Rain and Reflection

We experienced a rare thing yesterday:  rain.  After weeks and weeks of not so much as a passing shower, we got a thorough soaking yesterday.  It rained steadily for most of the day, then cleared off in the evening.  As a result, we weren't able to get in a ride yesterday.  

In fact, we've only gotten in two rides together this week.  The first was on Monday, when we just rode to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon and back.  I experienced my first flat on this ride, and it would have to be the rear tire.  

Actually, I was grateful because it gave me the opportunity to change the tube by myself with Mark watching and occasionally giving me pointers.  Now, I know I can do it on my own if I need to, which means I can take rides on my own.  I've been reluctant to do that in the past.

The following day, my bike was in the shop getting a new chain and cassette installed.  I picked it up that evening, and Mark and I went on a 30-mile ride to Draper on Wednesday.  There are three pretty good hills on that ride, and I could tell that those rides in the mountains, along with the canyon rides we took late last week, have really helped push my fitness to a new level.  We were able to complete the ride in just under two hours, which gave us an average speed of 15 miles per hour.  We felt pretty good about that.

In other news, I've been reflective the last couple of days.  I watched a documentary on Wednesday night about the AIDS crisis in San Francisco in the 80's called We Were Here.  Ever since beginning my journey of coming out, I have felt a desire and an obligation to learn about gay history, particularly within the last 40 years, most of which I spent living in the closet.  This started when I watched Milk shortly after I came out.  

As I watched both of these movies, as well as others, I have thought about guys who were contemporaries of mine who had the courage to come out when they were young and to be pioneers for gay rights.  I have thought about how many of these men died in the 80's and 90's as a result of AIDS.  And I have thought how I stood by during this period and, Saul-like, cast verbal stones at gays.  I thought about the comments I made when we were living in Vancouver - the San Francisco of Canada - about AIDS and the money that the government was spending on caring for these men ... and I cringe.  

I am deeply ashamed of what I said and did, which of course was motivated by my own deep internalized homophobia. And so I feel guilt, which prompts me to at least learn the truth of what went on and what so many men and their partners and loved ones went through.  We Were Here is a very personal account of what the epidemic met to a group of people who survived.  I recommend watching it.

There are so many stories that could be told about the epidemic and its aftermath.  I'll close with one I heard yesterday on NPR about the AIDS quilt.  One block was made by an IRS agent who was handling the estate return of a man who had died of AIDS.  This man apparently had no family (who acknowledged him), as the court had to appoint an administrator of his estate.  As the IRS agent worked on this case, he became saddened by the fact that this human being had died alone and, apparently, unloved.  So he made a square for the AIDS quilt in order to preserve his memory.  

I'm grateful I heard that story ...

The Abomination Thing

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

Leviticus 18:22

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; 

they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.”

Leviticus 20:13

This post, previously published in the spring of 2011 on my former blog, describes the insights of Daniel Helminiak (discussed in the previous two posts) into and conclusions regarding the foregoing passages from Leviticus, viewed in the light of a historical-critical approach to their interpretation.  

The Holiness Code

These two passages appear in what scholars refer to as “The Holiness Code” – a list of laws and punishments that spelled out requirements for Israel to remain ‘holy’ in God’s sight. As Professor Helminiak explains in his book, “to remain separate from the Gentiles was to be ‘holy’ – set apart, different, chosen, special, consecrated … Differences or specialness is the core meaning of holiness in the ancient Hebrew understanding.  So, a main concern of The Holiness Code was to keep Israel different from the Gentiles … Homogenital sex is forbidden because it is associated with Gentile identity.  It departs from the Jewish understanding of how things should be.”

“The prohibition of male-male sex,” continued Helminiak, “occurs only in The Holiness Code of Leviticus and nowhere else.  But other prohibitions in The Holiness Code [such as adultery, incest and bestiality] recur in other places in the Bible … The implication is that the only reason for forbidding male-male sex is concern about uncleanness and ‘holiness.’  The argument in Leviticus is religious [i.e., ritualistic], not ethical or moral.  That is to say, no thought is given to whether the sex in itself is right or wrong.  The intent is to keep Jewish identity strong.  The concern is purity.”

  

To better explain what he means when he draws a distinction between religious laws vs. ethical/moral laws, Helminiak uses the example of the prohibition on eating meat in the Catholic Church.  There used to be a church law that forbade Catholics from eating meat on Fridays.  That church law was considered so serious that violation was a mortal (i.e., extremely serious) sin, supposedly punishable by hell.  Yet no one believed that eating meat was something wrong in itself.  The offense was against a religious responsibility. 

This example parallels, in Helminiak’s view, the prohibition of male-male sex in Leviticus.  “Not sex,” he writes, “but violation of Judaism is what was prohibited … [and] the fact that two men shared a sexual experience was really not a problem.  The only problem was when one man penetrated another.  Among the early Israelites, to engage specifically in male-male intercourse was to mix the roles of man and woman.  Such ‘mixing of the kinds’ was an abomination; it was impure … Though the Hebrew Testament certainly did forbid penetrative male-male sex, its reasons for forbidding it have no bearing on today’s discussion of homosexuality.”

And what was behind this Hebrew aversion to penetrative male-male sex?  “Women [was] to be penetrated,” writes Helminiak, “and man is to penetrate.  The very Hebrew word for woman, naqeba, means ‘orifice bearer’ – as if there were no orifices in the male body.  The fundamental image of a woman was someone who was there to serve the man in sexual intercourse.  So for a man to sexually penetrate another man in anal intercourse was to mix and confuse the standards of maleness and femaleness.  It was to use a male in the function of a female.  It was precisely this mixing of kinds, this confusion of accepted gender roles, that Leviticus 18:22 forbade – but not other kinds of male-male sex.  In the ancient Hebrew mind, penetrative sex with another man disrupted the ideal order of things and thus was unclean, taboo, forbidden; it was an abomination.”

In this regard, I am reminded from a scene from the documentary, Trembling Before G-d, which explored homosexuality among orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities.  In the scene, Steve Greenberg, who is reportedly the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi in the United States, describes visiting with a revered rabbi in Jerusalem and asking him about homosexuality.  The rabbi pointed out that male-male penetrative sex is forbidden by the Torah.  Greenberg replied that there are other ways to express homosexual love, which the revered rabbi admitted he had never considered.

The Word "Abomination"

And now, about that word “abomination.”  In referring to Leviticus 20:25-26, Helminiak explains that “abominable” is just another word for “unclean.”  “An abomination,” he writes, “is a violation of the purity rules that governed Israelite society and kept the Israelites different from other peoples … We do not fully understand the ancient Jewish worldview …  The reasons for the purity laws of Leviticus are lost in history and in layer upon layer of editing … Whatever the rationale was behind the ancient Hebrew purity laws, such thinking certainly has nothing to do with ethics as we understand it.”   

Helminiak also points out that the Hebrew term toevah used in Leviticus, which is commonly translated as abomination, could also be translated as “uncleanness” or “impurity” or “dirtiness” or “taboo”.  The significance of the use of this word becomes clearer when one realizes that another Hebrew term zimah  could have been used, if that was what the authors intended.  Zimah means, not what is objectionable for religious or cultural reasons, but what is wrong in itself.  It means an injustice, a sin.  “Clearly, then,” writes Helminiak, “Leviticus does not say that for man to lie with is a “sin.”  Rather, it is a ritual violation, an uncleanness.

Further textual support is found in the Greek Septuagint, which usually translates the Hebrew word toevah with the Greek word bdelygma, which means a ritual offense.  In some places, it is translated as akatharsia, which means uncleanness.  But, as with the original Hebrew, other Greek words were available, such as anomia, meaning a violation of law or wrong or a sin; or poneria, an evil practice; or asebia, meaning ungodliness.  “These words, “writes Helminiak, could have been used to translate toevah.  In fact, in some cases they were.  In nine places in chapter 16 of Ezekial – where the prophet outright defines the sin of Sodom [see last week’s post on the Sin of Sodom] – toevah is translated as anomia, and the offenses in question are not just ritual impurity but real wrongs, like idolatry, child sacrifice, adultery and basic wickedness.  Anomia also translates toevah in Ezekial 18:12, 13 and 24, where the discussion is about individual moral responsibility.  In Proverbs 26:25, referring to a deceitful and wicked person, poneria is used to translate toevah.  And in Ezekial 14:6, in reference to idolatry, the Greek word asebia is used to translate toevah.”

Concluding Comments

In the last post in this series, I mentioned a book, Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality, by Rev. Rack Rogers, Professor of Theology Emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary and former Moderator (President) of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).  In his book, Professor Rogers sums up his comments on these two verses from Leviticus thusly (at pp. 69-70):

“Jesus was concerned with purity of heart.  In Matthew 15 he said to a crowd, ‘Listen and understand:  it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles’ (Matthew 15:10-11).  Later he explained to his disciples:  ‘What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.  For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.  These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile” (Matthew 15:18-20).

“When we see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law, we understand that our challenge is not meticulously to maintain culturally conditioned laws, but rather, with Jesus, to love God and love our neighbor.  When these texts in Leviticus are taken out of their historical and cultural context and applied to faithful, God-worshipping Christians who are homosexual, it does violence to them.  They are being condemned for failing to conform to an ancient culturally conditioned code that is not applicable to them or their circumstances.  Even Louisville Presbyterian Seminary New Testament professor Marion Soards, who opposes homosexuality on other grounds, agrees that ‘it is impossible to declare the necessary relevance of these verses for our world today.’”

What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality: Sodom

I published a series of posts on my former blog a year ago last spring about what the Bible really has to say about homosexuality.  As a follow-on to yesterday's post about Prayers for Bobby, I am going to re-publish those posts over the course of the next couple of weeks.

This post is the first of several that will consider a little book written by Daniel A. Helminiak entitled What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality (Tajique, NM: Alamo Press, 2000).  Helminiak is a former Catholic priest and scholar who has ministered to gays and studied theology and gay issues for over 30 years. Though only 133 pages long, the book has a lot crammed into it, and I recommend it to any gay Mormon or Christian.  

Helminiak grew up in a devout Polish Catholic community in Pittsburgh and entered seminary at age seventeen.  He was ordained in Rome, where he earned a Vatican license to teach theology; he later earned a PhD in Systematic Theology at Andover Newton Theological School and Boston College.  Helminiak came out in 1976 and served for many years as chaplain to Dignity USA, a LGBT Catholic support network.  In the 1980’s, after teaching in a seminary for four years, disillusioned with the institutional church and unable to reconcile his integrity with Vatican expectations, Helminiak enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a PhD in Human Development.  He is now a full professor in the humanistic and transpersonal Department of Psychology at the University of West Georgia.

Background

Helminiak begins his book by presenting a short lesson on the history of how the church has dealt with homosexuality.  “A millennium ago,” he begins, “Western society was rather indifferent to homosexuality and even supportive of it.  A gay subculture thrived.  Clerics and nuns wrote love letters and poetry to one another … Students at the newly founded Christian universities regularly debated the pros and cons of straight versus gay love. And no law codes in Europe (except in Visigoth Spain) included prohibitions on homosexual acts.”

By 1200, however, things had changed:  “Order and uniformity became the rule of the day,” Helminiak writes, “and volumes and volumes of law codes were promulgated.  For the first time in Christian history, Jews and Muslims were persecuted, the poor were regarded as a menace and … ‘heretics’ were put to death.  At the same time, homosexuals began to face violent and open opposition.  Thus began a millennium of Christian condemnation of homosexuality.”

Fast-forwarding to our time, Helminiak points out that “many of those who are homosexual have been raised to believe in the Bible, and they have been told that it condemns homosexuality … It looks as if homosexual people have to give up their religion or else – which seems impossible – give up their sexuality.”

He continues:

“That is no small matter.  Scientific study, along with psychology, has been underway for barely a century.  But it is already clear that sexuality goes to the core of a person.  Sexuality means much more than physical arousal and orgasm.  Attached to a person’s sexuality is the capacity to feel affection, to delight in someone else, to get emotionally close to another person, to be passionately committed to him or her ... To have to be afraid to feel sexual is to restrain that noblest of human possibilities, love.  It is to short-circuit human spontaneity in a whole array of expressions – creativity, motivation, passion, commitment, heroic achievement.  It is to be afraid of part of one’s own deepest self.”

Interpreting the Bible

There is no question but that the Bible has things to say about homosexuality.  Several passages have been used like gigantic clubs which many “Christians” have used to beat up on homosexuals.  Helminiak acknowledges that these passages exist, but challenges the interpretations that are commonly ascribed to these verses.

To preface his comments on these various passages of scripture, Helminiak devotes an entire chapter of his book to describing the two most common approaches to interpretation of the Bible:  a literal reading and an historical-critical reading.  The literal reading claims to take the text simply for what it says, whereas the other approach aims to discover that the text meant to the people who originally wrote it.  In other words, Helminiak explains, “to say what a biblical text teaches us today, you first have to understand the text in its original situation and then apply the meaning to the present situation.”

To illustrate a point that words don’t always mean what they say, he uses the example of the phrase “out in left field.”  To someone centuries in the future who runs across this expression in a text, unless that person understood the game of baseball and how the expression came into common usage, he wouldn’t have a clue as to what the term meant in the context in which it was being used.

As an illustration of this principle applied to Biblical texts, Helminiak uses the example of Jesus’ saying that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.  On its face, this statement implies that no rich person can get to heaven, because it is impossible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.  On the other hand, scholars have pointed out that in Jerusalem there was a very low and narrow gate through the city wall called “the eye of the needle.”  When a caravan entered through that gate, the camels had to be unloaded, led through the gate crouching down and then reloaded inside the city wall.  With this understanding, we can surmise that what Jesus meant by this saying is that the rich might first have to “unload” their material concerns in order to get into heaven.

Helminiak uses the historical-critical approach to interpret what the Bible has to say about homosexuality.  I will get into specifics in subsequent posts, but as general statements, Helminiak posits that the modern concept of adult homosexual relationships would not have been familiar to the writers of the Bible.  “Specifically,” he points out, “in biblical times there was no elaborated understanding of homosexuality as a sexual orientation … There was only a general awareness of same-sex contacts or same-sex acts.”  Therefore, in order to understand what passages of the Bible concerning homosexuality really mean as applied to modern society, one must understand and appreciate what the mindset was of the writers of such passages.

The Sin of Sodom

Helminiak dates the current widely-held interpretation of the story of Sodom to about the 12th century, which coincided with a major shift in attitude within the church toward homosexuality (discussed in my previous post).  From that point in time, writes Helminiak, “the very word ‘sodomite’ was taken to refer to someone who engages in anal sex, and the sin of Sodom was taken to be male homogential acts (i.e., same-sex sexual acts).”

However, argues Helminiak, in the many biblical references to the sin of Sodom, there is no concern whatsoever about homogenitality, but there is concern about hardheartedness and abuse.  The sins of Sodom, says Helminiak, were abuse and offense against strangers, insult to the traveler, and inhospitality to the needy.  “When male-male rape becomes part of the story,” he explains, “the additional offense was sexual abuse – gross insult and humiliation [by forcing anal sex on the men] in Lot’s time and our own.  The whole story and its culture make clear that the author was not concerned about sex in itself, and it was irrelevant whether the sex was hereto- or homosexual.”

In his discussion, Helminiak points out that in the ancient world, homosexual rape was a traditional way for victors to accentuate the subjection of captive enemies and foes.  In that culture, the most humiliating experience for a man was to be treated like a woman, and raping a man was the most violent such treatment.  As Dale Martin, a professor of religion at Duke University, wrote, “To be penetrated was to be inferior because women were inferior.”

Jack Rogers, Professor of Theology Emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary and former Moderator (President) of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), has also written a book (Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality) about homosexuality and the Bible, which I hope to write about in future posts.  With respect to the Biblical account of the strangers in Sodom, Rogers wrote:

“Some writers believe that the statement by the men of Sodom, ‘Bring them out to us, so that we may know them’ (Gen. 19:5), has a homosexual connotation.  That is not necessarily the case.  The Hebrew word ‘yada’, meaning ‘to know,’ appears almost 1,000 times in the Hebrew Scriptures.  It is used to refer to sexual intercourse only ten or eleven times.  In each case the reference is to heterosexual intercourse.  Therefore we should be cautious in attributing any homosexual connotation to it” [pp.189-190n3].

Other passages in the Bible point out that the sin of Sodom was not homosexuality.  Ezekial 16:48-49 states:  “As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, Sodom and her daughters were never as wicked as you and your daughters.  Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door.” [New Living Translation]  According to the 19th chapter of Wisdom (the Wisdom of Solomon, which is included in the Catholic bible, but not the King James and other versions), the sin of Sodom was a “bitter hatred of strangers” and “making slaves of guests who were benefactors.”

Jesus himself makes reference to Sodom, but the context is not “sodomy” but rejection of God’s messengers.  In Matthew 10:5-15, Jesus sends out his apostles with the admonition that if they are not received, they should shake off the dust from their feet as they leave a town, saying it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than that town.  This, again, points to the sin of Sodom being the sin of inhospitality.

Despite these clear references to the real sin of Sodom, people continue to cite the story of Sodom to condemn gay and lesbian people, which, Helminiak points out, leads to a bitter irony:

“There is a sad irony about the story of Sodom when understood in its own historical setting.  People oppose and abuse homosexual men and women for being different, odd, strange or, as they say, ‘queer.’  Lesbian women and gay men are just not allowed to fit in.  They are made to be outsiders, foreigners in our society.  They are disowned by their families, separated from their children, fired from their jobs, evicted from apartments and neighborhoods, insulted by public figures, denounced from the pulpit, vilified on religious radio and TV, and then beaten in the schools and killed on the streets and in the backwoods of our nation.  All this is done in the name of religion and supposed Judeo-Christian morality.  Such wickedness is the very sin of which the people of Sodom were guilty.  Such cruelty is what the Bible truly condemns over and over again.  So those who oppress homosexuals … may themselves be the real ‘sodomites,’ as the Bible understands it.”

Prayers for Bobby

“He must have seen the large tractor trailer approaching from under the Couch Street overpass and timed the jump.  Bobby executed a sudden and effortless back flip and disappeared over the railing.  The driver tried to swerve, but there was no time … Robert Warren Griffith, age twenty years and two months, had died instantly of massive internal injuries.” – Prayers for Bobby

[This is an edited version of a post I originally published on my former blog almost a year ago.]

Bobby Griffith was a young gay man who came out to his conservative (non-LDS) religious parents in his senior year of high school.  He was a near-contemporary of mine; a kind, bright, sensitive young man who had been a devoted member of his parents’ church.  Yet, he came to sense that there was something different about him.  Something awful.  Something he didn’t want, but couldn’t deny:  he was attracted to men.

When he came out, his mother undertook an unrelenting campaign to “change” her son.  She quoted scripture, assured her son that he could change if he really tried, bolstered by the teachings of her church and her understanding of the Bible.  He tried, but came to hate himself more than ever.  Eventually, the seemingly irreconcilable conflict within him drove him to suicide.  He simply couldn’t live with himself anymore.

I have been meaning to write about Bobby Griffith for months.  But the time never seemed right.  That changed yesterday, inspired by a young man I met last night who is Mormon and gay.  He had come to hear my remarks at the First United Methodist Church here in Salt Lake.  As I heard only a small part of his story of how his family had rejected him, and I felt only a tiny fraction of the pain he has experienced as a result of coming out, I knew that the time had come.

Mary Griffith, Bobby’s mother, wanted the best for her children – not material things, per se, but a good home environment that was centered on faith and trust in God and living according to the teachings of the Bible.  She loved her children, but her son Bobby’s self-confessed homosexuality ran counter to everything she believed in.  She could not accept this in her son.  She felt that if she just tried hard enough, prayed hard enough, God would cure her son and everything would be as it was supposed to be.  She wanted no empty chairs for her family in the life hereafter.

It was only after her son’s death, as she agonized over whether or not Bobby’s suicide had consigned him to hell, that her grief drove her to deeply examine not only her conscience but the religious teachings that had driven her zealous campaign to “save” her son.  She eventually came to the horrifying conclusion that her son had been sacrificed on the altar of her religious fanaticism.

“Looking back,” she wrote, “I realize how depraved it was to instill false guilt in an innocent child’s conscience, causing a distorted image of life, God and self, leaving little if any feeling of personal worth … What a travesty of God’s love, for children to grow up believing themselves to be evil, with only a slight inclination toward goodness, convinced that they will remain undeserving of God’s love from birth to death.”

In a letter to Bobby three years after his death, Mary wrote, “We were not aware (at first) of the conflict was slowly breaking your spirit … You were the apple of God’s eye just as you were.  If we had only known.  Out of the many discussions we had, the one phrase that comes back to me is the age-old chant, ‘You can change if you want to.’ How that must have angered and hurt you.  You began to feel like you did not fit into your family anymore.  You wanted to believe that you were not the person the Bible had interpreted you to be.  You were at the mercy, as we all are, of the false interpretations of the Bible concerning homosexuality …”

A turning point for Mary came as she spoke at a local city council meeting about something as innocuous as approving a resolution calling for a “Gay Freedom Day.”  In a scene brilliantly acted by Susan Sarandon in the movie based on the book (see clip below), Mary made an impassioned plea to the council members and her community:

“Because of my own lack of knowledge, I became dependent upon people in the clergy.  When the clergy condemns a homosexual person to hell and eternal damnation, we the congregation echo, ‘Amen.’ I deeply regret my lack of knowledge concerning gay and lesbian people.  Had I allowed myself to investigate what I now see as Bible bigotry and diabolical dehumanizing slander against our fellow human beings, I would not be looking back with regret for having relinquished my ability to think and reason with other people … 

“God did not heal or cure Bobby as he, our family, and clergy belived he should.  It is obvious to us now why he did not.  God has never been encumbered by his child’s genetically determined sexuality.  God is pleased that bobby had a kind and loving heart.  In God’s eyes, kindess and love are what life is all about.  I did not know that each time I echoed ‘Amen’ to external damnation, each time I referred to Bobby as sick, perverted and a danger to our children, his self-esteem and personal worth were being destroyed.  Finally, his spirit broke beyond repair.  He could no longer rise above the injustice of it all …

“It was not God’s will that bobby jumped over the side of a freeway overpass into the path of an eighteen-wheel truck which killed him instantly.  Bobby’s death was the direct result of his parents’ ignorance and fear of the word gay … There are no words to express the pain and emptiness remaining in our hearts.  We miss Bobby’s kind and gentle ways, his fun-loving spirit, his laughter.  Bobby’s hopes and dreams should not have been taken from him, but they were.  We can’t have Bobby back. 

“There are children like Bobby sitting in your congregations.  Unknown to you, they will be listening to your ‘Amens’ as they silently cry out to God in their hearts.  Their cries will go unnoticed for they cannot be heard above your ‘Amens.”  Your fear and ignorance … will soon silence their cries.  Before you echo ‘Amen’ in your home and place of worship, think and remember.  A child is listening.” 

Returning again to the letter Mary wrote to her son three years after his suicide, Mary lamented:  “I believed I was doing right the name of Christ.  I did now know my soul; my conscience was in bondage to the people and ministers who stand in God’s stead.  I went along in blind allegiance, unwittingly persecuting, oppressing gay and lesbian people – my own son.  The scales of ignorance and fear that kept my soul in darkness have [now] fallen from the eyes of my soul, my conscience.  I have been set free to have faith in, trust the dictates of my conscience.”

Mary then wrote the words I used to conclude my remarks at the First United Methodist Church:  “I would rather be branded a heretic while helping a child of God out of the gutters of this world, where the church and I have thrown them, than to pass by on the other side muttering under our breath, ‘The wages of sin are death.’  Rather this that to look away from the pain and humiliation of a child lying helpless.  The heart that hungers and thirsts for God’s love will find it in the Bible.  It has been said the eyes are the mirror of one’s soul.  When we look into God’s mirror [the Bible] will we see God’s reflection of love gazing back?  Or will we see an evil reflection of man’s inhumanity?”

I have been a member of the LDS Church for over 25 years.  I am a parent.  I myself was once as Saul, driven by my deep self-hatred, my homophobia, to embrace the teachings of the Church concerning homosexuality.  I had bought into them myself and was, to my shame, guilty of bigotry.  Fortunately, the only person I hurt through such acts was myself.  Yet, I have experienced, in other situations, the intense pain and regret that has come through putting the Church and its teachings ahead of the welfare of my children.  I have repented of such actions and vowed never again to let anything stand between me and my children.   

Postscript

I have watched the movie version of “Prayers for Bobby” several times.  On Sunday night, I watched it again with my son, Nathan.  I suppose that one of the reasons I love this movie is because Bobby Griffith was a near contemporary of mine, and his feelings, as expressed in the movie, were similar to those I myself experienced as a teen.  The main difference, of course, is that he came out and I didn’t.  

I also like this movie because of the depiction of Mary Griffith’s journey from religious bigot/zealot to that of a woman who came to see the Bible in a new light and who opened her eyes, her heart and her mind to the power of love.  This transformation was too late to save her own son, but she subsequently dedicated her life to stopping the spread of religious ignorance, misunderstanding and bigotry concerning homosexuality and to saving the lives of other Bobbys out there.

Hogle Zoo With the Quads

I had the Quads this past Friday night and Saturday and took them to Salt Lake's Hogle Zoo Saturday morning.  They were excited to see the newly-completed exhibit featuring polar bears, seals, walruses and grizzly bears.  We had hoped that there would also be penguins, but they apparently will not be coming back to Hogle.

The day started with breakfast on the deck ...

Followed by coloring ...

Looking at the seals ...

And the sea walrus ...

After the new exhibit and the reptile house, it was time to go to the bird show.  I looked over at one point and saw Levi with his legs crossed and arms folded across his lap.  I HAD to take a picture:  both his father and his grandfather fold(ed) their arms across their laps exactly like Levi was (though I cross my left leg over my right knee).

After reading this post, my sister reminded me of a picture of MY grandfather and great-grandfather, i.e., Levi's Great-Grandfather Broom and his Great-Great-Grandfather Broom, in a similar posture (you can also see where the premature gray comes from):

The most popular attraction of the morning, however, was not an exhibit or a show, but a squirrel feeding on bird seed dropped from a feeder.  Go figure.

Brighton!

Riding the loop at Brighton, at the top of the canyon

On Friday, I achieved a goal I had set for myself in May:  I cycled to Brighton, at the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon, by the end of June. We had previously ridden as far as Jordan Pines a couple of times, but this is the first time we went further.  We went all the way to the top, a climb of almost 4000 feet over 15 miles from the mouth of the canyon to Brighton.  It was bloody difficult in places, especially just before the end.  But I made it.

As had been the case with other rides, I didn't really truly realize the extent of the climb until we headed down.  Another amazing experience.  

The day before, we had cycled up to the top of Millcreek Canyon.  It was psychologically important to me that I make this climb, as I had bonked the last time we did it.  It was difficult, I don't mind saying.  It was near 100 degrees down in the valley.

These two rides put us just over 200 miles for the week and 700 miles for the month of June. I am now much more psychologically and physically prepared for our September trip, though I still have a ways to go.  As I was thinking yesterday about these two canyon rides, I contemplated how each ascent presents a psychological challenge:  me against the canyon.  I wonder who will win.   No matter how many times I have won, I still wonder whether - this time - I will lose.

On this Millcreek ride, I had started to notice that my chain seemed to be slipping a bit.  It got much worse on the Big Cottonwood ride, so Mark and I took the bike into a shop on Friday afternoon.  Turns out my chain is toast, as well as the cassette of cogs on the rear wheel.  I'll take it in on Monday for them to replace these parts.  I'll be without my bike for a day, but I can't wait to see the difference this will make in my riding ability.

Rocky Mountain High: Triple By-Pass

I cribbed the title for this post from Mark, who rode a 100-mile race by this name in Colorado a number of years ago which featured rides over three mountain passes.

On Tuesday of this past week, Mark and I drove to Frisco, Colorado, in the heart of the Rockies, while we left Nathan to spend the day with his "step-cousins," Marina and Sophia, at Grand Lake, pictured below.

When we arrived at Frisco, we parked near a trailhead at the edge of town and rode to Copper Mountain, where Mark worked for several years on the ski patrol.  It was interesting to see this place that I'd heard so much about.  Mark had set out from Oregon in the fall in hopes of finding a job at one of the resorts.  He showed me where he had parked his truck in the parking lot at Copper Mountain, hopped on a chair lift, happening to share it with the captain of the ski patrol.  By the time he got off the lift, Mark had a solid lead on a job which changed the course of his life.

Copper Mountain

From Copper Mountain, we rode up Highway 91.  Along with the above picture, I have cribbed the following description from a cycling website:

"The north side of the pass gives you some of the most diverse scenery Colorado can throw at you and, for that reason alone, this is a good pass to climb. You start in the heart of Summit County and heavily forested terrain and climb to high plateaus and mining country.   From the North, starting at Copper Mountain, you almost immediately start a constant climb.  The first five range from  2% to 3% grades.  Ten-mile creek is tumbling downhill to your left as you climb.  If you take one of the several turnout areas on the left, you will find the creek cascading over numerous waterfalls. However, at mile 5, the grade ramps to first 6% and then to 7 and 7.5%.  The grade does not back off until after mile 6.5.  The final assault, about a mile from the top, brings you in at steady 5%, but a short section hits 7.5%. From this point, you are squarely in mining country.  Vast trailing ponds to the right, and endless peaks to the left." 

Another cribbed picture, showing scenery on the climb up the north side of the pass.

I took this one on the way up

I enjoyed this ride.  It wasn't too bad (2000' ascent), and the scenery was spectacular.  After descending back to Copper Mountain, we then headed up a bike trail to Vail Pass.  This wasn't nearly the climb that Fremont had been, but the scenery was pretty spectacular as we headed down.

This graph shows elevation changes up to Fremont Pass and back,
then up Vail, then back down to Frisco.

View to the south from Vail Pass

On the way down from Vail Pass, Mark stopped at one point and pointed to the peak in the distance.  "You see that peak?" he said.  "It's Jacque's Peak.  I skied down that."  If it had been anyone but Mark, as I gazed at the rocky face in the distance, I wouldn't have believed it.

A close up shot of Jacque's Peak

From Vail Pass, we cycled back down to Frisco, where we had some lunch before tackling our last climb of the day:  Loveland Pass.  We wouldn't attempt the ride from Frisco, but would drive to past Keystone Resort and park on the way up.  Our original goal was to do five miles, but I have to say that I wondered whether I'd make it.  This picture shows what was staring us in the face for most of our climb:

Taken near Arapahoe Basin Ski Resort.

I just about bonked at the point that I took this picture.  I didn't think I could go further, but Mark coaxed me on.  I seemed to recover a bit once we got about Arapahoe, but I knew we were close to our five-mile goal.  As it turned out, we were only two miles from the summit and had to climb only 600 more feet, having already climbed about 1400 feet in the previous five miles.  But it was late in the afternoon, and we had already done two mountain passes.  And it started to rain a bit.  So, despite Mark's obvious wish to proceed on to the top, we turned around.

The ride back down toward Keystone was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.  The scenery was absolutely stunning and I felt, I think for the first time, the joy of cycling.  The sun came out after a mile or two, and it was just amazing.  Simply amazing.

A picture I took early in our descent.  It doesn't do justice to what we saw before us.

The above map shows the route we took up the west side of the pass.  Frisco is in the distance.

This was not the first time I had been to Loveland Pass.  In the late winter of 1973, my dad took me and my brother Dan on a trip to Colorado to pick up our sister Karen from school in Denver.  While there, we took a drive up to Loveland.

It somehow seemed appropriate that we concluded our Colorado trip with a visit to this place almost 40 years after the above picture was taken.  Like I said in the first of these three posts on our Colorado trip, I had wanted to visit the heart of Colorado since the late 70's when I was in college at the University of Illinois.  In making this trip, I felt like a circle had been closed, that I had reconnected to a part of me that I thought had died almost 30 years ago.  It was an awesome experience.