Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Let Priests Marry Priests

Why not let priests in the Catholic Church marry other priests? Priests do so in many other churches. The Pope's problems with priests turning into child molesters will be solved. Or, Pope aside, at least the Church will be saved. Give the priests a sexual outlet, for God's sake.

Simple, stu. Case closed.

- - - - - - -

Well, not quite. I suggested this idea today to a Catholic friend, and he reminded me that part of the problem is that pedophiles - not quite the same as we homosexuals - also find their way into the Church so they can victimize little kids. So it's not just a matter of priests who didn't fit into the world and so joined the priesthood forgetting their vows when they can't hold their juices any longer and getting turned on to the altar boys. It also appears to involve Sunday Schools and child choirs.

Much of what has been common in the Church appears to be unraveling in the every brighter light of legal discovery in the digital age. Stories - and the stories of the wounded, and their spiritual lives thereafter - remain to be told. The Church's institutionalized homophobia may well turn out not to be a product of the gay people in the clergy but of the pedophiles.

Clergy to clergy sex is one thing. Bedrock of the church. Clergy to parishioner sex quite another, under any circumstances. Within a parishioner relationship, predatory sex is quite another. It is sex as power, slow rape. Predation within society is a disease.

Gay sex is normal sex. It is a normal form of sex. It has been observed in over 460 different animal species. It is not usual, but it is normal. It co-exists. Swans and also penguins - far different from our own species - form long-term gay bonds. It is normal.

I do think that letting priests have normal sexual outlets through gay marriage would establish in the Church an inner culture that would recognize and regulate the physical needs of the male horsies these erstwhile holies ride. Let's face it, the culture is there already. Many priests are already gay, many are bonded. Let's marry them.

Each Christian - and many of us Hindu Buddhists - walks a path with Jesus. It is his own, but two can walk as one.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Government For The People

Fingers are uncrossing all over America. The health care bill has passed.

Bought Senators contorted it almost beyond belief, beyond support, but it passed.

"Government by the people" now enables "government for the people".

What else can we pass?

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Ghosts Cannot Think

Ghosts propel Republicans these days. The ghost of Ronald Reagan, that great increaser of the national debt, whispers "Tax cuts! Tax cuts!" They've heard those words before. They echo them. It feels good.

"No government is good government!" shouts the man who arms his neighbors against marauders.

When Republicans ran the government, they had the facts on hand but they could ignore them as they chose and then contrive fantasy worlds out of what remained. Now, without access to those streams of real information, they have only the echoes of the past to rely on. Mottoes and creeds.

What the past gives them does not help them analyse the present. Ronald Reagan said very little about climate change - it wasn't so noticeable back then. So for modern conservatives, it doesn't exist. They deny its existence. They can't think about it because their ghosts provide no words to say.

Echoes are not real thoughts.