The Dish

A reader writes:

The mainstream media and the blogosphere are alike in misunderstanding the Church’s teaching and the nuance taken by Benedict XVI as chief teacher. Please note that you, like the rest who report the stories about Church teaching and gay Catholics, leave out three big pieces of the puzzle.

1. It is about straight people, not gay people.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the document that contains the “intrinsic disorder” and “objective disorder” judgments against non-procreation, is equally clear about straight people. Every straight couple who uses birth control or whose play time is inclusive of anything apart from the missionary position is condemned with the same brush as we are as gay people. The upshot? If you read Benedict himself (as opposed to the Palin-esque US bishops), he never really talks about gay people – he applies the Catechism to straight culture.

2. Gay couples are, in fact, living holy lives. That same Catechism encourages gay people to pair off. Unfortunately, the English translation is “disinterested friends,” but the original Latin is “graced help-mates.” And the Catechism is clear that we exist and that “becoming straight” is not the answer for us. The upshot? The Church should be speaking out quite vocally for legal protections for gay couples. Marriage? No. Civil unions? Some other term? Yes, in the interest of promoting chastity for gay people.

3. There is no prohibition on gay priests. There is a prohibition on gay seminarians who are overtly active within the “gay culture” that is dying in any case. This is a temporary measure to address the fact that the priesthood itself is in crisis, and the presence of overwhelming numbers of gay guys with issues was complicating priestly formation. Right move? Probably not. Nonetheless, it was done as a practical matter, not a theological one. The upshot? One more reminder from the Vatican that gay men can (and should!) investigate life options apart from priesthood, and remain good Catholics. So, don’t be so hard on Benedict! Some day, his Catechism and his reign could be remembered as our ecclesial emancipation!

Well this is the most positive way to interpret the Pope's actions. But the ban on gay seminarians is obviously a way to purge all gays from the priesthood and the ugly descriptions of gay men's psyches accompanying the move goes far beyond any pragmatic needs towards entrenching the notion that gay people are "intrinsically disordered", a term coined by this Pope to call gay men sick in the head and thereby ineligible to be priests. 

As for the church's alleged support for gay couples, show me a single statement from Benedict or the bishops that supports civic recognition for gay relationships. I wish it were true, but it isn't. And while the proscription on non-reproductive sexual acts applies to gays and straights alike, the straights have the option of reproductive sexual acts, while gays simply don't. And where the straights don't have the option, as in post-menopausal or infertile relationships, the church gives them a pass. The church uniquely singles out gay people in not giving us a pass on the same humane grounds. So the unique insistence on total celibacy as a condition for being accepted even as a member of the Church remains exclusively reserved for gay people. Celibacy may be defensible in terms of the priesthood (although I disagree), but pastorally indefensible in guiding lay gays to productive and healthy lives.

Buried within the Catholic teaching, as I exhaustively explored in Virtually Normal, there is a kernel for expanding God's grace and the church's institutions and even sacraments to include all God's people. But Benedict has clearly made a decision not to let that kernel grow and blossom, but to snuff it out not only within the church but outside as well. He remains the enemy of gay people and our dignity. And, of course, of his own.

A reader writes:

Three generations of my family have endured a family member going to war. As a Marine, I've left my family to go to war (Afghanistan, Iraq). It was the toughest thing I've ever done. And when my Dad went to war (Desert Storm) it was tough on me (probably tougher on him). Both my Mom and Dad remembered vividly their fathers leaving during WWII, even though they were both only six. This video, and the young girl's reaction, captures all of the extreme emotions a family endures in such circumstances.

I can see my parents as young children in her. That memory never leaves you. But now it is worse, when the deployments repeat over and over again, and weigh so heavily on one small part of our population, it is traumatizing beyond description. It makes it worse that the rest of the country goes on as if nothing is happening.

The price of war can be seen all over that young girl's face. Can you imagine if she were finding out not that her father had come home early, but that he would never come home again?

This is what must be considered when we ask, about any particular war, "Is it worth it?

I think we should have listened more closely to those who had seen more war than most, people like Gen Anthony Zinni and LGEN Hal Moore (of We Were Soldiers fame), who said that Iraq was not worth one American life. It was also was not worth breaking one young American girl's heart.

If I have to go back again, my greatest fear will be for my children. I will be hoping they don't have to endure the loss that so many other American children have already had to endure in this war. This little girl's emotional outpouring brings that possibility immediately home to me. God bless her and her father.

Let's hope we can find a way out of this madness soon.

A leopard gecko is displayed in an aquarium tank during the annual Taiwan International Aquarium Expo at the World Trade Center in Taipei on November 7, 2009. More then one hundred tanks of fishes from nine asian countries can be seen during the exhibition. By Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images.

Watch and absorb. David Dreier knows better:

They've got it, says TPM.

Gavin McInnes has it out with the American Mustache Institute (NSFW):

A reader writes:

You ask, what it is about sunlight and open debate that Palin is afraid of.

My guess is that it isn't fear. (Though she knows on some level that she's not capable of debate with her dismal language skills.) I think that it's because the debate isn't the point. Because she doesn't want debate. Her sole objective, and that of the neocons who back her, is to continue consolidating a rabid right wing base, to reinforce the views they already have and then send them out to keep their fellow members

of the base in line.

She's simply to serve as the beacon to draw them, and the fount of "wisdom" if you will giving them elementary level talking points to carry forth and congeal their allegiance, cement it, and hopefully draw in their neighbors votes. And their money of course.

She isn't about debate. She's preaching to her choir. She's keeping them on the same page of the hymnal and singing the same tune.Louder and louder. I mean, it's pretty clear by now isn't it that the GOP is now the right wing, and that they have no interest in opposing views or drawing in other people? The Big Tent is now only open to the already converted and the true believers.

"Maddie knows if this bill passes, she knows her mom’s health care will go away and won’t be around for five years. If the bill passes, then no more health care for her mom, because it has to change," – moronic John Shadegg, holding up a baby, fanning unsubstantiated fears and engaging in ideological abstractions.

Drum weighs in:

Republicans are the party of the South these days, and sure, the GOP will regain power eventually.  But will they be able to do it if they remain a party dominated by the culture of Dixie?  Demographics suggest pretty strongly that they can't, which means that eventually the South will have to come to grips with the fact that they no longer hold the whip hand in American politics and probably never will again.  This means acknowledging that they're just another region, one with influence that waxes and wanes but basically corresponds to their population.  I wonder how long it will take for them to do that?