Sunshine Jeremiah Wolfe - Sermon: Encircling Love

The body as home.  In recent years, a lot of time and energy has been put into liberation for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.  This past fall Cleveland joined Salt Lake City, Dallas, and San Francisco in affirming the rights of lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people to housing and employment.  A constant debate goes on about same sex marriage and the rights of gays in the military.  Unitarian Universalists have joined the conversation with our Standing on the Side of Love campaign.  All of this is important and I am glad we are doing this good and important work.  However, I think we forget that beyond these positive affirmations and efforts towards equal treatment under the law, we forget the costs that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people experience with their own bodies.  Today I want to talk about something that is woven into these political and theological discussions in a more explicit way.  I want to talk about the experiences of violence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people and the many ways in which “stolen bodies have been reclaimed.”

Now, before I go further, I want to talk about the word queer.  I get in trouble in the Midwest sometimes when I use this word which was a little weird because in the Bay Area in California it is a word that GLBT folks use to describe themselves regularly.  It is a reclaimed word that is meant to embrace difference.  In the academy, the word queer refers to ideas and philosophies that counter heteronormative ideas and philosophies.  Heteronormative refers to the idea that there are clear roles of masculine and feminine and that a proper relationship is between a masculine and feminine person.  So that, even in a same sex relationship, there could be heteronormative behavior where one person is more masculine and one more feminine with clearly defined roles for each.  A queer relationship, for example, could mean that there are two butch identified lesbians in a long term committed relationship.  It is a reclaimed word and that is why I use the word queer and am comfortable doing so.

So, as I was saying, it is important to focus on the ways in which “stolen bodies have been reclaimed.”  One of these key ways is to only tell part of the stories of our lives or to mythologize our lives through popular media and news reporting.  GLBTQ people stand on the double edge sword between being silenced or becoming the tragic hero. 

We are silenced by stories that attempt to address the fact that we are normal and just like everyone else while ignoring the real violence, harassment, and threats that we receive regularly for being out of the closet.  We are stereotyped with humor and caricatured in shows like “Will and Grace” in which the everyday experiences of LGBTQ people are hidden.  Hidden are the experiences of harassment, prejudice, and judgment that we face in employment, at the grocery store, and most especially with many of our families.

            When stories of violence are shared, we are portrayed as the tragic hero.  For the past four years, I have attended a transgender and queer performance festival called “Fresh Meat” in San Francisco.  In one of her performances, Ryka Aoki de la Cruz shares her rage the fact that the tranny always dies in the story (tranny is one way some of us who are transgender say transgender).  She describes her frustration with the musical Rent.  “Let me guess, the tranny dies at the end, right?” she yells.  Too often, the benevolent queer person is killed so that others may learn and grow at their expense.  Too often the experiences of violence are silenced or turned into the notion of the tragic hero.

We need to change the story!!!  What happens when we tell the story as something that is a normal and every day experience that is not moved into tragic hero?  This is the importance of encircling love- the idea that we can surround a community with loving deeds and words and presence.  Encircling love is a community act engaged by everyone queer and straight.  It asks that we bear witness and that we react as communities with love and connection.  Rather than hiding the real experiences of GLBTQ people or turning their violent stories into mythical tragedies, we hold them in love.  We commit our churches to a love that heals- a love that binds.

We need to change the story, but as Laura Hershey writes:

Those with power can afford

to tell their story

or not.

Those without power

risk everything to tell their story

and must.[1]

            We risk a lot in speaking our story.  I am very out about who I am and I know this is dangerous.  I don’t know how people take what I say or who I am.  I could walk out of this church today and have someone confront me who is frightened by who I am.  It is important to tell these stories and churches have a great power to offer support and guidance in dangerous times.  I want to share with you some stories in which the outcome was not silencing or tragic heroes, but rather a community encircled with love and grace.

In 2009, more than 120 transgender people were reported as murdered- this is more than double the previous year.  Too often, we do not know the stories of how these people died.  On July 20^th, 2007, transwoman Victoria Aralleno was killed in a detention center for “illegal” immigrants.  Despite the fact they knew she was HIV positive, she was told that aspirin was all that she needed?  She was encircled with love at the end of her life and action was taken.  The one hundred men in the same cell with her shouted “hospital” until the authorities took her to the hospital where she ultimately died.  Her family spoke out publicly for their love her and for action to be taken.  Activists took action and insisted that the immigration personnel be held accountable and that laws be changed.  Her stolen body was reclaimed with the love of commitment and action of all of these people.

Now, it is fine to talk about encircling love in specific cases, but what about epidemics of violence within communities?  According to the Massachusetts 2006 Youth Risk Survey, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.   In addition, the San Francisco State University Chavez Center Institute has found that LGBTQ youth who come from a rejecting family are up to nine times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.  40% of homeless youth are GLBTQ often as a result of being kicked out of their homes.  How do we create a community of love around the inherent violence in this reality?

I think we need to start with our families, our children, and our churches.  I have been invited many times to speak on a panel of queer people at the Our Whole Lives comprehensive sexuality curriculum created jointly by the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association.  At one of these panels for junior high youth, a participant asked what the GLBTQ Liberation Movement was.  Not an easy question. 

In my answer to this question, I explained that a core part of GLBTQ liberation is freedom from violence and that youth had a unique opportunity to counter violence experienced by GLBTQ youth.  Every time someone says “that is so gay” or calls another person a sissy, it is important to speak up and to not use the words yourself.  For every time such words or attitudes are said, there is a GLBTQ youth who goes deeper into the closet.  Hearing so frequently that they are not welcome, they may decide that there is no place for them in the world and leave it.  It is important for families to know what messages giving their children and to speak up against negative words and deeds towards GLBTQ folks.  Speaking with love, instead, and offering loving kindness shifts the everyday experiences of GLBTQ youth who may not have come out of the closet.

In my own life, it took twenty seven years before I found the loving communities that would support me in embracing my life.  As a child, I liked dolls and cars; to dress up and to chop wood.  My Barbie would ride around in the cars on my train set.  This was fine by my parents.  My mother is a feminist who has no problem wearing combat boots with a skirt.  However, the message was clearly that I could bend the gender rules as long as I was a straight “girl.”

I felt lost and unaccepted.  In college, I would fall in love with the most amazing woman only to break her heart because I could not accept who I was- I could not even describe who I was.  My family could not accept who I was either.  I felt guilty and lost and turned to alcohol and drugs to cope.  Therapy helped me learn to cope, but was not enough to help me understand who I was or to come out.

It was my church and seminary that gave me the encircling love of community to understand who I am and to come out.  Attending the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, I participated in the Adult Our Whole Lives curriculum.  A guest speaker who was a sexologist asked us to stand at one end of the room if we were men, the other if we were women, and in the middle if we were gender neutral.  Gender neutral?  I was both scared and excited.  It was the first time I had heard anything that described who I was.

It would be at Starr King School for the ministry, where I was one of four genderqueer and transgender students in a school with transgender bathroom signs that I would officially come out and feel strong enough to ask the world around me to use the gender neutral pronouns.  I was literally loved and respected into health by the people in my church and seminary.

This is encircling love at its best- a love that acts as a protective tapestry beginning with one person and then a community shrouding the world.  It begins in places like this church.  Today, you invited guests and we have people from the Toledo area present.  This open invitation creates the possibility for love to spread further and deeper.

Religious people have had quite a long history of encircling love in GLBTQ liberation.  Overshadowed by fundamentalist Christian people, the story of religious community has been, to some degree, lost.  It is in the 1950s that we see encircling love in religious leaders.  Put simply, ministers begin to talk about the fact that they cannot stomach telling gays and lesbians that they are going to hell when gay and lesbian parishioners share stories of pain and fear.  Writing in 1951 in the journal Pastoral Psychology, George Henry, M.D. comments, “We have no assurance that the homosexual has committed the unpardonable sin.  We have strong scriptural warrant that he has as much right as any other sinner to approach the Throne of Grace for the absolution and remission of his sins...  The minister’s position should be one of understanding and of promise that there is a place for him in the Kingdom of God.  The minister is under a moral obligation to be considerate of him as he is of any penitent.  To be an effective counselor the minister must gain enough insight into his own situation to overcome the homosexual’s fear of ministerial condemnation.”

What can we do as religious people in this community?  What do we do for teens who are considering ending their lives?  What do we do for senior citizens who are separated from their partners later in life?  What do we do to support GLBTQ people who experience harassment, theft, property damage to their home or car, and/or physical violence?  We provide a community of loving support for GLBTQ people.  So, if encircling people with love is a key act, how do we do it?

Many of our churches have done quite a lot to support and welcome both the queer people in our churches and the queer people in our communities.  This has included education, social and spiritual groups for both allies and GLBTQ people, and social action efforts including our Standing on the Side of Love Campaign.  This is a great beginning, but we can always do more.

If we truly want to create communities that actively encircle people with love we need to offer effective pastoral care and counseling with keen awareness of the poor treatment GLBTQ seniors often receive in nursing facilities, harassment and violence that GLBTQ children and teens experience, and even fear of damnation or of family judgment.  Also, offering rituals for major life transitions unique to queer people can do a lot to lend support.

We can announce far and wide that GLBTQ people can come to our churches and find safe space.  In times of crisis, we are here to provide resources, referrals, and a space to speak about what is happening.  Isolation is common amongst queer communities and knowing there is a place to go matters.  We can build bridges to and with advocacy and support organization within the GLBTQ community so that when someone comes are way, we know where to send them.

Encircling love begins here and now with the people in this room.  It is this church and the people here that can help create the love that we all need.  That love reclaims the stolen bodies and protects the ones here and now.

May this church and the Toledo region encircle those who experience violence on a daily or near daily basis from racism, classism, sexism, ageism, and ableism.  May your love encircle lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.  Take a moment to look at one another.  This is your beloved community.  Your surrounding by the love of friends and strangers.  May that love connect from one person to another like a web over the entire globe.  May those of us who experience violence and suffering because of the bodies that are our homes find health, support, healing, and wholeness.  Go in peace, go in grace, go in love.  Amen, amin, blessed be, ashe, aho.