An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Dear Barack,
The chances are you’ll never see this blog. And so I write this knowing that it’s largely for my own soul that I say these things and the few souls who might intentionally come to my blog or those who accidentally stumble across it in cyberspace.
I want you to know first of all that until last week, I was a pretty solid supporter. I happened to hear your speech the day you entered the race. I was headed to the store on a Saturday listening to NPR and suddenly I heard this voice that sounded vaguely like Martin Luther King, Jr. talking about justice and the need for change. I found myself so taken that I pulled into a parking lot to listen to the whole thing. I found myself with shortened breath and tears in my eyes as I thought to myself, “This is what America needs – a voice in the wilderness crying out for change” adding quickly “And that’s precisely why this man doesn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning.”
But I was wrong. You did win the Democratic nomination, riding a tide of young voters and middle aged voters like myself sick to our very souls of the direction America has taken under the conservative right Bush regime and its conservative-lite predecessors. In all honesty, you weren’t my first choice in the Florida primary. Given my strong opposition to Iraq and my concern for civil liberties within America, I had planned to vote for Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Fortunately for you, he withdrew the day before the Florida primary and so, despite the fact you had not campaigned here, my partner and I voted for you. Hillary had lost her shot at our votes when she supported Iraq. But I felt good about my second choice. And I thought, maybe this guy actually does have a shot at winning.
Over the campaign, I began to feel I had made the right choice regardless of its circumstances. Your mantra of change, coupled with the fact that regardless of who the Democrats nominated – a black man or a woman - it would be a departure from business as usual, gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, change was coming. The Republicans’ nomination of John McCain, a doddering, duplicitous, self-serving man who paints himself as a POW hero and political moderate, gave me even more hope that maybe change could come. I began to allow myself to feel more hopeful than I had felt in a long time.
This past week I came crashing down to reality. First there was your rejection of public funding. If there is any key to political corruption in the farce we call American democracy today it is the observation of the Proverbs writer that money is the root of all evil. Barack, it takes no particularly brilliant insight to recognize that politicians who must constantly raise campaign funding sell their very souls to those who hold their purse strings. That means that most Americans, including the family in which you grew up, are effectively cut out of the political process in America. The status quo is a good deal for somebody, but it simply isn’t most of America.
Then there was the child rape death sentence ruling by the SCOTUS. Frankly, I was amazed that Kennedy swung against the Great American Killing Machine in the name of “evolving standards of decency.” As his decision noted, America’s practices are largely neither evolved nor decent. And this was one small step in the right direction, the direction against state killing that the majority of the world’s nation-states now embrace (why have they evolved and we haven’t?).
Your response was chilling: I have always felt that communities have the right to express their outrage by killing such offenders. Barack, that’s a pretty low level of moral reasoning. It’s the same utilitarian reasoning a killer uses when he chooses to kill witnesses – their deaths serve as a means to the killer’s ends. That people are outraged is understandable, expectable. But outrage does not produce a “Kill One Human Being Free” card, regardless of who they are. You should know better. And you should be ashamed of your response.
Then there was the gun decision. Kennedy swung right this time and the gun lobby won its greatest victory. America is inundated with guns that are used with impunity on anyone their possessor chooses. While Americans respond with maudlin candle lit rallies and yet one more magnetic ribbon to affix to the rear of their SUVs, the reality is that most of us accept this status quo as normal if not normative. We even pass laws like my own bone-headed state of Florida just passed protecting a supposed "right" to take your guns to work, but only if they stay locked up in your vehicle, right up to the point the disgruntled worker goes postal.
Now, the Supremes legitimate that understanding by telling Americans they have a right to own and use guns, not in the context of collective security that the Framers intentionally wrote into the amendment but simply because individuals want to own and use guns. As Justice Scalia (now there’s an oxymoron for you!) said in the previously mentioned state killing case, “More people will die because of this decision.”
This decision is the fruit of the long term GOP project of packing of the courts with far right ideologue jurists - perhaps the primary reason I still plan to vote for you in hopes that even a slight deviation from this current far right trajectory is essential to retaining anything that even remotely resembles democracy in America. The SCOTUS’ current focus on the vindication of force, power, corporate privilege and the deprivation of individual rights has a name – in the 1930s it was called fascism.
Barack, your response, which the local newspaper rightly described as “tepid,” was simply, “I’ve always believed in an individual right to own handguns” although, in all fairness, you do then state your support of the very kinds of efforts to regulate them that the SCOTUS just struck down. A tepid - and conflicted - response to a sea change victory for America’s killing industry is hardly inspiring.
Yesterday, the press reported that you intend to actually expand Mr. Bush’s “faith based” funding of social services. And it reports that as a part of this program you would agree with religious organizations’ discriminatory hiring practices. Now, Barack, we all know what that means: institutionalized homophobia legitimized by religion. Your support among the LBGT population in America has been very high. In all honesty, I feel you have betrayed us with this move and I suspect that many of my fellow LBGT people do as well.
The reality is that I am in favor of change, not necessarily your candidacy. And my willingness to hold my nose and pull your lever becomes increasingly attenuated as you reveal yourself as a centrist politician who will do anything to get elected. But you have a bit of a problem now. Your change mantra has come back to haunt you, hasn’t it?
Explain to the American people how business as usual in campaign funding by the wealthy and thus business as usual in American politics constitutes “change.” Explain to the thousands of people on America’s Death Rows who did not get fair trials or, worse yet, are innocent like those with whom you are personally familiar in your home state of Illinois, how your position on killing offenders to express community outrage constitutes “change.” Explain to the thousands of victims each year of gun violence – the highest rate in the world – how your tepid support of “individual rights” to guns constitutes “change.” And finally, explain how support of homophobic hiring practices in a country with a history of institutionalized homophobia constitutes “change.”
In all honesty, I feel used, Barack. I feel that your smooth rhetoric has been hiding a mediocre spirited, self-serving politician, just as your Hillary supporting opponents said all along. More than that, I am heart-broken over the appearance of this political Mr. Hyde. I have been so disillusioned about my country for so long. I had truly allowed myself to hope that maybe you would actually lead the move to change things. Today, rid of any self-delusions, I am back to survival mode – doing whatever I can to resist the seemingly inexorable life-denying aspects of a culture that values money above human beings, uses force as a matter of course for conflict resolution and which allows an uncritical tyranny of the majority to continue denying all of America’s citizens their birthright as Americans.
Fortunately for you, the alternative in this election is untenable for folks like me. Increasingly it appears we have a centrist Clinton Democrat clothed in the garb of “change” versus a doddering, unprincipled Republican clothed in the garb of “POW hero” even as he assents to Americans torturing our own POWs. So, my vote for you in November is secure simply due to circumstances. And I suspect that is probably true for many Americans who will pull the lever next to your name with resignation. So, not to worry, Barack. Except, perhaps, for your own integrity, assuming that was ever particularly important to you.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
More Learning, Less Time – Such a Deal! – for Someone
The local paper ran a story on the county school system which bears a little critical scrutiny. Increasingly I find it amazing how unexamined assertions seen as unchallengeable revealed truth inform public policy. The Sentinel article this morning was packed with them. To wit, the headline:
RE: "Orange County schools will pack more learning into same amount of time"
Interesting assumption. But why would we presume that students will learn more in the same amount of time simply because we impose an additional class' worth of information upon them in that same time frame? If the students are managing to learn X in 53 minutes – and that’s a major presumption - why would we presume they could learn the same X in 45?
This is certainly the fundamentalist free market ideology at work - "lay off" (read: fire) workers, impose their job duties upon the remaining workers, pay them less benefits and threaten them with termination all the while ignoring the corresponding decline in quality of work product and worker burnout, all based solely on the imperative of stockholders unwilling to pay for the operation of the companies that keep them wealthy. Substitute teachers for workers and taxpayers for stockholders and you have the paradigm of Florida public schools.
But why would we presume that students, already struggling to jump through the hoops of standardized testing confused for education, will learn more in the same amount of time? And why would we take a paradigm that has clearly NOT worked for anyone other than the very few wealthy beneficiaries of this exploitative practice and impose it upon the school children of Orange County, all the while congratulating ourselves on what clever behavioralists we are?
Then there’s this assertion in the lead:
RE: The seven-period schedule is a cost-free way to lower class sizes and give students more opportunities to take electives.
Again, an interesting assumption. Who will plan the seventh class for the teachers? Who will grade the extra class’ papers? Who will learn the seventh set of 35 or more names with all the various learning disabilities and special needs that go along with them? Who will now reconstruct all the existing lesson plans to try to get the work of the former 53 minute classes to now fit into 45 minutes? It may be cost free to the school board to lay down cavalier dicta which totally restructure the work of their remaining teaching staff. It’s a good deal for somebody. But someone also bears the cost.
Not surprisingly, the Sentinel story ran comments from principals and a teacher who supported the changes but no comments that drew the move into question. Here’s the view of the world from the inner sanctum of the principals:
RE: There's little reason to fear any fallout as long as classes remain in the 45-minute range, the National Association of Secondary Principals says.
Of course, there will be little fallout for those who will not be required to actually implement these changes. There was little sweat on the brow of the white masters sipping mint juleps rocking in their rocking chairs on the verandas while they watched their slaves picking cotton, either. But, there will be fallout. Someone will absorb the blow. Chances are, it will be both students and teachers.
Now, here’s the comment from the supportive teacher. While we don’t know what the teacher actually teaches, the sentiment is admirable. His focus is actually on the students here:
RE: The new schedule gives struggling students -- who often get no electives because they have to take remedial reading and math -- at least one class of their choice…. “Now a lot of our kids will be able to have P.E., art or music. Sometimes school can be kind of a drag for them…”
Of course, this is but one more piece of evidence of the failure of Pavlovian test-driven pedagogy. Not only are 30% of America’s children being “Left Behind” and written off as failures because they cannot pass a single standardized test, the testing regime has made school so rigid and unbearable that many students, not surprisingly, don’t want to go. Imagine a school day packed with drilling for math and reading exams with no opportunity to engage in anything remotely human like physical education for the jocks or art and music for the expressive kids. No doubt school has become “a kind of drag for them” and their teachers-turned-technocrats as well.
You have to admire a teacher who is willing to do yet more than the already enormous expectations placed upon any public school teacher simply so his students might find school even bearable. But shortening class periods so more can be packed into a single school day is not the answer. Might it be that the whole project of test-driven pedagogy needs to be reconsidered? Wasn’t it Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over (and here, more of it) and expecting different results?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The local paper ran a story on the county school system which bears a little critical scrutiny. Increasingly I find it amazing how unexamined assertions seen as unchallengeable revealed truth inform public policy. The Sentinel article this morning was packed with them. To wit, the headline:
RE: "Orange County schools will pack more learning into same amount of time"
Interesting assumption. But why would we presume that students will learn more in the same amount of time simply because we impose an additional class' worth of information upon them in that same time frame? If the students are managing to learn X in 53 minutes – and that’s a major presumption - why would we presume they could learn the same X in 45?
This is certainly the fundamentalist free market ideology at work - "lay off" (read: fire) workers, impose their job duties upon the remaining workers, pay them less benefits and threaten them with termination all the while ignoring the corresponding decline in quality of work product and worker burnout, all based solely on the imperative of stockholders unwilling to pay for the operation of the companies that keep them wealthy. Substitute teachers for workers and taxpayers for stockholders and you have the paradigm of Florida public schools.
But why would we presume that students, already struggling to jump through the hoops of standardized testing confused for education, will learn more in the same amount of time? And why would we take a paradigm that has clearly NOT worked for anyone other than the very few wealthy beneficiaries of this exploitative practice and impose it upon the school children of Orange County, all the while congratulating ourselves on what clever behavioralists we are?
Then there’s this assertion in the lead:
RE: The seven-period schedule is a cost-free way to lower class sizes and give students more opportunities to take electives.
Again, an interesting assumption. Who will plan the seventh class for the teachers? Who will grade the extra class’ papers? Who will learn the seventh set of 35 or more names with all the various learning disabilities and special needs that go along with them? Who will now reconstruct all the existing lesson plans to try to get the work of the former 53 minute classes to now fit into 45 minutes? It may be cost free to the school board to lay down cavalier dicta which totally restructure the work of their remaining teaching staff. It’s a good deal for somebody. But someone also bears the cost.
Not surprisingly, the Sentinel story ran comments from principals and a teacher who supported the changes but no comments that drew the move into question. Here’s the view of the world from the inner sanctum of the principals:
RE: There's little reason to fear any fallout as long as classes remain in the 45-minute range, the National Association of Secondary Principals says.
Of course, there will be little fallout for those who will not be required to actually implement these changes. There was little sweat on the brow of the white masters sipping mint juleps rocking in their rocking chairs on the verandas while they watched their slaves picking cotton, either. But, there will be fallout. Someone will absorb the blow. Chances are, it will be both students and teachers.
Now, here’s the comment from the supportive teacher. While we don’t know what the teacher actually teaches, the sentiment is admirable. His focus is actually on the students here:
RE: The new schedule gives struggling students -- who often get no electives because they have to take remedial reading and math -- at least one class of their choice…. “Now a lot of our kids will be able to have P.E., art or music. Sometimes school can be kind of a drag for them…”
Of course, this is but one more piece of evidence of the failure of Pavlovian test-driven pedagogy. Not only are 30% of America’s children being “Left Behind” and written off as failures because they cannot pass a single standardized test, the testing regime has made school so rigid and unbearable that many students, not surprisingly, don’t want to go. Imagine a school day packed with drilling for math and reading exams with no opportunity to engage in anything remotely human like physical education for the jocks or art and music for the expressive kids. No doubt school has become “a kind of drag for them” and their teachers-turned-technocrats as well.
You have to admire a teacher who is willing to do yet more than the already enormous expectations placed upon any public school teacher simply so his students might find school even bearable. But shortening class periods so more can be packed into a single school day is not the answer. Might it be that the whole project of test-driven pedagogy needs to be reconsidered? Wasn’t it Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over (and here, more of it) and expecting different results?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Dangers of Bottom Lining
Over the 21 years I have been teaching college students, I have observed more than one student who approached college with what I call a “bottom line” approach – Do the minimal required to get the credit needed. Time after time, I’ve see that approach fail. And yet, it seems to be a pernicious kind of virus that seems to readily infect a substantial share of every crop of entering college freshmen, some never shaking it right up to graduation.
A number of these bottom liners show up in lower division general education classes such as the HUM 2210 and 2230 sections taught online. Many appear in their final terms at the university, having avoided until the very last the classes that seek to make well rounded human beings out of them. Many later report that they had presumed that online classes aren’t real classes (they have somewhat of a point here – there is a bit of absurdity in taking a class which focuses on what it mean to be human in a manner guaranteed never to have to actually encounter one) and thus that they won’t have to do much to get the passing grade they need. The latter is where wishful thinking collides with the ability to perceive reality clearly often with disastrous results.
There are a number of problems with bottom lining. The first is a character concern. It is my observation that bottom lining is rooted in laziness and fear. College couch potatoes are nothing new. Many middle and upper class students come to college with inordinate senses of entitlement one strain of which suggests that minimal work and maximal grades are somehow their due.
The pernicious effects of consumerism also impact college attendance which somehow suggest that students pay for credits and thus grades. This, of course, misses the reality that tuition pays a small fraction of the cost of college educations and that paying one’s fees simply grants one an admission ticket to the class. What happens once one arrives there is dependent upon student performance. Hence the concern for the incipient laziness which afflicts more than a few middle to upper class freshman .
I have come to suspect, however, that the fear element is the stronger motivation for bottom lining. College educations, if they are truly engaged, are much more than mere vocational training. Educated people are expected to be informed, to have a base knowledge of the world around them with which they can positively and productively interact with that world. More importantly, educated people are expected to be able to think critically and creatively, to adapt to changes in a world where the pace of change has steadily accelerated over the past half century. While vocational skills have a very short shelf life in a rapidly changing world, critical and creative thinking skills are vital to those who would seek to remain afloat if not ride the wave of change.
Here’s where the fear comes in. Critical thinking requires the ability to be aware that human beings make and operate out of presumptions as a matter of course. It requires the ability to assess those presumptions constantly. It requires monitoring one’s gut for the emotional and often unconscious aspects of one’s encounter with the world. That requires time alone with little distraction and an intentional willingness to consider and reconsider one’s thoughts and feelings.
My observation is that most people don’t like their own company generally. We seem to go out of our way to avoid being alone with ourselves for any length of time. That is particularly true of young college students many of whom fill up every waking second with noise and distractions. The compulsive use – and tendency toward abuse - of cell phones, computer games and all sorts of passive entertainment suggest this. The rationalization of this behavior as somehow being hip also suggests this. “Multitasking” is a postmodern term that essentially means doing a lot of things at the same time in a mediocre at best fashion because one is so distracted they cannot fully engage the tasks they have undertaken.
It’s a lot easier to tune out than to be present. That is particularly true for classes which require critical thinking and demand self-reflection. For people unaccustomed to engaging either, its small wonder that bottom lining becomes the response.
Where the character issue becomes particularly pointed is when one considers the potential of a student in light of bottom lining behavior. Two religious thinkers shed some light on the problem here. The famed first century CE Rabbi Hillel said “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” Similar comments are accredited to Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel of Luke, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Both comments zero in on the problem with an unhealthy focus on self to the exclusion of the community in which one finds themselves. To quote an overused commercial jingle, the unwillingness to “Be all you can be” is at some level a failure of character. All one can be includes not only the development of one’s own talents to their fullest capacities but also to recognize that it is not all about me, that one’s talents are needed in the communities which make our own lives possible.
There are also pragmatic reasons why bottom lining is a bad bet. In addition to functioning at a relatively shallow level and being socially irresponsible, bottom lining requires a skill that few bottom liners possess: the ability to perform perfectly at the bottom line. There is nothing below the bottom line but failure. Hence there is no room for error. And my observation is that few students perform at such a high level. And if they do, they generally tend to not be bottom liners.
The other pragmatic reason that bottom lining is a bad idea is that such approaches to life become habitual. As Buddhist teaching states, “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your deeds; watch your deeds, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your destiny.”
Most college students come to college with inadequate and undeveloped study skills. Many bright students have been able to get by with little effort for maximal return in their pre-college educations. I know. I was one of them. And so I know why so many resent having to do more, having to think more deeply, having to express themselves more clearly than they are accustomed to doing.
That’s not an unexpectable initial response. But it’s the long term response that matters. Accomplishment through hard work – even hard work we don’t want to do, perhaps especially the hard work we don’t want to do – often results in a sense of empowerment. And the wrestling with our own thoughts and feelings, checking our guts and testing our endless presumptions, often results in a maturity that is the mark of socially responsible adult human beings.
This is hardly to say that mindless entertainment and less than fully engaged presence has no place in our world. We all need down time, otherwise we burn out. There is a time and a place for everything. But the place for disengagement is not in the college educational process. Minimal effort = minimal reward. I often tell my students “You can live as limited a life as you choose.” The question I’d ask is simply this: Why would anyone want to live a limited life? Or as Socrates put it, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
My .02 worth. Your mileage may vary.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Over the 21 years I have been teaching college students, I have observed more than one student who approached college with what I call a “bottom line” approach – Do the minimal required to get the credit needed. Time after time, I’ve see that approach fail. And yet, it seems to be a pernicious kind of virus that seems to readily infect a substantial share of every crop of entering college freshmen, some never shaking it right up to graduation.
A number of these bottom liners show up in lower division general education classes such as the HUM 2210 and 2230 sections taught online. Many appear in their final terms at the university, having avoided until the very last the classes that seek to make well rounded human beings out of them. Many later report that they had presumed that online classes aren’t real classes (they have somewhat of a point here – there is a bit of absurdity in taking a class which focuses on what it mean to be human in a manner guaranteed never to have to actually encounter one) and thus that they won’t have to do much to get the passing grade they need. The latter is where wishful thinking collides with the ability to perceive reality clearly often with disastrous results.
There are a number of problems with bottom lining. The first is a character concern. It is my observation that bottom lining is rooted in laziness and fear. College couch potatoes are nothing new. Many middle and upper class students come to college with inordinate senses of entitlement one strain of which suggests that minimal work and maximal grades are somehow their due.
The pernicious effects of consumerism also impact college attendance which somehow suggest that students pay for credits and thus grades. This, of course, misses the reality that tuition pays a small fraction of the cost of college educations and that paying one’s fees simply grants one an admission ticket to the class. What happens once one arrives there is dependent upon student performance. Hence the concern for the incipient laziness which afflicts more than a few middle to upper class freshman .
I have come to suspect, however, that the fear element is the stronger motivation for bottom lining. College educations, if they are truly engaged, are much more than mere vocational training. Educated people are expected to be informed, to have a base knowledge of the world around them with which they can positively and productively interact with that world. More importantly, educated people are expected to be able to think critically and creatively, to adapt to changes in a world where the pace of change has steadily accelerated over the past half century. While vocational skills have a very short shelf life in a rapidly changing world, critical and creative thinking skills are vital to those who would seek to remain afloat if not ride the wave of change.
Here’s where the fear comes in. Critical thinking requires the ability to be aware that human beings make and operate out of presumptions as a matter of course. It requires the ability to assess those presumptions constantly. It requires monitoring one’s gut for the emotional and often unconscious aspects of one’s encounter with the world. That requires time alone with little distraction and an intentional willingness to consider and reconsider one’s thoughts and feelings.
My observation is that most people don’t like their own company generally. We seem to go out of our way to avoid being alone with ourselves for any length of time. That is particularly true of young college students many of whom fill up every waking second with noise and distractions. The compulsive use – and tendency toward abuse - of cell phones, computer games and all sorts of passive entertainment suggest this. The rationalization of this behavior as somehow being hip also suggests this. “Multitasking” is a postmodern term that essentially means doing a lot of things at the same time in a mediocre at best fashion because one is so distracted they cannot fully engage the tasks they have undertaken.
It’s a lot easier to tune out than to be present. That is particularly true for classes which require critical thinking and demand self-reflection. For people unaccustomed to engaging either, its small wonder that bottom lining becomes the response.
Where the character issue becomes particularly pointed is when one considers the potential of a student in light of bottom lining behavior. Two religious thinkers shed some light on the problem here. The famed first century CE Rabbi Hillel said “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” Similar comments are accredited to Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel of Luke, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Both comments zero in on the problem with an unhealthy focus on self to the exclusion of the community in which one finds themselves. To quote an overused commercial jingle, the unwillingness to “Be all you can be” is at some level a failure of character. All one can be includes not only the development of one’s own talents to their fullest capacities but also to recognize that it is not all about me, that one’s talents are needed in the communities which make our own lives possible.
There are also pragmatic reasons why bottom lining is a bad bet. In addition to functioning at a relatively shallow level and being socially irresponsible, bottom lining requires a skill that few bottom liners possess: the ability to perform perfectly at the bottom line. There is nothing below the bottom line but failure. Hence there is no room for error. And my observation is that few students perform at such a high level. And if they do, they generally tend to not be bottom liners.
The other pragmatic reason that bottom lining is a bad idea is that such approaches to life become habitual. As Buddhist teaching states, “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your deeds; watch your deeds, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your destiny.”
Most college students come to college with inadequate and undeveloped study skills. Many bright students have been able to get by with little effort for maximal return in their pre-college educations. I know. I was one of them. And so I know why so many resent having to do more, having to think more deeply, having to express themselves more clearly than they are accustomed to doing.
That’s not an unexpectable initial response. But it’s the long term response that matters. Accomplishment through hard work – even hard work we don’t want to do, perhaps especially the hard work we don’t want to do – often results in a sense of empowerment. And the wrestling with our own thoughts and feelings, checking our guts and testing our endless presumptions, often results in a maturity that is the mark of socially responsible adult human beings.
This is hardly to say that mindless entertainment and less than fully engaged presence has no place in our world. We all need down time, otherwise we burn out. There is a time and a place for everything. But the place for disengagement is not in the college educational process. Minimal effort = minimal reward. I often tell my students “You can live as limited a life as you choose.” The question I’d ask is simply this: Why would anyone want to live a limited life? Or as Socrates put it, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
My .02 worth. Your mileage may vary.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Ditch the Church is Hell-Bent on Dying In
My nephew has just returned to California from a two week visit home with my partner and I here in Orlando. During his time here he came out to his parents who live just across town. Actually, he just confirmed their worst fears as fundamentalists since they had gotten into his facebook and read some of the posts which leave no doubt about his sexuality. It was a very tense Father’s Day dinner this year with my brother livid over his child’s Pride bracelet (frankly, all those rubber bands look interchangeable to me – I didn’t even know it was a Pride bracelet until I asked my nephew). Later my sister-in-law told my nephew that he had ruined his father’s Fathers Day by wearing that "detestable thing" (his father’s words, albeit borrowed uncritically from scripture).
When I read this news about the evangelicals in California mobilizing for their homophobic campaign disguised as religion to write discrimination in marriage into the state constitution, I found myself worrying about my nephew. Having survived a lifetime of overt and subtle homophobia as the context of my own life, I know how much energy it requires to simply cope with that context. But to have a whole segment of society mobilize to actively discriminate against you and carve their judgmental fears and loathing into a state constitution is demoralizing and intimidating. I pray for his safety. According to a wealth of studies, hate crimes based in sexual orientation increase during times of moral panic crusades like this. If it’s all right to bash gays collectively at the societal level, it’s certainly all right to act out such bashing on individuals who happen to be convenient.
While my nephew was here, we talked about religion. His general response to Christianity was simply “There’s nothing there for me.” Sadly, his experience of his own family, of organized religion and the presentation of religion in our media consistently equates the Christian faith with homophobia. He is hardly alone in that perception. And while he has a particular interest in avoiding homophobia based religion as a young gay man, his generational cohort feels much the same about organized religion for much the same reasons. When homophobia becomes the litmus test for religious faith, people of good conscience often find themselves unable to continue taking that religion seriously. This is hardly to say that people will not have spiritual needs which must be met in some manner. It’s just that increasingly it means they won’t be met in the institutional churches. As the church grays and dies and the Millenials vote with their feet, homophobia will become the ditch the church will die in.
My liturgics professor at seminary in California was prone to remark about ordination and marriage of gays and lesbians “If you don’t think you could ever ordain them or marry them, why baptize them in the first place?” My Roman Catholic seminarian buddies often said that the answer to how many sacraments there were was seven – if you were a straight unmarried male, six if you are straight and female and five if you were gay or lesbian. Perhaps churches that preach love of neighbor as oneself but practice discrimination – much less campaigning to make it state law – ought to die.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My nephew has just returned to California from a two week visit home with my partner and I here in Orlando. During his time here he came out to his parents who live just across town. Actually, he just confirmed their worst fears as fundamentalists since they had gotten into his facebook and read some of the posts which leave no doubt about his sexuality. It was a very tense Father’s Day dinner this year with my brother livid over his child’s Pride bracelet (frankly, all those rubber bands look interchangeable to me – I didn’t even know it was a Pride bracelet until I asked my nephew). Later my sister-in-law told my nephew that he had ruined his father’s Fathers Day by wearing that "detestable thing" (his father’s words, albeit borrowed uncritically from scripture).
When I read this news about the evangelicals in California mobilizing for their homophobic campaign disguised as religion to write discrimination in marriage into the state constitution, I found myself worrying about my nephew. Having survived a lifetime of overt and subtle homophobia as the context of my own life, I know how much energy it requires to simply cope with that context. But to have a whole segment of society mobilize to actively discriminate against you and carve their judgmental fears and loathing into a state constitution is demoralizing and intimidating. I pray for his safety. According to a wealth of studies, hate crimes based in sexual orientation increase during times of moral panic crusades like this. If it’s all right to bash gays collectively at the societal level, it’s certainly all right to act out such bashing on individuals who happen to be convenient.
While my nephew was here, we talked about religion. His general response to Christianity was simply “There’s nothing there for me.” Sadly, his experience of his own family, of organized religion and the presentation of religion in our media consistently equates the Christian faith with homophobia. He is hardly alone in that perception. And while he has a particular interest in avoiding homophobia based religion as a young gay man, his generational cohort feels much the same about organized religion for much the same reasons. When homophobia becomes the litmus test for religious faith, people of good conscience often find themselves unable to continue taking that religion seriously. This is hardly to say that people will not have spiritual needs which must be met in some manner. It’s just that increasingly it means they won’t be met in the institutional churches. As the church grays and dies and the Millenials vote with their feet, homophobia will become the ditch the church will die in.
My liturgics professor at seminary in California was prone to remark about ordination and marriage of gays and lesbians “If you don’t think you could ever ordain them or marry them, why baptize them in the first place?” My Roman Catholic seminarian buddies often said that the answer to how many sacraments there were was seven – if you were a straight unmarried male, six if you are straight and female and five if you were gay or lesbian. Perhaps churches that preach love of neighbor as oneself but practice discrimination – much less campaigning to make it state law – ought to die.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Friday, June 13, 2008
Coming to Grips with an GLBT Child – Things NOT to Say [Part 3]
My nephew recently came out to his parents....[Parts 1 and 2]...
So, what should parents tell their kids when they come out?
1. Be honest and humble – “I don’t understand this” meets both criteria. Your child will certainly understand. That’s precisely the way they first experienced the realization that they were different from most other kids. Some still may not understand. So, the ability to admit you don’t understand will place you in good company. Welcome to the club!
2. Admit your own limitations. – Don’t speak for G-d. You can’t with any integrity. Don’t predict the future for your child. Say you don’t know what’s going to happen. Admit you’re afraid of what that might mean. That meets criteria number 1 above. Speak for yourself, your own feelings. Avoid the tyranny of the they, .e.g. “They say…” And take heart. You’re hardly the first person to deal with the limits of human understanding.
3. Tell them you love them. – Hopefully that’s true. And hopefully, it can be unconditional in its nature. If it’s not true, work at making it true. As a parent, you owe them at least an effort. Bear in mind that conditional love has a more honest name – it’s called manipulation. Gay kids are already subject to tremendous amounts of manipulation simply to deal with day to day life. Don’t add to that onerous burden.
4. Pledge your support to them. – Your child is going to need you. Even if you conquer your own homophobia, there are whole segments of the world who haven’t even begun to deal with this social pathology. The potential harm to your child ranges from discrimination in housing and employment to being jeered at the supermarket to being in danger on the streets to being put to death in many jurisdictions of the world. Some of the most comforting words of the Gospel are Jesus’ assurance to his followers that “I am with you, even to the end of the age.” (MT 28:20). Be there for your child. We all need the support. All of us.
5. Be tentative. – Give yourself time to think and reflect. Coming out is almost inevitably painful for all of the parties involved and sometimes comes as a shock. Bear in mind that every feeling of surprise, dread, disappointment, fear, shame and concern that you experience, your child has already most likely experienced him or herself. Coming out is rarely a one time event. For most GLBT persons it is a lifetime process. Why would their parents be any different? Give yourself room and time to think and reflect. Pray about it. Talk with others. PFLAG is an organization devoted to people like you. Consider contacting them.
6. Keep talking – Perhaps most important of all is to keep talking with your child. If you cut the communication lines, they will be difficult to reestablish. Very few people at the end of their lives say they wished they’d spent more time being right. Almost to the person they say they wished they had spent more time with those they loved.
To my nephew and the many GLBT children of the world coming to grips with life’s little surprise, I wish you well. Know that many of us have been where you are and survived to tell about it. Be courageous. Know that there are many of us who have trod your path and know its difficulties. We are with you, always, even unto the end of the age. G-dspeed in your new lives.
To our parents, I wish you patience, humility and understanding. Don’t ever lose sight of the fact that your children love you even when you are less than loveable. More importantly, try to remember that your children need you, perhaps now more than ever. Try to be present for them. This is not about you, it’s about them. May G-d be particularly present with you as you struggle to learn anew how to love your child in light of their new reality. And may peace be with you.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My nephew recently came out to his parents....[Parts 1 and 2]...
So, what should parents tell their kids when they come out?
1. Be honest and humble – “I don’t understand this” meets both criteria. Your child will certainly understand. That’s precisely the way they first experienced the realization that they were different from most other kids. Some still may not understand. So, the ability to admit you don’t understand will place you in good company. Welcome to the club!
2. Admit your own limitations. – Don’t speak for G-d. You can’t with any integrity. Don’t predict the future for your child. Say you don’t know what’s going to happen. Admit you’re afraid of what that might mean. That meets criteria number 1 above. Speak for yourself, your own feelings. Avoid the tyranny of the they, .e.g. “They say…” And take heart. You’re hardly the first person to deal with the limits of human understanding.
3. Tell them you love them. – Hopefully that’s true. And hopefully, it can be unconditional in its nature. If it’s not true, work at making it true. As a parent, you owe them at least an effort. Bear in mind that conditional love has a more honest name – it’s called manipulation. Gay kids are already subject to tremendous amounts of manipulation simply to deal with day to day life. Don’t add to that onerous burden.
4. Pledge your support to them. – Your child is going to need you. Even if you conquer your own homophobia, there are whole segments of the world who haven’t even begun to deal with this social pathology. The potential harm to your child ranges from discrimination in housing and employment to being jeered at the supermarket to being in danger on the streets to being put to death in many jurisdictions of the world. Some of the most comforting words of the Gospel are Jesus’ assurance to his followers that “I am with you, even to the end of the age.” (MT 28:20). Be there for your child. We all need the support. All of us.
5. Be tentative. – Give yourself time to think and reflect. Coming out is almost inevitably painful for all of the parties involved and sometimes comes as a shock. Bear in mind that every feeling of surprise, dread, disappointment, fear, shame and concern that you experience, your child has already most likely experienced him or herself. Coming out is rarely a one time event. For most GLBT persons it is a lifetime process. Why would their parents be any different? Give yourself room and time to think and reflect. Pray about it. Talk with others. PFLAG is an organization devoted to people like you. Consider contacting them.
6. Keep talking – Perhaps most important of all is to keep talking with your child. If you cut the communication lines, they will be difficult to reestablish. Very few people at the end of their lives say they wished they’d spent more time being right. Almost to the person they say they wished they had spent more time with those they loved.
To my nephew and the many GLBT children of the world coming to grips with life’s little surprise, I wish you well. Know that many of us have been where you are and survived to tell about it. Be courageous. Know that there are many of us who have trod your path and know its difficulties. We are with you, always, even unto the end of the age. G-dspeed in your new lives.
To our parents, I wish you patience, humility and understanding. Don’t ever lose sight of the fact that your children love you even when you are less than loveable. More importantly, try to remember that your children need you, perhaps now more than ever. Try to be present for them. This is not about you, it’s about them. May G-d be particularly present with you as you struggle to learn anew how to love your child in light of their new reality. And may peace be with you.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Coming to Grips with an GLBT Child – Things NOT to Say [Part 2]
My nephew recently came out to his parents....[Part 1] ...With that in mind, I’d like to offer some suggestions on things NOT to say to your GLBT child during “the talk.” To wit:
1. Don’t tell them they have ruined their lives – In truth, they may have ruined the life you planned for them. But that is not the same as ruining their own lives over which ultimately they have the final say and for which they must take responsibility. And it’s hardly the first case where children have not lived into parent’s dreams for them. That they may be looking at a life of confronting homophobia and misunderstanding may well be true. But, given that reality, what they need from you is understanding, support and unconditional love, not judgment, hand-wringing and guilt-tripping.
2. Don’t tell them they’ll never be happy – For one thing, you cannot possibly predict the future any more than they can. Indeed, the chances that they’d necessarily be happy as married heterosexuals is belied by our nation’s 50% divorce rate. Moreover, study after study has shown that GLBT couples tend to be just as happy – and just as unstable – as heterosexual couples. Do not set into motion a self-fulfilling prophecy arising out of your own limited understanding of life based predominately in your own experience. Most importantly, don’t become part of the reason their lives might not be happy.
3. Don’t tell them that they can choose to be straight – To begin with, it’s arrogant to tell another human being what their experience is or ought to be, particularly when not invited to do so. There is no small amount of absurdity in people who cannot tell you when they themselves chose their sexual orientation - how, when and where the choice was offered, and why they chose as they did - insisting that a different sexual orientation was a matter of a choice. The notion of choosing one’s sexuality is not supported by any reputable research. Insisting on your child choosing to be straight exposes either one’s ignorance or one’s steadfast refusal to deal with the reality of diverse sexual orientations. Neither of these are what a human being just coming out needs.
4. Don’t tell them that G-d cannot love them if they are gay – I often respond to those who would suggest G-d’s cannot love me because of my sexual orientation that “I guess it’s a good thing for me that it’s the G-d who created the whole universe who will make that decision and not you.” Your limitations in dealing with people who are different does not somehow limit the G-d who created them from loving them as they are. If you feel the need to pray for someone, pray for yourself and your own abilities to learn and grow in the face of the situation life has presented you with a child coming out.
5. Don’t tell them they are going to hell. – To begin with you don’t know and neither does anyone else. Many of us want to believe in life after death – myself included - but none of us knows if such exists. It’s fine to say you believe this and, if you want to be taken seriously, offer the reasons you believe it. But always keep in mind that no matter how sincerely one might believe something, beliefs remain beliefs. And while all of us are entitled to our beliefs, no one else is. Using the threat of hell as a club to bash a child into submission to one’s own self-serving religious views is not intellectually honest, ethical or particularly loving. It’s simply manipulative. Remember, the Second Great Commandment of Judaism and Christianity is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. To test whether the theological bullying approach is sinful, simply ask yourself if you’d be willing to be in the position of the child you are emotionally abusing with threats of hell so they will hold your religious understandings.
6. Don’t tell them they cannot be a Christian and GLBT. – The opposite of Christian is non-Christian, not gay. The opposite of gay is straight, not Christian. People do not have to hold your prejudices to be Christian. There are millions of people who are gay and Christian. And there are millions who are straight and reject homophobia, many precisely because of their religious views. To suggest that holding homophobic views is somehow the litmus test for true religion is to essentially reduce your religion to a socially constructed prejudice. Even in religions which do conflate the two, not all of the faithful buy it. Roman Catholics, whose ostensibly celibate hierarchy regularly finds a whipping boy in homosexuality, are largely not convinced by their church’s homophobic stances any more than they find its teachings on birth control compelling. The same is true in many traditions. The bottom line is simply this: homophobia is not an article of faith of any world religion. It appears in no creeds. At most it is a socially constructed prejudice sometimes legitimized by some people with religious arguments.
7. Don’t tell them they cannot be themselves if they wish to be present in your home. – What that says is simply that you don’t want them. If they must become actors performing a forced drama as a condition of being present in your home, you have essentially asked the performer to become a liar. You might ask yourself why you’d want liars in your home. Indeed, what might that say about you? It’s particularly egregious to say to them that you want them to be with you but only if they are willing to play the role you have assigned them. What that really says is “We want us, not you.” In such cases, a truly healthy GLBT child will keep their contacts with you to a minimum to protect their own integrity.
8. Don’t say that you are afraid they will be a bad influence on siblings – Sexual orientations are not diseases. You don’t catch them. And the behaviors and attitudes of GLBT people are no less or more moral than those of their straight counterparts. Do not confuse honesty about one’s sexual orientation with immorality. To do so is to engage in unconscious homophobia at the very least. And try to become aware of the common myth that GLBT persons are a particular threat for pedophilia. The reality is that your child is statistically at much greater risk with their straight adult authority figures than with your GLBT child.
FINALLY, about this label homophobia. The definition of homophobia is an irrational fear or aversion to homosexuals, homosexuality and all things related to it. The key word in the definition is “irrational.”
In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Prior to that time, no one had ever looked to biological or genetic origins of sexual orientations. The given understanding, largely rooted in the work of Sigmund Freud, was that homosexuality arose from troubled familial relationships, an understanding accepted without question. Thus arose the myth that with enough desire to change, even this psychopathology could be “cured.”
Since 1973, however, a wide range of studies have pointed toward biological, genetic and environmental factors all contributing to both the aetiology of the various sexual orientations as well as the way they play out in individuals. While many people may not be readers of medical pr biological science journals, the reality is that with the amount of publicity these studies have received, most people either know or ought to know that varying sexual orientations are a statistically predictable natural occurrence much like left handedness. Thus, an ongoing fear, loathing or aversion to GLBT persons in light of these findings can only be seen as irrational. That includes buying into notions like choosing one’s orientation and the corresponding ability to change, the danger to children from pedophilia confused with homosexuality, the necessarily promiscuous sex lives of GLBT persons, or the notion of any sexual orientation other than heterosexual as somehow being sinful.
There is no small irony in the fact that while sexual orientations (as opposed to the way one chooses to live in light of those orientations) are not themselves a matter of choice, attitudes about sexuality generally and sexual orientations specifically are *always* a choice. That’s particularly true when such attitudes continue to be held in the face of disaffirming evidence to the contrary. While simply being homosexual or bisexual cannot be sinful anymore than simply being heterosexual would be, the unwillingness to reconsider self-serving, judgmental attitudes about other human beings can only be seen as the violation of the second great commandment – Love your neighbor as yourself, period. No exceptions.
Ironically, unlike sexual orientations, homophobic attitudes can be repented of and changed.
[Continued]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My nephew recently came out to his parents....[Part 1] ...With that in mind, I’d like to offer some suggestions on things NOT to say to your GLBT child during “the talk.” To wit:
1. Don’t tell them they have ruined their lives – In truth, they may have ruined the life you planned for them. But that is not the same as ruining their own lives over which ultimately they have the final say and for which they must take responsibility. And it’s hardly the first case where children have not lived into parent’s dreams for them. That they may be looking at a life of confronting homophobia and misunderstanding may well be true. But, given that reality, what they need from you is understanding, support and unconditional love, not judgment, hand-wringing and guilt-tripping.
2. Don’t tell them they’ll never be happy – For one thing, you cannot possibly predict the future any more than they can. Indeed, the chances that they’d necessarily be happy as married heterosexuals is belied by our nation’s 50% divorce rate. Moreover, study after study has shown that GLBT couples tend to be just as happy – and just as unstable – as heterosexual couples. Do not set into motion a self-fulfilling prophecy arising out of your own limited understanding of life based predominately in your own experience. Most importantly, don’t become part of the reason their lives might not be happy.
3. Don’t tell them that they can choose to be straight – To begin with, it’s arrogant to tell another human being what their experience is or ought to be, particularly when not invited to do so. There is no small amount of absurdity in people who cannot tell you when they themselves chose their sexual orientation - how, when and where the choice was offered, and why they chose as they did - insisting that a different sexual orientation was a matter of a choice. The notion of choosing one’s sexuality is not supported by any reputable research. Insisting on your child choosing to be straight exposes either one’s ignorance or one’s steadfast refusal to deal with the reality of diverse sexual orientations. Neither of these are what a human being just coming out needs.
4. Don’t tell them that G-d cannot love them if they are gay – I often respond to those who would suggest G-d’s cannot love me because of my sexual orientation that “I guess it’s a good thing for me that it’s the G-d who created the whole universe who will make that decision and not you.” Your limitations in dealing with people who are different does not somehow limit the G-d who created them from loving them as they are. If you feel the need to pray for someone, pray for yourself and your own abilities to learn and grow in the face of the situation life has presented you with a child coming out.
5. Don’t tell them they are going to hell. – To begin with you don’t know and neither does anyone else. Many of us want to believe in life after death – myself included - but none of us knows if such exists. It’s fine to say you believe this and, if you want to be taken seriously, offer the reasons you believe it. But always keep in mind that no matter how sincerely one might believe something, beliefs remain beliefs. And while all of us are entitled to our beliefs, no one else is. Using the threat of hell as a club to bash a child into submission to one’s own self-serving religious views is not intellectually honest, ethical or particularly loving. It’s simply manipulative. Remember, the Second Great Commandment of Judaism and Christianity is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. To test whether the theological bullying approach is sinful, simply ask yourself if you’d be willing to be in the position of the child you are emotionally abusing with threats of hell so they will hold your religious understandings.
6. Don’t tell them they cannot be a Christian and GLBT. – The opposite of Christian is non-Christian, not gay. The opposite of gay is straight, not Christian. People do not have to hold your prejudices to be Christian. There are millions of people who are gay and Christian. And there are millions who are straight and reject homophobia, many precisely because of their religious views. To suggest that holding homophobic views is somehow the litmus test for true religion is to essentially reduce your religion to a socially constructed prejudice. Even in religions which do conflate the two, not all of the faithful buy it. Roman Catholics, whose ostensibly celibate hierarchy regularly finds a whipping boy in homosexuality, are largely not convinced by their church’s homophobic stances any more than they find its teachings on birth control compelling. The same is true in many traditions. The bottom line is simply this: homophobia is not an article of faith of any world religion. It appears in no creeds. At most it is a socially constructed prejudice sometimes legitimized by some people with religious arguments.
7. Don’t tell them they cannot be themselves if they wish to be present in your home. – What that says is simply that you don’t want them. If they must become actors performing a forced drama as a condition of being present in your home, you have essentially asked the performer to become a liar. You might ask yourself why you’d want liars in your home. Indeed, what might that say about you? It’s particularly egregious to say to them that you want them to be with you but only if they are willing to play the role you have assigned them. What that really says is “We want us, not you.” In such cases, a truly healthy GLBT child will keep their contacts with you to a minimum to protect their own integrity.
8. Don’t say that you are afraid they will be a bad influence on siblings – Sexual orientations are not diseases. You don’t catch them. And the behaviors and attitudes of GLBT people are no less or more moral than those of their straight counterparts. Do not confuse honesty about one’s sexual orientation with immorality. To do so is to engage in unconscious homophobia at the very least. And try to become aware of the common myth that GLBT persons are a particular threat for pedophilia. The reality is that your child is statistically at much greater risk with their straight adult authority figures than with your GLBT child.
FINALLY, about this label homophobia. The definition of homophobia is an irrational fear or aversion to homosexuals, homosexuality and all things related to it. The key word in the definition is “irrational.”
In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Prior to that time, no one had ever looked to biological or genetic origins of sexual orientations. The given understanding, largely rooted in the work of Sigmund Freud, was that homosexuality arose from troubled familial relationships, an understanding accepted without question. Thus arose the myth that with enough desire to change, even this psychopathology could be “cured.”
Since 1973, however, a wide range of studies have pointed toward biological, genetic and environmental factors all contributing to both the aetiology of the various sexual orientations as well as the way they play out in individuals. While many people may not be readers of medical pr biological science journals, the reality is that with the amount of publicity these studies have received, most people either know or ought to know that varying sexual orientations are a statistically predictable natural occurrence much like left handedness. Thus, an ongoing fear, loathing or aversion to GLBT persons in light of these findings can only be seen as irrational. That includes buying into notions like choosing one’s orientation and the corresponding ability to change, the danger to children from pedophilia confused with homosexuality, the necessarily promiscuous sex lives of GLBT persons, or the notion of any sexual orientation other than heterosexual as somehow being sinful.
There is no small irony in the fact that while sexual orientations (as opposed to the way one chooses to live in light of those orientations) are not themselves a matter of choice, attitudes about sexuality generally and sexual orientations specifically are *always* a choice. That’s particularly true when such attitudes continue to be held in the face of disaffirming evidence to the contrary. While simply being homosexual or bisexual cannot be sinful anymore than simply being heterosexual would be, the unwillingness to reconsider self-serving, judgmental attitudes about other human beings can only be seen as the violation of the second great commandment – Love your neighbor as yourself, period. No exceptions.
Ironically, unlike sexual orientations, homophobic attitudes can be repented of and changed.
[Continued]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Coming to Grips with an GLBT Child – Things NOT to Say - Part I
My nephew recently came out to his parents. The long dreaded night finally came for “the talk.” Considering the possibilities, things went well. He’s not disinherited. He’s not banished from the house. And he’s old enough to escape the seemingly obligatory sentence to the psychiatrist or the pastoral counselor.
But he did have to sit through the usual indignities all GLBT kids must suffer from often well meaning but ignorant if not steadfastly self-blinding parents. He had to listen to the lecture on disappointment about not having grandchildren (as if GLBT kids haven’t already had to deal with that disappointment and the realization of disappointing others). He had to endure the obligatory lashing with the theological whip of threats of hell and damnation. And he survived the scare tactics of AIDS complete with disinformation about a 30% failure rate of condoms (that may be true for papiloma virus but not for AIDS, per NIH). But, to his credit, when the predictable “book we want you to read” was proffered, he accepted conditionally – “Only if you’ll read the book I’d like you to read.” Somehow I doubt the family book club will be meeting anytime soon.
All in all, it could have been much worse. The streets of our major cities are full of kids whose news was greeted with much worse response including abuse which made running away the only viable option. And those are the lucky ones. Some never make it out of their houses.
I suppose I was lucky to have parents who dealt with my coming out as readily as they did. My mother’s response was initially “Don’t tell me something I can’t handle,” to which I replied “OK, Mother, I won’t tell you.” Of course, that lasted exactly 24 hours after which Saint Marge simply said, “OK, tell me. When I did, she simply said “You’re my son, I love you. Nothing else matters.” And then there was my Dad, in his usual understated manner, who came to my house during one of my drunken, self-pitying moments during my two years of Purgatory teaching middle school in Inverness, FL, to ask me what the hell was wrong with me. “I love Andy, Daddy,” I said to which he replied, “We know that. But what’s the matter?” Years later my father would ask why I couldn’t serve as a priest in the Diocese of Central Florida when I returned home from California after ordination. “Because I’m gay, Dad,” I said. “But why not? Is that the only reason?” he responded.
Undoubtedly my parents suffered through the same sense of loss of dreams for their child that many parents have known albeit for a longer period than most parents of GLBT kids. Because my sexuality falls closer to the middle of Kinsey’s scale, I had a difficult time coming to terms with my sexuality and came close to marriage (to an RBG, real biological girl) several times. I also know they worried about how people would treat me and how my sexuality would affect my career. The shame they sought to suppress revealed itself in the absence of photos on their walls of myself and partner. And, during my wilder days when my rage over the homophobia I was encountering fueled some fairly self-destructive behaviors, they worried, and not without cause.
I tend to think most parents are not mindless homophobes narcissistically bent on making their children into their own image though clearly there are some who are. But I do think that a lot of pain can be inflicted by well intended parents who, unlike my mother, don’t have the better sense to step back for 24 hours before responding to their child who is trying to come out to them.
[Continued]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My nephew recently came out to his parents. The long dreaded night finally came for “the talk.” Considering the possibilities, things went well. He’s not disinherited. He’s not banished from the house. And he’s old enough to escape the seemingly obligatory sentence to the psychiatrist or the pastoral counselor.
But he did have to sit through the usual indignities all GLBT kids must suffer from often well meaning but ignorant if not steadfastly self-blinding parents. He had to listen to the lecture on disappointment about not having grandchildren (as if GLBT kids haven’t already had to deal with that disappointment and the realization of disappointing others). He had to endure the obligatory lashing with the theological whip of threats of hell and damnation. And he survived the scare tactics of AIDS complete with disinformation about a 30% failure rate of condoms (that may be true for papiloma virus but not for AIDS, per NIH). But, to his credit, when the predictable “book we want you to read” was proffered, he accepted conditionally – “Only if you’ll read the book I’d like you to read.” Somehow I doubt the family book club will be meeting anytime soon.
All in all, it could have been much worse. The streets of our major cities are full of kids whose news was greeted with much worse response including abuse which made running away the only viable option. And those are the lucky ones. Some never make it out of their houses.
I suppose I was lucky to have parents who dealt with my coming out as readily as they did. My mother’s response was initially “Don’t tell me something I can’t handle,” to which I replied “OK, Mother, I won’t tell you.” Of course, that lasted exactly 24 hours after which Saint Marge simply said, “OK, tell me. When I did, she simply said “You’re my son, I love you. Nothing else matters.” And then there was my Dad, in his usual understated manner, who came to my house during one of my drunken, self-pitying moments during my two years of Purgatory teaching middle school in Inverness, FL, to ask me what the hell was wrong with me. “I love Andy, Daddy,” I said to which he replied, “We know that. But what’s the matter?” Years later my father would ask why I couldn’t serve as a priest in the Diocese of Central Florida when I returned home from California after ordination. “Because I’m gay, Dad,” I said. “But why not? Is that the only reason?” he responded.
Undoubtedly my parents suffered through the same sense of loss of dreams for their child that many parents have known albeit for a longer period than most parents of GLBT kids. Because my sexuality falls closer to the middle of Kinsey’s scale, I had a difficult time coming to terms with my sexuality and came close to marriage (to an RBG, real biological girl) several times. I also know they worried about how people would treat me and how my sexuality would affect my career. The shame they sought to suppress revealed itself in the absence of photos on their walls of myself and partner. And, during my wilder days when my rage over the homophobia I was encountering fueled some fairly self-destructive behaviors, they worried, and not without cause.
I tend to think most parents are not mindless homophobes narcissistically bent on making their children into their own image though clearly there are some who are. But I do think that a lot of pain can be inflicted by well intended parents who, unlike my mother, don’t have the better sense to step back for 24 hours before responding to their child who is trying to come out to them.
[Continued]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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