Wild how some Christian schools actively erase LGBTQIA+ humans yet others celebrate the diversity of their students. It’s almost like there are many different interpretations of the Bible which makes it kind of, uh, flawed?? My daughter desperately wanted to go to a Catholic high school, I had some reservations but had been assured by others that it’s an amazing school. Not long after sending in her application form, they posted this on their Facebook page:
“This month we are celebrating Pride Month, starting with a message about its origins:
Pride Month is celebrated each June to make more people aware of and celebrate LGBTQ+ pride. There has been recordings of gay marriages since 10000 BC in places such as Mesopotamia (which is in present day Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Kuwait).
Pride Month has been celebrated in June since 1969 when a police raid on a queer bar in Manhatten lead to rioting in the streets of New York.
We are all lucky to study and work in an inclusive community here at *********. Be who you are, and be the best version of yourself!
For some seven years during my work as an educator for the NZ AIDS Foundation, I presented sexual health and sexuality inclusiveness workshops to a great many schools and, sometimes, also their staff. I was surprised, but pleased, to find that some of the schools booking my presentations were religious special character schools. It was great being allowed into these schools, the presentations were challenging to the recipients and I was often challenged in return, but in general they were very well received by staff, the female students and some of the boys.
"Why only some of the boys?" you ask. What I found in special character schools amongst the boys was an almost universal sense of privilege; some sort of inherited, class-based right to power and the right to wield that power without criticism; dismissal of the feelings, experience and humanity of those perceived to be of "lower class" or "less importance" than them; an almost complete lack of empathy, especially where expressing empathy might require them to examine their own comfortable position or their own roles in causing harm to others; and a strong underlying culture and practice of what we now acknowledge as "toxic masculinity," in which all things queer were seen as an absolute affront to, even an attack on, their sense of self and the man they were, or were growing to become.
These were the boys who went on to be leaders: in their schools, in their communities, in their churches, in our politics. To be fair, I found these same attitudes amongst the boys in state schools as well except that, in state schools, their attitudes were far more likely to be challenged and there were greater opportunities for others outside of this 'boys own club' culture to be seen and valued.
I have not worked in this field for some years, but maintain close contact with those who still labour to effect change. From what they tell me, change has been small and inconsistently applied.
All of this was summed up in perhaps my proudest, yet most sad, experiences to come from my work in these schools.
One day, a young man walked into my office and asked to make a donation to NZAF. It was a fairly large sum of money (his first week's wages at his first job, as it turned out).
At his special character school this boy had been a high performer. Dux of the school, captain of the seniors' cricket and rugby teams, a prefect, a very good looking boy by anyone's standards who was much admired, and who seemed to have the world being served to him on a platter.
When there was sexist or anti gay chatter in the changing rooms, he joined in, hell he led it! He had girlfriends; he boasted of his sexual conquests and was believed and admired for them. And yet . . . he was a chameleon (his word). His sexual conquests were a fiction; his apparent self belief and assured position and future, fragile.
Fragile to the point that at the time I visited his school and spoke to his age group, he was planning his suicide. I walked into his life, knowing none of this, and sat in front of his age group as an openly gay man and shared my life story; talked about inclusivity, respect, empathy et el.
It was the first time anyone had modelled acceptance, had shown that a complete and fulfilling life could be lived as a gay person. It saved his life.
He left school to go to tech (to everyone's surprise as they had mapped out a university career for him) and studied automotive engineering. He got an apprenticeship as a mechanic. That's where his first week's wages came from. It was his way of saying thankyou. because that boy was gay, he'd known it for a long time, but had hidden it oh so successfully, almost to his cost.
I celebrate this story, but I am also saddened by it, because, even now, there are too many young people out there who neither see nor hear these messages of inclusivity. And, in special character schools, their chances of seeing and hearing these messages seem to me to be far too remote, if Bethlehem College is typical, which I suspect it is.
I think as a wider community we had assumed the level of progress we had made for our rainbow community was significant and getting there. This is a powerful and necessary wakeup call. But its not a war. Noone is fighting to claim territory or resources that are not theirs. We are simply making sure the space and structure is in place to support vulnerable people to be who they are- meaningful and valuable members of society.
Thank you for the reminder about the rebuild fund- a good place to put some financial support.
These "Christians" ought to remember their own favoured saying: the Devil can quote scripture to his own ends.
I should like to mention my own: even if a billion people believe something that isn't true, it still isn't true.
I assume - I have too many other important things to try to remember to be able to quote chapter and verse of the Bible, that the inarticulate, wannabe investigative journalist was referring to God making man in his own image. Well, who know (a) what God looks like and (b) what Adam looked like? Not sleek, clean-shaven and white, I'm sure.
More to the point, if we are going into pedantic semantics, are we to assume that while 'man and woman he created them' woman isn't made in God's image? Let's face it, the word man is a short, incomplete form, of woman, or should I spell it womb-man? Just playing with words here 😄.
However, assuming that God is not the patriarchal psychopath he is usually portrayed as, and actually does value the female half of his creation, and assuming he created both man and woman in his image, the only logical inference is that God is transgender!
I find this all very scary. As a late in life member of the LGBTIQ+ community and a teacher , I have been celebrating the wonderful inclusiveness for our rangatahi these days. To read otherwise is upsetting and shameful!!
On another note, I have been watching the Netflix series Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey. This, on top of the programme about Gloriavale, makes me fume about patriarchal societies that abuse women and young people. We need people like you David, (and John Campbell), to speak out and expose these places. Let’s give our rangatahi a chance!
My feeds have been flooded this week with people posting the ‘We love Bethlehem College’ graphic. Each time I’ve found myself weighing up the value of engaging with it. My world is full of queer young people and I’m so glad that for all they face in life, they’re not at BC.
I wrestle with this space that calls for activism but also needs compassion for those so blind to the damage they do in pursuit of concrete beliefs. I want to do more than allyship but after years of pushing for LGBTQ+ rights and affirmation in these contexts — sometimes I still just throw my hands up in despair.
I sometimes seem to forget I live in a bubble, surrounded by people who generally think like me. Reminders like this, that New Zealand contains the same hate and bigotry as anywhere else, are always jarring. But important. I don’t want to pretend everything is shiny and lovely. So thank you as usual for what you do. On another note, my dad introduced me to Pretty Hate Machine when I was 11 and I was immediately hooked on Nine Inch Nails. Safe to say I was a weird kid. The song you quote is a banger. It has the same chord progression as a song called Nietzsche by the Dandy Warhols. The lyrics are, “I want a god who stays dead, not plays dead. I, even I, can play dead.” Just thought it was a cute coincidence.
We gotta take all these threats, even here in Aotearoa which I (wrongly?) thought was so much more tolerant, deadly serious & protect our LGBTQ+ whānau - especially the rangatahi 🏳️🌈 ⚧ 🏳️⚧️
The Genesis passage is about a man leaving his parents to join a spouse. And it's OK to be naked with each other. It doesn't mention whether the spouse is a man or a woman. It's more about leaving home than what these bigots are implying.
Mark 12:31 - And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Should be simple, Golden rules for the Fools distilled to a pure universal essence.
Gods Law supercedes man's, but also living by the Law of the Land as a citizen was a command, the usual total cognitive dissonance, the enemy - immigrant - other is both weak and strong.
Very Authoritarian outlook and predictable, its as if people are just cherry picking and making up literal rules for a symbolic way of life.
"Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off.
Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith.
I love that NIN song (and all their other stuff too). There’s a great song on the Sound City: Real to Reel collection by Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and Trent Reznor called ‘Mantra’ which is basically three of my musical titans all singing for the same song sheet. Just needed MJ Keenan on there too to completely melt my brain… or Layne Staley or Jerry Cantrell to check my brain… oh my. I remember feeling guilty for liking these artists as a bumbling unsure-christian teenager, ooo might they be devil worshipers? Luckily music won out. I cannot fathom how hard and contrary and fucked up it must be to have to worry about something as important and defining as your sexuality instead of a relatively inconsequential thing like which musician you might listen to. I have the most massive respect for anyone navigating those waters. Keep at ‘em David and Webworm.
I was going to begin with ' I grew up in boarding school', but I didn't. I grew up after I left and went to University. Because at our institution there were NO gay students. It was simply not possible to be openly gay and live to tell the story, such was the macho culture of young men that was both encouraged and self regulated in our fairly unreligious (Anglican) but rugby worshiping school in the 80s.
Now I'm father of two rainbow teens, and while University rectified my experience that straight white men were the world, it still didn't prepare me for the disempowerment of being a dad whose children were being terrorized for being their true selves.
Thankfully their experience of the world has improved, and with it their confidence and joy. This is no doubt helped by being able to see their true selves as being accepted and normalized in the Marvel / Star Wars / Trek world's, and to a much lessor extent in the real-world.
I reccomend this resource for parents. I didn't write it, but I did commissioned it. People, including parents can be on a journey through no fault of their own, from a place of ignorance and or violence. They can hurt themselves and others, and we constantly need to create a call-in-culture for real change to occurr. I'd suggest your audience doesn't need it, but I bet we all know a parent that does.
Wild how some Christian schools actively erase LGBTQIA+ humans yet others celebrate the diversity of their students. It’s almost like there are many different interpretations of the Bible which makes it kind of, uh, flawed?? My daughter desperately wanted to go to a Catholic high school, I had some reservations but had been assured by others that it’s an amazing school. Not long after sending in her application form, they posted this on their Facebook page:
“This month we are celebrating Pride Month, starting with a message about its origins:
Pride Month is celebrated each June to make more people aware of and celebrate LGBTQ+ pride. There has been recordings of gay marriages since 10000 BC in places such as Mesopotamia (which is in present day Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Kuwait).
Pride Month has been celebrated in June since 1969 when a police raid on a queer bar in Manhatten lead to rioting in the streets of New York.
We are all lucky to study and work in an inclusive community here at *********. Be who you are, and be the best version of yourself!
Happy Pride Month”
For some seven years during my work as an educator for the NZ AIDS Foundation, I presented sexual health and sexuality inclusiveness workshops to a great many schools and, sometimes, also their staff. I was surprised, but pleased, to find that some of the schools booking my presentations were religious special character schools. It was great being allowed into these schools, the presentations were challenging to the recipients and I was often challenged in return, but in general they were very well received by staff, the female students and some of the boys.
"Why only some of the boys?" you ask. What I found in special character schools amongst the boys was an almost universal sense of privilege; some sort of inherited, class-based right to power and the right to wield that power without criticism; dismissal of the feelings, experience and humanity of those perceived to be of "lower class" or "less importance" than them; an almost complete lack of empathy, especially where expressing empathy might require them to examine their own comfortable position or their own roles in causing harm to others; and a strong underlying culture and practice of what we now acknowledge as "toxic masculinity," in which all things queer were seen as an absolute affront to, even an attack on, their sense of self and the man they were, or were growing to become.
These were the boys who went on to be leaders: in their schools, in their communities, in their churches, in our politics. To be fair, I found these same attitudes amongst the boys in state schools as well except that, in state schools, their attitudes were far more likely to be challenged and there were greater opportunities for others outside of this 'boys own club' culture to be seen and valued.
I have not worked in this field for some years, but maintain close contact with those who still labour to effect change. From what they tell me, change has been small and inconsistently applied.
All of this was summed up in perhaps my proudest, yet most sad, experiences to come from my work in these schools.
One day, a young man walked into my office and asked to make a donation to NZAF. It was a fairly large sum of money (his first week's wages at his first job, as it turned out).
At his special character school this boy had been a high performer. Dux of the school, captain of the seniors' cricket and rugby teams, a prefect, a very good looking boy by anyone's standards who was much admired, and who seemed to have the world being served to him on a platter.
When there was sexist or anti gay chatter in the changing rooms, he joined in, hell he led it! He had girlfriends; he boasted of his sexual conquests and was believed and admired for them. And yet . . . he was a chameleon (his word). His sexual conquests were a fiction; his apparent self belief and assured position and future, fragile.
Fragile to the point that at the time I visited his school and spoke to his age group, he was planning his suicide. I walked into his life, knowing none of this, and sat in front of his age group as an openly gay man and shared my life story; talked about inclusivity, respect, empathy et el.
It was the first time anyone had modelled acceptance, had shown that a complete and fulfilling life could be lived as a gay person. It saved his life.
He left school to go to tech (to everyone's surprise as they had mapped out a university career for him) and studied automotive engineering. He got an apprenticeship as a mechanic. That's where his first week's wages came from. It was his way of saying thankyou. because that boy was gay, he'd known it for a long time, but had hidden it oh so successfully, almost to his cost.
I celebrate this story, but I am also saddened by it, because, even now, there are too many young people out there who neither see nor hear these messages of inclusivity. And, in special character schools, their chances of seeing and hearing these messages seem to me to be far too remote, if Bethlehem College is typical, which I suspect it is.
I think as a wider community we had assumed the level of progress we had made for our rainbow community was significant and getting there. This is a powerful and necessary wakeup call. But its not a war. Noone is fighting to claim territory or resources that are not theirs. We are simply making sure the space and structure is in place to support vulnerable people to be who they are- meaningful and valuable members of society.
Thank you for the reminder about the rebuild fund- a good place to put some financial support.
❤
David, thanks for your excellent work here. Love your honest, humorous, and confronting style.
I think I was Hitchens that said that there are good people and bad people but only religion can cause good people to do bad things.
As a newish reader I'm very happy to support your efforts, keep it up!
These "Christians" ought to remember their own favoured saying: the Devil can quote scripture to his own ends.
I should like to mention my own: even if a billion people believe something that isn't true, it still isn't true.
I assume - I have too many other important things to try to remember to be able to quote chapter and verse of the Bible, that the inarticulate, wannabe investigative journalist was referring to God making man in his own image. Well, who know (a) what God looks like and (b) what Adam looked like? Not sleek, clean-shaven and white, I'm sure.
More to the point, if we are going into pedantic semantics, are we to assume that while 'man and woman he created them' woman isn't made in God's image? Let's face it, the word man is a short, incomplete form, of woman, or should I spell it womb-man? Just playing with words here 😄.
However, assuming that God is not the patriarchal psychopath he is usually portrayed as, and actually does value the female half of his creation, and assuming he created both man and woman in his image, the only logical inference is that God is transgender!
I find this all very scary. As a late in life member of the LGBTIQ+ community and a teacher , I have been celebrating the wonderful inclusiveness for our rangatahi these days. To read otherwise is upsetting and shameful!!
On another note, I have been watching the Netflix series Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey. This, on top of the programme about Gloriavale, makes me fume about patriarchal societies that abuse women and young people. We need people like you David, (and John Campbell), to speak out and expose these places. Let’s give our rangatahi a chance!
My feeds have been flooded this week with people posting the ‘We love Bethlehem College’ graphic. Each time I’ve found myself weighing up the value of engaging with it. My world is full of queer young people and I’m so glad that for all they face in life, they’re not at BC.
I wrestle with this space that calls for activism but also needs compassion for those so blind to the damage they do in pursuit of concrete beliefs. I want to do more than allyship but after years of pushing for LGBTQ+ rights and affirmation in these contexts — sometimes I still just throw my hands up in despair.
This is war! (Peace be with you)
Paul “Dunning Kruger” Burns
I sometimes seem to forget I live in a bubble, surrounded by people who generally think like me. Reminders like this, that New Zealand contains the same hate and bigotry as anywhere else, are always jarring. But important. I don’t want to pretend everything is shiny and lovely. So thank you as usual for what you do. On another note, my dad introduced me to Pretty Hate Machine when I was 11 and I was immediately hooked on Nine Inch Nails. Safe to say I was a weird kid. The song you quote is a banger. It has the same chord progression as a song called Nietzsche by the Dandy Warhols. The lyrics are, “I want a god who stays dead, not plays dead. I, even I, can play dead.” Just thought it was a cute coincidence.
Love NIN! And you hit the condescending, patronising tone on the head. It always has to be white religious guys, doesn’t it 🙄 This, from my birth country Austria, really put the heebies in me: https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2022/06/austria-far-right-found-new-enemy-lgbtq-community
We gotta take all these threats, even here in Aotearoa which I (wrongly?) thought was so much more tolerant, deadly serious & protect our LGBTQ+ whānau - especially the rangatahi 🏳️🌈 ⚧ 🏳️⚧️
The Genesis passage is about a man leaving his parents to join a spouse. And it's OK to be naked with each other. It doesn't mention whether the spouse is a man or a woman. It's more about leaving home than what these bigots are implying.
David, I worked out that your number is 666 and therefore you are the Beast. I hope you like your toasted marshmallows.
Mark 12:31 - And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Should be simple, Golden rules for the Fools distilled to a pure universal essence.
Gods Law supercedes man's, but also living by the Law of the Land as a citizen was a command, the usual total cognitive dissonance, the enemy - immigrant - other is both weak and strong.
Very Authoritarian outlook and predictable, its as if people are just cherry picking and making up literal rules for a symbolic way of life.
"Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off.
Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith.
I love that NIN song (and all their other stuff too). There’s a great song on the Sound City: Real to Reel collection by Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and Trent Reznor called ‘Mantra’ which is basically three of my musical titans all singing for the same song sheet. Just needed MJ Keenan on there too to completely melt my brain… or Layne Staley or Jerry Cantrell to check my brain… oh my. I remember feeling guilty for liking these artists as a bumbling unsure-christian teenager, ooo might they be devil worshipers? Luckily music won out. I cannot fathom how hard and contrary and fucked up it must be to have to worry about something as important and defining as your sexuality instead of a relatively inconsequential thing like which musician you might listen to. I have the most massive respect for anyone navigating those waters. Keep at ‘em David and Webworm.
Thoughtful and inciteful as always David.
I was going to begin with ' I grew up in boarding school', but I didn't. I grew up after I left and went to University. Because at our institution there were NO gay students. It was simply not possible to be openly gay and live to tell the story, such was the macho culture of young men that was both encouraged and self regulated in our fairly unreligious (Anglican) but rugby worshiping school in the 80s.
Now I'm father of two rainbow teens, and while University rectified my experience that straight white men were the world, it still didn't prepare me for the disempowerment of being a dad whose children were being terrorized for being their true selves.
Thankfully their experience of the world has improved, and with it their confidence and joy. This is no doubt helped by being able to see their true selves as being accepted and normalized in the Marvel / Star Wars / Trek world's, and to a much lessor extent in the real-world.
I reccomend this resource for parents. I didn't write it, but I did commissioned it. People, including parents can be on a journey through no fault of their own, from a place of ignorance and or violence. They can hurt themselves and others, and we constantly need to create a call-in-culture for real change to occurr. I'd suggest your audience doesn't need it, but I bet we all know a parent that does.
https://whiteribbon.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Toolbox-Kids-and-Gender-White-Ribbon.pdf