Rollan's Censored Issues Blog

A CURED JOURNALIST CREATES A STIR

The story of journalist, Michael Glatze, sounds a bit confused and those listening to him, especially Christians now promoting him as proof of something "ex gay" and a long awaited "born-again" narrative of cure could extend the confusion.

Just about everything and everyone religious from the conservative World Net Daily to The Elijah List, a charismatic prophecy site, is in on the Glatze news though without mentioning - as I gather elsewhere on the Net is the case - that he has become a Mormon. It’s the gay male version of the lesbian story of a few months back when another editor and activist, Charlene Cothran, of Venus magazine declared herself converted and (messianically it seemed) ready to deliver a whole generation from the gay lies people are caught in. No one read the small print like the curious fact Charlene denied that she’d ever once thought of herself as born gay - it was a choice she’d always felt guilty about and now discounted.

Glatze's story, however sincere in itself, is likewise inadequate and its public hearing inadequate too. Which isn’t to deny Glatze may have found God as reported. There’s nothing to object to if he has and may he be at peace in a way he wasn’t before. However, finding through belief the true centre, identity and strength of character he needed (he calls himself “weak”) is still separate from the crucial question of whether he’s no longer gay and if it signifies anything if he isn’t. It’s taken him over a year to admit to change/conversion and he offers no evidence he’s anything more than out of a lifestyle that included drugs and editing Gay Young America i.e. We don’t hear he’s found the girl of his dreams or is even looking for her. But like Cothran Glatze wants to tell “the Truth” about homosexuality; by doing so he also wants to “atone” for being associated with it. David Kupelian’s The Marketing of Evil has much influenced him and I gather that book includes about certain deceits in the promotion of rights that have more to do with certain attitudes and beliefs of the secular leadership than any mainstream gay opinions.

There are people born gay who were meant to be so and will remain so. Whether or not Jesus referred to such persons, as some scholars believe, as those “born eunuchs from their mothers’ wombs” it’s high time Christians stopped kidding themselves and confusing people about this subject. In fact even fairly conservative Christians (like Evangelicals Concerned that Glatze doesn’t cite) would agree. Consider these points getting overlooked about Glatze and his story.

• He first had gay feelings at 14 and came out at 20. How odd! Any gay person with a memory reports their main interest, friendship and emotional drives were for the same sex when they were as young as five or six while most people living post liberation wouldn’t then take till 20 to be out and fully defined as gay. Actually the feelings emerged after Glatze's mother died when he was 13 and his out gay identity after his father died. Conversion occurred following stomach illnesses connected to the lifestyle of “sin and corruption” he considers gayness to represent.

• Glatze frankly describes himself as “weak” i.e. easily subject to influence. Clearly he was influenced. One may imagine as per the noted analyses of Prof. C.W.Tripp in The Homosexual Matrix, he was more sexual exporter than importer. He functioned in ways that would please people almost more than himself so if gay was there and wanted, that’s the way he went.

• Glatze wasn’t simply gay. Like many ex gays he reports being involved in “substance abuse’ and "other things", such as presumably the pornography he now describes the magazine he edited as being a mild form of. If one is too heavily involved in drugs one can finish up being and doing almost anything gay or straight. If one is confused drugs supply a missing identity. Pornography too can become obsessive and addictive.

• Glatze controversially maintains homosexuality is all “lust-based” and “neurotic”. Since lust is always a matter of degree this is absurd. Of course there are sex addicted gays who live for lust and perhaps a little more blatantly than straights because the opposite sex is not placing restraints. But lust exists. If you disapprove of it you arrive at the position of Ss Augustine and Jerome who (borrowing from pagans like Seneca) maintained sexual desire even within marriage is no better than adultery. Unless like Stoics and Buddhists you believe in eradication of all desire, you must learn to live with “lust” which is another word for desire. But such denial is not biblical though some Jews and Christians didn’t want the Song of Songs in the Bible because it seemed indecent. I return presently to the “neurotic” charge which is simply insulting to many gays.

• Glatze has an aunt who he says has greatly influenced him and whom he now compliments on having been not judgmental but firmly against his lifestyle. Perhaps the life style wasn’t too good but this aunt may paradoxically have been half the problem. Her attitudes may have fed internalized homophobia that left him incapable of ever adjusting to being gay - if he ever genuinely was, which can be questioned. (He now says he finds the thought of sex with men repulsive).

FOR AND AGAINST CHANGE

Since society is traditionally against homosexuality without positive support and self image there will always seem to be reasons for the gay person, especially in conformist societies like America’s, to doubt their orientation and seek change. When this is truly justified is a major question. In the case of seriously confused, undecided or addictive personalities (which appears to be Glatze’s self confessed profile) there can be some value. Also where people are already heavily committed (like the man with a wife and three kids who suddenly decides he’s gay) the case for therapy or change seems compelling. Why stagger through life used by others in roles not truly reflecting one’s core or be victim to various addictions or break up families one has somehow managed to begin because whatever one’s orientation one didn’t find straight sex so difficult in the first place?

I once met a married man with all of four children whom he had left having found a gay soul mate he believed God had blessed him with. I doubt personal or religious self deception could go much further and perhaps even some ex gay type therapy could help such a person whom I don’t feel religious organizations should so readily welcome as one had done in the interests of “toleration”. One's acquired attachments or one's vows are surely meant to mean something.

It’s also possible that especially in America the marketing of gay life (such as Glatze was involved in and which his reading on marketing caused him to question) has made homosexuality seem so exciting that suggestible personalities of the consumer society are dabbling in homo or bi/sexuality as a pleasure option rather than a matter of orientation. This is problematic especially religiously –“leaving their nature” or recreational bisexuality is what St Paul condemns in Romans according to the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. Even Prof Tripp’s study admitted that homosexuality could be a space that men with extreme desires (such as in S&M) might gravitate to because women are less likely to play to their needs. So, a trendy homosexuality of convenience can exist but could use cure or renunciation.

This said it’s unwise, even ungodly, to tamper in the matter of alternative orientation which is not against nature – homosexuality is found throughout nature contrary to the beliefs of Aristotle that early Christians appropriated. The ex gay record that such as Ex Gay Watch has monitored is alarming in terms of failure, everything to “hypocritical” reversions to nervous breakdowns and the feeling of having to live a lie.

THE “TRUTH” ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY

The Truth about homosexuality that Glatze doesn’t know and partly because the marketing and marketed gay world he served ignores deeper spiritual and psychological perspectives is the reason that the condition is not “curable”. Far from being a "neurosis" it’s a total spirituality and mind-set. It has its own archetypes, its own individuation processes. It’s a psychology before it’s a form of sexual activity. In a way some have found helpful I define a complete gay psychology in the first chapter of my A Special Illumination. Since there is a spiritual dimension I also believe, but am almost forbidden by various academic or religious or scientific prejudices to mention it, that the condition can be identified more esoterically: that there is a gay aura, colour, vibe, certain identifying patterns in astrology that almost no one wants to look at. It could nonetheless be very helpful if people were more aware of this as it would give better idea of who is genuinely gay and who is just floating confused or even just playing queer theory games.

Regardless, if you know several languages you don’t go back to speaking one. Due to factors like the element of androgyny present in many expressions of homosexuality, gay perspectives are often larger than for the average straight person. While I don’t want to bring out the old gay equals genius formula of justification, it’s a fact that from Michelangelo to the mathematician, Alan Turing, there is a gay imaginative, intellectual and sympathetic range which is quite special. Religion is far more owing to it than the religions care to admit but it is high time it learned more humility in relation to this fact but in many cases there’s a long way to go and there’s not even a real dialogue.

PATRICIA KING AND THE PROPHETIC SYNDROME THAT WON’T ANSWER

This whole subject, serious enough in itself, also neatly connects back to my last article (The Bad Manners of Good Christians) because two messages of May 7th and May 27th despite their extreme relevance to the gay issue and the views of a popular charismatic media Pastor, Patricia King, at Extreme Prophetic have never been answered by so much as one line of acknowledgment.

Patricia King is a trendy, pin up Christian media mother and grandmother with what from interviews sounds like a bit of a hippie past. She is pleasant enough as a person and even in some respects for her background innovatory and enlightened. In terms of the Bible about which she is basically fundamentalist – selectively as most fundamentalists are! – she arguably qualifies as all of an abomination St Paul would throw out of any church. She prays with her head uncovered and she frequently teaches and preaches, (instead of keeping womanly silent!) in tight trousers (which makes her an abomination according to Deut. 22.5) while her coiffure is mannish short in a way to irritate St Paul but perhaps delight any lesbian. However she knows what true abomination is and it's not about any modern Christian variations on outdated themes but “homosexuality” which she refers to as though the Bible used the word (it doesn’t). Departing from the prophecies her programmes and site normally deal in she devotes 4 whole video sessions to talks on “Homosexuality: Good or Evil?” and based purely on her own ideas and biblical citations, the latter not even slightly informed by modern scholarship or psychology on the subject. Some of her views are either non PC or just plain silly like the view homosexuality was the fall of the Roman empire. (Breakdown of the slavery system and excessive imperial wars were the problem).

Since she is supposed to be a charismatic dealing in what the Holy Spirit reveals and gay charismatics do exist and claim revelations that are getting ignored in all this by herself and other high profile charismatics, I proposed that PK might not be listening to “what the Spirit says to the churches”. Speaking to her in her own language I further suggested that the situation she deplores in which gay rights are gaining ground to the point of compromising free speech and personal rights (which arguably sometimes is the case ) I proposed that paradoxically God might be permitting this and despite all the prayers against it. And the reason could be because the historical treatment of gays had never been the subject of collective repentance that church groups had directed upon Blacks, First Nation people and others as a matter of course in recent times. I pointed out that the very idea of proposing we “love” homosexuals but hate their sin is an idea only heard since Gay Liberation as a pretext to continue respectably to oppose homosexuals.

This has to be the case since across history scarcely one Christian apart from the Irish politician, Edmund Burke, who was never forgiven for it, questioned the execution and ill treatment of homosexuals. All manner of public punishments and tortures including of adolescents went on with the blessing of Christians. Against such a legacy I suggested Patricia’s angry insistence she had the right to speak against homosexuality which fashion and law were taking away from her but that she would gladly go to prison to defend, is inappropriate. Without suggesting all modern gays were victims, martyrs or even good people I suggested this situation was still anachronistic and an offence to God.

I received no answer but as I had sent to the general address for Extreme Prophetic perhaps it hadn’t been passed on. On the 27th May I wrote unmissably to Patricia’s personal address at EP and jointly to another soi-disant prophet, Cindy Jacobs, another of these self declared lovers of gays – really – whose views I felt should be challenged. This time I put to them the facts that it has been discovered that 42% of America’s homeless are believed to be gays many of them adolescents ejected from “good” Christian families because they have been taught their children are abominations they don’t have to tolerate. I said no matter precisely how one interprets Bible this is a situation offensive to God and itself needing repentance and it MUST stop.

Of course, I have never had a reply. However, since some groups have been fasting towards today, 7-7-7, and for world change and global revival the latest videoed broadcast from Patricia talks about fasting – from emails and correspondence in her case! Recently she wanted some hours alone with the Lord but instead got caught in a mass of emails that took her 15 hours of her day. And she was wrong because it distracted her from practicing the presence. God is the only one we really need to talk to, she says. Indeed!

INVOKING THE SPIRIT ON DAY 7-7-7

Well, in fairness perhaps my message was lost or accidentally deleted, but I doubt it and I want to gag at this kind of holy talk even though I don't doubt it's ultimately more important to talk to God than myself and useful if it is an experience of the divine graciousness and so makes a person more considerate in their dealings. In writing to PK I took care and time and as a published author citing sources and I wrote from outside America to offer different perspectives. This should have been noted and respected. In all the hours devoted to PK’s email replies on that day and surely other days since May 7th I, and more importantly my sensitive subject matter, deserved at least an acknowledgement though I dare say that in even speaking the gay word I am thrown again to outer darkness not worth her or Cindy Jacob’s reply.

But beyond my own concerns the offence to God of such views and behaviour is I believe not so excusable. There are thousands of gays homeless (and an above average suicide rate among young gays) in part because of the attitudes conservative believers refuse to moderate, reconsider or confess, their understanding of homosexuality not extending, nor trying to extend. beyond some of the wildest Gay Pride images.

On this day 7-7-7 devoted to calls for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a new Pentecost upon the world, in line with St Paul's condemnation of religious leadership as “a white washed wall”, I invoke the Holy Spirit against the spirit of unconcern, of rudeness, of both loud bigotry and silent dismissal that prevails in so many Christian circles. And let not media prophets hide from such invocation conveniently dismissing criticism (as Patricia King has absurdly just recently done of any criticism of herself and associates by Christians) as "witchcraft". What is involved is a matter of simple truth and righteousness, things required of those priveleged in terms of influence upon societies' attitudes. The measure we give is the measure we shall get say the gospels. May they be confounded by this same Holy Spirit all those who would try to compromise whatever movement of the Spirit may manifest through the invocations of 7-7-7, making such only a further excuse to speak, campaign or legislate in ways that can only harm the marginalized in their personal and religious lives.