I Quite Like Decaff

I quite like decaffeinated coffee.

If I drink it in copious amounts my head doesn't ache as it would if I drank the same amount of normal coffee. Also it enables me to sleep well* at night.

However, why am I a confessed tea drinker on the whole defending coffee of the decaffeinated variety? The reason is that a Vatican official Father Gonzalo Miranda, a bioethics professor at Regina Apostolorum University, travelling through Mexico has said:

"A gay relationship is like decaffeinated coffee, you do not wake up".

Other benefits of course of de-caff are you are less strung up, less irritable. Also you're less reliant on the next fix, possibly even a stronger fix to wake you up. Detoxing from caffeinated products can also bring revival to your system. For the professor in the pontifical institution to compare caffeine, a drug, and its dependency to wake you up to a heterosexual relationship shows that something is also wrong with his analogy.

He has merely looked at one aspect of coffee or indeed relationships without bearing in mind the counter argument. Of course there is bias in he words.

Can a gay relationship be as fulfilling as a heterosexual one? Of course it can. Can it be as life affirming, as cherished and as desirable as a heterosexual one? Again I say of course it can. From personal experience I'm getting to the point that I'm getting tired of the dating game, I'm looking for that one person I can lavish all my love unto, of course the only way to meet that person is go meet more people. I also don't fall in love easily so when I do that person really is special (and I guess I've probably just scared off a vast majority of potentials).

But there is a yearning a desire to find that one. It exists even in a homosexual relationship. It's not any less a desire. Maybe it is the Church both Catholic and otherwise that needs to wake up. There are members of their flocks who are gay. They need to be nurtured not picked out for singular mention from the pulpit of being sinful, while their heterosexual neighbours can breathe easily as their sinfulness is not highlighted with quite the regularity as lying with another man is.

As I said at the start there are many health benefits of decaffeinated coffee, just as there are with decaffeinated and herbal teas. Benefits that can aid the physical and mental well being of those that sup on it, rather than being forced to adhere to a caffeinated norm.

* Well being a relative term for an insomniac like myself.