{"id":3410,"date":"2010-06-07T11:56:41","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T16:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=3410"},"modified":"2010-06-07T11:56:41","modified_gmt":"2010-06-07T16:56:41","slug":"stereotypes-last-only-as-long-as-you-let-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=3410","title":{"rendered":"Stereotypes Last Only As Long As You Let Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

This woman<\/a> and Penn Jillette<\/a> might have a lot in common to talk about regarding how the Religious Right have been portrayed in our culture.<\/p>\n

\n

[Eve] Tushnet entered Yale<\/a> in 1996 a happy lesbian, out since age 13 or 14 (she can\u2019t quite remember). Her father, a nonobservant Jew, and her mother, a Unitarian, both belonged to progressive traditions, tolerant of her sexuality. <\/p>\n

When, as a freshman, she attended a meeting of the Party of the Right<\/a>, a conservative group affiliated with the Yale Political Union<\/a>, it was \u201cspecifically to laugh at them, to see the zoo animals,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut I was really impressed, not only by the weird arguments but the degree to which it was clear that the people making them lived as if what they were saying had actual consequences for their lives, that had required them to make sacrifices.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Ms. Tushnet\u2019s time, as in mine \u2014 I was four years ahead of her at Yale \u2014 the Party of the Right had a benignantly cultish quality. \u201cHave you read \u2018The Secret History?\u2019 \u201d she asks, referring to Donna Tartt\u2019s 1992 novel about a secretive student clique obsessed with Greek literature. \u201cIt was like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But she listened to them, sincerely, and came out with a far, far different view of them than the culture had led her to believe.<\/p>\n

\n

But she found the Party of the Right students compassionate, intellectual and not terribly exercised about her homosexuality. She was drawn to the Catholics among them, who corrected her misimpression that the existence of sin \u201cmeans you are bad.\u201d It means \u201cprecisely the opposite,\u201d they taught her. \u201cIt means you have a chance to come back and repent and be saved,\u201d she says. She began reading books like St. Anselm\u2019s \u201cWhy God Became Man.\u201d She began attending church. Her sophomore year, she was baptized. <\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time it was real enough to be threatening,\u201d she says of her conversion, \u201cthings had gone too far. I didn\u2019t see it coming.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So now she’s a fervent Catholic and against same-sex marriage, but isn’t trying to change her religion to fit her notions of right and wrong.  She really believes in it, and understands what that means for her life.<\/p>\n

\n

As the hundred or so daily readers of eve-tushnet.blogspot.com<\/a>, and a larger audience for her magazine writing, know by now, Ms. Tushnet can seem a paradox: fervently Catholic, proudly gay, happily celibate. She does not see herself as disordered; she does not struggle to be straight, but she insists that her religion forbids her a sex life. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe sacrifices you want to make aren\u2019t always the only sacrifices God wants,\u201d Ms. Tushnet wrote in a 2007 essay for Commonweal<\/a>. While gay sex should not be criminalized, she said, gay men and lesbians should abstain. They might instead have passionate friendships, or sublimate their urges into other pursuits. \u201cIt turns out I happen to be very good at sublimating,\u201d she says, while acknowledging that that is a lot to ask of others. <\/p>\n

Marriage should be reserved for heterosexuals, whose \u201crelationships can be either uniquely dangerous or uniquely fruitful,\u201d she explained in an e-mail message. \u201cThus it makes sense to have an institution dedicated to structuring and channeling them.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She has her problems with the ex-gay movement (see here<\/a> for her very thoughtful NRO piece on the topic), but does understand what the Church teaches on the subject and, rather than practice the a la carte version of Christianity some do, she’s taken Jesus’ advice to count the cost, and decided to apply the teachings rather than ignore that which she holds true.  That’s dedication and commitment.<\/p>\n

But she got there by actually listening and giving a fair hearing to what others considered religious nuts.  Don’t believe the press.  Well, in general, but specifically about the Religious Right(tm).  Find out for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This woman and Penn Jillette might have a lot in common to talk about regarding how the Religious Right have been portrayed in our culture. [Eve] Tushnet entered Yale in 1996 a happy lesbian, out since age 13 or 14 (she can\u2019t quite remember). Her father, a nonobservant Jew, and her mother, a Unitarian, both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,30,14,9,47,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholicism","category-christianity","category-culture","category-doug","category-homosexuality","category-religion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}