Evolve

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?

  1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?
  2. When and how did you first decide you were a heterosexual?
  3. Is it possible your heterosexuality is just a phase you may grow out of?
  4. Is it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?
  5. If you've never slept with a person of the same sex, is it possible that all you need is a good gay lover?
  6. To whom have you disclosed your heterosexual tendencies? How did they react?
  7. Why do you heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into your life style?
  8. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Can't you just be what you are and keep it quiet?
  9. Would you want your children to be heterosexual, knowing the problems they'd face?
  10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexuals. Do you consider it safe to expose your children to heterosexual teachers?
  11. With all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?
  12. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?
  13. Considering the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual like you?
  14. 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?
  15. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality, and fail to develop your natural, healthy homosexual potential?
  16. 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.



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