Uniting Church in Australia, an inclusive church

God's Gay Tribe

"Being gay is not an accident . . . it is a calling."
The good news is that to be gay is to be more than different - to be gay is to be different for a reason. To be gay is to be set apart by God.
Coming out is the discovery personal identity in a sexual context, a gay person's "moment of insight" into his or her sexuality, and very personhood. Gay experience is spiritually significant. Coming out is a transfiguring experience like being born again.

Tim McFeeley, former Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the nation's largest gay, lesbian, bi-sexual organization, and a man not previously noted for spiritual conviction, recently appeared at Yale Divinity School and spoke of coming out as spiritually important. He stated, "As gay women and men, we don't procreate, we validate" He said that out gays validate to straight people, and to each other, that "God is a God of diversity", that homosexuality is beautiful, and that hiding it in the closet, or repressing it in others, "dishonors the Creator" and the Creator's artful and wonderful intentions "for human life and community."

The process of coming out is sacramental. A sacrament is an outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace, and a permanent change. If coming out is also a major permanent change which is guided by the spirit and meditation, then it is sacramental.
The gay community does not have a communal memory of a past; it must begin constructing one immediately. We may be born into the tribe, but we are not raised in it . . . . We must tell the stories, weave the legends, paint the icons of another family of saints whose lives will give us light . . . . This is the . . . essential ministry of gay-to-gay, the only way in which, some day, we will be able to make God's gay children free.
The story of Hashad the Fool

Hashad joins a Caravan which is crossing the sands. He awakens one night to discover a fire in the inn where the Caravan is staying. He rushes in and out of the fire and finds the Master of the Caravan, who weeps with pain for the members of his caravan who are unaccounted for. But Hashad knows where they are, and leads the Master to them, passing again through the fire.
It is this, that Hashad the Fool was born for: to place his hand in the hand of God, and to pass and repass and repass through the fire, until the fire has lost its power to burn, and until he has learned to dance in the fire - to dry the tears of God. . . . "We [gay men and women] are all this Hashad . . . who begins the journey of his life without the slightest recognition of where he is bound."
We did not chose the fire, but it is the only way through to our freedom and the freedom of others still trapped inside. We are God's fools, God's gay people, called to bear God company on this impossible journey . . . God help us all.
God's Gay Tribe by M.R. Ritley

Rev. M.R. Ritley is an Episcopal priest and the author of writings on gay spirituality. Her own journey as a spiritually seeking gay woman took her through nearly two decades in non-Christian religious practice until her return to the church in her forties. A teacher and writer, she is a popular speaker on Sufi spirituality and has studied at the Graduate Theological Union. She is an Assisting Presbyter at St.Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, where she works with the adult education program.

from uniting sexuality and faith