Holiness,
Love, and Wholeness
Rev.
Ron Sala
Unitarian Universalist Society in
Stamford
March
17, 2002
A
certain “Heterosexual Questionnaire” has been making the rounds the
last few years. Will the heterosexuals in the congregation please ask
themselves these questions? Gays and lesbians, talk among yourselves!
There
are 16 questions. Ready?
What
do you think caused your heterosexuality?
When
and how did you first decide you were a heterosexual?
Is
it possible your heterosexuality is just a phase you may grow out of?
Is
it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of others
of the same sex?
If
you've never slept with a person of the same sex, is it possible that
all you need is a good gay lover?
To
whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies? How did they react?
Why
do you heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into your life
style?
Why
do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Can't you just be what
you are and keep it quiet?
Would
you want your children to be heterosexual, knowing the problems they'd
face?
A
disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexuals. Do you
consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers?
With
all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling.
Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?
Why
do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?
Considering
the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone
were heterosexual like you?
Could
you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don't you feel s/he
might be inclined to influence you in the direction of her/his own leanings?
How
can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive
heterosexuality, and fail to develop your natural, healthy homosexual
potential?
There
seem to be very few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have been developed
which might enable you to change if you really want to. Have you considered
trying aversion therapy?1
Quite
a bit to consider, eh? Maybe some of you would like to share with me
or with each other the way you answered each of those questions over
coffee hour….
And
yet, how routinely such questions are asked of gay men, lesbian women,
bi-sexual and transgender people! As a matter of fact, I was shocked
at the rhetoric of Bill O’Reilly of Fox News Channel’s
The O’Reilly Factor in the wake of comedian and talk show host
Rosie O’Donnell’s recent coming out. First on Comedy Central’s
The Daily Show and then on his own program, O’Reilly said that
he doesn’t care what sexual orientation someone is; he just wants them
to not talk about their sex lives in public. Just like the questions
of “The Heterosexual Survey,” O’Reilly’s position makes the crucial
mistake of reducing all people of a given orientation to their
sex lives. I wonder if he would include in his prohibition instances
when straight people talk about their spouses or children. Is that talking
about your sex life in public? Yet, isn’t that all Rosie ever did? She
said that she was a lesbian in a committed relationship with another
woman and was raising three adopted children. Spouse and kids. That’s
about as much information as you’d routinely get a minute or two into
a conversation between straight strangers at a church coffee hour. That’s
the “talking about your sex life in public” that O’Reilly believes is
threatening America’s children? O’Reilly says that he doesn’t think
people should have to explain to their sons and daughters what a lesbian
is. Well, how about trying this definition on for size: “A woman who
loves other women.” Saying that will scar your child for life? As O’Reilly
might say, that’s so ridiculous it’s off the charts!
The
reason Rosie O’Donnell gave for coming out was “to
bring attention to the issue of gay adoption and a Florida law that
prevents gay couples from adopting.”2
She wanted to come out as a lesbian mom. The case the O’Donnell sites
as a providing her a personal epiphany is that of Steve
Lofton and Roger Croteau. They
are raising five HIV-positive
children, three of whom are foster kids. The couple were able to adopt
the other two in Oregon. The family was thrown into disarray when the
state of Florida told them they had to give up one of their foster children,
Bert, whom they have raised for 10 years. Lofton and Croteau would like
to adopt Bert, but under Florida law they can't, because they are gay.
When O'Donnell read about the
Lofton-Croteau case, she thought about her adopted son Parker: "My
Lord, if somebody came to me now and said … 'We're going to take him
now because you're gay,' my world would collapse. I'm lucky to have
adopted my children, not in the state that I live, Florida. I'm lucky,
because otherwise I would be in danger of losing my children."
A
mom defending her children. Should something that shocking be allowed
on television in America?
Bill
O’Reilly does, surprisingly, support the rights of gay and lesbian couples
to care for children, but only if no straight couples are available.
What basis does he have for the blatant, though commonplace double standards
he promotes against gays and lesbians? Their behavior is not natural.
Probably
this is the most common non-religious objection to homosexuality. It
has been derided as a “crime against nature,” as “inversion” or “perversion”
of the natural order. Only people homosexual sex, the theory goes, therefore
it is unnatural, therefore wrong.
I
decided recently to check to see how natural or unnatural homosexually
actually is. So I checked this out of the library. [Hold up book]. This
is a book called Biological Exuberance
by Dr. Bruce Bagemihl. It painstakingly details evidence of male and
female sexuality in nearly 300 bird and mammal species.3
It even includes photographs and drawings, if for you seeing is believing.
Dogs, cats, apes, chimpanzees, and whales have been documented frequenting
the gay bars and lesbian clubs of the animal kingdom. That goose eating
breadcrumbs down in the park might be leading a lesbian life. Closer
to home, Is your pet gay?
But
that’s not nearly all. Not only do many animals routinely exhibit sexual
behavior with another of their own sex, but they can perform rites of
courtship with another of their own sex, mate on a long term basis with
another of their sex, and raise young with another of their sex! Scientists
are learning that there’s hardly a human sexual or affectional behavior
that doesn’t have its analogues in the animal world. Many animals are
also transgender in one way or another, exhibiting behaviors or physical
characteristics of the opposite sex. Scientists are also finding a strong
genetic basic for homosexuality in both animals and humans—far too common
to be considered a biological “mistake.”
Since
homosexuality seems to be a ubiquitous fact in nature, why do people
react so strangely when it appears in themselves or others? Why, indeed,
is it true, in the words of Byrne Fone, that
Over time people have found
sufficient cause to distrust, despise, assault, and sometimes slaughter
their neighbors because of differences in religion, nationality, and
color. Indeed, few social groups have been free from the effects of
prejudice, but most warring factions—men and women, Jews, Muslims, and
Christians, blacks and whites—have been united in one eternal hatred:
detestation of a particular group whose presence is universal. Religious
precepts condemn this group; the laws of most Western nations have punished
them. Few people care to admit to their presence among them.
This group is, of course, those
we call homosexuals.4
I,
myself, cannot plead innocence. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian
home and was taught to think of homosexuality as a sin. By the time
I left the Mennonite Church, it had become permissible to have a homosexual
inclination—as long as you entered the easy and fulfilling world of
forced celibacy!
From
both church and society, I learned to fear “militant” gays (whoever
they are). A friend of mine from my youth group told me that gays did
disgusting acts with each other. All the same, he told me about a couple
of lesbian teenagers he’d read about. He empathized with their plight
since they had fallen in love and that could happen to anybody. I could
see that he was right. At about the same time, another friend told me
that one of our teachers from elementary school was gay. He had seen
him recently holding hands with a man. For some reason, we thought it
was quite funny. I also suddenly developed a new appreciation for homosexuals.
Our teacher had been, arguably the most popular in the school. While
some teachers’ classrooms could inspire dread, his always seemed to
welcome you into a land of learning. What’s more, he was
cool. He dressed sharp and drove a hot Sportscar. Apparently,
none of us kids ever suspected he was gay.
Another
of our teachers, this one in junior high, wasn’t so lucky. He was quite
effeminate, and the boys would mock him mercilessly. He protested that
he was not gay but had “a live-in girlfriend.” I have no reason to doubt
him. He probably was straight, but homophobia can cast a wide net. I
felt sorry for him. He, too, was one of my favorite teachers. But I
never said anything. It never occurred to me to. That was what people
like him got.
Why
is there homophobia? Where does it come from? By in large, the world’s
indigenous cultures have very accepting attitudes toward men and women
who love those of their own gender. Often they are regarded as shamans,
healers, divine beings. Some Native Americans refer to “two-spirit”
people, who act in ways generally associated with the other gender and
sometime love their own.
Also,
in classical Greece, homosexuality—both between youths and adult men
and adult men and each other was widely accepted and even celebrated.
There were some Greek writers, however, who looked down on homosexual
practices. Some praised what would eventually be called platonic love
between philosophers and claimed it was superior to such love accompanied
by sex.
In
the latter stages of ancient Greek culture, there was an increasing
emphasis among some philosophers on a rivalry between the mind/spirit
and the body. This led members of some groups, such as Gnostics, to
disparage sexuality of whatever sort, homosexual or heterosexual. But
homophobia would only come about as a fully developed and organized
concept and practice in Judaism and Christianity.
Such
Jewish and Christian homophobia has been justified over the millennia
but a few scattered Bible passages, called sometimes by the gay and
lesbian faithful as “clobber texts” or “texts of terror.”
The
most famous of these is Genesis 18 and 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Briefly stated, God wants to find out if the people of Sodom were as
bad as he’d heard they were. So God sends angels in the form of men
to visit the house of Lot. Who was Lot? Genesis 14: 14 and 16 say Lot
was Abraham’s brother. On the other hand, Genesis 11:27 and 14:12 say
Lot was Abraham’s nephew. So much for biblical literalism….
In
any case, Lot had taken up residence in the city of Sodom. After the
angels’ arrival, the men of Sodom demand that Lot bring out his visitors
that they might “know” them. Instead, Lot offers them his virgin daughters,
which the crowd refuses. They try to break Lot’s door down, but the
angels smite the mob with blindness. Lot and his family escape. God
rains down fire and brimstone killing every man, woman, and child in
Sodom and Gomorrah.
The
traditional meaning drawn from this pleasant tale is that homosexuality
is among the most deplorable of sins, meriting one of the most extraordinary
punishments in the Bible. There are lots of holes in this theory. One
of these is that it hinges on the translation of a single verb. The
Hebrew verb yadha usually means “to know” in the usual, non-sexual
sense. Only a few times in the Bible does it clearly refer to
carnal knowledge, or sexual relations. This is not one of those
clear instances. It’s entirely possible that the men of Sodom come to
Lot, as a stranger among them, to demand what other strangers he’s brought
into their city that night. It would seem to make more sense that they
would want to “know,” in a non-sexual way, who were there. From their
hostile action in trying to break down the door, it’s entirely possible
that they intend to kill either the angels, Lot, or both. That Lot offers
his virgin daughters as a sexual bribe or an offer to give them away
as slaves does not shed any light on the intention of the crowd. There’s
a parallel story later in the Hebrew Bible. In Judges 19-20, a certain
man is confronted by a similar mob while sojourning at Gibeah. The man’s
words in the story clearly state that he perceives this crowd’s intent
as murder, not homosexual rape. He also, decides to bride the mob, in
a similar way to Lot. In this case, he casts out his concubine, whom
they rape so brutally that she dies.
These
are not stories about homosexual attraction, let alone consensual same-sex
relations. They are stories about inhospitality and brutality toward
strangers. It is not until around the beginning of the Christian era
that we begin to find Jewish and Christian writers beginning to interpret
the Sodom story as having to do with homosexuality. John Mc Neill puts
it well when he says,
In the Christian West, the
homosexual has been the victim of inhospitable treatment…. In the name
of a mistaken understanding of the crime of Sodom and Gomorrah, the
true crime of Sodom and Gomorrah has been and continues to be repeated
every day.5
The
famous, or infamous, passages in Leviticus calling homosexuality an
“abomination” occur in the context of the so-called Holiness Code, which
seeks to condemn Pagan practices, of which homosexual temple prostitution
was one. In the same passages we find prohibitions on wearing clothing
made of two types of thread or touching the skin of a dead pig. (There
goes Monday Night Football!).
In
the Christian New Testament, the Apostle Paul speaks poorly of all sex,
homosexual or heterosexual. His comments about homosexuality come out
of the context of a Judaism and early Christianity that were trying
to defend themselves against the dominant worldview and practices of
Greeks and Romans.
From
just a few biblical texts, religious homophobia would grow over the
centuries to monstrous proportions. This growth was aided by such teachers
as St. Augustine and others who merged with Christianity certain streams
of Greek philosophy that saw the body as separate from and inferior
to the soul.
If
sex was inferior or bad, this reasoning argued, it should be done as
little as possible, i.e. only for procreation. The Church’s sodomy laws
were written to condemn all non-procreative sex, not just gay
sex, though they quickly became mainly enforced on homosexuals. In 1292,
the first person was burned at the stake for sodomy. Persecution only
increased during the Renaissance, at the same time as there was a flowering
of relatively open same-sex relationships. So-called “[s]odomites were
accused of being heretics, traitors, sorcerers, or witches, the cause
of plagues and civic disaster.”6 Jerry Falwell’s reflexive instinct
to blame 9/11 on gays is certainly nothing new.
Conditions
for homosexuals got generally worse through the so-called Enlightenment,
and would only begin to show improvement through the words and actions
of brave individuals through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Contemporary
Christian fundamentalists have ushered in a strong backlash against
the attempts of gays and lesbians to openly be who they are. Mel White,
in his excellent book, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian
in America, discusses the rise in the violence against, even the
murder of gays during the 1990’s as coinciding with the Religious Right’s
propaganda campaign, aimed at presenting homosexuals as a danger to
the nation.
It
was in such an atmosphere of religious misunderstanding and mistrust
that I, and perhaps you, was raised. Even after I left the Mennonite
Church, those ingrained attitudes still remained a part of me, though
I rationally rejected them. I moved to New York’s East Village just
after college to volunteer as a counselor with a homeless organization.
I lived in an apartment with several other young, male counselors, in
rather cramped conditions. After I’d been there a few weeks or months,
one of my roommates commented to me that several of the others were
gay. I have to admit that it took me aback for a moment. All those prejudiced
fears of my youth flashed in front of me. But I soon calmed down and
thought to myself, “Hey, they’re still the same guys they were before
I had that information!” They were still my friends, they had the same
interests, strengths and weaknesses as before. As time passed, I got
used to the idea.
A
defining moment for me came some time later. One of my roommates had
some papers blow out a window onto a roof below. His lover was there
for a visit, and the three of us came up with a plan to retrieve the
documents. One person would climb out the window and then down a stepladder
we would lower by a rope. Being an adventurous sort, I volunteered to
climb down. I got the papers alright, but I was having trouble climbing
back into the window. It was certainly not an ideal situation. So my
roommate and his boyfriend reached down and each took one of my arms.
As I was dangling there, I had a flash of insight. These were not the
weak, effeminate stereotypes of gay men I had been raised with (not
that there’s anything wrong with being effeminate). They were strong
young men, just like so many others I’d known, and I trusted them with
my life.
The
real tragedy of homophobia—for straights as much as for gays and lesbians—is
that it keeps us from experiencing people as people, as unique and precious
individuals. By focusing on stereotypes, we miss each other. The best
cure for homophobia is knowing someone who’s gay or lesbian and coming
to appreciate who they are. Rosie O’Donnell has invited President Bush
to spend a weekend with her family. She’s convinced that doing so would
change his mind about gay parenting. Maybe it would.
As
heterosexuals come to know people who have come out as gay, lesbian,
bisexual, or transgender, and as GLBT people come to better know each
other and themselves, the old homophobic images get replaced with more
positive ones. One place we can look for such images is in indigenous
cultures, which so often conceive of a “third sex” that walks between
the worlds of traditional gender roles and is respected or even revered
for its contributions to society. We can also rediscover lost images
from Western antiquity. For instance, you’ve probably heard of the Greek
myth of people once being hermaphroditic souls that were cloven in two
before birth. And that is why, so the myth goes, that men and women
go searching for each other through life—to recover their lost other
halves. But you may not have heard the other part of that idea, which
is that there are three types of original souls: one male and female,
one all female, and one all male. Accordingly, gays and lesbians also
search out their soul mates, their lost halves.7
Or we can draw inspiration from the many great men and women throughout
history who have been gay or lesbian.
This
Welcoming Congregation process is an opportunity for all of us to come
out—gay or straight. As Christian de la Huerta writes in
Coming Out Spiritually: The Next Step, “coming out means freeing
ourselves from the hang-ups and neuroses inherited from our families
and culture. It means releasing and rejecting unhealthy patterns of
behavior that no longer serve us, and which prevent our peace of mind
and fulfillment as human beings.”8 Coming out as a congregation will
mean declaring to the world that we will no longer tolerate the overt
or subtle persecution of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people.
It will mean that we are committed to an honest appraisal of our individual
attitudes and collective policies, that we will continually discover
who we are both as people and as people of faith. It will also mean
joining with the growing number of those in other faith communities
and in the community at large who are similarly committed.
I
will close with a memory of the UUA General Assembly a couple years
ago in Salt Lake City. ReBecca and I attended a dance to which the gay
and lesbian youth of that city were invited. People of all ages, straight
and gay, black and white, conservatively dressed and unconventionally
dressed, all danced together and had a wonderful time. Why can’t the
world be more like that? All of us together will help to make it so.
Let
it be!
Sources:
Bagemihl, Bruce.
Biological Exuberance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
De la Huerta, Christian.
Coming Out Spiritually: The Next Step (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam,
1999).
Fone, Byrne.
Homophobia: A History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000).
Kalev, “Inbetween Worlds” (www.kalevhunt.com/gaystuff_het_questionnaire.html)
Jordan, Mark D.
The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Katz, Jonathan Ned.
Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality. (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Mixner, David, and Bailey,
Dennis. Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage
(New York: Bantam, 2000).
Parents and Friends of Lesbians
and Gays. Accepting Your Gay or Lesbian Child: Parents Share
Their Stories (Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True Recordings, 1990).
White, Mel.
Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America (New
York: Simon and Schuster Audio, 1994).
1 www.kalevhunt.com/gaystuff_het_questionnaire.html
2 http://abcnews.go.com/sections/primetime/ABCNEWSSpecials/primetime_020313_rosiegayadoption_feature.html
3
Bagemihl, 1.
4
Fone, 3.
5
Ibid., 81-82.
6
Ibid., 8.
7
Ibid., 23-24.
8
De la Huerta, 126.