Homosexuality, Suffering, and “Coming Out” was the headline; I had to read it twice – then a third time; was this a Catholic story on a Catholic web-site? In a recent article, featured in “The Catholic World Report,” an on-line periodical published by Ignatius Press, a man who calls himself a “gay Catholic” described in an interview the experience of “coming out” as gay; he also recounted his own journey “towards self-acceptance and away from shame” and a purposeful moving away “from the language of ‘disorder’ and ‘brokenness.’” Only, I couldn’t get beyond that term: “coming out:” how did it get there and why?
In my generation; and really for every subsequent generation of gay men and women, “coming out” is a quasi-sacred word of incredible personal and spiritual consequence; in the straight heterosexual world there is no equivalent: the only near-comparable being the thresholds of a Confirmation, Bar Mitzvah, or a wedding. Yet, these are all descriptive words signifying an event; in each case the ceremony takes priority over the word; only, in terms of “coming out,” the two become one. Because “coming out” describes the event and the action. For instance, stating that: “I was Confirmed on Sunday” carries a very different charge than “I came out on Sunday.” This is so, since the word itself is a statement; choosing to use the term “come out” and to come out is not just a personal decision, but a social, political, and moral assertion that immediately aligns oneself with a whole set of historical precedents. Here is an excellent overview of “coming-out;”
It has been theorized that for many gays and lesbians, the “coming out” process, a term clinicians coined in the 1970s to describe the developmental process of coming to terms with one’s homosexuality (Gonsiorek, 1995) is one of the most pivotal and significant processes in identity development, often representing a shift in the core of the individual’s sexual identity. This complex process can bring with it a myriad of positive and negative feelings for the individual, including fear, relief, anxiety, deep emotional distress, and a sense of being true to oneself. In most Western literature and gay and lesbian identity development models, the process of coming out implies self-acceptance, accepting same gender desire as an aspect of one’s identity, complex psychological and social processes, renegotiating of one’s entire identity, telling others, and seeking affirmation (Ben-Ari, 1995; Galatzer-Levy & c, 2002; McDonald, 1982; Morris & Rothblum, 1999.)*
Therefore, in the gay community, and in the world at large, “coming out” is a term loaded with just as much significance as the word “gay” itself; as “gay” will never go back to its earlier meaning - when, for example, there were numerous films with the word gay in the title: “The Gay Divorcee” (1934) with Fred Astaire or “The Gay Ranchero” (1948) with Roy Rogers. In the same manner, “coming out” has taken on a connotation of its own: most perfectly realized by the gay appropriation of the 1980 disco record “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross; a song that originally had nothing to do with “coming out,” but which quickly became the theme music for the increasingly unconstrained gay rights movement. Consequently, stating that “I am gay” will always mean exactly that – that I am gay and that it’s an essential inextricable part of my being; as gay activist and author Michelangelo Signorile once said: “Coming out of the closet is a process that gets you in touch with the real you, the person you were meant to be before you were forced to wear the mask of heterosexuality.” The young “gay Catholic” from “The Catholic World Report” article appears to bolster this very argument: “…while it’s true that homosexuality means that a particular kind of temptation is prevalent in someone’s life, it also means a lot more than that.
Since sexuality itself is so deeply tied to so many aspects of our personality, and our experience as human beings, then homosexuality has very wide-reaching effects into almost every aspect of our lives, or at least as many aspects of our lives as sexuality effects.”
I have found this only to be true when we allow it to be true. Those most susceptible to this are the same people who insist on being self-labeled as “gay.” Robert Collier, the father of the American pop-self-help phenomena stated: “One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true or false. It comes to be dominating thought in one’s mind.” So, when we “come out,” we are not only acknowledging the importance of the homosexuality – but locking in the orientation by stepping out from one closet into another. The “process,” as it’s called, becomes analogous to one of the “Star Trek” “alternate realities” episodes or “mirror universes” where everyone tries to convince you that your previous existence was fabricated and the current seemingly incongruent life is the real one. Once you start trying to convince yourself that it’s true, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop because, as the “process” continues, you get more and more comfortable in your new home. Eventually, any other life is irrelevant.
In his “coming out” letter, this same young man wrote: “…I was ashamed of being gay, because I had been taught to be ashamed; even though it doesn’t make sense to be ashamed of something you didn’t choose…” First of all, as someone who also experienced this otherworldly feeling of “shame” when I was a kid, those emotions were not necessarily negative – in fact, I would argue that they were good, because they signal that something is drastically wrong, that something is out of order; indeed, that something is radically “disordered.” Pope Francis has spoken several times about the beneficial attributes of shame, in fact, not long after his election, he had this to say: “We ask for the grace of shame, the shame that comes from a continuous conversation of mercy with him, the shame that makes us blush before Jesus Christ…” Therefore, shame becomes a sort of safeguard, a “grace,” that prevents transgression and further serves as a device of humiliation which always keeps intact our alignment with Christ; it reminds me of the never-ending repetition of the “Jesus Prayer:” in Orthodoxy: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner;” and the similar chanting of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
Secondly, to proclaim that homosexuality is something “you didn’t choose” is a broad overstatement that completely misses the truth. While it’s true that no little boy or girl chooses to be neglected, abandoned, or abused – therefore, the initial surfacing of the homosexual desire as result of these traumas is oftentimes completely out of our control. But, the decision to act on those desires, and, certainly the decision to claim our attachment to being gay and to come out is very much something we choose to do. For me, that decision will always mark a sort of death; this is something rather implicit in the quote from Signorile that mentions the immergence or the domination of the “real you.” But is this gay reality the “real you.” Or is it something that you claim for yourself? I am so, therefore it is true. It brings to mind the current American fascination with gender identity symbolized by Bruce Jenner – a man in a dress who becomes a woman because he says that he is. In fact, an argument, albeit an empty one, could be made here that gender does become malleable once a sex-reassignment surgery takes place, but that could certainly not be said for someone who “comes out” as gay; for, what has really changed?
I believe that no Catholic should ever “come out” as gay: Why? Because when we chose to do so, we are surrendering to the struggle – we are raising the white flag; we become a sort of living incarnation of the Gloria Gaynor gay anthem “I Am What I Am.” The sex-reassignment surgery goes on in our head. Most tragically, the whole coming out pretext creates a sort of false burning bush in which we self-immolate while we proclaim our identity; it’s a divine-like decree that fizzles. For it’s been my experience that all lies go back to the original and biggest of them all: the promise of knowledge sold to Adam and Eve; and the gay deception is no different: vowing a return to full awareness and an attainment of potentiality, but merely guaranteeing a solidification of an artificial self-imposed state of being. In the “gay Catholic” the two will always remain incongruous resulting in an obsessive preoccupation to forcibly conjoin the opposite poles; in the “Spiritual Friendship” group this is evidenced in their almost neurotic fixation with a constructed form of clearly homoerotic gay “friends without benefits;” a weird universe in which the everyday, such as making soup for an ill same-sex friend, becomes gay affirmative.
Therefore, what I am proposing,instead of “coming out,” - what those with homosexual tendencies need to do is actually the opposite: a hiding within the Wounds of Christ: “Within your wounds, hide me.” Returning again to Pope Francis, the Holy Father said, during a Divine Mercy Sunday homily: “God’s patience has to call forth in us the courage to return to Him, however many mistakes and sins there may be in our life…It is there, in the wounds of Jesus, that we are truly secure.” I experienced this sensation almost immediately after leaving the gay lifestyle when I made a conscious decision to flee the world – to disengage from all I had once known: for many years, I was just quiet; I was alone with Christ. The horror of all that happened before resulted in a form of radical loathing in which I ripped out the “gay” cancer from my body with my own hands. I felt massacred and stripped – I needed to crawl away and hide. And, that’s what I did. At that point, the lost boy who once “came out” just disappeared. Because I was within God, surrounded by God, fully embraced by God – I no longer needed those superfluous affirmations; “gay” and “coming out” meant next to nothing; what little resonance they still had was merely a remembrance of the stupid duped person I had once been; and, sadly, the epitaph for many I loved – because, although I had escaped, most were not so blessed: they would die still believing they were gay; and then, “coming out” proved itself, not as a route to self-acceptance, but as a quick exit to the grave.
“But it is not enough for us to abandon our possessions if we do not abandon ourselves as well. What does it mean to abandon ourselves? If we abandon ourselves, where shall we go outside of ourselves? And who is it who departs, if a person has forsaken himself? But we are one thing when we have fallen into sin, and another in the nature with which we were created; what we did is one thing, what we have become is another. Let us abandon the selves we have made by sinning, and let us continue to be the selves we have become by grace.”
~St. Gregory the Great
“The Lord bestows his blessings there, where he finds the vessels empty.”
~Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
“Where there is no self-denial, there is no virtue.”
~St. Josemaria Escriva
*“A Phenomenological Study of the Coming Out Experiences of Gay and Lesbian Hmong”
Pahoua K. Yang, Doctorate Dissertation: University of Minnesota