Tag Archives: Whitney Houston

Institutional “Enabling” And the HHS Mandate

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Last week I wrote some thoughts on the tragic death of Whitney Houston.  In that article, I also opened up regarding some of my own personal past events, in an attempt to relate, as best I could, to the sad but clear truth that we could all without a doubt be a “Whitney,” had we been thus enabled by walking in her shoes and situation.

In re-reading my piece, I began to find myself further exploring the whole idea of “enabling” on a societal level, whether drugs, alcohol, or within the realm of sexuality.  It briefly occurred to me then, but more so now, how much the entire flap over forced payment of contraception and abortifacients by church and para-church organizations is indeed a case of this type of enablement.

What I do not think people fully realize, even those who are against this move by the Obama administration, is how much of a slippery slope we have already been on to even bring us to this point, or for how many years. It was called in the 1960s the “New Morality.” With that change in paradigms the birth control “Pill” became common, living together outside of marriage was suddenly acceptable, and sexuality in all forms was openly explored. It was no longer tied to one of its main purposes, which is the continuation of the human species, and became an end in itself. That altered thinking or, as some call it, the “contraceptive mentality,” was major in its ramifications. It was no longer the “norm” for a woman to stay at home and raise a family, but became just as common or more so to work and day care centers began to boom as an industry. Divorce became “no-fault” and those, like myself, from backgrounds of same-sex attraction too were liberated. What had been commonly accepted as correct behavior was turned on its head in a short enough time that I, even as a child and then teen during that era, easily observed the entire change by the time I graduated from high school, the year after Roe v Wade legalized abortion on demand nationwide.

I have seen many who have written on the Constitutional and religious liberty issues with regard to this issue but not so much on this more subtle piece to the puzzle. Perhaps we shy away from it due to our own senses of guilt or shame, or other reasons too, but I think we need to face squarely the fact that our society allowed this to happen and did not in fact even notice it coming because we were too busy participating.  Some forward-thinking people, such as Pope Paul VI, obviously did, to be sure, but they were considered to be overly inflammatory, “haters,” or just plain gloom-and-doom types who did not really know the score.  As it turns out, they were the only ones actually keeping score.

English: picture of pope paul VI Español: foto...

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We as fallen humans use some very complex psychology in order to enable others on any level, personal or otherwise. We first try to second-guess what might be the best for people, basing it upon possible or probable future behavior, whether good or bad.  Instead of then dealing with the underlying behavior issues, such as in this instance sexual promiscuity and wanton selfishness, we try to help them to plan for it. The faultiness in this approach is clear to me just by looking at my own past grievous faults and actions.

In my other article, I speak of a man with whom I was briefly involved in 1993, one who turned out to be HIV positive (the virus which causes AIDS).  The ironic thing is that I had never been in even a remotely dangerous sexual liaison until in my early 30s and in the process of divorcing, and had lost my dearest friend in ministry, as well as his wife, in the mid-1980s to this lethal illness. In his case it was due to a drug-dependent past, and then after he became a committed Christian he unknowingly passed it on to his equally unsuspecting wife. So I was aware of the horror of HIV/AIDS early on.  I was also educated on ways to prevent it.  But I still stepped into the trap of risk-taking.  And the very people who aided and abetted me in those risks were the same ones whose stated intentions were to help people make wiser decisions, such as the MN AIDS Project and others.  Let me be clear that no one told me to take risks. But it was assumed that I would, and thus thought necessary to teach me how to minimize them while maximizing my own pursuits for pleasure.

English: The Red ribbon is a symbol for solida...

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Obviously I was old enough and knew enough that I must own any choices I made at that time, but the fact remains that I might have been swayed otherwise if I had been warned more clearly about the gravity of the perils I was walking into, even of such things as failed condom usage and of the many other sexually transmitted diseases not always prevented by “playing the field” as I was heartily doing, even in a supposedly “safe” manner.  Instead the local LGBT bars handed out condoms for free to all customers, and the view was very simply that “we were going to do it anyway” so we might as well do it as safely as possible.

The striking similarity between giving an alcoholic just enough drinks to make him or her “feel good” and then to hang upon the futile hope that they will cheerfully comply with a 2 or 3 drink limit is an irony not lost to me. The bars, the MN AIDS Project, the LGBT publications, and even the “gay-friendly” churches all presumed the same thing—that being sexually active was the “new norm.” And, partly at least owing to that pervasive attitude, we did exactly that. People strongly tend to act as they are expected to. Basic psychology 101.

For my part I was not overly risky in my activities, and always stayed within commonly recommended “safer sex” guidelines. But when a person who I had spent one passionate night with died just one year later, of a disease I had sworn I would never allow myself to even get near to, it jolted within me a wakeup call, slowing me down abruptly  and considerably.  While it was several more years before I became fully celibate, I was suddenly far more particular as to who I went home with and how often, knowing that each encounter could be the one that might give me that dreaded and lethal condition. In effect the “field” became less fun but had far fewer weeds at that point.

The idea therefore that we must provide easy contraception for women who are sexually active is ludicrous to me in the same way as the well-intentioned folks at the bar who used to give me condoms by the dozen at no charge.  In both cases we are expecting the worst, not the best, to occur, and in doing so we essentially make it easier to happen.  That is what enabling does.

I was blessed, not deserving so, I might add, to find myself after 9 months of tests to still to be HIV negative. Other people, good people who our Lord loves and who carry His dignity and image, have not been so blessed as me.  But I wish to heaven someone out there had truly cared enough to not suggest that I have “safer sex,” but instead would have seriously challenged me to be celibate.  I am not sure I would have listened—but I might have—and did eventually.  No one though within the LGBT community or for that matter among other family and friends ever even attempted such a thing. Not one, and not once that I recall at least.

Fast-forwarding to now, in the name of “women’s health” of all things, we are doing the exact same type of enabling with HHS. The idea of even suggesting abstinence is approximately somewhere between idiotic and far-fetched to many of the people involved, and yet one of them is a faithful and at least apparently monogamous husband (President Obama), several are noted Catholic women with longstanding marriages, such as Kathleen Sibelius and Nancy Pelosi, and one, the head of the Catholic Health Care Association, Sister Carol Sheehan, has taken a lifetime vow of celibacy and chastity, which we can only assume she follows personally.  What a strange, strange group to be promoting promiscuity in the name of health!!!  How it must be a stench before our God.

President Obama signs the Ryan White HIV/AIDS ...

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Revelation speaks of the “whore of Babylon” and her desire to spread her immorality to others. Why would the above-mentioned group (picture is slightly different), all who claim to be practicing Christians, spend so much of their valuable time, efforts, and even reputations to do the same?

Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama

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Birth control is not illegal in this nation.  Nor, for that matter, is abortion sadly.  But the idea that it is somehow our moral responsibility to begin paying for such services to those who otherwise could not afford it, rather than using that same exertion and money in educating  those women (and men) in better ways to live, such as abstinence outside of marriage and NFP (Natural Family Planning) within it, which has been long proven to work just as well as the “Pill” by the way, causes me to wonder just what could motivate anyone who names the name of Christ to encourage others to do things with their bodies that they themselves clearly choose not to do?  The word stupid does not begin to describe it.

I am baffled, sickened and irate about this whole thing, as are many, many others. But I know one thing on a first-hand level that seems to be missed in this whole argument in both directions. I know the fear and apprehension that comes from supposedly “safer sex.” And I have seen friends die from it.  That to me is reason enough to oppose this immoral mandate.

English: Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Healt...

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Adding one last but very crucial point, the MN AIDS Project does many fine things. I would take nothing away the fact that they have pioneered efforts to fight HIV when few were doing so. I am simply saying that I fervently wish they would add abstinence education to their agenda. I do not expect them to do so, however. So this is not primarily about them–but it is about me and the many of us who once supported everything within the LGBT community, and can no longer do so.  However they (MN AIDS Project) do raise much money each year to fight AIDS and to help, in practical ways, those who currently are afflicted with it. A link to some of those activities is listed just below this paragraph. A better approach however might be to give to Catholic groups who also assist those with AIDS, but do so without advancing the idea of so-called “safer sex” but instead abstinence and helping people to achieve this this goal, no matter what their sexual inclination may be. Many such fine groups exist, such as Catholic Relief Services and the apostolate Courage. Their links are just below as well: 

http://crs.org/hiv-aids/

http://couragerc.net/

https://community.mnaidsproject.org/aidswalk

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BRINGING SOME MEANING TO WHITNEY HOUSTON’S UNTIMELY END–A Tribute and A Challenge

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First and foremost this is far from a theological treatise on suffering or death.  Neither is it a judgment on what the condition the eternal soul of Whitney Houston was in this last Saturday, February 11, 2012 when she was found near death in a pool of her own bathwater.

And to those of you who would say such inane statements such as “it was just her time to go” I simply would say one word–nonsense.  Extreme nonsense. God did not “take her from us.” She departed this earth because of horrible complications from a seemingly wasted life. And lest you think I am being harsh, I surely am not. It could have easily been me. Or you.  I will share more about that later on.

However the manner in which she left this world does not mean we cannot or should not attempt to make some sense, both comforting and perhaps to some extent disturbing as well, in her very tragic demise. I think that there are lessons for each one of us to discover if we choose to. And I hope we do so with some searing and ferocious honesty.

The most eerily powerful lesson I can think of here is in the form of a question—“what does Hollywood and fame do to people in general and particularly to Christians who become superstars and their testimonies?”  I would not be the one to rant and rave about the evils of Tinsel town, nor do I think all Christians must avoid its glitter at any cost.  I do wonder, however, if we ever stop and think what it may be doing to our young sisters and brothers in Christ who, often pushed forward by parents who name Christ as their own, into “making a name for themselves.”

Whitney Houston started out as a Gospel singer. Few from this generation may even remember this. But her mother, Cissy Houston, who sang a combination of Gospel and secular, was well-known long before Whitney was. Whitney was 15 when she first released a secular hit song, singing backup for Chaka Khan on the original version of “I’m Every Woman.”  Without blame, I do have to wonder why a parent who knows something of the savage music industry would intentionally expose her daughter to that environment, and she did so regularly, taking her to night clubs as a young girl and even having her sing on stage with her.  That in fact was how she was eventually discovered.

The last thing I would do is to pick on the grieving older Ms. Houston now or later. In fact a link sharing her perspective is listed at the bottom of this post. But it has to have at least crossed her mind that her daughter might be alive today were it not for the surreal success she had at such a young age.  It would to me as a parent.

There is a long list of such juvenile-aged “Christian celebrities” who could be named here, and in each and every case whose parents might have at least monitored or slowed down the process but instead allowed a recording agent to begin controlling their child or children’s upbringing.  And it seldom ends well. Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson were both touted as “virgins to marriage” and have both gone on to lead very rough lives indeed. The Jonas Brothers singing group is probably one of the prime examples of a strongly evangelical Christian idyllic family where each of the boys even publicly wore chastity rings and often spoke glowingly of their faith in Christ.  Now Nick, the youngest, has publicly stated he “would not mind at all” doing nude scenes on Broadway if the opportunity presented itself, and Joe, on his first solo music video, in it lays shirtless in a bed while a young woman in panties straddles him.  It might be noted that the Jonas’s father is a former Assemblies of God minister and that the boys were home-schooled. Nick nevertheless did his first Broadway performance (presumably with clothes on!) at age 7.  It somehow strikes me as a form of schizophrenia on the part of parents who are aiming on one hand to protect their children from the “evils of the world” by homeschooling them, and then still allowing the youngest a taste of Broadway and beyond at such a tender age. Jon and Kate Gosselin, whose TLC (The Learning Channel) television series about their strongly Christian family (also Assemblies of God) while raising 8 children, were in fact divorced during production of the show.  And, for a Roman Catholic example, Charlotte Church is, well, not too “churchy” these days, having had a child while unmarried and living with her baby’s father, as well as openly calling Pope Benedict XVI a “Nazi.”  She once had sung for Blessed John Paul II at age 12.

My point is absolutely not to condemn or judge any one of these individuals or their culpability before God. But the danger of obtaining huge amounts of money and extreme constant boosts to one’s ego while lavishly partaking of this world and its goods eventually takes its toll. And in the cases I mentioned, families have been destroyed, as well as reputations.  And I have pointed out only a very few of the many such stories.

But then again it is not my fault, is it? I think perhaps some part of it is actually. When I support Miley Cyrus concerts or CDs after her own “Christian father” Billy Ray Cyrus allows her to pose topless at age 16, and then blames it on photographer Annie Leibovitz, who is undoubtedly provocative and pushy but who also  does not have final control over his minor child during any given photo shoot, is it any wonder why Miley might now be breaking away from the “straight and narrow?”  And she too indeed is doing so at age 19.

Oh and did I make Britney go wild?  No. But perhaps I eagerly read about it through my National Enquirer subscription and in some cases otherwise added to her publicity stunts by my enjoyment of the many entertainment gossip mongers.  Do I own the albums or support the television programs which added to the fall of so many of these very precious young people who were never taught to properly handle fame? Maybe not  individually so, but do I relish in a Jerry Springer type societal mentality which takes glee in the serious problems of our Hollywood counterparts?

We all do bear some responsibility here.  That is my point. We relish the bad in others, and pray little if at all for them.  Then we criticize and belittle them when they slip, instead of giving our hand to them whether personally or in prayer.

I will share a deeply delicate and rather private situation that bore much of this out to me rather chillingly a number of years ago.  I also wish to divulge this with much care, as I would not wish to glorify the many mistakes or sins in my own life.  When I was very much active in the LGBT lifestyle and community, I met someone one evening during one of my many visits to the local LGBT single’s bar, aptly named the “Gay Nineties.” He invited me to his beautiful condo in south Minneapolis, and I willingly decided to accompany him to his home that evening and night. Without much detail I will say only that this was a fairly common occurrence for me during those early years after my own Christian marriage had ended or more accurately failed due to my own weaknesses (1993 to be exact).

What I remember most about this young man, Carl was his name, was that, beneath the pleasant exterior and enjoyable conversation, a certain deep sadness was almost built into his eyes somehow.  He seemingly had everything; a great job, a gorgeous home decorated with expensive original art, and he was “easy on the eyes,” as they say.  In short he was a handsome and still youthful man in his 30s. We talked again a time or two later on, but nothing further ever occurred between us after that initial night. A year later, through some totally unrelated circumstances, I found out that he was near death due to HIV (AIDS).  When I had met him twelve short months before, he must have known then of his status, but had not told me about it. In his defense we were relatively “safe” in our activities, but we all know that no “protection” (President Obama please take note here as you seek to enable even more sexual recklessness in our society!) is perfect.  Just a couple of weeks later Carl died, and I was left wondering anxiously if I had a deadly virus in my body.  Thanks only to God, and certainly in spite of my stupidity and lust, after being tested and re-tested, I turned out to be HIV negative.  But to think that a young and vibrant man who I knew, was attracted to, and frankly had felt a bit rejected by in the end, had most likely known when he met me that there was no actual chance of anything permanent between us ever, was basically staggering to me. I believe he may well have been attempting in his own way to be merciful to me by not allowing me to get too close to him, and for that I will be ever thankful. But he was simply gone now, and it gave me pause in every way.

And Carl’s premature passing away may be the very reason I am here writing this today, because I did at least slow down and took drastically more care and caution after that event. So his death indeed, at least indirectly, has had some meaning to every person reading these words.  I only wish I had known about his situation—maybe I could have comforted his sadness and at least given him some hope if I had. I certainly would have at least tried to had I known.

How does all of this relate to Whitney Houston?  Quite simply that none of us are invincible. None of us are guaranteed the rest of today, much less tomorrow. And some, such as Whitney and Carl, will die before their time due to errors or sins within their own lives and bodies, or at least the consequences of those errors. Others of us, no less innocent, will be somehow spared and given an opportunity to do penance for both ourselves and those who have gone on before us.  And before I condemn Cissy Houston, the Jonas parents, or the Gosselins for that matter, I need to stop and realize that all of them—every one of them in fact— almost surely wanted in their hearts what they thought was best for their children, and might well have made different decisions if given the chance once more.

Lent is around the corner. It may be the last Lent I or you ever see on this earth. Will we waste it by attempting to live in the fast lane but hoping our brakes hold out when we hit the speed bumps? Or will we rather allow Whitney’s and Carl’s lives, and so many others who are in reality just like all of us, whose past, whatever it was, caught up with them, to have real and lasting meaning?

I read just yesterday that Whitney’s last public performance was Thursday of last week, and she sang the children’s song “Jesus Loves Me.”  So perhaps in her last days Whitney had come full circle to her Gospel music roots after all.  Rest in peace, and may a merciful God hold you tight, Whitney and Carl. Your lives—and deaths—were not in vain.

AND FINALLY…How I will remember Whitney…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFeLlY7oJNc

Almost as a kiss from God Himself, as I was uploading this link to YouTube, I had the Rosary website up at the same time, and as these words “I’m Every Woman” shot from my computer speakers, the words “Our Father who art in heaven” and “Hail Mary full of grace” poured out from those same speakers.  Whitney truly rest in peace, and in the arms of our Heavenly Father and Blessed Mother–the true “Every Woman.” God bless to all.

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=us_mid#/video/bestoftv/2012/02/12/nr-whitney-houston-final-performance.cnn

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