dunghill

it's all about willies, apparently

I don't usually worry myself about what the christians get up to, as long as it makes them happy. But sometimes I wish they'd just stop their silly nonsense. Recently a Catholic adoption agency was given official approval to discriminate against gay couples. As a spokesperson said, "the ruling supports Christian groups which want to operate freely and according to traditional values with regard to the nature of family".

And, while we're talking about traditional values, this week the Pope has been apologising to the Irish people for the sexual abuse of children by the clergy. Though people implicated in the abuse, by doing their best to keep it covered up, are still in positions of power in the church.

Over on Radio 4 yesterday, Donal McKeown, Bishop of Down and Connor told the Today programme that people have become more conscious of the reality of abuse. But he added that "it's not more prevalent among Catholic clergy than any other part of the population."

How very wrong and insulting of him. Of course it's more prevalent among the Catholic clergy than any other part of the population.

I was sharing my sense of outrage at his presumption with a friend yesterday. She's a single mother, so presumably a bad parent in the eyes of the Catholic church. And of course, as both a single parent and a trans parent myself, I'm several days into unsuitable country; in fact, according to the Pope, I'm a threat to civilisation. Quite awesome, the power I evidently wield.

Back then when that story broke, I spent a while looking into what the Catholics were getting up to, and found my way to Joanna Bogle's blog, where this business was being discussed. It was quite unwholesome, I must say. Here's an excerpt from the discussion that was going on...

Malcolm McLean said...

Homosexuality is a bit like alcoholism. You cannot become an alcoholic without exposure to drink, and you can't become a homosexual without exposure to sexual activity with the same sex.

However some people won't become alcoholics despite fairly heavy drinking, whilst other will be addicted after only moderate exposure. Similarly some people are more disposed than others to act on homosexual stimuli. A lot of people engage in a bit of homosexual behaviour, say at boarding school, then drop it once they get access to the opposite sex, whilst for others the early sexual experiences set the pattern for later. In both alcoholism and homosexuality once the bahaviour is established it can become difficult to break, with steadily more extreme actions / higher does required to obtain the same effect. Actions and images that once repelled become desired. (This is also true of pornography, it is not unique to homosexuals by any means).

When someone says "I have a homosexual orientation" what he really means is "I am addicted". However that aspect of our psychology is God-given, if you like. It was He who chose that addiction should exist.

2:11 PM

Dru Marland said...

Presumably, then, the same is true for heterosexuality too? -this strikes me as a depressingly narrow (not to say jaundiced) interpretation of sexuality of any shade.

2:50 PM

Don McGovern said...

Justin writes "but I don't feel it is". Fortunately, as a Catholic, I'm taught to deal in objective truth rather than subjective feelings. And buggery is about as natural as trying to feed oneself by poking food in one's ear. If you feel that's natural - fine - but it aint.

10:01 PM

See what I mean? They're obsessed, these poor folk; they can't seem to discuss things without bringing the physical act of sex into it. I came away feeling rather dirty, and gave up visiting Aunty Joanna's blog. I'm sure she's nice as pie herself, but it's the company she keeps.

And as for Donal McKeown, if you live on a dunghill it is a mistake to assume that everyone else lives on either a similar or a worse dunghill.

transsexual behaviour

nunc dimittis

Exciting news from the Pope. It seems that he has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

I was a bit curious to know what this was all about, so I listened in to Radio 4's Today programme, and was rewarded with a little discussion between Christine Odone and Joanna Bogle (podcast here). I've got a lot of time for Joanna Bogle; there is something awfully compelling about someone who has apparently never doubted, never half-believed. She speaks in one of those loud and strident voices that flatten opposition with the dead weight of their certitude. She could have stepped off her hunter and out of the pages of a Waugh novel, horsewhip in hand. And, perhaps oddly, I find myself broadly in agreement with her on her core premise:

We are made male and female, and it's just bad science to pretend that it's an artificial construct. There's this fantasy going round today, a kind of flat earth theory that you invent yourself as male or female. This is just not the case. ...maleness and femaleness is much more important than we thought ...male and female matter.

Jolly good, Joanna. We're singing from the same hymn sheet, though we may be in different choirs.

I looked up her blog, and found that we have heaps of things in common. We both, to employ her terms, live cheerily among lots of books and no TV. She loathes instant coffee, extreme feminism, narrow-mindedness, cold pasta, "inclusive language" and stewed tea. I'm OK with the extreme feminism, and don't mind inclusive language, but I'm solid with her on the rest, although I do bear in mind that one person's narrow-mindedness can be another person's clarity of purpose; I recall a Chief Engineer on a ferry defending the display of hardcore pornography in the workplace by asserting that "you've got to be broad-minded at sea". Quite.

Our favourite modes of transport are train or bicycle, though I'm sure that if she had a Morris Traveller too, she'd have added it to the list.

She likes buttered toast, sticky chocolate cake, rain, old-fashioned detective stories, Pope Benedict XV1, making jam, winter teatimes, sleeping out of doors on warm summer nights, Christmas, Pimms, ginger wine, and making patchwork quilts. Me, I'll take a raincheck on the Pope, and I prefer felting to quilting and damson vodka to ginger wine; but hey, close enough.

She's got a list of men who ought to be bishops. I used to have a list of men who ought to be strung up and/or castrated, but I got over it.

This is almost scary. I wonder what will happen if Joanna ever realises that she engages in transsexual behaviour. (If you have stumbled upon this blog for the first time, by the way, I should perhaps clarify that I am a woman with a transsexual history, if you see what I mean)

Disappointingly, of course, it turns out that the Pope never actually said what the media have said that he said. This is the problem when you've got an elderly Austrian pope surrounded by Irish cardinals and it's getting late in the evening. What he actually said was probably more like, "Well, it's been lovely talking with you but frankly I could murder a pint of creme de menthe*, so auf wiedersehen, Kameraden".


*Creme de menthe: the drink of choice for popes. A Well Known Fact. It's a papal behaviour thing.