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[Q&A – Catholicism and Sex]: Have you been discriminated against because of your beliefs?

The Q: “Have you been profiled, discriminated against or otherwise treated with intolerance over your beliefs at work or school? How do you handle it?” -Trish

The A: The short answer is sort of yes, sort of no. I’m not sure my experiences have been discrimination or intolerance as much as they have been challenging. But how have I handled them? Discussion, and sometimes defense. Standing up for the truth about what I believe without the expectation that the people I meet will believe it. Here’s the long answer:

A set of beliefs prone to pokes and prods from the people who don’t share them is what I believe about love, chastity, and sex. Virginity in a culture that values sexual experience is treated as an anomaly. For the most part, readers of what I’ve written about it respond with respect (including the rock jocks who discussed me on a local FM station’s morning show!). But there are readers – especially when I worked for the newspaper – who write me notes or leave me voicemails solely to say how much they don’t like what I write. Others – out of anger or out of compassion – list reasons “chastity won’t work” or express pity for my having chosen it.

And then there’s my belief system in general: Catholicism. I didn’t know what Protestants were the day my fifth grade teacher told my class it’s easier for them to get to heaven than it is for Catholics. That year – my first at the private, Protestant school where I stayed through my high school graduation – started my eight-year, accidental education in apologetics and tolerance.

I’ve written before about my experiences there (primarily here and here), but here’s how I’d sum it up: The faculty and staff at the school generally treated my family and me with respect. But what several members of the faculty and staff did not treat with respect was my Catholicism. By excluding the word “creed” in its equal opportunity statements in its handbook, the school reserved the right to discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs. In distributing Jack Chick tracts and using a history curriculum that said Catholics worship Mary and saints, the school ultimately exercised that right. But in banning both when my family spoke up, the school exhibited respect.

Defense of faith on the fly is a lot to expect of a kid. Discussion of beliefs is hard at any age. But it also how change happens, both in and outside you. I had to stop caring what other people think. Accepting that not everybody believes what I do has been important for handling it when somebody actually doesn’t. Admitting that it is unreasonable to expect all the people I encounter to be nice to me has helped, too. Another great help has been the Dialogue Decalogue, a set of rules to follow when talking with people who don’t believe what you do.

How do you handle mistreatment as a result of what you believe?

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Q&A is an occasional feature. If you have a Q, I can come up with an A (and if I don’t have an A, I’ll find somebody who does). To submit a question, click here. No topic is taboo (although I can’t promise I will answer every question).

Click here to read all the posts in this series.

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Thoughts on Mark Ruffalo’s open letter regarding abortion.

Last weekend, at an abortion rights rally outside a clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, somebody read an open letter aloud, written by actor Mark Ruffalo. Ruffalo, who is the Hulk in The Avengers, is for the right to choose abortion, which – according to the letter – is what his mother did. Below are excerpts of the letter (in italics), plus my commentary:

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What happened to my mother was a relic of an America that was not free nor equal nor very kind. My mother’s illegal abortion marked a time in America that we have worked long and hard to leave behind. It was a time when women were seen as second rate citizens who were not smart enough, nor responsible enough, nor capable enough to make decisions about their lives. 

Women (and men) are created able to be smart, responsible, and capable enough to make good decisions. I agree with what Ruffalo implies: a woman in whose womb there is a baby can (and should) make a responsible choice. What I haven’t heard from Ruffalo yet, or much at all in this conversation, is an important reminder: Couples capable of making good decisions after conception can make good decisions before conception, too. So why don’t they? Probably because pro-choice people and pro-life people define “good decisions” differently. Because we live in a culture that still thinks we can have our cake and eat it, too. Because contraception.

It was a time that deserved to be left behind, and leave it behind we did, or so it seemed. We made abortion and a woman’s ability to be her own master a Right. That Right was codified into law. That law was the law of the land for decades. My own mother fought to make herself more than a possession; she lived her life as a mother who chose when she would have children, and a wife who could earn a living if she so chose. I want my daughters to enjoy that same choice. I don’t want to turn back the hands of time to when women shuttled across state lines in the thick of night to resolve an unwanted pregnancy, in a cheap hotel room just south of the state line. Where a transaction of $600 cash becomes the worth of a young woman’s life. 

I admire Ruffalo’s compassion for people who are in the toughest imaginable spots. I get how he hopes his daughters have a choice. But I am not as interested in whether it is legal to choose. (If abortion were outlawed entirely, it would be a Band-Aid anyway, for a wound way bigger than that.) If I have kids, my hope is not that they can choose. My hope is that they don’t have to make that choice. That they will choose chastity. That pregnancy, before or after a marriage, is regarded as a miracle instead of as a disease.

There was no mistake us making Abortion legal and available on demand. That was what we call progress. Just like it was no mistake that we abolished institutional racism in this country around the same time. The easy thing to do is lay low, but then are we who we say we are? Do we actually stand for anything, if what we do stand for is under attack and we say nothing? There is nothing to be ashamed of here except to allow a radical and recessive group of people to bully and intimidate our mothers and sisters and daughters for exercising their right of choice. 

Bullying or intimidating people who have had or are considering abortions is egregious. It’s unloving and Jesus wouldn’t do it. So stop it. To this I would add it is also egregious to bully people who have made another choice: not to have sex. It is also egregious to intimidate them. To tell them they are virgins because “I can’t tell if you’re a man or a woman,” to encourage them to compromise because “no guy will wait that long to have sex.” (And yes, people have said both to me.)

I invite you to find your voice and let it be known that you stand for abortion rights and the dignity of a woman to be the master of her own life and body. I invite you to search your soul and ask yourself if you actually stand for what you say you stand for. 

Our bodies are temples. Dwelling places of God. We have been given a human nature, which – according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church – “has not been totally corrupted.” It is only wounded. Which means we indeed can learn self-mastery, in chastity, which – far more than any movement I have encountered – promotes the dignity of all human life.

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Click here to read Ruffalo’s letter in full.

Click here to read 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, ’cause it’s relevant.

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[Q&A – Dating] How soon do you tell somebody you’re saving sex for marriage?

The Q: “With our society as it is today and everyone expecting sex outside of marriage, how (or how soon) do you let a guy you’ve started seeing know of your chastity and let him know he won’t be getting pre-marital sex from you? Is it something up front? Do you therefore seek out guys that feel the same?” -Jason

The A(‘s): The short answer to the first of Jason’s questions is IMMEDIATELY. Here’s the long one:

How I tell a guy I’m chaste has varied. Google usually beats me to it. But when a guy hasn’t Googled me, I can work it in when he asks about what I write. How I disclose chastity, however, has more flexibility than when I do it.

I am, in fact, a proponent of disclosing chastity up front. I’m for it on the first date or earlier. I’m for this because if a guy can’t handle that I bring up sex so soon, he probably can’t handle dating me. I’m also for this because if one (or both) of us is surprised or disappointed by what the other says about sex, I’d rather it be before we’re so involved we try to make work what inevitably won’t. It’s also a good idea to talk chastity at the start because what a potential mate does with what you divulge during that conversation is important. If he or she resists talking about chastity, he or she probably won’t practice it. If somebody lists incentives of sex before marriage, he or she will list ’em again and again and again, until you break down or break up. If he or she agrees to grin and bear it, you get a version of what you want: to practice chastity. But he or she doesn’t bring to a relationship what a person does who practices chastity, too.

In answer to Jason’s second question, I absolutely seek out guys who share my sentiments. To meet guys who don’t and try to change them isn’t fair, for me or for them. It isn’t my job to turn a guy into one who’d make a good husband, and it’s unreasonable to expect him to forsake his beliefs for mine.

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Q&A is an occasional feature. If you have a Q, I can come up with an A (and if I don’t have an A, I’ll find somebody who does). To submit a question, click here. No topic is taboo (although I can’t promise I will answer every question).

Click here to read all the posts in this series.

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A most important quote.

Stumbled upon this in the prep steps of the Ignatian spiritual exercises. Profound and convicting, it is probably the most important quote I’ve read in awhile. This one’s worth posting where you’ll read it often:

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3 Lessons and 2 Tips from Shane Blackshear.

kate-amp-shane3 Lessons and 2 Tips is a series of interviews in which some of my favorite people (and probably some of yours) share three lessons they’ve learned by being married, plus two tips for single people.

This edition features Shane Blackshear, host of the Seminary Dropout podcast, “public speaker and blogger with a passion and vision for communicating to people of all ages about living out the story that God has written for them in their personal and vocational lives.” Shane has been married to his wife Kate since July 21, 2007.

AS: How did you meet your wife?

SB: Kate and I met in college at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, TX. We didn’t really hang out, but it was a small school so everyone knew everybody else. It wasn’t until three years after she graduated and two years after I graduated that she moved back to Brownwood to help with a church that a few of us were planting together, and we got to know each other and started dating.

AS: What’s the first lesson you’ve learned by being married?

SB: Give up needing to be right. When you feel the need to be right, it’s the same thing as needing your spouse to be wrong. Give it up. You don’t need to chase down every fine point of an argument and wrestle your spouse into submission.

AS: And the second lesson?

SB: Set up some boundaries. I don’t mean that you have a private life that your spouse isn’t allowed to enter into. I work at home so it’s hard for Kate to tell when I’m working or just surfing Buzzfeed online. We’re working through some boundaries that will keep this a peaceful living situation (i.e.- I can use X number of hours a week to work and in the rest I have to be present).

AS: And the third lesson?

SB: Compromise! The apostle Paul talks about living in mutual submission to each other. One side thinks only women should be submissive to men, the other side thinks everyone should only do what they want to do all the time. The Bible says differently: both voluntarily submit to the other. I think that looks a lot like compromise. It’s not about what I want.

AS: What’s one tip for readers who are single?

SB: Don’t fall into the thinking that says that marriage is your next step in being complete. Paul is pretty clear that if you can stay single, you should. That’s probably one of the most looked over passages in the modern church. Many churches tend to build their programs around the families or couples, that shouldn’t be so. Singles are just as complete at couples and families. Enjoy your single life. Do things that are easier as a single person like living in an intentional community with others (yeah this can be done as a couple, but it’s harder).

AS: And a second tip for singles?

If you have a deep desire to getting married, don’t worry that God doesn’t want you to be. If God desires for you to be single, then the idea of always being single won’t be an overwhelming prospect to you.

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Connect with Shane Blackshear: Click here to read his blog and listen to his podcast, here to follow him on Twitter, and here to like him on Facebook.