Quick, name five things you know about Christine O'Donnell, the Republican nominee for the United States Senate from Delaware. If you are anything like me, this is what came to mind.
1. She is not a witch, though she is the first politician in memory who has felt it necessary to refute the charge.
2. She is not big on masturbation.
3. She is not big on paying her taxes, her bills, or her employees.
4. She is the darling of the Tea Party.
5. She is great television with her attractive appearance, kooky ideas, and countless appearances on shows where she talks openly about numbers one and two on this list.
Now, name five things you know about Elaine Marshall, the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate from North Carolina. This is what I knew without the help of Google.
1. She is the North Carolina Secretary of State.
2. She beat King Richard Petty when she won the office the first time.
3. She comes across as a regular person who is serious about her job.
4. She is not a witch.
5. ?
Okay, so I could not come up with five things I know about Elaine Marshall and had to play the "witch card" just to get to four. This is not good. And my concern is not what this says about Elaine Marshall the candidate, but what it says about the world in which we hold elections these days.
Let's face it; there is little reason for me to know anything about Christine O'Donnell. She is a candidate in a state most people can't find on a map who appears to have little chance of being elected. After the votes are counted, O'Donnell will likely fade from view. Yet, in an election year where the stakes are incredibly high, she is the person who has gained the most attention.
Why? Because we are no longer a serious nation when it comes to fixing our problems. We would rather watch politicians who do and say the bizarre, or stake out the most extreme positions imaginable, than listen to rational people talk about policy solutions. After all, who can focus on the economic crisis when there is witchcraft and masturbation to talk about?
Elaine Marshall has little chance of getting much press under these circumstances. She is an adult in a political culture that has turned childish before our eyes. How can we hear what she has done to enact lobbying reform in our state, or prosecute those who take advantage of the elderly (yes, I finally Googled her), when we can gawk at mental adolescents willing to do or say anything for attention?
It would be tempting to blame the mainstream media for turning politics into nothing more than reality television. Yet, those in charge of the 24-hour cable news business are only serving up what we demand: entertainment. Our addiction to watching the weird and titillating among us means we know far more about the politician who has been in a sex scandal than the politician trying to pass financial regulatory reform.
The tragedy is that we need people like Elaine Marshall to be running for office right now. And I don't mean that in a partisan sense. We need Republicans and Democrats to elect mature leaders who are willing to sit down with the opposition and hammer out solutions. In a country increasingly divided on everything from gay rights, to immigration policy, to how we should respond to religious extremists trying to attack us, we cannot afford to elect the most petulant personalities to do this critical work. It is time to put the adults back in charge of our country.
As a pastoral counselor it is not difficult to tell which individuals who seek my services are going to make progress. They are the ones who are serious about overcoming the obstacles in their lives. They are willing to own their mistakes, but more than that, are unwilling to let the drama created by others distract them from moving ahead. Their focus and determination are the key ingredients in their healing.
As a nation let us regain our focus and determination in addressing what ails us as a people. If we demand it of ourselves, and our leaders, the healing can begin.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
Looking at Gay Harassment as Part of a Larger Problem
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
The New York Times
Published: October 8, 2010
Weeks before she had any reason to know the name Tyler Clementi, the Rev. Audrey M. Connor was planning a celebratory day of worship at her church in Lynchburg, Va. It would take place this Sunday, the eve of a gay-rights event called National Coming Out Day. There would be prayers, songs and testimonies by three congregants who had successfully emerged from the closet.
Then, late last month, Ms. Connor watched the first news alert about Mr. Clementi’s suicide scroll across her computer screen. An 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers, Mr. Clementi jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge after, the police say, his dorm-room intimacies with another man were stealthily filmed and posted online by two classmates.
Those initial reports sprung loose shards of Ms. Connor’s own memories and experiences, she recalled in a telephone interview this week. She thought back to being teased as her sixth-grade boyfriend’s “boyfriend,” fully 15 years before she broke cover as a lesbian. She thought back to a gay college classmate who once told her that if his family had kept a gun at home, he would have shot himself in high school to escape the hatred and ridicule.
So this Sunday’s interfaith service at First Christian Church, Ms. Connor said, will inevitably take on a more somber tone, with a minister from the local Unitarian church speaking about Mr. Clementi in the Christian context of martyrdom.
“It may sound extreme,” Ms. Connor said, “but Tyler Clementi is someone who died in a battle that many clergy and religious people are fighting. For inclusion. For our understanding of what God wants the world to be.”
Well beyond Lynchburg and First Christian, the suicides of Mr. Clementi and three other gay teenagers over the course of three weeks have mobilized and galvanized liberal Christian and Jewish clergy members. While many already offered pastoral support to gay congregants and endorsed gay rights, the drumbeat of young deaths, all of them following on the harassment and humiliation of the victims, has driven up clergy activism.
As a result, it has also intensified the intrareligious strife over homosexuality. While there is no indication that Mr. Clementi or the other teenagers — Seth Walsh, 13, Billy Lucas, 15, and Asher Brown, 13 — had been personally assailed by religious leaders, liberal clergy members firmly believe that the traditional condemnation of homosexuals and homosexuality in organized religion enables, indeed ratifies, the bigotry inflicted by peers.
“The first thing that went through my mind was, ‘Oh, no, not again,’ ” said the Rev. Jack McKinney, a Baptist minister who does private pastoral counseling in Raleigh, N.C.
“And because there’s an epidemic of suicide among LGBT young people, my next reaction is anger,” he said using a common acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. “I’m convinced that the root of a lot of this is religion-based discrimination and defamation. Frankly, I think there’s a lot of spiritual malpractice going on.”
The conventional Judeo-Christian view of homosexuality as a sin, an abomination, largely derives from six sections of Biblical text, some in the Old Testament and some in the New, known colloquially as the “clobber passages.” Centuries ago, some religious leaders were able to similarly quote the Bible in defense of slavery. Yet somehow, while such passages as the curse of Ham proved mutable over time, the denouncing of homosexuality has remained a staple of conservative theology.
Ms. Connor’s church, for instance, is in the town made famous, or infamous, by a different minister, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who once described AIDS as “God’s punishment for homosexuals” and “the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a free-speech case involving Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., whose members used antigay rhetoric while picketing the 2006 funeral of an American soldier slain in Iraq.
And while Westboro is a small and extremist congregation, better at garnering headlines than filling pews, a major dispute about homosexuality has broken out in the country’s religious and geographical center, in Minnesota. There, the Roman Catholic archbishop, John Nienstedt, last month sent out 400,000 copies of a DVD opposing same-sex marriage as a “dangerous risk to society.” The archbishop subsequently refused to give communion to several dozen students at a Catholic college who attended a Mass wearing buttons with the rainbow insignia of the gay-rights movement.
None of these events, of course, played any direct role in the recent suicides. Official Catholic teaching on homosexuality, much like the rabbinic norm in Orthodox Judaism, tries to separate opposition to sexual behavior from acceptance of individual homosexuals. In various denominations, religious conservatives offer counseling to transform homosexuals to heterosexuals.
And yet, for liberal clergy members, the coincidental confluence of events has given them cause to mobilize. The Rev. Cody J. Sanders, a Baptist minister in Fort Worth, framed antigay bullying as a theological issue. “With dualistic conceptions of good and evil and hierarchical notions of values and worth,” Mr. Sanders wrote in an essay for the Web site Religion Dispatches, “it becomes easy to know who it is O.K. to hate or bully, or, seemingly more benignly, to ignore. And no institutions have done more to create and perpetuate the public disapproval of gay and lesbian people than churches.”
The Rev. Debra W. Haffner, a Unitarian Universalist minister who is executive director of the Religious Institute, an interfaith organization active in issues of sexual health, last week sent 2,200 clergy members in a dozen denominations an open letter asking them to devote this weekend’s sermons to Tyler Clementi’s suicide. Her appeal reached an even wider audience when it was published on The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog.
“Clergy have a key role,” said the Rev. Pat Bumgardner, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church in Manhattan. “We have a chance to shape public opinion, people’s willingness to wrestle with the diversity of God’s creation. Pastors need to step up to the plate and speak about the wrongness of bullying, the wrongness of cruelty.
“There’s no religion on the face of the earth that countenances the taunting to death of children.”
Email: sgf1@columbia.edu
The New York Times
Published: October 8, 2010
Weeks before she had any reason to know the name Tyler Clementi, the Rev. Audrey M. Connor was planning a celebratory day of worship at her church in Lynchburg, Va. It would take place this Sunday, the eve of a gay-rights event called National Coming Out Day. There would be prayers, songs and testimonies by three congregants who had successfully emerged from the closet.
Then, late last month, Ms. Connor watched the first news alert about Mr. Clementi’s suicide scroll across her computer screen. An 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers, Mr. Clementi jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge after, the police say, his dorm-room intimacies with another man were stealthily filmed and posted online by two classmates.
Those initial reports sprung loose shards of Ms. Connor’s own memories and experiences, she recalled in a telephone interview this week. She thought back to being teased as her sixth-grade boyfriend’s “boyfriend,” fully 15 years before she broke cover as a lesbian. She thought back to a gay college classmate who once told her that if his family had kept a gun at home, he would have shot himself in high school to escape the hatred and ridicule.
So this Sunday’s interfaith service at First Christian Church, Ms. Connor said, will inevitably take on a more somber tone, with a minister from the local Unitarian church speaking about Mr. Clementi in the Christian context of martyrdom.
“It may sound extreme,” Ms. Connor said, “but Tyler Clementi is someone who died in a battle that many clergy and religious people are fighting. For inclusion. For our understanding of what God wants the world to be.”
Well beyond Lynchburg and First Christian, the suicides of Mr. Clementi and three other gay teenagers over the course of three weeks have mobilized and galvanized liberal Christian and Jewish clergy members. While many already offered pastoral support to gay congregants and endorsed gay rights, the drumbeat of young deaths, all of them following on the harassment and humiliation of the victims, has driven up clergy activism.
As a result, it has also intensified the intrareligious strife over homosexuality. While there is no indication that Mr. Clementi or the other teenagers — Seth Walsh, 13, Billy Lucas, 15, and Asher Brown, 13 — had been personally assailed by religious leaders, liberal clergy members firmly believe that the traditional condemnation of homosexuals and homosexuality in organized religion enables, indeed ratifies, the bigotry inflicted by peers.
“The first thing that went through my mind was, ‘Oh, no, not again,’ ” said the Rev. Jack McKinney, a Baptist minister who does private pastoral counseling in Raleigh, N.C.
“And because there’s an epidemic of suicide among LGBT young people, my next reaction is anger,” he said using a common acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. “I’m convinced that the root of a lot of this is religion-based discrimination and defamation. Frankly, I think there’s a lot of spiritual malpractice going on.”
The conventional Judeo-Christian view of homosexuality as a sin, an abomination, largely derives from six sections of Biblical text, some in the Old Testament and some in the New, known colloquially as the “clobber passages.” Centuries ago, some religious leaders were able to similarly quote the Bible in defense of slavery. Yet somehow, while such passages as the curse of Ham proved mutable over time, the denouncing of homosexuality has remained a staple of conservative theology.
Ms. Connor’s church, for instance, is in the town made famous, or infamous, by a different minister, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who once described AIDS as “God’s punishment for homosexuals” and “the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a free-speech case involving Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., whose members used antigay rhetoric while picketing the 2006 funeral of an American soldier slain in Iraq.
And while Westboro is a small and extremist congregation, better at garnering headlines than filling pews, a major dispute about homosexuality has broken out in the country’s religious and geographical center, in Minnesota. There, the Roman Catholic archbishop, John Nienstedt, last month sent out 400,000 copies of a DVD opposing same-sex marriage as a “dangerous risk to society.” The archbishop subsequently refused to give communion to several dozen students at a Catholic college who attended a Mass wearing buttons with the rainbow insignia of the gay-rights movement.
None of these events, of course, played any direct role in the recent suicides. Official Catholic teaching on homosexuality, much like the rabbinic norm in Orthodox Judaism, tries to separate opposition to sexual behavior from acceptance of individual homosexuals. In various denominations, religious conservatives offer counseling to transform homosexuals to heterosexuals.
And yet, for liberal clergy members, the coincidental confluence of events has given them cause to mobilize. The Rev. Cody J. Sanders, a Baptist minister in Fort Worth, framed antigay bullying as a theological issue. “With dualistic conceptions of good and evil and hierarchical notions of values and worth,” Mr. Sanders wrote in an essay for the Web site Religion Dispatches, “it becomes easy to know who it is O.K. to hate or bully, or, seemingly more benignly, to ignore. And no institutions have done more to create and perpetuate the public disapproval of gay and lesbian people than churches.”
The Rev. Debra W. Haffner, a Unitarian Universalist minister who is executive director of the Religious Institute, an interfaith organization active in issues of sexual health, last week sent 2,200 clergy members in a dozen denominations an open letter asking them to devote this weekend’s sermons to Tyler Clementi’s suicide. Her appeal reached an even wider audience when it was published on The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog.
“Clergy have a key role,” said the Rev. Pat Bumgardner, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church in Manhattan. “We have a chance to shape public opinion, people’s willingness to wrestle with the diversity of God’s creation. Pastors need to step up to the plate and speak about the wrongness of bullying, the wrongness of cruelty.
“There’s no religion on the face of the earth that countenances the taunting to death of children.”
Email: sgf1@columbia.edu
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Getting History Right
Here is my column in the September edition of The Triangle. Check out the rest of the paper at trianglelgbt.com.
In June of 1981 the Center for Disease Control’s Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report cited five cases of a rare pneumonia in five gay men in Los Angeles. From that point on, in the mind of the general public, AIDS was a gay disease. It was somehow caused by gay men having sex. Then it became God’s punishment on “homosexuals” according to some particularly cruel and ignorant men of the cloth. And because the lgbt community was viewed with disdain or disinterest by most people, we went through the 1980s with little compassion, and a lot of hysteria, and our leaders missed the opportunity to slow the disease before it became the beast it is now. President Reagan wouldn’t even say the word AIDS in public until 1987. Our own Senator Helms fought tooth and nail to keep funding away from HIV/AIDS programs until he decided in his last years that fighting AIDS in Africa was acceptable.
Then we stumbled into the 1990s, and while progress was being made in the development of drugs to combat the virus, the response from political leaders was still incredibly timid in the face of such a deadly plague. President Clinton refused to advocate for needle exchanges fearing the political fallout of seeming to be soft on drug users. South Africa elected President Mbeki who didn’t even believe HIV was the virus that caused AIDS and he resisted efforts to combat the spread of the disease. Today, South Africa has the largest percentage of AIDS cases per capita in the world.
Closer to home, a few years ago North Carolina ranked dead last in funding for poor people living with HIV/AIDS. A leading member of the General Assembly, when asked about this terrible record of helping our most vulnerable neighbors living with the disease, was quoted as saying he had no interest in spending money on “those people.”
But here’s a strange little fact that has been ignored for too long. We now know that HIV isn’t a gay disease. It didn’t just pop up on the West Coast back in 1981 among gay men. There is evidence of the virus as early as 1959. And the source of the virus has been tracked to a group of chimpanzees who live in the southern part of Cameroon. Most scientists believe the virus made its way from the chimps into the human population because of the practice of slaughtering chimps for meat. The blood from the chimps likely got into the open cuts and sores of those doing the slaughtering, and there is your point of human contamination. And for all these years while society pointed the finger at gay men, the real culprits were people slaughtering chimpanzees in Cameroon in the mid-twentieth century. And if it wasn’t so sad and tragic it would almost be funny. It was the damn chimp killers, not the gay men, who brought this plague to us.
There is another part of the history of HIV/AIDS that has also been swept under the rug. While most of America has lived with the lie that AIDS is a disease brought to us by gay people and drug users, the truth of the matter is that the one group that has consistently stood up and fought this damndable disease has been the lgbt community. When nothing was being done in the 1980s by the powers that be, it was lgbt folks who caused such an uproar that public health officials couldn’t ignore them any longer. Go to any city in this country and find an agency that is providing care for people with HIV/AIDS, or is advocating for people with HIV/AIDS, and odds are the lgbt community started and funded and staffed those organizations.
So, thank you my lgbt sisters and brothers. Thank you for refusing to shut up even when preachers said AIDS was God’s punishment, and politicians turned their backs on you. Thank you for pushing the scientific and medical communities to be more aggressive in their treatment methods. Thank you for reminding the rest of us that it is not a sin to be sick and for caring so tenderly for all people living with this plague, even we straight folk who called you queer and faggot. Your passion and compassion have been models for the rest of us and we owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude.
There is an African proverb that says, “Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” The last 30 years have been tragic beyond words as AIDS has ravaged our world, but we have added to the tragedy by our one-sided and mistaken way of telling the history of the disease. The people we blamed turned out to be the true heroes in our midst. And only when we get the history right, and tell the story of the courageous lgbt community, will we be able to see that in the middle of all the suffering something remarkable and sacred has been happening all along.
In June of 1981 the Center for Disease Control’s Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report cited five cases of a rare pneumonia in five gay men in Los Angeles. From that point on, in the mind of the general public, AIDS was a gay disease. It was somehow caused by gay men having sex. Then it became God’s punishment on “homosexuals” according to some particularly cruel and ignorant men of the cloth. And because the lgbt community was viewed with disdain or disinterest by most people, we went through the 1980s with little compassion, and a lot of hysteria, and our leaders missed the opportunity to slow the disease before it became the beast it is now. President Reagan wouldn’t even say the word AIDS in public until 1987. Our own Senator Helms fought tooth and nail to keep funding away from HIV/AIDS programs until he decided in his last years that fighting AIDS in Africa was acceptable.
Then we stumbled into the 1990s, and while progress was being made in the development of drugs to combat the virus, the response from political leaders was still incredibly timid in the face of such a deadly plague. President Clinton refused to advocate for needle exchanges fearing the political fallout of seeming to be soft on drug users. South Africa elected President Mbeki who didn’t even believe HIV was the virus that caused AIDS and he resisted efforts to combat the spread of the disease. Today, South Africa has the largest percentage of AIDS cases per capita in the world.
Closer to home, a few years ago North Carolina ranked dead last in funding for poor people living with HIV/AIDS. A leading member of the General Assembly, when asked about this terrible record of helping our most vulnerable neighbors living with the disease, was quoted as saying he had no interest in spending money on “those people.”
But here’s a strange little fact that has been ignored for too long. We now know that HIV isn’t a gay disease. It didn’t just pop up on the West Coast back in 1981 among gay men. There is evidence of the virus as early as 1959. And the source of the virus has been tracked to a group of chimpanzees who live in the southern part of Cameroon. Most scientists believe the virus made its way from the chimps into the human population because of the practice of slaughtering chimps for meat. The blood from the chimps likely got into the open cuts and sores of those doing the slaughtering, and there is your point of human contamination. And for all these years while society pointed the finger at gay men, the real culprits were people slaughtering chimpanzees in Cameroon in the mid-twentieth century. And if it wasn’t so sad and tragic it would almost be funny. It was the damn chimp killers, not the gay men, who brought this plague to us.
There is another part of the history of HIV/AIDS that has also been swept under the rug. While most of America has lived with the lie that AIDS is a disease brought to us by gay people and drug users, the truth of the matter is that the one group that has consistently stood up and fought this damndable disease has been the lgbt community. When nothing was being done in the 1980s by the powers that be, it was lgbt folks who caused such an uproar that public health officials couldn’t ignore them any longer. Go to any city in this country and find an agency that is providing care for people with HIV/AIDS, or is advocating for people with HIV/AIDS, and odds are the lgbt community started and funded and staffed those organizations.
So, thank you my lgbt sisters and brothers. Thank you for refusing to shut up even when preachers said AIDS was God’s punishment, and politicians turned their backs on you. Thank you for pushing the scientific and medical communities to be more aggressive in their treatment methods. Thank you for reminding the rest of us that it is not a sin to be sick and for caring so tenderly for all people living with this plague, even we straight folk who called you queer and faggot. Your passion and compassion have been models for the rest of us and we owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude.
There is an African proverb that says, “Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” The last 30 years have been tragic beyond words as AIDS has ravaged our world, but we have added to the tragedy by our one-sided and mistaken way of telling the history of the disease. The people we blamed turned out to be the true heroes in our midst. And only when we get the history right, and tell the story of the courageous lgbt community, will we be able to see that in the middle of all the suffering something remarkable and sacred has been happening all along.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Ignoring Conventional Wisdom
This is my column for the August edition of The Triangle. To see the rest of the publication, check it out at http://www.trianglelgbt.com/pdfs/webaugust.pdf
When I think about Nancy Petty, my good friend and pastor, one question comes to mind. How did she get to this place in her life? How does a lesbian become the senior minister of one of the most prominent Baptist churches in a southern state? To appreciate the answer you need to know the whole story.
Nancy grew up in Shelby, west of Charlotte, not exactly the progressive center of North Carolina. Her family was active in a small Baptist church outside of town. Tagging along with her father, who was an active lay leader in the congregation, Nancy was in church every chance she got. To this day if she hears an old hymn Nancy will break into song as though she has been transported back to her childhood church.
Nancy went to college at Gardner Webb University, a Baptist school in Shelby, and then to seminary at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest. She was preparing for ministry in a tradition that had little room for women ministers. To make things even more challenging, Nancy’s understanding of her sexuality clarified in her college and graduate school days. So, she was a good Baptist girl from a traditional Baptist family who happened to be gay and wanted to be a pastor. Raise your hand if you sense a problem on the horizon.
This is the point in the story when most people would have followed the path of conventional wisdom and made a choice. Nancy could have hidden her sexuality so that her career as a minister might still have some chance of taking off in the Baptist world; she could have left her beloved Baptist roots to seek ordination in one of the few religious traditions accepting of gay ministers; or she could have abandoned her calling and pursued a life outside of the church. From an outsider’s perspective these were the only realistic options open to her and each one meant giving up something critical to her soul.
Nancy refused to abide by the choices presented to her by conventional wisdom. For almost twenty years she has served as an openly gay minister at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh. She has had different titles during that time: Minister of Education, Associate Pastor, Co-Pastor (a title I was proud to share with her for eight years), and now Pastor. She suffered the slings and arrows of denunciation from inside the Baptist world, and she overcame many doubters in her own church family. In the end, as the kids say, she outlasted the haters.
Of course none of us make it in life without much support along the way. Nancy would be the first to name all of the mentors, colleagues, and friends who helped her get to this point in her career. Even so, the key ingredient in Nancy’s story is her determination to live as authentically as possible. Her refusal to play by the rules handed to her by society, the church, and other traditional powers has resulted in one of the most interesting biographies of any minister I know.
Conventional wisdom is a subtle force that lulls us into faulty assumptions. It leads us to believe that the way things are must be the way they will always be. Conventional wisdom suggests that how most people see the world reflects the only acceptable truth about the world. More insidiously, conventional wisdom provides cover for those in power to deny the powerless access to basic rights and opportunities.
Liberation means throwing off the shackles of conventional wisdom and refusing to accept the paltry choices it sets before us. Of course it takes courage to live a truth others find uncomfortable or upsetting. It also takes patience and determination to continue on the narrow path that doesn’t immediately lead to success. However, we have a word for those people in any movement or culture who go against the grain and live honestly in the face of conventional wisdom’s rebuke. We call them heroes.
The heroes and heroines who have changed their world, either in big or small ways, all started from the same point: they were dissatisfied with the way things were and took a risk to make a change. For many of those people, that risk was simply being themselves in an open and proud fashion. And the amazing thing is that over time conventional wisdom succumbs to the power of the truth lived by such courageous souls.
Nancy Petty is a short woman with a huge heart whose determination to be herself is changing the church and our community for the better. Let us give thanks for such heroes in our midst.
When I think about Nancy Petty, my good friend and pastor, one question comes to mind. How did she get to this place in her life? How does a lesbian become the senior minister of one of the most prominent Baptist churches in a southern state? To appreciate the answer you need to know the whole story.
Nancy grew up in Shelby, west of Charlotte, not exactly the progressive center of North Carolina. Her family was active in a small Baptist church outside of town. Tagging along with her father, who was an active lay leader in the congregation, Nancy was in church every chance she got. To this day if she hears an old hymn Nancy will break into song as though she has been transported back to her childhood church.
Nancy went to college at Gardner Webb University, a Baptist school in Shelby, and then to seminary at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest. She was preparing for ministry in a tradition that had little room for women ministers. To make things even more challenging, Nancy’s understanding of her sexuality clarified in her college and graduate school days. So, she was a good Baptist girl from a traditional Baptist family who happened to be gay and wanted to be a pastor. Raise your hand if you sense a problem on the horizon.
This is the point in the story when most people would have followed the path of conventional wisdom and made a choice. Nancy could have hidden her sexuality so that her career as a minister might still have some chance of taking off in the Baptist world; she could have left her beloved Baptist roots to seek ordination in one of the few religious traditions accepting of gay ministers; or she could have abandoned her calling and pursued a life outside of the church. From an outsider’s perspective these were the only realistic options open to her and each one meant giving up something critical to her soul.
Nancy refused to abide by the choices presented to her by conventional wisdom. For almost twenty years she has served as an openly gay minister at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh. She has had different titles during that time: Minister of Education, Associate Pastor, Co-Pastor (a title I was proud to share with her for eight years), and now Pastor. She suffered the slings and arrows of denunciation from inside the Baptist world, and she overcame many doubters in her own church family. In the end, as the kids say, she outlasted the haters.
Of course none of us make it in life without much support along the way. Nancy would be the first to name all of the mentors, colleagues, and friends who helped her get to this point in her career. Even so, the key ingredient in Nancy’s story is her determination to live as authentically as possible. Her refusal to play by the rules handed to her by society, the church, and other traditional powers has resulted in one of the most interesting biographies of any minister I know.
Conventional wisdom is a subtle force that lulls us into faulty assumptions. It leads us to believe that the way things are must be the way they will always be. Conventional wisdom suggests that how most people see the world reflects the only acceptable truth about the world. More insidiously, conventional wisdom provides cover for those in power to deny the powerless access to basic rights and opportunities.
Liberation means throwing off the shackles of conventional wisdom and refusing to accept the paltry choices it sets before us. Of course it takes courage to live a truth others find uncomfortable or upsetting. It also takes patience and determination to continue on the narrow path that doesn’t immediately lead to success. However, we have a word for those people in any movement or culture who go against the grain and live honestly in the face of conventional wisdom’s rebuke. We call them heroes.
The heroes and heroines who have changed their world, either in big or small ways, all started from the same point: they were dissatisfied with the way things were and took a risk to make a change. For many of those people, that risk was simply being themselves in an open and proud fashion. And the amazing thing is that over time conventional wisdom succumbs to the power of the truth lived by such courageous souls.
Nancy Petty is a short woman with a huge heart whose determination to be herself is changing the church and our community for the better. Let us give thanks for such heroes in our midst.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Signs of Discrimination's Demise
When U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled last week in Massachusetts that the federal law banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional it reminded me of something. There comes a moment in every struggle for equality when the arguments for maintaining discriminatory laws and practices suddenly seem absurd to reasonable people.
How do we know when such a moment is upon us? First, the extreme elements in support of inequality resort to violence over rational conversation. Second, fair-minded people who once tolerated the discrimination are aroused from their slumber and start to advocate for a just solution. Finally, the last gasp is when people will abandon their principles in order to hang on to the privileges they have enjoyed and are loathe to allow others to share in them.
We have seen this pattern before in our history. When the forces of intolerance turned fire hoses on civil rights’ marchers, including children, the images shocked many Americans. Suddenly the lengths that the extremists were willing to go to defend segregation were no longer tolerable for many people. Those who had sat idly by while the bigotry went unchecked generation after generation finally found their voice and their conscience. And the only philosophical argument left to the segregationists was the old bromide--states’ rights.
Now the pattern returns in the push for equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans. The violence and threat of violence the GLBT community lives with daily is one of the most underreported stories of our time. As a pastoral counselor whose practice is largely made up of GLBT individuals, I hear regularly the toll this violence takes. The necessity of hiding their sexuality in order to be safe, or to hold on to a job, or to keep their family or church from rejecting them is a regular thread in my clients’ stories. Millions of GLBT Americans live in a state of constant alert out of fear for what they will suffer or lose if their sexuality is discovered.
Slowly, though, some straight people are realizing the pain being caused by the legal discrimination against their GLBT friends and family members. The most dramatic example of this awakening is Ted Olson.
Olson was solicitor general under President George W. Bush who successfully argued before the Supreme Court that the recount in Florida should stop after the 2000 presidential election debacle. Who was the lawyer for the losing side in the infamous Bush v. Gore case? David Boies. Now Olson has teamed up with Boies to try and overturn California’s Proposition 8 and establish a constitutional right for same-sex marriage.
Many conservatives are surprised that this darling of the Republican party would align himself with advocates for same-sex marriage, but Olson argues he is just being consistent in his principles. In an Op-ed piece published in Newsweek Olson makes this case in response to the criticisms he is receiving from those in his own party.
“Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.” (January 9, 2010)
Olson’s conscience and his commitment to his basic political principles caused him to take this stance. Yet, for those determined to prevent marriage equality from becoming the law of the land, they are willing to abandon their principles if need be. In response to Judge Tauro’s ruling last week that the federal law known as the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define the institution of marriage, and therefore denies married gay couples some federal benefits, conservative commentators have argued that the states have no right to determine who can legally marry. Yes, you know you have stepped through the looking glass when ultra-conservatives are demanding that the federal government flex its power and overrule a state’s attempt at self-determination.
What do these signs suggest about the future of marriage equality in the United States? Now that it is clear there are no sound constitutional arguments to deny millions of GLBT Americans the right to marry someone of the same gender, the only question is how much more violence and tortured reasoning must we endure as the forces of intolerance defend the discriminatory status quo. If Judge Tauro and Ted Olson are any indication, perhaps not much longer.
How do we know when such a moment is upon us? First, the extreme elements in support of inequality resort to violence over rational conversation. Second, fair-minded people who once tolerated the discrimination are aroused from their slumber and start to advocate for a just solution. Finally, the last gasp is when people will abandon their principles in order to hang on to the privileges they have enjoyed and are loathe to allow others to share in them.
We have seen this pattern before in our history. When the forces of intolerance turned fire hoses on civil rights’ marchers, including children, the images shocked many Americans. Suddenly the lengths that the extremists were willing to go to defend segregation were no longer tolerable for many people. Those who had sat idly by while the bigotry went unchecked generation after generation finally found their voice and their conscience. And the only philosophical argument left to the segregationists was the old bromide--states’ rights.
Now the pattern returns in the push for equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans. The violence and threat of violence the GLBT community lives with daily is one of the most underreported stories of our time. As a pastoral counselor whose practice is largely made up of GLBT individuals, I hear regularly the toll this violence takes. The necessity of hiding their sexuality in order to be safe, or to hold on to a job, or to keep their family or church from rejecting them is a regular thread in my clients’ stories. Millions of GLBT Americans live in a state of constant alert out of fear for what they will suffer or lose if their sexuality is discovered.
Slowly, though, some straight people are realizing the pain being caused by the legal discrimination against their GLBT friends and family members. The most dramatic example of this awakening is Ted Olson.
Olson was solicitor general under President George W. Bush who successfully argued before the Supreme Court that the recount in Florida should stop after the 2000 presidential election debacle. Who was the lawyer for the losing side in the infamous Bush v. Gore case? David Boies. Now Olson has teamed up with Boies to try and overturn California’s Proposition 8 and establish a constitutional right for same-sex marriage.
Many conservatives are surprised that this darling of the Republican party would align himself with advocates for same-sex marriage, but Olson argues he is just being consistent in his principles. In an Op-ed piece published in Newsweek Olson makes this case in response to the criticisms he is receiving from those in his own party.
“Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.” (January 9, 2010)
Olson’s conscience and his commitment to his basic political principles caused him to take this stance. Yet, for those determined to prevent marriage equality from becoming the law of the land, they are willing to abandon their principles if need be. In response to Judge Tauro’s ruling last week that the federal law known as the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define the institution of marriage, and therefore denies married gay couples some federal benefits, conservative commentators have argued that the states have no right to determine who can legally marry. Yes, you know you have stepped through the looking glass when ultra-conservatives are demanding that the federal government flex its power and overrule a state’s attempt at self-determination.
What do these signs suggest about the future of marriage equality in the United States? Now that it is clear there are no sound constitutional arguments to deny millions of GLBT Americans the right to marry someone of the same gender, the only question is how much more violence and tortured reasoning must we endure as the forces of intolerance defend the discriminatory status quo. If Judge Tauro and Ted Olson are any indication, perhaps not much longer.
Monday, July 5, 2010
That Abominable Word
Here is my column in the July edition of "the Triangle," a new publication serving the LGBTQ community in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area. The publication and other resources can be found at trianglelgbt.com.
If 25 years of preaching taught me anything it is this: words matter. Every minister who saw Four Weddings and a Funeral laughed nervously when the inexperienced priest declared “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spigot.” Been there, done that. Maybe not calling the Spirit a plumbing device, but all clergy have made equally dumb mistakes. I once did a funeral for a man named Ed and called him Earnest throughout the service. You can just imagine how pleased his family was.
Years later I can laugh at that gaffe and realize it wasn’t intentional or fatal. We all make mistakes with words and names. It’s just that those who do public speaking for a living get many more opportunities to screw up.
However, there is a more sinister misuse of language in the church that is neither funny nor unintentional. There is a word that gets used a lot from pulpits, that comes spewing out of mouths filled with loathing and invective. It is a word I hate because it shames, and denigrates, and breaks the spirit of good people. The word is abomination.
Everyone in the LGBTQ community has heard the word. Preachers and other religious folks are quick to quote from the book of Leviticus in the Bible these lines: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Those who use the “a” word do so with the intent of declaring there is nothing more detestable than two men having sex. The problem is, those who use the word in this ugly fashion don’t realize how badly they are misunderstanding it.
The book of Leviticus declares a lot of things abominations: eating shrimp, cutting your hair, wearing a cotton/polyester blend, having a ham sandwich, and much more. Funny how we never hear what an abomination the ham sandwich eaters are. But this weird list of “abominations” should at least make us wonder what the word actually meant.
The Israelites were a people living amongst other tribes who had their own religious practices. In order to distinguish their religion from their neighbors, the Israelites adopted codes of conduct. In Leviticus the list of rituals is called the Holiness Code. The main purpose of the code was to keep a person ritually pure so that she or he could worship and participate in the life of the community. All manner of things could make one unclean, or, an abomination. Yes, the word doesn’t mean “the worst thing in the world.” It means ritually unclean.
Now here is where it gets weird and personal for me. I have a gorgeous teenage daughter who is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. She also happens to have been born with a rare condition that discolors her skin on certain parts of her body. Many people do not even notice this condition, and it does not take away from her stunning good looks. Yet, if we read the book of Leviticus literally, and apply this ancient code like some narrow-minded people do, then my daughter is also an abomination.
You see, shortly before one arrives at the two short verses in Leviticus declaring man-on-man sex an abomination, there are two long chapters describing the “ritual impurity” of people with certain skin conditions. That’s right. Leviticus spends much more time dealing with the religious problem of permanent skin discoloration than it does same-gender sexual activity.
If all of this seems absurd it is only because it is. Selectively misusing an ancient religious code to condemn any group of people is cruel and tragic. But when that selective misuse becomes so normal that the condemned group internalizes it and accepts it, well, that makes me furious.
Calling something that is beautiful an abomination is one of the worst uses of language imaginable. My beautiful daughter is anything but an abomination. My beautiful LGBTQ friends are anything but abominations. And don’t let anyone tell you different.
If 25 years of preaching taught me anything it is this: words matter. Every minister who saw Four Weddings and a Funeral laughed nervously when the inexperienced priest declared “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spigot.” Been there, done that. Maybe not calling the Spirit a plumbing device, but all clergy have made equally dumb mistakes. I once did a funeral for a man named Ed and called him Earnest throughout the service. You can just imagine how pleased his family was.
Years later I can laugh at that gaffe and realize it wasn’t intentional or fatal. We all make mistakes with words and names. It’s just that those who do public speaking for a living get many more opportunities to screw up.
However, there is a more sinister misuse of language in the church that is neither funny nor unintentional. There is a word that gets used a lot from pulpits, that comes spewing out of mouths filled with loathing and invective. It is a word I hate because it shames, and denigrates, and breaks the spirit of good people. The word is abomination.
Everyone in the LGBTQ community has heard the word. Preachers and other religious folks are quick to quote from the book of Leviticus in the Bible these lines: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Those who use the “a” word do so with the intent of declaring there is nothing more detestable than two men having sex. The problem is, those who use the word in this ugly fashion don’t realize how badly they are misunderstanding it.
The book of Leviticus declares a lot of things abominations: eating shrimp, cutting your hair, wearing a cotton/polyester blend, having a ham sandwich, and much more. Funny how we never hear what an abomination the ham sandwich eaters are. But this weird list of “abominations” should at least make us wonder what the word actually meant.
The Israelites were a people living amongst other tribes who had their own religious practices. In order to distinguish their religion from their neighbors, the Israelites adopted codes of conduct. In Leviticus the list of rituals is called the Holiness Code. The main purpose of the code was to keep a person ritually pure so that she or he could worship and participate in the life of the community. All manner of things could make one unclean, or, an abomination. Yes, the word doesn’t mean “the worst thing in the world.” It means ritually unclean.
Now here is where it gets weird and personal for me. I have a gorgeous teenage daughter who is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. She also happens to have been born with a rare condition that discolors her skin on certain parts of her body. Many people do not even notice this condition, and it does not take away from her stunning good looks. Yet, if we read the book of Leviticus literally, and apply this ancient code like some narrow-minded people do, then my daughter is also an abomination.
You see, shortly before one arrives at the two short verses in Leviticus declaring man-on-man sex an abomination, there are two long chapters describing the “ritual impurity” of people with certain skin conditions. That’s right. Leviticus spends much more time dealing with the religious problem of permanent skin discoloration than it does same-gender sexual activity.
If all of this seems absurd it is only because it is. Selectively misusing an ancient religious code to condemn any group of people is cruel and tragic. But when that selective misuse becomes so normal that the condemned group internalizes it and accepts it, well, that makes me furious.
Calling something that is beautiful an abomination is one of the worst uses of language imaginable. My beautiful daughter is anything but an abomination. My beautiful LGBTQ friends are anything but abominations. And don’t let anyone tell you different.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Secret Life of a Pastor - Chapter Four
Leaving my life as a pastor at the age of 44 was a sudden move, a scary move, and a financially absurd move. It was not, however, an original move. I had done it once before, way back at the beginning.
My last year of college was a whirlwind. I accepted the pastorate of a small rural church late in my junior year. That summer I got married and started working six days a week at a furniture store. When classes resumed in the fall, I was a full-time student, a nearly full-time employee of the Texas Furniture Company, and the pastor of the Naruna Baptist Church. It was a full life.
My agreement with the church was that I would stay through my graduation in May at which time I would be moving away to attend seminary. By February I knew I couldn’t make it. I suddenly felt incapable of preaching one more sermon, much less a dozen more. In shame, I informed the church that I would be resigning several months earlier than they had expected. They were confused. “Why couldn’t I just stay through May like we had talked about?” they wanted to know. I didn’t have an answer. I just knew I was done.
This experience was the great existential crisis of my early adulthood. Since I was 15 I knew I was going to be a preacher. I went to college to study and prepare for that future, and knew that seminary would be the next step. While in college I had met the love of my life and knew that getting married was right for me. It was a life filled with certitude.
Suddenly nothing was certain. I was paralyzed by doubt and fear. Here I was, about to finish college and head to seminary, and the thought of being a pastor terrified me. I had tried it, albeit in a limited fashion, and been overwhelmed by it. If I couldn’t handle being the weekend pastor to a church of 40 good souls, how was I going to manage ministering in a larger setting?
The clearest memory I have of those days was the walk I took across the campus with KaKi. We had been married about eight months and our plans for the future were in place: graduation for both of us, seminary for me, and a teaching job for her. Now, as we walked in front of the library on a brisk winter morning, I was trying to explain what was happening to me. Only I didn’t know. I didn’t know why I couldn’t finish my time at the country church. I didn’t know why the thought of a future as a minister filled me with anxiety. What I do know is that in my moment of terrified confusion KaKi didn’t blame or judge me. Her support on that chilly morning is a gift I still treasure.
Twenty-five years later I have much more compassion and understanding for that confused, scared preacher boy who was me. I know now that I was exhausted from a pace that was unrelenting. I also realize that my first experience of trying on the role of pastor had exposed me in ways I was not prepared to handle. I didn’t feel good enough, holy enough, or strong enough to be a spiritual guide for others. I hadn’t yet learned the truth that ministering to people is mostly about showing up and listening. It would be years before I grasped the fact that it was okay for me not to have all the answers. It would be even longer before I understood that my parishioners didn’t want answers anyway. They wanted what we all want, what we all need, what I got from KaKi on that cold morning in front of the school library: a minister who loved them for who they were; a minister who cared for them when they were hurting; a minister who tried to tell and live the truth.
The first time I “left the ministry” I was young, confused, and the departure would be temporary. The next leaving came in the middle of my life in a moment of absolute clarity. Same result, but it feels completely different.
My last year of college was a whirlwind. I accepted the pastorate of a small rural church late in my junior year. That summer I got married and started working six days a week at a furniture store. When classes resumed in the fall, I was a full-time student, a nearly full-time employee of the Texas Furniture Company, and the pastor of the Naruna Baptist Church. It was a full life.
My agreement with the church was that I would stay through my graduation in May at which time I would be moving away to attend seminary. By February I knew I couldn’t make it. I suddenly felt incapable of preaching one more sermon, much less a dozen more. In shame, I informed the church that I would be resigning several months earlier than they had expected. They were confused. “Why couldn’t I just stay through May like we had talked about?” they wanted to know. I didn’t have an answer. I just knew I was done.
This experience was the great existential crisis of my early adulthood. Since I was 15 I knew I was going to be a preacher. I went to college to study and prepare for that future, and knew that seminary would be the next step. While in college I had met the love of my life and knew that getting married was right for me. It was a life filled with certitude.
Suddenly nothing was certain. I was paralyzed by doubt and fear. Here I was, about to finish college and head to seminary, and the thought of being a pastor terrified me. I had tried it, albeit in a limited fashion, and been overwhelmed by it. If I couldn’t handle being the weekend pastor to a church of 40 good souls, how was I going to manage ministering in a larger setting?
The clearest memory I have of those days was the walk I took across the campus with KaKi. We had been married about eight months and our plans for the future were in place: graduation for both of us, seminary for me, and a teaching job for her. Now, as we walked in front of the library on a brisk winter morning, I was trying to explain what was happening to me. Only I didn’t know. I didn’t know why I couldn’t finish my time at the country church. I didn’t know why the thought of a future as a minister filled me with anxiety. What I do know is that in my moment of terrified confusion KaKi didn’t blame or judge me. Her support on that chilly morning is a gift I still treasure.
Twenty-five years later I have much more compassion and understanding for that confused, scared preacher boy who was me. I know now that I was exhausted from a pace that was unrelenting. I also realize that my first experience of trying on the role of pastor had exposed me in ways I was not prepared to handle. I didn’t feel good enough, holy enough, or strong enough to be a spiritual guide for others. I hadn’t yet learned the truth that ministering to people is mostly about showing up and listening. It would be years before I grasped the fact that it was okay for me not to have all the answers. It would be even longer before I understood that my parishioners didn’t want answers anyway. They wanted what we all want, what we all need, what I got from KaKi on that cold morning in front of the school library: a minister who loved them for who they were; a minister who cared for them when they were hurting; a minister who tried to tell and live the truth.
The first time I “left the ministry” I was young, confused, and the departure would be temporary. The next leaving came in the middle of my life in a moment of absolute clarity. Same result, but it feels completely different.
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