Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Gay YouTube Sensation Steve Grand & All-American Reconciliation

Gay Country Singer/Songwriter Steve Grand [photo courtesy of Steve Grand]

Gay Country Singer/Songwriter Steve Grand [photo courtesy of Steve Grand]

Posted in “Gay Voices” on The Huffington Post, July 15, 2013.

Steve Grand, a formerly unknown singer/songwriter from Chicago, hit a nerve of longing and reconciliation with his County Music ballad of unrequited love, “All-American Boy.”  In less than two weeks since Grand put the video up on YouTube, the song has received nearly a million hits, measuring up favorably against the offerings of some of the most recognizable names in American music.  What makes “All-American Boy” so compelling at this time in our culture is the way Grand’s breathtaking roll-of-the-dice for love, approval, and self-acceptance touches the nation’s soul.

Betting everything on one video, Grand maxed out his single credit card and drew on the kindness of friends to put together the story of a campfire crush that leads to a single kiss, and then to a gentle, heartbreaking rebuff.  All the elements of the familiar story of unreciprocated love are there: desire, forlorn hope, vulnerability, the awkward kiss, rejection, and then the disappointment and the aching hurt that go with it.  But Grand injects the story with a crucial twist that only could work today: the unrequited lover and his object of desire are both men.

Grand’s back story provides the spiritual energy that connects his song with the life experiences of so many people.  The child of a Catholic Midwestern family who discovered his attraction for his own gender at age 13 in Boy Scout Camp, Grand came out to his disapproving parents who put him through several years of “straight therapy.”  It didn’t work.  Closeted but gay, Grand struggled with shame and self-doubt into adulthood, feeling like a disappointment to his parents, and led a furtive life so many gays and lesbians can relate to.  Music gave him joy and passion, but to make ends meet, he took odd jobs, modeling stints, and, ironically, singing gigs in churches.   Finally, unable and unwilling to endure the self-betrayal of the closeted life, Grand came out as gay in one, stunning moment, telling his story to the world in “All-American Boy.”

The soul of America is responding to Steve Grand in a powerful way, searching for reconciliation between LGBTQ people and a heterosexual majority who are striving to understand them.  Spiritually, reconciliation is more compelling than rejection, since its motive energy comes from love.  It is the power that drew pagan Ruth to Hebrew Naomi, the force that reconciled the Prodigal Son first to his father, and then to his older, disapproving brother.  It is the way of justice the prophets walked, paving the way for estranged humanity and a seeking God to reach out to each other and embrace.

In a time of seemingly hopeless political gridlock in Washington, war fatigue at home and anxiety over Egypt, Syria, and the Middle East, not to mention frustration with the NSA’s invasion of personal privacy in the name of national security, Steve Grand’s gracious, plaintive song cuts through the defensiveness and aggression of this age.  It is the pure invitation of a son to his parents, of a lover to his beloved, and of millions of oft-rejected citizens to their country: “Be mine.”

Hundreds of thousands have taken Steve up on his offer so far.  He has remained humble in his newfound success.  The only thanks he says he wants is in the email messages from people who recognize their story in his.  His greatest moment so far is the admission of his mother that she and his father are finally proud of him, just the way he is.  The “All-American Boy” is reconciling with himself and his world, and now Steve says he is truly happy and at peace for the first time in his life.

Steve Grand is no media messiah, no lawyered-up diva . . . yet.  May he never be.  He is enough like most Americans that we feel the pull to reconcile at least some of our differences with each other when we hear him sing.  His heartfelt cry awakens something in the American spirit Abraham Lincoln called, “the better angels of our nature.”   Perhaps songs and stories like Steve’s will prompt more healing and understanding between gays and straights than any legislation or court ruling ever could.  Of course, there will be losses.  Unrequited love does not have to end in bitterness and despair, however.  It may become the engine of a future reconciliation, an invitation not to settle with failure, but to get ourselves up, reach out again, and pursue the peace we all long for.

July 16, 2013 Posted by | "All American Boy", Boy Scouts of America, gay men, GLBTQ, Huffington Post, Illinois, LGBTQ, Reconciliation, Reparative Therapy, Roman Catholic Church and Homosexuality, Steve Grand | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Gay YouTube Sensation Steve Grand & All-American Reconciliation

9/11: Remembering the Fallen on the 11th Anniversary

The body of Fr. Mychal Judge, Chaplain of the Fire Department of New York, is carried from the chaos of Ground Zero on 9/11 [photo by Shannon Stapleton of Reuters].

New York, New York – September 11, 2001 is being recalled across the world today.  On this 11th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the thwarted attack on the U.S. Capitol thanks to the heroic action of the passengers aboard United Flight 93 are remembered by a somber and far less naïve nation than the one which awoke to the horror of 9/11.

2,996 people died on that awful day, including the 19 men who hijacked four airliners, and 2,977 victims.  Among the victims were the 246 passengers aboard the planes.  2,606 died in the Twin Towers. 125 died in the Pentagon.  The vast majority of victims were civilians.  At the Pentagon, 55 of the fallen were military personnel.

Of the heroic acts on 9/11, none were greater than the sacrifices made by the first responders. The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) lost 343 personnel that day.  75 firehouses suffered the loss of at least one member of their team.  FDNY also lost its chief, its commissioner, its marshal, its chaplain, and many specialty and administrative personnel.

Collateral losses of first responders due to illness and injury sustained on 9/11 continue to this day.

Unfinished Lives salutes the fallen of 9/11 by choosing one among them all to serve as their representative: Fr. Mychal F. Judge, OFM, Chaplain of FDNY, who died offering comfort and assistance to the dying and wounded in the lobby of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  Witnesses testify that Fr. Mychal died when debris from the falling South Tower rocketed into the North Tower Lobby with a velocity of over 100 mph. The medical examiner certified that Fr. Mychal succumbed to blunt force trauma to the back of his head.  His victim number is 0001, acknowledging that his body was the first to be recovered and carried from the scene. Among the unforgettable scenes of that awful day, the image of Fr. Mychal’s lifeless body being borne away by his comrades, a modern day Pietà, is a stand out. He was an exemplary man, a dedicated priest, and, among other dimensions of his life, a gay man unafraid to own who he was among his colleagues and before the world.

Amidst the terror and the death of 9/11, the courage, loyalty and love of Fr. Mychal stands for the suffering and hope of all the fallen and their families.  Much has changed since the trauma of that day, but the wounds to the American consciousness remain fresh. May we never forget. May we honor the dead by rededicating ourselves to improve the circumstances of the living, even as we strive to create a better world.

September 11, 2012 Posted by | 9/11, Fr. Mychal Judge, gay men, GLBTQ, LGBTQ, New York, Remembrances, Roman Catholic Church and Homosexuality | , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 9/11: Remembering the Fallen on the 11th Anniversary

“Stop Church Homophobia!”: LGBTQ Christians to Pope

Pope Benedict XVI

Rome, Vatican City – Thousands of LGBTQ Christians issued an Open Letter to Pope Benedict XVI, appealing to him to end the Roman Church’s bigotry against the sexual and gender variant minority throughout the world at Roma Euro Pride on June 10.  Among the 44 organizations endorsing the Open Letter to the Pope were Americans, including the pioneer gay priest, Fr. John J. McNeill.  In brief, the signatories from the European Forum of LGBT Christians call on Pope Benedict: ” We appeal to Your Holiness to condemn acts of violence against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people, and for Your Holiness cooperation in lifting the penalisation of homosexual acts worldwide. Silence from Your Holiness is interpreted by people engaged in violence, torture, and murder as consent to their actions.”  The letter goes on to impress on the Pope the importance that priests cease pressing LGBTQ people to undergo “reparative therapy” in misbegotten attempts to change their sexual orientations.  The full text of the Open Letter to Pope Benedict is viewable here.

Roma Euro Pride 2011, Flavio Michelle Pinna photo

MacNeill, a gay Jesuit priest and psychotherapist who authored groundbreaking books (such as The Church and the Homosexual in 1976) on Christian spirituality and homosexuality, was silenced by Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and forbidden to continue his ministry among LGBTQ people, first in 1977, then in 1983 and yet again in 1986 with a severe rebuke.  Then,  in October 1986, Cardinal Ratzinger issued the Vatican’s infamous “ Letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” which defined homosexuality as “an objective disorder” and “a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil.”  LGBTQ-friendly groups were expelled from Roman Catholic parishes worldwide.  MacNeill broke his silence, refusing to cease his work and activism.  MacNeill’s participation in the 2011 Open Letter to the Pope challenges the very man who attempted to muzzle him, and who has done more than any recent prelate to harm LGBTQ people, giving him yet another chance to live up to his faith, and recant his ecclesial bigotry.  A film on Fr. MacNeill’s life, “Taking a Chance on God,” premiered in Rome during Euro Pride 2011 as reported by the San Francisco Sentinel.

Reports of over a million attended the festivities in Rome this year, culminating in a huge Mardi Gras-style parade on June 11, after nearly two weeks of games, forums, worldwide press events. For the first time ever, Euro Pride included an emphasis on Faith and Homosexuality.

July 6, 2011 Posted by | Being Gay is a Gift From God Campaign, Bisexual persons, Euro Pride 2011, Fr. John MacNeill, gay bashing, gay men, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Homosexuality and the Bible, Lesbian women, LGBTQ, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Pope Benedict XVI, religious hate speech, religious intolerance, Roman Catholic Church and Homosexuality, Rome, Social Justice Advocacy, transgender persons, transphobia | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on “Stop Church Homophobia!”: LGBTQ Christians to Pope

Catholic Church Refuses Gay Man’s Funeral; Community Outraged

John Sanfilippo, gay Catholic denied a funeral because of church homophobia

San Diego, California – John Sanfilippo was a lifelong, devout Roman Catholic–and an openly gay man.  His parish church, Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church, flatly denied his funeral because of his sexual orientation, according to Channel 10 News.  Sanfilippo, who died last week after a long struggle with emphysema, planned years ago for his funeral mass to be held at Our Lady of the Rosary.  He was a faithful parishioner there for decades, and according to his friends had even left a large sum of money to the church in his will.  That did not stop the church from rejecting his funeral.  Last weekend, his partner of 30 years, his family, and his friends were curtly notified that the funeral was banned from the church because Sanfilippo was an openly gay man.  A storm of controversy has broken out in the San Diego LGBTQ community about the overt institutional homophobia that caused the denial of a dying man’s last request.  Sanfilippo was a fixture in the San Diego gay community, a businessman who owned and operated the popular SRO Lounge. According to EDGE, one of the parish clergy, Fr. Louis Solcia, allegedly said that gays themselves had “set up” the church for controversy in the wake of criticism from all over the region. A group of Sanfilippo’s friends went to the steps of the church to pray and get answers about why a Christian congregation would cause such pain and sorrow so needlessly. Queerty editorialized, “When the priests at Our Lady of the Rosary Church found out that [Sanfilippo] was survived by his partner of 30 years, Brian Galvin, they told Sanfilippo’s family that the Mass was canceled. That the priests managed to do so just two days after Sanfilippo died speaks both to their efficiency and their complete lack of humanity.”

Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in Little Italy

The Diocese of San Diego, backtracking on the decision, tried to quell community anger by claiming that the initial refusal to hold Sanfilippo’s funeral mass was made by a visiting priest who was “unfamiliar” with customs and practices of the parish. Few are buying the story.  “All of a sudden, they change their mind…Why? Because they got caught in the process of denying equal rights to people,” Sanfilippo’s friend, Neil Thomas, said to the San Diego LGBT Weekly. Six years earlier, another devout, openly gay parishioner of Our Lady of the Rosary was denied a funeral, John McClusker–and the painful memories are still fresh in the San Diego community.  Hurt and deeply angered by the 2005 decision to refuse McClusker the pastoral offices of the church, members of his family converted to the Episcopal Church where his funeral was held in lieu of his Roman Catholic parish. In the Sanfilippo case, diocesan damage control did not work, either.  Though a confusing statement from the diocese said the “ritual” could now be carried out at Our Lady of the Rosary for the deceased, his partner and his family had enough.  On Thursday, John Sanfilippo’s final rites were performed at Holy Cross Cemetery and Mausoleum on 4470 Hilltop Drive. The Roman Catholic Church in San Diego has some explaining to do: to their LGBTQ parishioners, to their families and friends, and to the LGBTQ community—but most of all, they have some explaining to do to themselves: about how a Christian church could reject the dying request of anyone.  Much less a baptized believer who sought to be authentically gay and Catholic at the same time.

July 1, 2011 Posted by | Anglo Americans, California, funerals, gay men, GLBTQ, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, LGBTQ, religious intolerance, Roman Catholic Church and Homosexuality, Social Justice Advocacy | , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Fr. Matthew Kelty, OCSO, Passes Away: Out Gay Monk was Thomas Merton’s Confessor

 

Fr. Matthew Kelty, OCSO, Monk of Gethsemani (1915-2011)

Trappist, Kentucky – The most widely known and beloved monk of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani died peacefully among his brothers today in the Kentucky Hill Country.  Fr. Matthew, né Charles Richard Kelty Jr., was born in South Boston, Massachusetts in 1915. Educated in the public schools of Milton, Massachusetts, he followed his vocation to the religious life, attended the seminary of the Society of the Divine Word in Techny, Illinois, and was ordained a Roman Catholic Priest in 1946.  Fr. Matthew served as a writer for the magazine of the order, and became a Divine Word missionary in Papua, New Guinea from 1947 to 1951. Sensing all the while that his vocation was to the contemplative life, Fr. Matthew petitioned to enter the Abbey of Gethsemani in February 1960.  “A natural love for the monastic life drew me to Gethsemani and fulfilled a lifelong dream,” he said.  At Gethsemani, Fr. Matthew did many things. He once said, “Over the past decades, I have served in various capacities: master of the brothers, shoe shop, tailor shop, vocations office, and retreat house. Monastic life is everything I wanted, my happiness. All dreams fulfilled. But the fulfillment came slowly. Following your dreams and not giving up is my best recommendation.” Two interludes in his life are most worth mentioning.  First, Fr. Matthew served as Prior of Holy Mother of God Monastery in Henderson, North Carolina, a small foundation near Oxford that the Trappists took over from Benedictines in the 1970s. In those days, when I first met Fr. Matthew, he was ebullient, funny, and a committed motorcycle driver.  I can see him in my mind’s eye, zipping down the two-lane state roads, with his habit’s black scapular streaming behind him in the slip stream. I remember he loved and tended peacocks and pea hens that roosted in the pine trees bordering the chapel grounds, and he shared afternoon strolls with his dog and an obstreperous billy goat named “Philip Morris.”  It was during this period that Fr. Matthew protested the war in Vietnam in a most monastic way: he and his dog walked for peace all the way from North Carolina to Washington, D.C. His journey was carried widely in the media.  Standing on the banks of the Potomac River, looking over at the stately marble buildings of government, Fr. Matthew said that Washington looked to him like “frosting over so much burnt cake.” Second, Fr. Matthew received permission from Gethsemani to return to his beloved Papua, but this time as a hermit.  He lived on the coast, loved the Papuans, and sewed clothes for his living as a tailor.  During his hermitage, Fr. Matthew married Lady Poverty.  Upon his re-entrance to Gethsemani, he wrote his spiritual autobiography, Flute Solo. It was in this book that he revealed his homosexuality as a celibate monk.  Many years ago, I nervously came out to Fr. Matthew when I was on one of many retreats to the Abbey.  He was so pastoral, loving, and understanding.  He affirmed his own gayness, and mine, and advised me to live my dreams.  He also helped change my life.  “I will pray for you every day, Stephen,” he said, “as I say mass.”  And I believe he did. Every day. Without fail. Fr. Matthew served as Thomas Merton’s confessor from the days of his entrance to the Abbey and Merton’s death in 1968. He always said Merton was the finest monk of Gethsemani, because he knew that in order for God to get a hearing, you had to have cunning enough to use other means to do it.  Fr. Matthew must have taken those words to heart, for he will be best remembered and loved as the Guest House Chaplain and post-Compline preacher for years.  His homilies are online for readers at the Abbey website.  There are many ways God has of blessing the human race with gayness.  Fr. Matthew was the queerest person I ever met, or am likely to meet.  He hid nothing. He lived as a true child of his tradition, out in the open where God, the pea fowl, and the hierarchy could see. “Who wouldn’t want to live here?” he asked me one day when I was on a Fall retreat at the Abbey. “I am surrounded by good men, and get to wear beautiful clothes!” Now his transition is complete. He is with beloved Jesus, whom he loved as a consort and ascetic for 51 years.  Not bad for an Irishman, eh?.  Requiescat in pace, Padre.  ~ Stephen Sprinkle, Unfinished Lives Project Team Member

February 18, 2011 Posted by | Anglo Americans, gay men, Kentucky, Remembrances, Roman Catholic Church and Homosexuality, Social Justice Advocacy, Thomas Merton | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment