’ll tell someone not to hurt another person if I see that happening, but I won’t tell someone how to express love, or what love to feel, or what sexual desire to feel, as long as that’s not hurting someone else.
If you claim it’s hurting you, then you’re a somewhat special case, because it’s your interpretation of it that is unusual and focused on it. To use a thought experiment to illustrate it, imagine that I think that the color purple is vile and horrible, and so whenever I see anyone wearing purple, I either think to myself or tell them to their face how wrong it is, and how it’s destroying the fabric of society… they’ll say “what harm is it really doing to you that I’m wearing purple?”
I’m operating by different axioms than you, I am sure, so that’s why I see things differently. I love the Bible, for its powerful mythical symbolism and beautiful language, but I don’t take it as an absolute source of anything. Rather, I love the spirit of love that I feel in many parts of it. I also chuckle at some of the historical specificities it contains, as a snapshot of one view at one moment in history.
Love,
Sage
A couple of other things…
* I have several gay friends, and I was happy to be able to love and accept them just as much when they came out, as before I knew. It’s with them in mind that I write these words. I am happy to be able to embrace them as wholly as before — in fact, even more wholly, because I know them more truly now, and I am a safe person for them in a world that has a lot of subtle and explicit condemnation of some of their core aspects. Most of them, by the way, are very sure that it is not a choice that they are making, but rather a core part of who they are, as much as if they were born a woman or a man or black or white or asian… even if it is a choice, I don’t think it’s wrong, but that idea is often used as a wedge against allowing people to be gay so I think it’s important to mention it.
* There is much vile and lowest-common-denominator “shrill” screaming and all of that, on either side of nearly every issue on the Internet. That’s the nature of debate in a world where people can get online any time of day, whatever mood they’re in, without seeing the faces of the people they are talking with, and just let out their worst. Michelle Malkin’s book, from what I’ve seen, holds up the worst of the worst from liberal/progressive bloggers and emails, and uses that to say that those ideas are without merit. I think that technique in itself is also an example of the same exact sort of lowest-common-denominator argumentation, used for the other side. What’s the point? Aren’t we better than this? There were hundreds of comments on your opinion piece, and some of them were nasty in tone. I bet that others were not so nasty in tone, but had a certain righteous indignation. That’s what I’d expect in response. That’s not wrong in itself…. We have to filter *out* the worst of the worst and recognize the real substance of any argument, not fish *for* the worst of the worst and use that as some kind of ad hominem argument for either side.
Love,
Sage
Very well put, Sage, and I appreciate your comments. You have a kind of laissez-faire attitude
which says that anyone can do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else That,
too, seems to make sense. But suppose they are hurting themselves or society?
If you’ve read much of my blog at all you know that I think natural is best: natural foods, natural
childbirth, breast-feeding, parents should raise their own children, children do better with both a
mother and a father, and, of course, natural sex. I expect even you believe that men and women
are designed to have sex with each other, so sperm can meet egg, etc., etc. Animals know that
instinctively. It is obvious that the anus is an exit, not an entrance. Anal sex is a bodily abuse
causing tears, incontinence, and many types of infections not hitherto common, not to mention
AIDS which is recognized, even by gays, as a disease of homosexuals and of heteros that go on
the down low. With good reason, the Red Cross refuses to take blood from homosexuals.
Doctors are also now seeing unusual infections of the mouth and throat such as herpes and
chlamydia.
In our current anything-goes culture youngsters are getting sucked into gay sex, thinking they can
play around and not worry about pregnancy. Unfortunately they also get psychologically locked
into it, sometimes for good. I know of a man who was only aroused by knot-holes in a fence! I
think the reason gays get so upset by those who believe homosexuality is a sexual disorder (as, for
example, bulimia is an eating disorder), is that they know in their gut that it’s true. Anyway, why
should I be called an evil old bitch for voicing my opinion? It seems tolerance only goes one way.
If they want to mess up their lives in the privacy of their own homes, so be it – I think they could
make better choices. Homos have a choice about having sex just as heteros do. No one dies
from no sex. Why do they have to flaunt their sexual deviations in public parades, invade
churches, and sue pastors who don’t want to bless their actions? Most people would not make
gays uncomfortable if they kept their sexuality in the bedroom like the rest of us do. They should
not try to force the great majority of people to say “gay is good” when they believe in their hearts
it is not, it is disordered, it is harmful to individuals and to society.
Read: The Health Risks of Gay Sex at this URL –
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0075.html