Communities of Lovers and Others
Standing outside the Upper Room
This post is a long and rambling response of sorts to a brief and beautiful reflection by James Keenan SJ: “Reconciling Radically Inclusive Friendship in the Upper Room”. James is one of the Church’s leading theological ethicists and a close personal friend whom I respect and admire. I raise several questions and doubts about the scope and inclusivity of the rapidly expanding LGBTQA+ movement. I hope readers will interpret this as a quest for shared insights rather than a rejection of James’s vision, which I share. I have shown him this before publishing it, and he has once again demonstrated a generous spirit of support and openness.
How did I get here from there?
My relatively brief, late-life academic career began with my doctoral research at the University of Bristol in the early 1990s when feminism was rapidly yielding ground to gender theory. My thesis was later published as God’s Mother, Eve’s Advocate: A Marian Narrative of Women’s Salvation.
My background—a married woman, mother of four young children, recent convert to Catholicism, who had spent most of her life in sub-Saharan Africa—meant that my main academic interest was and remains the incarnate realities of female life. This includes not just the incarnational significance of theology for the sacramentally abjected female body but also the sexual and reproductive rights of women and the promotion of the dignity and equality of women and girls, especially those in poor African communities.
This has been my focus, but my research and teaching extended to cover broader issues. I became (and remain) an advocate for same-sex marriage and gay rights. I was delighted to be invited as a keynote speaker at two Quest conferences. Quest was then a Catholic lesbian and gay network. When one delegate joked that he wanted to have my babies after hearing me speak, I was flattered beyond words! All this was before the Johnnie/Jilly-come-lately bisexual, trans, intersex, queer, asexual, asterisks and plus signs appeared on the scene. (The “I” is gradually being dropped, as many people with DSDs [differences in sexual development] have made clear their objection to being labelled as “intersex” and being appropriated by gender activists.)
Conflicting Ideologies
I have repeatedly argued that church teaching on sexuality and gender has become ideological. Since the 1980s, it has been driven not by study and reflection that seeks to discern how to live faithfully, with dignity and generosity, amidst the complex entanglements of human sexuality and identity but by a thinly-veiled hostility to feminism and same-sex desire. This hostility is rooted in the fears and prejudices of the clerics who make the rules, and it provides ripe cherry pickings for the far-right politicians whose dogmas are well-served by Catholic teachings on sexuality and reproduction, even if their politics would be untenable if they followed Catholic social teaching.
These publicly expressed views have involved me in many ideological struggles over the last twenty years or so. Catholic bishops have banned me from speaking in their dioceses on orders from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF); a Catholic university in the US withdrew an invitation to a research fellowship; I’ve been publicly vilified and trolled by conservative Catholics for my research and publications, and I withdrew from my voluntary role as a member of the theological advisory group for CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) because of an organised campaign to have me dismissed. My “offences” include support for same-sex marriage, ditto for women priests, challenging the Vatican’s prohibition against artificial birth control, and appealing for a more nuanced and pastorally sensitive approach to abortion.
But in the rapidly evolving and expanding complexities surrounding issues of gender and sexuality, I’ve now become persona non grata at the other end of the gender spectrum. I don’t lend unquestioning support to all that falls within the ever-expanding umbrella of LGBTQ(I)A+ activism, and this is a problem for many of those who once supported me. Here is an extract from one recent email:
The challenge is that my parish has been on the front lines of 2SLGBTQIA+ issues for a number of years. … When I looked at your recent work on gender and trans ideology, and your recent twitter posts, I realized that if people checked you out online, this would raise issues for my activists and for parishioners with trans family members, and that it could derail the workshop. I sat on the decision, and consulted with others, and finally concluded that for pastoral reasons it was not going to work.
This was a courteous exchange, expressed more in sorrow than in anger. Still, it confirmed what I was beginning to suspect: I risked losing many of my former supporters and friends by publicly sharing my questions and doubts, albeit mainly through the opinionated medium of the Black Cross (still Twitter to most of us). One of my dearest friends lamented that I had become a terf. I knew I might be forfeiting opportunities for academic collaboration and engagement. For example, I would usually be included in any networks and invitations to participate in a Catholic conference in the UK on gender organised by those towards the more liberal/inclusive end of the Catholic spectrum. I only discovered that such an event was happening because a friend drew my attention to it. I don’t want to appear paranoid, but I can’t help but wonder why I was kept in the dark.
So, I’ve found myself in a wilderness between two conflicting ideologies, unable to meet the demands of either for full and unconditional support. With some hesitation, I agreed to lend my name to a new initiative—LGB Christians—started by gay and lesbian Christians whose concerns I share. Their website hosts a number of blogs and reflections that explore the issues.
Gender activists may share little common ground with the sexual ideologues in the Vatican, but many use the same methods of control and exclusion: silencing, condemning and treating as heretics everyone who fails to conform to their doctrinal absolutes. A recently published report of an employment tribunal concerning the dismissal of Roz Adams, an employee of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, was excoriating in its criticisms:
You can read that report from The Guardian here. The tribunal report is at this link.
Censorship and silencing are the hallmarks of all ideologies: their claims would disintegrate in the face of too much reality, so their castles in the air must become impregnable fortresses that allow no reasoned and informed critics to challenge their sanctified absolutes.
It’s becoming clear that whatever drives adults to impose these dangerous ideologies on children, these are the most vulnerable victims of a movement that has lost its moral compass. Here is a piece I wrote about my concerns:
The Exclusivity of the Inclusive
The LGBTQA+ movement has become so vague and all-encompassing that it’s easier to say who is excluded than who is included. I’ve never supported a cause without being able to explain my reasons for doing so, and I cannot commit to supporting an alphabet soup of sexual rights and gendered identities simply on the basis of tribal loyalty.
There are still many parts of the world and many communities in which lesbians and gays are persecuted, criminalised, or marginalised. There are also vastly complex questions about gender dysphoria and trans identities and rights. These, I believe, make claims upon us in terms of understanding and engagement. But as for the rest, in all honesty, so long as they leave children, vulnerable adults and animals alone, I’m happy to remain ignorant but accepting of the multitudinous ways in which red-blooded adults get their kicks. Legislation around these areas should be about protecting the vulnerable, not about policing adults’ private lives.
I enjoy the colourful displays that queer people bring to the grey monotony of the average British crowd. Beyond that, I feel mild irritation about those queer, non-binary, and “+” others who seek to avoid contamination by association with the sexed and gendered hoi poloi by inventing ever more elaborate identities of exclusivity. As for “Asexual”, since when did that constitute a persecuted and marginalised community? The Catholic Church has been trying to desexualise women for two thousand years. Most of the female saints are remembered primarily for being virgins, though I doubt this was quite as ubiquitous as their devotees would like to believe. There’s no law against asexuality, and only in a society defined and dominated by sexual activity would this be a form of exclusion.
What interests me is how we accommodate our basic sexual needs and desires, which are expressive of our most profound emotions and attachments but which are often unruly and sometimes dangerous and self-destructive, into our gendered identities, relationships, and commitments. I ask how these are filtered through the lens of Catholicism’s plurivocal theological, cultural and ethical traditions in ways that can be both nurturing of and damaging to our fragile human capacity for flourishing. This also involves our procreative capacities and how we care for and protect the children we conceive and bring to birth.
Pandora, Eve and Sexual Chaos
The Catholic tradition has consistently recognised the potential of sexual desire to unleash violent and chaotic forces that disrupt our personal and social relationships, but the celibate men at its heart have projected all their fears and lusts onto the sexual female body. Eve stalks the world of men in many guises with her sly come-hither glances and her serpentine wiles, and she trails death in her sexual wake. She must be robed and cloistered, controlled and contained, socially lobotomised and sexually anaesthetised, lest the chaos she represents is unleashed upon the world.
No wonder feminism turned out to be one of the greatest threats the Church has ever faced. Here’s how Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar described it in the 1970s:
The worldwide offensive of ‘feminism,’ which is battling for the equality of women with men, takes effect within the Church as the women’s claim to the ministerial priesthood. As a whole, the battlefront presents a confusing picture, and this in turn affects the ecclesial arena, which in addition has its own special problems.1
You can find a wider context for that quote and my views on theology and the sex abuse crisis here.
Homosexuality posed a more complex problem. While it was a relatively simple task to keep female bodies out of those sanctified communities of celibate male clerics, homosexual male bodies were less immediately identifiable and, for many, more difficult to resist. While senior clerics huffed and puffed about homosexuality being “intrinsically disordered”, many were seeking rest and recreation in the arms of their young male lovers at the end of their hardworking days of keeping God’s libidinal household in order.
As if our poor leaders didn’t have enough on their hands already, along came trans activists. Pandora’s box had been opened. They always knew it. Let one wild woman have her way, and the whole world falls prey to the deadly threat of sex in all its forms. Feminists. Lesbians. Gays. And now—gender ideology! Pope Francis has called this “the ugliest danger of our time” and has likened it to nuclear arms and genetic manipulation for its failure “to recognize the order of creation”.
Like-minded Catholic liberals/progressives were both appalled and vindicated when the extent of the sex abuse crisis was exposed (and it’s not over yet folks). The dividing lines were drawn. On one side were the clerical predators, abusers and rapists; on the other side were the children of innocence, wide-eyed with wonder as they gathered together in the Elysian fields of all-inclusive love free from abuse, predation, rape, misogyny, phobias of every kind. I admit I was only a spectator at this lovefest, but I was a willing ally.
James Keenan SJ writes eloquently and movingly about how this community emerged from grief, struggle and alienation:
From Stonewall onwards, the radically inclusive model of friendship lived and practiced in the LGBTQ+ community grew as the primary form of relationship within our community. … Rejected by family and others, the LGBTQ+ community was born and built on a no-nonsense acceptance of everyone. Each newcomer was accepted as he, she, or they presented themselves. This dynamic was and remains the radically inclusive friendship practiced and lived in the LGBTQ+ community as we recognize, welcome, and welcome back one another.
Keenan likens this LGBTQ+ community to the disciples of Jesus gathered in the Upper Room at Pentecost. It’s a short, inspiring and thought-provoking reflection on how we find healing, forgiveness and reconciliation after bitter experiences of loss, betrayal, abandonment, and grief. Reading his piece made me yearn for those days when I was briefly welcomed into that community in the Upper Room. I know from the conversations we had there that such a community exists, made up of those who have indeed found healing and solace from the deep wounds inflicted by growing up in a Church and a culture infected by hatred and prejudice towards who they are.
On the Outside Looking In
So why did I leave the room? How did I find myself in that mob of party poopers known as cis white heterosexist terfs, though Robert Jensen also speaks for me when he says that he is “neither cis nor TERF”. He writes:
I am routinely described as cisgender (defined as people whose internal sense of gender identity matches their biological sex). Because I have critiqued the ideology of the transgender movement, I also am often labeled a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). But neither term is accurate — I don’t self-identify as cisgender or as exclusionary. …
The feminist critique I embrace is not an attack on, nor an exclusion of, anyone who suffers from gender dysphoria or identifies as transgender, but rather offers an alternative framework for understanding patriarchy’s sex/gender system and challenging those patriarchal gender norms. …
There has been uncivil conduct on all sides of this debate, but it is only radical feminists who are routinely told that their position is hateful and that they should be excluded from the conversation.
When I look around at those who have voluntarily left or have been evicted from that Upper Room, I see many lesbians; grieving parents and trans widows; suffering and confused adolescents; silenced women and girls; regretful detransitioners, and even some of my gay male friends, all on the outside looking in, shouting a warning that nobody is listening to.
One of the founders of Stonewall, Simon Fanshawe, has become an outspoken critic:
At best, I now see the use of the rainbow colours as little more than flabby virtue signalling which has no real effect on the lives of gay people. …
While Stonewall started out as a well-meaning organisation that championed gay rights, it has, in recent years, morphed into a propaganda machine that preaches extreme and divisive gender ideology under the guise of “factual” information. It is dogma that is far from universally accepted seeing your sex at birth not as an immutable fact but as open to personal choice.
And it is one that is fast eroding women's rights and their protection in female-only spaces, as well as posing a potential risk to children, who might be led to believe that irreversible medical intervention is the solution to common adolescent insecurities about identity.
In the last few months, the publication of The Cass Review, which investigated the care of young people (under-18s) with gender dysphoria in England, has opened up more cracks in the edifice. Dr Cass raises serious questions about treatment and support offered to these youngsters, with devastating findings around issues such as the lack of reliable research into the effectiveness of treatments for gender dysphoria; questions about the long-term effects of medical and surgical interventions; the failure of any follow-up that might offer information about detransitioners, and the impact of social transitioning on young people. She also points to a dramatic rise in the number of adolescent girls experiencing gender dysphoria and raises questions as to how often boys identifying as trans are trying to mask their homosexuality.
Rights in Conflict
I left the Upper Room because I was becoming aware that the more widely the LGBTQA+ “community” spread its influence, the more of a Trojan horse it became. Yet there is still a widespread assumption that this is a self-policing community made up of tender-hearted folk incapable of acts of sexual violence, misogyny or abuse. As one person informed me when I expressed some of my doubts and reservations: “As a cis, hetero woman I'm reluctant to speak for the LGBTQ+ community but I think people of this community would be horrified if someone thought the + can be used by abusers or that they would support abusive relationships.”
We Catholics have heard that before, haven’t we? Didn’t all those parents believe the same of the priests to whom they entrusted their sons and daughters? The Catholic tradition has been wrong in so many ways about the creative and abundant ways in which human sexuality can express our deepest and most ardent yearnings and capacities for love, but it has not been wrong in the fundamental insight that the sex drives can lead us down dangerous and violent paths.
I am not a terf insofar as I want as much inclusivity, compassion and solidarity as is humanly possible in our suffering and violent world, and as few segregated spaces as we can negotiate. I believe in the inviolable dignity of every human being of whatever gender or sexuality. Every person is entitled to all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which entails corresponding responsibilities. But as rights multiply they become more complex and contested. Human rights is not a jigsaw in which we only need to fit all the pieces together to see the whole picture. It’s a jumble of pieces from different puzzles, and the task of sorting through them to begin to discern how these many fragmented pictures might fit into one worldview will continue as long as human life continues. Our cultures, values, privileges and prejudices are infinitely diverse, dynamic, and volatile. We are repeatedly broken open, challenged, exposed, called to risk and confusion, anxiety and distress. These are the growing pains of the human condition, and the more we build our defences to resist them, the more we shrink into ourselves.
Doubt and Love
I lay in bed with a pounding heart this morning as I contemplated writing this, unsure whether I’m a Jeremiah or a Jezebel. I decided to listen to one of my favourite podcasts and sources of wisdom—Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound. “Serendipity” is another word for grace. This morning, the poem and reflection were a serendipitous gift. Here is the poem:
“The Place Where We Are Right” by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Stephen Mitchell
“From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.“The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.“But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.”
Here is an extract from the transcript of Pádraig’s reflection:
How willing am I to allow both doubt and love to dig up the place where I’m right? Because to speak about the place where I’m right is to imply the place where other people are wrong. And there are things that I don’t want to be wrong about, hard-won things … [D]oubt and love are two things that can hold you. Love, alone, I don’t think is enough because it’s easy to love something and nonetheless be violent in its name. This is about saying “doubt and love.” The doubt that says, What if I need to pay attention to another point of view? How willing am I to ask myself a question that might mean that I have to stand on new ground, that I have to go a bit deeper, that I have to employ doubt and love and maybe even bring some of my loyalties into question in order to ask something that has a deeper integrity.
Doubt and love. That’s where I find myself in this time of confusion, alienation and concern. I grieve that some of the trans people who valued my friendship and support may feel I’ve betrayed them, though I do not forget the insights they gave me into their struggles and sorrows. I am more grateful than I can say for the one or two who understand my concerns and give me the courage to speak. I mourn the loss of respected academic colleagues who no longer see me as an ally. Still, I forfeited so many opportunities when I offended the Vatican that I can’t now bring myself to be cowed into silence because the discourse has changed. I may be wrong. I’m open to arguments that might persuade me to change my mind. But I cannot keep quiet for fear of being unpopular.
So, here’s me holding out my hand and asking if we can talk. I’ve tried that with the Vatican. It didn’t work. I wonder if it will work this time. Is there room in that Upper Room for me, if I’m honest about my questions and doubts: if I can’t say hand on heart that a trans woman is a woman; if I reject the claim that some lesbians have penises; if I think it’s not possible to be born in the wrong body; if I say that trans women should not compete in women’s sports; if I say that young people with gender dysphoria need psychological support, not “affirmation”; if I ask for female-only spaces in hospitals, prisons, changing rooms, toilets; if I ask why women are being pushed aside in the name of inclusivity; if I choose to listen to those on the outside because I agree with so much of what they say? Is there space for me?
Next time: to be decided. (I’m nervous enough about publishing this. I have to gather my confidence to say more).
Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Women priests? A Marian Church in a Fatherless and Motherless Culture,” Communio 22 (Spring, 1995), 164, www.communio-icr.com/articles/view/women-priests; also published as “Women Priests?” in New Elucidations, trans. Sr. Mary Theresilde Skerry (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986).
I am immensely grateful for the integrity, eloquence, erudition, courage and leadership you are showing on this issue Tina.
Know that you speak for me and for many, many others too. This is a masterpiece of writing on a most complex and contentious issue. Thank you for your brave and considerate analysis of it and for generously sharing it with us. Ursula
Thank you indeed Tina for all that you have shared so honestly, eloquently and bravely. All that you say resonates deeply with me, though I could never have found the depth and breadth of words with which you express it. I agree with all you say and offer you my 100% support.
As I read it came to mind that there were 2 versions of the Upper Room, the last Supper Upper Room, where the disciples were of the "we are right" brigade, swearing allegiance to Jesus unto death, confident he would restore them to power, unable to listen to his different narrative. The Pentecostal Upper Room gathers those who recognise they were wrong, who come broken, having abandoned Jesus and his truth, in need of healing, needing to understand a different narrative. I suggest that the Upper Room that you left is the former, pre death/Resurrection and Pentecost room. I can't enter that room for all of the reasons you so eloquently set out in your final paragraph. I applaud you and others who have left it. I believe it is not in that room but in the Pentecostal Upper Room that the Spirit is active, healing, emboldening, uniting, reconciling. it is here that the Spirit invites us to speak our truth and hear other truths and journey together towards wholeness. As you hold out your hand it is, I believe, to ask us to abandon the Upper Room of the "we are right" brigade and come instead into that Pentecostal Upper Room, which is where the Spirit can weave her wondrous creation. Thank you for the invitation. Ann