Astronauts & Chicken Sandwiches

I used to blog a lot, but then I got busy and stopped. I do tweet a lot, mostly links to other things. I decided to get this blog that I started to create a while ago up and going because I'm not satisfied with little tweet-length comments on things, and I'd like to create both a place to express myself in short-form writing and open up conversations.

Starting with Sally Ride, who recently died. Apparently, she had a female partner of 27 years, but this fact wasn't publicly known until her obituary. All of a sudden, a lot of people are calling her a hero for being a lesbian, though some, like Andrew Sullivan think she owed it to others to have come out publicly while alive.

I think being the first woman in space is pretty darned cool, and maybe even heroic. I'm not convinced her sexual orientation has anything to do with her heroism — or, contra Sullivan, any cowardice.

I was just thinking about this issue in the shower. (TMI? It's where I do my best thinking. So sue me.) I ended up tweeting how I thought maybe Ride didn't come out because she didn't think her sexual orientation was the most interesting thing about her. To expand on that, I grew up in conservative Richmond, Virginia in the 70s and 80s. In retrospect, a sampling of the gay people in my childhood: my uncle, my pediatrician, guy across the street, a couple of teachers in school, the couple who cleaned our house sometimes, Paul Lynde. I can't actually tell you for sure that most of these people were gay, though with one exception, I don't think they covered it up or anything. It was more of a "Boston marriage" kind of understanding, at least as far as the public was concerned, with some of them. And, well, sometimes you just knew or had it confirmed later.

I guess maybe my parents were particularly enlightened, but nobody I remember seemed to care about any of these folks' sexual orientations. Okay, so maybe we joked about Bobbi-with-an-I (don't think he actually spelled it that way) cleaning the house, but if I remember right, Bobbi was pretty flamboyant and would have laughed along.

Granted, it's the South, and for all the supposed conservatism of the place, even staid Virginia shows signs of Flannery O'Connor's point of view — every town has its freaks, and we're all one of them. Generally, we just meet that with a shake of the head and a "That's just Mark...."

There are tragedies here; as much as I'd like to say that sexual orientation was no big deal, I honestly think my uncle spent so much time in the closet that he developed a dissociative disorder, among other issues, that made his life a challenge. That's sad to me, because he was such an interesting person in so many ways, and what I unqualifiedly diagnose as mental illness robbed me of a lot of years of a relationship with him.

Look, I'm not unaware of the civil rights issues involved with gay marriage, and I've said on more than one occasion that both theologically and civilly, we are so unclear about what marriage is for that we can't decide to whom it should be available. We need to have those conversations, and in the meanwhile make those rights available to everyone.

The Chick-fil-A thing, though, seems like a little overkill. Have we reached the point where we shouldn't buy from people with whom we disagree? Okay, it's your decision, that's cool — but can we ease off on the witch-hunting rhetoric? I suppose you can pat the mayor of Boston on the back for saying what he said, but (1) when I lived in Boston, we complained constantly about the need for more Wendy's and Chick-fil-A, and (2) Mumbles Menino is a freaking idiot who will pander to anything to get his name in a headline. It isn't like there's any sincerity or conversation coming of all this. It's just the latest media meme, and as many people will make a point of visiting the Chick-fil-A because they're homophobic morons as will others boycotting the place.

So, I don't know much of anything about Sally Ride's life. Maybe she never came out because she felt oppressed by a homophobic society, though given the tone of things in recent years, I suspect she never came out either because she didn't think it was anyone's business with whom she slept or because, like I tweeted, she was an astronaut, and that's what she was famous for, and how awesome is that? That's the interesting public thing about her.

I understand where some Christians are coming from in their public positions on homosexuality, and while I won't go full-on exegetical, I'd say reasonable people can disagree about what the Bible says about it. (And it is Romans 1, so stop quoting Leviticus in your Facebook posts — and that goes for both sides of this thing.) No doubt I'm influenced by a lot of the people in my life, past and present, but I don't think the New Testament comes down clearly against homosexual activity, and I don't mind having that conversation with Christians who disagree. (Also, natural law is a crock, and tradition is there to be changed when it is wrong.)

Reasonable people can also disagree about the public relevance of their understanding of religious morality. I think I decided to write this out as a kind of plea for civility, because a lot of people don't seem to be acting reasonable. I've read my MLK, and I know civility is overrated in civil rights situations, though King was pretty clear about drawing some lines. But I just wish that instead of demonizing the other side, boycotting, witch hunting, posting GIFs on Facebook, everyone would just sit down and have lunch with someone on the other side of the issue.