RE: this:
1. Jodi O’Brien is a brilliant, challenging, and damn good professor, thinker, and person. She is funny, no-nonsense, compassionate, and memorable.
2. In class, she pointed out that “gay marriage” as it’s currently discussed gives her major pause, not because the privileges of marriage shouldn’t be extended to gay people or because of theological reasons, but because it might be a shame to extend the limitations of heteronormative marriage into the gay community through the legal structures that have shaped “straight” marriage. For instance, she pointed out, many relationships within the gay community are more complicated and pluralistic, creating support systems and family structures that are caring and functional for more than two people. If marriage is a flawed system, she asked, are we sure we just want to make it bigger? Couldn’t we back up a little and make it better in the process—make it possible to think about families and relationships as wider, more inclusive units?
3. In her class, I learned these terms: heteronormativity. gender performance. These are words that organize my thinking.
4. In my six years of Jesuit schooling, I gained a lot of respect for the Jesuits I knew—and I heard this prayer many, many times over the school loudspeaker during morning prayer:
God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
The Jesuits liked this one: it reflected (for highschoolers’ consumption) the principles of Ignatian discernment, while also handily supporting “social justice” and mildly attempting to quell the Quixotic zeal of the listening adolescents.
5. The Jesuits I’ve known were not afraid of the Church, not afraid to speak out and say what they believed was right according to their own examination of faith and their own understanding of God.
6. Hey, Jesuits, you’re dropping the ball: this is one you can change, if you only have the courage and the wisdom. This, here: this is that social justice you were talking about.
