Pope Francis I: How does this affect the worldwide gay community

Quote by Jacien

Quote by Lorenius

LOL. In point of fact, yes I do, Robbie. But who would be Bashir?

~J

Indeed I wonder... Who would be cast as the mentally superior product of morally dubious science know-it-all who always comes off as being kind of annoying? :P

I'm sorry Jeff, I think it might be you. :laugh:

I know Sej wouldn't mind playing a Vorta. ;)

So what that leaves the Prophet for me? Sniff

*takes off "mentally-superior"/academic hat*

I'm really just a guy who was raised in a single wide trailer in rural Florida who loved to read. I couldn't go the direction of most kids, who could be popular and say all the right things. I only had my mind to defend me from the cruelty heaped on me by the kids my age. I discovered science-fiction, fantasy, and gaming. I started acting in high school.

By the time I was 12 I knew I was gay...I didn't know that word back then, so I thought of myself as "queer." It was terrifying, I couldn't run away from the kids, so I ran even more deeply into books. By the time I was 17 I had rejected Catholocism as my faith system and all of my attempts to hide my sexuality had been fruitless (at least by the high school faculty, who I discovered later, knew it all along)

I "ran" away from home at 17 into the arms of the military, this was the first of many mistakes I made trying to find my way in the wider world. I took a lover while I was in service. It was a miracle we weren't caught since we had sex in the enlisted dorms. I took an honorable discharge and early out when offered at three years. Skip forward two years to I was 22. I came out and I ran off and started making a career in the theater. It was the first time I was truly comfortable anywhere. I was finally surrounded by people that were like me. This was the middle 1980s. I had friends dying all around me from AIDS. Those were pretty grim days. I won't go into great detail about those times...maybe someday. Just imagine the horror of coming out and watching other gay guys dying around you.

Skip forward to 2007. I lost my grandmother and grandfather, the only people I ever really cared about in my family. Over the previous years I had a reasonable amount of lovers, but never anyone permanent. I had driven equal amounts of energy into my career and volunteering at LGBT centers. Losing my folks crushed me...and forced me to reassess my life. I wanted to do something meaningful for the gay community at large. After burying them both I took off to Europe alone for 40 days, I told my agent to leave me alone. When I came back I knew I had a talent for history that I had only used sparingly. When I got into university, I and others discovered I had a talent for academia. Not a wild sexy sort of moment for me.

The fact is I was never a terribly outgoing guy. I have been given a certain amount of good looks that I kept through not smoking and going to the gym, I was always too shy in private to take a vast amount of lovers. Plus I am downright picky now, when I fall for a guy it is genuine and that person had to have set off a some sort of bomb to get my attention...and for it to last that guy has to be intelligent and make me laugh...cry...ahh, hell, he has to matter.

In the present my sheer cussedness, my hard work has gotten me into a PhD program. I know I can seem like a walking dictionary, but most of that is armor. My Catholicism is long behind me, but as other folks raised Roman Catholic can attest to, you never quite get it out of your system.

I suppose I am Bashir in some senses. Shy, awkward (or at least I feel that way), and loyal unto to death to my friends and those I care about.

That's me...in the overview.

~J

I know I'm new here, but I wanted to say thank you to the people in this thread for an interesting conversation. Whether you agree with people or not, people in this thread have tried to make interesting points and speak their minds. It's rare that I see people online in any forum able to vigorously disagree with each other without resorting to pure ad hominem, and I just wanted to thank all of you for that.

Lorenius, especially thanks for your academic discussion of Pope Francis I. I wasn't aware of a number of those facts, so I'm very grateful.

Personally, while I'm going to remain frustrated with religion in general, having been raised Southern Baptist and seeing things that make me so angry in most religions... I see this as a good sign. I know that 'toleration' changing to 'respect' may seem minor in the face of the rest of it, but I'm often happy with changes in entrenched systems, especially one as entrenched as the office of the Pope.

I'm not holding my breath that there will be a reversal of doctrine, but if Pope Francis I can even allow for a change of tone from persecution to respect, I think it's a stepping stone to greater things.

I can't see this new pope having any impact whatsoever on my conduct, my life, the people around me, the people around the people around me...

Because all of that crew live the 20th century. I don't quite think the catholic church, or most others, for that matter, have nearly caught up.

I just don't see much relevance or impact for anything they do.

Nor do I expect it to have such an impact.

But it is interesting in terms of how the Church and the Papacy may handle future challenges. This new pope is by no means an ally, and reviews from gay catholics on this pope is decidedly mixed, but the simple fact that this particular pope is not rabidly anti-gay like Ratzinger or his predecessor is a signal that, at least for practical reasons, this bunch of old, hidebound men realize that they have a few problems they need to address.

By any sane measure you would think that a Cardinal that advocated gay civil unions to his own bishops (for whatever reason) would not have stood a chance in hell of being elected. But here we are at that point in history.

Will Francis advocate for same-sex marriage? No. His advocacy of civil unions was to counter President Cristina Fernandez's strong advocacy for same-sex marriage (his bishops outvoted him by a wide margin, btw).

Will he advocate for the ordination of women? Unlikely.

Will he address the artificiality of the prohibition of priests marrying and having families (Mostly to address the chronic shortage of parish priests)?: Perhaps.

Did I think we would actually be debating these matters realistically post papal election? No. I expected another theological hard liner, not a pastoral priest.

Will it change my personal conduct among my friends and loved ones? No.

It only impacts my scholarly interest, which is compartmented away from my personal life.

~JC