Category Archives: Faith and Doubt

Jee Leong Koh: “Bethlehem”


Starting 2010 off right, this well-crafted lyric by Jee Leong Koh addresses one of my favorite themes, the relationship between eros and the sacred. Koh is the author of the poetry collections Payday Loans and Equal to the Earth. He’s kindly permitted me to share this poem, first posted on his blog, with the understanding that “it’s a draft”. We should all have such good first drafts!

Bethlehem

You come home to be counted but no room
is to be had at a cost you can afford,
having silenced the lathe and stilled the loom,
paying the hours with your heart toward
a vast accumulating sense of doom
that counts the certain end its own reward.
The journey stops, not in Jerusalem,
but backward, dirty, crowded Bethlehem.

Go into this unwholesome stable where,
before the beastly eye picks out its blank,
a stench of piss has stenciled in the air
muscular curve, bold stroke, animal flank;
hands, filling in detail of flesh, declare
the body a deposit and a bank,
care less what cock has shafted home what ass,
mad with desire and mad with disease.

The kings, they come with their gold offering,
to bless the body’s lust with frankincense,
and bitter myrrh the body’s lingering.
The shepherds are astonished by its presence.
And you, unkept, soon to be undone, sing
of the swift massacre of innocence,
sing of the body’s torture on the thorn,
keep singing of the place where love is born.

Stephen Philbrick: “Don’t Try So Hard”


A member of our local Buddhist meditation center shared this wonderful poem at the center’s winter solstice party. I wrote to Stephen Philbrick, who lives nearby in Cummington, and he’s kindly given me permission to reprint it below.

Don’t Try So Hard

It comes in a shiver sometimes,
Sometimes in a winter windowpane
Wild with the unseeable frozen there:
The shapes above clouds,
The score of wind and the words, too;
The plot of waves and the brain that
   lays and abandons them:
Don’t try so hard.

Sometimes it falls,
A flake at a time,
Into your life when you’re asleep.
Sometimes it comes as a winter blankness,
Waiting for storm, or ice, or thaw,
   or even wind.
And then the air by itself groans
And the trees speak out of themselves;
The swamp shudders and the woods come to.
Sometimes it comes when you least expect it;
And sometimes it doesn’t.
Quiet, still, no voice (not even small),
No whirlwind, no reply, no burning.
Just a bare winter bush.

The space between stars,
Where noise goes to die;
And the space between atoms,
Where the charges thin out:
These are places, too.
The moment in the movement of the soul
When it all seems to stop, seized up.
This is true, too. Ice is, also. And dormancy.
I don’t mean the stirring of seeds beneath
   the snow,
But the place between and the moment
   before.
And I don’t mean a lightning bolt,
But what it passes through.
I don’t mean a dream, but dumb sleep.
After the end and before the beginning
Is time, too.
Let it alone, don’t try so hard.
This is God, too,
All of you is.

****
Stephen Philbrick has been the minister of the
West Cummington Church for the past 15 years. Before this he raised
sheep in Cummington for many years. His books include: No Goodbye (The Smith); Up To The Elbow (Adastra Press); THREE (Adastra Press, 2003); and Backyard Lumberjack (Storey Publishing, 2006) a prose collection co-authored with his son, Frank.

Reiter’s Block Year in Review: 2009


My imaginary friends and I have had an eventful year. Some friendships were strained, many others proved more of a blessing than I’d ever imagined. Novel chapters got written, some published, and poetry did even better. My husband and I visited Chicago (AWP), New York City (friends, family and shopping), West Palm Beach (gay rights conference), and three agricultural fairs (we like cheese). My politics moved further to the left, dragging my theology along. Or was it the other way around?

Thanks for visiting Reiter’s Block. I look forward to continuing our conversation in 2010.  And now, the clips episode.

Biggest Accomplishment

SWALLOW. SWALLOW SWALLOW SWALLOW. Buy it now and the scary birdies won’t getcha.

Biggest Disappointment

You know who you are.

Guilty Pleasure

Facebook. Okay, so that’s tangentially related to my writing career. But…

Even Guiltier Pleasure

Farmville on Facebook. This game has no productive value whatsoever. The most I can say is that it’s easier on my wrist than computer solitaire.

Best Books Read in 2009

*Alex Haley, Roots

I thought I understood the story of slavery in this country, but I didn’t feel it in my heart till I read this saga of seven generations of an African-American family, beginning with Haley’s Gambian ancestor who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the 18th century. Haley’s fictionalized re-creation of their lives is rich with drama, humor, tragedy, political outrage, and love that defies the odds.

*Cheryl Diamond, Model

There’s more to this teen memoir than meets the eye. Beautiful, blonde Cheryl has a wise old head on her shoulders, which helps her survive encounters with all sorts of human predators as she tenaciously builds a career as a fashion model in New York City. She’s also a sharp, funny writer. Now, when I feel defeated by life’s setbacks, I often ask myself, “What would Cheryl do?”

*Adrian Desmond & James R. Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause

Two leading Darwin scholars wrote this thorough and engaging history of how Charles Darwin’s hatred of slavery impelled him to seek a common origin for the races. The book has a strong narrative line and a detailed analysis of how politics, religion, and science have been entwined at every step in the development of evolutionary theory.

*David G. Myers & Letha Dawson Scanzoni, What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage

A journalist and a sociologist make a concise and persuasive case that marriage is good for everyone; gays are born that way; and the Bible doesn’t have to be interpreted to condemn homosexuality. While their arguments won’t be news to followers of progressive and queer theology, this is the book I recommend first to anti-gay Christians because it’s written by two straight evangelicals.

*Sarah Schulman, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences

Original, hard-hitting new book from longtime AIDS activist and lesbian playwright casts a critical eye on the family dynamics of shunning and devaluing gay members, and how this becomes the template for the same behaviors in the wider society, as well as domestic abuse in gay relationships. Amazon reviewer C. Bard Cole writes, “…a tight and focused master work. Her approach to talking about the painful family dynamics in her own life is unlike anyone else’s, so unlike the calculated confessional approach of memoir and transgressive fiction that I hardly know how to describe it. It’s cool, intellectual, self-controlled — but perhaps like Perseus looking at the Gorgon only as a reflection in his shield.”

Favorite Blog Posts

“Blogging for Truth” Week: Writing the Truths of GLBT Lives

As Pontius Pilate famously asked, “What is truth?” Who gets to tell it, and about whom? The debate between affirming and non-affirming Christians is fundamentally about the relationship of truth to power. For that reason, it should concern all Christians, whether or not they have a personal stake in GLBT rights.

Liberal Autonomy or Christian Liberty

Original sin distinguishes the Christian picture of human nature from the liberal one. Privileging personal experience over text and tradition, a liberal might say “The truth is inside you.” I wouldn’t go that far. As a good postmodernist, I would say “You are inside you.” The right to stay grounded in our own experience should not be conditioned on the impossible burden of always “getting it right”. That’s another form of legalism.

I’m a Barbie Girl, in a Fallen World

When I’m with my Barbies, I can simply enjoy being a girl. I can pretend that I’m working on narrative structure by inventing elaborate storylines for them — TV show producer Barbie, transgender fashion designer Barbie, 12-step rehab Barbie, closeted evangelical gay teen Barbie, Korean radical feminist ex-stripper Barbie, and the rest. But the truth is, I just love clothes.

Happy 2010 from me and my muse…

Book Notes: The God That Failed


The God That Failed, a 1949 anthology edited by Richard Crossman, features essays by six great European and American writers on why they first believed in, then rejected, Communism. The contributors include British poet and critic Stephen Spender; African-American novelist Richard Wright; French symbolist writer and anticolonialist activist Andre Gide, a Nobel laureate; Louis Fischer, a foreign correspondent for the New York Post; Ignazio Silone, a novelist who fought in the anti-Fascist resistance in the 1930s and returned to his Christian roots after leaving Communism; and the well-known Hungarian-born journalist and science writer Arthur Koestler.

I picked up this little paperback at a used book stall as research for one of my novel characters, who’s a young left-wing activist. (With some difficulty, he’s going to teach my protagonist to care about something more than clothes and the boys who wear them.) But I soon realized that this book’s relevance went far beyond its specific political context.

Militarism, political and racial inequality, and the spiritual deadness of complacent bourgeois culture led all six of these men to seek a nobler way of living. Communism looked like Christianity without the baggage of the church–its complicity in the feudal structures of old, its distracting focus on otherworldly goals. The worldwide triumph of the classless society promised to overcome the nationalistic passions that had torn the West apart in World War I. The Communists envisioned a society where the poor would be fed, ethnic distinctions leveled, and swords beat into ploughshares.

The reality, of course, was quite different. The concentration of power in the Soviet bureaucracy led not to equality but to a new form of elitism coupled with hypocrisy. The same old political abuses were repeated in the name of revolution.

Ultimately, these six writers each discovered that artistic freedom and ideological purity don’t mix. Moreover, artistic freedom is not merely a personal luxury: the artist’s focus on the individual has a moral dimension, keeping us from dehumanizing groups of people who stand in the way of our utopian schemes. This, I think, is the book’s greatest lesson, applicable to religious as well as political ideologies.

I’ve had some frustrating conversations with fundamentalists who have decided a priori that human suffering is not a data point to be considered in evaluating their beliefs. They remind me of the Communists whom these six writers challenged regarding the Soviets’ human rights abuses. Either they denied that the torture and silencing of dissidents actually happened, or they argued that repression (always of other people!) in the present was necessary to bring about a future society where everyone would live better. This isn’t too different from the medieval Grand Inquisitors who burned heretics to save their souls–or today’s Christians who believe that shaming and disenfranchising homosexuals will turn them from a “lifestyle” that endangers their salvation. The end justifies the means…but somehow the end is hard to see.

In the end, these six authors found, the qualities needed for great art and a moral society are the same: truth-telling, humility, concern for each person’s unique experience, and a willingness to admit that human behavior is complex and mysterious.

For myself, I’d also add “shared control”: when I write my novel as a collaboration with my characters, it contains more life and truth than when I move them around like Stalin directing his troops. (Even God, in the Bible or the real world, seems to allow His protagonists a lot more leeway than do many authors of “Christian fiction”!)

Spender’s essay, the last in the collection, to my mind expresses these insights most eloquently. This passage follows his lament that under the Soviets, second-rate artists were put in charge of censoring all others, because the criterion for approval was political conformity rather than the quality of the work. Substitute “Biblical” or “religious” for “political” in this essay and you will understand the struggle of the contemporary Christian novelist. Boldface emphasis mine; page numbers refer to the 1949 paperback from Bantam Books:

I listened with disgust to the dogmatic crowing of inferior talents. There was something degrading about the assumption that a political theory of society could place him who held it in a position where he could reject the insights of genius, unless these proved to be, after all, applications of a political theory to aesthetic material.

I felt scarcely less revulsion for that extensive Marxist literary criticism which interprets literature as myths consciously or unconsciously invented by writers to serve the interests of some historically ascendant class. To my mind, although poets such as Dante and Shakespeare are certainly in a sense both men of their time and political thinkers, there is a transcendent aspect of their experience which takes them beyond human social interests altogether. Society may follow them into luminous revelations about the universal nature of life which are quite outside and beyond the preoccupations of any particular historical epoch, and in that sense society may be elevated by them; but their illuminations are not just the projected wishful thinkings of their society.

To me the beliefs of poets are sacred revelations, illustrations of a reality about the nature of life, which I may not share, but which I cannot and do not wish to explain away as “social phenomena.” If art teaches us anything, it is that man is not entirely imprisoned within his society. From art, society may even learn to some extent to escape from its own prison. (pp.243-44)

****

…Now the artist is simply the most highly developed individual consciousness within a society. He does not have an official generalized view of human needs and activities, but he does have a profound insight into the feelings and experiences, the state of happiness and unhappiness of individuals. To say that the artist is an individualist is not to say that he creates only out of himself only for himself. It is to say that he creates out of a level of his own experiences, which has profound connections with the experiences of many people on a level where they are not just expressions of social needs.

Literature and art are therefore a temoignage, a witnessing of the human condition within the particular circumstances of time and place. To make individual experience submit to the generalization of official information and observation, is to cut humanity off from a main means of becoming conscious of itself as a community of individuals existing together within many separate personal lives. It is difficult to believe that a central authority of the State which denies writers and artists the freedom to express their intuitions if these are contrary to the politics of the State has the vitality and moral force to give people happy lives. All it has is a machinery and an organization to take the place of living. To destroy the freedom of art is really a kind of madness, like destroying the freedom of the individual to have ears to hear sounds to which his mind is sensitive, and to replace them with microphones which are only tuned in to hear what the State directives wish him to hear, which are the sounds relayed by the State amplifiers. Yet the destruction of this freedom is justified by a slogan: that freedom is the recognition of necessity. The political freedom of necessity is the necessity of the State version of the needs of generalized, collectivized man. The freedom of art speaks for the individuality of each human being. Although art is not the same as politics, art is political in that it is forever widening our conception of human freedom, and this widening process alters our conception of life from generation to generation, and ultimately has an effect on the political aims of society. (pp.246-47)

The Church of Misfit Toys


This Christmas Eve, I’d like to share a great post from Richard Beck’s Experimental Theology blog. Beck, a research psychologist at Abilene Christian University, writes engagingly about how insights from the social sciences can inform theology and vice versa. In this entry from last December, he describes the gospel message at the heart of the classic Christmas TV special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

As you may recall, Rudolph has always been teased and excluded for being born different from the others. He and his pal Hermey, the elf who wants to be a dentist, go on a quest to find someplace they’ll fit in, and wind up on the Island of Misfit Toys:

…At this point in the show all the misfit themes are coming to a climax. We see misfits seeking community, we see empathy as one misfit identifies with another, and, finally, we see one misfit seeking to act as savior. A misfit to save the misfits. A misfit Messiah.

But the theology of Rudolph takes its most radical, surprising, and extreme turn when the personification of evil, The Abominable Snowman, comes back from death in a quirky resurrection event–Bumble’s Bounce!–as a peaceable creature who is also in need of loving community. Apparently, this “evil” creature is also a misfit. And the hint is that he’s “abominable” because he’s been marginalized and without community.

So, summarizing all this, I learned from Rudolph this important lesson about Christmas: Something about Christmas means misfits have a place, a community, a home. Or, rephrased, Christmas means that there are no more misfits.

In a more adult way, this theme was strikingly presented in this season’s opening episode of the FOX medical drama “House”. Watch it here.

Dr. Greg House (Hugh Laurie), a brilliant and antisocial man who specializes in diagnosing medical mysteries, is confined to a mental institution to cure his painkiller addiction and other emotional problems. Unable to tolerate not being in charge, he engages in a contest of wills with the hospital staff, trying to cause so much trouble that they’ll release him without making him do the work of getting well. At first he uses his diagnostic genius to play on each patient’s unique symptoms and set them off against each other. But eventually, this man who’s so afraid of his own emotions begins to care for his fellow inmates, and uses his psychological insight to forge them into a community of people who help one another.

Nearly every dilemma in my life comes down to epistemology: How do we know what we know? Which really means, whom can we trust? Not ourselves, not anyone else, if perfection is the criterion. I’ve recently lost faith in some people whom I used to regard as a pipeline to the divine. And what does that say about my own ability to discern God? When relationships founder, we often say “She’s not the person I thought she was”, or “I just didn’t understand my own feelings”. Too many of these breakpoints, in the past two years, left me feeling lost in a hall of mirrors.

So this episode of “House” was healing and inspiring for me, since it showed that God can be contained in the most broken vessels. Perhaps especially there. You don’t have to be right, or right in the head, to receive His miraculous love and reveal that love to others.

Come, Lord Jesus!

Too Little from Lambeth


Last week I encouraged readers of this blog to send a message to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, urging him to speak out publicly and forcefully against the genocidal “Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009” pending in Uganda. This week I received an elegantly worded email reply from Lambeth Palace press secretary Marie Papworth, which impressed me till I discovered it was a form letter.

Susan Russell, an Episcopal priest in Pasadena who blogs at An Inch at a Time, posted this statement to members of the Facebook group “Anglicans who want THIS statement from Canterbury”. It includes Ms. Papworth’s message, below.

“Do you hear what I hear?” isn’t just one of the Christmas carols echoing in the airwaves this week-before-Christmas. It is also the question I’m asking about the responses we’ve gotten from Lambeth Palace regarding the “disconnect” between the Archbishop of Canterbury’s readiness to issue a formal statement on the election of a bishop suffragan in Los Angeles and his reticence to “go and do likewise” on the draconian anti-gay legislation pending in Uganda.

Like many of you, I received a “boilerplate” response in an email from Marie Papworth in the Lambeth Palace office. (text posted below) If you “heard what I heard” in that response, you heard words like “unacceptable” and “deep concern.”

My question is: how deep does concern have to be before the Archbishop of Canterbury uses his moral authority to speak out on behalf of gay and lesbian Ugandans who cannot speak for themselves? How unacceptable does it have to get before he says so?

And to be clear: a comment in response to a question from a journalist does NOT an “official statement” make.

Do you hear what I hear? In the email from Lambeth Palace and in the deafening silence on this pressing human rights issue I hear that speaking out to protect gay and lesbian lives in Uganda is less important than speaking out to protect the Anglican Communion from a lesbian bishop.

If you hear what I hear, you hear that the leader of the Anglican Communion is more concerned about preserving institutional unity than he is protecting innocent Ugandans.

If you hear what I hear, then I invite you to do what I’m going to do:

Send another email.
Write another letter.
Post another blog.

This Facebook group has grown to ALMOST 5000 members — a truly awesome accomplishment. Let’s use the power of our collective voice to keep urging the Archbishop to use the power HE has as the moral leader of this worldwide Anglican family of ours to speak the truth of God’s inclusive and abundant love for ALL people.

Let us urge him to send a word of hope to LGBT Ugandans who “mourn in lonely exile” that the Emmanuel whose coming we prepare to celebrate in a few short days came not just for the Archbishop of Canterbury in his Lambeth Palace warm … but for those who shiver in the cold of dehumanizing homophobia.

O come, O come, Emmanuel!

=====

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 4:50 AM

Dear Canon Russell,

Thank you for your message and for taking the trouble to write about this deeply painful issue.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is very clear that the Private Member’s Bill being discussed in Uganda as drafted is entirely unacceptable from a pastoral, moral and legal point of view. It is a cause of deep concern, fear and, to many, outrage. The Archbishop has publicly stated that “the proposed legislation is of shocking severity and I can’t see how it can be supported by any Anglican who is committed to what the Communion has said in recent decades”.

For its part the Church of Uganda has clearly restated its opposition to the death penalty. As the Ugandan Church continues to formulate its position on the bill as a whole, the Archbishop has been working intensively behind the scenes (over the past weeks) to ensure that there is clarity on how the proposed bill is contrary to Anglican teaching.

Marie Papworth
Press Secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace, London, SE1 7JU

****

So, what more would we like the ABC to say? Not to be nit-picky here, but to me, the word “severity” implies a legitimate spectrum of punishments for homosexuality. Rather than challenging the whole concept of persecuting people for their sexual orientation, the ABC appears to limit himself to guiding Ugandans toward the moderate end of that spectrum. And we’re supposed to be grateful that the Church of Uganda is opposed to the death penalty? Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table (Matthew 15:27) but apparently now it’s enough that he doesn’t shoot the dog.

One could argue that ++Rowan is trying to be discreet in order to work diplomatically behind the scenes. If he openly allies himself with the inclusive wing of the church, the Ugandans will write him off as a homo-lovin’ liberal and he’ll lose the power to influence this legislation. (That day Herod and Pilate became friends…)

Problem is, I haven’t seen this approach accomplishing very much. Meanwhile, the ABC is failing in his primary responsibility to his own flock. GLBT Christians in the UK, when faced with gay-bashing, familial homophobia, and economic discrimination, hear the silence from Lambeth as a sign that their dignity and safety aren’t important to the church–and maybe not to God, either. Dr. Williams, your millstone is ready.

Saturday Advent Song: Johnny Cash, “The Man Comes Around”


Apocalyptic readings from the Book of Revelation and the Hebrew Prophets feature prominently in the lectionary for this season of Advent, which looks forward not only to our commemoration of Christ’s birth, but to his second coming. Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around”, the title song from his last (and perhaps greatest) album, weaves these Biblical images into a compelling ballad. The end times are a favorite subject in popular Southern Gospel music, but often handled with a peppy eagerness that I find unnerving even while I sing along to the catchy tunes. Not Cash’s version. It’s rough-hewn, grim, and thrilling.

And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder: One of the four beasts saying: “Come and see.” And I saw. And behold, a white horse.

There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names.
An’ he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won’t be treated all the same.
There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.

The hairs on your arm will stand up.
At the terror in each sip and in each sup.
For you partake of that last offered cup,
Or disappear into the potter’s ground.
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin’.
Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin’, voices cryin’.
Some are born an’ some are dyin’.
It’s Alpha’s and Omega’s Kingdom come.

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks.
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

Till Armageddon, no Shalam, no Shalom.
Then the father hen will call his chickens home.
The wise men will bow down before the throne.
And at his feet they’ll cast their golden crown.
When the man comes around.

Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still.
Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still.
Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still.
Listen to the words long written down,
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin’.
Multitudes are marchin’ to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin’, voices cryin’.
Some are born an’ some are dyin’.
It’s Alpha’s and Omega’s Kingdom come.

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks.
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

In measured hundredweight and penny pound.
When the man comes around.


And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts, And I looked and behold: a pale horse. And his name, that sat on him, was Death. And Hell followed with him.

(Lyrics courtesy of hit-country-music-lyrics.com)

Email Comes for the Archbishop


As of this writing, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has not spoken out against the anti-gay genocide that’s about to be approved by the Ugandan legislature. US-based conservative Christian groups have been instrumental in bringing this legislation to the floor. Use this web form to send him a message. Here’s my letter:

Your Grace,

I am writing to ask you to speak out against the anti-gay genocidal legislation pending in Uganda. People of good faith can disagree about what the Bible says about homosexuality, but persecution is clearly not the gospel way. Jesus invited people to transform their lives by offering them love, not violence. Nothing could be further from “family values” than coercing family members to turn in their gay relatives to the police. Nothing could be less in keeping with the spirit of Jesus, the great healer, than interfering with HIV/AIDS care and education. The world is looking to us to show that Christianity is about love, not hate. For every misled Christian we appease in Uganda, we lose thousands in the West who see the church keeping silent before another holocaust. I pray that you will do the right thing.

Sincerely,
Jendi Reiter
Member of the Episcopal Church USA


The word is that the ABC pays more attention to snail-mail than email, so consider following up with a letter. First-class mail from the US to the UK is 98 cents. The address:

Lambeth Palace
Lambeth Palace Road
London
SE1 7JU
UK


Meanwhile, evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren has issued a statement condemning the legislation. Watch it on YouTube. It’s somewhat self-justifying and not exactly gay-friendly, but hopefully it will influence the right people.

Rachel Maddow on Ex-Gay Leaders’ Role in Uganda Persecution


MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow ran a segment Dec. 7 on “ex-gay therapist” Richard Cohen and how his ideas, largely discredited in the US, have found new life as the inspiration for the genocidal legislation pending in Uganda. Be prepared for a Norman Bates moment when Cohen, demonstrating a “healthy” release of the childhood emotions that lead to homosexuality, takes a tennis racket to a pillow representing his mother. Darn it, Mrs. C., none of this would’ve happened if you’d signed him up for peewee football like a normal boy.

“I’m not gay. God doesn’t make gay people,” says a woman in the indie film “Chasing the Devil: Inside the Ex-Gay Movement”, which Maddow mentioned in her news segment. Watch the trailer here. The film is available for purchase on their website as a DVD or download.

In a longer follow-up report today (Dec. 8) Maddow interviewed Salon.com’s Mark Benjamin about his 2005 undercover investigation of the ex-gay movement:



Maddow then put Richard Cohen himself in the hot seat. In this intense 18-minute interview, she slices right through his rhetoric of “compassion” by tripping him up with hateful quotes from his own writings:

Meanwhile, CNN.com has also picked up the Uganda story. In an article today, correspondent Saeed Ahmed writes:

…The Anti-Homosexuality Bill features several provisions that human rights groups say would spur a witch hunt of homosexuals in the country:

• Gays and lesbians convicted of having gay sex would be sentenced, at minimum, to life in prison

• People who test positive for HIV may be executed

• Homosexuals who have sex with a minor, or engage in homosexual sex more than once, may also receive the death penalty

• The bill forbids the “promotion of homosexuality,” which in effect bans organizations working in HIV and AIDS prevention

• Anyone who knows of homosexual activity taking place but does not report it would risk up to three years in prison

“Who will go to HIV testing if he knows that he will suffer the death sentence?” Elizabeth Mataka, the U.N. Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa, told reporters last week. “The law will drive them away from seeking counseling and testing services.”

Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda under colonial-era laws. But the bill, introduced in October, is intended to put more teeth into prosecuting violators.

It applies even to Ugandans participating in same-sex acts in countries where such behavior is legal.

“They are supposed to be brought back to Uganda and convicted here. The government is putting homosexuality on the level of treason,” Mugisha said.

Lawmakers have indicated that they will pass the bill before year’s end.

It has the blessing of many religious leaders — Muslim and Christian — in a country where a July poll found 95 percent opposed to legalizing homosexuality.

The Rev. Esau Omara, a senior church leader, said over the weekend that any lawmaker opposing the bill will pay for it during the next election, according to local newspaper reports.

And a leading Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje, has called for gays to be rounded up and banished to an island until they die.

Several media outlets also have inflamed sentiments in recent months by publicly pointing out gays and lesbians.

In April, the Observer newspaper published tips to help readers spot homosexuals. And over the summer, the Red Pepper tabloid outed 45 gays and lesbians.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has not publicly stated his position on the bill, but last month blamed foreign influence in promoting and funding homosexuality.

Museveni’s nativist sentiment is ironic since foreign influence, in the person of US evangelicals and their well-funded missionary organizations, has actually been instrumental in stirring up Ugandans’ homophobia. Our own Archbishop of Canterbury has thus far been silent on the legislation, though he did take time out from ironing his purple dress to slam the Diocese of L.A. for electing Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool, a (gasp!) out lesbian, as Suffragan Bishop.

 

Report from the Soulforce Anti-Heterosexism Conference, Part 4 (and the Last)


Decisions, decisions…

We return to our regularly scheduled programming today with the final installment of notes from the Soulforce Anti-Heterosexism Conference, which took place Nov. 20-22 in West Palm Beach. Previous entries are available here, here, and here.

Sunday morning’s rousing keynote speech, “Debunking the Myth of Gender Polarity”, by Rev. Deborah L. Johnson of Inner Light Ministries, had the flavor of a gospel worship service, combined with a radical call to envision the liberation of all human beings from false gender stereotypes. We began with Jackie Merritt and Risa Gibbs, two-thirds of the blues trio MSG, performing their satirical song “Mean Church People”. (Watch this clip on YouTube.)

Rev. Deborah’s main message was that our civil rights struggle is never just for ourselves alone. Members of the dominant group also suffer when their identity is built on lies and constricting stereotypes. To succeed, we must articulate a positive vision that shows how life will be better for all people when GLBT people have full equality. She also called for the GLBT rights movement to put the spirituality back into their dialogue. Dignity comes from God, not the state. “You’re not equal when you get the civil rights. You get the civil rights because you declare your equality beforehand…because you are equal under the eyes of God!”

She felt that the GLBT community gets sidetracked by infighting or reaction against oppressive measures, because people in oppressed groups will take out their internalized pain on one another. Instead, they need to spend more time creating a picture of their ideal world. The burden of proof is on the people who want change. Right-wingers are very good at painting a picture of the so-called horrors that would ensue if gays were equal.

No movement for minority rights can prevail without allies from the majority group. The majority has built its identity on a hierarchy that we’re trying to overturn. We have to understand their fear that there’s no good place for them in our new world. “Equality displaces the oppressor.” In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the revolutionary part was his positive vision of what black equality would mean for white people–a little white child and a little black child walking hand in hand. Feminism had to help men understand how they could continue to play a valuable role in the family and society without being patriarchal.

Every “-ism” (racism, sexism, heterosexism) is rooted in the idea of an immutable, unequal binary. Example: look how many people still see Obama as a “black man” first, and only secondarily as a brilliant lawyer, politician, president, etc. A prejudice doesn’t become a full-blown “-ism” till it’s institutionalized. It becomes constantly interwoven into social institutions and attitudes till it’s invisible to members of the dominant group. The world is so much designed for them that they don’t even notice their privileges. Straights don’t feel defined by straightness whereas gays have to think about their sexual orientation all the time. White people don’t think they have a race.

The beginning of liberation is to show that these organizing binaries are fake and based on political inequalities, not immutable natural laws. How did Obama get to be a “black man” when he’s half white? It’s because of how race was constructed in the 1600’s to justify slavery. Any time something is mixed in, you stop being white. Similarly, heterosexuality becomes the “pure” category and then “queer” becomes like “black”, a catch-all of anything tainted by less than pure straightness. Like race, sexual orientation and gender are really a spectrum, not a binary.

When Genesis says humanity was “created male and female”, we can read this to mean that each person contains both genders. The characteristics that make up racial differences represent less than 1/1000 of 1% of our DNA. Gender differences are just as tiny. Our job is to redefine what it means to be man or woman so we are not two halves looking for the whole, but can be balanced within ourselves and draw on the best of each gender within ourselves instead of looking for the other to complete us.

Homophobia is so powerful because people are heavily invested in traditional gender roles and women’s inferiority. The one thing GLBT people have in common is their challenge to gender nonconformity. Rev. Deborah won’t settle for gay marriage–she wants “gender revolution!”

Watch a video of Rev. Deborah speaking out against California’s Proposition 8 last year:

During our last round of workshops, I attended Candace Chellew-Hodge’s discussion based on her book Bulletproof Faith, while my husband sat in on Timothy Palmer’s workshop on integrating sexuality and spirituality. Candace’s session ended earlier, so I dropped in at the end of this workshop, just in time to hear a few of the men debating whether sex in a committed relationship should be considered a higher spiritual path than casual sex. The group didn’t have the time, nor perhaps the willpower, to pursue this controversial issue further.

I’m currently reading Candace’s book, which I’ll be reviewing here at greater length, so these notes on her workshop will be brief. With modesty and wit, she shared ways to develop spiritual centeredness so that we don’t become wounded or provoked into unloving behavior by religion-based attacks. I appreciated her remarks on “the gift of the enemy”. Our opponents reveal the weak spots in our psychic armor. Responding to their attacks can hone our own arguments for our position. When we can be grateful for what they’ve taught us, we can begin to feel compassion for them. At the same time, this doesn’t mean that we them get away with abuse–only that we respect their dignity and don’t fight dirty. We should also give ourselves permission to retreat from pointless conflicts where the other person isn’t going to give our views a good-faith hearing. We don’t need to justify ourselves because we are justified by God’s infinite and universal love.

Finally, conference coordinators Drs. Marsha McDonough and Paul Dodd reconvened us for a wrap-up discussion about our impressions of the weekend and suggestions for the next event. As I recall, we spent awhile talking about whether the “anti-heterosexism” title was too negative, academic-sounding, or obscure, but didn’t come up with an alternative. The general mood was one of appreciation for the fellowship we’d developed and a desire to continue this work in our own communities. Along with Marsha and Paul, Soulforce conference manager and interim executive director Bill Carpenter deserves a shout-out for keeping us running smoothly. I looked forward to his cheery and energetic housekeeping announcements. Bill will be posting conferen
ce videos soon.

Thanks to all of you for a loving, inspiring, and spiritually nurturing weekend!