The late Dr Frank Pittman.

The value of commitment, fidelity and realism in relationships.

Remembering the brilliant marriage therapist, the late Dr Frank Pittman.

  
I was sad to discover recently that the acclaimed American psychiatrist, family therapist and author, Dr Frank Pittman, passed away last year, after a lengthy and distinguished career that began in 1962.

Dr Pittman's writing was a major influence on my own thinking about the ideal nature of marriage, the value of marriage, and the value of fidelity and commitment in marriage.

The extremely destructive nature of infidelity was a central theme of Dr. Pittman's work. In a 1993 article for Psychology Today, he wrote:

"Day after day in my office I see men and women who have been messing around. They lead secret lives, as they hide themselves from their marriages. They go through wrenching divorces, inflicting pain on their children and their children's children. Or they make desperate, tearful, sweaty efforts at holding on to the shreds of a life they've betrayed. They tell me they have gone through all of this for a quick thrill or a furtive moment of romance. Sometimes they tell me they don't remember making the decision that tore apart their life: 'It just happened.' Sometimes they don't even know they are being unfaithful. (I tell them: 'If you don't know whether what you are doing is an infidelity or not, ask your spouse.') From the outside looking in, it is insane. How could anyone risk everything in life on the turn of a screw?"

Dr. Pittman expressed his view of "growing up" in a 2000 interview:

"But growing up does mean that while your feelings are very interesting, they're not the only thing that's going on in the universe today. And however lovely your feelings are, and however fascinating your complicated state of mind, there are things that need to be done. And if you're going to take on a partner, there are responsibilities there. If you're going to have children, there are responsibilities there. And you can't really run out on those responsibilities and maintain much of a sense of honor and integrity. You can't run out on those responsibilities and really grow up in a way that makes you proud of your life's choices in the second half of your life."

Dr Pittman's books seemed to me to be a call to realism, a call to recognition of the personal responsibility that comes with human maturity, a call to the abandonment of unrealistic ideals of perfection and to the rejection of temptations that could easily lead to the devastation of a precious soul-mate relationship that will never recover from the trauma of betrayal.
 
I wish that anyone thinking about having an affair would put their intention on hold for at least as long as it takes to read his outstanding books Private Lies and Grow Up!; and I would also recommend that anyone who has been the victim of infidelity in a relationship (and yes, I certainly belong to that club) also read both these books. They certainly helped me to work out what had happened in my own relationship, and what seems to be happening in society in general where, unfortunately, the concepts of commitment and fidelity in relationships have increasingly come to be regarded as ridiculously old-fashioned.

In addition to the longer quotations above, Dr Pittman's Wikipedia Page includes the following short "notable quotations" that might provide a taster of the ideas his works explore in more detail:

• "Marriage isn't supposed to make you happy - it's supposed to make you married." 
• "Marriage, like a submarine, is only safe if you get all the way inside." 
• "Bad marriages don't cause infidelity; infidelity causes bad marriages." 
• "...in the end, there is nothing a man can do that a woman can’t, except be a father." 

• "For most people, a life lived alone, with passing strangers or passing lovers, is incoherent and ultimately unbearable. Someone must be there to know what we have done for those we love."

Dr Frank Pittman's work informed much of what I wrote in my recent article for Pink News, where I expressed my hope that the legalisation of marriage for same-sex couples might herald a return to a more conservative attitude towards relationships, personal values and social values in the gay and lesbian community.

Video clip: "To change, you have to act contrary to your feelings. You have to do what you don't want to do." Dr Frank Pittman, 2012 Psychotherapy Networker Symposium.

Click here to read Frank Pittman's interview with Victor Yalom. 

© Gary Powell, 2013 

A new LGBT social conservatism.

Equal marriage: dawn of a new social conservatism for the LGBT community?

Now that the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act has been passed in England and Wales, and Scotland is very likely to follow suit, LGBT couples will soon have the opportunity to become conventional and mainstream as never before. So what is going to be best for our LGBT psyches and for society as a whole: do we walk through the matrimonial door that has been opened to us, or do we snub it in disdain or indifference?

It is not surprising that there are many LGBT people who feel they still have an account to settle with the conservative institutions of society, and do not feel they are ready to join a club that has treated us with brutal discrimination in the past. In my Pink News article of 25 July, I detailed some of the appalling treatment meted out to LGBT people in Britain only thirty years ago.

A profoundly homophobic society makes LGBT people feel anxious, guilty and ashamed about our sexuality, and repressive school environments force LGBT people, when children, to hide something of fundamental importance to our identity and to our psychological and social development. When people are treated like that, it will take them a long time to feel like a full and accepted member of the wider community who can identify with its values, even for some time after that community has become more enlightened.

When British society was so repressive and unjust to LGBT people, it was healthy to be “counterculture”. Years of suffering homophobic discrimination as a young person will take their toll. We are made to feel that our sexuality is so abhorrent that we cannot legitimately interact with society on the same terms as everyone else. Shame, anxiety and low self-esteem are toxic to the human soul, and the best initial antidote to them is anger: anger towards homophobic society and towards the people in it who are responsible for perpetuating the discrimination and ignorance that cause so much harm.

Anger emerges with the consciousness that one has been wronged, and replaces the misguided and socially-programmed belief that one is in the wrong as an LGBT person. Anger is a marker of having suffered an injustice and of the party responsible being in the moral wrong. As such, anger restores one’s proper sense of legitimacy in the world, of being a morally good being, of being someone worthy of respect and decent treatment. Anger marks a revolution in the consciousness: the beginning of our becoming active, self-confident, self-affirming and equal players in our social world, rather than mere passive, anxious and self-deprecating survivors.

When we eventually overcome internalised homophobia and achieve a degree of self-acceptance, a great deal of healthy and justified anger can emerge: anger that is often directed towards a society that was responsible for our suffering in the past.  We may be in no mood to endorse institutions that are pillars of that society.

The Conservative Party has had a dismal past history of homophobia, and it is an institution that still fills may LGBT people with aversion. David Cameron, supported by many of his colleagues, has made very significant progress on the journey towards LGBT equality by pioneering equal marriage in the UK. This was an extraordinarily brave and principled commitment for him to make as the only conservative world leader to support the measure, and in the face of fierce political and personal hostility. Unfortunately, many people still remember the homophobia of Margaret Thatcher, Norman Tebbit and many of their contemporaries: homophobic politicians whose actions continue to blot the Conservative landscape. The Conservative Party, and the contract of marriage, are both institutions towards which LGBT people may still feel a visceral aversion on the basis of past experience: despite, in the case of the Conservative Party, its ever-increasing number of members and voters who passionately support LGBT equality, and its ever-diminishing number of members and voters who do not.

What is the effect on us of feeling we do not really belong in the society in which we happen to find ourselves? The counterculture mode that rejects the institutions and values of the society that rejects us, can initially be an important attitude to adopt for the development of our self-esteem. However, in that mode, we are always outsiders: and human beings are never at our most content as outsiders. The institutions of mainstream society, even after they reform, may still continue to be tainted by association with the suffering and injustices of the past.

So now, one of those institutions – marriage – has been thrust into the limelight, and has become a contemporary symbol for many people of LGBT liberation.  As a gay activist in the 1980s, I remember the institution of marriage being regarded by many gay and lesbian people as a “petty-bourgeois” and patriarchal institution that had the primary function of preserving class society and the rules governing the transfer of property within it, and of controlling human sexuality in an ultimately repressive and harmful way. The influence of Marxist thinking on the Gay Liberation Front, and on the political movements that developed from it, was unmistakable.

Gay and lesbian people still did, of course, get together in couple relationships, but there was often a sense that we were not working towards a permanent commitment, and that the expectation of sexual exclusivity in that relationship was unnecessary or even unreasonable. Nonetheless, a number of people still forged long-term, committed relationships.

One of the great flaws in Marxism is that it focuses too much on explaining history in terms of money and property, and too little on the many other things that contribute to human happiness, well-being and motivation. As well as being a tremendously positive experience for many people, marriage can also be a tremendously oppressive experience for many others: especially for those who are trapped in a relationship with an incompatible person by a dogmatic religion, or by financial circumstances; or for people who are victims of physical or emotional domestic abuse. Yet the legalisation of equal marriage challenges us now to ask ourselves whether taking this step into a very conventional institution, and becoming more integrated with traditional, conventional, mainstream society, might be something that is good for us, as well as good for society as a whole. 

Perhaps the counterculture opposition to marriage and to the ideal of a long-term, committed, monogamous relationship, was an example of the baby being poured out with the bathwater. There was much about mainstream culture that deserved to be rejected: but marriage is perhaps something that will be better at providing for our emotional needs as LGBT people than the less traditional and less rule-governed relationship models that have prevailed to date.

Counterculture ideals are not the only influence that has forged today’s rather amorphous and anarchic models that govern LGBT relationships. In parallel with the political movement to emancipate LGBT people, capitalist markets have developed in response to the new LGBT clientele. These markets have had the function of providing places for LGBT people to meet, of increasing our visibility, and of providing places for our entertainment. Yet capitalism has been far more successful at meeting our surface needs than our deeper, emotional ones.

In addition to Internet hook-up sites, there are the pubs, night clubs and saunas that abound in many major cities of liberal Western nations, which have a particular appeal to the young. They provide environments where those who feel inclined to do so, can dance, drink alcohol, take recreational drugs of uncertain short-term and long-term safety, and meet other people for casual sex. They can be places to be admired for one’s youth, for an attractive face, for a fit body, for good taste in designer clothes, for one’s wealth, and perhaps for some impressive, well-rehearsed dance moves.

Capitalism, where it is unhindered, can be fantastic at meeting certain basic human needs. But where the modern commercial gay scene is concerned, it is time to question whether the deepest needs of LGBT people are being met; and, if they are not, to question what needs to change in order to make that happen. The commercial gay scene has been dominant for so long that it would be very surprising if it has not had a profound influence on how we LGBT people perceive ourselves, on how we behave, on how we see other people, and on what kind of values we develop.

We must also give ourselves permission to think critically about the LGBT commercial scene and about the values and behaviours that have developed as a result of it. There is no reason why we should automatically identify ourselves with any negative values and behaviours encouraged by, or associated with, the commercial gay scene. It is not “homophobic” to refuse to endorse behaviours that are common on the gay scene if they are destructive or antisocial behaviours. If what has developed in our society is not meeting our needs, or is encouraging attitudes and behaviours that are harmful to us, we are perfectly entitled to try to change them.

We fought for years to have the right to have sex without risk of imprisonment or ostracism, and without inappropriate guilt; and that is a very good thing. Apart from facilitating social contact and lowering inhibitions, sex, alcohol and recreational drugs (notwithstanding the potential dangers of all of these) can have the effect of enabling people to escape momentarily from oppressive thoughts and worries, and of achieving a short-term feeling of how they might like things to be permanently.

The problem is that such behaviours can, of course, become unhelpfully habitual, or even addictive: and they do not bring about lasting emotional well-being and security. Especially where the intense euphoria of sexual interactions is concerned, the belief can develop that nothing should be allowed to get in the way of the opportunity for legal sexual excitement whenever the opportunity for it arises. That is not a mindset that is conducive to beneficial longer-term outcomes, including the longer-term outcome of not losing our capacity for intimacy, and not losing a valued relationship because of infidelity.

The popular objectives of short-term satisfaction and self-centred sexual competition that have developed on the commercial gay scene are detrimental to some valuable outcomes. These outcomes include the pursuit of intimacy and deep connection; the making and keeping of commitments that involve personal challenge and sacrifice; and the inclination to honour and respect other people (and ourselves) as complex, multifaceted individuals with important needs and feelings. When we have developed the habit of going for short-term satisfaction, and when we have internalised the superficial values of the commercial gay scene, we may find ourselves too easily judging people simply on the basis of how handsome, beautiful, youthful, physically impressive or fashionable they are. Recently I read a very disturbing article about a disabled gay person and wheelchair user who attended a Pride event and was repeatedly made to feel unwelcome and unequal. Notably, this treatment also came from a group of familiar people who, in other contexts, had behaved positively towards the person concerned, but who, in the public forum of this LGBT event, seemed to become embarrassed by the presence of a person in a wheelchair at their table. Reading about this made me feel angry and dismayed: but based on my own experience and observations at LGBT venues over a long period of time, I knew it was all too credible.

It is often the case that LGBT people dread turning fifty – or forty – or sometimes even thirty – because of a consciousness of how our status on the gay scene, and ability to attract youthful mates, will diminish as a result. Far too commonly, we LGBT people become almost obsessed with our weight, with our body shape, with our wardrobe, with our hair, with our complexion, and with various status-associated trappings apparently associated with being a popular gay or lesbian person. At the same time, this is often accompanied by a serious neglect of the development of our inner selves. Even when we have invested a great deal of time, money and energy in a smart, fit physical appearance, our difficulties in reaching out to other people, in achieving intimacy and connection, and in doing truly worthwhile things with our lives that give us the inner satisfaction and confidence we lack, simply continue to cause us dissatisfaction and alienation.

The possibility of marriage now presents the LGBT community with a new option: the option of transcending the counterculture that we have needed in the past, and of transcending the commercial culture that has historically served us fairly well, but that has never met our most important needs. We have the option to prioritise the pursuit of our need for intimacy, for genuine acceptance, and for authentic connection, over the possibility of short-term excitement, and over unrealistic expectations whose pursuit has distracted us from making realistic and achievable improvements in our lives. One of the most common causes of unhappiness in people’s mature years is a sense of loneliness and disconnection: and, of course, it is the same kind of loneliness and disconnection felt by many younger people who yearn for intimacy, but who discover that such a yearning does not get met on the commercial gay scene, including on the Internet hook-up scene that capitalism has cleverly provided in recent years.

Being willing to commit to one person, to try to make that relationship work in the long-term, to invest in the intimacy of that relationship, and to protect it from derailment by making it sexually exclusive, all involve a big leap. On account of the consciousness that has developed in mainstream LGBT culture, that big leap may go against the grain for many of us.

One thing that big leap entails is the abandonment of the aspiration for perfection. Very few people meet their ideal partner, whether in terms of their sexual attractiveness, or of their attentiveness and degree of considerateness, or of various other possible qualities on the Perfect Partner Checklist. But neither do we ourselves need to be perfect. The high premium placed on appearance and youthfulness on the commercial gay scene has had the same kind of damaging psychological effects on LGBT people as have the fashion industry and youth media on the self-esteem of teenage and even pre-teenage girls. All too often, we feel we must always aspire towards perfection – the perfect body, the perfect outfit, the perfect set of gay-scene-consistent opinions and cultural tastes, the perfect sex life, the perfect partner for our arm – and we feel we need this perfection to compensate for basically not feeling good enough. And we only have to look at the inevitable effects of social exclusion and stigmatisation of LGBT people for years on end, as well as at the ruthlessness and depersonalisation of the commercial gay scene, to see that there are some very clear explanations as to why we often feel so diminished deep-down.

But the truth is that we are good enough, just as we are. We will benefit from abandoning the negative, depressing and stressful belief that we, or our life partner, must be nothing less than perfect in order to be “good enough”. We will also benefit from shedding the romantic notion that a great life partner will transform our lives beyond recognition, and meet all our emotional needs. Ultimately, we may have a lot of work to do on ourselves on our path towards emotional well-being. But our partner may well be on the same path, and he or she might be a great person to share that challenging journey with us. Suddenly casting him or her aside because sex is not so exciting any more a year into the relationship, and because someone more thrilling has (often temporarily) turned up, can be an irreversible act of wanton destruction towards someone who is a fantastic soul-mate. 

When the disposable consumerist culture invades our intimate relationships, that natural point in a relationship where sexual excitement starts to wane and a new phase of deeper connection and intimacy begins, can be a very vulnerable time for many a good relationship.

Old habits die hard, and a number of people will find it very difficult to make an exclusive commitment to one person, with the hope and intention that the commitment will be maintained for life by both parties, so long as the relationship does not become in some way abusive or permanently marred by infidelity. Many of us have been deeply wounded in the past by betrayal in relationships we had believed to be secure, and pursuing intimacy will always carry a risk of being badly hurt, rejected, and let down. But perhaps there really is something to be said for having someone on whom one feels one can always depend, with whom one can share the joys and the tribulations of life, and who genuinely cares about our well-being.

The satisfaction of being needed and loved by that person, and of feeling the same way towards them, are supported by the organically-evolved and socially-endorsed ancient framework of marriage, where public declarations of commitment are made to one another, and nobody is in any doubt as to what is expected. We see from heterosexual marriages that, sadly, around half of them do not last; and it is sometimes the case that couples really do discover they are incompatible. But having that framework, and that aspiration, available to us now, may well encourage many LGBT people to think about whether we can make our peace with a very conservative institution, should we be fortunate enough for the opportunity to tie the knot with someone special. As the old Chinese proverb says, “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.” In the context of marriage, perhaps doing things differently, and becoming more socially conservative and mainstream, will be a transformation that furnishes many of us with a new sense of belonging, connection and authenticity.

© Gary Powell, 2013

Also published in Pink News.

Bible-bashers who ignore the poverty bit.

There is a clear distinction between fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist forms of Christianity, the former referring to those approaches that insist on the infallible and literal truth of every verse of the Bible that is clearly not intended to be allegorical, or on the infallibility of the teachings of a church or church leader on the basis of claimed divine revelation. In other words, religious approaches that involve adherents being dogmatic, blinkered, and impervious to logic and empirical evidence. It is clearly the case that there are very many thoughtful and reflective Christians who pursue a spiritual path that eschews fundamentalism: indeed, quite a number of the latter continue to make a great contribution to the struggle for LGBT equality, including equal marriage.

Most of those opposing equal marriage because they think the Bible commands them to do so, or because the Vatican commands them to do so, realise that, in the modern age, dogmatic religious injunctions will cut no ice with mainstream opinion. This degree of historical progress in exposing the evils and absurdities of religious fundamentalism is something worth celebrating.

Instead, the majority of fundamentalist Christians are trying to resort to non-religious, rational arguments, as though their objections were based on empirical evidence and logic above all else, and as though they would change their mind in an instant if only the proponents of equal marriage could present a compelling case. In reality, no argument has any hope of prevailing against fundamentalist Christian faith, which enjoins we should all become like Mad Hatters under extreme duress, believing six impossible things before breakfast on pain of eternal condemnation.

Hence the people who once vigorously opposed civil partnerships now declare that same-sex marriage is simply "unnecessary", because the said civil partnerships apparently confer the same legal rights as marriage. Not a word from them any more that exposes their aversion to civil partnerships, and indeed to all things that might imply being LGBT is in any way normal, acceptable and valid. Any such utterance would cause the mask to slip, and reveal their real agenda: which, for some evangelicals and orthodox Catholics, even includes opposition to the legalisation of homosexuality. What the dogmatic Christians are about now is pragmatism, where the narrative of eternal condemnation for "Sodomites" is being suppressed in the hope of winning the support of as many non-religious people as possible to their Crusade against equality for LGBT people in marriage.

The arguments that fundamentalist Christians present in opposing same-sex marriage are easily hammered. This is not surprising, as these "arguments" are not the reason for their opposition, which is instead blind faith in a narrow and often distorted interpretation of text from an ancient book written by ignorant and primitive people.

So let's get down to the real cause for the opposition. Should equal marriage be opposed because homosexuality is condemned by Scripture, and because it is therefore offensive to people of religious faith?

Richard Holloway, in 'Godless Morality' (p. 80) said:

"The rich always find it easy to call upon the poor to make sacrifices they would never dream of making themselves. Heterosexuals, especially Christian heterosexuals, are expert at calling upon homosexuals to deny themselves consolations they themselves could not live without [...] The heart of the message of Jesus was a challenge to the powerful to acknowledge their complicity in the fact of human misery. Only the destitute were innocent, he told them; only the wretched were guiltless; only those who had no bread had no fault."

So many of those 'Christians' who profess to believe that Scripture should be taken literally as the revealed word of God, prefer to overlook the repeated and unambiguous New Testament warnings that the wealthy will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and that the Christian’s wealth should be given to the poor. The following three quotations are probably the most unequivocal on this subject:

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. -- Matthew 19:23-24, Mark 10:23-25 

But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. -- Luke 6:24

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. -- James 5:1”

Many anti-gay “Christians” manage to find a way of conveniently reinterpreting Jesus' warnings about the state of sin associated with being wealthy, while continuing to condemn others for breaking the letter of the scriptural law with regard to sexual behaviour, including homosexuality.

This is nothing less than cherry-picking. As well as hypocrisy of the first order.

To be consistent, Christians who quote from Scripture in order to condemn gay and lesbian relationships, should already have sold their worldly goods, and given their wealth to the poor. Any fundamentalist Christian with any savings at all, or who has anything more than a very frugal lifestyle, is breaking this rule while there are still children in developing countries dying from diarrhoea and malnutrition. Millionaire evangelical Christians, or popes wearing lavish vestments and custom-made red shoes, are simply living inconsistently with the belief system they would impose on others: beliefs they aren’t even willing to impose on themselves.

The vast majority of “Christians” who denigrate gay and lesbian sex and relationships on the basis of a literalistic interpretation of Scripture have certainly not shown themselves to be willing to give away their worldly goods. Instead, you are likely to find the fundamentalist, “Bible-believing” Christian claiming that Jesus' warnings about wealth have to be "taken in context", and that he was only saying it was "very difficult" for a wealthy person to get into heaven, but not impossible - with the implication that people could justifiably hang on to their cash and assets without undue concern, so long as they otherwise lived a life of devotion to God.

They will claim that Jesus was simply teaching that it is not the possession of wealth that is a sin, but instead allowing one’s relationship with it to get in the way of one’s relationship with God. They will also refer to Old Testament passages where God expressed approval of people who were clearly wealthy. This convoluted reinterpretation and contextualisation of the uncomfortable and highly unambiguous condemnation of wealth in the New Testament stands in stark contrast to the stubborn inflexibility in the way the same people treat any biblical quotations that seem at first glance to condemn homosexuality.

The New Testament condemnation of wealth is a very uncomfortable truth for financially comfortable fundamentalist Christians, and for the pastors who demand such people donate a biblical one-tenth tithe of their ample income to the church.

Secular arguments and evidence will not prevail against blind faith and religious dogmatism. It seems that the only thing that will prevail against the narrow and literalistic interpretations of religious fundamentalism is the self-interest of the “believer”, and particularly his or her personal attachment to material wealth.

Dogmatic forms of Christianity are a closed system, and those within such a system are wedded to it emotionally, to the extent that their proud attachment to the identity of “evangelical Christian” or “Catholic”, and their egotistic attachment to believing they are a member of God’s elite, will prevail over any evidence or argument encountered from outside that system, no matter how compelling to non-fundamentalists.

Trying to change the mind of most of these dogmatic religionists by any appeal to justice or empirical evidence is, therefore, a lost cause. We should therefore focus our efforts on exposing to the wider public the fact that the vast majority of those campaigning against equal marriage are people with an implacable and barely concealed religious fundamentalist agenda. And when challenging such fundamentalists, we must focus on their hypocrisy in opposing LGBT equality whilst they ignore the clear New Testament condemnation of possessing wealth. But be prepared for them to jump through burning hoops backwards in an attempt to justify their inconsistency: their blind faith can be as impervious to simple logic as it is to evidence. Yet pointing out the internal contradictions in their theological system can, at the very least, take some of the arrogant wind out of their sails, and it can positively influence those religionists who have not yet been fully drawn into the system, or in whom the indoctrination process has not been fully successful.

LGBT people, and our supporters, must never tolerate attacks by the hypocrites of dogmatic religion on our right to equality. Instead, we should be attacking the hypocrisy and irrationality of those who cherry-pick those parts of the Bible that suit their convenience and their prejudices.

Once we have got the so-called “Bible-believing Christian” on the back foot, by challenging their selectively liberal interpretation of the New Testament warnings about wealth, we can deliver the coup de grâce, which is a reference to Romans 13:1-2:

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. ² Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”

In other words, according to the Good Book, it seems that David Cameron has been placed in authority by God, and that anyone who rebels against his will to legalise equal marriage in this country is also opposing God’s will, and will be judged for doing so.

As we have seen from the debate about equal marriage, dogmatic religion is rarely  something that brings out the best in people: especially as its adherents are forced by the internal contradictions it contains to spin themselves into a web of subterfuge and convolution that is as abusive to logic as it is to the decent human beings they condemn as “sinners”. If their creed commands them to condemn homosexuality and the social approval of LGBT relationships, then it equally commands them to obey those in power, who have apparently been put there by God: which paradoxically means they should be supporting David Cameron’s unwavering commitment to legalise equal marriage. Yet neither this injunction, nor the commandments to give away all wealth to the poor, survive the cherry-picking process. Instead, the banner headline is how the Bible condemns homosexuality and, by implication, any measure that implies it is in any way acceptable or normal. Ironically, a cynical religious movement characterised by destructive prejudice, hypocrisy, and a lack of respect for basic logic and evidence, is helping to produce something beautiful and wonderful as its antithesis: an increasingly solid, compassionate and interconnected global community of LGBT people and our non-LGBT supporters, who put brotherly and sisterly love and solidarity, as well as respect for basic logic and empirical evidence, before the selectively proclaimed edicts of a self-contradicting religious book.

© Gary Powell, 2013

A new look at values, behaviours and meaning.

Over the course of the last twenty years or so, a new form of cognitive behavioural therapy has been developed, called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It is based on enhancing human well-being by encouraging people not to struggle with aversive thoughts, urges and feelings, to identify values and act according to them, to practise mindfulness, and to identify and reject programming that takes us away from what we want our lives to be about. 

ACT (pronounced as one word, not separate letters) has quite a lot of overlap with Buddhist philosophy, and is well worth investigating for anyone interested in personal development, and particularly anyone who experiences depression, anxiety, burnout or a sense of meaninglessness. Those who would like to find out more about ACT might find The Happiness Trap a very good introduction. Another excellent self-help book based on ACT is "Get Out Of Your Mind And Into Your Life." (Psychologists and psychotherapists would probably enjoy getting their teeth into the main ACT textbook: "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: the Process and Practice of Mindful Change.")

All kinds of negative consequences can arise as a result of people living their lives in accordance with their programming, instead of doing so in accordance with their values. One of the most pervasive verbal rules that ACT targets is the maxim, "I must avoid my painful feelings." This is a very widely followed rule, and seems to have developed as a result of taking rules that work well in the external world, and applying them to the psychological world, where they work far less well. 

When my TV breaks, I can try to repair it, or I can send it away for repair, or I can buy another one. This is problem-solving in the external world. However, if I feel anxious, and I have the belief "I must avoid my painful feelings," then I will try to do with my anxiety what I did with the broken TV set. Perhaps I will bombard it with analysis, keep replaying the situations in my mind that I think are causing the anxiety (maybe a past event, or a future worry), or just try to push the anxiety away psychologically. Unlike the happy outcome with the TV set, the result will be an escalation of the anxiety, as struggling with it will not remove it, and I will then have an added layer of anxiety to worry about: anxiety about not being able to remove anxiety. The key is to be willing to experience the anxiety, and to pursue things of value, taking the anxiety along for the ride. If a willingness to experience the anxiety is developed, it will abate in its own time.

Alternatively, I might decide to drink alcohol in order to reduce my levels of anxiety, or to take tranquillisers, and as a result develop an alcohol or tranquilliser addiction. Or I might distract myself from my anxiety by being aggressive towards other people. These are all further behaviours in accordance with the maxim, "I must avoid my painful feelings," and behaviours that similarly lead to negative outcomes that are usually very inconsistent with people's deepest values.

These are examples of where the verbal rule "I must avoid my painful feelings" results in a negative outcome. Another example of a negative outcome happens where we can only get to what we value as a result of experiencing emotional discomfort on the journey, but our habit of avoiding emotional pain blocks our path.

I teach children who are on the autistic spectrum. People with ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) can be particularly prone to being caught up in struggles against painful thoughts and feelings, which derail efforts to identify and pursue their values. With my students, I use a metaphor from ACT called "The Emotional Swamp", where their values are symbolised by mountains, but in order to reach the mountains, they have to cross a dirty swamp. The metaphor is designed to encourage a willingness to experience short-term discomfort in the service of pursuing longer-term valued objectives. Without a willingness to go through the emotional swamp, life can sometimes grind to a halt. 

The maxim of being willing to experience short-term discomfort in order to bring about longer-term happiness for ourselves does not even completely define the phenomenon of pursuing values in the face of emotional pain. Sometimes what we value is greater emotional well-being for someone else, or for society as a whole, or for a future society of which we may no longer be part. Some people are willing to experience quite significant emotional hardship and sacrifices for the sake of an ideal. Human beings may not be very good at getting rid of our own emotional discomfort by acting on it directly, but we can always take our emotional discomfort with us on our journey towards a meaningful life.

One area where emotional pain can visit easily, and where it can be very tempting not to act according to one's values, is the domain of expressing opinions and campaigning for important causes in the public square. Particularly for people who are sensitive to other people's aggressive criticism, and to feelings of embarrassment, rejection or humiliation, it can be very tempting to go with the flow, and to allow attitudes and opinions that contradict one's values to go without challenge. While it is never a good thing to take up a battle whenever a values-inconsistent opinion is expressed by someone, it nonetheless might be very significant if one never does.

Such a habit entrenches the maxim "I must avoid my painful feelings," which can do wider psychological harm, as well as reinforcing a barrier to living a meaningful life, and undermining one's self-respect. Every small step in the direction of one's values, taken in the face of potential social opposition and the resulting emotional discomfort, is a step towards liberation from unhelpful psychological programming and towards living a more vital, meaningful and empowered life. When social anxiety, and the fear of censure for expressing an unpopular view, come to dictate the course of one's life, much can be lost in terms of human and social potential.

© Gary Powell, 2013 

Fundamentalist Christianity: a nihilistic and relativistic fanaticism.

Those who have read my article for Pink News on how fundamentalist religion caused a serious bout of clinical depression and anxiety in my teens, may be aware that I managed, with some help, to escape from this closed and toxic system.

I studied Philosophy at university, and subsequently taught the Philosophy of Religion for several years. 

Fortunately, this places me in quite a strong position when it comes to challenging fundamentalist Christians: particularly when they vocally oppose LGBT rights. As the Theology and Philosophy I have studied relates to the Christian religion, I am unfortunately less able to enter into a detailed analysis and critique of fundamentalist Islam. But fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity have both caused immense suffering throughout human history, and both continue to do so; and insofar as both creeds try to poison human sexuality and propose a God as good who declares himself willing to torture unbelievers in eternal hell fire, much of what I write below is relevant to both fundamentalist religions.

Evangelical, "Bible-believing" Christians would have us believe that they recognise and uphold objective, God-given standards of truth and morality, whereas we non-believers have no objective frame of reference with regard to our own ethical foundations. We might be accused of assuming pre-supposed standards of morality that originally derive from the Christianity we have rejected, or else of simply allowing ourselves to act hedonistically on our basic drives.

Fundamentalist Christians demonstrate great self-confidence when arguing in this way. But they are actually on very thin ice. And whereas those they attack usually counter by referring to pragmatism or basic altruistic instinct, the first prong of attack should really be to expose to the fundamentalist religionist that his system not only presents no objective moral basis for actions, but that it is also positively antithetical to the notion of objective truth and objective morality. Fundamentalist Christianity is nihilistic and represents a system where truth is relative rather than absolute, and where X shifts to being not-X on the sheer basis of pragmatism from the perspective of the fundamentalist Christian.

The way that fundamentalist Christians cherry-pick the Bible and brush the inconvenient parts of it under the carpet is the first example of how "truth" is treated in a pragmatic, relativistic way, rather than an absolute one. The New Testament says that the rich should give away all their excess wealth. Not some of it. All of it. The texts where this injunction appears have been subjected to Evangelical theologians applying the convenient device of "contextualisation", so that, despite the unequivocal instructions for the wealthy to give away their money, we end up with Jesus really having apparently meant something else, based on whatever context the theologians have constructed.

Now, for some strange reason, when it comes to homosexuality, you won't find many Evangelical theologians poring over the text to find a historical or biblical "context" within with the injunctions must be interpreted, or looking at the original Greek or Hebrew to identify what the original words used actually meant.

It is very convenient for Evangelical Christians to believe the Bible does not really regard being wealthy as an impediment to salvation. (Apparently, all that we are being warned about, according to the Evangelical theologians, is that we should not let our relationship with wealth get in the way of our relationship with God.) As Evangelical pastors instruct their flock that the Bible commands a 10% tithe of their income should be paid to the church, it is not really in the interests of these pastors to have a poor congregation that has given its wealth away to the poor. Neither will people be so likely to flock to be born-again Christians if they are expected to give away all their wealth. So it's quite convenient that the Evangelical theologians have found some sophistical and intellectually dishonest way of getting everyone off the hook where wealth is concerned.

The point is that "Bible-based" Christians, if they want to retain some credibility while using a literal interpretation of the Bible to bash gays with, need to stop cherry-picking, and give all their wealth away as well.

I personally don't think anyone should give all their wealth away. But I am not a Christian. And when I read of wealthy Christians condemning homosexuality because of what they have read in the Bible, it makes me think they are very selective and very hypocritical. Not only that, but if what they present as "truth" is based upon a literalistic reading of the Bible, but only when what they read is convenient enough for them to believe, then their ultimate criterion of truth and morality becomes an amalgam of adequately convenient literal prescriptions and proscriptions from the Bible and personal convenience that is proscribed by the Bible when read literally, but is accommodated by a handy re-interpretation of the challenging passage. So already they have lost this so-called objective framework of morality, which has collapsed into materialistic personal convenience.

Here are the Biblical references about the sin of retaining wealth that are  ignored and "reinterpreted" by people who claim to think the Bible is the infallible word of God, and who use quotations from Scripture to condemn homosexuality:

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. -- Matthew 19:23-24, Mark 10:23-25

But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. -- Luke 6:24

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. -- James 5:1

There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. -- Luke 16:19-25

Given that such fundamentalist Christians applying scripture so selectively - a literal interpretation when it comes to condemning gay marriage and homosexuality, and a less-than-literal interpretation when it comes to the sin of retaining wealth in a world of need - the following quotation might apply:

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.  (Matthew, 7:5.)

The Bible is full of absurdities and contradictions, and fundamentalist Christians will be able to find examples in the Bible (probably from the Old Testament) of situations where God is said to have rewarded goodly people by making them wealthy, and this will be presented as evidence that God will not exclude wealthy people from salvation, despite what Jesus explicitly taught. It is not at all surprising that texts can be found in the Bible that contradict other texts. This only goes to demonstrate that a fundamentalist approach to Christianity is absurd and unworkable. Fundamentalist Christians have to twist their reason into self-deluding contortions in order to try to make the contradictory parts of the Bible seem as though they are not contradictory, and in order to demythologise and deliteralise selective passages within the overall paradigm of literalistic exegesis where those passages are inconsistent with and inconvenient to cherished behaviour (such as retaining wealth) that Christians are reluctant to give up.

The Bible is full of inconsistencies and absurdities, and it is also full of atrocities, either threatened or actually carried out by "the God" that fundamentalist Christianity worships: a God who, as Stendhal said, is only excused by the fact that He does not exist.

And where Evangelical Christians insist on an obscure interpretation of a Biblical text, we are justified in offering them a challenge. Given that he was meant to have been the Son of God, one might have thought that Jesus could have been capable of unambiguous speech,  especially because of the importance of what he was saying, when he uttered the following, if, as fundamentalists say, he didn't really mean it as it reads:

But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. -- Luke 6:24

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. -- James 5:1

For instance, he didn't say:

But woe unto many of you that are rich - but definitely not all of you: perish the thought! - for ye have received your consolation. -- Luke 6:24 (amended)

or

Go to now, ye rich men, or at least lots of you: weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. But don't lose any sleep about it, as I don't mean all of you. -- James 5:1 (amended)

The injunctions in the New Testament about the sin of retaining wealth are very forceful, and are unqualified.

Even if the Evangelicals were right about Jesus taking a much less punitive line on wealth than the Bible indicates as it reads, Jesus still, even on the most liberal reading possible, makes it abundantly clear in the NT that being rich is a serious obstacle to getting into heaven. One might have thought that the Christian churches would have prioritised the importance of achieving salvation over the importance of protecting personal wealth, and said that because it is so difficult to get into heaven as a wealthy person, and because Jesus spoke in very forceful terms about wealth, it is best to give wealth away, just to be on the safe side. But oh no. The vast majority of Christians do not want to do that at all. So instead they have bent over backwards to search for spurious and sophistical arguments and scriptural references that they think could be stretched to justify being wealthy. At the same time, they are very happy to quote other verses from the Bible without any similar effort to look into context and overall compatibility with the faith, such as those condemning homosexuality.

And, as I have mentioned already above, I am sure that those pastors collecting 10% tithes from their congregations would much rather have 10% from a rich person than 10% from a poor person. No wonder they want to downplay the sin of retaining wealth.

So it is established that, far from having an objective verbal framework in the Bible that provides objective guidance as to revealed truth and morality, fundamentalist Christians have an internally contradictory text that can only be true if "X" and "not-X" can be true at the same time for the same universe. As these inconsistent propositions cannot both be true at the same time for the same universe, the only way they can both be presented as true is where the person presenting them has abandoned the idea of objective truth and moved into the domain of relativism: something of which fundamentalist Christians frequently like to accuse non-believers. (If you would like evidence of the contradictions in the Bible, which according to fundamentalist Christians must all be true at the same time, have a look at this link to the excellent Sceptic's Annotated Bible.)

A person who asserts that truth and morality depend on pragmatism and convenience, has abandoned the common idea of objective, absolute truth and morality, and is not only a relativist, but is a nihilist. Fundamentalist Christians are therefore relativists and nihilists, while declaring themselves to be the only people attuned to an objective framework of truth and morality. Such an irony.

Even if there were no blatant contradictions in the Bible that we were commanded to believe, it is still very far-fetched to claim that God is all-knowing (omniscient), all-powerful (omnipotent) and all-loving (omnibenevolent), and that, because He is perfect, His will must be synonymous with morally good actions. The belief that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent is something we are asked to believe as a matter of faith. There is no more empirical evidence that God has these attributes and is the fount of morality, than there is empirical evidence that we should be guided by our conscience, and that objective morality reveals itself to us via our conscience rather than via a self-contradictory book.

Furthermore, if God is omnipotent, then he surely could have made a better job of revealing Himself to us via the Bible. There are so many things in it that are contradictory and that have explicitly caused terrible human suffering: such as people being burnt at the stake, and being stoned to death. Perhaps a little prescient verse or two warning people not to carry out Crusades or the Holy Inquisition might have been welcome. And if God is omnibenevolent, then why does the Bible depict him in places as one of the worst kinds of psychopath imaginable? Here is the Sceptic's Annotated Bible again, with evidence of divinely-condoned cruelty and violence in the Bible.

As far as divine violence is concerned, and evidence that the God of fundamentalist Christians is anything but all-loving, you only need to consider the teaching that the punishment for unforgiven sin will be eternal torment in hell fire. Only an evil psychopath would punish anyone in this way. If God really was like that, then rather than being omnibenevolent, he would be omnimalevolent. Any fundamentalist Christian (or fundamentalist Muslim) who worships a god who he believes will torture people in hell for eternity, and believes that a god could ever be morally justified in doing this, has completely lost his moral compass. Presenting extreme evil and cruelty as a paradigm of goodness and justice is a reversal of morality. It is nothing less than the embracing of a belief that cruelty and evil are morally good and just things. The framework for objective morality has been so displaced in such a system as to confirm that it is a system of moral nihilism.

I have written more about the evil that the teaching of hell as a literal place of eternal torment has brought into the world here.

Thomas Paine said, “Attempting to debate with a person who has abandoned reason is like giving medicine to the dead.” Once people have bought into fundamentalist religion of any kind, it is a very similar experience to being brainwashed by a cult. The ability to think rationally is sacrificed on the alter of their ego that they perceive as being so holy, superior and elite. Such people's knee-jerk response of hair-splitting, obfuscation and distraction feels much like the tripping of a fuse box every time the light it turned on. The believer is plunged back into darkness, because the light is unbearable and threatening.

Although the Bible says (in one place) that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven,  Evangelical Christians say that, because all things are possible with God, and because they  think that the implication is that it is “difficult” rather than impossible, they don’t see a serious problem with wealthy Christians retaining their wealth.

That speaks volumes for the vast majority of evangelical Christians. They claim to believe that they have the promise of paradise for eternity. There are dire warnings in the Bible, that they claim is the inspired word of God, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven. However, they are so attached to their material goods and money that they would rather take the risk of jeopardising their bliss in heaven for eternity than give away their wealth to the needy, and thereby sacrifice their material comfort on earth for a few decades. And they are willing to accept that the consequence of their decision is that many people who could have been fed, given medicine, clothes, shelter, and kept alive, will instead die.

That just goes to prove how hypocritical, dishonest and immoral the Evangelical Christian movement is. They can contort and convolute words as much as they like to try to justify this very selective approach to Scripture and Biblical teachings, picking out verses that contradict the inconvenient (which only goes to show what a bag of inconsistencies and contradictions the Bible is), but anyone outside their closed and self-serving system will see it for the irrational, materialistic, life-denying sham that it is.

The Bible is a bag of contradictions which is why fundamentalist Bible-based Christianity is such a nonsense. And what evangelical Christians do is to jump from one verse to its contradictory counterpart whenever difficult questions are raised. In my book that is nothing less than nihilism: relativism in the service of selfish pragmatism. Evangelical Christians clearly have little regard for the value of absolute and objective truth.

Fundamentalist Christianity is a nihilistic belief system that dispenses with the concept of objective truth and objective morality, while denying that it does so. A relativistic system such as fundamentalist Christianity can claim that any proposition represents truth, and that any proposition represents moral goodness: however, by eschewing objective standards, as fundamentalist Christianity does (whilst claiming it does not), this belief system no longer uses the words "truth", "falsehood", "morality" and "immorality" according to their normal meanings, and so the use by them of such words becomes meaningless.

So there is another hypocrisy to add to the list when fundamentalist Christians rail against the so-called "post-modernism", "moral relativism" and "nihilism" of liberal secular society. They need to take the plank out of their own eye before complaining about an ostensible speck in other people's.