Methodists Vote to Dehumanize Members

If you're straight, you can vote on the issue and go home to your legally sanctioned family and forget about it. For me, it has profound, life-altering consequences. 

Excuse me if I seem strident or overly emotional about this subject. It's just that ...

It is humiliating and degrading when other people get to vote on your value as a person.  Whether in the form of civil rights,  or in the case of this week's vote in the United Methodist Church to double down on the ban against LGBTQ clergy and marriage, it is insulting to reduce human beings to an issue that can just be dismissed by the majority.

Who is the United Methodist Church to take a vote, a popularity poll, about whether fellow human beings, made in God's image, are worthy of full participation in the community of faith?

I've experienced this many times and I'm sick of it. Even though I'm not Methodist, I have history with that denomination. I learned a lot about social justice and ecumenism working in campus ministry at Nebraska Wesleyan University back in the 80s. Under the sponsorship of the UMC chaplain, I started, along with a lesbian friend,  the very first gay and lesbian group on campus (we weren't yet fully enlightened about bi and trans sisters and brothers at the time). The excitement was dampened when the chaplain was fired, in part, because of it.

In 1991, I left the Presbyterian Church USA because a majority voted for the umpteenth time to deny full membership to LGBTQ people.  No matter how big my theological school scholarship was, no matter how many positions I held, or how much ministry I was involved in, I couldn't be ordained simply because of my sexual orientation. You bet I took it personally.

I took it personally when in 1992, a majority of Coloradoans voted to suspend all civil rights protections for LGBTQ people.

I take it personally when I see protesters outside a public event holding signs that say, "God hates fags."

I take it personally when bakery owners refuse to serve gay customers. It's not some far away legal question when because my personal civil rights interfere with the comfort and self-righteousness of some religious fundamentalist, the matter has to go to the Supreme Court.

I take it personally because it is personal for me. LGBTQ equality in church and society are not some abstract issue. My humanity cannot be reduced to an academic debate over carefully selected scripture passages taken out of the context in which they originated thousands of years ago. I cannot respectfully listen to the opinion of the "other side" because they are wrong and they are trying oppress me.

If you're straight, you can vote on the issue and go home to your legally sanctioned family and forget about it. When the vote is about you, it has profound, life-altering consequences.

So excuse me if I seem defensive. Pardon me if my anger seems a little out of proportion. Forgive me if my existence makes you uncomfortable. It's because once again, I have to stand up and defend my value as a person.

Footnote: I'm happy to say that the Presbyterian Church USA has since reversed its position and now ordains and marries LGBT people. Amendment 2, the antigay law Colorado voted for, was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Reasonable Response to Restroom Hysteria

Some of those nutty right-wingers are in a huge tizzy about the possibility of sharing public restrooms with people of a different gender. In some places, they are actually exploiting this fear to pass laws which blatantly discriminate against transgendered, as well as lesbian, gay, and bisexual citizens.

Consider this: a regular looking, clean cut sort of person with, say, a trim beard, perhaps wearing shorts revealing muscular hairy legs, and a t-shirt covering a well proportioned torso with just a little chest hair coming out of the top -- I'm sorry, what were we talking about? I kind of got caught up in an attractive image ... Anyway, he finds himself in need of a rest room. If anyone were to look at his birth certificate, which no one does by the way, they would see that he happens to have been recorded as female in his first minutes of life. But as a result of years of struggle to reconcile a gender he believes himself to be, to one assigned to him by society because of the genitals he was born with - a struggle that is frankly none of our business to judge or comment upon, by the way - he now appears to be and functions as the gender he most closely identifies with. According to new laws in North Carolina and Mississippi and probably many other places (I've lost track), no matter how he sees himself, and no matter how much personal progress he has been able to make, this man is required by law to use the women's restroom.

In fact, if this guy walked into a men's room to privately relieve himself, no one would notice and nothing unusual would happen. But can you imagine the reaction if this hairy beast walked into a crowded women's room in Mississippi? Any proper southern lady would be mighty scandalized.

But I'd like to take a step back and ask something I've always wondered. Why can't we all just share the same restrooms? What is each half of the population hiding from the other, exactly?  Is it that women's rooms are so much nicer than men's? I've heard that's the case. That they have like, nice furniture and stuff. Is it true?

We all know what happens in restrooms, whether men's or women's. Generally speaking, people go in there to void their bladders and bowels. These are necessary bodily functions required by every human being on Earth. There is really no difference between the waste produced by males and the waste produced by females. It looks and smells about the same. These are not particularly nice smells, and most of us go out of our way NOT to encounter them, regardless of the gender of the person who produced them.

For that matter, we also don't tend to watch what other people are doing in the restroom. It would be considered bad manners. And just to avoid accidental lookage, there are generally private stalls or dividers between receptacles.

According to the logic of the wacko reactionaries trying to reinforce segregation of the restrooms, I, as a gay man, should not be allowed to use public men's rooms lest I succumb to my animal nature and leer at other facility users. Just to be clear, having used men's rooms for many decades, I can assure you that the only animal instinct I have in there is to GO. I usually just do my business, wash my hands, and get out as quickly as possible. For the record, I'm much more likely to check out other guys on the street than in the loo.

Back in the 80s when I was doing time with the Presbyterian Church, I was lucky enough to live in student housing at New York's very progressive Union Theological Seminary. I lived in a dorm with mostly seminary students. That community welcomed me, a non-student, into their poetry readings, anti-apartheid awareness raising, and drunken late night theological discussions. There was one large bathroom on our floor in Hastings Hall. It was shared by everyone, men and women.

That's right. A co-ed bathroom. I took showers (private showers mind you) adjacent to women and men. I often shaved chatting with a woman who blow dried in the mirror next to mine (many of us had mullet hair in those days). I regularly peed in a stall next to one of the resident lesbians. Though we could hear each other's noises, we never "saw" anything except each other's shoes. It was only strange the first day. After that we never thought about it.

For the past 30 years I've wondered why there weren't more places with desegregated restrooms.

We have to get over our hangups about the human body. What, really, is there to be afraid of? Can we just grow up? This hysteria about encountering someone of a different gender in the restroom is a massive waste of energy. There are real things out there to worry about, folks. I'd be much more alarmed at running into a Republican presidential candidate in the men's room than a man who used to be a woman.

Anti-Gay? Are You Sure?

A recent Facebook exchange has been bothering me.

One of my FB friends declared that a public persona was probably a conservative Republican and therefore anti-gay.

It’s no great leap to make such a claim. One only need look at congress to see who votes pro-gay (Democrats, in case you were wondering), and who votes anti-gay (Republicans, duh). Yes, there are exceptions, such as Senator Susan Collins (R) from Maine who has, at worst, a mixed record.

Just to make my own bias clear: I am pro-gay and very wary (not to mention weary) of most Republicans, particularly conservative ones.

Another FB friend, however, defensively and angrily responded to the first FB friend that as a conservative Republican, neither she nor her other conservative Republican friends are anti-gay.

True – there are Republicans who are not anti-gay. The Log Cabin Republicans are largely gay and Republican. In fact, many Republicans are fiscally conservative (wanting to limit the amount of money government spends) and socially, well, moderate. Frankly, I don’t know of any socially liberal Republicans, but I could be wrong. Let’s stick with moderate.

I agree we shouldn’t paint any one group of people with the same brush. Don’t even get me started on the red-state/blue-state stereotypes that after the 2004 election cast everyone in the middle of the country as homophobic, racist, war-mongering fascists. Wherever you go, you can find people who are quite accepting of those different from themselves. And, everywhere you go, there are rabidly hateful and intolerant individuals.

What bothers me about my conservative Republican friend who is not anti-gay is the vehemence of her defensiveness. She seems quite sure that she has been unjustly attacked by our broad, sweeping generalizations. And yet, I doubt if she has ever lost a job because of her sexual orientation. I’ll bet when she’s sick, her husband is allowed into her hospital room, no questions asked. I’ll bet her very basic civil rights have never been subject to a majority vote. I’m sure that while she was growing up, she never ached to see role models in literature or on TV, or in her own family, who resembled herself. I’ll bet she never wondered, as a child, if there even was anyone else in the world like her. I’ll bet when she was asked to be on a committee at church, no one questioned whether her orientation disqualified her from serving. I’ll bet if her spouse died, his family would not sweep in, pretend that she didn’t exist, and claim ownership of all his belongings.

Really, who has the right to be defensive and angry here?

Here are some questions I’d like to ask of anyone who says they aren’t anti-gay.

1. Do you believe most people who identify as gay or lesbian can choose not to be that way?

2. Do you believe that lifetime commitments between two loving partners should be legally sanctioned with every benefit of a heterosexual marriage, no matter what their genders?

3. What would you do if you found out one of your children were gay?

4. Should patriotic gay and lesbian Americans who feel called to serve their country in the armed forces be allowed to do so without fear of expulsion?

5. Do you believe that a child can be healthfully raised in a loving home that just happens to be headed by a same sex couple?

I won’t bother to spell out whether how you answered renders you pro-gay, a little homophobic, or anti-gay. Just consider your answers and think twice before lashing out in anger at a GAY PERSON who may NOT completely understand YOU.

And if you answered the questions the same way I do, then I’ll agree you aren’t anti-gay, no matter what your political affiliation.