Interlude:
The End of My Lonely Battle
(Lilly Lilium)
WHILE WE DISCUSSED the Church’s plans to alleviate poverty and its position as an economic entity, Rae left her seat to go take a break. I chatted with Claire while we waited, but we ran out of tea and no refill was coming, so I went to go check on the ones in charge of serving us.
“Miss Lilly is meeting with the daughter of the Minister of Finance now?”
“I know… It’s disgusting.”
I found the nuns tasked with serving us, but hid myself upon catching a snippet of their conversation.
“It must be true that Miss Lilly is a homosexual then.”
“How immoral…and while engaged to Prince Yu too.”
It was just as I expected. I was often gossiped about behind my back like this. Many were envious of me, as it was unprecedented for someone as young as me to be made a cardinal. Most of the time, people gossiped about my sexuality.
For some reason, I’d only ever liked other girls. I knew it was unnatural, but I couldn’t help it. I had once confessed to an older girl I knew, unable to conceal my feelings any longer, but that…did not go well. Ever since then, I’d lived on the edge of a precipice, treated like a heretic by others.
“She’s only a cardinal because her father is the chancellor, despite her perverted inclinations.”
“Apparently, there’s more. Some expect her to be the next pope.”
“What a stain on the Church that would be.”
Not everything the women said was correct, but at least some of it hit the mark. It would likely have been impossible for me to become a cardinal if it weren’t for my father, and it was true my idea of love differed from the values of the Church. The two were justified in taking issue with me. Or at least, so I thought…
“Isn’t that a little unfair?” Rae stepped in and interrupted their gossiping.
“Um, can we help you…?”
“You’re Miss Claire’s maid, aren’t you? What business do you have with us?”
The two nuns looked at Rae with some confusion. There wasn’t a trace of guilt on their faces.
“Is same-sex love really such a terrible thing?” Rae bluntly asked.
“Umm…” One of the nuns grew evasive.
“At the very least, I don’t think it’s natural.” The other nun responded with the prevailing opinion.
The one who had been evasive signaled for the other to stop, but it appeared she was dead set on maintaining her stance. This wasn’t a surprise—nuns did wield some status in society. More than a commoner serving a noble, anyway. Some nuns were even noblewomen whose families had been ruined after political defeats. They had no reason to fear a common maid.
“How so?” Rae asked.
“Think about it. Same-sex couples cannot produce children. Their relationships bear no fruit.”
I could never come up with a rebuttal to this argument. Heterosexual couples could contribute to society by leaving behind descendants, but homosexual couples could not do the same. That was why people claimed same-sex love was indulgent, as it served no greater purpose.
But to that, Rae said, “If birthing children is a condition for love to be natural, then heterosexual couples who are unable to conceive must not have a natural relationship either.”
“Well…”
“And if being natural is desirable, should you refuse medical treatment when you’re sick? Medical science defies the course of nature in every instance of its use.”
Rae’s counterarguments were things that had never even occurred to me before. I’d never stopped to consider my own stance on what made love real. She also made a good point that making reproduction the chief criterion of validity discounted some heterosexual couples who couldn’t reproduce.
The way she questioned the very idea of “normal” was eye-opening too. Rebuttals could be made to what she’d just said, of course, but it was also hard to deny the fact that disease was to some degree natural, as everyone became sick at some point in their lives. But was it natural to undo that sickness through the means of man—that is to say, unnatural means? It was a gray area. If you went even further and claimed such unnaturalness was objectionable, you might come off as saying the medical services the Church itself offered were wrong.
The nun didn’t seem to have expected Rae to debate her like this. She grew red in the face and started to trip on her own words. “Such sophistry…”
“Please, tell me specifically which part of what I said was sophism. Otherwise, I’ll take your entire claim as nothing more than an emotional argument.”
“It doesn’t matter what sort of glib answers you come up with. Homosexuality is not normal, and it is practiced only by a heretical few!”
This was yet another argument I never had a rebuttal for. No matter what fancy arguments we presented, it remained a fact that homosexuals were in the minority. As heterosexuals were in the majority, did it not make sense for the rules we followed to be theirs to define?
“I’ll accept that there are fewer homosexuals than heterosexuals. But what does that prove? What is wrong with a number being smaller?”
“It proves it’s not normal!”
“All right, so a higher number means something is ‘normal’? But you still haven’t explained why the ‘abnormal’ smaller number ought to be bad.”
“Well…that’s because…”
“Do you think happening to belong to a majority means you have the right to attack someone in a minority?”
“Argh…”
Rae presented yet another effective counterargument, claiming numbers were not a justification for discrimination. I listened to her logical breakdown, my heart feeling lighter than ever.
“Never mind your logic! This—this heresy, it’s disgusting!”
“And there it is. Pure physiological disgust. You can’t understand it, and you don’t want to understand it, so you simply attack it.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong is that’s simply discrimination in its purest form. Doesn’t the Church teach all are equal under the Spirit God? Your values conflict with your own teachings.”
Rae’s counterargument clearly flustered the nun. The more devout the follower, the more hesitant they were to stray from doctrine. Equality under the Spirit God was one of the core tenets of the Church. To flout it was unthinkable for the pious nun.
Rae could probably have forced the woman even further into a corner if she wanted to. But she didn’t.
“I’m not trying to outdebate you or embarrass you. I just want you to be freed from your bias against homosexuality.”
There was silence from the nun.
“I won’t even ask you to understand,” Rae said. “But can’t you at least respect us?”
“…Are you a homosexual too?”
“I am.”
Rae showed she was willing to compromise. Rather than trying to win the argument, she asked for respect. If she had continued to argue, neither side relenting, the nun would have clung to her resentment. But Rae chose a different path.
The hostility left the nun, who now seemed willing to meet Rae halfway. She wasn’t a bad person. Her belief was simply the prevailing thought of the world.
With a grimace, she said, “I…I cannot acknowledge anything yet. But I believe I understand what you mean to say. I will think about it. When… If I devise a rebuttal, then perhaps we might debate again.”
“That’s enough. Thank you very much.”
The two nuns left. I’d been unable to do anything but stand there in blank amazement throughout their entire exchange.
Rae turned, then went wide-eyed upon noticing me. “Wh-what’s wrong, Miss Lilly?”
I hadn’t even realized I had been crying. This was the first time I’d met someone who understood my suffering and accepted what I was.
I am a woman of faith. To me, faith was absolute. But I had lived my whole life having the absolute nature of my faith deny who I was.
Until now. Finally, someone had come to bring an end to my lonely battle.
“…ank you…”
“What?”
“Thank you…very much…”
Before I knew it, I had dived into her chest. Flustered, she wrapped her arms around me. Her body, taller than my own, seemed to envelop me in a sense of security.
“I’ve always thought my own feelings were a sin… But you…you…”
My voice was too feeble to string words together. I’d been longing to hear the words Rae had just said for so long. Her exchange with those nuns had changed everything for me. I wanted to tell her that, but I couldn’t form the words through my tears.
“Nobody has ever accepted who I am before… It’s amazing, the way you’re able to unashamedly say what you think…”
I barely managed to say that much before looking up at her, my face still stained with tears. She looked bewildered and yet still dashing.
I was certain this had to be destiny.
“I-I think I might be in love with you, Rae.”
The moment I said that, I heard the sound of something dropping close by—but I was too far gone to care.
There was only one thought left in my mind: No matter what happened, I would never let Rae go.