THE OPEN DOOR

Oct 8^th, COMING OUT SUNDAY, 2006.

Frank Carpenter

St. John’s Unitarian Universalist Church, Cincinnati, OH

Are you happy?

Are you happy?

The myth says that gay people aren’t happy. The Human Rights Campaign Coming Out Guide says of allies of GLBT people:

straight supporter – A person who supports and honors sexual diversity, acts accordingly to challenge homophobic remarks and behaviors and explores

and understands these forms of bias within him- or herself.

http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Coming_Out&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=32669

I suppose the myth regarding unhappiness includes GLBT straight allies; allies aren’t happy either?

Are you happy?

How about that music? “Masculine Women! Feminine Men!” “Hattie and Mattie.” Are you happy? The choir sounded happy, sounded as if was having a lot of fun. MUSE sounded like it was having a lot of fun?

Are you happy?

The Coming Out Guide goes on to say about the myth:

GLBT people aren’t happy. In 1994, the American Medical Association released a statement saying, “Most of the emotional disturbance experienced by gay men and lesbians around their sexual identity is not based on physiological causes but rather is due more to a sense of alienation in an unaccepting environment.” What that means is that the discrimination and stress that GLBT people face is the root cause of a great deal of pain for many GLBT people. That pain can be alleviated by knowing that there is a vibrant, growing community of GLBT and straight-supportive Americans who know and care about GLBT

people and the issues they face.

This Sunday is Coming Out Sunday. This week is the annul coming out Day, Oct 11^th.

On Oct. 11, 1987, half a million people participated in the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. This was the second such demonstration in our nation’s capital and the first display of the NAMES Project Quilt, remembering those who have died from AIDS. One measure of the march’s success was the number of organizations that were founded as a result — including the National Latino/a Gay & Lesbian Organization (LLEGÓ) and AT&T’s GLBT employee group, LEAGUE. The momentum continued four months after this extraordinary march as more than 100 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender activists from around the country gathered …. Recognizing that the GLBT community often reacted defensively to anti-gay actions, they came up with the idea of a national day to celebrate coming out and chose the anniversary of that second march on Washington to mark it. [ http://www.hrc.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Coming_Out/Get_Informed4/National_Coming_Out_Day/History/1987_In_the_Beginning.htm ]

Another reason to be happy: Coming Out Day. It’s a day when GLBT people remember their own spiritual journeys, a time when they teach the rest of us that life, all our lives, are spiritual journeys. A journey of a thousand miles begins with that first step. Coming out is the first step. It is also a continuous journey. Our spiritual journeys are a constant coming out to ourselves and to others.

Indeed let us be happy!

But of course it is not all a bed of roses. Being gay, being transgender, is not easy, it’s not all happiness. We know well that hostilely to GLBT folk is rife in our culture. An attempt to legalize discrimination against gays here in Cincinnati was only barely kept off the ballet this November. The struggle for the recognition of gay relationships, the legal recognition of gay marriage continues a wedge issue in our politics. Gay youth and same-gender parent families continue to be rejected by groups such as Scout troops. No, it’s not all happiness. The pain is a “sense of alienation in an unaccepting environment.”

The simple fact of the matter is that scapegoating is alive and well in American society. This past week I attended the Fall retreat of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers of the Heartland District. We met at the Grailville retreat center in Loveland as we do each October. One of the people there was Rev., Lisa Presley. Lisa is the Interim District Executive for our District, the Heartland District. A number of us from St. John’s attended her workshop on membership yesterday at the Heritage Church in Andersonville.

At our ministers’ retreat, Lisa gave her report as the District Executive. Her job is to monitor what goes on in the congregations of our District in Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. Lisa noted that she finds a lot of free floating anxiety in congregations. She thinks this anxiety goes back to 9/11.

The security issues which our country faces have not had an open and national discussion. As examples, we don’t know why Osama bin Laden was not captured, nor what it means that he is still at large, though maybe he’s dead. We need a national discussion that recognizes our insecurities. The media seems more interested in keeping us fascinated than in having honest debate on the issues of the day. Because we feel insecure and are moved along by our leaders to quick fixes, we do not have the opportunities to discuss, say during an election time, what we are really feeling, our concerns, our fears. The net result is that our unresolved anxiety as a society randomly appears in various places.

I think this is one of the causes of the number of school shootings that we have seen, such as this past week at the Amish school in Lancaster County, PA. It is this unresolved anxiety in a society that leads to scapegoating, witch hunting. An historical example gives insight. The witch craft trials in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 17^th century began after the British King revoked the charter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This meant that people’s ownership to their land was not longer valid. And so innocent members of the village were hanged as witches; their bodies thrown to the dogs.

Today, immigrants are demonized. And GLBT people strike fear into the hearts of too many. This sense that GLBT people and their allies don’t fit in is caught in some of the vocabulary of the gay liberation movement. The HRC Guide has a glossary. One of the terms is

genderqueer – A word people use to describe their own nonstandard gender identity, or by those who do not conform to traditional gender norms.

What that comes down to is really that every day people just don’t slide easily into our cultural definitions of male and female, either as gender categories or sexual categories. A lot of people have trouble with that. When I was living in Newport, RI, our next door neighbor was one of the out gays in town. A college classmate of his visited one time and we were invited over for an evening of conversation. His classmate was at the time the head of the Human Rights Campaign, the principle gay lobbying group in Washington. One of the concepts he shared with us is sexuality is not a clear cut, either/or, binary, male/female thing. We are all on a spectrum, he said, on which male is one end and female the other. There is sort of a bell curve on that spectrum, a curve shaped like a camel with two humps, but it means that most of us, as the choir’s song said, are to some extant either masculine women or feminine men. And as the mythbusters said:

It’s a “choice.” Sexual orientation and gender identity are not choices, any more than being left-handed or having brown eyes or being straight are choices. The choice is in deciding whether or not to live your life openly and honestly with yourself and others.

Because the cultural role definitions of male and female are human constructs rather than innate mental concepts, many of us find adolescence a challenging time as we explore what many people think we are supposed to be gender wise. For many of us, it works, and for many the cultural molds mislead us.

And because our cultures molds are not one size fits all, the struggle of coming to terms with our sexual orientation is not easy for many. This process of our journey of coming to terms with a sexual orientation outside traditional limits is called coming out. For all of us, coming to terms with ourselves is the basic element of our spiritual journey. For some the sexual dimension is easy, for some, unsupported by family and the culture, it is hard.

The HRC guide on Coming Out speaks of THE COMING OUT CONTINUUM

Coming out and living openly aren’t something you do once, or even for one year. It’s a journey that we make every single day of our lives. There are three broad stages that people move through on the coming out continuum. For each person it is a little different, and you may find that at times you move backward and forward through the phases all at once.

The Resource Guide then outlines three stages. Firstly, Opening Up to Yourself

The period when your journey is beginning —

when you’re asking yourself questions,

moving toward coming out to yourself and

perhaps the decision to tell others.

From the spiritual point of view, this wrestling with oneself is most important. As is true of all journeys, so it is true of our spiritual journeys that however long we have to go, our trip begins with the first step.

The second stage is Coming Out

The period when you’re actively talking for the first

time about your sexual orientation or gender identity

with family, friends, co-workers, classmates and other

people in your life.

The Dutch have a proverb which applies: “He who is outside the door has already a good part of his journey behind him.” Breaking out of the molds, as the Tiger in our story broke out of his cage built of his keeper’s lies, is the unfolding of our spiritual journey. As the anthropologist Antony F.C. Wallace tells us, the most important phase in a religious revitalization movement is the recognition that what is causing us suffering is not something wrong with ourselves, but because society demands that we behave in ways that no longer work. Breaking out of the straight mold, say yes to oneself, rejecting standard definitions of gender and sexual roles in life, sharing that with friends, that is beginning of the journey.

Then the third stage in journey of the HRC Guide is Living Openly:

The ongoing phase after you’ve initially talked with the people

closest to you about your life as a GLBT person, and are

now able to tell new people that come into your life fluidly —

where and when it feels appropriate to you.

This ongoing phase, this stage of sharing when appropriate, growing as we need to, moving along our spiritual journey as called for is never finished. At times our spiritual journey may call for retreat; at times for negotiating or renegotiating with loved ones and friends. It’s not over until it’s over, as has been said. And life, our spiritual journey is not over until its over.

A friend of mine is a black alcoholic lesbian. I once asked her which of the three stigmas: race, addiction, or sexual orientation, caused her the most unhappiness in her life. She said race. Race is not something you can hide. Often black GLBT people find that they are put down by white GLBT even before they have a chance to identify themselves. Often times, identifying oneself as gay, without a deeper exploration of why society needs to oppress gay people is the end of the coming out journey. But a full spiritual journey calls for an ever deeper understanding of the dynamics and frustrations of hope and justice in our lives.

At the end of the HRC Guide, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese writes:

For me, coming out was initially a process that was daunting. But as I came out to more and more people I began to realize that most people were simply happy for me, and that despite the occasional difficulties, I could ultimately begin to live my life as the person I was truly meant to be. What was stressful at first, quickly became empowering. More than anything else, I think the thing that drives each of us to come out is an intensely human desire to be known and loved authentically for who we are. That is something everyone can relate to — and something we should celebrate and honor in one another.

Yes, we are happy, because we want to be known and loved for who we are. We are on this most spiritual of journeys. As St. Paul said, today we see as through a glass darkly, but then, in the kingdom of love, we shall see face to face, be known and loved for who we are.

And this journey leads ever one. The road not taken is the decision we make this day, and every day. Let us be happy for we accept ourselves and one another. Let us joyfully take into our wider community the open arms of acceptance of all gender identities and sexual orientations.