HOW NOW, SWORN VOW?: (sorry....) Round four of the grand discussion of reviving vowed friendship! For round one you can check out my Inside Catholic column, "Romoeroticism" (and my review of Alan Bray's groundbreaking, beautiful book, The Friend); for round two, my comments here and here (the latter post is not specifically about friendship, but about other aspects of reactions to my IC piece); for round three, a series of posts and reader emails starting here; and now you get three more reader emails, posted without comment but all very much worth your time.

Thanks so much to everyone who has written, and I very much still welcome your comments on all of this! I have a couple of critical links I need to truffle up, and a bit more to post about godparents and godsisters, but not tonight.

These are posted in reverse chronological order, earliest last.

reader #1:

I do not know what to think of your idea, but it is quite intriguing. I do agree that our modern idea of kinship is overly narrow - - if we can create legal fictions to account for adoption of children by parents, then surely we can create all sorts of legal fictions to accomodate realities that do not exactly correspond to the biological or natural family. Could [same-sex marriage] or domestic partnerhip laws be characterized as legal fictions? Perhaps that is one way to look at them, though I am sure that both Andrew Sullivan and the Family Research Council would scream bloody murder at the idea for very different reasons.

As for your commenter, Mr 8 or 9, I was struck by how his view that [same-sex attraction] is so radically disordered that it taints everything that it touches is very similar to Martin Luther's view of human nature being incurvatus in se - - even if one does good things, such acts not only corrupt and not only of no value, but such acts only increase one's blameworthiness the more good acts one does! Compound that with an Augustinian slant on eternal salvation, one can see how a person with SSA - - especially a young man with SSA with an overactive libido and an overwhelming emotional desire to be love and to love - - could be driven to despair if confronted by a Mr. 8 or 9 in a position of moral authority. Surely, then, such a person would conclude that he was damned, given the way that sexual orientation colors a significant amount of human interaction with the world. If he's effective in for penny as much as for a pound, he might as well go for the whole pound while he is at it. . . . Southern Decadence here he comes! This is an example of the damage that zealous "defenders of the magisterium" and "defenders of the family" can wreak on people who find themselves with SSA and little or no OSA of no fault of their own. Thinking of C.S. Lewis's famous comparison of the prig and the prostitute, surely that irritiating mediocrity Bishop Gene Robinson is a better role model for SSAs than a counselor who thinks like Mr. 8 or 9.

reader #2:

My initial response to the suggestion that we revive vowed friendship is, "Yes, obviously." It's madness that marriage is the only meaningful public mode of intimacy that our society allows. It just leaves so much of the psychological landscape... nameless.

As the very last person to be actually interested in undertaking a vowed friendship (I'm a married white male who considers his wife his best friend and who has no significant male friendships to speak of), I nonetheless had much the same reaction to the idea of vowed friendship that you did. The world of vowed friendships is the one that really resonates with me. And this for many reasons, including, but not limited to...

1. The world of vowed friendship almost automatically has a saner view of marriage. After all, in practice, there's a lot of overlap between eros and philia. The marital relationship has a lot to do with being friends and co-workers, but with those aspects of the relationship consumed in public discourse on the one hand by silence and on the other by the equation of worthwhile work with money-making, marriage is left only with its distinctives -- sex and childbearing. Oh... except not those either since the Birth Control Revolution. A robust theology of friendship accompanied by a meaningful liturgical corollary would go a long way towards giving us a way to think sanely about marriage.

2. The Catholic Church says that homosexuality is wrong only insofar as sodomy is wrong. That means that the Church ought to decry the condemnation of homosexuality as a culture/genre/predisposition (and especially the condemnation of chaste same-sex love) as error. The Church has not done this in an open way (though, I would argue, it has done so in an implicit way), and I would really like to see that happen. It would appeal to my sense of justice, and it would seem to me that the Church was striking a really startling blow against modern heresies -- both pro- and anti-homosexual.

and

3. I'm down with pretty much anything folks did in the Middle Ages so long as it doesn't involve gruesome death.

However... but... and also... I still see merit in some of the arguments you speak against.

You are correct to say that the potential for misuse is no reason to avoid doing something that is inherently good to do. However, the potential for misuse may mean that we have to do that inherently good thing in an extremely cautious manner. Thus, the Tridentine mass is good, and Benedict XVI has always spoken out in favor of it, but he nonetheless has been cautious in his efforts to bring it back into common usage because of its mistreatment by the St. Pius X Society and others (as well as the unfavorable reputation it has with a certain generation of bishops).

Just so, I think that much groundwork must be laid both theologically and politically before the vowed-friendship rite may be meaningfully restored. Were it simply released to the many winds within the Church, it would be tossed about and treated ill. It would be taken by the press and the public at large as a concession by the Church to the gay marriage movement rather than as a ressourcement coming out of Catholic tradition. And many Catholic faithful (though men and women of great faith) would be unsophisticated and uninformed enough to suffer great scandal. More to the point, though, I think the vowed-friendship in its true form (and not as a surrogate for gay marriage) would be short-lived and little used.

I would suggest that what the Church needs is a point man in the form of a (conservative) bishop who truly and deeply understands the need for a theological understanding of friendship to let his own flock be a liturgical laboratory. After a few years of sermons and letters (maybe a nationally-distributed book) on the subject, perhaps he could hand-pick a few well-respected pairs of friends to help resurrect the rite on a very small scale. And so on and so on... little by little.

Basically, as with all rites, the community comes first. The soil must be ready for the seed.

But again, I agree with your basic point. The vowed friendship and a theology of friendship underlying it is something the Church (and the society in general) need... I would go so far as to say "desperately need." My only concern is cultural and political logistics.

Thanks for getting people talking about this issue. Here's hoping the conversation is... preparing the soil (?)

reader #3:

I'm one of those who has a problem with the formalized vow. I remember some time ago a discussion about this on the Courage email list, prompted by David Morrison. At that time and still today, I had no worries about the temptation and scandal issues. It was the idea of exclusivity that bothered me. For me, the Christian ideal is that one loves (agape) everyone equally. Not equally badly, of course, but perfectly, which would mean equally. Now, we do have special loves -- parent/child, spousal, friendships. These, in my view, are concessions to an imperfect nature -- 'we can't love everyone the same'. Of these, only spousal love is formalized in Christianity, and I would say it's the eros that is formalized. And I think that's a good thing -- I don't think we need to formalize any more of these concessions.

David's point, if I recall, was that the special loves are not concessions, but opportunities (for us lowly humans to practically -- my addition) practice God's love. We then learn from these opportunities to be more loving to others. The way I see it, yes, the fact that, say, I have aging parents to care for helps me to empathize more with others and love other aged parents better. But should it be that way? Isn't that so evolutionary biology. Shouldn't I love these other people anyway. After all, even the Gentiles do the same...

So I don't like the exclusivity.

Then there's the cultural issue. How much of the need for formalized avowed friendship arises from the lack of such relationships in the West? Would this be using a religious institution to address a cultural deficit?

Now, promoting unformalized (they may be avowed or not) friendships I of course applaud wholeheartedly. If people want to live together, or apart, in groups of any number, or anything it between, I think that's fine. Have a deeper and wider set of friends, like (simplistically) we have in another cultures. Strain not to send your parents to a nursing home. Enjoy living with an extended family. Etc.

But, I tell you, it's a tough go here in North America because the entire lifestyle is not attuned to it. I see everyday fellow immigrants astonishingly quickly absorbed by Western ways. In fact, I see it even when I go back home to Ethiopia among the (slowly) 'rising middle classes'. They work more, spend more, save more, and with much less time, retreat into their nuclear families in Western style.

THE TRIAL: Orson Welles-directed Kafka adaptation. This is amazing. Wildly-angled noir atheology--one of the most consistent, and consistently persuasive, atheist movies I've ever seen. (In case you're thinking of a film festival, off the top of my head I'd put Cube and maybe Nobody Knows on that list, for very different reasons.) Anthony Perkins is a shivery, wrong-jointed Joseph K, as uncomfortable as a snake trying to shed its skin. I honestly don't know what to tell you except that it's Welles without self-indulgence, and Kafka noir. If that doesn't make you want to see it, I don't know what will!

POWER CORRUPTS, AND AWESOME POWER CORRUPTS AWESOMELY.

LADY CHURCHILL'S ROSEBUD WRISTLET #24 aka The One I'm In. Here's a review of the whole zine, in case the fact that I'm In This One! isn't enough for you. You can download each issue as an e-book for just $4 each.

First of all, there is kind of a LCRW "house style," ably demonstrated by this issue. It's hard to describe fully, but some elements include lush prose, a mysterious and troubling atmosphere, and direct references to and subversions of various well-known fantasy genres. A strong premise with unusual, surrealist imagery. Since my story has all these elements (I mean, I hope the premise is strong!), rest assured I have nothing against this stuff; but devouring the whole magazine at once may not be the best way to bring out the stories' unique characteristics.

Alexander Lamb, "Eleven Orchid Street": Very creepy parable of (it seemed to me) class and origin, the trap of fatalism and the trap of an embittered imagination. Expanding one's experiences can lead to the feeling that the old experiences have been drained of substance and meaning, rather than giving them renewed meaning. The kill-your-television stuff at first felt cliched, but was done so spookily that I ended up on board. The futuristic atmosphere worked too--a very lightly sketched Clockwork-Orangey place. Definitely my favorite story.

Liz Williams, "Dusking": Seems like it will be bog-standard Victorian revisionism (modesty and the Bible are evil! Fairies bite!) but has a really fun ending. The ending made me very fond of this one, and it's short enough that you get there before you really get irritated at the protagonist.

Jasmine Hammer, "Tornado Juice": Super-intriguing double premise (every strand of a girl's hair contains a world + people living inside a tornado), but ultimately this felt like a slight story which was trying to be dark but (for me) didn't quite pull it off. Still, the images are fun and very fresh.

Alissa Nutting, "Leave the Dead to the Living": A mortician who smokes his clients' hair to imbibe their memories. Very Tim Powers in Expiration Date. Once again, though, the story felt slighter than the premise.

"A Story Like Mine": Hey, I'm In This One! Various origin stories of a scar.

Dennis Danvers, "The Broken Dream Factory": You know, I'm not sure what to make of this one. For a while it was quite smug (and even if that's intentional, I don't find it any more illuminating or pleasant!) about its protagonist's commitment to producing broken dreams in an America which prefers banal happiness. Then it twisted into a really odd reworking of the Orpheus myth. I still think colliding two over-easy stories doesn't make one complex story... but I could be wrong about that. If any of you all read this issue, let me know what you thought! (And of course about the other stories, too.)

Anya Groner, "The Magician's Keeper": Stockholm Syndrome parable. I didn't get much out of this, I have to admit.

Overall, I'd say three stories I didn't write were good, one really good; and even the ones I didn't care for had intriguing premises and imagery. Given how easy it is for fantasy to feel played-out, a twelfth-generation xerox, that seems like an accomplishment to me. I didn't grok the poetry or comic well enough to comment on them, but I will note that part of the fun of a zine like this is the ads: Did you know there's a Joan Aiken collection coming out?! Plus lots more neat fantasy collections, weird novels, and magazines.

Get it here! Get more here! Remember, just $4/issue for an ebook version!

You are throwing gold after me
I am drowning:
perhaps a fish can be
bribed
--Celan

Evening after evening, embassies
drift over, distilled
from thoughts,
hard as kings, hard as night,
into the hands of the grief-
constables:
--Celan (excerpt)

AGAINST SINCERITY. Jendi Reiter has my back! With bonus poetry, "How to Fail a Personality Test."

me vs. sincerity here (and sexily here)

IVY-COVERED PROFESSORS, WITH IVY-COVERED...: Tell me your favorite novels set on college campuses?

Cleared for this
departure too.

Song of the front wheel with
corona.

The rudder of dusk engages you,
your slit-
awake vein
untangles,

what's left of you, sets itself aslant,
you gain
altitude.
--Celan

OH HEY! Victor Morton, the Right-Wing Film Geek, was on a blog hiatus for quite a while. He's back now!--or at least, he was in July, and I hope he'll post more (instead of just Twittering!). But there are reviews of Up and a wide range of documentaries.

UNLEASH THE POWER OF THE BLOG!: Hi y'all. I'm working on an article about how young adults are increasingly likely to call themselves pro-life, and increasingly likely to support gay marriage. There are a lot of narratives you could tell about how someone comes to hold either or both of these beliefs; I want to get some sense of which narratives people tell themselves. [ETA: Whoa, that phrasing is awful! "Which narratives people tell themselves" = how people explain, in their own words, how they came to hold their beliefs.]

So! If you are pro-life, pro-gay-marriage, and under 25, please email me at eve_tushnet@yahoo.com . If you know other people who fit the bill, please give them my information! And if you're on any mailing lists which might truffle up some responses, I would be thrilled if you'd repost this request.

THANK YOU.

Unappeased,
unattached, artless,
what alters the universe came up slowly
rasping
behind me.
--Paul Celan, "Heap of Seashells," tr. Katharine Washburn and Margret Guillemin

FAT LACES ON MY FEET WHEN CRACK FIRST HIT THE STREETS: Things I learned while surfing YouTube for the tv shows of my childhood, per this post about avant-garde cinema.

Thing the first: The opening credits of Mysterious Cities of Gold actually made me want to Netflix the whole thing rather than run in fear. Second, through the wonders of YouTube, I next found Count Freaking Duckula!!!! ...and thence to this selection of '80s cartoon themesongs. I remember exactly one of these shows (Jem of course, not a show I ever really liked--although apparently it's become something of a lesbian icon because there are multiple female human characters, LOL LOWEST OF STANDARDS) but overall, I grinned through this montage of the decadence of the space-age. So beautiful... so dumb!

You know how Jaime Hernandez is now revisiting his old superhero Bubble Yum commercial Chicana storylines? I love it. I always adored the ridiculous Penny Century storylines, and even the Maggie the Mechanic early stuff where she, I dunno, fought dinosaurs or something?... but I guess I relate even more now to the way Jaime has stayed '80s in the best way, cheesy and outdated and completely dedicated to being awesome. After the '80s it really felt like we all got so sincerist--nobody could say crazy crap like "No Guts, No Glory!" anymore on children's television!--whereas I grew up with the belief that any vastly stupid $#@! you wanted to pull was okay as long as it turned out hardcore. Bringing back the superheroine shtik is almost a refusal to move on; Jaime's sitting on the porch of his comics, drinking mint juleps and polishing his gun.

My favorite description of my cultural childhood is from Cracked:

If you don't remember the 80s, just imagine listening to Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" playing on a boom box that at any moment could explode, killing you and everyone you know.

everyone's a Captain Kirk!

WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN?: The second disc of "Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and '30s" was bizarrely water-themed. It was also vastly less awesome than the first disc! Was this just me and my obsessions, or did the jesses really slacken on this disc?

Anyway, there was one short movie so amazing that it was absolutely, three hundred percent, worth sitting through everything else on the disc. Skip to H2O if you want to know about the only awesome flick herein reviewed.

Review of the first disc, part one; two.

Second disc:
Uberfall: Police report of an assault; plotty, doesn’t strike me as wildly experimental--? There’s a funny parallelism bit where a man paints a face on an egg and then breaks it in an egg-cup. …OK, it gets experimental (distorted faces, dice and other bits from earlier in the film looming up eerily) after he actually gets assaulted, to show the effects of the blow to his head.

La Glace a Trois Faces: French-accented English voiceover, lol. Three men in love with the same woman; their stories presented one by one. Bright Young French Things running around being champagne-y. Experimentalism limited to montage fade in/fade out techniques so far. …Oh ok, now there’s some neat stream-of-consciousness stuff with lampposts. …Wow, people in the 1920s really did not like lips! There are some aggressively-framed shots with geometric backgrounds—kinda obvious, but I like that stuff. In the same scene, there are some lovely bits of choreography e.g. a woman being pulled into the camera shot by her hand, or two men almost waltzing into frame as they light one another’s cigarettes. A great, creepy, low-slung shot of an elevator rising, making it look as if it’s traversing some kind of post-apocalyptic blasted warehouse landscape. Second segment: a monkey! There’s some great (original?) music, like a reverberating jew’s-harp; then, in the third segment, a more traditional skirling, longing sound, which apparently is a Vivaldi piccolo concerto. Great horror-movie music while the “intruder” (?) speeds past a danger marker… and then the Vivaldi again. And then possibly at the end all three men were really one man??? Do not understand that part.

Le Tempestaire: Seasick shakycam credits. Painterly shot-by-shot, like a Viewfinder, of a seaside village and its inhabitants. Low-key, slow-moving “she fears for her man at sea, so she goes to persuade the old witch doctor to work his weather magic once again” tale; some really cool shots of the sea reversing and calming. Several missing subtitles (including the last line!).

Romance sentimentale: Sergei Eisenstein. Intense, dramatic shots of the sea and falling trees, with the crash of branches paralleled to the crash of waves. Really great use of reflections and water-distortions. The music is original and mostly traditional with interruptions. Then we cut unexpectedly between a drawing-room with sculptures and a woman and a clock, and the leafless autumn forest. Then cheesy fireworks and more intense intercutting! …And then it’s spring for some reason. This is why I wish they’d translated the Russian song the lady sings. (Despite the Yalien colleague who always laughed, "Just learn the f***ing language!")

Autumn Fire: Ehhhh, (nearly-) wordless love poem.

Manhatta: Sentimental-modernist ode to NYC. Tall buildings and little anonymous ant-people. Some nicely-industrial piano music, but otherwise, no.

La coquille et le clergyman: Slow movie is sloooooooooooooooow. Koyaanisqatsi is the freaking Micro Machines Man compared to this. It does seem to have a plot, but I truly can’t be arsed to figure out what that plot is—and bear in mind that I’m already the kind of person who will watch six and a half hours of “experimental cinema of the 1920s and ‘30s.” This is what you feared silent movies would be like.

There’s a bit where the clergyman is crawling around all scrunched up like something out of Freaks or Uzumaki. I really liked that part.

Regen: Rain in a small city, with pretty (new) music. At its best, the music sounds like if the Raincoats circa “Honey Mad Woman” seriously mellowed out and had no instruments but a guitar and bass, but there are noodly bits which don’t really go much of anywhere. Deeply nonessential, but painless.

H2O: Again with the rain! And then other forms of water, actually photographed in a striking, dynamic way, where each shot looks very different from the previous even though it’s all just… you know… water. People as obsessed as I am with sea metaphors might really get a kick out of this. Also people who want a lovely alphabet of textures and shapes, different forms of motion. …Wow, I love the series of cuts showing different kinds of rippling. It’s a primer on “how to film,” sure, but it’s a beautiful and compelling one. Ooohh solarization now! …Oh my gosh, I literally caught my breath just now. The solarized-Japanimation-silken-Rorschach-realist-staticky-molecular intertwining sequence of shots is just too much.

The (new) music is country-fried and demi-menacing.

This is by far my favorite from this disc. Again, if you’re less obsessed with this particular kind of image than I am, it may be your equivalent of “Manhatta,” but man, this was sublime. It’s the only film on both discs where I knew I had to watch it again because I’d missed things. (Update: I totally had. I was mesmerized the second time through; it was even better than the first.) And y’all: THERE IS NOTHING IN THIS MOVIE EXCEPT WATER. That’s talent.

It’s by Ralph Steiner, a name I do not know.

Even—As You and I: Holy cats, is that the Harry Hay? YES YES IT IS. The “Boy Meets Girl” stuff at the beginning becomes more satirical when you know this, though I have no idea whether that is the filmmaker’s satire or God’s.

Unfortunately this struck me as an otherwise-unremarkable “Surrealism comes to America” piece. He’s reading the paper upside-down! And when he turns the page there’s a bra! And he has a swastika and a hammer-and-sickle over his eyes! Yeah, no. I did like the bit where the high-heeled shoe gets stuck on the cactus.

Rob me, strip me,
Virgin ruthless,
Cleanse me of every love,
Spare none.

--"Little Seal-Skin," Eliza Keary

I dreamt about this poem last night (/this morning, as I'm mostly nocturnal). I would like to say that this was a classier dream than the one in which Blair and Serena switched bodies... but I fear it really wasn't!

AGAINST SAFEWORDS: I note that "safe, sane, and consensual" is an extraordinarily sincerist credo; its assumptions about our ability to know ourselves, and its assumption that self-knowledge and self-ownership form the core of morality, are basically my exact problems with the sincerist ideal.

Not to mention that s/s/c = three things vocation isn't.

ANTI-IRONY CHARMS: Some rambling thoughts on "sincerism" and why it's no fun. So a couple times here I've growled at sincerism, without ever telling you what it is! Which... is certainly not the sincerist way, so props for consistency, but I do think at some point I might explain myself. Here are some partial notes.

Sincerism means--probably among other things--requiring a sincere, authentic, honest accounting of one's thoughts and emotions. It opposes irony, misdirection, self-protection (which, to be fair, I also oppose in most cases!), exaggeration, agent-provocateur behavior, unspoken understandings, WASPish complicity in one another's secrets, and your mouth writing checks your ass can't cash.

Think of it as American newspapers' claim to "objectivity," by which we mean mainstream conformity, vs. European newspapers' tabloid partisanship. Think of it as realism vs. "genre."

Sincerity, as a mode, has its good points. If anything, I think I tend to be much more sincere than I should be! The world does not care about the sparklyhearts authenticity of my feelings; nor does it really need every idea chewed into obviousness and pablum. But there are times when withholding sincerity from another person is prideful and/or cruel. If they need you to say, blatantly and without regard for your own self-image, "I love you," or, "I think you're amazing," you should do that. You don't always have to disclaim it or quote it ("I've known you longer than anybody, Eddie, and anything you do is all right by me--can I borrow the car?") or make them work for it.

But here are just a few of the many problems with sincerism.

* It's a genre which thinks it's the whole of art; it's a perspective which won't acknowledge its contingency. If I speak in aphorisms or jokes or provocations, I am actually conveying something about both myself and my view of the truth, just as much as if I *~*bared my heart*~*.

* It's the privilege of those whose beliefs are basically mainstream to think that "realism" and sincerity are good ways of conveying the truth. Only those whose experiences and interpretations line up with mainstream culture can be guaranteed that their sincere heart-baring tales will be believed; and they're the ones for whom this language of sincerity was made. To take the boringly obvious example, if I want to talk about Gay Catholic Whatnot, I need to somehow entice or bully straight people (and non-Catholics, for that matter) into learning my language; I can't convey what I need to say in theirs. And I strongly suspect this is also true of other kinds of privilege, which is why Invisible Man is one of the greatest American artworks ever created.

It's never joking all the way down.

* Sincerism is the opposite of camp. Camp, as far as I can tell, only works if the thing parodied has some real emotional and personal resonance. Camp is never loveless or rationalist. Sincerism divides the world into "serious" and "oh but you don't really mean that"... when our actual hearts and lives are much more conflicted, complex, and complicit than that.

If I can think of more to say, I'll say it; and I do apologize for the deeply sincerist nature of this post! It's a Mobius strip of ridiculous.

INTERNATIONAL BLOG AGAINST RACISM WEEK: At LiveJournal, and very much a mixed bag, but I really like the variety of posts here--everything from fan pix of nerd icons to personal stories of racism to a quickie exploration of how certain feminist tropes reinforce privilege.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (MOVIE) IN 15 MINUTES: (uh, warnings for Samuel L. Jackson-esque language and suchlike)

The Unbreakable Vow

[Narcissa has come to beg an unusually feathered Snape for her son's life, and indeed, she is so distraught that her hair has gone two-toned. Her sister Bellatrix, however, is somewhat doubtful of Snape's stick-to-it-iveness.]

SNAPE: Begone, Wormtail! Fetch us a meat pie or something.

BELLATRIX: You realize that, in promising to cover Draco's ass, this is a vow that you cannot break, coward?

SNAPE: Yes.

BELLATRIX: Hence the unbreakability, scum?

SNAPE: Obviously.

BELLATRIX: And the vowness, Fluffy?

SNAPE: BRING IT.

Weasley & Weasley's Plot Point Emporium

FRED (OR GEORGE): Wouldn't it be awful if someone used our Instant Darkness Powder to infiltrate Hogwarts, thus leading to the death of Professor Dumbledore instead of just a harmless prank?

GEORGE (OR FRED): Well, that's why I put an anti-irony charm on it!

FRED (OR GEORGE): Excellent.

My mother is a fish

We asemble at the door where a beautiful AIRGURL is standing she is absolutely fizzing more lovely even than prudence entwhistle the under matron.
--Molesworth Back in the Jug Agane

THIS IS MY AMCON PIECE about Dupont Circle and bobos and rum and... rambling. This link actually works!

Mind you, there are some who think soccer is super. These are the ones who charge, biff, tackle and slam the leather first-time into the net ect. They hav badges and hav a horible foto taken at the end of term with their arms folded and the year chalked upon the pill. This foto cost there parents 7/6 on the skool bill and i hope they think it is worth it. i would not care for grabber's face on my walls, that's all.

Of corse i'm no good... no, i mean it... i simply am no good... no, please, grabber, my body-swerve... well, it go in the wrong direction... o, i sa, no... wot a nice thing to hear about myself... if i try hard i'll be in the seconds! And then how much further on would i be in the career of life, eh?
--Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, Molesworth Back in the Jug Agane... channeling a particular kind of soccer-related childhood bitchiness to which I was always prone.

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US: If you do not want to read vast amounts of bloggery about Gay Catholic Whatnot, you can skip to this post and scroll down for "Kings," squid, lawyers and language, avant-garde film, a creepy fetus, and the usual flotsam and/or jetsam.

If you do want to read vast amounts of bloggery about Gay Catholic Whatnot--my friend, have I got a deal for you!

SONG FOR A FUTURE GENERATION: OK, my thoughts on many different issues raised in response to my "Romoeroticism" piece.

"Beauty is an encroachment upon autonomy." (C. Paglia): It's been instructive to me that 90% of the comments I've received on the piece have been about this idea of vowed same-sex friendship, since, to be perfectly honest, that was a last-minute addition! And perhaps an ill-timed one, see below. I do have a lot to say about vowed friendship.

But maybe the other elements of my "Romoeroticism" piece are more fruitful, even though I have less to say about them. I think there's an immense amount of work yet to be done on how Catholicism's insistence on sexual difference may make the Church more attractive to gay people; I think Miss Ogilvy is right to suggest that talking about "gay as a genre" would illuminate in some way the difficulties of our current cultural moment and the possibilities for transcending them. And yet I have nothing left to say about that! HELP ME OUT, PEOPLE. Yes?

You can go your own way...: And, although in what follows I will be primarily talking about vowed friendships, I'd also challenge us to consider how we can foster friendships and extended forms of kinship outside of the formal vow. Can we make it culturally normal to take a leave from work because your friend needs you? Can we honor and respect godsiblinghood in the public sphere, giving that relationship the kind of weight and acknowledgment we give to blood kinship?

In Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, And Good for America, Jonathan Rauch lists off a bunch of cultural markers of the importance of marriage: When you're married, people ask after your spouse, and you're expected to know how your spouse is doing. Your family treats your spouse as part of their family: holiday photos, concerned questions, understanding that your obligations to the spouse and her family may conflict with your obligations to your family of origin. Your boss and your coworkers understand that the pictures on your desk represent ties of love and obligation, as deep as any human ties we know. Breaking up with your spouse is a tragedy, a publicly-acknowledged heartbreak. You're not expected to mourn that loss alone, just as you're not expected to bear the burdens of caring for and serving your spouse with no social support.

The thing is... these markers of kinship were not always restricted to marriage. (And, as I said before, in some communities in America today they are still not all restricted to marriage.) If marriage is the only form of kinship we recognize, all other loves will be treated as lesser, as purely private. When only marriage counts, should we be surprised that marriage is overburdened? Should we be surprised that Americans report far fewer close relationships than in the past? You get more of what you honor; we've withdrawn from any form of public honor for nonmarital chosen kinship.

Forget the vow thing for a moment and ask yourself whether there are things you can change in your own life--in your role as boss or coworker, in the questions you ask your children, in the invitations you extend for family gatherings, in the degree to which you are willing to sacrifice pride or time or money for another person--which would support and strengthen your own friendships and those of the people you love. If you can think of any way to make devoted friendship more normal... maybe do that thing, you know? Even if you disagree with me on everything else.

"Steady, Eddie...": But now, vows, since I do actually want to talk about them!

I think I messed up, in writing about this concept first for a piece about Gay Catholic Whatnot. In my own personal head, this was never an exclusively gay concept, though I think it should be obvious why it would be especially interesting to gay Catholics. But I thought at least as much about the many elderly women who make their homes, in their widowhood, with their best friends. A lot of families have these friendship pairs; a lot of families continue to care for the woman who is unrelated by blood, even after her blood-relation best friend dies. These are the "Aunties" who aren't really Grandma's sister. A formal vow might not matter to most of them; to some, however, it might seem as beautiful an acknowledgment of lifelong loyalty as it does to me.

Then there are veterans; then there are "straight" men who have virtually no way of articulating love for another man. I know that straight guys aren't allowed to talk about beauty and gay stuff like that!--but maybe that's also something we can change in our culture. It certainly isn't a good feature of contemporary American life.

One thing I really like about the possibility of renewing this tradition is precisely that it would offer so much solidarity, so much common recognition, between disparate groups. I won't denigrate my own concerns: Even if vowed friendship comes to be a "chaste gay thing," it will still be shockingly beautiful and entirely worthy of honor. But I hope these vows actually offer an expansion of our vocabulary of love and kinship for everyone.

If I am astonishingly lucky, and this form of kinship is in fact renewed, I strongly suspect it will take several different forms. I would argue that the basics should still involve the Eucharist, a pledge of mutual loyalty and loving care, a promise to care for one another's families, and a promise that the longest-surviving friend will arrange for Masses to be said for the souls of both friends. (Friendship always exists in the shadow of death, because it does not produce children. That's one reason the art of friendship is death-haunted from Augustine to the Weakerthans. And it's one reason that some form of fruitfulness and union beyond death should be a part of vowed friendship.) But other features of traditional friendship vows, such as living together, will vary. I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if men's friendships end up with somewhat different norms than women's, though I couldn't predict how, and I'd also be relatively unsurprised if they end up looking basically the same.

I know I keep saying this, but again I want to emphasize that this is lab research in theology: As with any tradition, you can't control it; you can only attempt, with rhetoric and the example of your life, to guide the river. I don't know how friendship will look in a hundred years, or even how it should look. I can rule things out, but I can't set up an ideal model. All I can do is suggest things we might try.

Thorns of the Mystical Rose: I do want to address one strain of argumentation I've noticed, which is basically to point out ways in which intense, devoted friendships (whether vowed or not) can be dangerous if you are attracted to your friend but cannot marry her. Because yeah: That's a danger. There are many friendships in which the best response is greater distance, a cooling-off.

But I absolutely do not believe that is true of all such relationships. Here are three angles of approach to that question (and I know I'm not disposing of every possible argument here, but I hope I'm at least giving food for thought):

1) All manner of pious practices can be misused, can become covers for sin. And yet at the Easter Mass I still got a plenary indulgence, you know? Cat'licks are always arguing that danger is not an argument against beautiful devotion--that the misuse doesn't crowd out the use.

2) I am quite sure that a friendship vowed and sealed publicly in the Eucharist, in front of family and friends who know that these two friends have pledged fidelity not only to one another but to the Gospel and to Jesus Christ, is more likely to be chaste than a friendship which is purely private, often treated by others as trivial, and granted no religious significance.

3) If unintended--and explicitly disclaimed!--consequences can argue against a pious practice, may I please deploy that reasoning against the pious practice of stating that the Catholic Church offers no way of honoring same-sex love? Because the unintended consequence of that act is atheism, when it isn't self-destruction.

So maybe we should accept that what we do and say can be misused and misunderstood, but it might still be worth doing and saying. She said, with a hint of acid.

No humility without humiliation: If you do want to make vows of same-sex friendship, I suspect you are in for a much harder time than Robin Darling Young had--especially if you're gay (whether or not your friend is gay also, and whether or not you're even attracted to her!). You will need to explain yourself, at tedious length I'd guess, to priests upon priests. You will need to figure out some way of introducing your friend which makes it clear both that she is part of your heart's landscape and that the two of you are not sexually active. I can say from experience that the whole "I'm gay but chaste because of my religion" conversation is humiliating and awkward and you feel like an ass.

All of this is good for your own spiritual life, and also necessary to prevent scandal. But you should be prepared. Public love has public consequences.

And we have not yet developed a beautiful public language. You can be a pioneer!

Call it what you want, you've got a home here: So why is it worth it? Why would anyone bother with the dilemmas, both old (spouse vs. friend is a theme the old ballads knew well) and new ("I dance around in a gay, gay way, but I'm not gay!")? Why bother with the humiliation? And in my case, why bother with the argument?

Well... for me it's easy. I mean, first of all, on the lower level, the conversation around gay stuff in the Church can get so stifling and polarized! I desperately want to let in some oxygen, give people some sense that our contemporary battles and jargon are not the sum total of Catholic faith, good God. But there's also something more.

For years and years I've seen the beauty of friendship. I've seen this unacknowledged, barely-supported love turn the water of our culture into wine. And then, not only did I find a way of honoring that love--so much more than that! I found a way of exalting it. To draw the strong wine of friendship into the Body and Blood of the Eucharist... it's breathtaking. You know, you can all but hear Alan Bray catching his breath when he first sees the tomb of two devoted men friends... and years later, reading his book, I reacted the same way. There's a feeling when your heart finds its home, and that home is so much more than you ever dreamed.

How could I not want to shout this from the rooftops?

#8 or 9, I've lost count: anonyreader: The last in today's series of replies to my "Romoeroticism" piece. I'll do a longish post in which I hope to give a better sense of what I'm going for here, but maybe not for another several hours--I may want to sleep on it a bit before the final (for today) roundup. Thanks to everyone who has written in!

This email, I note, was entitled, "Is 'Romoeroticism' Synonymous with 'Homo-eroto-schism?'" To which one can only say, "Well, no!"

Dear Ms. Tushnet,

I hope you will forgive my belated response to your article "Romoeroticism" but I needed time to digest what it was you were saying and insure that I understood you properly. My preparation may yet be inadequate but I trust that you will point it out to me should you find it so.

Your proposal, that the Church begin again to formally recognize chaste, same-sex friendships seems to be ignorant of the culture the Church now finds herself surrounded by. Everything has become sexualized to such a degree that a formally innocuous phrase like "come and see" now contains implications of the most indecent nature (forgive me). In the wake of a scandal where the sexual exploitation of adolescents was passed over with a wink and a nod, does it seem prudent to formally reinvigorate a custom from the past which, in the present culture, might be misunderstood as a wink and a nod to same-sex sexual activity?

Further, it seems to me that your attempt to discover licit, even sanctified, expressions same-sex desire fails to address the concession to utter depravity made by so many an apologist. Attempts to find precedents in stories such as that of David and Jonathan has, time and again, been utterly rejected with assertions that there can be no valid parallel drawn between that experience and the experience of two same-sex attracted men. Is it surprising, in the current climate, that even the Catholic Church seems to have nothing to offer beyond the frail hope that one's same-sex desires may cease? How does one escape the charge that one is simply reading justification for one's appetites into Tradition, Scripture or what have you?

To the question "Is there anything in my love and desire that the Catholic Church can respect?" the only answer I can arrive at honestly is "No." Even without sex, there is lust. Even without lust there is scandal. The occurrence of same-sex desire may not itself be a sin, but its every expression, both genital and affectionate, is. Chastity, properly understood, seems to imply the absence of same-sex desire. Therefore, in the midst of it, such an individual is caught in the paradox of learning not to love so that he or she may learn to love.

Eve says: I did say I'd post all critical emails. But I do think this position, in which cooking a bowl of soup for a sick lady becomes sinful if I think the sick lady is hot ("its every expression"), is untenable and forces us to reject an astonishing amount of beauty and love. I don't think it is necessary.

I do think the changed culture, and the increased possibility of scandal, are real issues. I'll address them in the roundup post... soon. Later today.

#8: another possibly-anonyreader?:

I read this piece (and your blogpost), and the comments with interest but also a good deal of confusion.

When I began to read the blogpost, I thought at first that you were recommending "vowed friendship" simply as a way of binding friends together. But as I read further, and read the piece at Inside Catholic, it seemed clearer that you were talking about a substitute for marriage, of a kind that would, I think, appeal mainly to SSA people, no matter what the original purpose of such vows might have been.

You seem to recognise this risk, and ask whether it matters, on the grounds that that chaste gay Catholics need an affirmation of their loves and family lives. I can see why this would be important to gay people, but I suspect that instituting or re-instituting such ceremonies would cause bewilderment among Catholics of whatever sexual orientation.

Straight people (esp. men, I suspect) would fear to try it with members of their own sex on the grounds that it might make them seem gay. Straight women might like the idea but not understand why such "best friendship" had to be exclusive. Straight men and women friends would fear it might be threatening to their spouses or potential spouses. Gay people would, I think, be sorely tempted to treat it as a marriage in every sense, including the physical. This temptation would be particularly powerful for the young and inexperienced, who might also reasonably ask "we're allowed every other expression of our love, why not the physical as well?"

You mention people like David Morrison and his partner, who live a chaste life together, but such couples are in a special position. Mr Morrison and his partner were once lovers. They have already found some form of sexual fulfillment together, in so far as homosexual sex can provide this type of fulfillment (and I suspect the Church would say that it cannot do so, or only in a limited sense). Two young SSA persons who exchanged best-friend vows would not have such a history behind them and find it very difficult to refrain from seeking sexual intimacy, esp. if they lived together, as you suggest such couples should.

I think the best hope for an SSA person who wishes to share his/her life in chaste friendship with someone of similar tendencies (or not of such tendencies? you aren't quite clear about this) would be some form of "domestic partnership" arrangement. This would not, of course, provide the public and vowed commitment you long for, but it would help to solve the loneliness problem and give some legal structure to chaste gay friendships.

I suspect that the Church simply is not going to yield on its view that homosexual love (if not chaste in both body and heart) is "objectively disordered", and thus not a thing to be celebrated by public vows of friendship, however chaste in intention. Sigh. I remember that when I was younger I used to search history, scripture, and anywhere else I could think of for some legitimate way out of the Church's restrictions on both pre and post-marital heterosexual activity. I couldn't find any. I realise that you aren't trying to do anything of the sort regarding SSA love, but I suspect you won't be any luckier than I was, just the same. Marriage is a sufficiently grave matter that the Church is unlikely to compromise regarding anything that looks like marriage, or could be mistaken for marriage, for fear of "scandalizing" the faithful.

Eve says: Yeah, I think this email hits on real issues, esp. cultural barriers (if a practice is taken up by gay people, will it become unattractive and/or embarrassing for heterosexual same-sex friends to do it?) and the potential for scandal. I think my upcoming post will make it clear that this is not "gay marriage lite," but in the end, really these questions of how can only be answered by individual people taking up this practice, renewing and reshaping it. If they want to, then the tradition will grapple with its accompanying problems; if they don't, we'll move on to other possibilities and other questions.

Super-quick clarification: While living together was one traditional part of English friendship vows, I wouldn't say vowed friends "should" live together; I think that's a matter for discernment, and often it just won't work for any number of reasons both practical and spiritual. Again, I don't think a renewed tradition would look the same as the earlier forms of that tradition....

#7: a... possibly-anonyreader?:

Eve, a question. (Well, upon re-reading this is more of a monologue) A lot of your talk about vowed same sex friendship seems to be very similar to my idea of the best friend. (I hate that particular usage, but it is the only phrase in current parlance that even comes close to the concept.) When I say best friend, I am referring to what Cicero talked about when he discussed friendship. If you haven’t read his On Friendship, you absolutely ought to.

I have a best friend, Ben, who is almost completely unlike me. But we were best friends literally days after we met, very much in the “unchosen” way you speak of. We have never taken any formal vows, but I would drop everything I am doing and fly to Florida (where he lives) to help him if needed. Our friendship is one of mutually held commitments and duties that we both take very seriously.

So, I am wondering if this is the kind of thing you are talking about, except with the addition of sexual attraction as a complicating factor, something to be transcended that I don’t have to worry about. Ben is really the only person I am comfortable describing as my “friend”, though I use the term more loosely with my close acquaintances to avoid hurt feelings. But I simply don’t have the depth of bond with those other people as I do with Ben, even though we only see each other at best once a year.

It is a different relationship than I have with my wife. And yet, somewhat similar. It’s hard to describe. It may just be that I have difficulty forming emotional attachments with people (which is true, my wife and Ben are the only people I would say that I am so attached to) but I don’t see a friend as merely someone with whom to hang out and have fun, watch the ball game, etc. It’s not even shared interests or political ideas. It is a shared commitment very similar to marriage, but without the sex or even the desire for it. It is a sort of mutual defense treaty, but deeper because you really want to put yourself out to help the other person. It’s not a burden. This seems to share some data points with what you are describing, though I get the impression that the vowed same sex friends might live together like siblings. Correct? Or is that simply a possible but not necessary variation?

This note is already too long, so I’ll shut up. I could talk about this kind of friendship for tens of thousands of words. However, you should definitely read Cicero’s thoughts on the subject! I think I see very much what you are saying, but slantwise. I think there are one or two elements that I am still failing to grasp, but it seems to me to be very similar to the concept of the non-Paris Hilton best friendship. I can see how some people would take this as simply “same sex marriage lite” and an unnecessary and troubling near occasion of sin, but I don’t think that is at all what you are driving at. And I'm not sure why the vows are necessary. However, there is something out there other than neanderthal beer buddies or frustrated suppressed longing.

Eve says: Yes, this is quite in line with my own thinking, as I hope will become clear when I do the final post in this series (for today). I hope that post will also give some sense of why the vows themselves are important to me, even though I also think we really need to give more honor to friendship when no formal vows have been taken.

#6: anonyreader:

I'd like to offer this meditation-response on your article, "Sublimity Now!", with some [relevance to "Romoeroticism"]. I am sorry that this is entirely too long and completely out of season. So feel free to edit as needed. ...

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Eve Tushnet's description of the bonfire scene at the beginning of the article "Sublimity Now!" reminded me of the great hymn of Pentecost, Veni Sancte Spiritus. "Come Holy Spirit and supernaturally send forth a ray of your light."* Tushnet observes that the sublimity of the bonfire implies danger and perhaps a tantalizing lack of control. Beauty, in the quotation she provides from Edmund Burke, implies that the awesome and fearsome nature of the sublime often turns people towards the beauty that is within their reach and control. Perhaps the sublimity of the bonfire represents the tongues of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The call of discipleship that flows from the burning, uncompromising tongues of Confirmation and Pentecost lasts well beyond the bishop's blessing of the last confirmand and the Ite of Pentecost Sunday Mass.

The concept of sublimity and the sacred resonates with my own experiences. So many times I will turn my face from the searing bonfire of the Holy Spirit and follow after the five watt bulb of flirting with some hottie. Yet even he will eventually wrinkle and lose his "beauty" and quick wit. And so will I, sans wit. And so will we all. The tungsten filaments of human light fizzle out quickly but the intense bonfire of of the Holy Spirit climbs even brighter. Brighter it glows, despite the times I have desperately wanted to reject sanctification for a few desperate minutes of screwing.

The Veni Sancte Spiritus petitions the Holy Spirit to correct the faults of Christians. "Bend what is rigid, warm what is chilled, [and] set straight what has gone astray."* Like our first parents who took the quince and ran with it, we paint masks to protect our faces from the heavenly rays that search the entire body and leave no lust, no desire unturned. It is a war between the choir loft and the pew: the words of the cleansing Spirit unmistakably flow over the congregation on Pentecost morning. But many in the pews deflect the searing and uncompromising Flame with crudely shaped Attic masks that protrude frozen lips shaped for shouting. "Teh gays!" these dramatists often cry outside Mass, as their masks slip slightly to reflect the loneliness we all partake of time after time. We queers know pain. Yet we busily paint our masks as well. We desperately deflect the cleansing Fire, and curse those who salt our wounds and bathe us with pity rather than compassion.

The Veni Sancte Spiritus ends with the following stanza: "Give us a virtuous reward, give us a graceful death. Give us joy everlasting."* It would be so nice to dance around the bonfire with a chaste lover, trampling our masks underfoot. The Flame tans our faces with Spiritual rays; the Flames occasionally leap to show the inadequacies of the beloved. We bruise our bare toes with misplaced dance steps.
Fumbled words trip up our intellectual pretensions. The tongues of fire protect us against settling for sex to mask our inadequacies. Discipleship is only a degree higher.

As Tushnet states in "Sublimity Now!", "an encounter with the sublime can teach us the white-hot passion of submission."

Shouldn't we queers search a lifetime for the fascination of the Flame living within another person, and reciprocating that Flame with mind and emotion transformed?

#5: Miss Ogilvy again (see below):

It seems to me that to win over the naysayers, you really ought to emphasize the "gay is a genre" point: how, for example, might the historical shifts in understanding sexuality speak to the question of renewing same-sex friendship-blessing? One could make a case that renewing this tradition would encourage skepticism about our culture's primary way of understanding "the tangle of experiences we've decided to call being gay" (as you put it in a post about Lillian Faderman). Chaste same-sex vowed friendship would be a way, not just of redeeming particular instances of same-sex attraction, but of changing (restoring?) the meaning of sexuality.

Eve says: Oh, this is so fascinating! I wish I had something useful to say about it! I know that gay is a genre but have a hard time cashing out what I mean by that. So if any of you all have thoughts on this question, I would really, really love to hear them!

#3: Miss Ogilvy:

...But for now, on to "Romoeroticism" (my reaction is kind of lengthy). [Also, by way of identification: I'm also SSA, female, and a recent adult convert (well, grad student convert, which isn't quite adult) to Christianity. I'm still trying to figure out the ethics of same-sex love.]

One of the comments-boxers accuses you of “trying to see the world through the prism of same-sex attraction.” But I wonder if it might be more accurate to say that you’re simply noticing ways in which Catholicism enables celibate same-sex attracted Catholics to receive God’s love corporeally. Let me flesh this out (pun intended).

As I was reading “Romoeroticism,” I kept thinking of Rowan Williams’ essay “The Body’s Grace.” For Williams, the question of embodiment is central to the problem of same-sex sexual ethics. In sex one learns that her body can be the cause of happiness to herself and to another person, and, as Williams puts it, “The life of the Christian community has as its rationale - if not invariably its practical reality - the task of teaching us this: so ordering our relations that human beings may see themselves as desired, as the occasion of joy.” And the problem of embodiment, of knowing ourselves to be desired, doesn’t go away for the single person:

All those taking up the single vocation – whether or not they are, in the disagreeable clinical idiom, genitally intact – must know something about desiring and being desired if their single vocation is not to be sterile and evasive. Their decision (as risky as the commitment to sexual fidelity) is to see if they can find themselves, their bodily selves, in a life dependent simply upon trust in the generous delight of God - that other who, by definition, cannot want us to supply deficiencies in the bliss of a divine ego, but whose whole life is a “being-for,” a movement of gift.

I’ve thus often bristled at the fact that so much of the Biblical picture-language for God’s love focuses on heterosexual marriage. How can I understand the tenor of divine love when my experience excludes me completely from the vehicle of these metaphors?

I think you’ve come up with an awesome solution in the way you look at Mary and the Church and Dante’s Beatrice.

That said, I have a couple of questions re: your desire to renew the practices of same-sex friendship blessing:

I take it that in your view one of the main reasons for recovering this tradition is to sublimate same-sex desire. But what if we saw the chief end of such friendships differently, focusing instead on its material and social benefits? In that case, what would you make of the possibility of a vowed, lifelong, liturgically-blessed friendship between a gay man and a gay woman? Or between a gay woman and a straight woman? Or between two straight women or two straight men? I know I would find a lifelong vow of sexless yet intimate friendship much easier to undertake with a gay or straight man – and maybe even with a straight woman – than with another lesbian: it would be heartache to live with a beautiful woman who also loved women and to remain chaste.

The “Romoeroticism” project implies that we can isolate the sex in same-sex relationships and call it wrong, while seeing the rest of the relationship as fine (the comment-boxers noticed this). I want to think carefully about what makes this sort of theological move possible. At first blush it seems silly – if the friendship structurally resembles marriage (sharing finances, caring for the friend’s aging parents), what makes having sex so bad? Is it simply a question of procreative potential?

The English poet W.H. Auden, a gay convert to Christianity, has an interesting take re: question-cluster #2. In a letter to Wendell Stacy Johnson in the early 50s, he writes: “Have you seen the C of E report on homosexuality? In its wish to be fair, it falls into the odd position of declaring that only the act is sinful which is, of course, heretical and, from a practical point of view, ineffective. Nobody, where there is mutual consent and pleasure, can possibly feel an act is wrong: if it is, the reason must lie in the personal relationship which desires the acts.” But from your comments in the Romo-thread, it seems like you imagine that personal relationships which become vowed friendships probably won't include desire for sexual acts (I note your example of the eroticism w/ your striking, brilliant friend that pointed toward education, not sex). I get this - maybe it would help your argument if you talked about the (hopefully communal) discernment process that would lie behind such vowed friendships. On your chaste model, it would be important to partner w/ people w/ whom shared eros very obviously didn't point toward sex.

Eve says: Hmmm, first of all, I'm so glad the Beatrice stuff made sense to you! Second, I think possibly my basic vision of how vowed friendship could work will be a bit clearer in a moment when I've posted my next installment of wiggy ponderings on the subject.

Third... I find both Williams's and Auden's quotes here very odd indeed, especially the latter! The act of sex makes a difference because our bodies make a difference. (And I would argue that some form of iconicity--la difference--is primary in the Christian vision of sex, and procreation is secondary.) I genuinely don't understand his argument w/r/t "Nobody, where there is mutual consent and pleasure, can possibly feel an act is wrong: if it is, the reason must lie in the personal relationship which desires the acts." I can consent to and take pleasure in all kinds of acts with another person which in fact I should sublimate and express in another way. This seems so obvious that I think I must be misunderstanding! If so, please just ignore all this, as I don't mean to waste your time with unhelpful ranting. (I can give examples and analogies if needed, though I'm trying to avoid that since analogies, as I've said, generally beg their questions in this kind of discussion.)

I... see your point, re communal discernment of a vocation to a specific vowed friendship, since it's easy to fool ourselves and assume that the sacrifice we want to make is the sacrifice God wants. And yet every fiber of my being revolts against the idea of trying to explain my love to a parish committee! In fact, there seems a danger of "sincerism" there, if we believe and require that love can be fully articulated and brought under the sway of juried evidence and common sense. I am unwilling to recommend specific forms of communal discernment to everyone, though I will recommend getting outside perspectives from people you trust. I know that's very individualist--you are most likely to trust the people who will give you the answer you already want!--but I don't see a better alternative. More on the necessary humiliations involved in renewing vowed friendship in a moment. But I wanted to say that you make an important and difficult point here.

And finally, I highly recommend Miss O's blog to anyone interested in Gay Christian Whatnot! I will link it in my blogroll forthwith.

#2, Philomena:

I've been a lurking follower of your blog for some time now, and am just emerging from the shadows to comment on the comments on "Romoeroticism" at InsideCatholic (don't really feeling like fighting it out amongst the commenters at the moment, but wanted to offer a positive review anyhow).

I loved the piece for the same reason I enjoy all your writing: intellectually rigorous without being pedantic, orthodox beliefs which you don't feel the need to constantly apologize for, lovely prose, and (last but not least, as they say) for the experiences and reflections that I identify with. In this piece particularly, I immediately recognized the feeling you talk about, a yearning which is essentially unfulfilled but which seeks to be fulfilled through God, something which is deeply associated with the body but not reducible to physical urges and desires. Though my own tendencies don't generally run in the direction of SSA, I find that your writing often touches that chord of recognition in me. Maybe it's just a function of being young and reared on the same sort of critical/theoretical/philosophical language, like the post-modern tendency to find sexual motivations for everything. It gets silly, but that kind of thing is rooted in a real experience, the thread of eros (the longing, that is) that runs through a lot of everyday life.

But the comments at InsideCatholic puzzle me because so many of them just seem to be missing the point completely. They're either a) identifying eros with lust and/or , which I'm pretty sure is not theologically sound, or b) wanting the "bottom line" of whether or not you're saying homosexuality is sinful. Or both. None of the contentious commenters seem to be really engaging with the spiritual reality that you're describing, and instead are telling you what you're "really saying" and then going from there (I'm trying really, really hard not to be snarky right now!). I'm forced to think that the problem is a lack of recognition, because surely everyone has felt that formless longing at some point in their lives; they're just not identifying their experience as being the same as what you're talking about, since yours is attached to SSA and theirs is presumably attached to something else.

If they did recognize it, then they wouldn't be gabbing on about how God told them personally to be fruitful and multiply and how if there's a sexual shading to adult friendship it renders the relationship poisonous and how we all just need to read our Bibles really. Instead, they would actually maybe be able to sympathize with gay people, who currently (and quite understandably) feel frustrated by the amazing unhelpful stuff they're saying.

Internet comment threads are where the influence of the Tower of Babel really becomes clear. We're all speaking the same language, even using the same words, but we mean rather different and specific things by them. The only way to define them is with more words, which leads to the same problem. The only way to escape it is to make a leap of understanding and identification not strictly intellectual in nature; my theory is, there used to be a bridge there, so we didn't have to jump.

Sorry for the long and somewhat rambling email. I should really stop reading comment threads, cause they always make me want to hit something.

Eve says: Well first, thanks for the very kind words! And yeah, I think there is a point at which prudence becomes safety-fetishism... which is not the Catholic way. (Or not the only Catholic way!) I understand why many of the IC commenters thought I was imprudent, but I still disagree with where they draw that line. More on this in a bit.

RESPONSES TO "ROMOEROTICISM": Post #1, anonyreader. (this is a repost--accidentally posted it in a messed-up form earlier, which I hope nobody noticed! And it's actually about my Commonweal piece, but I thought it was apropos.)

I have just read your essay or reflections on Homosexuality & the Church in Commonweal. I liked your voice - but I ended up feeling confused...

I remembered once, many years ago, I had my little niece visiting me - she was only three, four or five years old - don't remember exactly and I was out of the church at that time, and we were talking about God and I think I said Where is God? - and she pointed her finger towards the heaven - and I smiled and said No, she is down there pointing towards the ground. She looked at me bewildered first and then giggling....

I think I did it because I had just discovered how different it would have felt for me If our creed had been talking about the Mother, the Daughter and the Holy Spirit - very estranging....

I know what Fatherly love is and I know the thrust in the Father - but the metaphor of relationship is not gendered? Being a son is not different from being a daughter? I hope not! To love God with all my heart - is loving a You/ a Thou -

Relating to the Word, the Son, The Christ, Jesus - and loving Jesus - How is that for a man and a woman? Is it a gendered face or is it Compassion, Lovingkindness in eyes - in a bodylanguage which still is not a masculine body? Just Human? Or is it not? Like when we don't differentiate between he and she in our prose and let he be both? - because for me there is a difference reading he and/or she....

I am a man who is longing for another man - a thou embodied in a male body - still my love is for a thou. Some men and women fall in love with another man or woman with the same personality profile - some fall in love with someone who has another personality profile then their own - no matter if they are hetero- or homosexual...

But then there is the question of energy - that prototypes of Man and Woman even though they conceal all differences in those categories - they help molding the feeling of wholeness - for most gendered people - and this is based on the man longing for a woman and a woman longing for a man... maybe... and that's why children have to protect those bounded categories. We have all kinds of labels for lesbians and gays - and people identify with those roles, even though they might know that they are more than that identity. Some of those roles seems to me to be somewhat not autentic to the self...

I think there is a problem with the dicotomy of Man and Woman - if we don't ask what kind of man and what kind of woman - and I don't mean a real man and not a real man/ a real woman and not a real woman - or a good woman or a bad woman. I think polytheistic religions may have more opportunities for personal fullfillment through prototypes than we have through Jesus and Mary....

These are just some impulsive reflections... I would like very much to read what you think about these things.

Eve says: I do think our longings are often, though not always, very strongly gendered. That's where I was going with the "Beatrice" passage in the IC piece. This doesn't require rigid gender roles, but a more subtle sense that Woman and Man have some iconic reality. There's a very lovely thing in Thomas a Kempis's Reflections on the Passion of Christ where he reworks the Song of Songs as a hymn to the Christ crucified, which is deeply attentive to the body, very much attuned to the sublime aspect of the flesh; you might appreciate that. I've found praying the Anima Christi is also very striking.

ALL THIS USELESS BEAUTY. It's the feast of St. Martha.

CANCEL YOUR OWN DAMN SUBSCRIPTION TO THE RESURRECTION!

A MOCKERY KING OF SNOW: Some thoughts on what is either the season or the series finale of Kings. My first post on the crypto-Biblical show; my second. Spoilers, but not ultimate ones, i.e. I won't tell you how it ends. I'll just give you a rough sense of a couple things which happen on the way there.

The most striking thing to me in this episode was the scene in which Jonathan realizes God didn't choose him for the crown. Finally, I can get behind Sebastian Stan's acting! I haven't felt that way since the first episode. He shows unspoken thoughts completely clearly, without relying solely on the lip-wobble he substitutes for emotion in most of the other scenes of this episode. He does a thing which always gets me, where you laugh or smile while saying something obviously painful. (There's a bit in the acting book Audition which suggests playing against the obvious emotion of a scene; even a quick moment of that reversal can go a long way toward conveying emotional complexity and shaky control.) Stan has to sell this scene, and its many shifting parallels: God as father, God as lover, God as enemy, God as king. There were at least two moments where I felt like I knew exactly what Jack was thinking, even though those thoughts weren't articulated--in a show which tends to spell out way too much.

...After that he mostly reverts to lip-wobbling. But still--despite the cliched dialogue, that was a really effective scene.

Other things which worked for me: There are some comedic moments dropped without warning into the grimth. I really liked that hairpin twist of audience reaction, and it cut through the melodrama.

Rose is great. Silas is stupidly great. William Cross is evil and great! So, in a startling twist, is his Culkin-played son.

There's a scene with ridiculous dialogue, but I loved it anyway, because what at first appear to be noir conventions are completely overturned. A city rainstorm, which ordinarily would be treated as isolation and abandonment by justice (cf. the beautiful series finale of Veronica Mars) is instead treated as if the country and the genre were still agricultural--rain is providence. I'm actually more impressed by this than by the many times the dialogue has spoken from within a monarchist worldview, since it's harder to think in alien metaphors than to think in alien lines.

I'm not sure how I feel about the deeply obvious father/Father parallels. Various lines where you're not sure whether "him" is capitalized. There's some lovely later stuff where the same thing is done with enemy/God-as-Enemy, which is a callback to a previous tank-laden scene and also reminiscent of Judah Halevi.

eta: I'd forgotten, until I re-read my first post about this show, that the enemy/God parallel is present from the very first episode. Oh man, that's hot.

Things which didn't work for me: Everything involving God except Rev. Samuels's lines, and the aforementioned rain scene.

Specifically, the implication that God instituted the monarchy is directly in opposition to the Hebrew Bible. Which... maybe okay???, if I had any sense of why that change to the Biblical text was made. Which I don't; because God is still mostly just a tank.

Neither Jonathan nor David appear especially devout. In fact, they're two of the least devout main characters--only Rose and her brother appear less concerned with God!--which is just weird. And, as I've said from the beginning, this change makes the story vastly less interesting than the Biblical canon. This final episode showed Jack moving closer to his father in his view of God (which would still be a far cry from the devotion of the Biblical characters), but still, what is God in this series other than celestial election returns?

On a less-intense level, I note that the front/homeland tension of the first few episodes was completely dropped and pretty much never regained. I'm sorry about that. American television should have a show for that, and I'm not sure there's another one.

I think the ending of the episode fits with the series but doesn't expand it.

Do I want this to be renewed? I've heard rumors that it might be. And... I'm conflicted, but mostly yeah, I want more. On the one hand, its portrayal of God--Who surely should be an important character!--is shallow and convenience-oriented. And it's hard to watch a David story where I deeply dislike both the Jonathan actor and the Michal actress. On the other hand... this show is doing such an unusual, risky thing. And I'm interested! They know how to build suspense. They give me something to think about, even when I can't stand their choices. I want there to be a space on television for souffles, even if I think this particular souffle is a bit floppy.

HEAVEN IS NOT A FARM. I have a piece in the current American Conservative--basically vignettes from Dupont Circle. You can read it here as PDF; I'll let you know if an html version goes up.

"BEFORE VATICAN II, THIS SQUID WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO GROW BIGGER THAN SUSHI-ROLL SIZE."

IN RE: CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION: A fun post about the linguistic-theory difficulties with a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode; but I was struck by this comment: "Perhaps more lawyers need to see this episode, for the Tamarian language is exactly what we sound like to laymen. We communicate with each other by shorthand references to complex legal doctrines that are, without a fairly full explanation of context, misleading when reduced to a short summary."

ETA: I also liked some of the comments defending the episode, especially this one, since Nietzsche's parable of language-formation falls close to my own view (though without the atheist's insistence that metaphorical meaning is arbitrary).

IN WHICH A NATURE DOCUMENTARY COUNTS AS "AVANT-GARDE" FOR SOME REASON: Thoughts on Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and '30s: Disc One. This is the remainder of the first disc. As before, no accent marks.

Brumes d’automne: Same guy as “Menilmontant,” but only 12 mins long. Does what it says on the tin. Falling leaves; parallel between fire and rain. He leaves her, she burns his letters, she stares soulfully, she walks through fallen leaves. Blur effects felt kind of cheap (unlike e.g. the underwater, Monet blur effects in “L’etoile de mer”). Really cool singing on the soundtrack, which is original I’m pretty sure, not new.

Lot in Sodom: Biblical retelling; old-fashioned music; shirtless boys leaping about in makeup. The opening is fantastic, with “Bride of Frankenstein”-style electricity effects lancing down through a clouded sky; then mists part like fire from Heaven, and we zoom down onto the city. Unfortunately, the flick itself doesn't live up to its opening. …Does “Mulier templum est” really mean “Woman is a temple”? (Or, “The woman is a temple”? Or something completely different?) Snakes, doves, blossoming flowers = sex. No trains into tunnels, sadly. A hilarious beard which looks like the cotton-ball concoction we used at JCC day camp to play “Pin the Beard on Mordecai.” There’s a lovely moment with Lot’s wife running, just before she looks back at the city. Her transformation is done in a way that reminded me a bit of the original Star Trek crossed with modern “become a flower” dance.

Rhythmus 21: It’s a Severed Heads video from 1990, only seventy years too early! …No, actually, it’s three minutes of rectangles. Ohhhhhkay.

Vormittagsspuk/Ghosts Before Breakfast: “The Nazis destroyed the sound print of this movie as ‘degenerate art.’ It shows that even objects revolt against regimentation.” Charming, playful imagery—hats flying upward, a shirtcollar baffling its wearer, an assassin’s target making his head fly around to defy the assailant, men stroking phantom beards. Kind of “Monty Python” animation meets children’s television, with (new) cabaret music. There are a lot of guns here, giving a sense of menace, but the overall tone struck me as lighthearted… for now. This is the same guy as “Rhythmus 21,” but this one is delightful and more than a little foreboding.

Anemic cinema: Marcel Duchamp, anagrammatic. (We’re so proud that little Marcel has won the Surrealist Spelling Bee of 1922! His wonderful prize is a dictionary in which all the definitions have been replaced by pictures of alley cats.) The new music is slightly Doors-like, hypnotic, paired with what I found predictably hypnotic and willfully-nonsensical imagery. Possibly the wordplay is a lot more fun if you’re French.

Ballet mecanique: The new music is lovely, thin and shivery, but I admit I zoned out for most of this. It’s, you know, gears and stuff. There are some really fun shots of women’s eyes opening—women’s eyes are made for the movies, but maybe especially for the avant-garde. There’s a nice if heavyhanded bit of imagery-punning as the O’s in a newspaper-style headline become the pearls of the stolen necklace which is the subject of that headline. There are some odd shots of a stocky woman walking up a road; not sure what those are doing.

Symphonie diagonale: The director’s first name is “Viking”!!! TOO MUCH AWESOME. Ooooohhh I’m loving the new music. I’m not sure how it would play with the original soundtrack (if any?), but with this music it comes across as a study of pacing. The kind of thing fanvid makers often talk about: matching visual movement to music beats. (I may be over-influenced by the pre-title here, which talks about how the piece explores time in film. Don’t worry—only two of the movies have pre-titles, and both are decades old, so you’re more or less allowed to come to these movies raw.) Man, this music is hot. If Sue Harshe composed this specifically to mirror the beats of the visuals, rather than simply adapting original music which did the same thing, she’s a stone genius.

Le Vampire: Original music, very jazzy and cool. Nature is bizarre! “Fully articulated appendages suggest a supernatural being.” At first I thought that meant that anytime you find fully-articulated appendages, that articulated critter is like a supernatural being in some way, but actually I think it’s intelligent design theory. Oh well. This short quotes from “Nosferatu” and locates the origin of the vampire myth in the various eldritch horrors of the natural world. An intelligent designer need not be a benevolent one!

Animal was harmed in the making of this picture. (Guinea pig, playing a guinea pig.)

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles!!! …and also William Vance. Parodic Southernisms including blackface and much grotesquerie. It becomes a thing which might be a protest against lynching, without sacrificing its avant-garde artistry in the service of politics.

MAN RAY? I'LL WAIT UNTIL THEY MAKE A WOMAN RAY...: I'm watching a Netflixable thing called "Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and '30s: Disc 1." It's three hours long and you couldn't pay me to watch that much indie-film at once, so I'm taking it in bits and pieces. Here are some thoughts on the first six movies--all but two highly recommended. I make no attempt to provide accent marks, because "that's the way Dad did it, that's the way America does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far!"

And also, I'm lazy.

Man Ray, "Le Retour a la raison": This is a great teaser for the rest of the disc. It's maybe two or three minutes long?--yet you'll find yourself catching "future echoes" of everything from Sesame Street to Hitchcock. (Seriously, I'd need two hands to count the times this disc has reminded me of children's television--from Pinwheel's opening sequence to 3-2-1-Contact's, from ZOOM's cheapness-equals-existentialism to Looney Toons' expressionism.)

The music, so far on every movie, has been amazing. It's new--created for this release, I think?--and so it creates a completely new viewing experience from the one contemporary audiences would have had. But then, my experience would never be what a contemporary audience might've had; and this new experience is so fantabulous that I can't wish it were different. I'd play this every day just for the music. Imagine... maybe the Raincoats, muddled with Herrmann, dragged a few feet leftward to Messaien, about a quarter-mile east toward Mozart, and a mile south toward Bizet??

Man Ray, "Emak-Bakia": Suspense music plus adventure-movie visuals! Pilotesses in earflaps! Sheep and pigs! The ghosts of women's legs stride out of a jeep again and again, memory, until they resolve into the Charleston. A lady has eyes painted on her eyelids. Daggone that's uncanny.

White buildings and film-white skies.

Man Ray, "L'etoile de mer": Surrealist sex! The clash of symbols (Cybele, Impressionism); perversity (she strips to her skivvies, then tells him to leave!); mad science; the permeable boundary between nature and culture. Oozy beauty.

I loved this like cake.

Man Ray, "Les Mysteres du chateau du De": ...The music is bouncy and hilarious, and for a long time this feels like a Beckettish, Goreyish comedy of meaninglessness. But then it settles down to portentous talk of MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN and Venus Astarte, and I can't do it anymore. Fans of The Prisoner might like it more than I did. Also, I wonder how much the opening of The Exorcist owes to this piece--if anything.

Robert Florey Y U NOT MAN RAY?, "The Life and Death of 9413": Bog-standard Hollywood disillusionment, barely redeemed by some lovely acting. MEH. If you're enough of a film buff to watch this disc, you're enough of a film buff to have seen this movie five times already, only better.

Someone I forget, "Menilmontant": WOW, shivery horror piece. Fans of Heavenly Creatures, Doctor Faustus, and especially Picnic at Hanging Rock shouldn't miss this. I felt like it lost steam relatively quickly, but there are some frightening moments here even in silent film, and I'd absolutely watch a remake of this. I'm not sure if it was genuinely a bit conventional for an "experimental" disc, or if it merely highlighted how many avant-garde techniques carried over into genre filmmaking. Highly recommended either way.

UMBERT THE UNHEIMLICH: If you spend a lot of time in Cat'lick pro-life circles, you may well run across a cartoon strip called "Umbert the Unborn." In this thing, a charmin' little guy hangs out in his (never-pictured) mother's womb, offering uplifting folk wisdom about the funny little things in life.

You... can probably tell from that description that this strip is way too Bil Keane for me to understand its virtues. Apparently at least one other pro-life Catholic has found the premise of this strip intensely creepy.

Matthew Lickona's Alphonse features a similarly-sentient fetus. But Alphonse is vividly aware of his utter helplessness--not as a political contingency but as an existential threat. His mother wants to kill him. And she would succeed... except that Alphonse, in a horrific freak occurence, survives and crawls away.

This is a horror comic which simultaneously exploits and transcends the abortion-horror storylines I talked about here. The comic relies on the flesh-creeping, Uncanny Valley nature of the late-term fetus in order to get its effects--yet, unlike most other horror-baby works, it treats the creature as a person: a monster like Frankenstein's, a bloodied self whose individuality is real, not purely symbolic. And Alphonse's would-be savior herself must break ethical boundaries in order to do what she thinks she has to do to preserve his life. We get trapped in spirals of wrong actions, and when you get down low enough it's hard to see a clean way out.

(The fact that the comic never states explicitly that that's the very reason many women abort is one of its many signs of respect for its audience. There are several parallels between the would-be abortive mother and the would-be baby-saver, but they're done quietly, not stridently.)

The artwork is gritty but not awkward, by an artist who's worked in mainstream comics (WildStorm and maybe something else?) and who uses fairly standard contemporary Western comics techniques clearly and well. The art basically doesn't get in the way, though it also won't be the reason you buy the comic. The figures, gestures, "camera angles," and pacing are all unobtrusively well-chosen. (The women, by the way, look like individual women--indie comics usually do a lot better about this than superhero titles, but I still thought I should mention it.)

I don't know to what extent I can recommend this title yet, since I've only seen the first issue. It's the sort of thing where the premise might be much better than the denouement. But if you think this sounds worth trying, do check it out. I'll say that it does pummel you emotionally, but not ideologically. I'm excited to see where this story goes. Lickona's website might be the best place to order it.

CONTEXTUALISM: Readers have questions about my epic American Constitutional Society panel post! You got questions, I got answers. (Or... I got replies. "Answers," not so much, this ain't Ann Landers, bud.)

reader #1 (I will add names if I get permission):

I'm a lawyer, and I saw your comment that you have "found the Sotomayor hearings a farcical exposure of the weaknesses of the 'originalist'/'just read the text' position." I wouldn't let the ham-handed, grandstanding questioning by the Republican Senators be an indication of the weaknesses of the originalism/textualism position, any more than the equally hapless grandstanding questioning of Justices Roberts and Alito by Democratic Senators should be an indication of the weaknesses of [...] other interpretive theories.

Yeah, in fact I basically agree with this. I tried to indicate in the post that I think the progressive/"democratic Constitutionalism" position has weaknesses which largely parallel those of the textualist/"originalist" position, and the latter position has strengths with which the progressives at the ACS are, in my view, productively grappling. (Most prominently, the text guys hammer on our desire not to be ruled by five philosopher-kings or costumed vigilantes; and our belief that words should be basically intelligible to most people. This latter may be naive, but it's not stupid, and it's not wrong.) But confirmation hearings, as my father might tell you, are basically the worst window into Constitutional interpretation.

reader #2 aka Willard Moore:

Why do you think it is an advantage to come from an academic and intellectual society, rather than from people with actual experience in practicing law? What do you mean when you say you are out of sympathy with the silent majority?

To the first question, I'm sorry--I hadn't meant to contrast academia with legal practice. I was intending to contrast academia with political office. The Reagan-era "Constitution in 2000" document came from within a sitting administration; the ACS guys have much more freedom, I think, to distance themselves in intellectually-fruitful ways from the Obama administration.

Second question: Oh you know, this was just my usual anti-bourgeois shtik, and largely not worth the time you spent wondering about it! My sympathies never go to the people who make the world work. I always want to be the monkey-wrencher. I always focus on the things the current culture gets wrong, where we all need a slappin' from the Church, instead of talking about ways we do things better than other possible civilizations. There are benefits to that approach but there are obvious drawbacks (especially of prideful contempt for one's fellow Americans), so I try to flag that tendency when I notice it.

Holding the mask is like handling a pair of handcuffs: you can't help wanting to try it on.
--Father of Frankenstein

L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO ON OSCAR WILDE. I am contractually obligated to provide you with this link! (...I wouldn't wade into the comments if I were you.)