Coming Out Strong

I’ve put off writing about the HRC/Logo debates from last week but I think it’s time to add my two cents. I just read an editorial by Jonathan Capehart, one of the panelists for the event. He focuses on a response New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson gave when Melissa Etheridge asked him if he thought homosexuality is a choice or if it is biological. It’s a pretty good editorial, but I think we need to go a little deeper.

Let me set the scene. I was watching the debates with around 300 other lgbt and allied folk from Minneapolis/St. Paul at the HRC and OutFront Minnesota sponsored location, a local lesbian restaurant/bar. The place was packed and by the middle of the debates, everyone was getting a little punchy from the huge crowd, not being able to flag down a server, and from hearing exactly what we were expecting from the candidates. When Etheridge asked that question, I rolled my eyes (”what a softball”), but then had to gasp when Richardson completely whiffed it, “it’s a choice.” The entire crowd had the same reaction Capehart described having, “Oh, no, he didn’t!” The poor guy then proceeded to grab a shovel to try to dig himself out of the hole. Richardson had committed numero uno faux pas for anyone trying to show the lgbt community how lgbt friendly they are. Etheridge, aghast, thought he had misunderstood the question and so she repeated it, which is when the shovel came out. As far as most in the lgbt community are concerned, he might as well have said he thinks the sky is green, up is down, and the US occupation of Iraq is going just swell. Read the rest of this entry

In my official position with a para-church organization, I’ve wondered not a few times in the past few months how I can negotiate this position with anti-oppression work relating heterosexism. Specifically, how to speak and act in a just and life-affirming way while serving in a job description that doesn’t include addressing heterosexism as part of my charge.

I’m in an admittedly easier situation than many, since my position (as the Mennonite Church USA representative to AMIGOS – the global young adult network of Mennonite World Conference) fits into a institutional structure that’s non-coercive and still evolving, as well as the fact that I don’t depend on receiving a salary from my work (it’s volunteer). And since people perceive me as heterosexual, I’m almost never challenged on a personal level.

Nevertheless, I’m not quite sure how to proceed when I’m speaking in my official role. I aspire to acknowledge homophobia alongside other oppressions when I’m listing things that contribute to exclusion/imbalance of power in the church, but I sometimes feel like I’m out of place bringing up sexuality in conversations on global church.

So I was thinking one thing that would help would be to get to know more queer Mennos and allies – as well as stories of how people have negotiated such positions. I’m keen to hear stories of how people (professors, conference reps, pastors, etc) who have taken courageous stands even at odds with their institution.

I should be clear too that I appreciate also the perhaps less-flashy stories of queer folks. Hearing them helps me on my personal faith journey as I seek to learn more about how the dynamics around sexuality, gender, authority, and theology (to name a few) play out in my own life as I interact with the past and present of the church. (The Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and this one have been great places to start for such stories.)

And hearing them also helps me in my official position, as I become more able to recount real examples of how sexuality and the various faces of oppression play out in the lives of people I’m supposed to be representing.

I could say more, but perhaps I’ll tie up my thoughts here by saying thanks to folks who have already shared, and that I hope to hear more about how folks are taking risks to support more thoroughly healthy relationships to sexuality in the church.

I’m writing from the Mennonite Church USA Churchwide Assembly in San Jose. I’ll try to keep some updates coming as I have time and content. I’m here more as a delegate from my congregation than as BMC staff but of course I still have similar concerns whether I’m wearing a BMC hat or just the Katie hat.

The speaker at tonight’s adult worship session was Juan Martinez. I didn’t know of him before but you can read a bit about him here. As I listened to him speak, I was reminded once again that the church has a long way to go. The reason I say this isn’t because I disagreed with much of what he had to say, I felt he was right on as he spoke of the need for the church to deconstruct boundaries and break down walls. He spoke of the church needing to able to change and deal with diversity and I was there with him. I wish I took notes at these kind of things because then I would be able to give a better idea of his words to those gathered tonight. I’ll try to get my notebook out more the rest of the week so I can give better synopses.

The thing that bothered me was that as he was talking about deconstruction and breaking down walls, and boundaries and such it was clear he was talking about language, race, and culture boundaries (maybe even gender, wish I had those notes that I didn’t take) and anything outside of that gets a little fuzzy. When I hear a good speaker talk about themes like this, I tend to apply the inspiring words to my own experience and think how well it all fits but, as far as I could tell, he wasn’t talking about some walls the church needs to deconstruct (or if he was, he wasn’t making that clear with his words). He wasn’t talking about the boundaries that push lgbt people out or tell them they are unworthy. He wasn’t talking about the walls for heterosexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

I’ve begun to notice that in so many church situations, people say as much with what is left out as they do with the actual words that come out of their mouths. If a church person (especially a leader) is talking about diversity or justice, I can’t assume they are saying anything about diversity and justice for the queer community unless they specifically say that. There is always a lot of talk about the church for all people and the unity of the church, but I know to always check for that asterisk and the footnote. It surely rings hollow when it doesn’t seem to be a full call for justice, or diversity, or unity.

“God’s Table, Y’all Come”*

“Live the Call, Vive el Llamado!”**

*some restrictions apply, offer only good for heterosexual Mennonites.

**not if your call is to be queer, out, and anapologetic about it. In that case, if you could just keep it hush hush, that would be just great.

I’ll be writing more later about the amazing BMC/SCN conference this weekend in San Francisco. It was inspiring and fulfilling. First Mennonite of San Francisco is truly a gift.

Hi all,

It’s great to see this blog up & running. A (very) short intro to me: I’m currently halfway through medical school at the University of Chicago. My partner and I have now been together for six years - we had a commitment ceremony a year ago.

I think that LTH, HTS is really about Christians who are good people and feel like good people wanting to continue to feel like good people. They may have heard something about the injustices that queer people have undergone, but in general their worldview is pretty clear on heterosexuality being the only possible expression of sexuality. So the idea of “loving the sinner, hating the sin” feels to them like a way of continuing to feel like they love everyone without really changing their ideas about sexuality.

The thing that just doesn’t work about it is that people can’t be separated from their sexual natures in the way that people can be separated from a “sin.” A sin is usually something you DO, usually knowing that you shouldn’t do it because it will cause others harm (I’m sure there are more profound theological examinations of sin, although I actually find the concept a rather weak way of thinking about behavior.) But someone’s sexual nature is a part of who they are that runs deep into so many areas of their life and being. “The sin” (presumably a certain sexual act) is just one small part or facet of that person’s sexuality - it becomes kind of ridiculous to fixate on “it.” So to me, LTS HTS seems like a very primitive way of talking about queer sexuality that shows only the very faintest notion of what such sexuality even is. For example, my relationship with my partner includes eating together, sleeping in the same bed together, kissing each other hello and goodbye, relying on each other for emotional comfort, sex, being each other’s main confidant, lying on the beach together, on and on… notice that sex is just one aspect of a whole relationship, a relationships that cuts through every area of life. Supposedly “the sin” in all that is exclusively the sex part, but that seems to me like trying to pick one little area of a whole picture and claiming something about that piece that ignores its relation to the whole.

Sexuality is integral to humans relating to each other. I’m not sure most straight people even understand that, probably because the way it affects their relating has always been so taken for granted that they’ve never had to think about it. That’s the main reason why, to me, the church hasn’t even really begun to address the issue of queer sexuality. The only teaching they have is a ban on gay sex (”the sin”) but they’re absolutely silent on sexuality itself.

If you’ve been perusing the categories section, you may have noticed this jumble of letters and wondered, what is LTS HTS? It means “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” It gets used so much in the church that I decided to just abbreviate it here.

If anybody feels inspired to write about their thoughts and feelings on LTS HTS, I welcome some comments, or even a post. I’ll wait a bit to write more about it.

For some more of my thoughts on the language of like this: check this out. Like a lot of my other stuff here, it was at young.anabaptistradicals.org first because that is where I was writing before I started this blog here.