{"id":4554,"date":"2003-08-07T09:14:49","date_gmt":"2003-08-07T16:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4554"},"modified":"2003-08-07T09:14:49","modified_gmt":"2003-08-07T16:14:49","slug":"tough_questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/07\/tough_questions.html","title":{"rendered":"Tough questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a bit after the fact now, but there’s another aspect of Rev. Robinson’s election to bishop of New Hampshire that bears some discussion. About 85% of the discussion has been on “He’s gay! He’s gay!” with another 14% on “His election will tear apart the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Union!” Since I thought these were both poor arguments against the confirmation (Luke 12:51ff <\/a>seems to counter the latter, at least), I was left supporting it.<\/p>\n

But there’s another argument that’s been brought up — and largely because Lileks raises the matter this morning<\/a>, it’s worth at least touching on, after the fact:<\/p>\n

This story has irritated me from the start, and it has nothing to do with Rev. Robinson\u2019s sexual orientation. The guy left his wife and kids to go do the hokey-pokey with someone else: that\u2019s what it\u2019s all about, at least for me. Marriages founder for a variety of reasons, and ofttimes they\u2019re valid reasons, sad and inescapable. But \u201cI want to have sex with other people\u201d is not a valid reason for depriving two little girls of a daddy who lives with them, gets up at night when they’re sick, kisses them in the morning when they wake. There’s a word for people who leave their children because they don’t want to have sex with Mommy anymore: selfish.
\n[…] If he\u2019d cast off his family to cavort with a woman from the choir, I\u2019m not sure he\u2019d be elevated to the level of moral avatar \u2013 but by some peculiar twist the fact that he left mom for a man insulates him from criticism. It\u2019s as if he had to do it. To stay in the marriage would have been (crack of thunder, horses neighing) living a lie, and nowadays we\u2019re told that\u2019s the worst thing anyone can do. Better to bedevil other lives with the truth than inconvenience your own with a lie. Right? If others are harmed in the short run, eventually they will be happy because you\u2019re happier. Right?<\/p>\n

Divorce is a tricky one. Being previously divorced myself, I obviously have a certain bias in the issue. I’m also one for taking responsibility for one’s actions, and sticking by one’s commitments. I also don’t know as much as, perhaps, I ought about the details of Rev. Robinson’s life and how he ended his relationship with his wife and daughters.<\/p>\n

I will note that the situation is not directly analogous to “if he\u2019d cast off his family to cavort with a woman from the choir” — for the same reason that arguing that “he’s fooling around out of wedlock” is not a valid criticism. Until we, as a society, tolerate and formally recognize gay relationships, up to and including marriage, we cannot, as a society, criticize gay individuals for not being good, upstanding, married individuals.<\/i> Critiquing Robinson for not marrying his partner should be, on the face of it, goofy, given that he cannot <\/i>marry him under current civil and religious law; that folks continue to make that argument shows they don’t get the point. Lileks is not doing this directly, but to say that there’s no difference between a man acknowleding he’s gay and turning to the intrinsic subject of his affections, and a man deciding that, no, he’d rather be hitched to a different woman than the one he chose, is to make a similar argument.<\/p>\n

Marriage is about more than sex. But were I suddenly to find myself single, I cannot imagine having a relationship — even excluding sex — with a gay man as close as what I could have with a straight woman.<\/p>\n

I was lucky enough to grow up in a society that accepted who I fell in love with and chose to partner with, and that accepted that partnership as something good and worth nurturing with the force of law and culture. I’m willing to cut someone who did not have that advantage a certain measure of slack when confronted with that situation.<\/p>\n

But …<\/p>\n

Kids are a different matter, and that’s where I’m closest to Lileks’ position. Short of a situation where there’s violence in the home, I’m reluctant to give a pass to anyone leaves their kids, even with all the agreement and acceptance and visitation in the world. A case-by-case basis, perhaps. But “living a lie” isn’t an automatic gimme. There is an intrinsic commitment to children beyond what one has to one’s spouse, and sucking it up and soldiering on seems to be a more morally defensible position than not — no matter what the gender of the snuggy-boo you’re running off to hang out with. <\/p>\n

There may be other factors involved. But that’s my first stand on the position.<\/p>\n

That all being said … I’m still willing to give that decision up to the electors in New Hampshire, who, presumably, weighed it in their decision, as I don’t know that I consider it something that would disqualify Rev. Robinson outright, or should have properly denied his confirmation. But it is, to my mind, a better ground to criticize the qualifications of Robinson than those which were <\/i>used.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a bit after the fact now, but there’s another aspect of Rev. Robinson’s election to bishop of New Hampshire that bears some discussion. About 85% of the discussion has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4574,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/05\/breaking_news_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":4554,"position":0},"title":"Breaking news","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 5-Aug-03 9:15am","format":false,"excerpt":"I hate to link to breaking news here, because inevitably something pops up almost immediately to take the story beyond whatever analysis I can give it. Still, the 11th-hour accusations...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4560,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/06\/cowboy_theology.html","url_meta":{"origin":4554,"position":1},"title":"Cowboy theology","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 6-Aug-03 3:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting piece here on protests by various deputies to the Episcopal General Convention regarding the confirmation of Rev. Robinson's election. One paragraph stood out to me: In his statement,...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4568,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/05\/breaking_news_i.html","url_meta":{"origin":4554,"position":2},"title":"Breaking News II","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 5-Aug-03 4:02pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Rev. Robinson has been cleared of the allegations made against him. Scruton said Lewis refused to lodge a formal complaint when Scruton interviewed him by telephone Monday afternoon. Lewis said...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4537,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/11\/footnote.html","url_meta":{"origin":4554,"position":3},"title":"Footnote","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 11-Aug-03 8:33am","format":false,"excerpt":"Oddly enough, I got three e-mail on Friday about my blog, none of them on the same subject. One that caught my eye (and which I was going to blog...","rel":"","context":"In "Crime & Punishment"","block_context":{"text":"Crime & Punishment","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/crime-punishment"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9509,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/06\/19\/our_new_presidi.html","url_meta":{"origin":4554,"position":4},"title":"Our new Presiding Bishopess","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 19-Jun-06 10:12pm","format":false,"excerpt":"While much of the focus on the Episcopal Church's triennial General Convention has been on, y'know, the Gay thing, a new curve ball got tossed in by the election, on...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28399,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/21\/oppressed-and-oppressors.html","url_meta":{"origin":4554,"position":5},"title":"Oppressed and oppressors","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 21-Jun-12 12:53pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It is a sad fact that those who have once been oppressed -- bitterly, justly, profoundly oppressed -- do not seem to be immune to the human tendency to make things about \"Us vs Them\" and to make sure that \"Us\" don't have to treat \"Them\" as equals.Thus the irony\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}