Letter To Louise

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Often he is endowed with a wealth of religious feelings, which help him to bring the ecclesia spiritualis [the spiritual church] into reality, and a spiritual receptivity which makes him responsive to revelation. Louise, it seems as though one ought to look on a gay or a lesbian as potentially a very special person made that way by God, one we should seek out, especially for our churches. Baptists don’t believe he meant literally what the words say, for we know from the whole New Testament that baptism in itself has nothing to do with salvation.

But when the world believes that churches despise and condemn homosexuals, those who hate them find encouragement. E., one of the Vatican Library’s earliest Greek liturgical documents is a marriage ceremony for two persons of the same sex.Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Psychologists are recognizing that this special combination of characteristics in homosexuals often results in their having exceptional potential.

If the Bible expresses such a prejudice, then it certainly cannot be wrong to act on that prejudice. I regret it now, but I’m sure I have said it a thousand times–you’ve heard me–“Jesus commanded us to do” so and so. Most denominations are discussing it openly; without exception they are divided in their thinking, and the news reports of the discussions publicize the negative rhetoric along with the positive. Back in London, when Collins realized she was pregnant, her lover offered marriage; she declined what seemed like his self-sacrifice.

Award-winning British actress Collins, of Upstairs, Downstairs TV fame, reveals that in 1964, at age 23, she bore a child and then gave her up for adoption. We at Penguin Random House Australia acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians and the first storytellers of the lands on which we live and work. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done.