I Was Born This Way

For years I have fought my own nature, but no more.

Ever since I can remember, I have felt this way. It has always been just below the surface, but I have done my best to push it down. Way down.

Also, ever since I can remember, when my ‘tendencies’ would become obvious, people would tell me that it is wrong. My parents, my teachers and especially my priests would warn me, you can’t act that way, that the Bible says that it is wrong.

Now I know otherwise. I have been denying my true nature. There is a long-standing social stigma against people like me. We are put down, and people do not like to associate with us. But the one thing I know is true is that I didn’t ask to be this way. It is not, I repeat NOT something I have chosen. It is who I am. Everyone in my life, for my 44 years, has forced me to deny it. To pretend. And I have listened to them, until now.

I was born this way, the way God made me. No more denying it. I will embrace it and finally be who I was made to be, angry.

Yes, I am angry.

Ever since I can remember, anger has been there. This is not nurture, it is nature. I have always been angry. I could be going about my daily life, happy as a clam, and without warning and with the merest provocation, red-faced anger would envelop me.

Everyone always told me that I needed to get my anger under control, but why? Isn’t this the way God made me? Why should I pretend otherwise, because other people don’t like it? As long as I don’t hurt anyone, I should be as flaming angry as I was born to be, and all you fury-phobes can kiss my grits.

Think this is a stupid post? Yeah, me too. Somebody should tell Arthur Fitzmaurice, Director of the Los Angeles Archdiocesan Ministry with Lesbian and Gay Catholics. Here is what he had to say.

In the final paragraph of a March 11 story about the 25th anniversary of the founding of the archdiocesan Ministry with Lesbian and Gay Catholics, ministry co-leader Arthur Fitzmaurice, citing “pain,” “hurt” and “bitterness” over the adoption of Proposition 8, says the ministry focuses on “the pastoral side that says ‘God made you this way. You’re welcome to participate in the Eucharist.’”

Now anyone with four synapses to spare would argue that I need to keep my anger under control because it is a destructive force that, if it were to dominate my will, would eventually destroy my life and the lives of everyone around me. That to find my identity in my anger would not help me develop as a person, in life or in holiness.  That my “natural born’ anger is a product of my fallen nature, not something to be embraced, let alone define me.

Would any rational person argue that the counsel of loved ones who urge me to suppress my natural anger is causing me undue “pain,” “hurt” and “bitterness?” That would be absurd.

Why is this all so easy to acknowledge when it comes to disordered behavior like inordinate anger, but so difficult when homosexuality is the disorder?

I would argue that the fundamentally flawed thinking of Mr. Fitzmaurice makes it difficult to impossible to minister to homosexuals in a meaningfully Catholic way. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles should re-evaluate what they hope to achieve for Christ and for the souls entrusted to their care in this ministry.

This is what I argue, and I wouldn’t advise arguing against me in the combox. That would only make me angry, and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.