Hudson Valley Humanists
Secular Morality and the Gay Community
Conrad Claborne
Conrad Claborne, President of the Secular Humanist Society of New York, spoke to the Hudson Valley Humanists on May 1, 2005 about "Secular Morality and the Gay Community." He spoke at the New Paltz Village Hall where mayor Jason West officiated same-sex marriages in 2004.
Claborne contrasted the more tolerant humanistic approach to sexuality with the rigid attitudes of some religious groups that lays blame and shame on gays and lesbians. He chronicled his search for a philosophy that lent understanding and support. As a gay man, he felt confident in saying, "There is a home in humanism."
First of all I want to thank Ed Poll for inviting me to speak to the Hudson Valley Humanists, here in the very building where New Paltz Mayor Jason West challenged New York State law by attempting to perform same sex marriages!
There is a welcoming home in humanism for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender that is the total opposite of what we find in most religions. What is it that people who are LGBTs find attractive in secular humanism? There are strong reasons for this, but in order to answer it properly I need to take you on a personal journey to give you some perspective.
Although I am a member of the Stonewall generation, I grew up and went to college in Southern California. I did not move to Manhattan until July of 1971, two years after the Stonewall riots. Growing up in Southern California in the 1950's and early '60's was a challenge to me personally. I knew from a very early age that I was attracted to males, not females. Yet I did not see anybody around me who also seemed to be so inclined, so I remained in the closet. In 1959 our family moved from Long Beach in Los Angeles County to Chula Vista in San Diego County. Chula Vista is located exactly halfway between San Diego and the U.S./Mexican border. There was almost nothing on gays in visible society except for the occasional notice in our local paper that "X" number of men had been arrested at a local park, or restroom, and charged with "solicitation." Local cops were sent in to entrap these individuals, whose names, addresses and occupations were then printed in the paper. Obviously society did not think much of them.
For some reason I had to do a paper for a social studies class in high school, and because of my own sexual leanings decided to do one on the subject of “Homosexuality.” There wasn’t anything in book form, but the librarian suggested I look in the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature to see what might be found from magazine articles. It was here that I discovered the work of psychologist Evelyn Hooker, who was one of the first researchers to look at homosexuality scientifically, not from the standpoint of religious or social stigma. Hers was the first published statement I'd come across saying that I was not sick, just a normal human being. This was still a minority view, and it was not until the early 1970's that Dr. Hooker was able to have homosexuality's "disease" classification removed by the American Psychiatric Association. But this was years in my future.
After I graduated from Hilltop High School in Chula Vista I enrolled in the newly opened local junior college, Southwestern College. It was during this period that I went through the process of coming out to myself, viewing myself as a healthy, normal human being.
After graduating from UCLA, I sought to connect with other gays wherever I could find them. At this time the Stonewall riots were raging in Manhattan. In southern California I became aware of the Metropolitan Community Church, a church for lesbians and gays.
One of my early lessons on religion came from my mother and stepfather who said that religion was OK, but be suspicious of people who "got religion" and who were “wearing it on their sleeve for everyone to see”. I went to our local Methodist Church because my Mother wanted me to have an ethical grounding. Later I sampled both the Catholic Church, and a local synagogue.
I also had a first cousin on my father's side of the family who at the time was in the California Assembly as a Democrat from Orange County, and a lifelong member of the conservative Missouri Synod branch of the Lutheran Church. Later he realized his voting record was too conservative for the Democratic Party, so he switched to become a Republican. He was one of that party's most right-wing members of the U.S. House of Representatives for 12 years. Knowing his opinion on gays, I spoke to him privately - before he ran for Congress - to let him know that there was one person in the family who was gay, hoping this would temper his public attitudes in the future. This was a mistake, as he was too set in his thinking. He would become one of the biggest homophobes in Congress. He may have been the inventor of the phrase "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." He also wanted all people with AIDS to be placed together on some offshore island. To this day he still does not understand why religion did not "take" with me. But, all my life I have also had little voices of conscience asking me “if such and so” made sense. I am a natural skeptic. These traits have played well with me in my life in helping me to separate fantasy, or wishful thinking, from reality.
After a while my Mother got used to the idea that I was gay; had PFLAG been in operation then I would have loved to introduce her to that community. That experience would have helped to overcome her concerns earlier.
I knew first hand what a jackass my father was in addition to being an alcoholic, and a smoker, he was a man who had a gambling problem, owed everybody money, in addition he very stubborn and not dependable. My father was a welder by profession. He would leave a sign on the shop door which said “out to lunch, back in an hour”, when he had gone to the racetrack, and was gone all day. We lived in the small fishing community of Newport Beach. Customers who waited around found another welder very quickly. Why would a woman want to remain married to this person? She didn’t and divorced him.
When my mother and stepfather retired to Sacramento, California, I traveled there often, but refused to attend local church services, because I would sit in the back and mentally curse out the ludicrous goings-on. But attending one wedding became a turning point in my life. The minister told the young bride to honor and obey her husband, who was a jerk. I thought to myself why would people of religion want to ruin a woman's life in a bad marriage?
In addition I had heard from many a pulpit that people like me were evil, bad people. But, since I knew I was a good person, as I had the possibility of looking inside myself, if ministers were wrong on these important issues, then there was the probability that they were wrong on a lot of other things too! It was at that point that I decided to seek out literature criticizing religion. As is the case with all journeys, this one took its time, but it eventually led me to Free Inquiry Magazine, and to secular humanism.
I think the morality of secular humanism is a natural fit for those who are gay and lesbian. Secular morality is so freeing from the shackles of many religious institutions, which continue to be blind to the poisonous side effects of their positions! On August 1, 2004 the New York Times carried an article about a Roman Catholic Bishop in Oregon who had issued an Affirmation stating that Catholic lay leaders must follow church teachings or give up their positions. The Affirmation "singled out issues that many American Catholics have struggled with, like the sinfulness of contraception and 'the church's teaching that any extramarital sexual relations are gravely evil and that these include premarital relations, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography, and homosexual relations.'" Compare this to "A Declaration of Sexual Rights and Responsibilities - Evolving Principles for a New Century," by Vern L. Bullough and others in the August/September 2004 issue of Free Inquiry Magazine. There one can find these positive statements "taboos that cause people to feel that viewing the genitals or seeing sexual intercourse is obscene and pornographic should be challenged. Sex must be treated as part of the natural experience of being human. And masturbation is one of the joys of sex and should be regarded as part of the natural experience of being human."
But in Bullough’s secular morality he also emphasizes one's responsibilities to oneself and to others. "Until now, our bodies have been in bondage to church or state, which have dictated how we could express our sexuality. Most people in the past have not been permitted to experience the pleasures and joys of the human body and their sensory nature to their fullest capacity. To do so, we need to accept the belief that actualizing pleasure is among the highest moral goods - so long as it is experienced with responsibility and mutuality and does not involve unwanted force or exploitation. ... A reciprocal and creative attitude toward sexuality can have a deep meaning both for the individual and for society. Each of us will know its personal meaning, but we also need to experience it with others. In effect, our behavior can say to another, 'I am enriched for having had this experience and for having contributed to your having had it also.' The loving feelings of mental and physical well-being, the sense of completion of the self that we can experience from freely expressed sexuality may reach out to all humanity."
Bullough concludes: "It is impossible to have a meaningful, ecstatic sexual and sensual life and to be indifferent to or uncaring about other human beings. Freeing our sexual selves is vital if we are to reach the heights of our full humanity. But at the same time, we believe that we need to activate and nourish a sense of our responsibilities to others."
Are these 2 groups sharing the same planet!? What a tremendous difference in thinking. Just compare the poisons of religious dogma to the open air of secular humanism! As a gay person I feel very much at home in secular humanism!
I would like to say a few words about same-sex marriage. Had former Governor McGreevey taken a different path in his life and won election as an openly gay male he would have been the perfect individual to argue for same-sex marriage with the New Jersey legislature. As it is, the bill he signed was very limited in scope.
I do believe same-sex unions need to be legal, because it is a civil rights issue. If one's life partner has a pension, and dies, and because you are of the same sex you cannot inherit benefits, that is wrong, simply wrong!
The gay community is all over the map as far as our belief in God is concerned. My former life partner is a person who strongly believes in God; in fact this has been one of the most difficult of things for me to ignore in our personal relationship. There is also the Catholic organization Dignity, a large group of gays and lesbians who try to change the church from within, with absolutely no success, but who continue to go to church regularly. I had hoped that the successor to John Paul II, would return to the more open opportunities found in Vatican II, but this will not be the case.
Other gays, like me, have no place for religion in our lives. I feel human society has so many problems to face that if we were to dedicate the same energy, time, and money to solving these earthly problems instead of giving it to religious organizations, we could make significant progress toward our goals. We need to recognize that Earth is our only home, and secular humanism can help to change our thinking, instead of pretending, as Christianity or Islam does, that life is just a way station to an afterlife.
Just think of this turn of events. Most religious organizations try to position themselves as a lifeline for the poor with access to a god who will ease their pain. But there is little or nothing in their agendas to deal with the real issues of poverty and to work toward its elimination. Secular humanism does not offer a paradise. It does offer an opportunity to make our lives significantly better and to treat Mother Nature with respect at the same time, instead of robbing her blind!
I was pleased to hear that the Supreme Court finally de-criminalized sodomy in 2003. Justice Kennedy pointed out that 15 years earlier, when the Court last visited this issue, nobody knew people who had out lesbian daughters and gay sons. Now most everyone had had that experience. This is why, despite having lots of trouble coming out, with no role models, I felt it was important for me to be an honorable and honest person who happens to be an out gay. I had also embraced the morality of secular humanism as a core of my life’s values.
I discovered - a couple of years ago - that I had been a role model for someone else. One of the first jobs I had in New York was working for a small company in Long Island City. During the three years I had this job I was close to one of the mechanics, who with his young family, had recently immigrated from Ecuador. They had 2 children who were attending elementary school. Just 2-years ago I had a phone call – out of the blue – from the son – who was now a young adult, and lives in Spain. He wanted to let me know that he is gay, and to thank me for being a positive role model! Because his mother had known me all these years ago, it was her observation, that if I was a good human being, who happened to be gay, then it was OK for her son too! This made me very happy!