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{"id":2074,"date":"2006-05-15T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-15T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2006\/05\/2074\/"},"modified":"2006-05-15T18:15:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-15T18:15:00","slug":"2074","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2006\/05\/2074.html","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

EXTRA DOUBLE SUPER <\/em>GAY!: Review of David Morrison\u2019s Beyond Gay.<\/em><\/strong> (The title of this book makes me giggle.)<\/p>\n

OK, I actually read this a while ago, and don\u2019t have a copy with me, as I lent it out. But I wanted to do a (mostly) positive review, after the Payne debacle recorded below. So this will be brief, but possibly helpful.<\/p>\n

When I first finished Morrison\u2019s book<\/a>\u2013basically an autobiography with generous helpings of theology\u2013I was somewhat disappointed. I\u2019d hoped that he would have written my <\/em>book, so I wouldn\u2019t have to! Fortunately, I got over this lazy and entitled reaction, and I think now I can appreciate the book more on its own terms.<\/p>\n

One major caveat remains: the degree to which Morrison uses \u201cscared straight\u201d rhetoric, especially in the book\u2019s opening. You know\u2013statistics on drug use, depression, STDs, etc. As I indicated below, I\u2019m really unimpressed with this line of approach. First off, no one is a statistic. So it\u2019s very easy to respond to the stats with, \u201cOK, well, I won\u2019t do those things, though.\u201d Not everyone does! Second, if you don\u2019t make that response, there\u2019s still anger (we\u2019re messed up because of heteronormativity!) or despair (fine then, I\u2019m doomed, so kind of you to let me know). I don\u2019t know of anyone who has responded to the \u201crisky lifestyle\u201d talk by actually embracing Christian teaching on homosexuality. I certainly didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

That said, there are a lot of good points to the book. It\u2019s engaging and personal, and it never feels like Morrison is just telling his audience what it wants to hear. Morrison gets the balance right, I think, on the \u201corigin story\u201d question\u2013how come you\u2019re same-sex attracted, and how much does it matter? He does talk about incidents and relationships that influenced him, but he doesn\u2019t focus on the past. He identifies problems, seeks to resolve them, and doesn\u2019t obsess over them.<\/p>\n

He also describes an ordinary Christian life, with ordinary prayer and ordinary struggles, rather than the \u201ccrisis followed by happily-happily-happily ever after\u201d pattern so prominent in Payne\u2019s book. It\u2019s a humble and very hopeful approach.<\/p>\n

This still isn\u2019t \u201cmy book.\u201d I even think some of the posts in Morrison\u2019s blog <\/a>archive are better\u2013more insightful and inspiring\u2013than the book. But Beyond Gay<\/em> is pretty darn good, really. Recommended with reservations.<\/p>\n

(Also, of course, there are the links on my sidebar under \u201cSicut cervus\u201d; and I\u2019m going to trawl through Dreadnought\u2019s<\/a> archives at some point, since some of his older posts are terrific and I\u2019d like to sidebar-link them as well.)<\/p>\n

[eta: I should mention that Morrison, unlike Payne, is writing about his own actual situation, rather than other people\u2019s. And I don\u2019t want to push that fact too hard. I think I gained a lot, actually, from the fact that when I was first encountering the Catholic faith, the Catholics I knew were all hetero. So I had to realize that everyone has a cross, and I should stop whining and feeling like my cross was extra special.<\/p>\n

But I read a hilarious thing a couple months back about the \u201cSturgeon Number.\u201d Theodore Sturgeon famously said something along the lines of, \u201c90% of everything is crap.\u201d And this blogger pointed out that while every idea can be done well, some ideas have a higher Sturgeon Number than others\u2013a higher potential to be crap. \u201cSnakes on a Plane,\u201d <\/a>to take the obvious example, has an exceptionally low Sturgeon Number. It could be two hours of Samuel Jackson just yelling, \u201cI want these m\u2014f\u2014 snakes off this m\u2014f\u2014 plane!!!\u201d and it would still be awesome. People entirely without same-sex attraction writing about people with it, by contrast, are working with a high Sturgeon Number, no matter <\/em>what stance they take on moral questions. That doesn\u2019t mean it can\u2019t be done well (Pat Barker comes to mind); just that it\u2019s good to be aware of the Sturgeon Number of any enterprise in which one plans to engage.]<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"