Coming Out Strong

Having just finished my first year working with a predominantly African-American population of public high school students, I’m painfully aware of racial differences in how we conceptualize sexuality. Socially it is not ok for these teenagers under ANY circumstances to be thought of or known as a gay male in our high school community. It isn’t the least bit trendy or exotic as it is slowly becoming even in rural midwestern communities. The few “out” gay male students I knew of are flamboyant to the extreme and surround themselves with close female friends as a sort of first line of defense. i think they cling to stereotypes only because they have no concept of a black gay man who is acceptable in society.

It’s a strangely different story for lesbians or bi girls. These girls are out and proud and are pretty much accepted. I’m guessing because the popular media (music, tv, movies, music-videos) that these students live and breath worship lesbian sex as exotic and highly erotic. It’s amazing to me to observe lesbian girls discuss their sexuality openly with both guys and girls listening and asking questions, sometimes genuinely trying to understand. I’ve never witnessed an equivalent discussion about male homosexuality.

My point is that lgbt issues are NOT only a white issue. It’s just that it is not always talked about in open and constructive ways in African-American communities. From my perspective, it’s almost like the only reason white folk can even begin to deal with sexuality in the often academic way we do is because we don’t have to deal with issues of racism and classism.

Does that make sense to anyone? Comments?

I’m not out to most of my students–not because I have to fear for my job, but because most of them wouldn’t know how to deal with having a gay teacher. And at this point, I’m not strong enough to add that to the list of baggage I already deal with as a teacher who is early in his career, emotionally and experience-wise.

Eventually, I do hope to be more open with them–not add it in the syllabus obviously, but be honest if they ask. Just like straight teachers share about their families, I would ideally like to share about my partner…and cat. Then maybe I could be at least indirectly supportive of both out and closeted gay students who pass through my classroom.

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.

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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Former BMC board member Adam Hostetter sent this video linkto the office (aka the mothership) and said it would be okay to share here. It is a wonderful story and the video is great. I’ll copy and paste the text that goes with it but I’ll just link up the video and you’ll have to go to the Stories for Change website to see it.

Taboo Underoos Video
“Some things felt right and normal to me when I was a kid, and as I grew up, I realized my “right and normal” wasn’t quite so. This story is about coming back around to my own “right and normal” and feeling FABULOUS about it.”

This also was first posted at YAR (young.anabaptistradicals.org), but I hope it will get some good discussion going here.

I’m going to do a spin-off from the speech I pointed you all to in my last post. So here is the conundrum. I grew up Mennonite. I went to a lovely, nurturing, happy, rural church (East Union Mennonite Church) where I was baptized at 16. I went to a Mennonite summer camp (Crooked Creek Christian Camp) for quite a few years and loved it. I went to many a Mennonite churchwide assemblies as my parents were youth leaders for many years and when I was in high school. I went to a Mennonite high school (Iowa Mennonite School) where I learned lovely things about Mennonite history and faith along with the English and Trig. I served for a year with Mennonite Central Committee (SALT) in South Africa. I spent four formative years at Goshen College. I highly value every one of these institutions as they have played a major part in my formation. Those institutions represent an integral part of almost my entire life. The problem arises when I realize that every single one of these institutions would discriminate against me if I were to want to work for them or even volunteer for them as an openly queer Mennonite.

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Hello folks, Welcome. You might already know, but we’re still setting up and working out the kinks around here. We’ll be up and running full blast soon with interesting posts from interesting people (maybe you).

Here is the blurb I wrote up so far for what this blog is all about:

Coming Out Strong is the blog of Brethren Mennonite Council for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (BMC) and is focused on the perspectives of youth and young adults who identify with the BMC community (Brethren or Mennonite related and lgbtqa).

For more about BMC, you should go to the mothership and look around a bit. Coming Out Strong is named after a video recently released by BMC. You can view most of the video online and you can also order dvd copies for $5 from the BMC office. For more on this, check out the Coming Out Strong video page.

More coming soon…

In the meantime, register for an account and start writing posts. Tell us a little about yourself and what you are passionate about. I’ll be starting my posting with a relevant piece or two that I’ve posted previously on another blog I frequent, young.anabaptistradicals.org.

Send any suggestions and questions to kaleidoscope@bmclgbt.org.

Katie Hochstedler

Kaleidoscope Coordinator, BMC Volunteer, administrator of Coming Out Strong