Let Me Just Slip Into This Black Robe, Here

Well, the first thing that has to be said about Alain de Botton is that he’s phenomenally wise, profoundly insightful, unimaginably creative and wonderfully incisive.

I say all this, by the way, to avoid a repetition of the 2009 incident in which de Botton wrote, “I will hate you until the day I die,” to a New York Times critic, who had been less than kind about a book de Botton had written. 

In fact, I have liked all of the de Botton talks that I have seen on YouTube—he does have a razor-sharp mind, but who, graduating with a double-starred first from Caius College, Cambridge, wouldn’t?

There was the talk on atheism 2.0. The old version of atheism only established one thing: there is no god. OK—but what about the good things that religion brought us? A sense of community—there are times when a congregation carries a grief-stricken parishioner through dark times. Or what about morality? Yes, you can argue that a person shouldn’t need god to be moral; as well, many atheists are moral. But the church, ideally, was or is a constant, drumming force for reminding us to be living a moral life. And I liked what de Botton said about religion’s view on art: it is completely not art for art’s sake. It is strictly utilitarian; the purpose of art is to elicit emotion and teach lessons. That’s why you have that depiction of Christ on the cross, or the last supper, or Moses parting the Red Sea. It’s there for a reason.

I followed him through the lecture, “A kinder, gentler, philosophy of success.” Interesting, there, what he had to say about meritocracy, which he, in general, favors. Who couldn’t—it’s the belief that anyone, with enough work, can get what he deserves. That’s great in the case of Obama, but what about me? Iguanas has sold maybe six copies, so am I a dud? Do I deserve my failure?

De Botton says no—remember Mathew 24:13? “The race is not given to the swift nor the strong but he who endures to the end?” (Franny may be channeling me, or I her, but shouldn’t it be “him who endures?”) OK—that wasn’t actually his point, on rereading Mathew. De Botton thinks that despite all of our efforts, the playing field will never be entirely level. And he should know—his father was a seriously rich guy, though not, apparently, a terribly supportive one. My father was middle class but supportive—so who had the better deal? The thing is that in both cases it makes a difference, and neither he nor I had any say in the matter.

Then of course I had to listen to his talk about “How to think more about sex.” I mean, what guy wouldn’t? And that, finally, led me to Barbara Ehrenreich, whose book Smile or Die; How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. I had liked the book, and could especially relate to it, since I had been through about 94 doses of quite concentrated positive thinking in my seven years at Wal-Mart. We had a monthly meeting, a regular feature of which was the motivational speaker. One particular speaker was a charming old lady who had to be lugged up to the stage because the cancer treatment was still affecting her but. not to worry, because the world was getting.., and here she broke into song…

Mejor, mejor, mejor!

Yes, her world was getting better, better, better—sing it, group! Sing it, everybody! Put your heart in your mouths and a smile on your face and beam your positive attitude into the radiant white light! Let’s hear it again!

We sang it again.

And even though it’s Monday, and it rained all weekend, and the housework never did get done—we’re alive, we’ve got jobs, we’ve got our families, and every day we can be sure that we are getting…

She put her ear to the microphone….

I loved all that stuff. Well, most of it. There was a day, in those months when I spent waiting for the ax to fall, when I came upon the in-house motivational speaker, Milton, filling up buckets of water before a Human Resources meeting. And no, he wasn’t the kind of guy who mops floors.

I could bear it no more; the meeting was mandatory and I skipped it.

Which may be why I’m not there.

Ehrenreich states that the main reason people are canned is because of their bad attitude, and asking skeptical questions about everybody’s great idea—hey, let’s give mortgages to people with lousy credit and then bundle ‘em up and sell ‘em off (sorry, the mortgages, not the people)—was a classic example of negativity. It’s not, of course; it’s a critical part of an organization. There’s a place for the people who refused to be swayed by the latest craziness.

Well, de Botton has started The School of Life; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

The School of Life is a social enterprise founded in 2008 and based in a small shop in Central London. The School offers a variety of programmes and services concerned with how to live wisely and well, addressing such questions as why work is often unfulfilling, why relationships can be so challenging, why it is ever harder to stay calm and what one could do to try to change the world for the better.[1] The School also offers psychotherapy and bibliotherapy services and runs a small shop which has been described as 'an apothecary for the mind'.[2]

Wow—what a seriously good idea! Oh, and what do atheistic you do when you’re in London on a Sunday morning? Here’s the answer:

On Sunday mornings The School of Life hosts secular sermons in which cultural figures are invited to give their opinion about 'what values we should live by today'.[7] These theatrical events are usually held at Conway Hall in London. Past preachers have included Tom Hodgkinson on Loving Your Neighbour, Geoff Dyer on Punctuality, Sam Roddick on Seduction and Alain de Botton on Pessimism.[8] The Financial Times described the sermons as being 'hedged about with all sorts of ironic paraphernalia, designed to reassure the trendy young audience that they are not about to be harangued by a religious zealot'.[9]

Oh, and that bibliotherapy up there? Here’s the answer:

 The School of Life offers a literary consultation service it calls bibliotherapy.[10] For a fee, people are able to meet with a bibliotherapist who will talk to them about their reading habits and 'prescribe' books which relate to their interests or concerns. The School of Life's bibliotherapists include the novelist Susan Elderkin.

Confession: I completely screwed up my last goal, which was to tell everybody in the world by midnight, 31 December 2012, that they could have a good, peaceful, spiritually charged death in their home at the hour (or thereabouts) of their choosing.

 I fucked up.

Alain, can I come give a sermon?

A Cry to Stamps!

For half a century (OK, really only 48 years) J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI, as well as threatening the hell out of everyone. He did it illegally.

For the last ten years (OK, really 12 years) two presidents have signed off on a program that allows the NSA to collect information on our telephone calls, emails, and text messages. They’re doing it legally.

We had all been saying it for years, all of us “radical” people who couldn’t quite get why we had to sit in Vietnamese rice paddies, watch little kids approach, and wonder if they had bombs under their dirty shirts. We spoke out against the infiltrators, the bugged telephones, the informers, all of the people spying on us as we protested an unjust war.

I miss it, those innocent years before we paid others to fight our wars, and before we gave away our privacy to the government, instead of protesting it. And I may as well confess, I’m mostly of the opinion that Edward Snowden acted correctly when he exposed the secret programs that are spying on us all.

Why?

Because we wouldn’t have known, otherwise. And because everything—OK, much of what—we know about J. Edgar Hoover came from a similar action. Somebody—nobody knows who but you can bet it wasn’t for lack of trying—stole secret files from an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania.

It was a night in 1971, and most of the United States was watching Joe Frazier fight Muhammad Ali. But a guy or guys from the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI grabbed a crowbar, wrenched the 2-man FBI office, and filched the files. All in all, over a thousand documents were taken.

Two weeks later, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times got manila envelopes with copies of documents. There was the report on sending a tape to Martin Luther King; the tape showed King in his hotel room with women, not his wife. That came accompanied by a note: “King, there is one thing left for you to do. You know what it is.”

That presumably meant suicide, which was the option actress Jean Seberg opted for, after a (false) rumor was published saying that the father of her unborn child was a Black Panther, not her French husband.

Want more? Here’s one writer on the subject:

The sheer reach of a completely politicized FBI was one of the most frightening revelations of the Media documents. Underground newspapers were targeted. Students (and their professors) were targeted. Celebrities were targeted. The Communist Party of the U.S.A., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-Violent Organizing Committee, the Black Panther Party, the Women's Strike for Peace -- all were targeted. "Neutralize them in the same manner they are trying to destroy and neutralize the U.S.," one memo said.

 Attorney General John N. Mitchell asked Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post, saying that doing so could “endanger people’s lives”—those people out there spyi…err, collecting information vital for our national security.

It was only through that one act—forcing a window, raiding two file cabinets—that we understood or rather we knew what we had always known. As well, we got a new term—COINTELPRO, or counter-intelligence program.

A few months after the break-in, Daniel Ellsberg came forth with the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that the government knew early on that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, and that the Johnson administration had lied to the people, and to the Congress. All of that lead to the Church Committee, which has been described as the most—well, here’s Wikipedia….

Together, the Church Committee's reports have been said to constitute the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but more than 50,000 pages have since been declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

The report revealed that it wasn’t just at home that our intelligence system had gone seriously off whack. Here’s more Wikipedia, from the same source:

Among the matters investigated were attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles's plan, approved by the President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to use the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.

So now we have a president who is telling us that we should trust these secret programs because there is a mechanism to oversee them and so all is OK. But, in fact, a meeting that was called before the Snowden affair of the heads of the intelligence agencies and Congress had only 48 senators and representatives show up. The meeting was on a Friday afternoon—the boys skipped out early that day.

Oh, and the FISA judges approved every request from the NSA—all 1856 of them. Odd, why am I thinking just now of rubber stamps?

Hmmm, you know, it’s not a bad idea I have. Readers of this blog know that, for seven years, I worked for a small company named Wal-Mart. My efforts in that enterprise consisted largely of sitting a room, pounding on tables, and throwing pencils at small groups of people. That all ended one Friday morning, after the company had done an extensive re-alignment. I was outta line.

So what to do now?

Readers, be the first on your block to buy in. Give yourself a double shot of self congratulations by helping a deserving blogger and your government. For ten bucks (plus handling and shipping, as well as taxes where applicabl… oh, and you ladies down there in Tobago—I know you’re there—I gotta charge more) I’ll send you this valuable item, which you in turn (and in protest) can send to the federal government. The one crucial thing they obviously don’t have….

2.8 Million Kids

We’d like to think it’s easier, now, but I think it’s not. When I was a teenager, gay was nowhere; it was un-talked about, it was taboo, it surfaced maybe once every two years in an article in Time. You’d see the pictures of the backs of men lurking in dark corners of smoky bars, in the shadows of abandoned warehouses, waiting, watching. Short of vampires, nobody, apparently, got less sun than we did.

So I could hide. I wasn’t too visibly gay, I was a musician—which meant that I was instantly weird anyway—and I was tall. It was easy for me. Here was my strategy: I pushed away dealing with being gay until I was older, in college, when I was better equipped to deal with it. Even so, it’s certainly one of the five hardest things I’ve done in my life.

Now, gay is everywhere. Which means that it’s on even adolescent’s radar screen. Which also means that the first hint that a kid is gay brings on condemnation, bullying, fear of rejection.

Which is often justified—the fear, I mean, not the rejection. Because while all of us are fighting for marriage equality, an issue of equal or even greater weight is going unaddressed.

There are 2.8 million gay kids homeless on the streets. Up to 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ. Think about it—unless 2 out of five of all of the people you know are gay, that 40% represents an enormous skew.

And why are they on the streets? Take a look at the graphic below.

One study published in the Journal Pediatrics reports that half of LGBT kids experience rejection in some form from their parents. Granted, the study was from 1987—but is the situation better or worse, now? (Remafedi, Gary. (1987). "Male Homosexuality: The Adolescent's Perspective." Pediatrics, Issue 79. pp. 326-337.)

Once kids are on the street, what happens to them? You know perfectly well—the parent’s worst nightmare. Prostitution, drug addiction, HIV and AIDS, the litany of horrors that keep parents awake at night.

There aren’t enough shelters, and those that exist have age limits. So it’s a race; how fast can you get the kid ready for an independent life? This is a kid who needs to graduate from school, learn adult skills like driving and paying your bills, learn how to cook and negotiate the health care system when sick. That’s hard enough when you have a home and loving parents.

Sadly, most parents are loving parents—one researcher went off and talked to the parents of kids who had either been kicked out or had fled the house. Only about 2% maintained their stance of rejection, especially after hearing the statistics and descriptions of LGBT youth in the streets. They were loving, they were anguished, they were confused.

There are programs, there are people trying to help. Caitlin Ryan and Rafael Diaz started the Family Acceptance Project; here’s what they say:

The project is designed to: 1) study parents’, families' and caregivers’ reactions and adjustment to an adolescent's coming out and LGBT identity; 2) develop training and assessment materials for health, mental health, and school-based providers, child welfare, juvenile justice, family service workers and community service providers on working with LGBT youth and families; 3) develop resources to strengthen families to support LGBT children and adolescents; and 4) develop a new model of family-related care to improve health and mental health outcomes for LGBT adolescents. Findings will be used to inform policy and practice and to change the way that systems of care address the needs of LGBT adolescents.

And Ryan’s done more; she got ahold of John Kerry, and together they forged the Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act. Here’s the description:

The Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services establish a demonstration project to develop programs that are focused on improving family relationships and reducing homelessness for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth. These programs must include research-based behavioral interventions designed to decrease rejecting behaviors and increase supportive behaviors in families with LGBT youth and research-based assessment tools to help identify LGBT youth at risk for family conflict or ejection from their homes. Additionally, the Secretary must provide educational tools and resources to help families identify behaviors that put LGBT youth at risk as well as provide multimedia educational tools and resources that are focused on helping a diverse range of families understand how their behavior affects LGBT youth.

OK—let’s strip it of jargon. We gotta figure out which kids are at risk, what stuff works to get parents to start accepting, not rejecting, and then we gotta get the tools and resources out there.

And I think that we gay people who have made it through to the other side, who have spent some time navigating the land-mined landscape of fear, rejection, self-loathing, loneliness, despair and defeat—we’ve got to go back there, cross over again, and start bringing some kids with us.

Over to the other side.

A Tectonic Shift in the Mormon Church?

So, question of the day: is the Church of Latter Day Saints really changing?

You may know them as an easy group to hate: the Mormons. And yes, we can all laugh at their protective underwear, their beliefs that Joe Smith actually found the tablets in Palmyra, New York, (think that was where), their history of polygamy. They do, however, some things very well. They work damn hard and did make the desert bloom; they respond quickly in natural disasters; they take care of their own.

And their church is their lifeline. They are, in a sense, still living out that trek from New York to Nauvoo, Illinois, (another “think that was where”) to Salt Lake City. Yes, they have arrived, they have made a home, but they haven’t stopped clinging to one another; the desert mentality of each member being crucial in the survival of everybody still lives in their psyche. For others, church is church; for Mormons, church is their life.

Which is what made it such a compelling story in movies, plays, and fiction. There was Joe Pitt in Angels in America, there was the movie Latter Days, and now, there is an upcoming documentary about a Mormon family with a thirteen-year old gay son. And predictably, Mom goes through shock and disbelief and questioning and ends, finally, at some kind of acceptance.

Well, that seemed like something interesting, especially since the mother had gone door to door in California in 2008 campaigning for Proposition 8. And speaking of which, was there any truth to the belief that the church was backing off “defending” traditional marriage?

Having spent 45 minutes on the church’s new website, I can tell you—it’s a definite maybe. Mormons and Gays dot Org is the name, and yes, I’d call it Gays and Mormons, but that’s a quibble. And the church is quite clear in where it stands:

The experience of same-sex attraction is a complex reality for many people. The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is. Even though individuals do not choose to have such attractions, they do choose how to respond to them. With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.   

In the Catholic Church, which teaches the same thing, this is called the “you can be a bird, but you can’t fly” doctrine. And the site bangs the drum on love, listen, have compassion, have hope, let’s have a dialogue. Just no screwing.

So then I had to listen to the Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Twelve Apostles on “What needs to change.” Oh, and prepare yourself for a jolt—the Elder is:

1.     white

2.     elder and elderly

3.     male

Hey—if you need to lie down to absorb that, it’s perfectly fine.

He looks, in fact, like the worst combination of a mix between my old high school principal and Ike Eisenhower. And his message? Here it is:

Same gender attraction presents many issues and questions in society at large. These include what causes it, whether it is subject to change in kind or degree, and whether, or the extent of which, laws like marriage should accommodate it. Our discussion is limited to two related questions we sometimes hear in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What does our doctrine teach us about how family members and church members should treat one another when one of their members is struggling with some of these issues, and how can we help members of the church who struggle with same-gender attractions, but want to remain active and fully engaged in the church?

This same topic was discussed with all of the general authorities of the church in April of 2012. We will not discuss any of the multitude of other issues and questions. There is so much we don’t understand about this subject, that we’d do well to stay close to what we know from the revealed word of God. What we do know is that the doctrine of the church, that sexual activity should only occur between a man and a woman who are married, has not changed and is not changing. But what is changing and what needs to change is to help our own members and families understand how to deal with same gender attraction.

The church, you see, got slammed over Proposition 8; the public relations were a disaster. What had seemed like a conservative but hardworking group ended up looking like spoilers and haters. And their efforts weren’t inconsiderable: Mother Jones magazine states that at the height of the Proposition 8 campaign, there were 77 people working full time on the issue in Salt Lake City. Oh, and they kicked in 20 million bucks on it, too.

Right, now on to Ty’s story, from the video posted on the website:

Well, it wasn’t an issue for him in high school, because he still had to do his year of missionary work. But after he got home, it was time to get married, start a family. And why was it that he didn‘t want to get close, physically, to any of these girls? Was he gay? He began dating men.

He goes through several spiritual crises, always ended up with a huge and wonderful revelation: God is love. Be with Him, stay in the church, let Him into your life. He keeps struggling and struggling and decides to ask the question, being prepared not to receive a question. And the question? Is there a family in his future? Must he go alone through life alone?

Know where this is going?

We see pictures of his wife; we see pictures of their home; lastly, we see pictures of their adorable baby boy.

You’ll know my reaction. The picture I saw was of a church that had put one of its children through years of unnecessary, almost capricious, spiritual hell. And that through the message of Ty’s story—and he’s utterly sincere, by the way—will put a lot of other gay people through the same ringer.

The Huffington Post reported that the church is making connections, reaching out, rethinking. “There’s been a tectonic shift somewhere,” a church member says. The money—always a good barometer for measuring the social pressure—for defeating marriage equality bills is drying up.

I grew up in a time when homosexuality was illegal, when cops were raiding gay bars, when it was routine to talk trash about fags and queers. I now deliver food periodically to my husband’s mother; she strolls into the plaza and reads names for me. The world has changed. I understand Ty’s longing to have a family, I came to realize how much I had missed only recently, when I saw Raf’s nephew matter-of-factly dawdle his daughter on his knee. I stole away and bawled for the children I’d never known.

I chose a husband and no kids over a wife and kids. But I think all of us—the Catholic and Mormon churches as well—need to get here: you can have a husband and kids.

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The Archbishop Sighs Relief

Readers, you can now stop worrying. The archbishop of San Juan, Roberto González Nieves, is off the hook. Subject to a 19-month long apostolic visit—and one imagines the small talk and social chitchat wearies after 19 months—he came up clean.

Or so the Vatican Insider says; the site quotes González Nieves saying this:

Exonerado de toda culpa. El Vaticano confirmó que el arzobispo de San Juan de Puerto Rico, Roberto González Nieves, no es rebelde y que las denuncias en su contra nunca tuvieron fundamento. Lo confirmó él mismo, hace unos días durante una conferencia de prensa en su país. Ahora sus seguidores piden que se limpie su nombre.

Rough translation: Exonerated of all guilt. The Vatican confirmed that the archbishop of San Juan de Puerto Rico, Roberto González Nieves, is no rebel and that the denunciations against him never had a base. He himself confirmed it, some days ago during a press conference in his country. Now, his followers request that his name be cleared.

You may remember the case. The archbishop, born in New Jersey but raised in San Juan, arrived on the island after serving in New York, Boston, and Corpus Christi. He soon ruffled feathers of the statehood flock by more or less openly being an independentista. He spearheaded efforts to get the navy out of Vieques—OK, we were all pretty much on that page—and brokered a deal when the government shut down in 2006.

Then, he got it into his head to create the Altar de la Patria.

“What actually is “patria?” I asked Mr. Fernández, those many years ago before I was sufficiently politicized.

He gave me an explanation that made no sense. So I asked my friend Tony, who gave me the story. Loosely, it runs like this: there was a politician who was ostensibly for the commonwealth, our current status. But he referred constantly to the “patria,” which became a code word to indicate independence. So if you want to talk about independence without talking about independence, you talk about the patria.

See?

Actually, González Nieves threw a bit more salt into the wound by setting up, as well, what he called, “Capilla del Santísimo Cristo de toda la nación puertorriqueña.” This is guaranteed to set statehood mouths frothing, since it translates into “The Chapel of the most holy Christ of all the Puerto Rican nation.”

The opposition pushed back, charging that the archbishop was inserting politics into the church. And certainly the last governor—rumored to have ties to Opus Dei, and very much pro-statehood—was no particular fan of the archbishop.

Hence the apostolic visit, which, according to González Nieves, found nothing. But there were four charges:

1.     Sheltering pederast priests

2.     Supporting a bill that would allow roommates of either sex health benefits

3.     Selling a parish school without authorization

4.     Creating the famous Alta de la Patria

Things got a little hot for the archbishop, but he’s a fighter. On May 8 of this year, he organized 100 religious groups to come and see him celebrate mass, on the anniversary of his entering the priesthood. He passed the word to send letters to the Vatican, and then came out and said, “please, please, don’t send letters to the Vatican. I beg your prayers instead.”

Smart, hunh?

Then a letter got leaked, in which the archbishop expressed his horror at the gravity of the charges against him, and the hurt that the strong suggestion that he should resign caused him. Never, he said, would he resign. The charges against him were lies and defamations.

Unafraid of pushing any more buttons, González Nieves then decided to get a great Puerto Rican patriot, who had died in Spain and had been buried in Cádiz, back home and re-interrate him, presumably, in the Capilla del Santísimo Cristo de toda la nación puertorriqueña. There, his remains would rest in heavenly harmony with those of his great friend, the first Puerto Rican bishop.

“Ridiculous,” said Mr. Fernández, “The guy was buried in a mass grave during an outbreak of yellow fever. Of course they don’t have DNA evidence—how could they? Nah—they scooped up some bones, conjured up a lab result, and shipped it off to Puerto Rico, probably laughing their heads off. You know the Spanish.”

Right—so the remains of somebody arrived on the island, and were greeted with great Caribbean formality and enthusiasm. Now the question—what to do with them?

Well, they lay around in the State Department for a while, and then, González Nieves announced that he had received authorization from the Vatican to place the remains in the capilla. This they did, on 10 June, in an elaborate celebration, marked by the very finest vestments, incense, altar boys, and the 100-strong Mita choir, singing nationalistically or perhaps just patriotically.

González Nieves announced it all several days before; The First Hour, or Primera Hora, published it all in an article titled “I Survived the Storm” or He sobrevivido a la tormenta. He said:

“Le pido a Dios la fuerza de perdonar porque no es fácil”, aseguró en una rueda de prensa en referencia a quienes lo acusaron en Roma.

“La visita apostólica entra ya a su fase final. Yo creo que puedo decir que el visitador apostólico no encontró que yo hubiera protegido a sacerdotes pedófilos y además hay un informe de la Congregación de Doctrina y Fe que indica que he tratado esos casos con los debidos protocolos”, expresó.

“I ask God for the strength to forgive because it’s not easy,” he stated in a press conference referring to those who accused him in Rome.

“The apostolic visit is now entering its final stage. I believe I can now say that the apostolic visitor didn’t find that I had protected pederast priests and that I had as well a report from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith that indicated that I have treated the cases with the correct protocols,” he said.

Note carefully that phrase, “the apostolic visit is entering its final stage.” To me, that means it’s still going on, and the jury’s still out. The Vatican, as far as I can see, has not made an announcement on the matter.

Think the archbishop is bluffing?

When Religion Gets it Right

Alan Chambers said he was sorry in a lengthy apology; here’s part of what he said.

Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents. I am sorry that there were times I didn’t stand up to people publicly “on my side” who called you names like sodomite—or worse. I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine. 

Chambers was head of the largest “ex-gay” group, Exodus International, which promulgated the theory that gay people could change their sexual orientation through a deep personal relationship with God. That, coupled with “reparative therapy” would be enough. And if didn’t work? You weren’t trying hard enough, or the demon was too strongly attached to your soul.

To call it “reparative therapy,” however, is to legitimize barbarity.

So Chambers has apologized, and gone further: he has shut Exodus International down. And that leads to the question: how to forgive?

“Sorry is the cheapest coin in the vocabulary,” said a character in one of my favorite books, and I knew immediately what she meant. The amount of damage that the ex-gay movement has done is enormous; people exposed to reparative therapy are eight times more likely to attempt suicide; six times more likely to be severely depressed; three times more likely to use illegal drugs.

So sorry is not enough. What has to be done?

Two things.

I heard a TED talk recently by a South African who discussed what happened after apartheid. How was the nation to heal? How do you get over wounds like that?

The solution was a nation-wide series of reconciliation meetings, where blacks and whites, abusers and abused, came together, shared their stories and pain, listened to each other. Chambers started that process three months ago, when he sat with the people he had harmed in a church basement in Los Angeles. The event was filmed, and will be aired tonight on Lisa Ling’s “Our Americas.”

The question in my mind is whether that’s enough. For many, many years I refused to go into a church—making one exception only for St. John the Divine in New York City. Now, after years of movement, effort, and work by the Episcopalian Church, I could enter their places of worship. But I can’t think of any other church I could say that about.

Nor was I particularly harmed by the church—my parents were only nominally religious, I never took the thing seriously enough to care what they taught about homosexuality. But I had many friends who did, and who suffered gravely at the hands of organized religion. And if coming out was one of the five hardest things I’ve done in my life, I place some of the blame on the church. So yeah, I was affected; we all were.

So Chambers, you’re gonna have to do much more. You’re going to have to apologize, decry reparative therapy, travel the country giving speeches welcoming LGBT people into your church, stand up for marriage equality, start organizations, raise money for victims—in short, do a lot of actions that tell gay people, yeah, you’ve changed. We can trust you.

That was number one.

Number two?

There are people in religion who get it, and whom we should support. On of them is an Episcopalian priest, the Reverend Albert Ogle. Gay himself, he spent a lot of time advocating for marriage equality in California, where he lives, when the thought struck him: all the work he was doing in a developed country was simply making it more difficult for people in undeveloped countries.

There are 76 countries where homosexuality is still a crime. And increasingly, those countries are becoming more repressive, not less so. Why? Ogle likens it to big tobacco: as the market declines in the developing world, businesses look to new markets.

Remember the family, the super-secret organization that organizes the National Prayer Breakfast? Remember Scott Lively, the guy who went down to Uganda and spoke to members of parliament, giving them the news that the Nazi and Rwanda genocides were caused by gay people?

In addition, there’s been a flood of money given to religious groups under George W. Bush’s “faith based initiative” program.

So Ogle makes the point—is this simply a stunt, shutting down Exodus International? There’s still Exodus Global, and that’s where the real work is going on.

Ogle has set up a foundation, the St. Paul’s Foundation for International Reconciliation; here’s what he has to say:

 The Foundation was created in 2010 as an IRS 501 (c) 3 non-profit corporation and is a registered California charity.

Our focus has been on the intersection of human rights, health, education and faith, by providing resources for emerging grass roots organizations and leaders in the Global South. Local organizations are given assistance to create innovative HIV education and prevention programs, women’s development and self employment programs and providing training and education projects to build sustainable communities. Educational programs in Europe and North America seek partner congregations, foundations and donors to provide funds, technical assistance and advocacy, so that marginalized groups can be included more deliberately in their own larger communities.

In addition to the foundation, Ogle has created a website, 76crimes.org, which focuses attention on repressive countries around the world. I didn’t know that Jamaica—two islands away—is scheduled to have a mass protest against repealing the anti-buggery law on Sunday, and that the event was organized by the island’s churches.

So yes, we have to keep up the fight. And yes, we have to reach out and help the millions of people who have it worse.

To Beethoven via South Korea

I read recently that nineteenth-century violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim had said, “The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's.

I know them, but curiously hardly ever hear them. Why? Well, one of the paradoxes of classical music is that when a piece gets played often enough, it gains “warhorse” status, and people then tend to shun it. Think I’m wrong? When was the last time you heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony?

Of the four concerti, Beethoven’s is the oldest and—some would argue—the best. It’s also fiendishly difficult: the violin has to go into the stratosphere and still be utterly lyrical. It’s therefore almost unbelievable that Beethoven gave the part to the violinist Franz Clement so late that Clement was sight-reading (that is, playing it for the first time) at the first performance. That may have been why Clement chose to play a little ditty for one string with his violin held upside down between the first and second movements. In fairness, breaking up movements was a fairly common practice at the time; earlier generations were less fussy in those days.

At any rate, the debut was not a great success, and the concerto went essentially un-played for a couple of decades, when it was revived by a twelve-year old Joachim with Mendelssohn conducting.

It’s a typical concerto—nothing revolutionary here. OK—it’s a little weird to have those four somber timpani notes starting the whole thing, but other than that, it’s fairly traditional. It starts out with the orchestra playing the tutti, which introduces the principal themes, as well as giving the soloist time to fully feel his dry mouth, sweaty hands, and churning stomach. Then we get the soloist coming in, and playing a miniature cadenza—a solo passage which is or should feel improvised and which, generally, is highly virtuosic. There’s nothing virtuosic here, it’s mainly meant to tease—when is the violinist gonna get down to business and play us some tunes?

He or she does for about twenty minutes—Beethoven takes his sweet time wrapping this thing up. And the first movement ends with a true, fiery cadenza. The second movement is Beethoven at his most lyric, and the third movement—which is connected to the second, a typical Beethoven trick—is almost fatally a rondo.

A good blogger would look it up, and give you the formula for the damn thing—it goes something like aabbaaccaaddaa and then—at last—the end. So the first problem is that you’re gonna hear the aa six zillion times. The second problem is that the tunes chosen by the composer tend to be mildly irritating at the start, so by the end? You’ll be gagging.

And Beethoven, with all his skill, comes very close to not pulling it off. He has, however, to his aid an incredible violinist, Kyung-wha Chung. Chung has quite a story—her mother was a singer, and two of her siblings are professional musicians as well. So she grew up playing with her cellist sister and pianist brother, and was famous in South Korea, their home. From there, it was off to Julliard, where she had two major challenges—Juilliard was filled with child prodigies as good as she, and her teacher, the famous and feared Ivan Galamian, didn’t think much of female violinists. He thought she’d make an orchestra violinist, not a soloist.

The life of a conservatory student took its toll on Chung. Although she was fiendishly disciplined, she grew depressed: other people were dating, having fun, dancing in clubs. She was practicing every waking moment; despondent, she considered giving up the violin.

The family reacted by having an emergency meeting. They decided: Chung would enter the prestigious Edgar Leventritt Violin Competition. If she didn’t win, she could give up. If she won, she’d go on. She told Galamian, who adored her, but feared she would be lost to marriage.

He was also teaching a kid named Pinchas Zuckerman, who had the chromosome that Chung lacked. So, she didn’t get much support. Oh, except for her mother, who sold the family home to buy a Stradivarius for the event.

She didn’t win—she did something better. She tied with Zuckerman, the first time that any two people had been declared winners; some years, no one wins the thing if the judges don’t feel there’s anybody up to snuff.

Zuckerman’s career took off; hers languished. And then, she got a break—Zuckerman’s wife was giving birth, and Chung was asked to step in. She prepared the Tchaikovsky concerto, the orchestra played the Mendelssohn, instead. Right, so she could do that—they prep you for stuff like that in Juilliard. She played it perfectly, and the London Symphony Orchestra, which thought she was a lightweight, was impressed.

In the clip below, she’s at the peak of her career, and playing with a wonderful orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, with Klauss Tennstedt as conductor. The orchestra has this wonderful, rich sound; Chung goes from fiery virtuosity to almost unbearable tenderness. It’s a knockout.

A Banker, Dispatched

News of the day, here in our sunny isle, is that a lawsuit has been filed in federal court by the widow and daughter of Maurice Spagnoletti, a banker gunned down by professional hit men on 15 June 2011.

(Grammatical Readers, please note that the computer, in general correctly worried about excessive use of the passive voice, has gently suggested this: “News of the day, here in our sunny isle, is that professional hit men have filed a lawsuit in federal court by the widow and daughter of Maurice Spagnoletti, a banker gunned down on 15 June 2011.” Your choice!)

And if even a few of the allegations of the suit are true, it’s a shocker.

According to the suit, Spagnoletti was hired by Doral Bank as Chief Operating Officer in 2011; he moved to Puerto Rico from New Jersey, and once on the island, began sniffing rats.

There was the million-dollar loan backed by a hotel—all well and good, but where was the hotel?

Didn’t exist.

There was the architect who got several hundred thousand dollars for a branch that was never built. Or what about the loan for $900,000 for a condo in Isla Verde? Spagnoletti went out to see it himself—the place had been trashed by its previous owner; even the kitchen appliances had been removed. Spagnoletti figured it was worth 600,000, max.

There were other irregularities—money paid to contractors for lighting supplies and office furniture that were never installed or delivered. Oh yes, and what about the $30,000 that was transferred weekly from Doral Bank or Doral Financial for services that were not performed?

Then Spagnoletti—according to the suit—began wondering about the accounting practices: were the numbers right? He asked the Chief Financial Officer, Robert Wahlman, and never got a clear answer. He then pressed for an audit by an outsider CPA—that didn’t happen either.

Spagnoletti focused his attention on Annelise Figueroa, Executive Vice President of Facilities and Operations, and began to press for her dismissal. He locked horns with Enrique Ubarri-Baragano, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief of Compliance of Doral Financial. Ubarri-Baragano insisted that Figueroa stay, the two men had a fierce argument. At one point in the argument, Ubarri-Baragano tells Spagnoletti that he would “regret it” if Figueroa was fired.

According to the suit, Spagnoletti was having a hard time sleeping at night—who wouldn’t?

The suit says that the FBI was aware of “irregularities,” and that the bank was being investigated; the suit also claims that the FBI has documents that would corroborate the allegations, documents that the feds have refused to give up to the wife.

Spagnoletti appealed to Glen Wakeman, the CEO and president of Doral Financial, the man who had hired Spagnoletti. And Wakeman agreed that Figueroa had to go; he left it up to Spagnoletti to do the termination, though Figueroa reported to Wakeman.

It turned nasty—Spagnoletti walked into work one day and found a photo of Figueroa with a black “X” over her pasted on his door. He told Wakeman, the bank investigated, and told Spagnoletti that there was no credible threat. Wakeman, in the meantime, got increased security; Spagnoletti could neither ride in the same car nor elevator with his boss, due to “security protocols.”

Then the family began to feel that they were being trailed.

The hit came on 15 June 2011. Spagnoletti had left the office, and was driving to his home in Condado, a wealthy and safe (usually) beach community of San Juan. Apparently, he was racing, aware that he was being followed; the car behind him drew up on his left, and three shots were fired, expertly delivering him.

So expertly, in fact, that almost immediately the police suspected that nobody on the island was that good: it had to be professionals from outside.

Which was what the guy told Spagnoletti’s widow, Marisa, at the airport two days later. The man told her that he worked for Doral in the security department, he was aware of the plot to kill Spagnoletti, and that the director of the department, José Robles, had been involved.

The suit lists Doral Financial Corporation, Doral Bank Puerto Rico, Glen Wakeman, Enrique Ubarri-Baragano, José Robles, Annelise Figueroa, John Does 1-10, Jane Does 1-10 and ABC Corps. 1-10 as defendants. Doral Bank has stated that the claims are frivolous, harmful, and completely without merit.

Whether true or not, it can’t be said that the bank is doing particularly well. In November of 2012, the stock exchange considered delisting the stock, which had been selling below a buck for over thirty days. Caribbean Business reported that in March of 2013 the bank had created a “bad bank,” called Doral Recovery, to handle all the assets that had tanked. And Investigative Reporting Workshop’ Banktracker reported that in March of this year Doral had a 105 ratio of troubled assets versus reserves; the industry average is 10.9.

No one knows, at this point, how many of the allegations are true, or to what extent. What’s sure is that one man, Maurice Spagnoletti, might have had some answers.

And he ain’t talking….