An addendum to the last post: that reference, and many more helpful pieces on the subject of Same-Sex marriage, are included in what I think is one of the best readers on the issue: Andrew Sullivan’s Same-Sex Marriage: Pro & Con. Its a helpful collection of some of the strongest arguments on the subject, and a helpful resource.

I’d commend it, particularly given the fact that it marshals strong arguments on both sides, the author admits his own bias and position, and it is fairly balanced. You might get something out of it…

News this morning that prominent conservative “evangelical” (in scare quotes because of my earlier caveats with that word, since I’m using it here to denote a form of American right-wing Christianity) Ted Haggard has been caught in a sex scandal. This pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and president of the National Association of Evangelicals ostensibly has been regularly soliciting sex from a male prostitute.

Its not looking very good for Haggard:

Haggard, 50, initially denied the allegations, telling 9News Wednesday night that “I’ve never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I’m steady with my wife. I’m faithful to my wife.”

But KKTV in Colorado Springs reported that New Life Associate Senior Pastor Ross Parsley told a meeting of church elders Thursday night that Haggard had met with the church’s overseers earlier in the day and “had admitted to some indiscretions.”

Parsley told the elders that Haggard had said some of the allegations were true, but not all of them.

This is a fast breaking story, and these are currently just allegations. But if true, Haggard will be the second high-profile “defender of traditional marriage” (read: against marriage and/or same sex union rights for gays and lesbians) to be exposed as homosexual in the past several months. Like Foley before him, this will stun the religious right. And maybe it should.

There’s something deeply troubling about people denying who they are and feeling forced to live a lie. Let me be clear, I’m not sure that’s the case here. And these people are all fully responsible for their behavior. I know that Foley was molested as a child, and that’s likely a catalyst for his behavior. But what the Haggard and Foley cases have signified for me, as well as the recent book tour by ex-Governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey, is just how wrong it is for us to continue to suppress gays and lesbians and to try to make them into something they are not.

Andrew Sullivan has long been an advocate for these things. I think he’s right on in his assessment today:

I’m afraid I feel for Haggard. This is what happens to a man psychologically and spiritually destroyed by actually advancing a lie he knows to be a lie about homosexuality as a “chosen lifestyle” while being gay himself.

… Denial is a very powerful psychic force. When combined with addiction, it can fuel destructive behavior. In a human being, it can destroy a person, a family, a marriage, an entire life.

One more obvious lesson: The religious right’s lies about who gay people really are must end. Surely now. The victims are also Christians like Haggard. They are countless kids and teens in places where they are taught to hate themselves, and subsequently act out the psychic damage years later. I am not saying Haggard isn’t morally accountable for everything he has done, for the lies he has spread, for the hatred he has enabled. That hatred will now come back to him, like the sorcerer’s apprentice whose magic of electoral homophobia soon overwhelms him as well. It’s brutal pay-back, as it was for Foley, as it often is for every closeted gay man in the end. In the end, their lives lose integrity; and they know it; and then misery; and they feel it more than anyone. I’m praying for Haggard, as I hope he is praying for me and every sinner. But the lesson of this to the religious right surely is: go and sin no more. Stop the lies. Stop the bigotry. Deal with the reality of gay people, our souls, our wounded hearts, our humanity, our right to be treated equally by our own government. It’s what Jesus did. And it is your true calling now.

So there you have it. Oh, and also of somewhat tangentially related note, Bill Tammeus has an interesting comment on Pastoral Care to Homosexuals on his blog. For the record, Bill and I share a similar exegetical understanding of scripture with regard to homosexuality.

Sullivan gets an email from a Presbyterian pastor:

As a Presbyterian pastor, I continue to be stunned by the unthinking support of many evangelicals for a policy that permits torture. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when the so-called “Traditional Values Coalition” decided that torture was among the traditional values that they feel compelled to support.When Jesus was put on trial and handed over to Pontius Pilate, he rejected violence and said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He was then tortured and brutally murdered (three hours in a “stress position” on the cross, as one of your readers aptly noted). “Caesar”, of course, went on to torture and brutally murder innocent Christians who were “threats to the state.” Now, 2,000 years later, in their wordly lust for power, Christians are hopping into bed with Caesar and signing off on anything Caesar wants, especially if Caesar takes care of the Christian “base”.

In my Presbyterian tradition, we are called to stand outside the halls of power and speak truth to those in power, no matter what party is in control. We are not called to become that power ourselves; Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world; his values are not Caesar’s values.

Last year on Good Friday, my church had our traditional worship service at which we read the story of Jesus’ torture and execution. To make the story more than just a past event, we read three contemporary accounts of innocent individuals who had been tortured. If we were going to shed tears for our innocent Lord Jesus, we also needed to shed tears for other innocent victims of torture. One story we read was about Christians in China – “threats to the state” – including a mother who was brutally interrogated while hearing the cries of her son being tortured in the next room. Interestingly enough, the Christian Right would join me in expressing outrage against innocent Christians.

Another story was of a man who described these conditions:

“I saw a cell almost the size of a grave. 3 feet wide, 6 feet deep, and 7 feet high. The cell had no light in it; it only had two thin mattresses (two thin blankets) on the ground … I was kept in that dark and filthy cell for about 10 months. The worst beating happened on the third day … they were asking the same set of questions and they would beat me 3-4 times. They would sometimes take me to another room where I could hear other people being tortured … at the end of the day I could not take the pain anymore and I falsely confessed of having been to Afghanistan.”

We read that story last Good Friday. The man’s name? Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, who was
arrested at JFK airport in New York. He was then deported by the American government via Jordan to Syria, where he was detained in the cell described above. Just last week Arar and his claims of innocence were completely vindicated by the Canadian government. The Traditional
Values Coalition would probably respond: an unfortunate mistake, but torture is still a necessary policy.

And What Would Jesus Do?

Jesus wept.

For the record, I know many evangelicals who are aghast at this torture mess. But I too am disturbed by any Christian voice that would try to rationalize sin…

Congress is in the dark, intentionally, about the interrogation techniques used by the CIA and other government entities. So, for instance: “I don’t know what the CIA has been doing,  nor should I know,” said Senator Jeff Sessions. What an astounding attitude from a United States Senator.

Sullivan:

I’m amazed that, in the context of what we now know this president has authorized for the CIA, and wants to retain for use by the CIA, an obvious connection has not been made more forcefully. When you look at the photographs from Abu Ghraib, what do you see? You see exactly the “alternative methods” this administration is trying to preserve: long-time standing, nakedness, degradation, stress positions, sleep deprivation – and much worse as well that will now be clearly banned: rape and murder. (Worryingly, sexual abuse short of penetration seems
to be a gray area in the proposal.) It strains credibility to believe that these images were not related by clear signals from the very top that the “gloves were off” and that the president and defense secretary gave torture and abuse cover and approval.
…

“Doused with cold water” and “deprived of sleep for days at a time.” Sound familiar? One point we must repeat insistently is that the torture bill being unwisely rushed through the Senate may well legalize many of the abuses at Abu Ghaib, Bagram, Camp Cropper, Camp Nama, and
many in the dozens of sites of torture and abuse in this war for … democracy and human rights.

Remember how you felt when you first saw some of those photographs. Remember the shame. Now remember we may be about to legalize and endorse some of it as American policy. Should we not take the time to get it right?

Not only would the bill open the door to these abuses, but it would make it nearly impossible to hold the Bush administration to account for their approval of such techniques. Boggles the mind.

Please, call your Senators and representative today. Remind them that this is an affront to human dignity, as well as to Christian Ethics (if they are themselves people of the Christian faith).

I wrote Monday about how torture is incompatible with Christian Ethics. All Christians, everywhere, but particularly in the United States, of any political stripe or party, ought feel obligated by their faith to condemn the use of torture by our government.

The recently announced legislative compromise brought McCain, Warner, and Graham back to the fold. But it doesn’t prohibit torture. (There are other problems with the legislation, but few as outrageous as this).
Sure, on the face of it it does. But it doesn’t. At least, so argues Andrew Sullivan, who first links to analysis by Marty Lederman and then concludes:

So we “formally” leave Geneva alone, but grant the executive branch complete discretion in determining what “cruel” means; and the language of the bill certainly can be construed to allow waterboarding, hypothermia, sleep deprivation, stress positions, and long-time standing. It even allows for a person to be beaten, cut, or near-drowned.

Sullivan believes that McCain doesn’t see this to be the case, but, through an Orwellian use of language, these abuses remain viable. (More Sullivan on this issue here and here, and a link to the actual proposed legislation. (pdf)) I’d commend it all for your reading.

I’m no attorney. I’m a pastor and an ethicist I don’t know if Sullivan is correct without much more study. But granting that he might be: what will we do about it? Do we even care?

I’m mortified and sickened tonight by the thought of what this legislation will permit.

…Note analysis and news from:

• NY Times: Detainee Deal Comes with Contradictions
• Washington Post: On Rough Treatment, A Rough Accord
• And news about two dead after torture by US forces, LA Times: Secrets in the Mountains of Afghanistan

Sullivan articulates a crucial distinction that I think gets lost in the shuffle:

Gay people are not asking for the right to marry anybody. We’re asking for the right to marry somebody. Right now, heterosexual polygamists have an option: marry someone. And gay people are told: you can marry no one at all. That cannot be just. It cannot be fair. And it cannot be conservative to refuse to give 9 million people an incentive to settle down and take care of one another.

His premise is that sexual orientation isn’t a choice, but polygamy is. That’ll be an interesting debate, but I think he’s correct. Among the goods of marriage (Augustine scholars, review your notes) are the reigning in of sexual appetites within a healthy sphere (that is, with a consentual spouse) in a way that deepens and strengthens the bonds of the union. One of the evils of breaking the marriage covenant (through adultery, say) is the weakening of those bonds. One can choose adultery, or fidelity. One can choose to give oneself entirely to a life-long partner, or not. And in a similar way, one can choose, I gather, to try to do that with muliple partners (the previous problems of polygamy to be noted). The point that conscious choice is involved. One isn’t choosing the orientation to a particular sex (though certainly how one acts that out is chosen), nor the fundamental desire to be united with someone (for all the goods of a marriage or other committed relationship). Those are more or less innate.

So a good case could be made for that distinction. Good argument. Go read it….

Andrew Sullivan links to a blog post that begins:

It was 15 years ago today that our 8-year-old son Ryan suffered a severe brain injury that left him unable to walk or talk or feed himself. He was in the hospital (in two hospitals, actually) for over six months, and ever since has lived with us at home. I thought I would share some of the lessons I’ve learned in these past 15 years:

Its a moving read. You might find it enlightening….

I’ve been watching this story about Cheney’s accidental shooting of a friend with some interest, particularly with an eye to what it means for powerful people in this country to confront their mistakes and what stance they choose to take. So, needless to say the reports about how long it took for Cheney to report the incident and Whittington’s prognosis have been telling. Assuming the best about Cheney’s humanity, I wonder how he is handling this both mentally and spiritually.

Andrew Sullivan has two fascinating posts about this whole thing. First:

Just a word, if I may. You are employed by the American people. You are not a monarch; and you are not a Pope. You have seriously wounded another human being. The news was kept from the public for a day. The man is in intensive care. There are many serious questions about the incident: How did it happen? What happened immediately thereafter? Why the decision to keep it secret for so long? The least the American people deserve is your own account in public in front of the press corps. Who are you hiding from? And who on earth do you think you are?