Requiems and homosexuals

Since I attended Mattins last Sunday and will be attending Evensong tomorrow, I thought that I had better go to Mass at some point during the week, lest I go three weeks without communicating. For High Mass today, the only game in town was a Requiem at the Church of St Mary Magdalene, my parochial home-away-from-home. A long-time member recently died, and the requiem was the first Mass held in the church proper after the recent renovations. So I went, despite feeling rather like the woman in The Twilight Zone who hits up the funerals of strangers.

Since SMM is much enamoured of the spirit of Vatican II, there was no black in evidence, I regret to say. But it was a very moving funeral - indeed I teared up at a couple of points, and I did not know the deceased. Afterwards I took my sister to brunch at a local breakfast food place. Since my parents' separation each of us has resided with the parent of the opposite sex, so I don't see her as often, especially since both of us now have part-time jobs. Every couple of weeks I make a point of taking her to brunch at this particular restaurant. For forty dollars, I can spend an hour with her and delight in her company and conversation. She has a very sharp wit and is much more pragmatic than I am - indeed we are opposites in so many respects that I often wonder how we could have sprung from the same parents.

On the subway ride home from brunch, a somewhat disheveled (but apparently sober) man with a gash on his face struck up a conversation with another man nearby on how vexing he found "homosexuals," who he said wanted rights but didn't seem to want to respect the rights of others - such as to protect their children from sexual exploitation. The climax was when he whipped an adult magazine out of his rear pocket and remarked "That's what life is about." And I thought, really? Because I find that very sad. If this man's "life" (or his sex life) is indeed merely "about" the consumption of pornography (which in and of itself I can tolerate) then he will, it seems, never know the meaningful intimacy in body and mind that thousands of same-sex couples live out every day. I couldn't help but thinking that this man was wrong in his estimation that he had gotten the better deal in life. That may be self-righteous of me, but I can only be honest about it.