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The Episcopal Church leaves the question of homosexual marriage up to each individual parish. Some priests will perform it, and others will not. I find this heartening. The joke goes that the Episcopalians are "Catholic lite" because their teachings are similiar to Catholicism, but more dialed in to current times. If they'll evolve, perhaps eventually the Catholics will, too. I was raised Catholic and their stance on homosexuality is one of the reasons I left the faith. Their stance on women's rights was my trigger, since I am a woman and I want to belong to a community that accords me equal status, but once I started thinking critically, I realized they held many other positions that I disagreed with. If I'm a Catholic who disagrees with 3/4 of the Church's positions, then I'm not really a Catholic, am I?
My Catholic high school was segregated males and females, leading to the saying that there are three types of Catholic schoolgirls: the sluts, the lesbians, and the lesbian sluts. Statistically, one in ten of my classmates should have been gay, but I estimate that half of them have at least kissed a girl, if not gone further. I doubt many of those girls have remained bi-curious, but it's in the hormones to explore anatomy at that age. If you keep them away from the opposite sex, they'll experiment with the same sex.
My math teacher busted two girls making out in the bathroom. She gave them a lecture on the evils of skipping class and surrendering to lust, and sent them away without punishing them or notifying their parents. They were lucky. Any other teacher would have gotten the dean involved, and they could have been expelled. When <Female Student> got caught getting to second base with <Male Student>, they both received a week of detention. If they'd both been the same gender, it would have been much worse. Expulsion would have been a very real threat, or even worse, the dean would have recommended "straight camp" to their parents.
I'm straight, but I developed right on schedule during high school and I had no easy access to the guys. Not to mention the mystique the teachers built up about the male sex (whom we rarely saw) and the dangers of intercourse, such as pregnancy and STDs. Unfortunately, all they did was convince me that it was difficult to see the guys, that they were some alien species who thought much differently from me, and touching them led to Bad Things. Whereas the girls were already my friends, we changed together in the locker room, sleepovers were sanctioned and encouraged, and we were all suffering from unsatisfied curiosity.
At this point I feel the need to reiterate that I am straight now.
Once I transferred to a public high school, I transferred my fascination to my male classmates. Although it was pretty funny, when I was filling out paperwork to invite my old friend Patricia to my public school's dance, since she wasn't a student there. My vice principal was explaining the paperwork to me, and he kept referring to her as "Patrick". I didn't interrupt; it didn't really matter. Then at one point, he glanced at the paper, did a double-take, and asked me to verify the spelling. After that, he kept going with less enthusiasm. At the end, just to see his reaction, I told him Trishia was really looking forward to coming to the dance with me. She was really coming to socialize with public school boys, but he assumed we were together and it left a sour taste in his mouth. He was homophobic, but he didn't say anything to me and he did his job right, so I have no complaints.
Where was I going with this? Oh, right...homophobic bullying. In my religious high school, it was carried out by the teachers, both by picking on particular students and by (unsuccessfully) brainwashing the students to believe that everyone who touches the same sex is going straight to Hell in a handbasket. In my public high school, you could kinda tell which teachers were homophobic, and my gay friends felt that sometimes they were graded down for their orientation, but there was nothing overt, wide-spread, or coordinated.
My Catholic high school was segregated males and females, leading to the saying that there are three types of Catholic schoolgirls: the sluts, the lesbians, and the lesbian sluts. Statistically, one in ten of my classmates should have been gay, but I estimate that half of them have at least kissed a girl, if not gone further. I doubt many of those girls have remained bi-curious, but it's in the hormones to explore anatomy at that age. If you keep them away from the opposite sex, they'll experiment with the same sex.
My math teacher busted two girls making out in the bathroom. She gave them a lecture on the evils of skipping class and surrendering to lust, and sent them away without punishing them or notifying their parents. They were lucky. Any other teacher would have gotten the dean involved, and they could have been expelled. When <Female Student> got caught getting to second base with <Male Student>, they both received a week of detention. If they'd both been the same gender, it would have been much worse. Expulsion would have been a very real threat, or even worse, the dean would have recommended "straight camp" to their parents.
I'm straight, but I developed right on schedule during high school and I had no easy access to the guys. Not to mention the mystique the teachers built up about the male sex (whom we rarely saw) and the dangers of intercourse, such as pregnancy and STDs. Unfortunately, all they did was convince me that it was difficult to see the guys, that they were some alien species who thought much differently from me, and touching them led to Bad Things. Whereas the girls were already my friends, we changed together in the locker room, sleepovers were sanctioned and encouraged, and we were all suffering from unsatisfied curiosity.
At this point I feel the need to reiterate that I am straight now.
Once I transferred to a public high school, I transferred my fascination to my male classmates. Although it was pretty funny, when I was filling out paperwork to invite my old friend Patricia to my public school's dance, since she wasn't a student there. My vice principal was explaining the paperwork to me, and he kept referring to her as "Patrick". I didn't interrupt; it didn't really matter. Then at one point, he glanced at the paper, did a double-take, and asked me to verify the spelling. After that, he kept going with less enthusiasm. At the end, just to see his reaction, I told him Trishia was really looking forward to coming to the dance with me. She was really coming to socialize with public school boys, but he assumed we were together and it left a sour taste in his mouth. He was homophobic, but he didn't say anything to me and he did his job right, so I have no complaints.Where was I going with this? Oh, right...homophobic bullying. In my religious high school, it was carried out by the teachers, both by picking on particular students and by (unsuccessfully) brainwashing the students to believe that everyone who touches the same sex is going straight to Hell in a handbasket. In my public high school, you could kinda tell which teachers were homophobic, and my gay friends felt that sometimes they were graded down for their orientation, but there was nothing overt, wide-spread, or coordinated.
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