"Why Do We Have To Talk About It?"
Many of you are familiar with the certificate that is framed and hung in the narthex of our building. It reads: "We Are A Welcoming Congregation. This Unitarian Universalist community welcomes and celebrates the presence and participation of gay, lesbian and bisexual persons."
We earned the right to display our certificate from the Unitarian Universalist Association by undergoing a process that took four years to complete. It’s unfortunate that the certificate isn’t very attractive, and I think it could be worded to be much more inclusive. Someday, I hope we’ll replace it with a certificate of our own creation that’s more aesthetically pleasing and more understandably welcoming of all seekers. Are any of our graphic artists up for that challenge?
Still, we worked hard to earn the right to hang the certificate we have. The procedure included a great deal of self-evaluation and the implementation of programs and projects designed to help us move through our personal and institutional levels of homophobia.
Aware that this must be an ongoing process, we wanted ours to be a congregation more than just open to the possibility that gay folks might walk through our doors and be accepted. We wanted and want ours to be a church intentionally engaged in reaching out to serve and to welcome gay, lesbian and bisexual persons. The process of being a Welcoming Congregation requires that we always be about determining where we are on this path, and then taking the next step toward that goal.
We choose to be members of this church, this community of aspiration. We come together to remember and to hope, and then to do something about turning our hopes into realities. We see the brokenness in the world around us, and we hope for a path that leads to healing.
We want the world to be more just and compassionate, a world that better honors the inherent worth and dignity of every person, one that promotes the spiritual development and the soulful fulfillment of all people. We are realistic enough to know that our hopes can not become realities without our determined actions–guided by our religious convictions and values–to remake this world into the world of our longings.
For the past two years our February Focus theme has been on Journey Toward Wholeness and the work of antiracism. Our efforts toward that goal are incomplete. My hope though, is that we have made the work of antiracism an ongoing part of the life of this congregation. I’m sure we will need to come back to it many times in the future. For now though, I hope to reengage our focus and the light of reason and compassion onto this other area of homophobia, which is darkened by injustice.
In a piece with prophetic vision, Alice Walker claims, "Love is not concerned with whom you pray or where you slept the night you ran away from home. Love is concerned that the beating of your heart should kill no one." I have to believe she’s right. How could love be concerned with anything that might diminish loving. Yet, somehow our culture has developed over the ages, a seemingly unquenchable concern about where people sleep and about who sleeps with whom.
And so, we have chosen as a special focus for this year a re-visitation of The Welcoming Congregation; so that we might see how we relate with this cultural concern once again; so that we might determine how this cultural bent plays out in our own congregation now; and so that we might discern anew a fitting religious and congregational response to the evils of homophobia.
It's been over eight years since the congregation undertook the process of becoming an officially recognized Welcoming Congregation. At that time we committed ourselves to doing the work of justice and extending a welcoming hand of compassion to persons of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender orientation. By compassion we don’t mean charity or pity. We mean that we want to learn how to better connect with one another, and just be human together. That’s compassion.
Some of you were here in those earlier years and may remember the excitement and the enthusiasm with which the congregation began this work. It was frightening to be sure, and uncomfortable for many. It went against the current of the main stream culture. But we took the step. In many regards we have been quite successful, especially in extending the hand of compassion. Still, it feels that our resolve to do the work of justice, both internally and externally, has flagged somewhat while the issues of injustice have not.
Many of us, including myself, would just as soon wish that this didn't any longer have to be such a big deal. Just this week I received a phone call from a member of the congregation, someone for whom I have the greatest love and respect, and that will never change. At the end of the call the person said, "I’ll see you in March."
"What do you mean?" I said. "Are you going away?"
"No," I was told. "I’m not coming to the services in February just to be hit over the head with an issue that’s well enough left alone."
Some of us quip, "Enough said already! We don't need to keep mentioning differences between gays and straights. To notice the difference is to widen the cleft. We don't talk about whom other people sleep with. Why does it need to be so public with gays?"
The thing is we talk about who sleeps with whom all the time–in the news, in our literature, in the theater, just about everywhere. The thing is it would be wonderful if it was not such a big deal, but it is.
Bill and Hillary Clinton make it a big deal when they say that gays should not be afforded the rites of marriage. Republican presidential candidates make it a big deal when they say they would deny the rights of gays to serve in the military. The Religious Right makes a big deal out of it when it misuses its own scriptures to condemn behavior it does not understand.
Our culture makes it a big deal by forcing some of our people to do without security benefits enjoyed by others, or forces them to mourn the loss of a loved one in secret. That’s a heartbreaker no one should ever have to bear, returning to work immediately after the death of a partner, with no time for grieving, in order to dispel suspicions and not take the risk of losing a job. This has happened to members of our congregation.
Why do we need to talk about it? Because, it is our religious imperative to talk about it and then to do something about it! To love our neighbor as ourselves. To affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. To speak out and to act when we encounter bigotry and injustice. We don’t need to hit ourselves over the head with any of this. We do need to stand together, and maybe scratch our collective heads, to see what this all means to us now, and to figure out what we might want to do about it.
I'll hope that this month we'll be able to learn more about where we fit into this picture and more about our part in creating solutions. I'll hope we can renew our enthusiasm and commitment in this most important cause that calls for justice and compassion.
I’d like to share with you the experience that helped me to recognize that acting for and with gay and lesbian people–especially working with youth–against homophobia, put my religious integrity was on the line. It happened over the course of several days at the 1990 General Assembly of the UUA, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’d been sympathetic and supportive of gays and gay issues long before then. But I didn’t actually realize that it was such a religious issue until that GA.
In a casual conversation, I was introduced by my mentor, Alan Egly, to a couple that he knew. Bob and Lois were very pleasant. Like me, they were from the Prairie Star District, and so we struck up a conversation. They invited me to stop by their booth in the display area to learn about their organization, PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Later on, that’s just what I did.
They told me about the experience that they’d had learning their son was gay; how they learned first to cope with that, and eventually to embrace it. I’ve heard that story many times since then. I’ve even had the fortune of being part of that story as it’s unfolded for a number of families. But this was the first time I’d heard about how parents grieve the loss of what they imagined to be a normal life for their child, and then, with grace, learn instead to embrace the beauty and love waiting for them in their new reality.
Bob and Lois and I struck up a GA friendship. They invited me to attend a number of workshops and events that focused on gay issues. I became very sensitized. I learned some statistics regarding gay youth that haunt me to this day.
That’s pathetic. Not the kids, the culture is pathetic. It’s an incredibly inhumane waist of some of the most talented members of the next generation. These statistics were true in 1989 because not enough religiously responsible people would stand up against the hate and create a new reality of safety for our children. And it continues to happen today for the very same reason.
It all came together for me at a midnight worship service at that Milwaukee GA. It was a memorial vigil for victims of AIDS. In that service we sang "We Are a Gentle Angry People" just as we did here a few minutes ago. And at the end of it we sang the last verse just as we did, "We are a gay and lesbian people."
And I could see all around me, through the tears rolling down peoples’ faces that the hope had come true. Straight people did understand what it meant to deny one’s sexuality. And gay people sung out with pride–I’m sure some of them for very the first time–and with honesty and integrity about their sexual identity.
And I understood then that it’s not up to gay people to turn this around. They are not responsible for the homophobic fears of others. And yet so often they are still willing to work with the rest of us. The ball is in the court of the straight community, and if justice and compassion are going to win out, straights are going to have to take their place in this struggle for decency, common, human decency.
I swore that night that my own children, and any other children over whom I would have influence, would never have to fear my rejection if they were gay. I recognized that night that it is my ministerial calling, that it is a religious calling, to say out loud long before I’m ever asked, that people need to love whom they love, and they should never have to apologize, or hide or deny that love. Our highest human aspiration is love. It is a religious quest.
All too often religion is used as a weapon to protect small mindedness. It’s used to inflict pain on others whose presence causes the religious person to question his or her own small faith. I want to take just a couple of minutes to debunk the proposition that the bible condemns homosexuality. If we are going to create a religious response to homophobia, we ought to be ready to counter a supposedly religious attack on homosexuality.
There are nine biblical citations typically used in these assaults. Four of them (one from Deuteronomy, two from the First Book of Kings and one from the Second Book of kings) simply forbid prostitution by men or women. Two of them (both from Leviticus) do prohibit homosexual acts. The same list though, also makes taboo: eating raw meat, planting two different kinds of seed in the same field, wearing garments made of two different kinds of yarn, tattoos, and intercourse during menstruation. Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?
There are three references in the New Testament letters of St. Paul (Romans, I Corinthians and I Timothy). In a New York Times article, Peter Gomes writes, "…Paul was concerned with homosexuality only because in Greco-Roman culture it represented a secular sensuality that was contrary to his Jewish-Christian spiritualism. He was against lust and sensuality in anyone, including heterosexuals."
And finally, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is so frequently used, was not even about sexual perversion. It is about the sin of inhospitality. Gomes writes, "To suggest that Sodom and Gomorrah is about homosexual sex is an analysis of about as much worth as suggesting that the story of Jonah and the whale is a treatise on fishing."
When people use the Bible, or any religious text, to promote their own practices and condemn those of others, they are hiding behind a shield that can rarely withstand confrontation with truth and love. Religious text is not the truth. If it is good religious text, it merely points us in the direction of truth.
There is no mention of homosexuality in any of the four gospels. I only wish Jesus had addressed the issue. It’s not to his credit, I think, that he didn’t. He could have put all of this self-righteous judgmentalism to rest. Instead, he said simply, "Love one another."
That would be a good idea. It’s a lot like affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It’s not about sitting back and letting things be. It’s about doing what needs to be done to promote love in a world that needs it desperately. "Come now, and let us reason together…" it says in the Book of Isaiah.
What I hope we will achieve over the next few weeks during our Focus Month, what I hope we will gain from this experience, is a new beginning. I’ll hope we gain insight into the gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual issues that really affect us all. I’ll hope that we can revitalize our connection to this religious cause and to one another, that we will be inspired toward a more purposeful way of living, that we will be comforted by knowing that we are making an honest effort toward a purposeful, religious goal.
My hope for our congregation is that we will once again recognize that we are all connected to this work. We are not here to beat each other over the head with ‘shoulds and should nots.’ But we are here to be with one another in a way that promotes the possibility that no one here will ever have to wonder if they are being judged on account of their sexuality.
We are here to promote the possibility that the world might begin to appreciate a newer and truer religious message that promotes love and does not quibble with who might be its giver or its receiver. Like the Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood said, "We’re on a mission from God."
Our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters need our love, and gay and lesbian youth need it more than ever. And every bit as much as that, those of the straight community need the love of gays and lesbians. When we finally realize that we are all in this together, we can stop drawing lines of exclusion and discrimination, and we can all become more whole.
This is an ongoing process and we are beginning the next step. Together we can make a stand for justice and compassion and for faith in the unlimited power and ways of loving. Perhaps we can learn to be with one another in the religious way Mary Oliver suggests in her poem, "Wild Geese."
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours,
and I will tell you about mine.
May we join together anew, to begin again in the creation of a world where love is the champion over fear, and where justice and compassion are the standard for human affairs.
by Charles Blustein Ortman
For February Focus Month: Our Welcoming Congregation
February 6, 2000
I wasn’t just sensitized, I was incensed! How could we do this to our children? How could we allow this to happen to our children? They didn’t chose to be gay anymore than some of the rest of us chose to be straight. Whatever it might be, sexuality is not a matter of choice. And the cultural message our gay kids get in huge doses everyday, is that it’s better if they don’t exist.