Coming Out Strong

There’s a reason BMC changed its name from the Brethren Mennonite Council for Gay and Lesbian Concerns. And I’m not talking about bisexuality — though that calls for a blog post of its own. I’m not talking about sexual orientation in any capacity, actually. Throw out homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, homoflexibility, pansexuality, heteroflexibility, etc. I’m talking about gender. Not sex, not sexual orientation, not sexuality, but gender. I’d like to repeat one bit of that — not sex, but gender - as in transgender.

Perhaps it’s all those Sociology courses I took in college finally getting the best of me, but I’ve reached the limit of how many times I can read sex and gender being interchanged in the Church of the Brethren and Mennonite Church. [Sex refers to one’s biology, whereas gender refers to one’s presentation and identity] I’ve reached the limit of the number of times I can listen to person after person group transgender rights in with homosexuality — as if they are one and the same. These are more than pet peeves and slight annoyances; they are untrue, sometimes even harmful statements.

I’m ready for the lgbt community to finally include its full range of identities. If a group claims to work for lgbt rights, their work can not only focus on homosexuality, or sexual orientations in general. Discussing sexuality and sexual orientation are important matters, but ignoring the fact that the discussion often leaves out transgender individuals harms us all. Doing so creates a dishonest movement, claiming total equality, but working only with sexual orientations. Especially when gender variance continues to flourish in our youth, we should be eager to share resources provided by the BMC office (and elsewhere). I deeply appreciate that, while acknowledging there is still a long way to go, BMC includes the transgender population in the community it serves.

The shameful lack of comprehensive sexuality education in the Brethren and Mennonite communities fuels a lot of this ignorance. It feels as if we are forcing our youth to remain naive about their own bodies, urges, and identities in order to preserve our own intense misunderstandings about the world (after all, we all know decent sexuality education leads to promiscuity, abortion, and homosexuality). I am worried that our denominations seem afraid of the fact that the more we teach our youth, the more they might explore. This exploration is seen as an undesirable and inappropriate process, but I see it as finally allowing our youth to grow outside our unhealthy boundaries and experience a world that seems beyond our control.

Lawrence King?s young life tragically ended in his junior high computer lab in Oxnard, California. Larry, who identified as gay and sometimes dressed in a ?feminine? manner, made the mistake of asking his fellow student, Brandon McInerney, to be his valentine. Apparently the idea of this was so abhorrent and shameful to the fourteen year old Brandon that he brought a gun to school, walked into the classroom, and shot Larry directly in the head.

It is tempting to gasp, express dismay, and then convince oneself that this is an isolated incident that is tragic but, thankfully, an anomaly. However, this dismissal ignores the disturbing statistic from the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey that 28% of gay and lesbian students report being threatened or injured with a weapon, a rate that is five times that of other students and consistent with national findings. In such an environment, it is no wonder that social engagement, educational aspirations and overall academic achievement can suffer. Students who experience harassment because of sexual orientation or gender expression are more likely to skip school, drop out, reject college, suffer from depression and substance abuse, and under perform academically.

Both the Mennonite Church and Church of the Brethren have included language in their sexuality statements that expresses sorrow at the violence and hatred directed towards gay and lesbian people and calls for understanding and even the pursuit of civil rights (note: bisexual and transgender people are not included in the statements ? the obsession is with ?the homosexual.?) Such sentiments, however, have had little impact. This year BMC proposed a booth for the exhibit space at the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference that would focus solely upon providing education related to lgbt hate crimes, job discrimination and housing discrimination. The request was denied, with the committee citing homosexuality as ?an issue which causes passionate divisiveness in our denomination.? It is a telling comment when violence directed towards lgbt people is understood as ?the issue of homosexuality.? Is anti-Semitic violence the ?issue of Judaism??

In practice it is difficult to interpret pious denominational words as little more than an exercise in cheap grace. What efforts have any of the denominations made? What can they point towards in terms of fulfilling this promise? Where have they made a difference? I can think of no instance where the Mennonite Church USA, the Mennonite Church Canada or the Church of the Brethren has spoken out to challenge lgbt directed violence, discrimination or the violation of human or civil rights. Indeed, denominational officials from Mennonite Church Canada were vociferous in their opposition to marriage equality. The courageous congregations and the few pastors who have taken seriously this message of non-violence and understanding have found themselves becoming targets of discipline, derision and hostility.

Lawrence King is dead. May he find a peace that was denied him in life. Brandon McInerney, age 14, will probably spend most of his life in prison. Thousands of young lgbt kids have just gotten the message to be very careful about coming out or displaying any type of gender non-conformity. All are victims of a tragic homophobia that is reinforced by the policies and practices of the Mennonite and Brethren denominations. It is up to each of us to end this shameful complicity. Speak up, come out, talk to your friends, challenge your congregation, demand that your pastor break silence, organize your campus, ask more of the larger church, and get involved in the movement for lgbt justice. For the sake of other young people like Lawrence King and Brandon McInerney, it?s time.

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I posted this first bit a little while ago here at young.anabaptistradicals.org but I’m adding more at the end to update the situation.

The US House of Representatives just passed hate crimes legislation that would extend hate crimes protections to be based on gender, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity in addition to current protections for race, religion, color, and national origin. It still has to go through the Senate and then face veto by you know who.

The thing that really blows me away is that people are actually against this, and that those people happen to call themselves Chrisitians. Now, if folks have a problem with the idea of hate crimes protections in general, eh, I would be happy to discuss that. But the idea that some groups of people should get protections while other groups (groups which happen to experience a disproportionate amount of hate crimes) should not is completely ridiculous. As it happens, the religious right is coming out en force against hate crimes protections for lgbt people. I linked this article about this (really, check it out, it’s a good one) in an earlier post.

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