I'm not gay. Sure, my favorite professor and my best friend in college were both gay, though I was probably last to figure that out. And yes, my husband and I and our young son attended a re-commitment marriage ceremony for author Andrew Harvey and his husband at the Unity church we attended, and I told another friend "of course" when I was asked if gay marriage would be legal one day. I taught my boy from a young age what "gay" meant and that folks have the right to pick whomever they want to love. For a while, I even thought he might be gay -- now, he's 11, and he's talking about girls, but before that, he had crushes on boys. But I really don't have much to contribute to the completely warranted passionate indignation on this site re: Obama and Rick Warren. I'm not gay and I don't have the right to say. But I thought I'd relate a story about gays in my old church, for what it may be worth....
For most of my life, through the early 90s, I attended an Episcopal church in Detroit. If you know anything about the Episcopal church, you know that it's a denomination tearing itself apart in a war between the past and the future. The national church has made slow, baby steps toward women's rights and gay rights in ordination, commitment ceremonies and church leadership, culminating in a woman heading the national church, and openly gay bishops in committed relationship. As a result, the more "traditional" elements of the church are breaking away, forming their own enclaves of prejudice and fear, fighting off the present and the future. The Anglican church worldwide is in the same struggle. The church in Africa is more regressive about gays, and the Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to hold the international communion together while the American church continually votes to be ever more inclusive.
That's what I loved about the Episcopal church: as long as its members are engaged and entangled with each other, struggling with each other, not walking out of the room (as so many have), it has a chance to grow, change, move forward, a broken family struggling with its fears and trying to hold together in the face of its vast differences. The Episcopal church is by and large trying to do what is right, even as its own survival is increasingly at stake.
That is the atmosphere in which I was one of only a couple of voices in my old parish, in favor of opening to dialogue with the gay and lesbian community. You see, for some people who have been taught differently, taught untruths and half-truths, the only way they can move forward is baby steps. It's frustrating for many of us. But it is one way that change does come to those clinging to the ways things used to be.
Our church membership was old, elderly, without a lot of young people, without a lot of funds. There came an opportunity to open our doors to a gay parish of an estranged Baptist pastor and others who had made their own worship out of the pain and rejection from their families and their former churches. Trouble was, their worship space was in the basement of a gay bar, which kept flooding. I was on the vestry (governing body) of my church, and we were asked if we would share our large, under-utilized worship space with the gay congregation, an opportunity to bring in some extra money, while they used our resources on alternate hours.
Many in my parish were afraid of this, a couple of us were in favor of it, but together we decided to break bread with members of the gay parish prior to making our decision.
I did a lot of lobbying, person to person, not because of the potential of extra funds, but because some of the elderly members, and some of the younger ones, were uncomfortable with the idea of people being around those open about their orientation. Would two men or two women kiss in front of us? In front of the children? How would we explain that? What was it like to be gay? Did they choose it? Couldn't they just "quit"? We listened to each other over dinner that evening, as fears were aired, questions were answered, misconceptions clarified and corrected. More discussions followed. I remember telling some of our members that whether they believed being gay was a choice or not, it was not ours to judge, and if I was going to err, I would rather err on the side of loving people, accepting people, rather than to judge or reject wrongly.
Long story short, the gay parish brought their worship to our space, and more and more, the members of both congregations intermingled, learned to love and respect those who were at first just "different," and I witnessed some of the most stubborn, prejudiced people open their hearts to hug, to joke with, and ultimately to befriend these strangers.
Some months later, when I married my husband in that Episcopal church, members of both congregations, gay and straight, decorated and cooked and sang to make my marriage day a success, on a shoestring. I often think that one of the true accomplishments in my life has been to open a few people's stubborn, closed hearts to gays, because it is a lot harder to judge and reject a person whose face and voice and smile have become known to you.
I thought of this when I read Juan Cole and Melissa Etheridge and her partner's take on Rick Warren and his pseudo-conciliatory behavior at the recent MPAC event. I can understand maybe only a fragment of the extreme hurt, anger and disappointment over Obama's choice of Rick Warren, because I am not gay, just an observer. Some religious people -- yes, bigots, I can agree with that -- are capable of taking baby steps toward understanding. It's not fast enough to assuage all of your pain and impatience, no cure for the centuries of injustice and violence. But while some people are quicker to understand, some require that messy, struggling, anguish-inducing slow engagement with those they do not (yet) understand. They need time to wrestle with their own fears and the years of false programming. This is not to excuse bigotry and prejudice. This is only to recognize that one pathway out of prejudice, for some people, is infuriatingly slow.
This diary will probably be flamed, just because nerves are so raw around here. I only wanted to relate my experience with church-based prejudice and church-based hope. I want to trust Obama, I want to believe that Melissa and Obama see that some people need to be brought along slowly, but have some capacity for growth. Is Rick Warren worthy of this magnanimous treatment? I don't know. I hate some of the things he's said. I can't see inside his heart. Maybe he is just extremely ignorant and can learn better. Maybe his voice, ultimately, could change others. The only thing I can do is hope some good will come of this, somehow.
George Bush about beat out all of my anger and outrage. I'm tired. I've been leaning back, since the election, content, for now, to let Obama begin.