Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities

Links

Reference Materials: Books, Tapes,
Journal Articles, Newspaper Articles

For the Bible Tells Me So

For The Bible Tells Me So Image

The Reitan Family of Eden Prairie, MN, in a vintage family portrait. Parents Randi and Phil Reitan are in the center; Jake Reitan is at the far left, without glasses. All three are featured in For the Bible Tells Me So.

Over the past year, the Vatican and US Catholic hierarchy has been increasing its spiritual violence against LGBT persons, as demonstrated in its ongoing egregious failure to acknowledge the faith-filled, life experiences of its LGBT members and in its blatant disregard for the preponderance of the findings of the social and biological sciences that support theories that homosexuality is genetically or hormonally predetermined and theories that support same-sex committed relationships as a healthy means of finding human unity and intimacy and of raising children.

Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate?

Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival, Dan Karslake's provocative, entertaining documentary brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and Biblical scripture, and in the process reveals that Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias is based almost solely upon a significant (and often malicious) misinterpretation of the Bible. As the film notes, most Christians live their lives today without feeling obliged to kill anyone who works on the Sabbath or eats shrimp (as a literal reading of scripture dictates).

Through the experiences of five very normal, very Christian, very American families -- including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson -- we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child. Informed by such respected voices as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Harvard's Peter Gomes, Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg and Reverend Jimmy Creech, FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO offers healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the crosshairs of scripture and sexual identity.

The Gephardt Family in a vintage portrait. Former Congressman Dick Gephardt and wife Jane appear in For the Bible Tells Me So, along with daughter Chrissy Gephardt (far right).

Others Featured in the Film


The Poteat Family	Mary Lou Wallner with her daughters	Bishop Gene Robinson

More About For The Bible Tells Me So

For The Bible Tells Me So Trailer

Some Popular Online Order Sites
Where For the Bible Tells Me So
is available:

First Run Features

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

TLA Video

Top of Page

Diagram of Sex and Gender
Source: Center for Gender Sanity
(www.gendersanity.com/diagram.shtml)

BIOLOGICAL SEX
(anatomy, chromosomes, hormones)

male ------------------------------------- intersex ---------------------------------- female

GENDER IDENTITY
(psychological sense of self)

man ---------------------------- two spirit/third gender ------------------------ woman

GENDER EXPRESSION
(communication of gender)

masculine ------------------------- androgynous ---------------------------- feminine

SEXUAL ORIENTATION
(romantic/erotic response)

attracted to women ----------- bisexual/asexual ------------- attracted to men

Biological sex, shown on the top scale, includes external genitalia, internal reproductive structures, chromosomes, hormone levels, and secondary sex characteristics such as breasts, facial and body hair, and fat distribution. These characteristics are objective in that they can be seen and measured (with appropriate technology). The scale consists not just of two categories (male and female) but is actually a continuum, with most people existing somewhere near one end or the other. The space more in the middle is occupied by intersex people (formerly, hermaphrodites), who have combinations of characteristics typical of males and those typical of females, such as both a testis and an ovary, or XY chromosomes (the usual male pattern) and a vagina, or they may have features that are not completely male or completely female, such as an organ that could be thought of as a small penis or a large clitoris, or an XXY chromosomal pattern.

Gender identity is how people think of themselves and identify in terms of sex (man, woman, boy, girl). Gender identity is a psychological quality; unlike biological sex, it can't be observed or measured (at least by current means), only reported by the individual. Like biological sex, it consists of more than two categories, and there's space in the middle for those who identify as a third gender, both (two-spirit), or neither. We lack language for this intermediate position because everyone in our culture is supposed to identify unequivocally with one of the two extreme categories. In fact, many people feel that they have masculine and feminine aspects of their psyches, and some people, fearing that they do, seek to purge themselves of one or the other by acting in exaggerated sex-stereotyped ways.

Gender expression is everything we do that communicates our sex/gender to others: clothing, hair styles, mannerisms, way of speaking, roles we take in interactions, etc. This communication may be purposeful or accidental. It could also be called social gender because it relates to interactions between people. Trappings of one gender or the other may be forced on us as children or by dress codes at school or work. Gender expression is a continuum, with feminine at one end and masculine at the other. In between are gender expressions that are androgynous (neither masculine nor feminine) and those that combine elements of the two (sometimes called gender bending). Gender expression can vary for an individual from day to day or in different situations, but most people can identify a range on the scale where they feel the most comfortable. Some people are comfortable with a wider range of gender expression than others.

Sexual orientation indicates who we are erotically attracted to. The ends of this scale are labeled "attracted to women" and "attracted to men," rather than "homosexual" and "heterosexual," to avoid confusion as we discuss the concepts of sex and gender. In the mid-range is bisexuality; there are also people who are asexual (attracted to neither men nor women). We tend to think of most people as falling into one of the two extreme categories (attracted to women or attracted to men), whether they are straight or gay, with only a small minority clustering around the bisexual middle. However, Kinsey's studies showed that most people are in fact not at one extreme of this continuum or the other, but occupy some position between.

For each scale, the popular notion that there are two distinct categories, with everyone falling neatly into one or the other, is a social construction. The real world (Nature, if you will) does not observe these boundaries. If we look at what actually exists, we see that there is middle ground. To be sure, most people fall near one end of the scale or the other, but very few people are actually at the extreme ends, and there are people at every point along the continuum.

Gender identity and sexual orientation are resistant to change. Although we don't yet have definitive answers to whether these are the result of biological influences, psychological ones, or both, we do know that they are established very early in life, possibly prenatally, and there are no methods that have been proven effective for changing either of these. Some factors that make up biological sex can be changed, with more or less difficulty. These changes are not limited to people who change their sex: many women undergo breast enlargement, which moves them toward the extreme female end of the scale, and men have penile enlargements to enhance their maleness, for example. Gender expression is quite flexible for some people and more rigid for others. Most people feel strongly about expressing themselves in a way that's consistent with their inner gender identity and experience discomfort when they're not allowed to do so.

The four scales are independent. Our cultural expectation is that men occupy the extreme left ends of all four scales (male, man, masculine, attracted to women) and women occupy the right ends. But a person with male anatomy could be attracted to men (gay man), or could have a gender identity of "woman" (transsexual), or could have a feminine gender expression on occasion (crossdresser). A person with female anatomy could identify as a woman, have a somewhat masculine gender expression, and be attracted to women (butch lesbian). It's a mix-and-match world, and there are as many combinations as there are people who think about their gender.

This schema is not necessarily "reality," but it's probably closer than the two-box system. Reality is undoubtedly more complex. Each of the four scales could be broken out into several scales. For instance, the sex scale could be expanded into separate scales for external genitalia, internal reproductive organs, hormone levels, chromosome patterns, and so forth. An individual would probably not fall on the same place on each of these. "Biological sex" is a summary of scores for several variables.

There are conditions that exist that don't fit anywhere on a continuum: some people have neither the XX (typical female) chromosomal pattern nor the XY pattern typical of males, but it is not clear that other patterns, such as just X, belong anywhere on the scale between XX and XY. Furthermore, the scales may not be entirely separate: if gender identity and sexual orientation are found to have a biological component, they may overlap with the biological sex scale.

Using the model presented here is something like using a spectrum of colors to view the world, instead of only black and white. It doesn't fully account for all the complex shadings that exist, but it gives us a richer, more interesting picture. Why look at the world in black and white (marred by a few troublesome shades of gray) when there's a whole rainbow out there?

An Excellent Resource
for Ordering GLBT-Related Books

Lambda Rising began serving the GLBT community in 1974 and was quickly recognized as a leader in our literary, political and social world. For three decades, we have made the finest GLBT literature available to all, as well as music, videos, magazines and gifts. At the same time, we have supported non-profit groups, promoted performers, sheltered youth, encouraged communication, and fought discrimination. Lambda Rising has always worn two hats: both as a responsible business and a dedicated community resource. Our pledge to you is that we will continue that dual role online, just as we do in our brick and mortar stores.(From: www.lambdarising.com)

Specific References

Some inspiring and challenging reflections on the next pope,
from Morris West.

Let Us Pray for a Man of Courage
By Morris West
Sydney Morning Herald
April 4, 2005

(The late Morris West wrote numerous novels about the Catholic Church, including The Shoes of the Fisherman. The Herald commissioned this article from West in 1997, to be published on the death of the Pope.)

The new pope will have to make a leap of faith or the church will be left behind, writes Morris West.

For 2000 years Christians have relied upon the promise of Christ: "I shall be with you always even to the end of the world." This is the hope by which the community of believers endures in faith. It provides also a specious absolution for the follies and delinquencies committed by the same community and its leaders down the centuries. This is the paradox of history, the constant jeopardy in which the institutional church survives.. . .

[Abbreviated copy of this article on
CPCSM's home page resumes here.]

The first call of Christ to Peter the fisherman and his brother, Andrew, was a simple imperative: "Come with me and I will make you fishers of men." There was no limit to their mandate. The whole world was to be their trawling ground. But it is a fact of history that the all-encompassing net breaks often, and its catch spills back into the dark and sometimes bloody sea of confusion.

The last years of the recent pontificate have been a time of tearing and spillage. Now we have, all of us, to mend the nets and find skilled fisher-folk to handle them. It will not be easy. The crowd on the beach, some of whom quit fishing years ago, is mistrustful and sceptical.

More than all this, too many issues, crying out for extended examination, have been swept under the carpet. Debate has been stifled by edict. Open discussion between clergy and laity has been inhibited by the fear of censure. The simplicity of the good news itself has been corrupted into the dialect of theologians and philosophers, which is unintelligible to ordinary folk. They cannot reason in it. Therefore, they reject it as irrelevant.

Women who hold up the roof-trees of the world and of the church are saddened and demeaned by patriarchal language and attitudes. They are no longer willing to have their role defined in the terms of a male-dominated society.

I know this. I am one of the people. I live among men and women. I am an old man now. I have lived through bad times in the prewar and wartime church and the pre-conciliar institutions. I have lived through the hopeful years of the great renewal of Vatican II and the troubled ones afterwards, when the leaders of the church tried too desperately to rewrite and reinterpret the decisions of the general council. I have watched the alienation of two generations since the great Pope John XXIII. It was he who gave me the courage to continue in the faith.

Which brings us, by a very short step, to the heart of the question: Where do we look for the beginning of necessary change?

To the electors? Their job will soon be done. They will resign their offices and hold themselves at the disposition of their new master. To the new pontiff? The white cassock that the attendant tailor will have tacked hurriedly to fit him will feel like the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. The Sacred College will pay him homage, pledge him fealty - and wait upon his new disposition of them. The faithful will wait to know whether they have a reactionary or a reconciler.

When the first adrenalin rush is over and the first heady sensation of power has subsided, he will feel, and he will be, most terribly alone. There will be a measurable time, a critical time, before he will be able to gather himself to act. Alone in his chambers or in public ceremonies he will certainly pray.

And that, I believe, has to be the new beginning for the whole church. We have to pray. The naked evil in our world, the desperation of our impotence against it, prompts our prayer. However, the prayer made, we have to act, each and all as best we can. We are in a new age now. The old order of things will never come back.

There is much hope that a new pontiff will open himself and his counsellors to the mind of the church by calling a general council to complete the work of Vatican II.

God knows, we need fresh air, we need fresh light. We need new trust in the Spirit and in the common sense of all Christians. But the time to prepare a council, the labour it will take and the new contentions it will inevitably raise will demand an exceptional pontiff ready for the most daring leap of faith.

Can we count on such a one? Will the electors be prepared to risk him? They should know, if they do not know already, that we are ready because we live always at our own risk - unprotected by clerical bureaucracy. Willy-nilly, we have to move forward out of this desert place. Already in different places and in widely different fashions, people are using their baptismal empowerment of priesthood to take control of their personal and communal lives. More and more of them, men and women, are qualifying as teachers of theology and philosophy, of biblical learning, of bio-ethics of pastoral and social care.

More and more of them are taking over parish tasks from an ageing or dispirited clergy. More and more of them are making themselves heard with authority inside the still-closed clerical councils of the church.

Parish life, in some places, is being transformed by the formation of small groups, each active in the exchange of support and charity and experience. Diocesan life, too, is changing, though more slowly, because its mechanisms are more cumbersome, and because so much depends on the character of individual bishops and their attitude to change.

These are positive and hopeful signs. They go a small way towards making up for the wastage of frustrated lives and the spillage into indifference. But let us say it plain: the people of God cry out for open access to the gifts of the Spirit.

The cry of the women is the loudest and most poignant of all. They will all walk a long, hard way up the mountain to receive the gifts; they will not be barred too long by canons and prescriptions and rigorist theologies and expedient silences about vital moral issues. It is idle to repeat the old clerical cliche: "In Rome we deal in centuries." Like all cliches it contains a small truth and a large untruth.

The fact is that none of us can count beyond today. Here and now, we have to work out our salvation with such graces as we are given. The measure is different for each of us. The need is common to us all. We should not have to plead like beggars for the gifts which were bought for us all by the act of immolation on Calvary.

And this, your eminences, is the last word we pass to you before you are locked into the conclave.

Pray very hard. Give us a good man, with an understanding heart. God help your eminences. God help us all.

Turning Tony into Tonya: Juveniles raped
in adult prison face 'death sentence' of HIV
By Jens Soering
National Catholic Reporter, 11/19/04
"Tony’s story is far from rare in a correctional system that houses 2.1 million inmates nationally. During a hearing on the Prison Rape Reduction Act in July 2002, a former state attorney general testified that “anywhere from 250,000 to 600,000” prisoners were forced to have sex against their will each year. The result is an HIV infection rate of at least 8.5 percent in New York state’s correctional system, which tests its inmate population more rigorously than others. By comparison, the estimated infection rate for the civilian U.S. population is 0.3 percent."

Zero Indifference: A How-To Guide for Ending Name-Calling in Schools
By Nancy Goldstein, PhD, GLSEN Education Resources Manager
GLSEN Resource Center, November 2, 2001, www.GLSEN.org
(PDF Version is also available.)
This November 2001 resource spells out the legal and ethical case for stopping name-calling in schools as well as providing a practical guide for intervention and education.

A Clue to Why Gays Play Russian Roulette With H.I.V.
By Richard A. Friedman, M.D.
The New York Times, September 24, 2002
A recent study raises the possibility of a link between internalized homophobia and unsafe sex among young gay men.
(Note: To access New York Times' articles, users must have a membership with
NYTimes.com, which is free and will be offered to them when they attempt to access NYTimes.com the first time.)

Tell Me The (Whole) Truth
School Supplies to Get Real Sex Education
Lambda Legal Publications, 9/5/2002
More and more school districts are replacing real sex education with unproven and misguided “abstinence-only” programs that deprive students of basic information, and the health and lives of young people across this country are being endangered in the process. Among those most threatened by this “head in the sand” approach to teen sexuality are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth (whose lives are erased from existence by messages that sex can only happen in marriage) and teens at risk for HIV infection (all teens who are sexually active and don’t protect themselves). [From Introduction to Tell Me The (Whole) Truth.]

Crisis in the Church: NCR's Web Page Offering Full Coverage of Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal in the Church
Recent and past NCR stories and links to other related sources.

Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation
Gregory M. Herek, Ph.D., Professor
Dept. of Psychology, University of California at Davis
Biographical Sketch of the Author

American Academy of Pediatrics' publication supporting adoptions by gay co-parents.
(Perrin, EC. and the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health. Technical Report: Coparent or Second-Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents. Pediatrics: 2002;109:341-344.)

Reuters: "Pediatric Group Endorses Adoption by Gay Parents"

Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation & Youth:
A Primer for Principals, Educators and School Personnel

Developed and endorsed by the following organizations:
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Counseling Association
American Association of School Administrators
American Federation of Teachers
American Psychological Association
American School Health Association
Interfaith Alliance Foundation
National Association of School Psychologists
National Association of Social Workers
National Education Association

Download this document in Adobe Acrobat pdf format. *

* To read and print this brochure, you will need to use Adobe Acrobat
Reader. The Adobe Acrobat Home Page contains detailed information on this product, and allows you to download free copies of Acrobat for Windows, Macintosh, or UNIX systems. Directions for downloading the Adobe Acrobat Reader can be found here.