HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL

June 11, 2006; Frank Carpenter

MEDITATION, (with thanks to Andrew Hill)

Great Rainbow Arch

your bright light
your seven colors
your cool dew
link sky and earth above the troubled clouds.

Hold us all in your encompassing arms.

Forgive our exclusion of others
earth and life and child.

So may we too forgive those who have excluded us.
Save us from the darkness of arrogance.
May we find out hope in self-acceptance.

May we find our dignity in overcoming the world’s outrageous assaults on whom we know ourselves to be.  May we find our pride in the only victory that matters, the struggle to be true to ourselves.

Here gathered as individuals each on our sacred journey of hope and self-acceptance, may we rejoice in the varied colors that create the very possibility of life. In the different gifts we bring may we find the collaboration to emerge in the new world waking amongst us.

With gratitude and hope, let us rest in the silence.

Peace be with you.  Amen

SERMON:

It’s good to be gathered together this morning.  In our worship this morning we join with a number of other churches in Cincinnati – indeed across the country – in celebrating our GLBT community. 

 

It’s Pride Week.  This past Tuesday the Annual Interfaith Pride Service was held here in our sanctuary.  Catherine Roma, Rachel Kramer, MUSE and the St. John’s choir provided music.  Our new Interweave group supplied some wonderful hospitality.  It was a very meaningful service with four community leaders sharing their journey in GLBT experience.  The new minister at Mt. Auburn Presbyterian, Susan Quinn Bryan talked about raising a lesbian daughter.  Joyce Kahle, parish nurse at Clifton United Methodist talked about recognizing her sexual identity, as a nun.  Gary Wright shared his commitment to human rights and his work on loyal GLBT political issues.  Bonnie Daniel of Spirit Life Metropolitan Community Church shared how her acceptance of her sexuality lead her to a passionate faith in Jesus. A meaningful experience.

 

This afternoon many of us will participate in the annual Pride Parade. On Sunday June 11, thousands of lesbian, gay, bi, trans and supportive people from across Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky are expected to converge on the Clifton and Northside neighborhoods to celebrate Pride Alive 2006. The theme of this year’s events is “There’s No Stopping Us Now.” The Pride Parade will step off at 1pm from the circle at Burnet Woods following a Pride Pep Rally at the gazebo in the park.  The Parade proceeds down Ludlow, across Mill Creek along Hamilton to the Pride Festival at Hoffner Park in Northside.

 

This is Pride Week, today the Pride Parade.  I thought I would share just a few brief thoughts on the word Pride.  It’s an interesting word, with a bit of baggage. 

 

Pride is not a word to be used loosely, thoughtlessly.  Traditional Christianity uses the word ‘pride’ for what it calls one of the deadly sins.  The list of these ‘sins’ is pride, greed, envy, anger, lust, gluttony, and sloth. An impressive list of our all too human weaknesses and not to be rejected out of hand. 

 

I read from a website o n the subject, the first to come up when I Googled.:

 

Overweening pride, arrogance, haughtiness: these have been the stuff of tragedy. Vanity, fussiness, delicacy: the stuff of comedy. These are all forms of self-delusion, and paper-thin masks over rotting features. Pride and vanity refuse the truth about who we are and substitute illusions for reality. While vanity is mostly concerned with appearance, pride is based in a real desire to be God, at least in one's own circle. http://www.whitestonejournal.com/seven/pride.html

 

Well, this is not what we are talking about when we are excited about celebrating Pride Week.  There’s no question that there’s a problem here, but I prefer to use the word arrogance.  Describe some political leader, would you speak of their pride or their arrogance?  Note the different connotation.

 

In the list of deadly sins, the alleged sin of pride is next to the alleged virtue of humility.  That’s an equally overworked concept that can be as dangerous if nor more than a misuse of pride.  Humility slides to easily into humiliation.  I generally do not use the word humility as it suggests degradation too much to be useful in public discourse.

 

Some might suggest that a better word than “pride” with less ambiguity is ‘self-esteem.”  Certainly that’s what is meant when we speak of a sense of pride, that a person has healthy self-esteem. But it seems a bit weak.  Just saying ‘Pride” seems right; but we don’t mean arrogance.

 

Why do we need to speak of pride, why celebrate pride this week?

 

I think the answer comes easily.  We need to talk about pride because there has been so much pain.  Gay men have been lynched; people with AIDS have been stigmatized, scapegoated.  Being gay, being a lesbian, continues to be all too painful in our society.

 

Martin Niemoeller's famous quote recounts much of the pain of our modern world:

 

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
    and there was no one left to speak out for me.

 

And yet this very statement says nothing about one painful truth of the Nazi regime: “homosexuals … were the damnedest of the damned, the outcasts among the outcasts in the concentration camps” where “they were accorded a special category among the inmates and `merited' a separate, pink triangle.”   http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/laska.html

 

And still today, as if anyone needed more pain.  The sexual relationships that are politically correct in our society, let us call one of them traditional marriage, can be painful enough.  The long struggles for meaningful relationships have no simple guide book. The long sleepless nights of doubt, the heavy hours of betrayal make for dark times in many relationships.  The rate of divorce is but one indication that relationships, intimate, loving relationships are not easy.

 

But not just caring, and intimacy, but sexuality is part of what we expect..  Going upstream from the cultural expected norm when all you want is a normal life, a quite family with children, isn’t pain free.

 

So, yes; let’s call it pride.  Go for it.  It’s about pride, not hiding yourself away.  The pain and the hope call for nothing less than pride when the victory is won. This morning we have presented the first Catherine Roma Scholarship.  Cathy feels pride, Catherine Alexander and her family feel pride. But I don’t see any reason to confuse that with arrogance.

 

Just this past week, the United States Senate offered its own contribution to Pride Week; it defeated the so-called marriage amendment. 

 

Marriage they said is between a man and a woman.  That’s what’s so important?  How about marriage is an honest, loving relationship?  How about commitment? Well, we’re talking about politicians here, aren’t we? 

 

Watching some of the debate on C-Span I was tempted to call it the bedroom amendment.  It’s really awesome.  After the marriage amendment, maybe they will amend the marriage amendment so that it becomes the abstinence amendment.

 

Driving this bedroom amendment is an extremist, puritanical view of sexuality.  I cannot help but think a hostility to sexuality.  You know and I know it’s not just about marriage is between a men and a woman.  It’s also about that man and a woman not using condoms in the bedroom, be they married or not. It’s also about not using birth control method.  And it’s about male supremacy.

 

We can consider not just the anti-gay agenda in the amendment, but also the entire anti sex agenda.  Against gay marriage, against abortion, against use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, against the use of birth control pills. 

 

What kind of agenda is that?  Looks like a pain agenda to me.  It’s about causing people a lot of heart ache and pain. People should be proud of their sexuality, gay and straight.  Yes, pride is the right word to respond to the pain agenda of the extremists.

 

 

And so we can take pride that William Sinkford, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association said after the rejection of the alleged marriage amendment this past week:

The latest effort to amend the United States constitution to deny loving couples the rights and responsibilities of marriage is a blatant attempt to write discrimination into our democracy's foundational document. This attack on American couples and families exposes the increasingly cynical efforts by the extreme right to divert the country's attention from far more vital issues. The resounding failure of this proposed amendment is a testimony to the enduring power of the constitution, which has never been altered with the express intent to deny equal protection to an entire class of citizens. May it never be used as a weapon against any of "we the people," but instead be preserved in sacred trust as a guarantee of freedom and liberty for all Americans.

"This amendment was a shameful attempt to divide the American people. I am thankful to the thousands of Unitarian Universalists across the country who have borne witness to our liberal religious values and raised their voices to defeat this amendment and affirm that we are in fact one people."

One of the items on the pride agenda is marriage equality.  Same sex marriages need legal recognition.

 

Unitarian Universalists have supported gay and lesbian services of union since 1984.  In 1996 Unitarian Universalists called for the legal right to marry for same-sex couples.

 

The legal institution of marriage provides a number of benefits. If your spouse is in intensive care, you can say, that’s my partner, and they will let you be with your loved with, hold her hand at her bed side.  Social security and death benefits come with legal marriage.  Ownership of property is greatly simplified if you can show a marriage license.  And also adoption is not as much an issue if you have a marriage license.

 

But while you enjoy the many benefits of a marriage license, we know that a piece of paper does not a marriage make.  Yes it is good to have the weight of the state behind your relationship.  Getting a divorce is not an easy out..

 

Today, it is the state which decides what a legal marriage is.  But the state itself is not that old.  In the middle ages, there were no states.  Marriage was recognized by the church. Whatever happened?

 

The spiritual, intimate aspect of the relationship is primary in our thought.  Marriage today is generally not thought to join kingdoms together, nor for most of us for the transfer of estates.  Marriage is, in our commonly held opinion, for the joining of two hearts together, to journey together on their spiritual journeys, sharing together the joys and sorrows of daily life. A rich relationship is one of the great satisfactions of life.

 

All this is not to say that I think a couple can marry themselves.  Just as it takes a village to raise child, so does it take a village to support a marriage.  It is an important aspect of a marriage that that the couple bear witness of their promises to one another before a gathered community.  In the absence of the state, without a marriage license, it becomes ever more important that the gathered community at a wedding accept their role as witness to the pledges the couple makes.

 

A wedding is eternal.  Sometimes I think in the old days of myth, of eternal recurrence.  It has been my experience of weddings that when a couple makes their vows to one another, all the gathered couples also renew their vows in their hearts, as if they stood at the one eternal marriage which is always being celebrated.  Ah, I wax mystical, I apologize.

 

That two people should be denied the benefits of legal marriage shows just how far we have yet to go.  People hold on to the old ways when plainly they are failing.  People stick their heads in the sand as if the steam roller of tomorrow will not see them. 

 

The cause of human rights has now spread to ever land.  Marriage is human right.  Article 16 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that “Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.”  How can there be free and full consent if the spouses must betray their sexuality?

 

Our basis as a religious organization is human rights.  The Principles and Purposes of the Unitarian Universalist Association, found in the front of our gray hymnal, is a human rights declaration.  It begins with the fundamental principle of human rights, that we affirm and promote “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”

 

What is human dignity if it is not human pride?  True pride is not about disobedience to God, but about obedience to oneself.  ‘To thine own self be true.’

 

In such times when we are true to ourselves, when we have overcome pain, transcended the efforts of some to degrade us for who we are, then we can truly celebrate pride.