Month: May 2012

Letting Suffering Redeem Us

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

“Bishop Sheen used to say that there is nothing worse than wasted suffering. And that is certainly true. I was taught by the sisters long ago in Catholic school to unite my sufferings, works, and prayers each day with Christ, and I continue to do that through the heart of Mary. It gave great meaning to me while I was in the hospital and idle, unable to work for the salvation of souls, to be able to offer the pains and the patience required by them as a prayer for the world.

“You have to be careful with suffering. One has to be careful not to enjoy it, or focus on it, or expand it too much. Then suffering becomes the goal. The goal is not suffering; the goal is loving patience, offered to God as best one can. And the humility to admit that we don’t do this very well. One of the things I learned from my illness is that over and over again we have to tell God that we really trust Him. Trusting in God is not one action; it’s an ongoing way of life.”

—Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R.
From an Ignatius Insight interview after his near-fatal accident in 2004.

We must get well

~ Laura Lowder ~ 4 Comments

While it might be debatable, just whether, to what extent, and in what order of events homosexuality is a mental illness, I think it’s quite certain that our marriages were very sick.

Living with a gay man is not an easy task, or a pleasant one. The first manifestation of this is a dearth of physical affection and intimacy. It’s highly revealing that one of the first things ex-wives want to talk about, when we find one another, is sex. Rather, the utter lack of it. It’s as if we’re grasping for reassurance:was my experience unique? is something wrong with me, or did you go through this, too?

One woman told me she could count on one hand the number of times she and her husband had sex – although they were married for more than seven years. My own husband would flinch if i demonstrated the most benign and nonsexual affection by resting my hand on his shoulder or his arm: “Don’t do that!” he’d explode. “You know that bothers me!” When he would condescend to hug me, it was done gingerly, actually touching me as little as possible, as if he were afraid of catching something.

For a woman who is as affectionate in nature as I am, and who came from a family of very affectionate people, that hurt terribly. It hurts all of us.

We were ignored, rebuffed, as companions as well as lovers. Our husbands didn’t mind talking about their work – a topic in which they could dominate and control the topic and our participation was severely limited, but they didn’t want to really communicate with us. Our husbands have used a lot of mechanisms to shut us out, from television to workaholism to spending all their spare time with their buddies …

And did you know your husband’s friends? Because I never met mine. They were “some guys I know through work,” but I never met them, or learned their names, or anything else about them. He never liked the men we went to church with. He complained they were snobs, while I thought they were terrific fellows. Now I realize that he – so many gay men – have to cut others down because they’re so insecure in their own tenuous masculinity; the men in our church, straight men, were a threat; through them he might be found out for what he really was.

And, of course, for so many of us, all these issues had to be our fault.

We’re women – we are created to adapt and to yield. When we are said to pour our selves into a relationship, it’s true: we adapt to fit the mold we’ve chosen. So when the “mold” kept changing and pushing us away… what’s wrong with me? became the relentless cry of our hearts.

Discovering our husbands are gay doesn’t quiet that cry, as noted by the point, above, that we seek reassurance from one another that our situation was not unique, and therefore was probably not our own fault.

So now we must take stock, recognize that it’s not us – if we’d been perfect, it would not have been enough! – and begin the process of recovering our own serenity and wellbeing.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? or, is homosexuality a mental illness?

~ Laura Lowder ~ 8 Comments

1970 – 1973 was a busy season for the devil and his minions. In 1970, in Texas, the case was filed which would become known as Roe v. Wade, and in San Francisco, the assault on the American Psychiatric Association was begun.  By 1973, Roe v. Wade was established as law by a liberal judiciary, and the APA had caved in and removed homosexuality from its DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

I won’t recount the history of that tragic decision, which is available in multiple locations online and in hard print, but I will point out the obvious (after all, my Ex-, the Fairie Prince, used to complain that I have a bad habit of overstating the obvious, so this is in honor of him):  homosexuality was not declassified because of medical investigation and scientific inquiry, but because of political pressure by militant homosexuals –

And because of weakness within the APA, itself. I learned over the weekend that part of the weakness was a large number of closet homosexuals within the APA, including the president-elect.

So. Is homosexuality or is it not a mental illness?

Frankly, given the history of civilizations in which same-sex activity is ubiquitous – and that means every civilization except the Judeo-Christian world – I’m not sure that diagnosis was quite honest. I find it hard to imagine cultural mental illnesses, national mental illnesses.

That does not mean that mental illness is excluded from the reality of homosexuality. Permit me to explain:

Psychiatry must be secularized, and as such it does not recognize the real issue behind homosexuality: that it is a very grave sin. What Catholics call a mortal sin.

Which means – if I may use this analogy – that homosexuality is like a bomb blast in the soul. Once one has yielded to the temptation and engaged in the act (and it is the act, not the temptation, which is a sin), then the damage is immediate and catastrophic, in the same sort of way that a bomb blast decimates a building or causes immediate and visible damage.

I observed in my ex-, and I’ve heard friends speak of their family members who’ve floated in and out of the lifestyle in the same way – that when he entered the lifestyle after we separated, his personality and character changed. He became more bitter, more sarcastic, more supercilious, haughtier. He became more insulting of me, of women in general, of his own mother (whom he’d not been very respectful of, before). An angry and defiant edge seemed to develop in him. He became deceitful, openly dishonest, and paranoid, and he even demonstrated an explosive temper that I’d not seen before.

In fact, I would go so far, based on basic observation, to suggest that in this case the egg (the orientation) definitely came first, and the chicken (the mental illness) followed.

I’ve heard parents, siblings, friends of homosexuals who’ve come out of the lifestyle off and on say that their loved ones underwent profound personality changes upon leaving and upon returning. “When he got out of that mess, he because like the son/brother/friend I’d always known. Then he fell back into it again, and all that ugliness came back, too.”

I believe that there are situations in which mental illness lurks in its potential, and that our life choices can control – to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the actual pathology involved – whether that illness develops or to what extent it does. I have come to the conclusion that choosing to be in the lifestyle opens doors for pathologies to develop and flourish that are suppressed when one is living in a wholesome and chaste environment.

In either case, one thing I think is certain: it is not in our best interests, as the straight ex-wife, to try to justify, excuse, or in any other way be complicit in our ex-spouses’ life choices. We can drown ourselves, that way. And we certainly cannot save them.

I will not support gay marriage

~ Laura Lowder ~ 2 Comments

We are still embroiled in controversy, here in North Carolina, after Tuesday’s vote on the Marriage Amendment. There have been a lot of insults thrown our way, even by straight friends of gays who think we should have grown up and become more “with the times.” I’ve even seen comments like “I’m ashamed to be from NC” from people I grew up with, who were raised in traditional Christian homes with traditional, old-fashioned Christian moral values.

I’ve tried to find out from a couple of these friends how they’ve come to abandon as evil the values we were raised with, but no one is willing – or able – to give me an answer.

In the wake of this, I’ve looked at a couple of other “straight spouse” websites, and I’m disappointed, to say the very least, that each of them advocates for gay “marriage.”

Can you think of anything more insulting?

When my husband and I stood before God and man and exchanged promises, vows, with one another, we were participating in something holy. We thought in terms of “covenant” – an agreement between God and ourselves, instituting a new family bond; now I think of marriage also as a sacrament.

He entered this covenant falsely – I like to think it was not a malicious falsehood, but a lack of understanding on his part (we were, after all, very young at the time, and “nice people” simply did not discuss some things, where we lived), but it was false.

Nevertheless, the nature of the covenant is not destroyed by that false or mistaken attempt – my own intentions are not invalidated by his incapacity to enter into the sacrament.

And other women who’ve been through this, who are supposed to understand just what we’ve gone through, are telling me that I have an obligation to demonstrate goodwill and “friendship” by supporting –

a mockery! a travesty! a farce! an obscene mockery!

No! I will not betray my worth as a human being, my dignity and value as a woman, my purpose and significance as a wife, by sanctioning this bawdy burlesque.

 

We won!

~ Laura Lowder ~ 1 Comment

North Carolina passed its “Marriage Amendment” by a 61% vote. Three-fifths of North Carolina voters recognize the historical and multicultural value of marriage as limited to man and woman.

Already there is talk about legal challenge to the amendment, although it was pursued according to Constitutional guidelines, it passed with the vote of 3/5 of the State’s citizens, and 93 out of 100 counties passed it.  The battle is by no means over.

I predicted that the NC Triangle and the Charlotte area would go Against, and I was right. I also thought Asheville area would go Against because of their large gay population, and I was right on that. I was surprised that Wautauga County, the Boone area, went Against.

I was even more surprised, however, that the Greensboro Triad (Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem) went FOR. This area is one of NC’s gay strongholds. The NBC affiliate in Winston-Salem, WXII TV12, reports that the measure was defeated by only 100 votes in Guilford County, where more than 116,000 were cast. That’s a much narrower margin than I would have expected, indicating that the area’s residents are a bit stronger-minded than I’d realized.

I worked the polls, yesterday, and am pleased to report that in my area folks both for and against the measure were, for the most part, pleasant and cheerful. That is how it should be when we deal with differences of opinion. A couple of people were defensively brusque, but not to the point of outright rudeness, and there was certainly not any hostility. I heard there was some up in the Raleigh and Chapel Hill areas. A shame.

However, the rhetoric, yesterday, and last night as the results were being announced, was ridiculous. “Vote against discrimination” was one of the slogans. Discrimination??? WTH??? Gays have every single civil right and access to legal recourse for their grievances that I have as a heterosexual. NO ONE – not I or the gay community – has the right to try to redefine language or to deconstruct history.

But that’s what they’re determined to do. The battle isn’t finished, yet.

Attempts to legitimate Gay Marriage

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

Tomorrow, May 8, the Great State of North Carolina will be voting on a Constitutional Amendment which would secure for perpetuity the present law recognizing only the marriage between one man and one woman as the only recognized legal union in the State.

The wording of the proposed Amendment, in fact, says just that:

Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

Opponents of the Amendment, however – promoted and financed by the homosexual community from across the nation – have engaged in a campaign of lies and manipulations, trying to play in ignorant and well-intentioned people by insisting this Amendment would hurt children and affect domestic violence law.

The truth of the matter is that the exact opposite is true. The defeat of this amendment will hurt children and women.

Here’s how it works: As soon as the Amendment could be defeated (tomorrow night), the homosexual lobby will be pushing Raleigh’s lawmakers to legally recognize gay marriage, as has happened already in – I believe it’s seven states at present, with several more in a legislative/judicial limbo. I will say that we will begin hearing rumblings of this almost immediately, and within two years it will be being debated in the State House, if not passed (the gay lobby won’t take “no” for an answer if they can find a loophole anywhere).

If the Amendment is passed by the voters, then you can expect legal challenge to begin immediately.

Now. If a State recognizes gay marriage, then they must also officially begin the process of legitimating homosexuality – and that means homosexual acts. We’re seeing this now, culturally, with lawsuits against private individuals refusing to provide goods and services to gay couples, like a photographer out in the Midwest (Indiana?) who is being sued for declining the privilege of taking photos at a gay wedding. Although it’s not in the U.S., the situation of the Christian B&B owners in England who are being sued for not renting a room to a gay couple is cautionary.

Right now in Canada, priests are being charged with hate speech crimes for preaching that homosexuality is a sin, and parochial schools are being warned that they may not teach Catholic moral theology to their students, in so far as teaching that homosexuality is wrong is concerned. It will be happening in the U.S. as the movement gains a stronger toehold – if we let it.

And that means that the State – Big Brother – will be sanctioning public works, such as public school education, to brainwash our children that homosexuality is equally legitimate with heterosexuality, and will be teaching homosexuality even as they now teach techniques for using condoms and performing oral sex (bet you didn’t know that was happening, did you? But it is.) It’s happening in Vermont, now.— Right now, in our public schools, kids are hearing, receiving, and being taught information that twenty years ago would have been considered “Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor” in most states’ court systems.

And there will be even stronger efforts to get States to lower the age of consent for statutory sex offenses, just as there is currently pressure by an organization called NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Assoc.) to declassify pedophilia and pederasty as a psychiatric disorder (see my upcoming post on the sabotage and hijacking of the American Psychiatric Association and the declassification of homosexuality as mental illness).

Meanwhile, there will be increased pressure against homeschooling – the last bastion of religious conservatism where traditional Christian moral values are being taught by curriculum and lived out within the family structure.

Because the Enemy’s #1 weapon to kidnap our kids’ souls is the breakdown of our families. If our kids don’t see, hear and experience a reasonably healthy heterosexual love through their parents’ examples (and even a toxic marriage has to be better than no heterosexual modeling at all!) and observe our Christian moral values as something normal, integral to daily life, and joy-filled, then they’re easy prey for the pseudo-authority of government institutions.

And that, in its final analysis, will provide a new generation of beautiful boys to serve as the prey of homosexual predators. Our sons.

Trophy Wife

~ Laura Lowder ~ 5 Comments

It was a real shock to me when he said it. I was having one of my bad days, one of those days when I refer to the ex- as The Faerie Prince – and my friend stopped me short.

“I used to date a lady,” he said, “who was divorced for the same reason you are. I figure, when those guys do marry, they pick out a Trophy Wife for themselves. You might want to think about that.”

Trophy Wife? MOI?????   But I thought about it, and I dug out some old photos, and I thought of the few other women I know who were in this position, and … you know what?

He was right! My friend was right! We are Trophy Wives!

Wow!

I thought I stood…

~ Laura Lowder ~ 1 Comment

I’m not a poet. I sure wish I were. I’ve had a poem floating around in my head for several years now. Well, the beginning and the end.

It would begin, simply, I thought I stood at the brink of Hell... and then it would twist and turn in those solar-plexus-hitting ways that good poetry has, in memories of the hard times, the abject fear that wrenched me as we were separating, the fear that the contempt was grounded in reality, etc., etc., etc….

but it would end, But it was Purgatory. Purgatory – that place Catholics believe in -more a state of being, perhaps than a geographical location in the Cosmos – where we are purged of our sins and selfish-self-love and cleaned of our love for worldly things that have meant more to us than God.

Being married to a homosexual is one of those things I would not wish on my worst enemy. It’s also one of those things I wouldn’t take a million bucks for (not in today’s economy, by any means!) for what I learned about myself in the process:

I am strong. I am resilient. I have good instincts. I am not stupid, or unrealistic, or irrational, or boring, or undesirable; I am intelligent, and perceptive and so often I was right about the values and ideals that he couldn’t face up to… and (straight) men love to talk to me about all sorts of things and even now I rebuff advances (blush) —

and THIS is what I want this blog to be about, ultimately. NOT about disparaging my ex- or other gays. Yes, understanding what goes on behind the scenes is important to our finding our balance after such an event, but we mustn’t wallow in our grief and sense of loss!

Life is beautiful – and so are we.

 

Perspective – Part Two

~ Laura Lowder ~ 4 Comments

Even more important, however, than the basic physical offensiveness of homosexual acts, or of the contemptuous way in which the gay community treats the rest of us, is the spiritual component of homosexuality.

My husband and I were Baptists/evangelicals. When we were married, he was a faithful believer who spent the first part of his morning reading the Scriptures and praying. He was pro-life. He believed that homosexual acts were a sin and that people burdened with the cross of homosexual tendencies were obligated to live as celibates.

He no longer believes these things.

I became Roman Catholic ten years ago, which gives me a new and stronger vocabulary for discussing this stuff.

First, we have the issue of “natural law.” The Apostle Paul was alluding to it when he wrote to the Romans that even pagans have a law that is written on their hearts, that reveals right and truth even to people who haven’t heard the Gospel (Romans 1). Natural law also tells us that sexual relations which in nature result in procreation, must be of the sort that can result in new life if they are going to adhere to that Natural Law. Homosexual acts cannot result in procreation; therefore they violate natural law.

Then we have the historical cultural evidence. Dennis Prager, in Judaism, Homosexuality and Civilization, points out that Judaism arose out of a pagan ancient world – a world in which sexual license-to-depravity was the social norm. Remember all the Greek gods and their proclivities? The ancients just weren’t quite so sophisticated with their mythologies, but the cultures operated the same way: homosexuality, bestiality, incest, fetishism…  But out of this milieu arose a family, which became a tribe, which became a nation!… who said that they’d been formed and called by a God who commanded them to live for Him in ways which included restricting their sexual encounters to the framework of marriage: heterosexual monogamy.

So, not everyone followed the rules. Kings, for instance, like David and Solomon, were polygamous (and got into some serious trouble for it, too). But the rules themselves didn’t change. God prohibited all the ordinary events of the pagan world. The homosexuality He called “abomination,” but He also prohibited bestiality, incest, and the like.

And when the Christian Church was established, and, lo and behold! Gentiles were coming to know Jesus Christ! (and Gentiles were not “protestant jews,” they were pagans) it caused such an uproar that the first Council of the Church had to be held to figure out how to handle them. I mean, this was a MAJOR paradigm shift, from Roman/pagan to Christian! — and Peter and the rest of the Apostles put their heads together and agreed: the new converts to Christ did not have to be circumcised, the signification of the Old Covenant of Abraham; instead, they were to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols and from sexual immorality.

In other words, the new Christians didn’t have to have their bodies mutilated, but they did have to abandon the old paradigm and embrace a wholly new one – a paradigm of chastity.

It couldn’t have been easy. We know this because the earliest records of the Church demonstrate that private Confession (sacramental Confession) was followed up by public penance – and severe penances were placed in effect for the former pagans falling back into old habits. Severe fasting, separation from the Eucharist and from the community were some of the penances assigned to those who fell into the old ways.

There was vigorous discussion whether one could even be saved, whether penance was possible, who had fallen back into such grave sin after baptism.

Paul, again, wrote of this to the Corinthians. Now, the Corinthians were a particularly depraved group of people with a reputation so lewd that calling someone a “corinthian” was a serious insult. And Paul reminded them of what they had escaped, in I Corinthians 6:
{6:9} Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers:
{6:10} Nor the effeminate nor liers with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor railers nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.

And those are the very sorts of people the Corinthians had been – But Paul goes on to remind them:


{6:11} And such some of you were. But you are washed: but you are sanctified: but you are justified: in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God.

(emphasis mine) Get a load of it: the early Gentile converts to Christianity became…

Ex-gays!

Sure, societies have deviated from the norms throughout history. History is full of examples of kings and nobles who had a decided “thing” for young boys instead of for women. But the law of the Church and the expectations of society never changed.

So – Homosexuality is a very grave sin, perhaps the gravest of sins because of its association with paganism, with following after false gods. And because I believe in a coming Judgment, I worry and grieve far more for my husband’s immortal soul than I do for the abuses he’s placed his body under – or even the ravages to his character I’ve observed in the years since our divorce.

Yet those very character deviations stand out as evidences of the great spiritual damage he – and other homosexuals – are doing to themselves.

And this grieves me most of all.

Perspective – Part One

~ Laura Lowder ~ 4 Comments

(Language warning – but this is why I rated this blog PG-13)

I get pretty angry when I see/hear people talking about homosexuality as if it were all sweetness and light. The willful ignorance of the general population toward homosexuality is appalling.

I have a hard time keeping a civil tongue in my head when I encounter discussion about gay rights, gay marriage, as if homosexual “love” were just like heterosexual love… with certain… anatomical… distinctions.

Think that if you wish, but you’re not thinking at all if you do. The dynamic of homosexual relationships is not like heterosexual ones. There is a violence – physical violence in the sex act and emotional violence in the way gays treat one another and everyone else.

There is nothing sweet or normal about the anger and sarcasm and emotional violence and the general contempt for other people, the basic “F*** you” attitude that marks the gay community in regards to everyone else who isn’t a part of that community – or, in their language, all us heterosexists.

Look. In heterosexual relationships, there is a complementarity of being: masculine/feminine, both equally strong but in different ways. In the gay community, relationships are identified by dominant/passive-receptive. According to Queer Net, this is called the active-passive split: “–a mode of thought found in some cultures in which, in male-male sexual activity, the only one who is perverted is the bottom. In this mode of thought, a man who would allow himself to get fucked is thought weak and womanish, whereas the top retains his manhood because he is doing the fucking.”

Note that the male partner in the receptive or “female” role is the one regarded with contempt and derision.

The slang of the gay community is further evidence of this violence and contempt. It’s rude, it’s ugly to call a homosexual a “queen”? Guess what? That’s what they call themselves and each other. Is it ugly to call a straight girl attracted to gay men a “fag hag”? Well, guess what, again! The term was coined by gays!  Someone told me that my ex- is a “bitch queen” – a term given to a particularly campy or catty gay man. Do you really think I’m being nasty and ill-tempered to use these words, here? Would I be if I were a lesbian?

But the language is nothing compared to the physical acts. Do you know that gay men are likely to have a variety of gay-specific infections and medical complications, not including AIDS, that the rest of the population has never heard of? That gay men in the passive role lose the ability to have normal bowel movements? have to wear feminine hygiene products to catch the bleeding? There is nothing noble, heroic, beautiful or “sweet” about a man having his anal sphincter ripped open by another man’s dick. Okay?

And there’s nothing sweet, loving, or honorable about a man doing that to another man.