A decade ago, while I was serving another UU congregation in this area, I had an experience that changed forever my perspective on how religion treats the issue of homosexuality. We were a small congregation, struggling to find adequate worship space that we could afford. There was a building - an old downtown church whose congregation had moved out to larger space in the suburbs - that was available for rent. But we couldn't afford the full rent and didn't need the whole big building. So we entered into conversation with another small congregation about sharing the building. Their minister and board met with me and our board, and together we toured the space, noting the places where each of us could have a sanctuary, office space, and classrooms. Then, at my fellow minister's request, we sat down to talk about possible problems. He told us that he didn't know much about Unitarian Universalism, so he had looked it up in the encyclopedia. His reading there led to questions.
Were we Christians? I gave him the quick history, and told him that though we didn't profess Christ as Lord and Savior, we valued the teachings of Jesus, as we valued the teachings of other religious geniuses. He nodded. "We can live with that." Other questions followed. We were doing OK. Then came the deal breaker. "What about homosexuality?" I told him we believed that all people were children of God, and that we celebrated the diversity of ways in which we had been created. We supported any intimate relationship that was built on love, mutual respect, and a sense of responsibility for self and other. His face fell, as did those of the board members sitting around the table with us. "Oh, that just won't work," he said. "I couldn't risk having my people walk by your sanctuary on Sunday and overhear you condoning something that the Bible clearly says is a sin and abomination.
At that point, steam was coming out of my ears. The two board members who had accompanied me on this tour stood simultaneously, and one of them said, "This meeting is over. Let's go." I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay and argue with this minister of the gospel. I had a whole conversation going on inside my head, and it wasn't pretty. But I followed the lead of my board members, one of whom told me afterwards that he had envisioned dragging me out, kicking and screaming. But we simply walked out. The deal was not done!
Here's what I would have said to that man if I had stayed. "What kind of people have you got, that you cannot afford to let them catch even a whiff - a fragment of a thought - that differs from what you tell them? Maybe among those people who are so at risk there is a young man, a 16 year old, who knows in his heart and has known for years that he is made to love another man. And he is in so much pain, and so afraid, that if he follows his heart he will be rejected by his family, shunned by his religious community, and condemned to hell by his God. Maybe if he overheard me, he might realize that there is more than one faithful way to understand himself. Perhaps instead of acting on his despair (because among adolescents, the highest suicide rate is for gay and lesbian teens) he might find a way to become the person he is clearly meant to be, fully human and fully alive in his ability to love and be loved. What a frightening and risky scenario!
Or maybe it would be the two ladies - what you probably think of as the two spinster ladies - who have been room-mates all their adult life, for economic reasons, of course. These two women, who have loved each other faithfully and monogamously, who have brought home made cookies and cakes to every wedding reception and every wedding anniversary party your church has celebrated, who have smiled and clapped and cheered every successful marriage. And who have spent all their emotional and spiritual resources keeping the secret of their own blessed and wonderful love for each other, because they too feared losing their community of faith and being condemned by their God. How terrible it would be if they were to walk by and discover that there is another way - a church that would welcome and celebrate their loving relationship, a God who wants them to live out their God-given ability to be intimate. Pretty scary!
But, my friend and colleague, there is an even scarier scenario. What would happen, I shudder to think, if some of MY people walked by your sanctuary on Sunday morning and overheard you preaching your message? My people, Unitarian Universalists, believe in speaking the truth in love. Perhaps they would engage in a quiet guerilla action, leaving pamphlets about and subtly letting people know that if they want to come out, they can come on in to our half of the building. Or maybe better than pamphlets would be colorful Post-It notes with fragments of poetry on them. Like this from Alice Walker: "Love is not concerned with whom you pray or where you slept the night you ran away from home. Love is concerned that the beating of your heart should kill no one." Or this snippet from Prayer For Revolutionary Love by Denise Levertov: "That no one try to put Eros in bondage. But that no one put a cudgel in the hands of Eros." Or the opening lines of Marge Piercy's To Have Without Holding: "Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors opening on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open . . . "
But some of my people might be motivated by our history and our principles to speak truth to power. They might speak out and call that message of condemnation what it is: The Great Lie. The Great Lie (all caps). Feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether coined the phrase to refer to a theme that runs through all the major religions of the world, a theme that she and we believe is a corruption of the message of true faith. The Great Lie is that God ordains oppression.
The Great Lie has been used by men for thousands of years to rationalize the subjection of women. It was used by good Christians in this country who owned slaves - not only to justify the economic system itself, but to justify the inherent physical, psychological and spiritual cruelty of that system. It was used by Europeans in the age of Discovery to justify labeling indigenous peoples in the so-called New World as heathens, unworthy of respect or even life. And now it is being used by the Radical Religious Right to justify codifying discrimination against gays and lesbians.
Now I know that a lot of the backlash to the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision comes from fear. Fear that change means that we, those of us who are in the majority, who are considered the 'norm', may lose what we have. And fear, when left unaddressed and unacknowledged, breeds hate. Some of the hate out there around this subject is very, very scary. And that is why I am so dismayed that President Bush has taken what appears to me to be a craven political step in calling for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage. The leader of the free world has basically said, "Yes, you who are afraid, there is something to be afraid of. In fact the something is so threatening that we have to bring out the biggest gun in the arsenal of democracy - the constitution itself." I am afraid. I am afraid that Mr. Bush has put the cudgel firmly in the hands of Eros, and that his words and actions will encourage those who are most afraid to act out of their fear - with acts of hatred and violence.
I have to admit that I am more than dismayed. I am angry, very angry. I usually try to leave partisan politics out of the pulpit. I don't endorse candidates, I simply urge you all to vote. But I truly believe, as a minister and not as a citizen, that the words of the president this week were irresponsible. His position was articulated for carefully calculated political gain - some have called this the weapon of mass distraction. His traditional political base is somewhat unhappy with the deficit, with joblessness, with the way things are going in Iraq. So, let's refocus the debate on something else, something that touches people in deep and painful and scary places. And let's use that for political gain, without really thinking about the costs. Like many decisions made for craven political gain, the costs may be enormous. People suffer. People die. And if you don't think that lives are at stake in this case, let me direct you to the web site of the Westboro Baptist Church. The good Christians of Westboro have announced that they will be picketing 6 churches in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, next month. One of them, I'm proud to say, is our UU church. But according to their web site, these targets of Westboro's ire are not really churches, they are, and I quote, " . . . sodomite whorehouses masquerading as churches."
If you have a pen or pencil you might want to jot down the URL for this site. But no, you can probably remember it pretty easily. It is http://www.godhatesfags.com/. Yes. And when you get to their site, the first thing you will see, in big bold blue letters, is this 'gospel' message, and again I am quoting directly. "Sodomy is an abominable sin, worthy of death." This is scary stuff, and I'm afraid that throwing fuel on the flames of fear will lead to violence. So it is our job, my friends, to counter the Great Lie, not with anger or hatred, but with the Great Work that Mary Caroline Richards invoked in our call to worship this morning: the Great Work of incarnating a bold and courageous love in our nation.
Rev. Meg Riley, who is the Director of the UUA Washington Office, sent out some advice to local UU ministers this week. She said that she has consulted with Evan Wolfson, Director of Freedom to Marry. I quote from her message: "He says there are about a third of Americans firmly for the idea of gay marriage, a third firmly against, and the middle truly trying to understand a fairly new concept to them. Depending on the context of thinking about it, their opinions change often. Evan says that obviously our task is to move this center group. All of the focus groups that have been done show that two things clearly move people towards support for gay marriage, and two things move them away from it. Moving folks TOWARDS supporting gay marriage are a) the stories of what marriage means for ordinary couples (taking out the garbage, raising kids, caring for sick parents--the things people recognize as 'marriage') and b) learning of ways that current law prevents people from living these simple married lives (e.g., not being legally related to in-laws, not getting to the hospital bed of a partner) that are therefore discriminatory. Moving them AWAY from supporting gay marriage are a) the implication that by not supporting this fully, they are homophobic and bigoted and b) the sense that this whole conversation is being engineered by 'activists' rather than by ordinary people."
So, ordinary people, you have your work cut out for you. Instead of coming across with anger and condemnation, tempting as that may be, we need to learn to talk about this subject from our hearts. Remember when you first encountered the homophobia in your own mind and heart, planted there simply by living in this culture? Remember the work you did, the work we did together in the Welcoming Congregation program? We did that work, successfully, because we created for ourselves an atmosphere of acceptance and open-mindedness that allowed for growth and transformation. We agreed that we would go as slowly as we needed to, that we would answer every question, address every concern, as often and for as long as it took.
I have told you that I am angry, and afraid. And yet I know that I cannot speak or act out of that anger, or that fear. My own personal challenge is to channel the anger and fear into the Great Work of incarnating love. I started this sermon with a story - about another time when I was also angry and afraid. The truth is, that story could just as easily have ended in a shouting match, an ugly confrontation that we all would have regretted later. My board members could have dragged me away kicking and screaming. That would have felt good for about 15 minutes. But their matter of fact rejection of the message of fear and hate was the right one. We simply will not practice, nor tolerate the practice, of oppression. We will not allow any religion or spokesperson for religion to get away with the Great Lie. We will say, as often as we have to, "We do not believe that God ordains oppression."
I believe that we are the people called to the forefront of this debate. We are called to speak the truth in love, to struggle mightily with our own anger and fear so that we can preach, and practice the Great Work of radical and inclusive love. Not just within the safe walls of this sanctuary, but in the larger community. I don't have answers, but I have faith. Faith that together we can do this Great Work. Love and peace are indeed possibilities that live within us. Let's talk together about how to make them concrete, right now.