Pride Month: The Moment I Became a "Side A" Christian

“Don’t let your compassion keep you from calling sin what God says is sin.” 

~ My former pastor (and other Pharisees and legalists throughout history) 

“This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”

~ Certain Pharisees

“Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?”

 “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” 

 Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

~ Jesus Christ

***

 My journey away from the Fundamentalist/Evangelical belief system regarding human sexuality has been a couple decades long, and has been both a gradual process and a series of epiphanies.

On the one hand, my LGBTQ friends and family have been important to this journey. On the other, I believe that equally important to my journey have been the numerous bigots in my life, who have at various times clarified exactly what the foundation of anti-gay teachings really are. I hope to someday give a more detailed and comprehensive account of my journey, personally and theologically, but I figured I would start with this moment, five years ago, that remains seared into my memory. (I use the word “bigot” intentionally: see footnote below.)

Just as background, unlike many (most) Evangelical parents, mine never taught me to hate. I never heard them (to my recollection) advocate for denying them jobs, housing, and healthcare - which is literally the goal of the Culture Wars™. However, like pretty much every Evangelical back in the 1980s - and not just Evangelicals either - they believed that any sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage was sinful. Of course, it was a lot easier back then, before it became much clearer that sexual orientation wasn’t a choice, and couldn’t be “cured.”

My journey through my 20s was a gradual process of coming to understand all of that. As a strongly cishet white male, it was easy to ignore the stories of LGBTQ people, just as it was easy to ignore the stories of women and people of color, and assume that I was “normal,” and others were, well, others.

 ***

Those who didn’t grow up in the American Christian subcultures may not be familiar with the terms I will be using, so let me define a few.

I believe that Christian beliefs about sexuality generally fall into four categories (I have written a post about this that I have yet to publish, but intend to this month.)

Denialists. These people, generally Boomers or older, deny that sexual orientation exists, that people are born LGBTQ, and believe that “same sex attraction” can be cured.

Calvinists. I use this term not because all Calvinists believe this, but because it is a Calvinist approach. Basically, sexual orientation isn’t a choice. But God made people gay so that he could burn them in hell for eternity for his everlasting glory. But, considering Calvinists believe that god’s default approach to humans is to burn them for eternity, choosing only to save a small sliver of the population - mostly middle-class white people - what’s a few gays, right?

“Side B.” These are most younger evangelicals who are not “Side A.” This belief acknowledges that sexual orientation is not a choice and cannot be cured, but insists that sex should only be in the confines of heterosexual marriage. Thus, LGBTQ people should either enter heterosexual marriage or remain celibate for life.

“Side A.” Side A believes that sexual orientation and gender identity are God-given traits, and that LGBTQ Christians should live in harmony with how they were created, in a manner consistent with the Greatest Commandment. Thus, LGBTQ people are encouraged to marry, and allowed to participate fully in the Christian community.

Like most Evangelicals, I started out as a denialist, back in the days when we believed in “reparative therapy.” Now, of course, it has been thoroughly discredited. Even the largest group that pushed it, Exodus International, has repudiated it, acknowledging that it didn’t work and caused harm. And, as it has now come out, “reparative therapy” is just another name for psychological and sometimes physical torture.

I switched to “Side B” somewhere along the way. I don’t remember an epiphany exactly - it was probably just listening to LGBTQ friends, particularly one from church who came out at that time. This would have happened sometime in my late teens. 

But I can remember EXACTLY when I switched to “Side A.” This is that story.

***

In May of 2015, my former pastor was working through I Thessalonians, and got to this passage in chapter 4:

³ It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; ⁴ that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, ⁵ not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; ⁶ and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.^[b] The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. ⁷ For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. ⁸ Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.

 From there, he embarked on a shockingly passionate anti-gay sermon. I mean, his usual practice - something I liked about him - was to explain the different viewpoints and why he believed the way he did. This was done in a calm and dispassionate way, and was the official church approach to theology. “Grace based,” focus on the essentials of the faith sort of thing. Which is why for a long time, that church was a haven for people like us, survivors of abusive theology, looking for an alternative to Fundamentalism, a place where we could have community without being forced to adopt a bunch of doctrinal dogma.

That’s why this was such a shocking sermon. I have never, before or since, heard him preach with such passion and emotion. It was like this was the One Thing That Mattered™, and he must communicate with force that there was no possible other conclusion.

And, at the climax of the sermon, he let loose with what I think he believed was his “money line”: 

“Don’t let your compassion keep you from calling sin what God says is sin.”

I sat there stunned for a moment, before it came to me in a rush that this was completely familiar. I had indeed heard this before, regarding another similar issue. 

“Don’t let your compassion keep you from enforcing rules!”

And it sure as heck wasn’t Jesus Christ saying that. Rather, he went out of his way to heal on the sabbath, and to excuse his disciples for gleaning - gathering food for themselves - on the sabbath. 

It was at that point I knew I was a “Side A” Christian, and there was no going back.

Please don’t try to excuse sabbath breaking as a minor offense - it carried the death penalty in the Torah. See Numbers 15. This was a freaking huge deal. And Christ went WAY OUT OF HIS WAY to break the sabbath to make a point to the “experts in the law.” He pointed out that god required “mercy, not sacrifice.” The point being that the rules are never trumped by compassion. Ever. And you do not EVER sacrifice other people to your rules.

Here are the passages in the Gospels that talk about the sabbath:

Matthew 12:1-14 (both gleaning and healing)

Mark 2:23-28 (gleaning) 

Mark 3:1-6 (healing)

Luke 6:1-10 (both gleaning and healing)

Luke 13:10-17 (healing)

Luke 14:1-6 (healing)

John 7:21-24 (healing)

John 9:1-41 (healing)

Re-reading this for this post, I was struck by a number of things about these passages. First, all four gospels contain at least one passage about Jesus breaking the sabbath. All of them. Which indicates to me that it is a very important incident in the life and teachings of Christ.

[By contrast, the number of times Jesus Christ mentions homosexuality, despite it being widely discussed in Palestine and the Roman Empire at the time: ZERO. One would think if it were a core issue, he might have mentioned it? Ditto abortion, by the way…]

My second observation was that the religious leaders were described as “experts in the law. These were people who spent a LOT of time thinking about the Torah and what it meant people should or shouldn’t do. In other words, a lot like our present day Fundamentalists, who spend a LOT of time and energy thinking about exactly what genitals mean - what you can do with them; how the configuration you are born with determines your role in society, the family, and church; and how to use the power of the civil law to punish those who disagree with Fundie rules.

Third, the Gospels include two different categories of rule breaking, and gives analogies for them. The first is healing. One may - indeed one SHOULD - help others on the sabbath. Christ uses the example of rescuing a helpless animal from a ditch, and applies it to human beings. “How much more should one heal a person!”

I take this to mean that when we consider rules, we should focus on the whole “love your neighbor as yourself” thing. How we choose to apply or ignore the rules should be determined by whether it helps or heals others. And no, “making them follow the rules” isn’t love. This is made abundantly clear by the way Christ responds to the advice “can’t they just wait until the next day?” His point was that good needed to be done now. The rule was overruled by the greater law of love.

The second category of rule breaking is even more interesting - and it is the one I have never once heard preached on.

The disciples were hungry, and broke the sabbath by gathering grain. It is implied that Christ himself may have gathered too, and eaten of the grain. This is a REALLY clear violation of the commandment. As in the letter of the law - “don’t gather food on the sabbath.”

Yet Christ literally excused this, citing another egregious instance, where King David and his men ate the sacred bread - that’s another capital offense, by the way.

I find this one particularly fascinating because of this: the disciples weren’t doing good to others. They were satisfying their own needs. They were hungry, and they broke the rule in order to fill the need they had.

AND JESUS CONDONED IT!

This is HUGE!

I think these two instances combine to apply well to our rules about human sexuality.

First, as Christians, we should seek to heal, not harm, with our rules. And we cannot do that simply by reading and re-reading the rules. We have to ask those who are affected what their needs are, and meet them, regardless of whether their needs fit our rules well. The question wasn’t “can we make them wait until the next day?” but “do they need healing now?”

This is where I believe the passage from Luke (and also in Matthew) about not loading people down with burdens is relevant as well. I am astonished at the way heterosexual Evangelicals casually condemn others to a lifetime of celibacy. They would place on them a burden of loneliness that they have zero interest in helping carry. In fact, a number of people I know (of a certain generation, particularly) who are the most anti-gay had shotgun weddings. I mean, they couldn’t even keep their knees together until they turned 20, yet they would condemn LGBTQ people for something they couldn’t even do for a few years?

The second point, though, is that Christ didn’t condemn breaking the rules to meet your own needs. To be clear, Christ DID teach against meeting your own needs at the expense of other people. This isn’t an excuse to harm others in the name of “meeting your own needs.”

What it is, however, is an indication that god doesn’t consider the rules to be more important than people. David and his men were starving? Eat what is there! The disciples were hungry? Take and eat! (Later, St. Peter would have his vision that the Kosher rules didn’t apply in a way that would prevent gentiles from entering the Kingdom.)

Fourth, I noticed that Christ said the sabbath was made for man, NOT man for the sabbath. Humans don’t exist to serve the rules. The rules are there to serve humans, and human needs matter more than the rule.

Or, as one might put it in this context, “Marriage and sexuality were made for man, not man for rules about marriage and sexuality.”

The way I would apply it to sexuality is this: there is nothing inherently wrong with sexual desire. If god created you with a desire that doesn’t fit the “rules,” then human needs trump the rule. And in that connection, let’s look back at that passage from I Thessalonians.

First, the word translated “sexual immorality” is porneia, which has an...interesting history. The word is thrown around a LOT in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Porneia is used primarily to describe idolatry or selling oneself to another god. (The root of the word combines "sex" and "transaction," that is “prostitution.”) So the Israelites seemed to be continually committing “porneia” with other gods. Esau committed “porneia” when he sold his birthright. (How crazy is that?) Christianity, particularly starting with patriarchal church fathers like Augustine, decided that “porneia” really meant sex outside of marriage, which is...not its clear meaning. To the Greeks and Romans, porneia had become an idiomatic way to refer to “acceptable” extra-marital sex - namely, men sleeping with prostitutes or raping their slaves. (There was a different word, moicheia, to refer to adultery - that is, a man messing with another (free)man’s chattel.) This could be an entire rabbit hole here, but suffice it to say that the cultural baggage of the Greco-roman world combined with the cultural baggage of Second Temple Judaism to create a whole doctrine that is rather foreign to the Torah or to the culture the bible was written in.

I mention this to point out that my pastor - like virtually every Evangelical pastor, simply takes for granted that they know what porneia means - and applied it specifically to same sex relations. 

But look at what else is there in the passage that gets glossed over. First, being in control of one’s body. Hey, that’s actually a great idea! Learning to control myself was key to a good marriage. Don’t be like the pagans! This would seem to be a nice dig at the whole “sleep with prostitutes and rape your slaves” idea conveyed by porneia as understood by Roman society. Again, sounds like a good idea: don’t take advantage of the poverty and desperation of sex workers by using them as sex objects, and don’t rape. And finally, “no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.” Come to think of it, a few prominent pastors (and the leader of the cult I was in) need to learn this one. Don’t wrong or take advantage of other people!

And this very thing was mostly glossed over in that sermon in favor of a screed against LGBTQ relationships. Doctrinal purity and the rules were more important than finding ways for people to meet their sexual needs in a way that healed, not hurt them, and didn’t take advantage of others. 

All of this important background information, ethical thinking, and application to reality as experienced by LGBTQ people was less important than a passionate screed against gays and their relationships. And all justified with:

“Don’t let your compassion keep you from calling sin what God says is sin.”

 And that is how and why I became a “Side A” Christian on that day.

 ***

In retrospect, I wish I had walked out of church that day and never returned. It took another year and a half, and a serious incident involving a hate group, to make us leave.

Soon after we left, we found out that there had actually been an intentional shift in the church, away from the “grace based” idea, to a more “traditional” fundamentalist approach. Unsurprisingly, this shift was driven by the wealthy, white, and (mostly as it turns out) racist Boomers who held the actual power in the church. Those bills had to be paid, so those of us who differed from the official line had to be forced out.

That was nearly three and a half years ago, and we have not (and likely will not) ever return to organized religion. But, in retrospect, the beginning of the end was that day five years ago in May of 2015, and that hateful sermon.

I truly hope my former pastor reads this post, and understands the way this sermon backfired on him. And also that his decision to embrace hate then and later cost his religion a number of people, including my children.

***

Why I use the term “bigot”: 

(From Merriam Webster)

Bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

A person isn’t a bigot for disagreeing. A bigot is someone who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his own prejudices. This means that no amount of proof will ever convince them. LGBTQ people giving evidence of how doctrine has damaged them won’t matter. Kids committing suicide over sexual orientation won’t matter. Nothing matters except the rules. Because “salvation” is in the rules. 

A person is also a bigot when they treat members of a group with hatred and intolerance. To say that this is the Evangelical approach to LGBTQ people politically is an understatement.

Sure, there probably are a few people who think gay sex is wrong, but who fully support anti-discrimination laws, and genuinely try to help LGBTQ people without condemning or trying to convert them. But….I can probably count them on one hand.

***

It’s beyond the scope of this post, but I want to mention that one reason I changed my mind is the sheer amount of LYING that Evangelicals do about LGBTQ people. And that includes our former pastor, unfortunately. This whole “gays are all sexual predators” is gross slander, something I thought Evangelicals thought was a serious sin. But I guess it applies only when someone says something unkind about them, not when they falsely accuse people outside their tribe of crimes and predation.

***

There is a whole rabbit hole regarding the Christian doctrinal superstructure of sexuality, from Augustine’s belief that sex should only be done expressly for procreation, and that one should try one’s best NOT to every enjoy it, to an honest analysis of what marriage actually meant until recently. 

One of the theological parts of my journey was to honestly and openly look at the Old Testament and its cultural context and understand the truth:

There are very few restrictions put on male sexuality in the OT. A man could sleep with a prostitute, take a concubine, rape a slave or war captive, take and discard multiple wives, sleep with any unmarried women he wanted (although he might be on the hook for a bride price…) Really, about all he had to do was (1) not sleep with certain relatives (2) not sleep with a male and (3) not mess with another man’s chattel (his woman, ox, or donkey…)

Now women, on the other hand...lots of restrictions for them, of course. They were the property of men.

Oh, and anyone else notice that the OT is silent on lesbian sex? Or that the one possible reference to lesbian sex in the NT was believed by the early church fathers to be a reference to a cult where females penetrated males with dildos? (You don’t hear that in church….)

Anyway, the meaning of porneia is hardly the cut and dried thing that Evangelicals say it is. It’s literally 2000 years of cultural baggage, beliefs about the superiority of males, protection of their female chattel from despoiling, and obsession about legitimate offspring.

Law school disabused me of a lot of false notions, including the belief that a man who sleeps around on his wife is committing adultery. It isn’t, legally, or in the bible. A man could sleep with literally any unmarried woman he wanted, including a prostitute or slave, and it wasn’t adultery. (It would merely be porneia...if even that.) Rather, it was adultery when a man (married or otherwise) slept with the chattel - the wife - of another man. Yep, that’s what it legally means, and how it would be understood in the bible.

There is much more to what I call a “theological superstructure” than meets the eye. And that’s why when you look closely, you see that the foundations aren’t really about human thriving, but are all about beliefs about the inferiority of women, and the perceived need to protect male property. For me, when I really grasped that, the whole house of cards crumbled. I may have to do a series of posts someday about that - I have spent a lot of time wrestling with it, but haven’t committed it all to writing.

Oh, and if you want to know how messed up Augustine was on this subject, consider that he considered a woman who had sex to make an illegitimate son (to support her, etc.) but didn't enjoy it, to be less of a sinner than a woman who wanted sex with her husband for pleasure. Literally. And if you are going to have buttsex, it is less sinful to do it with a prostitute than with your wife...

***

One final thought: 

Just as it is beyond arrogant for us white people to tell people of color how they should feel, what their experiences are, what their needs are and how to meet them, and how they should respond to injustice, so too it is beyond arrogant for cishet people to tell LGBTQ people how they should feel, what their experiences are (including their relationship with god), what their needs are and how to meet them, and how they should respond to injustice.

If your theology of gender and sexuality has not been built from the ground up with the full and equal participation of women and LGBTQ people, then it will - by definition - be incomplete at best and harmful at worst.

The current Evangelical doctrine about gender and sexuality didn’t appear by magic out of the sky. It was developed within certain patriarchal cultures with certain assumptions, including the congenital inferiority of women, the right of some humans to own others as slaves, and a universal embrace of the sexual double standard. It was created and refined over the last 3000+ years exclusively by males holding power in their societies, without any meaningful input from women, slaves, or LGBTQ people. And it shows. 

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

Source of book: I own the complete essays of James Baldwin

This is my official choice for Black History Month this year.

Here is the list of Black History Month selections since I started this blog, and also some related books:

2011:    50 Years and Other Poems by James Weldon Johnson

2012:    Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

2013:    The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois

2014:     Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

2015:     Kindred by Octavia Butler

2016:    Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

2017:    Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South

    And

    Black Boy (American Hunger) by Richard Wright

2018:    Poems 1921-1930 by Langston Hughes

       

Other notable books by African American or African authors:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Poems by Phillis Wheatley

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

I Greet The Dawn (Poems) by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh by Daina Ramey Berry

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

Books on Black History by other authors:

Red Tails, Black Wings by John B. Holway

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Ragtime (the Musical)

The Slaves’ War by Andrew Ward

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Vol.1 by M. T. Anderson

Devil In The Grove by Gilbert King

***

Three years ago, I read James Baldwin for the first time: his semi-autobiographical novel, Go Tell It On The Mountain. While the depiction of domestic violence and dysfunction was difficult at times, the book really impressed me with its psychological perceptiveness and nuanced view of various political and religious movements. 

I had a chance to pick up a collection of Baldwin’s essays in the Library of America format, so I did. I decided to start at the beginning, and read the first collection for Black History Month this year.

This collection was fascinating and thought provoking. It is divided into three sections. The first is essentially critical reviews of books of movies - specifically, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Native Son by Richard Wright, and the film version of Bizet’s Carmen starring African Americans, Carmen Jones. (My wife had heard of the last of these despite its obscurity.) The second section looks at the African American experience in the United States. The third is about the author’s experiences in Europe. Preceding all of this is an introduction entitled “Autobiographical Notes,” which is fantastic.

I’ll look at these roughly in the order they are in the book. First are a couple of wonderful lines from the introduction. Baldwin really articulates well the unspoken and unacknowledged role of racism and white supremacy in the very core of our politics. It is impossible to coherently talk about pretty much any issue in our current political discussion - particularly the election of The Toupee Who Shall Not Be Named - without acknowledging the past and its effects on the present. As Baldwin puts it:

I don’t think that the Negro problem in America can be even discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it. I believe this the more firmly because it is the overwhelming tendency to speak of this problem as though it were a thing apart.

There is more good stuff about this in the final essay, which I hope to discuss later in this post. The second quote is fantastic, and is one I hope to steal.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

This is a common - and intentional in my opinion - misunderstanding of those of us who criticize America. We love our country, and want to see her live up to her ideals, not degrade to our worst instincts and historical moments. And this is why the Colin Kaepernicks of the world will always be far truer patriots than the jingoistic gun-toting sorts. To love is to expect the best, not enable the worst.

I didn’t note any particular quotes from the literary reviews, but I did want to touch on them. First, Baldwin’s criticisms of Uncle Tom’s Cabin are entirely just. He is right that, to reach her audience, she had to make her Negros either exotic (see: Topsy) or all too perfect to be realistic. As Baldwin notes, they cannot be fully human, with weaknesses and all, or they would be rejected by Stowe’s white audience. And yes, this remains a problem in white portrayals of people of color, from the “magical negro” on down. I won’t get into that further, other than to say that the essay is worth a read. It isn’t so much a takedown of Stowe as a critique of white audiences in general.

I can’t say much about Baldwin’s criticism of Richard Wright’s Native Son, as I have not yet read that. I thought his autobiographical work, Black Boy (American Hunger) was good.

The takedown (and takedown it was) of Carmen Jones appears to be entirely justified. Heck, so much of classic Hollywood has aged extremely badly - particularly on issues of race. I will particularly note his fantastic riff on why Black Carmen - and particularly the black men who desire her - cannot be allowed to be truly sexual. After all, that would get uncomfortably close to the most pernicious stereotypes about African Americans.

The second section is both intriguing and depressing. Baldwin is not much of an optimist, and is pretty much a self-admitted misanthrope in many cases. His view of black politicians is pretty dismal, even as he acknowledges the need for more blacks in politics. Sadly, so much of what he says seems to be true about today as well. Sigh.

I do want to quote one of his percipient statements, at the beginning of his description of the hazards of traveling to the deep south - specifically a horribly botched fundraising campaign involving a friend of his.

It is considered a rather cheerful axiom that all Americans distrust politicians. (No one takes the further and less cheerful step of considering just what effect this mutual contempt has on either the public or the politicians, who have, indeed, very little to do with one another.)

That’s both depressing and far too true these days as well.

In a later essay, Baldwin also makes a thoughtful observation about hate. Baldwin had a vicious, abusive father. In this essay, he mentions that he didn’t want to see his father on his deathbed. Although he told his mother that the reason was that he hated his father, he acknowledges in this essay that the real reason is that he didn’t want to see his father in a condition too pathetic to hate. Baldwin’s level of self-awareness is impressive and admirable. But the quote applies beyond just his situation.

I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.

There is so much truth in this, both on the personal level, and on the broader societal level, as we endure a season where hate has gained a renewed vigor.

The final section was, in many ways, my favorite. If that is the right word. During the Jim Crow era, Europe, particularly Paris, was a bit of a haven for African Americans. It was a place where they would be treated relatively equally, and had access to the mainstream of intellectual and social live. But it wasn’t exactly a utopia, as Baldwin points out. While one wouldn’t be denied food, shelter, or employment, one was always burdened with the assumptions that came with being an American. Baldwin also notes that white supremacy is endemic to Europe too - that whole colonialist enterprise was founded on the idea of white superiority. It just manifests differently.

Perhaps the most horrifying essay is the one that tells the tale of Baldwin’s experience with the French criminal justice system. So, this fellow American runs into Baldwin, and gets his help in finding lodging in the same dive hotel in Paris. Unbeknownst to Baldwin, this guy stole the sheets from his previous lodging. Baldwin borrows these sheets while he does a protest that he can’t get his own sheets washed by the hotel. The cops are called, and an identifying mark is noticed, and Baldwin and his acquaintance end up in a bewildering cycle of bureaucracy and oppression which keeps them incarcerated for weeks on end on what is the most petty of thefts. (And Baldwin didn’t even do anything!) Finally, after an agonizing and seemingly endless series of hearings, Baldwin manages to get a fellow inmate who is released to go contact a lawyer friend of Baldwin’s, who gets things dismissed in fairly short order. The whole episode is a chilling reminder of the challenges - and abuses - faced by immigrants in our own justice system. Forget not sharing a common language. Baldwin is most horrified by the fact that he can’t read the culture like he could at home. Even in the South, he would have been able to kiss the right asses and get out. But in France, it is a bewildering mystery. This is why a bristle at those who claim that immigrants and refugees should somehow be able to master our own system the first time, without mistakes, and that any mistake should result in catastrophic consequences. I wish that each of those persons might find themselves afoul of a justice system they don’t instinctively understand. (Our own would be good enough - but a foreign one would be even better.) I love Baldwin’s observation on culture:

One had, in short, to come in contact with an alien culture in order to understand that a culture was not a community basket-weaving project, nor yet an act of God; was something neither desirable nor undesirable in itself, being inevitable, being nothing more or less than the recorded and visible effects on a body of people of the vicissitudes with which they had been forced to deal.

I am reminded of Abraham Maslow’s amazing quote about culture:

It is too often not realized that culture itself is an adaptive tool, one of whose main functions is to make the physiological emergencies come less and less often.

This is one of the main arguments I have had with people in the last few years. “Culture” is essentially used as a euphemism for race, of course, but more than that is the argument that somehow a culture is superior by definition because it has subjugated other cultures. Rather, cultures and subcultures are as much driven by circumstances as by choice.

Another essay in this section concerns Baldwin’s experience in a tiny Swiss village, where he was essentially the first black person anyone had seen. It is pretty horrifying in many ways, even though it is predictable as to the human behaviors. One of the best lines in this comes from Baldwin’s notice of a missionary collection box - seeking money to “convert the heathen Africans.” As Baldwin contemplates the irony of “buying” souls as black bodies were bought in the recent past, he makes an observation about his own father, who was a devout preacher even as he was abusive to his family.

I tried not to think of these so lately baptized kinsmen, of the price paid for them, or the peculiar price they themselves would pay, and said nothing about my own father, who having taken his own conversion too literally never, at bottom, forgave the white world (which he described as heathen) for having saddled him with a Christ in whom, to judge at least from their treatment of him, they themselves no longer believed.

This is, indeed, the conclusion I myself have come to about white American Evangelicals. They sure believe in their doctrine, in their beliefs, and especially in their white nationalist politics - but they sure as fucking hell do not believe in Jesus Christ. At least not in a way that might possibly affect their behavior toward their fellow humans.

The final four pages of this essay are some of the best writing on race I have ever read. Baldwin takes the reader on a tour-de-force of the history of European chauvinism and the need whites have to remain wilfully ignorant of their own complicity in harming others. He starts with the idea that the American dream, of the equality of mankind, runs directly counter to American behavior. The expansion of equality to include the black man has caused tremendous cognitive dissonance. Let me quote at length.

[T]o betray a belief is not not by any means to have put oneself beyond its power; the betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be now moral standards in the world at all. Yet one must recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous - dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say. And dangerous in this respect: that confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses. The ideas on which American beliefs are not, though Americans often seem to think so, ideas which originated in America. They came out of Europe. And the establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a beak with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.  

This was, literally, a hard necessity. It was impossible, for one thing, for Americans to abandon their beliefs, not only because these beliefs alone seemed able to justify the sacrifice they had endured and the blood that they had spilled, but also because these beliefs afforded them their only bulwark against a moral chaos as absolute as the physical chaos of the continent it was their destiny to conquer. But in the situation in which Americans found themselves, these beliefs threatened an idea which, whether or not one likes to think so, is the very warp and woof of the heritage of the West, the idea of white supremacy.

Americans have made themselves notorious by the shrillness and the brutality with which they have insisted on this idea, but they did not invent it; and it has escaped the world’s notice that those very excesses of which Americans have been guilty imply a certain, unprecedented uneasiness over the idea’s life and power, if not, indeed, the idea’s validity. The idea of white supremacy rests simply on the fact that white men are the creators of civilization (the present civilization, which is the only one that matters; all previous civilizations are simply “contributions” to our own) and are therefore civilization’s guardians and defenders. Thus it was impossible for Americans to accept the black man as one of themselves, for to do so was to jeopardize their status as white men. But not so to accept him was to deny his human reality, his human weight and complexity, and the strain of denying the overwhelmingly undeniable forced Americans into rationalizations so fantastic that they approached the pathological.

Dang. The idea of the pathological rationalizations is even more true today of white Evangelicals than when Baldwin wrote it. It goes on:

At the root of the American Negro problem is the necessity of the American white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to be able to live with himself.

Baldwin goes on to note the history of lynching and segregation - and calls this an insanity which overtakes white men. Indeed. Baldwin then goes on to get to a really raw nerve. One which is at the heart of both our toxic excuse for religion and our equally toxic politics. I have to quote the final two paragraphs in their entirety, because they are so prophetic in explaining both our current political moment and indeed the way that white Evangelicalism has self-destructed over the last few decades.

Yet, if the American Negro has arrived at his identity by virtue of the absoluteness of his estrangement from his past, American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to a state in which black men do not exist. This is one of the greatest errors Americans can make. The identity they fought so hard to protect has, by virtue of that battle, undergone a change: Americans are as unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be. I do not thing, for example, that it is too much to suggest that the American vision of the world - which allows so little reality, generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life, which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and white - owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain between themselves and black men a human separation which could not be bridged. It is only now beginning to be borne in on us - very faintly, it must be admitted, very slowly, and very much against our will - that this vision of the world is dangerously inaccurate, and perfectly useless. For it protects our moral high-mindedness at the terrible expense of weakening our grasp of reality. People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact face, with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

I have read and re-read these paragraphs over and over a few times, because they are so fantastic. Really, the political and cultural moment we find ourselves in is contained therein. Trump ran on a platform which is essentially what Baldwin describes as “European innocence.” That state in which the existence of non-whites can be denied. MAGA is really - and has always been - “make America white again.” But the world is no longer white, and it never will be again. These warring ideas play out in so many ways, from the debate about immigration, to the Black Lives Matter movement, to our discussion of taxation and public benefits. The undercurrent of white supremacy has yet to be fully addressed, a full 75 years after Baldwin wrote these words. And it is nowhere as fully unaddressed as within white Evangelicalism. So many things here apply, from the naive (or, more likely, malevolent) insistence on a black and white morality (literally and figuratively), to the pathological denial of reality, to the way that moral high-mindedness and false innocence turns one into a monster: these are literally the defining characteristics of white Evangelicalism these days.

This collection of essays is well worth the read. Baldwin, even though he wrote decades ago, seems more prophetic and relevant than ever. His writing seems, like Jean Sibelius’ music, to be “cold, clear water” offering that clarity so needed today.

The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

Just some thoughts on this. I started this book a few years ago when my wife read it, but it was requested by another library patron, and thus had to go back before I could finish. A couple of online friends (cool people I met through my blog) expressed interest in reading and discussing it. 

Just at the outset, let me say a bit about the style and content, before getting into specifics. Jessica Valenti co-founded the Feministing website, and wrote for it for a number of years. The site is essentially a blog, and as the writer of one myself, I understand the significant differences in writing style that go along with it. These stylistic differences are apparent in the book, which more resembles a blog than a typical non-fiction book. This is not to say that it lacks citations: it is well researched as to the sources for quotations. But it isn’t intended to be a scholarly look at the subject so much as a cultural look. I think, therefore, that many who disagree with Valenti’s opinions will also be put off by the style. Valenti uses a breezy blog style, not formal English, so expect contractions, paragraphs not modeled on the MLA format, and overuse of parentheses. (Hey, a bit like my blog too!) So you may not find it to be what you expect. On the other hand, if you go in with different expectations, there is a lot of thought provoking stuff in the book.

Valenti’s premise is that in our culture here in America, women are assigned value based on their virginity and adherence to patriarchal gender roles. This allows women to be divided in the the “Madonna” sorts - the good girls - and the “sluts” - the bad girls. Step outside of expectations, and you are placed in the “slut” category.

Longtime readers of this blog will be familiar with my exploration of that theme in my Modesty Culture series. Since I wrote it, I have had a number of interesting conversations about it, and realized that Modesty Culture is just one facet of Purity Culture, which is about sex - and a lot more than just sex. The Purity Myth really explains a lot about how it fits together.

My wife and I have personally had plenty of unpleasant experiences with both Modesty and Purity Cultures, starting with my wife’s thoroughly unpleasant time in Jonathan Lindvall’s cultic home group. It has been obvious from the beginning that there were three interconnected - indeed inseparable - facets to this issue. Namely, the division of women based on their sexuality and adherence to gender roles, an obsession with controlling females, and a rigid view of gender roles and gender hierarchy. They are all connected, and you really don’t find one without the others. Thus, you find an obsession with female virginity, a need to control how women dress, and the belief that women shouldn’t work outside the home. All of these stem back to viewing women as sub-human, perpetual children who cannot be trusted to make their own decisions, and this in need of male control.

This is the uncomfortable truth about religious teachings on sexuality. You cannot separate beliefs about sex from beliefs about gender - because the teachings on sexuality are based on the views about gender. To give but one example, I was shocked when, in my law school days, I re-read the Old Testament in light of what I had learned about the history of the English Common Law, and realized that the OT says precious little to restrict what MEN do. As long as they didn’t mess with another man’s property, or have sex with an equal, I mean other male, most other behavior is acceptable or at least tolerated with little comment: prostitutes, plural wives, concubines, rape, sexual enslavement, you name it. In contrast, just like the culture in which it was written, female sexuality was brutally punished. (Honestly, the NT is only marginally better. It too draws heavily from misogynist cultural beliefs in many ways, even as it occasionally pushes back against them. In both cases, a lot of what I was taught about what the bible says turned out to not actually be in there…) This is why the religious discussion about sex - see more below - makes little sense in our time. Once you remove the sexual double standard - and the open misogyny - from the discussion, you are missing the key point: the rules derive from the misogyny.

On to some specifics. These are roughly in the order in which they appear in the book, and are taken largely from our discussion.

One thing that struck me when I first started this book years ago, and I thoroughly agree with now, is that in our culture (particularly religious culture), morality for women is defined in terms of sexuality. That is, a woman is considered to be “moral” if she is a virgin on her wedding night. Otherwise, she is considered immoral. As Valenti puts it:

I was the...burgeoning feminist who knew that something was wrong with a world that could peg me as a bad person for sleeping with a high school boyfriend while ignoring my good heart, sense of humor, and intelligence. Didn’t the intricacies of my character count for anything? The answer, unfortunately, was no, they didn’t.

…

When young women are taught about morality, there’s not often talk of compassion, kindness, courage, or integrity. There is, however, a lot of talk about hymens: if we have them, when we’ll lose them, and under what circumstances we’ll be rid of them.

While boys are taught that the things that make them men - good men - are universally accepted ethical ideal, women are led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere between our legs.

This is otherwise known as the double standard. Men are judged on more universal character traits (unless they are Republican politicians, apparently…), while women are judged on their sexual status. This is far too true. I have seen it at work in two different arenas.

The first is my professional experience. I can tell you that there is nobody as self-righteous and full of entitlement as a woman who was a virgin on her wedding night, who has faithfully adhered to gender roles ever since. Nobody. These are the women who feel that their chastity and submissiveness has entitled them to a certain level of financial support from a man, and who are furious when that man lets them down. (Even if he lost his job through no fault of his own…) They did their part, why can’t he do his? These are, undoubtedly, the second ugliest divorces I have done. (The worst was the pastor who was raping and abusing his wife. Horrible case, in which a divorce was a happy ending in every possible way for her.) The problem here, naturally, is that the woman judges her own morality by virginity and meeting gender expectations. She is the counterpart to the man who judges his morality by his wealth and income - aka meeting male gender expectations.

The second is more personal. Within my extended family, there are a few women who base their morality on these things. Their virginal status in the past, their adherence to gender roles (stay at home mom, particularly), and their conservative clothing choices. This, while behaving abominably to others, in some cases including their own children. The problem isn’t just them, but the fact that others give them a pass on abusive behavior because, well, they must be good because of how they do sex and gender roles. As long as they dressed modestly, didn't work outside the home, manipulated rather than said what they meant, they could get away with mean, abusive behavior and still be considered "good girls."

Particularly good in this section of the book is the acknowledgement that raunch culture and purity culture are actually the same thing, just with slightly different manifestations. I myself noted in the aftermath of our cult experiences that it turns out that many of the men involved were outright creeps. Obsession with female sexuality and a need to control can be expressed as sexual repression of others - or in rapey porn fantasies. Often both.

One amusing bit in that chapter involves how one counts sexual partners. After all, what “counts”? Is one still a virgin after _____ [insert act here] is apparently a question often asked. The author mentions a female friend, who didn't count it as sex unless she had an orgasm. Valenti notes that this way of counting isn’t likely to be popular with certain men - they won’t end up counting for many of their partners.

I also found Valenti to be spot on about the role of race in purity culture. Here in the US, sex is all about race. Protecting white girls from brown men has been a justification for everything from Jim Crow to lynchings. But of course, it was actually the white slave owners raping the brown women. Thus, the myth that non-whites (particularly African Americans) are hypersexual and out of control. So race plays a definite role in purity culture - which idealizes young white women.

I cannot say how much I love the acknowledgement that the "ideal woman" of the Purity Movement is a little girl. Not an actual woman, but an undeveloped, subhuman. Someone who is passive and unassertive and, well, little girly. Valenti mentions a lot about American culture, but, as a father with daughters who love Anime, it isn't just an American problem. The juvenilization of femininity is pretty disturbing. I myself preferred a grown up woman (even if she was barely 21 when I married her...) I have read and continue to read a lot of Victorian literature. The idea of the "innocent" girlish female is all to common. I think my experience in reading has made it easier to detect where Victorian sexism is endemic to modern discussions of "purity." In my Modesty Culture series, I pointed out that sexualization of children and young women was central to both our culture and Modesty Culture, and it is nice to see someone else noticed too.

I agree with Valenti that the cure for both the oversexualization of girls and the obsession with female virginity  is the training of girls to find their identity in non-sexual things: intelligence, compassion, making the world a better place. Things males are expected to do.

The chapter on Purity Balls and the like, while something I was already familiar with from my experience, was creepy to read about again. You want to take a shower afterward. And, the whole idea of my daughters making a promise to ME about their sexuality is so beyond creepy I don't even want to think about it. Yuck, yuck, yuck!

The chapter on porn is interesting. This isn't my area of expertise, although I have professionally run across plenty of men with unrealistic ideas of women. I am not qualified to speak about whether this is due to internet porn, or if it is a longstanding problem not particularly connected to that. What I can say is that Valenti nails how Fundies talk about porn. They seem to either go for some ludicrous non-mainstream thing, or go ape-shit over...really mild stuff. This whole conflation of anything realistically sexual with porn is (in my view) self defeating. I recall from my own childhood people freaking out over classical art...nudes, yo. This ruins credibility over legitimate issues, such as misogyny that Valenti says is rampant in most mainstream porn.

I too hate the false dichotomy of either phallocentric smut or denying female sexuality.

I concur that Fundies really get their panties in a wad whenever female-controlled pleasure comes into view. Some Fundies do not appear to believe that "normal" females masturbate - which is denialism for sure. I think there is a general suspicion of the idea that women are actually sexual (at least good women - and white women too...right?) I see this too in the opposition to female-controlled birth control.

If I were to mention one significant paradigm change I experienced after I started dating my wife, it was that the Fundie teaching about female sexuality was bullshit on a stick, and that many (most?) women were highly sexual, and the canard of "women trade sex for love" was a male fantasy, not representative or reality.

Moving on to the next topic, I ran across something that was VERY typical of the Fundie teachings I know: the idea that girls won't want sex if they are getting affection from their fathers. I have heard this so many times, and it just feels so gross. I have three daughters (two of whom are decidedly post-puberty), and whatever else they need from me - and I have a good relationship with them! - they are most certainly NOT looking for a quasi-sexual something or another. A substitute for sex? Holy shit that is creepy as hell! And yet, I grew up in this mindset!

In the chapter on “Abstinence Education,” I was reminded of some research I did a few years back. I ran across actual curriculum - used in public schools! - and it was retrograde in a way that would have embarrassed my own parents. Good lord. A bunch of Victorian gender essentialism (“most women want to get married, have children, and let their husbands work”???) and heavy pushing of 1950s gender roles.

At this point, I do want to say really good things about my parents, who gave me generally accurate sex ed, and were always available for questions. I disagree with some of what they said, but I was not lied to like many fellow Fundies. There were a few things that I found out later didn’t apply as universally to all women as much as they did to my mom. Which, fair enough, her experience and feelings. Also, I was never given the "men can't help themselves" thing AT ALL. I always felt responsibility was on me as much as on women.

The chapter on abortion and birth control was interesting. Full disclosure. I am not a fan of abortion. But. But I really soured on the “pro-life” movement when big names filed amicus briefs in the Hobby Lobby case (Gothardites!) essentially opposing ALL female-controlled birth control. At that point, it became clear to me that this had nothing to do with actually ending abortion, and everything to do with punishing women for failing to attain “purity.” Which meant quiverfull and staying at home rather than working.

While I find this chapter to be a bit much in some ways - as I said, I am uncomfortable with abortion - it has turned out to be less alarmist than I would have thought before the last few years. She was ahead of the curve on this one. It is pretty scary. Particularly the bits about that proposed law criminalizing women who don’t promptly report miscarriages to the police. Imagine how that would work.

The chapter on rape was really good. One of the side effects of working in family law - and that means domestic violence cases too - is seeing the really ugly side of marital rape. (I mentioned that above. One quibble I have with Valenti on this issue is her tendency to see an increase in sexual assault. The better explanation is that in the last half century, sexual assaults have been prosecuted, which has led to more being reported. I am unaware of any reputable researcher who believes sexual assaults are on the rise. Rather, the consensus is that most were never reported - for the reasons Valenti outlines. Particularly non-white victims of white rapists. Just as one example, when my mom was an LVN before I was born, nurses tried to keep one hand free to swat away the groping from doctors. My wife would never put up with that - because she has other options my mom didn’t. On a related note, #metoo doesn’t reflect an increase in assaults. It reflects a change in culture, where nobody should have to fuck Harvey Weinstein to get a job.

Very interesting in this context for me personally is my law school experience. We had to study rape in our first year as part of Criminal Law. And got to read all the old cases arguing about how pure a woman had to be before it was “real” rape, and just how much “penetration” was necessary to be rape rather than assault. Sigh. It was pretty bad.

One more thing in this context. I have copied the thread of a conversation on a (now private) Facebook page devoted to Theonomic Reconstructionism that is both fascinating and horrifying. The discussion was on the OT laws regarding rape, and a few of the die hards (one of whom appeared to be a woman) were arguing that it wasn’t rape if you forced sex on a widow or divorcee. After all, the crime was not one of violence, but a property violation. Rape destroyed her economic value, and once that was gone, well, no crime… I’ll probably use it as a blog post someday.

The chapter on toxic masculinity was also good. The definition of masculinity as "not female" is seriously pernicious and widespread. It permeates the culture.

One of the most laughable things in this book is the seemingly ubiquitous quote from the various "purity" pushers: "Who will want me now that I've had sex?" Since the WWII generation, north of 80% - including females - have had sex before marriage. And I believe that it was pretty common during the 1920s too. (Or if you want to look back further to the Puritan era, a LOT of pregnant brides...) Seriously, last I checked, non-virgins have been getting married right and left for...well...since we ended arranged marriages. (And that's women. I strongly suspect male virgins have been as rare as unicorns since the dawn of the concept of marriage.) One has to wonder if the purity people get out much these days. For those under, say, age 80, most guys DON'T CARE. (And, in my professional experience, the ones who do tend to be controlling creeps.)

[Interesting case in point here: Josh Harris. As in, the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. As in, the demigod of the “courtship” movement. His wife had a sexual history. (I wouldn’t mention it if he hadn’t already gone public - in a freaking book - with the information.) And you know what? I bet that is the least important thing about her. To Josh’s credit, of all the Patriarchist figures, he is the only one I know who has actually admitted he was wrong, and is working to apologise to those he hurt.]

I laugh when I hear "Your virginity is the greatest gift you can give your husband." Really? Because if that is the best you have, I want a refund! But of course, my wife's virginity wasn't anywhere near the best of what she gave me. And gives me, every day. The whole idea only makes sense if you think of women as property. Buy new, not used.

Pretty hilarious too that there is all this moral panic. Millennials have first intercourse several years later, and will have fewer average partners than the Baby Boomers. And less teen pregnancy. Fewer STIs. So....this really is more about women not "knowing their place," isn't it? Things weren’t “better” in the good old days - but women sure are stepping outside their gender-role cages these days.

I really love the idea of female sexual self determination. And the idea that female pleasure matters. So many are terrified about a world where women have the same sexual self determination as men. Ha. I have lived that world for 17 years, and it is actually fantastic. At least with the right partner.

Lots more to say. This is one of the biggest flash points of our generation, as much of the world is transitioning to a view of women as equal - and equally entitled to decide what they do with their genitals (something men have had since the dawn of human history…) To a large degree, our Culture Wars™ are very much about whether we preserve the toxic injustices toward women from the past - or not.

One final quote here comes at the end of the book. It kind of sums up the message. For those of us who are feminists, and believe that women should indeed have political, economic, and social equality with men, it really rings true. Valenti gives brief stories of several younger women who are doing amazing things in the world, and finishes with this.

These are the kinds of women who make up America - diverse, engaged, smart, interesting, moral agents of change. Take a look at the work these young women and others are doing. Now tell me it matters whether they’re virgins or not (it doesn’t), or that their contributions to society have anything to do with their sexuality (they don’t). So let’s use these examples of amazing young women to remind ourselves why we’re fighting to end the purity myth - a myth that denies our value as whole human beings - and move forward with their work in mind. And let’s spread this message about all young women across the country: that we’re more than the sum of our sexual parts, that our ability to be moral and good people has to do with our kindness, compassion, and social engagement - not our bodies - and that we won’t accept any less for any longer.

***

This is not an argument for promiscuity. And certainly not an argument for using sex selfishly. Rather, Valenti argues - and I agree - that whether one has had sex, and with how many people is far less relevant than how one acts sexually. Is our sexual expression loving? Or does it express dominance over others, violence, or dehumanization? (Hello, Doug Wilson…) But if your sexual teachings are based on misogyny, you end up saying stuff like a woman seeking consensual sex is the same as a male rapist. (Hello, John Piper…) If a woman has had consensual sex with a few partners before she marries, that sure seems to be a low level fault at worst. In contrast, “grab ‘em by the pussy” is a serious indication of bad character. Not to mention a crime. Some of us are having a really hard time taking seriously the pearl clutching of a religious tradition that obsesses about the former, while giving a total pass to the latter. Just saying. Or a tradition that seems just fine with voting the Ku Klux Klan into office, while waging jihad against LGBTQ people. Remember that when you clutch your pearls over why young people reject church teachings on sexuality…