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U. S. Roman Catholic bishops first published a pastoral letter to
parents of homosexual children in December 1997. In Argentina,
however, our Catholic leaders have provided no such document to guide
and orient us regarding God's gift of sexuality. When I first read the
document I was deeply moved even by the title. "I am gay, but before
all a son." I took the English copy to a Catholic publisher here and
tried to convince them to translate and publish the document, but to no
avail.
In 1998, however, Dignity sent me a copy of the document already
translated into Spanish. So again I visited the Catholic publisher,
this time with the Spanish edition in hand, to see if they would now
publish it in Argentina. Two weeks later, the publisher called to tell
me that they had decided rather to publish an announcement about the
publication in their Sunday leaflet (which includes the lectionary
Scripture lessons and comments and is distributed free each week to all
who attend mass in all our Catholic parishes)--and give my name,
address and phone to permit interested readers to request a copy from
me directly! With Argentina's 30 million population, some 90% Roman
Catholic, what kind of response should we prepare for?! The
announcement was published the third Sunday of January, 1999.
Soon the requests began pouring in, mainly from the interior, by phone,
fax and letter--more than 150 to date--from parents, catechists,
priests, and seminarians, many with moving expressions of need:
"I'm praying for you, your plans and family."
"I need a copy for my husband, because his brother is gay and he wants
to understand him better."
"May God put his good hand on you to bless you for undertaking this
ministry."
"The document is beyond reproach."
This "coming out" stage of my life, providentially, was marked at the
beginning with another gift from God.
At first, in December, 1991, the Argentine Supreme Court upheld an
appellate court decision denying legal status to the CHA (Community of
Argentine Homosexuals), at that time our country's only gay rights
organization. That decision provoked such a national and international
scandal that our President, Carlos Menem, removed the director of the
government office involved, whose replacement then without further ado,
granted the legal status solicited by the CHA.
That entire conflict, at times thunderous, was amply covered by the
media. However, throughout the entire process the medical
establishment, psychologists and lawyers, with their professional
societies and lawyers, maintained absolute silence about the case. Why
such total silence?
In face of this deafening silence on the part of university
researchers, I began to voice my complaints and demanded an explanation
from the secretaries of research in various faculties in the University
of Buenos Aires--and even managed to get an article published in an
intellectual journal denouncing the shameful silence.
The only professor who owned up to the situation and answered my
complaints responsibly was Enrique Oteiza, who directed the Center for
Research of the School of Social Sciences. "The absence of research in
this area is a sign of backwardness, and lack of professional ethics,"
he asserted, and committed his Health and Human Rights Section to
prepare a research project on homosexuality.
The resulting project, Homosexuality and Human Rights in the City of
Buenos Aires, was prepared by a team of investigators in May, 1994, to
be carried out from 1994 to 1997, and was approved with the highest
classification by the University's Secretary of Science and Technology.
In 1997, this investigation of gay and lesbian identity, homophobia and
human rights was completed on schedule, published the following year,
and remains the only such university investigation in this area in
Argentina.
When I read my name in the preface and was presented with a copy of the
new publication I sensed that my coming out in my university had
resulted in a kind of sacrament of reconciliation with my profession as
researcher.
Another dimension, however, proved more painful. In 1992, I was
finishing my doctoral thesis in the School of Pharmacy and
Biochemistry. This put me in an odd situation as a philosophy grad
working on a history thesis in physiology, but I was glad for the
company of other doctoral students on scholarship. One of them
discovered that he could converse freely with me about AIDS,
photography, the death of his grandfather and various situations in the
university that bothered him. Our intimacy increased without my
realizing it. But one day when I realized that I was thinking of him
constantly. I realized I had fallen in love. I had to recognize the
truth in the assertion that often we don't realize we are gay until we
fall in love with someone of the same gender.
In March, 1994, I was able to tell him that I was in love with him, but
he responded with surprise "So that's what this was all about!" and
recalled all the care and concern I had been showing for him. He also
seemed to recognize, without being able to admit it openly, that I had
touched on his own deepest secret. My confession proved too great a
challenge and turned out to be the last of our conversations.
However, by falling in love with this person I was able to receive the
gift of reconciliation with myself, experience inner healing from my
own internalized homophobia, and stop denying God's gift of my sexual
orientation.
Already, in mid-1993, my wife and I had initiated a divorce by mutual
consent, the judge rapidly dissolved the marriage and I left the house
I had shared for 15 years with her and my two children. When the
divorce was over I felt that I could begin to speak more freely with
those who were still family, even though we no longer lived together.
However, when I began to share with them my experience of falling in
love, both my daughter and my mother were devastated, and their homophobic
anxieties separated them from me in a way the judicial sentence had
never accomplished.
On that occasion my son, then 13 years old, expressed solidarity with
me and reprimanded his mother and older sister, reminding them that
Paul's letter to the Galatians says "In Christ Jesus, ..., the only
thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." Later,
when I was able to converse more tranquilly with him to see how he
felt, his response was still firm: "How could I feel ashamed of my
father for being honest about who he is. I'm really proud of you!"
That solidarity I experienced as a sacrament of reconciliation with the
fundamental elements of my faith.
When our discussions about homosexuality appear to cancel each other
out from the beginning with a Catholic who insists "The Catholic Church
says that ...," we need to ask where our Catholic friend is coming from,
since he or she also is church.
With such an interchange both the affirmation and response represent a
cry for reconciliation. When I let my mother know about my sexual
orientation and after a few other comments, she responded that she
really didn't care whom I slept with.
The conversation went in other directions and we left. But days later
I began to feel angry about the indifference my mother had expressed.
With her language my mother had now affirmed her indifference to my
spiritual welfare expressed corporally, although years before this had
been very important to her when she had attended my wedding. After
that exchange, for almost three years I had little contact with my
mother, who lived in another city. Then, in 1998, my mother visited
family members in Buenos Aires and when I heard from my daughter that
she wanted to see me, we arranged to meet. I was able to remind her
about our last conversation and expressed my resentment about her
attitude. She insisted that the Bible backed her up. Sensing that we
had to agree to disagree, I let the matter drop. I accompanied her to
the train station for her trip back home and she said she planned to
return in two months for Christmas and the New Year, so we would see
each other soon.
But my mother then died suddenly just a week before Christmas. When I
heard, I was glad I had listened to my daughter's exhortation to meet
with my mother again and not let resentment get in the way of our
reconciliation.
That was the way I experienced the sacrament of reconciliation with my
mother and the mercy I hope to receive from God.
When, in 1992, I criticized my fellow scientists for their irresponsible
complicity in the Supreme Court's homophobic judicial decision against
the CHA, I really began a process of spiritual revelation communicated
to us in the sacrament of reconciliation.
Because, in reality, what I was doing was to exhort myself to accept
God's grace present in my life now and to trust in the unfailing mercy
of Jesus and begin to walk the road of reconciliation with myself in
order to experience reconciliation with others.
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Voices of Hope : A Collection of Positive Catholic Writings on Gay & Lesbian Issues Jeannine Gramick (Editor) John J. McNeill Chris Glaser
Websites:
Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Catholic Handbook
Roman Catholic Church and Homosexuality
Also In This Issue:
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