personal political

greetings from...

Yes, it's World Youth Day in Sydney - actually, it's the week leading up to World Youth Day, which will culminate in a huge Mass conducetd by the Pope next weekend. I've written a couple of posts about the experience, cross-posted at LP. 

a-theism

I got halfway through The God Delusion last month but haven't been moved to pick it up again (and now co-parent is reading it - and being equally amused/irritated by Richard Dawkins.) Although I saw a few holes in it (his obsession with rationality and evidence would preclude something like psychoanalysis, I suspect), I have to admit that Dawkins has raised my consciousness as an atheist - though I'm not sure I wanted that raised consciousness.

One of my whinges about the contemporary world is that I happily spent the past 30 or so years hardly giving a thought to religion but now I'm almost forced by certain political realities to dwell on it. Although I've called myself an atheist since I was 18 (and been one since I was 16), I'm a little bemused by things like this - both the drawing and the 'creed' in response.

the law

Pragna Patel from Women Against Fundamentalism has written a lucid piece in the Guardian in response to the Archbishop of Canterbury's suggestion that some parts of sharia law be incorporated into the British legal system. (Maybe that's not what he suggested - it seems both complicated and simple.)

marriage alarm

I'm not sure how stable this link will be, but this story about celibate gay priest Jeffrey John entering into a civil partnership with his longterm partner in Britain and this causing "alarm" "dismay" and possible "disastrous consequences" made me smile - at first. There's something madly mixed up about a world where some people get into a tizz about other people who avowedly don't even have sex getting married. I mean, how much more conservative could these two be?

That's where the smile left my face. Essentially, what's behind all this alarm is a self-righteous sense of sexuality-apartheid which believes homosexuality/homosexuals are inferior. 'We can't have them acting like us or, for Christ's sake, people will think they're like us". [Even worse, of course, people might begin to think that most people have homosexual feelings of their own.] It's almost enough to make me run out and get married (co-parent and I are eligible to do the British civil union thing.)

Just kidding. I'm deeply allergic to any thought of marriage. We won't be tying any state-sanctioned knots

However, some of our friends have. We know two lesbian couples in Britain who've entered civil partnerships this year, mainly for the sake of parental rights. We also know one lesbian couple who live in Australia but recently 'got married' in Canada, primarily to secure inheritance rights (the Canadian one has many siblings who might contest her partner's right to a share of the family estate.) [Note: I got this wrong - see this other post.] They all did this quietly. No furore or alarm, not even from me.

egg dilemma

I'm back, after a wonderful break, which I hope to write about in detail in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, a small worry is niggling away at the back of my mind...

The day before we left, Olle rang his best friend Joe and asked him to come over and play. (That was a first - he rang without asking or telling us he was going to do so - the first we knew of it, he was speaking to Joe on the phone.) So Joe's father Al brought him round and asked us to have Joe back home by 6pm as they were having family for dinner. (I later realised this was a Passover dinner.)

An hour later, I was in the kitchen when Olle brought Joe to the fridge to show him his stash of Easter chocolate. He told Joe (who is Jewish) that some Christian friends of ours, K and J, had given them to him. [Apparently, a semi-apologetic excuse for having them.] "K and J aren't Christians!" I said, "They're like us, they don't have any religion and you don't have to be a Christian to have Easter eggs." I said they could eat a little egg each (you know, the ones which are 2cm long) - so they did. It fleetingly occured to me that Joe looked a bit nervous about this and I felt as if I was doing something I shouldn't (urging Easter eggs onto a Jewish child who clearly associated them with Christians) but I didn't have time to give it much thought.

A few days later, when we were in Adelaide, it somehow came up in conversation that when he brought Joe to the door, Al had told co-parent that because of Passover, Joe wasn't to eat wheat, milk or eggs - but that Joe knew what he could or could not eat.

I immediately thought of the chocolate egg - full of milk.

I'm not sure that Joe would've realised that chocolate has milk in it - I think the slightly guilty expression on his face was about eating a 'Christian' food. And I don't think the fact that he ate dairy is of any actual consequence - in this case, it's symbolic.

I guess my concern - my own little guilt - is about the fact that I tempted him to break a cultural taboo. It's not fair to do that to a child, no matter what I as an adult think of such things.

I know that Joe's mother at least is an atheist, but as a family they take their religious practise much more seriously than most of my other Jewish friends - they are embedded in an extended Jewish family who all live nearby in a way that most of my other friends are not. It's not just a religious practise - it's an identification. I suppose the strong identification by them of some of the things we partake in as Christian is an irritant to me, even though I can see that historically, they are. I can see that it must be confusing to children like Joe to be told they aren't have to have Easter eggs because it's a Christian tradition and then to be told by me that it has nothing to do with religion. Not that I would refrain from saying what I did, but I think now that I shouldn't have encouraged the boys to eat an egg.

My dilemma is this - and part of it is about whether or not Joe would have 'confessed' to his parents to eating the egg. If he didn't, I guess there's nothing to be said or done ... or maybe I should bring it up with his mother. If he did (which I have no way of knowing), I feel that I should make a small apology to them - and maybe to him as well.

So both paths lead to talking to them (or his mother) about it.

What do you think?

cartoon riots

I've been watching the furore over the Danish cartoons with dismay. Dismay at the rioting and violence, dismay at the knee jerk reaction from some who insist on the right to say anything (anything?) and call for more newspapers to publish the cartoons.

Here's a more considered voice, seeking dialogue and respect rather than posturing and contempt.

getting in the way

Whenever aid workers or peace activists get into trouble in Iraq, I feel a more-than-usual sense of sorrow and fear for them. And also a sense of incredulity that anyone would consciously decide to go to a place like that. I admire them and I know I could not do it. [A friend of mine is currently in Afghanistan with her four year old, teaching women. (Lesbian mother, by the way, not that it makes any difference but I feel compelled to note her bravery and compassion.)]

The Swords of Truth group in Iraq has threatened to kill 74 year old Quaker and peace activist Norman Kember today - he was kidnapped along with other westerners a couple of weeks ago.

This article about a similarly old peace activist gives some insight into the thinking of the Christian Peacemaker teams.

more on catholicism and homosexuality

Jellyfish makes the point that there are some great Catholic schools in Australia. I'm sure that's true. I've mentioned before that our very close friends, who are not religious, send their three teenagers to Catholic schools. Those kids once came with us on the Mardi Gras parade and have certainly not been indoctrinated into an anti-gay point of view at school. Of course not. I've known lesbians who taught at Catholic schools - though they were not out. That was a compromise they were prepared to make. I even know some lesbian mothers whose son went to a Catholic high school for awhile. They were not out at the school either. As it was a high school, they essentially had little to do with it (when your kid's in primary school, you get to spend a lot of time there, if you want to - helping out in the classroom and with special events, taking and collecting them each day. All that comes to an end in high school and most parents of teenagers I know rarely if ever set foot in their kids' school.) So it wasn't as if they had to physically hide themselves - but they didn't put both names on the official paperwork as parents. I make a lot of compromises in life but that's not one I'd be prepared to make.

Although it may not sound like it, I don't think all Catholics are authoritarian and superstitious (although that's my basic take on the Church and the religion). In fact, some of my favourite relatives are practising Catholics. Inlcuding the ones I worry about - I have a gay cousin who is one of four children (who all went to Catholic schools, natch). The other three are married and their kids all go to Catholic schools. My aunt and uncle are practising Catholics who are very close to and accepting of their youngest son (who is a successfull, currently single, professional). (They are also, by the way, very fond of us.) What is everyone in that family to make of this latest proclamation from Rome? Even if they decide it's ludicrous, will it sew seeds of doubt in their minds? Will it shore up any underlying remnants of belief that the gay one is leading a lesser kind of life? That his boyfriends don't match up to the spouses?

It's clear that in the western world at least, entering the priesthood has been a useful way of dealing with their homosexuality for men from Catholic families. The number of American priests who have died from AIDS gives us a clue as to the high number of homsosexual priests. I see no reason not to believe that the proportions would be similar at the highest levels of the Vatican. Let's go beyond cheap jokes about men in frocks. I'd guess that many of the very men who've had input into this statement are themselves homosexual. It's called self-hatred and repression. I just wish they wouldn't spread it around.

catholicism and homosexuality

Recently, in discussions about which high school we might send Olle to (such discussions start early in the eastern suburbs of Sydney), three different people have asked if we'd consider sending him to a Catholic school.

Well, there are all sorts of reasons I wouldn't send him to a Catholic school. Firstly, I'm an ex-Catholic who went to Catholic schools myself. I didn't have an awful time at them but I don't want to revisit my own childhood in quite that way.

And I'm an atheist. I know a lot of non-Catholics send their children to Catholic schools these days, but I don't want to. I wouldn't handle knowing that he was being exposed to certain ideas which I think are, well, nonsense. I wouldn't want the split between home and school to be quite that stark.

Plus, most Catholic high schools are single sex and at this point I'd rather he went to a co-ed high school.

But the reason I give first to all these interlocutors is that as lesbian mothers, we could not be out if our son was at a Catholic school. And a) we wouldn't want to be 'in' b) we wouldn't want to put him in the situation of having to hide us or be ashamed of us or hear negative things about 'our kind' which were sanctioned by the institution he was attending. {And of course, if he had any gay tendencies himself, I wouldn't want these people anywhere near him.]

When I've said this to all three questioners, they've looked slightly taken aback but then quickly had to agree with me.

But now the Catholic church has come up with the knockout reason for us not to even faintly contemplate sending Olle to one of their schools.

They think we cannot have proper relationships with other human beings. That we're objectively disordered, intrinsically immoral etc ec.

I know this is all about men, lesbians don't really feature on the Vatican radar, but I'll take the liberty of identifying as a homosexual in the broad sense of the word.

On the one hand, this is not something that gets me deeply agitated. Why should I care what a silly old group of men who've never lived in an intimate relationship say about me (if only by extension)? I'd be happy if thousands of gay priests left the church over this. I'd be happy if anyone left the church at any time.

On the other hand, my resentment and contempt for them runs deep. They really are ridiculous. More than ridiculous - hateful.

Morgan has some more sensible things to say than I do.

transnational islam?

Is there really a global jihad, as we are endlessly told there is?

Fred Halliday, an academic authority on the middle east, has an interesting short essay which looks at the competing claims of nationalism, religion and transmationalism in Islamicism.