THE DEATH-HAUNTED ART OF FRIENDSHIP, PART II: At Catholic Lane. This time, sacrificial friendship in the Bible and in our everyday lives:

How often in Scripture we find violence mingled with love, like water mingled with wine: in the Song of Songs, the watchmen beating the lover as she searches the city for her beloved; in Genesis, Abram’s knife poised over Isaac’s breast. Yet it is friendship that features most prominently in this strange dynamic of love and violence. It is most explicitly and insistently linked to death and sacrifice.

more

FRIENDS IN NEED: At the pregnancy center, we see how certain norms which are destructive for everyone, but which may make some utilitarian sense from an upper-class perspective, have filtered down to poor women. The most obvious one is the idea that marriage is the final stamp of approval on a life well lived, the last item on the to-do list, to be checked off only once you've achieved economic stability. Marrying before economic stability has been achieved is actively stigmatized, because economic independence and stability are major markers of grown-up status, and the new model of marriage is that you complete the growing-up process first rather than letting your marriage form the bedrock of your adult identity.

You can see how this causes difficulties when economic stability is a far-off goal which may never be achieved. (And which becomes even harder to achieve once you start having kids out of wedlock.) Marriage is simultaneously an immensely longed-for honor and an endlessly-receding finish line.

What I didn't notice until more recently is that destructive upper-class norms of friendship may also be changing poor communities. This study basically argues (this is from memory, so I apologize if I misstate anything) that upper-class friendships are looser, based on common interests and personal compatibility, easier to shrug out of, and less tightly-tied to mutual aid, while working-class friendships are nosy, impose sometimes burdensome obligations, and are based mostly on proximity or similarity of life situation. Looser friendships offer independence, but are prone to atomization and alienation; tighter friendships foster generosity, but are prone to gossip and to resentment when perceived obligations aren't met.

I've been struck recently by how many of my clients are ashamed to go to their friends for help: both material or financial help, and emotional support, the love in time of distress which might be thought of as one of the key purposes of friendship. I've written before about my own struggle with the temptation to keep my troubles to myself and not seek help because I don't want to burden others, so I totally sympathize with this dilemma. But as I'm trying to teach myself, love in a time of need is what you have friends for. St. Aelred's emphasis on transparent honesty with one's friends may be considered an antidote to the shame we feel at exposing our own needs and weaknesses.

One of the biggest tasks at the center, at least for someone with my style of counseling, is to help the woman find the sources of love and support already available to her in her own life and community. I try to help her identify and strengthen those connections. And I've been startled by how often people will identify a friend as a possible source of desperately-needed strength, and then admit that they're ashamed to rely on that friend. "Well, if she were in need, wouldn't you want to know?" I ask, and that helps a bit. But the tight old relationships--not only friendship but the fictive kinship relations of godparenthood and godsisterhood, and maybe even the extended-family relationships of cousinhood--seem to be weakening. A renewal of friendship would be good for everybody, but maybe especially good for the poor.

I would say that those men are beasts rather than human beings who declare that a man ought to live in such a way as to be to no one a source of consolation, to no one a source even of grief or burden; to take no delight in the good fortune of another, or impart to others no bitterness because of their own misfortune, caring to cherish no one and to be cherished by no one.
--Aelred (the character) in St. Aelred, Spiritual Friendship. I have been thinking about the spiritual harm done when I am too proud to be a burden on others.

"GAY AND CATHOLIC: WHAT THE CHURCH GETS RIGHT AND WRONG ABOUT BEING GAY." In which I am a "guest voice" at the Washington Post's On Faith site. My basic spiel, in almost exactly 750 words, and with a specific pitch to DC readers!

UPDATERY: Ratty has more on famous authors' texts from last night; and Andrew Sullivan reminds me of the best thing he's ever written!

SISTERHOOD IS POWERFUL: So while we’re kicking around gay-marriage compromises, we get this one:

That brings us to our alternative proposal: The revisionists would agree to oppose the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), thus ensuring that federal law retains the traditional definition of marriage as the union of husband and wife, and states retain the right to preserve that definition in their law. In return, traditionalists would agree to support federal civil unions offering most or all marital benefits. But, as Princeton’s Robert P. George once proposed for New Jersey civil unions, unions recognized by the federal government would be available to any two adults who commit to sharing domestic responsibilities, whether or not their relationship is sexual. Available only to people otherwise ineligible to marry each other (say, because of consanguinity), these unions would neither introduce a rival “marriage-lite” option nor treat same-sex unions as marriages. Their purpose would be to protect adult domestic partners who have pledged themselves to a mutually binding relationship of care. What (if anything) goes on in the bedroom would have nothing to do with these unions’ goals or, thus, eligibility requirements.

(more)
Which gets this response, in comments at the Independent Gay Forum (and the main blogger there picked this comment out as worthy of posting on its own):

Another half-baked idea that goes into the reject pile. It seriously debases same-sex relationships to the level of friendships and blood relations.

(more)

Which I’ve heard before in gay-marriage discussions, a lot, and which breaks my heart. So here’s a post I think you can agree with in toto even if you think gay marriage is the quintessential grape-scented marker of justice.

First, I’m not endorsing the Anderson/Girgis compromise. I see problems with it and I see good points. This post isn’t about that.

Nor am I going to repeat my cri de coeur on behalf of sacrificial friendship. We desperately need to revive our understanding of, respect for, and willingness to sacrifice within friendship. But in this post I’m going to focus on the idea of “debasing ... relationships to the level of ... blood relations.”

Because I don’t think it’s a great idea to denigrate our unchosen loves, our familial duties, in order to exalt our chosen ones. I think it’s honestly quite awful to denigrate the love between sisters, brothers, comrades in arms (no, click that link), any tie we don’t choose and which nonetheless requires intense sacrifice from us.

I get why people don’t want to think of siblings and beloveds in the same breath. We move around so much, you know? It’s really hard to know how we could be responsible for a sibling a hundred miles away, even if we wanted to be, whereas we expect a spouse to move with us. We view employment in the career of our choice as a much better reason to move than employment near our families-of-origin. And I am not trying to argue that this privileging of choice over unchosen origin is wrong in all cases.

(There’s a subtext here, of course, that LGBT people have often been rejected by their families of origin; their only family is their “chosen family.” Note here, though, that the “chosen family” includes friends as well. I thought AIDS taught us that friends too will stand by you and suffer heartbreak with you even when your own parents will not. ...But I said I wasn’t going to talk about friendship.)

What I’m trying to say is this: 1) We used to know that brotherhood and sisterhood were powerful, beautiful, unique and real relationships. That’s how adelphopoeisis happened. That’s how we came up with the idea.

And 2), maybe more importantly: Wedlock is about making chosen relationships more like unchosen ones. Of course we’ve gotten far away from this ideal, both legally and culturally. But we still have this sense that the wedding vow is a choice to forego future choices. We still try to talk as if we are choosing to become bound; we are choosing to be faithful, choosing not to leave, choosing not to stray.

If marriage is about making chosen relationships more like unchosen ones... why would we ever think that denigrating unchosen relationships, families-of-origin, would be a good way to defend marriage?

My own answer is that the “culture of commitment” is basically a culture of personal will. Think about the different connotations of “commitment” (personal choice) and “fidelity” (adherence to preexisting standards).

But seriously, this post is not about getting you to agree with me on that explanation. It’s just about ridding the world of arguments for gay marriage which require denigration of unchosen loyalties, unchosen loves, and unchosen responsibilities. Those arguments are bad for gay marriages, let alone for anyone else’s relationships.

And finally 3), most importantly of all: I want to think about how we can strengthen friendships and families (families made by vow and families made by flesh) in a mobile society. If you care about this stuff and have any ideas, comments, anything at all, please email me so we can talk. I hope to post soon with specific ideas along these lines.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they are warm; but how can one be warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.

--Ecclesiastes 4:9-12