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HOW TO BECOME A GAY CHURCH: A Call to a New Age in Spiritual Community

HOW TO BECOME A GAY CHURCH: A Call to a New Age in Spiritual Community

Last updated on: November 1, 2011 at 3:09 pm by James Ford

HOW TO BECOME A GAY CHURCH: A Call to a New Age in Spiritual Community 2011-11-01T15:09:49-07:00 James Ford

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HOW TO BECOME A GAY CHURCH

A Call to a New Age in Spiritual Community

A Sermon by

James
Ishmael
Ford

17 May 2009
First Unitarian Church
Providence, Rhode Island

Text

If indeed we love the Lord with all our hearts, minds, and strength, we are going to have to stretch our hearts, open our minds, and strengthen our souls, whether our years are three score and ten or not yet twenty. God cannot lodge in a narrow mind. God cannot lodge in a small heart. To accommodate God, (our hearts) must be palatial.

William Sloan Coffin

I’m sure you’ve noticed how many humorous books and movies there are about growing up either Jewish or Catholic. Lots of ‘em. While I liked many of these books and movies, I also always felt a little jealous, a tad cheated. As someone raised in a fundamentalist Baptist household I was awkwardly aware books and films touching on fundamentalism tended to be grim. Talking about this with a friend, she observed, “James, you don’t understand. It’s just that there’s nothing funny about growing up fundamentalist.”

Similarly, recently I’ve read a lot of sermons about the issues of being lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgendered, and there isn’t a lot of humor in them, either. Hardly a joke to be had. So much hurt, so much woundedness. It can break your heart to read the stories of oppression and cruelty visited upon people for whom the object of longing and love runs counter to that of the larger majority.

Of course this is how it’s always been. In fact venerable tradition is one of the standard arguments for continuing to oppress sexual minorities. The problem here is that once upon a time you could be burned at the stake for being left-handed or having red hair. And such things were thought appropriate for a long time, a very long time. Or, having women subordinate to men, that’s a perennial favorite, as well. And of course, then there’s slavery. While outlawed across the globe today, it still happens, and not much more than a century ago it was ubiquitous. Now, this is the important point, forever before that it was common, and accepted, and like the subjection of women, even supported in many religion’s spiritual texts.

Of course we don’t have to do something just because it has always been so. That’s the great thing about being human: we can change. A modern novelty running against the long course of human history is the belief human societies have a profound responsibility for protecting the dignity of the individual and to support the right for full expression of that individuality. In recent decades this appreciation of the individual person has forced us to revisit our attitudes about sexuality, and particularly homosexuality.

The first break up of older views in this area came through plain old science. At the dawn of modern scientific psychology people assumed homosexuality was aberrant, and must be caused by the environment, probably by bad parenting. People still think that. But not among the mainstream of those who actually study these things rigorously.

What we have learned out of this investigation is that there is a naturally occurring range of human sexuality As my colleague and friend Gene Dyszlewski outlines what we understand today is how: human sexuality ranges along a continuum from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual, one’s place on that continuum implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability or vocational capabilities, it results in no difference in the essential emotional qualities of a relationship nor is there a difference in the capacity for long-term commitment, it presents no inherent obstacle to leading a happy, healthy and productive life, it is unchangeable, and has no measurable effect on the quality of parent-child relationships or on children’s mental health or social adjustment. This is the mainstream scientific understanding. Are details going to be proven wrong over time? Probably, that’s the nature of science. Still, the big strokes are in, there is nothing pathological in being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgendered.

The obvious next step is social and political. Yesterday riot police in Moscow violently suppressed a peaceful demonstration for gay rights. Yesterday. The mayor denounced homosexuality as satanic. Right now you can be executed for being homosexual in some countries and imprisoned in many more. We’re better, but you know, not better enough, nowhere near better enough.

UU minister Don Southworth writes that, “Peggy Neff’s partner of eighteen years, Sheila Hein, was killed when (that) plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th. When she petitioned the state of Virginia for support, she received a letter that said, ‘Please accept our condolences on the loss of your friend. We regret to inform you that you are not eligible to file a claim under (the) Virginia Victims of Crime Act.’” The list of this sort of thing is long, very long. If you want to feel bad, do a little research on how gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered people are regularly treated.

Sometimes, however, people step up to the plate. And truthfully one doesn’t know who that person will be until they do it. So, “New York(‘s then Republican) Governor George Pataki did what the Governor of Virginia could have and should have done – he signed an executive order granting gay survivors of 9/11 equal benefits.” Of course that shouldn’t have been optional. That is the deeper problem.

Which brings me to the third point, and the really important point for us here. While people have appealed to archaic ideas of natural law and long held custom to uphold the oppression of BGLT people, it has been the spiritual communities that have given most support to the continuing marginalization and oppression of sexual minorities. And so I suggest we here therefore have a particular obligation to wrestle with these issues, to bring our traditions of reason and heart and free quest to the matter, and then to proclaim what we have found in that process from our pulpits.

Forgive me for getting “all prophetic” on you. But here’s the deal. We must look at our hearts, we must see how we have offended against the God of Love and our neighbors, our deepest knowing how we are all connected, we must then confess our errors, and finally we must embrace with wild abandon all those who have been hurt and wounded by what we have done and what we have left undone that has contributed to those hurts, to those wounds. This is an important part of our work. This is what makes us a spiritual people.

I’ve heard some rumblings asking why are we paying so much attention to BGLT issues? Don’t we want, I hear, to be inclusive of all? You bet. I want us to do the same thing with issues of race; I want us to become a black church. I want us to do the same thing with class; I want us to be a church for the poor. But right now, standing in the pulpit you have called me to and entrusted me with, drawing upon the deepest resources I can, I am calling upon us all to look within our hearts, to challenge ourselves, to repent of all stains of homophobia, and to embrace our lesbian, our gay, our bisexual and our transgendered sisters and brothers, and then for us to proclaim this embrace before the world. More, to go out into the BGLT community and to stand as one with them, or, I desperately hope to bring them here, among us, so at the end there is no them, only us.

One may ask how do we make this so? Fortunately it isn’t rocket science. Let me repeat a story that shows what this looks like. My dear friend and colleague Gail Geisenhainer, who serves our congregation in Ann Arbor, preached the concluding worship service at the 2006 GA in Saint Louis. I remember vividly that afternoon as she told us:

“I was thirty-eight years old, living in Maine, driving a snow-plow for a living and feeling very sorry for myself when a friend invited me to his church. He said it was different. I rudely refused. I cursed his church. “All blank-ing churches are the same,” I informed him, “they say they’re open – but they don’t want queer folk. To Heck with church!” (I suspect Gail cleaned up the language a bit for her sermon. She then went on.) My friend persisted. He knew his church was different. He told me his church cared about people, embraced diverse families, and worked to make a better world. He assured me I could come and not have to hide any elements of who I was. So I went. Oh, I went alright.

“And I dressed sooooo, carefully for my first Sunday visit. I spiked my short hair straight up into the air. I dug out my heaviest, oldest work boots, the ones with the chain saw cut that exposed the steel toe. I got my torn blue jeans and my leather jacket. There would be not a shred of ambiguity this Sunday morning. They would embrace me in my full Amazon glory, or they could fry ice. I carefully arranged my outfit so it would highlight the rock hard chip I carried on my shoulder, I bundled up every shred of pain and hurt and betrayal I had harbored from every other religious experience in my life, and I lumbered into that tiny meetinghouse on the coast of Maine.

“Blue jeans and boots. Leather jacket, spiked hair and belligerent attitude. I accepted my friend’s invitation and I went to his church. I expected the gray-haired ladies in the foyer to step back in fear. That would have been familiar. Instead, they stepped forward, offered me a bulletin, a newsletter and invited me to stay for coffee. It was so… odd! They never even flinched! “They called me “dear.” But they pronounced it “dee-ah.” “Stay for coffee, dear.” I stayed…”

Gail then went on to describe the next and equally important turning point for her. This was when people weren’t yet sure what AIDS was beyond that in America it appeared to be a “gay disease.” One morning still early in her time in that tiny Maine congregation someone stood during their joys and sorrows and opined that all gay people had AIDS and should be quarantined and put to forced labor, where at least they’d be productive. I think a lot about that confrontation in our little UU congregation in Maine.

In that sermon Gail told us how “That congregation had reached a crossroad where one among them had begun the use of language that would depersonalize and endanger others. She tried to create a class of less-than-human persons toward whom violence would be acceptable. The congregation gently refused to follow.”

I heard those words, “the congregation gently refused…” And I felt tears welling up. This was a large stadium, and I wasn’t the only one who leaned in, wanting to be closer, wanting to hear how to deal with this great hurt, to know what would be a skillful way, what would be a Unitarian Universalist way to engage this hurt. One by one people stood in their joys and sorrows and spoke the truth from their hearts.

And there was a method in how they did this. Gail told us “The congregation refused to depersonalize, refused to dehumanize the original speaker. The congregation stayed in what Martin Buber called an “I-Thou” relationship with her. They did not start calling her names, “that homophobe! That gay-basher!” None of that happened. While the speaker tried to turn homosexuals into objects to be manipulated, the congregation never referred to the speaker in a way that was less than embracing and respectful of her full humanity.”

This is so hard. I know I fail so regularly at this. Just by holding this issue up can be oppositional. And it is hard not to be angry. I see the wrong and I feel myself filled with anger, and I’m ashamed, right after that how I can then be filled with self-righteousness. But there can be no place for that in this work. It isn’t about winning arguments. It is about changing hearts. And to do this we need constantly to search our own hearts, to witness, and to learn. A great teacher pointed out how the spiritual path is one continuous mistake. Homophobia is a terrible thing. And every person has worth and every person needs to be respected. Two truths. The good news is our hearts are big enough to hold both truths. And in discovering that, we discover a different way than anger.

Gail put the final touch on this when she said, “Later, in that same church, I opened the hymnal to find the words attributed to the Buddha, “Never does hatred cease by hating in return.” He taught, “Let us overcome violence by gentleness, only through love can hatred come to an end. Never does hatred cease by hating in return.” Now that’s something to find in a little church on the coast of Maine.

We need to love the sinners, otherwise how would we ever learn to love ourselves. I mean sin is, as we’ve all learned in Sunday school, “missing the mark.” I’ve missed too many marks in my time to really want to be judgmental. But, we also need to see the sin, the missing of the mark, and to call attention to it. Gently. With love, with heart, with knowing we really are all in this together.

“My friend was right.” Gail teaches us. “His church was different. He did forget to tell me that at his church, some Sundays, I could be in for a wild, wild ride. But he was right. His church really cared about making things right for everybody.” That’s our church Gail is talking about. This church right here, and what we can be if we are willing.

Now we have no patent on this. This way is part of Jewish and Christian and Muslim teachings, and many others as well; when they pull back and see the great heart showing through their sacred texts. The spirit that the letters point to is what we are all seeking. We can find this deeper across the globe. It is the wisdom written on our hearts from before the creation of the stars and planets.

The way is simple enough. Let our hearts become palatial. Let us throw our hearts as wide as all outdoors. And in that let us be transformed, and let us in that help to transform the world.

Then we’ll be a gay church. Don’t doubt it.

Amen.

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