Homokind

Frank J. Tipler, in his enlightening book, The Physics of Immortality, reports (pg 370):

At the Council of Florence 1442, the Catholic Church laid it out forcefully: ‘The Holy Roman Church, firmly believes, professes and proclaims that none of those outside the Church (Extra Ecclesium nulla salus), not Jews, not heretics, can participate in eternal life, but will go into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are brought back into the Catholic Church before the end of life."

This doctrine clearly makes the Roman Catholic Church the most extreme fundamentalist church of them all.

Today Jews and heretics have been replaced by gays and lesbians. We go to the fire, unless we go (back) into the Church before our life ends. No option for eternal life for us.

In the 15th century the Church sold the notion that heaven is only for the select few. Kept its priests at the door of the big Disco in the sky. Tempted all queens who wanted a VIP pass to the stairway to heaven. Admit One Selected Soul-a lucky person to get in.

Even at the time, this doctrine of selectivity was challenged. If the Church happened to be wrong, then it meant the Church falsified itself and stood between a loving God and Jesus, who admitted everyone and humankind. It meant the Church shut off the electrifying flow of love between God and her people. God left heaven’s gate open to all.

For our tribe, I like the word HOMOKIND. HOMO from Latin refers to the universal generic man, who like gays and lesbians, “are everywhere.” Tiny in numerical size, but universal in application. That’s why a church which calls itself “universal and whole” should be the first to include us all as equal members, equal to the body of Christ.

Pope comes from the word pontifex, which means “bridge builder.” Hardly. Instead Popes use their bully pulpit to brand us “molokai,” softies, sissies, the no accounts. Tragically, because of our soft, kind and gentle nature (the KIND in HOMOKIND) we seem to stir up and provoke their brutal atoms. So they harass and keep us outside the Church and try to keep us away from eternal life. This harsh punishment hits gay sons and lesbian daughters hard, puts fear instead of the love of God in our older members.

For 27 centuries the Church has been wacky and out of balance. In the beginning all it talks about is HOMOGENITALITY. As Rick Garcia has remarked: they keep sticking their noses into our genitals. They are one rigid kind of unkind church that concentrates all its fire in condemning one kind of homo/sex. They particularly refuse to acknowledge over the years how we have evolved a loving kind of domestic partners.

The Church has a deliberate stand against domestic partners at City Hall and in Oak Park, as recently signaled by Archbishop George. Chicago aldermen have and make better sense than the pack of bishops.

It took them half a millennium to seek forgiveness for standing between God and Galileo, between God and the Jews. Will it take them another 500 for the church to reach the apology and realization stage with us? YES. Meanwhile they themselves, because they deal in an ethic that is dark, closed and closeted, suffer a horrendous perception problem. Many if not most who stand outside the Church believe these men in fine silks and dress are gay.

Believe that homo priests and pedophile clergy run the shop.

If in the next millennium they want to live up to their name “universal,” they will have to incorporate outsider gays and lesbians with the folks inside the Church, decent folk who do not like their mind trapped in such deception. Ironically the Church’s salvation hinges on their outreach, love and acceptance of gays and lesbians, not our obedience to a cabal of secretive repressed homos, men who exhibit too much genital expression in their talk about us, and not enough kindness in actually dealing with us.

[Publisher’s Note(s): Along with “The Field of God,” this makes up the last essays Damski wrote and edited in 1997. It was reprinted as Schizo-File No. 32, under the title “By the time you read this I’ll be a dead queer, but I was always homokind to you.” in dead/queer/proud (Firetrap Press, 2002)--John Vore]