By the Power of Us

This weekend I had the honor of officiating the wedding of two of my best friends. I am posting a video from the meditation I gave during the service because, well, these things are better heard than read, but for those of you who like to read rather than hear, I’ll post the text later. I am posting this because I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning and value of community lately in the wake of Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in California and the subsequent stay placed upon that ruling.

Particularly, the power our communities have in subverting the status quo by our collective belief that can usher in a truth as not yet realized in the current culture. This weekend I was a minister, as fully as if ordained, and we, the community, married our best friends, an enduring truth that the law cannot shake. It was not a religious service, but there was a higher power in that moment. Instead of invoking the power granted by my religious office or state mandate, I invited the community gathered to say these words together after the exchange of rings, “Jenny and Jay, we the community join together, with the power vested not by law or creed, but by our blessing, to pronounce you partners for life.”
It is amazing what we can do when we band together.

FULL TEXT:

I hope you are all aware, that by showing up today, you have all committed yourselves to be the ones Jenny and Jay call if ever they should be whisked away by TSA for violating the 8oz liquid carry-on rule and land themselves in prison. You think I’m joking, but this is the standard which Jay and Jenny kept when they were deciding who all to include in this moment. Their standards were: 1. that they would be able to write each person here a note explaining why you are here and what you mean to them and, 2. That if ever they should find themselves in a dust up, you would be one of the people they would want to answer when granted their one phone call. Because, in inviting you to witness this moment, Jenny and Jay are also promising YOU that should you ever need them, they will be your lifeline.

This is what community means to Jay and Jenny, and their relationship is a testament to the value their community plays in their lives. And as all of us who have ever been to their house for dinner know, they will go out of their way to spoil and take care of us.

But why are we talking about community? This is a wedding, not a neighborhood association meeting! But in some ways it is. We are the community Jenny and Jay have drawn together, not through geographic proximity, but by their love. And the strength of the community is a testament to the strength of their love. In loving each other so dearly, they are able to love each of us so well. Some of us may never have expected to be in the same room together, some of us have been close friends for years, but we are here because we believe and affirm the truth of Jay and Jenny’s love, see the strength of their commitment, and wish to bless the next step of their journey together.

Marriage above anything else is a community endeavor. We will be the ones to answer the phone or fly across the country to be the ones to witness this commitment in times of sickness and health, for richer or poorer, in love and in anger, in life and in loss.

Jenny and Jay recognize the value of community which is their family both kin and chosen because for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, community is all we have. Two weeks ago Judge Vaughn Walker in California, ruled that the recently voted Proposition 8 amendment which nullified same-sex marriages performed since it was re-legalized in May 2008 was unconstitutional. In one ruling couples were given the right to marry, and within the same election year that right was taken away, then with another ruling that right was given one shining week of hope, and then a stay was allowed continuing to forbid any institution from legally marrying same-sex couples.

Fortunately, the state of Massachusetts has resolved this issue and granted legal rights to love in all its forms, but drive out of the state and that right is taken away again. Imagine if your marriage suddenly disappeared depending on which state you were driving through. In the event of a car crash, your legal right to attend to the bedside of your partner would disappear as you crossed state lines.

But those of us who have loved or wed know that marriage is far more than a piece of paper, and even if someone — perhaps the state — were to take that piece of paper away, the ones who would still consider you to be married are your family and friends, those who have witnessed your commitment and journeyed with you in good times and in bad.

We gather here in Rhode Island, a state that does not recognize this marriage as legal, because we affirm that love and commitment far surpass the bounds of law or religion. We are here to form a community of witnesses who believe fully, no matter what the law shall say–that these two, after today, are hereby married. Our firm belief in this truth cannot be banned by any institution, it cannot be legislated away, and it will not be undermined by any group or ideology. As a community, we celebrate the love these two have for each other, knowing that one day love will triumph over hate, and that no matter what the legal stance of the times, we have the collective power to declare Jenny and Jay partners for life.

Today we have gathered three special people in Jenny and Jay’s lives to tell stories of each of their journeys and their journey together. We chose friends and family, rather than readings, to speak to the people Jay and Jenny are, and the love that they have for each other. Let this be the testament to their lives, and all the proof we need to declare them married today, and hold them in marriage by our community, from this day forth.

Off the rack

Perhaps I’ve been watching a little too much Project Runway (yes, I still watch even after the move to Lifetime) but, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about clothing as a metaphor for my gender identity. You might have noticed that I am struggling with pronoun preference. In my last post, I declared that ‘she is my compromise with myself.’ But, then I was watching Project Runway or What Not to Wear and it dawned on me–Tim Gunn or Stacey or whoever is right, I don’t have to just accept a shoddily made pronoun ‘off the rack’ — tailoring is always an option.

This might not seem like such a huge revelation, I mean, I know masculinity and femininity are constantly constructed, sometimes their seams show and there are pins at the hem line….

But what really dawned on me was an image of myself in any clothing store ever. A long time ago I determined that all the clothes in the women’s section were too ill fitting, uncomfortable psychically, and no amount of tailoring would make women’s clothing feel right to me. And here’s my revelation–I don’t have to compromise with ‘she.’ It doesn’t fit. I’ve been trying to wear it, tailor it, stretch it, and reshape it to fit me, but no matter how I try, female pronouns are just not working. I look in the mirror with them on and know in my heart it just doesn’t fit me.

However, due to my shape, my size, my life history, my politics, my experiences, and my values, I also can’t just wear masculinity ‘off the rack.’ But I can’t deny that in my wardrobe, as in life, the men’s section is where I’ve felt at home for some time now. ‘He’ isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be–I know a good tailor. But I also know that no matter how the garment ends up, if the foundation is from the men’s side of the store, I can ‘make it work.’

So now, I think I’ll try on male pronouns as an accessory and see how it changes the overall look.

**For my friends who have long been following me into the men’s section as I explore the construction of my identity, thanks for going there with me, and giving me the confidence to wear my look into the world.

Freeze Frame

Every time I am in a space with enough politically correct consciousness to ask participants in the conversation, group, meeting,what have you, to state their name and pronoun preference, I freeze up, get flustered, and usually mumble something unintelligible. Asking our pronoun preference is an attempt to honor the fact that for those gathered, our gender/pronoun preference may not be the same as our sex suggests. A noble premise, indeed. And yet. I never know how to answer the question. In fact, I realize I’ve never even mentioned it here since pronoun usage is something I tend to avoid at all costs.

For me, it is difficult to answer the question since the way I respond, “says something” about who I am. By answering the question one way I would be identifying myself as transgender, which on the plus side, aligns me firmly with those who are struggling with their bodies, or their identities, or presentation in the world. However, answering that way seems a little inauthentic because I have made no steps to permanently change my body towards that gender direction. But, answering the question the other way seems to simplify my experience. Saying “I prefer she” seems to imply that despite my visibly gender-transgressive outward appearance, on the inside things are much simpler. It implies that I’m not looking to alter anything about myself….that I haven’t been on a journey. Maybe that’s it, saying “I prefer she” simplifies my journey with the sex and gender I have, that somehow I am at peace with the sex I’ve been given and the gender I was raised to have.

My buddy Miriam recently noted that many of us, for whom our gender identity is an ongoing struggle rather than a settled matter, tend to reply in that moment “she is fine.” This response, one I’ve used before, is actually kind of ironic because “she” is so not fine. Using “she” is my compromise with myself. I’m still “she” because I’m not sure where else to go. In a binary system, if I’m not-male, that automatically means I’m female. For me, being female isn’t the end of my story; too bad I can’t skip to the ending to see how I’ll turn out. I was born with this sex, yes, but I’m on a journey to explore new territory. Perhaps when the question arises, I should say that I prefer to be known as a wayfarer, that “she” is my starting point, but I have a lot of miles to go.

Back to the subject….

Now that my blog and I have made-up, I’d like to share some of what I’ve been up to in the nearly 5 months since my last post. One of my favorite experiences this summer was speaking on a panel at the Campus Progress national conference called “Keeping the Faith: Moving religious communities from tolerance to advocacy on LGBT issues.” I am continually grateful that more and more youth-focused secular organizations are adding a faith component to their programming, and are specifically addressing LGBT issues within that realm. You would be hard pressed to find a queer person who grew up in the United States that has not had to contend in some way with how one religion or another regards his or her sexuality. I’ve met agnostic and atheist queers who still believe the Bible condemns their sexuality or gender presentation. I’ve met staunchly progressive activists who even sometimes wonder if what the Right Wing has said about their ‘lifestyle’ is true. I think that as a result we, progressive religious queers, have gotten really squeamish about bringing up religion at all in the interest of not triggering those to whom religion has not been kind. As I’ve mentioned before, I have decided to put an end to that squeamishness and continually ‘out’ myself as both queer and a person of faith.

Anyhow, the panel was a great experience and really confirmed a lot of things I’ve been thinking about my call to this work, but that’s another post. To listen to audio of the panel click here. However, I geekily transcribed some of my comments to remember what exactly I said and I will post some highlights below. It is always interesting to see on the page what you said out loud and on the spot. For the session the moderator posed a question for each of the panelists to answer in turn and then at the end there was a QnA with the audience.

1. Most people believe that to be a person of faith you must be extremely sexually conservative — how can we deal with the false assumption that to be queer is to be anti faith and vice versa?

Because there are so many issues of being ordained as a queer person, I think a lot of times you have to put your sexuality as an afterthought. “I really want to be ordained but I happen to be queer” I think a lot of people play into that role to get through their various ordination committees. In my ordination process I spoke about my girlfriend…but for me to even talk about having a girlfriend was really something that my committee had never even thought about before, not just because I was gay. My liaison on the committee said “oh I don’t think we even know, of the straight people, (which was everyone but me), how many people have a partner at all.” To think about other people particularly within the ministry as having a sexuality was not something they were prepared to think about even for heterosexuals. So I think that by and large there is such a need to be more vocal that the fact that you can be a minister, you can be a person of faith, and be sex positive. The need to talk about it with others is key to debunking that myth. Because it’s not going to happen until we have more conversations about it. So if you shock a room full of older white men about that, then that’s what happens and eventually they get over it and self-reflect and think about how they might be hiding parts of their identity as well. That’s how we can bring everyone together around it.

2. Many faith groups are tolerant of queer people, as long as they are not running at us with bats they could be considered tolerant. Is tolerance really a good thing, or is it thanking people for not killing us. Should we be striving towards tolerance w/in faith communities at all?

I think that tolerance is a window, it’s hard to dialogue with folks who outright hate you and if their minds are closed, I don’t know if there is so much you can do in that moment except to find common ground somewhere, “let’s talk about something else.” And then if you’re still in the room with me, we don’t have to talk about this right now, we know it’s happening, it’s the elephant in the room if it has to be that, but I think that many people have been moved from tolerance or even just a little bit of ignorance into more accepting places and more advocacy roles. To dismiss tolerance as something that is of lesser importance is to not do tolerance justice, in the sense that it does start us places and it is really important in a lot of ways. But ultimately the goal is justice, and more than justice the goal is to create a culture where queer people are integrated into a religious space and to also shift that religious space in a way.

3. In trying to move faith organizations to the left on queer issues is marriage the issue to talk about, is that the most effective way to have this discussion? And if not how can we get beyond marriage and to potentially more important issues of queer justice that might have a broader impact among diverse faith organizations?

My answer to that is in terms of marriage equality….which communities are we trying to shift, do we want churches to get on board to advocate for marriage equality? Is our issue a secular one in terms of shifting policy on that struggle? Or is it an internalized one and what we really want is cultural change within religious institutions? If so, I think that marriage equality is not the way to get that. That’s for me that is what I am interested in working on and what I do. Because I think that legal battles for queer equality if that’s what we’re striving for, those will still not happen until you have this cultural shift into a queer understanding of… allowing for difference even at the most basic, allowing for people to have different choices than the proscribed ones. So I think that for me the issue that is central to achieving that is the focus of this panel, shifting faith communities into that queer space and melding those two identities such that it’s not shocking, and yet changing it in some way. In the sense that every one is changed, queer folks, heterosexual folks and the individual religious spaces are changed. And that’s the movement that I’m advocating.

QnA from the Audience:
I find that with most of the members of my family or community, their argument is “we understand that you want us to tolerate and accept you, but you won’t accept that we’re going to have a problem or that we can’t agree with your lifestyle.” Is there a middle ground?

How I understand your question is… for those of us who have family members who do think that our queerness is abhorrent because of the faith that they’ve grown up with… I mean half of my family is very southern Baptist and they don’t even think that women should be ministers so for me to go to divinity school was a big leap. They never asked me to pray at family meals and didn’t really recognize it, let alone the queer piece. So I think that to be with folks like that who we care about very much requires a certain amount of tenderness and understanding that sometimes the process is really long. It took me 18 years to be able to say that I was queer, and it might take them 18 years for them to say “that’s ok.” I’ve been with people whose parents who at one point kicked them out of the house and now are coming for Thanksgiving. There is a certain amount of pushing them to say “hey I’m gonna keep calling, I’m gonna keep coming by, I’m gonna keep being me, but at the same I recognize that I wanna get you out of this place, but it’s going to take a while” To be with them takes a certain amount of grace and tenderness and that’s completely understandable. You know we go out and fight the big fight for queer equality and we go home to some of our more conservative family members and say, “I still love you.” I think that is really important.

Thanks for making it to the end of this post. I love the way that answering tough questions publicly pushes you to really think on your feet and sometimes surprise yourself. I had no idea how I was going to answer these questions before the event, and in particular the question from the audience participant. The experience on the panel reminded me how important it is to keep telling folks that queerness and faith aren’t antithetical. It reminded me that this is my calling, and I’m so grateful to get to speak up for it.

All apologies.

Dear Blog, I am terribly sorry to have neglected you these past few months. Please don’t take it as a sign I am no longer interested. I hope to make it up to you in the coming weeks. I’ve missed you, believe me. Yours, Presbyqueerian.

epistemology of the theorist

Sometimes you read something and it changes the course of your life forever. Whether it’s a text, or a poem, or a story, there are some things that just rock you to your core, and you emerge at the end of the page, altered, seeing the world from a whole new perspective.

During my junior year of college, I read Epistemology of the Closet in a class called the Politics of Sexuality. At that point in my life I was a firmly established lesbian but after reading that text, I had only just begun to grasp the possibilities of queerness. I don’t think that when I first read it—painstakingly, over the course of hours—I understood half of it. But what I did know was that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was on to something and that her words were opening up to further exploration the idea that sexuality is not a binary system and that gender is not a binary fact.

Sedgwick posited that the very words we choose to construct and articulate our identities are both bringing those identities into being, and at the same time foreclosing those identities from the possibilities of change. For me, Eve Sedgwick is the author who first introduced me to the idea that language is intrinsically connected to the ways that we know ourselves and our sexuality, as well as to the prophetic and poetic realms language has to offer the study and analysis of sex.

The fact that I didn’t understand half of the words or concepts in that first reading of the Epistemology of the Closet only fueled my desire to delve deeper into the lexicon of sexuality and to immerse myself in queer theory, since I felt that there truths of the universe and existence were being revealed. It also helped challenge me into living a fuller sense of queerness, not so tightly restricted by what I thought being a lesbian meant I should be. It allowed me to let go of the woman balloon I didn’t have such a strong grip on anyway in order to find myself finally free to explore who it was I might become if I didn’t have a whole air-filled chamber of expectations about what a woman should be hovering above me.

Today I learned that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick died last night after a long history of breast cancer. She was only 58. And while I did not know her, and have studied and learned from many theorists since my first experience with her, I am mourning the loss of her. She taught us to think things that had never before been thought or said, and allowed us to explore new ways of being that were previously unarticulated. It is fitting that Sedgwick was a practicing Buddhist, since Buddhism is so much a philosophy of be-ing, because she called us into new ways of be-ing, of knowing, and of understanding our human experience. On a memorial blog post, one of Eve’s dear friends writes, “according to The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying — which Evie did a seminar on, at Duke — she will be in the Bardo of Becoming for 40 days after the cessation of respiration. According to her belief, thoughts and prayers of the living will steady her soul as she passes through the bardos to the next life. And there _will_ be a next life.” If so, then I offer up these thoughts to her. Until she returns, reincarnate, we will give her words second life.

Thank you, Eve.

WTF Amazon?!

Amazon.com’s recent ridiculous censorship tactic of stripping the sales rankings of books by and for LGBT authors smacks as some seriously regressive practice. Pomegranate Pen gave the subject a great treatment so I’m not going to echo what she already so eloquently said.

However I do want to participate in the Googlebomb currently launched at Amazon. For a more detailed explanation of the tactic behind said bomb, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has the rundown. But I do want to give my own little fuck you to Amazon. So without further adieu, Amazon Rank. MUWAHAHA.

Speaking Out

This weekend I got to do something I haven’t done for a long time—I got to speak at an event as someone who is a faith leader.  On Saturday I was a guest panelist at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy conference on Reproductive Justice at Hampshire College.  The panel was a “Religious Leader Speak Out” on the possibilities of organizing around reproductive justice from a faith perspective.  As anyone who has been to the conference knows, the environment at Hampshire College that weekend is, as most super progressive spaces are, more suspicious of religious/faith perspectives than accepting of them.  The panel at which I was speaking was established as an attempt to appease those who actually do approach this work from a place of faith and to offer an alternative perspective for those who believe faith and progressive values are antithetical. 

Let me just say, it felt SO good to be speaking in that role again.  In my current job working on the development side at a non-profit that does reproductive justice work from a faith perspective, I am most often seen as someone who is better at writing deliverables than delivering a sermon.  It is strange to no longer work at a church or live in a city that knew me in that capacity. 

I was especially glad to have an opportunity to talk about the possibilities of working for reproductive justice given a recent article in Religion Dispatches, which confronted the pushback many openly queer and Christian folks seeking ordination experience from the LGBT community.  One of the points in that article that resonates with me the most deeply is “instead of bashing LGBT people of faith for their ‘imaginary friends’ and religious delusions, the LGBT community needs to embrace the brave pioneers who are fighting on what is really the front line of the battle for ‘real equality’ for our community.”

It feels so validating to be labeled as a ‘brave pioneer’ and not seen as some sad sack who cannot see the futility of working for this cause.  In the Q&A during the panel, one woman asked me why I didn’t just choose to go the route towards ‘pastoring’ rather than towards officially licensed ordained ministry.  While most often questions such as that one, and its twin “Why don’t you just switch to the United Church of Christ?,” are raised because someone recognizes my gifts for ministry and is expressing sympathy that I am currently unable to be ordained—those questions also smack as a bit condescending and patronizing of my belief that I am called to working for queer ordination in the Presbyterian Church. 

As I said during the panel, I love the Presbyterian Church too much to let it off the hook for discrimination.  In so many ways my experience growing up in that church made me who I am, and gave me the freedom to accept that God made me both as queer and as called to ministry. I cannot just walk away without first challenging the church to recognize that I am a product of the love and care so many within its sanctuary gave me.  I started this blog, participate in speak outs, and continue to come out as a queer Christian ordination candidate to demonstrate that not only is working for LGBT rights within religious traditions a possibility, but a necessity.  

“she told me I was cute, for a girl”

I always get a little nervous before I walk into ‘women’s only’ spaces; bathrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms—those public yet intimate spaces—close quarters where women pretend not to notice each other, except to reassure themselves of who is ‘allowed.’

I am acutely aware of the ways that the inhabitants stare at me while I’m waiting in line, or washing my hands.  I am careful to avert my eyes in the locker room as I walk past naked bodies that look like mine but who dress up so differently.  I fix my hair, straighten my tie, and leave as quickly and quietly as I entered.

Which is why I was startled when she turned to me in the shared office-suite bathroom and blurted, “you always wear such nice ties, I mean…you dress very well, but you always have on a great tie.” I think I stammered “thanks” back and commented that “life is short, why wear ugly ties?”

But I was shocked that she spoke to me—I hadn’t noticed her in the bathroom before, and I certainly hadn’t noticed her noticing my nice ties (which I must say, I do take pride in choosing).

I was told, often, by new acquaintances during college that I tended to come off as intimidating before people got to know me.  When I first started hearing that from friends I was all too happy to have met, I was shocked that they would have experienced me as intimidating at all.

But then I thought about it, and realized I moved through the world during college scowling a lot out in public, walking around campus my shoulders were hunched, my fists were balled – always in anticipation of some jerky fratboy messing with me or the girlfriend whose hand I held.  Even then I heard the whispers as people walked by, witnessed the conversations stop when I walked into a room, I knew that the guys who drove by in a truck and shouted, “dyke” were yelling at me.  I spent a lot of time looking tougher than I was in the hope that it might prevent someone from attacking me —physically or verbally.

But I’ve been wondering recently if the ‘preemptive scowl’ mentality was worth it any more.  If anything, I feel like I’m just confirming what people might think that a queer looking person in the locker room might be like—intimidating and unfriendly.  I’ve been thinking, maybe I should try the ‘preemptive “hi”’ to disarm awkwardness and establish familiarity from the get-go.  After all, part of the point of my gender expression is to make more room for female-bodied people to look and dress and act the way I do.

I know that the threat of violence is real, and that many genderqueer and trans folk have bodies, or skin tones, or income levels that appear as much more ‘threatening’ to others.  But in the words of Audre Lorde, ‘my silence will not protect me;’ I cannot stay silent and let someone else take the heat who appears just a little more threatening than I do.  I want to use the fact that for various reasons some people feel ‘comfortable’ with me in order to push against those spaces of discomfort to allow more people in the door.

So, thanks, I do try to wear cute ties. And thanks to whomever it was that made it ok for you to talk to me.

This is what a Presbyqueerian looks like

I cannot take credit for the term Presbyqueerian, but I can say that it found me. On the first day of my seminary internship at a progressive, federated United Church of Christ and Presbyterian Church, I was doing the awkward post-church coffee hour meet-n-greet (where you are asked to sum up who you are and your life’s purpose in 2 minutes or less) when I was approached by this wonderful, jolly, gay man who proceeded with the standard series of questions: where I was from, what I was studying at seminary, and when I would be ordained. Since the church was also affiliated with the United Church of Christ (a denomination whose official policy is accepting of gay ordination) most people assumed that because I was so visibly queer that I must be UCC. When I explained to him that I was out as queer within my Presbyterian ordination process and wasn’t sure when, if ever, I would be ordained; instead of the general response “oh? Why don’t you switch to the UCC?” He got a merry sparkle in his eye and a grin across his face and replied, “Oh! You’re a Presbyqueerian! Or do you prefer the term Lesbiterian?” I laughed, shook his hand and replied “Yea, that’s me, I’m a Presbyqueerian.”

That was more than 2 years ago, but when I first heard the term, I was floored. I finally found a word that brought together two of the most fundamental parts of my identity and joined them in a way such that it reflected that the identities complimented each other. In the standard narrative I had to tell to my ordination committee, I was Presbyterian above all else and just ‘happened’ to be gay. I was always advised to present myself as someone whose queerness was irrelevant to my fitness for ministry. The political wisdom behind that was such that I would not be seen as someone who was here to challenge the Presbyterian Church, but rather as someone whose queer identity was happenstance to my call.

In the queer world, for a long time, I felt the need to downplay my Presbyterian/Christian side in order to put people at ease who were more than cynical about Christianity altogether.

For me, Presbyqueerian is a positive affirmation of who I am. The fact that I’m queer is essential to how I understand my call to ministry. I cannot separate my sexuality and my spirituality because they both so fundamentally affect how I see and understand the world and the work that needs to be done—the work that I am here to do.

It’s hard to articulate all that in a 2-minute coffee hour speech. But I thought it was important for you to know — lest you think I was the witty genius who coined the term. A basic google search leads to a few people in the Presbyterian LGBT movement who have mentioned the term in passing, but I am here to claim it. Not as something I own, but as something I am. I am sure there are others who would fit this description, but I want to plant myself squarely within it. So right now in the island of identities, we are at Presbyqueerian, population – 1.