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06/02/2004: "Sorry, you don't count"
Personal experience is the card that trumps everything else these days. Evidence, logic, arguments-whatever one says, if someone else comes back with, "well, that's not my experience," that ends the debate. Unless, of course, one is no longer actively gay. Commenting on the discussion of same-sex blessings at the Canadian Anglican synod yesterday, the Rev. Dave Ponting of the Diocese of Niagara made clear that such people are an embarrassment, most devoutly to be ignored:
In the most surreal moment of the discussion, a speaker read a letter purportedly signed by a group of “cured” gays and lesbians who have seen the error of their ways and were now straight. He worried these people have no voice in this debate. I sighed and shook my head, aware this was being web-cast to the world and silently weeping for another slap in the face by the church to gays and lesbians who one more time have had ignorant church leaders belittle the way God made them.
In folks like Ponting, the faith-claim that homosexuality is genetic, and therefore unalterable, and therefore must be approved by the Church, is as impervious to contrary evidence, and as intolerant of contrary views or even experiences, as flat-earthism. The fact that he had standing before him living, breathing examples of people who were no longer practicing homosexuality, some of whom are now happily married, was of no consequence. They are outside his theory so, presto, they can be dismissed. As a way of relating to the real world, it bears a striking resemblance to (whisper it) fundamentalism.
