Believe in Miracles

I know today was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and it was also the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, our nation's first African-American president (because Clinton was NOT). 

The significance of those two events coinciding on this day is not lost on me.  And just as big was the President saying, "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law... For if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well.”  He further went on to make the link between various civil rights struggles for women, African-Americans, and the LGBT community by bringing up Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall.

I got teary-eyed hearing this.  For the first time, a President of the United States had connected the dots that I, and so many other gay people, have been connecting together for years, only to be growled at for daring to equate our struggle for equality with that of our black brothers and sisters.  Now it was our black brother, the ally-in-chief, making our case for us.   And, for once, this wasn't just some Democratic politician saying all the right things to get us to open our pocketbooks, so we could be ignored and left behind... again.   President Obama has shown he means it.  He has repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell; his Justice Department has refused to advocate for the Defense of Marriage Act.  And his own significant move came last year when he told Robin Roberts in a sit down interview that he had "evolved" on the marriage issue and he didn't have a problem with people of the same gender tying the knot.  That statement rippled out through the African-American community, and it opened the door for blacks who have quietly supported LGBT rights to step up and become more vocal... especially from the pulpit.

So, what in the world does any of this have to do with miracles?   Because, much like the moment in yesterday's gospel, when Jesus performs the first miracle at the wedding in Cana by turning nasty undrinkable water for purification rites into a never-ending flow of the best wine ever, I am seeing a similar moment of "Wow!" in the President's remarks with regards to the LGBT community. Jesus' miracle, done not for show but as a teaching moment about God, clearly the blew the minds of those present to witness what he did. 

When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now." Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Ca'na of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.--John 2:9-11

Believing is the first step in having faith.  Having faith is then the motivator for engaging the world in the ongoing effort to bend that long moral arc of the universe toward justice. 

At our service yesterday, we had a guest preacher, Rabbi Jack Romberg of Temple Israel, who noted that the miracles that occur in Scripture don't happen without the willingness of human beings to act on our faith.   The advancements that LGBT community, and any other minority group, has seen in history has not come by us waiting and praying for a change to occur and waiting for God to do "God's thing."  It has happened because we have been actively working toward change.  And a "Wow!" has arrived in the words of the President in his second inaugural address.

This "Wow!" that has the potential to continuously "Wow!" for the months and years to come.  May it be so.    

This Little Light of Ours...

What a way to end the month-long "Queer As Faust2 Festival"! About 50 people with candles, walking in quiet conversation or in silent meditation from Tallahassee's City Hall to the State Capitol building, to commemorate the event that started the modern day LGBT civil rights movement. Ours was a stark contrast to the fire ignited in New York City that hot night in June, 1969, when the NYC police were met with resistance and retaliation for their brutality. One of the patrons of the Stonewall Inn bar, the place where the rebellion was born, described the scene this way:

"Queers started being filed out, being put into police cars, and the loose change started flying-- you know, everybody started throwing it as payoff to the cops. And then the words, the cursing: 'Hey, fuck you pigs. We're not moving. We're tired of this bullshit.' You know, all this was happening, and I guess you could taste a bit of freedom before it even happened. Because I know I was feeling good, just for the change being thrown at the cops, for gay brothers and sisters and drag queens and street kids and hustlers, just throwing
this money at these people like, 'You've been treating us like shit all these
years? Uh-uh. Now it's our turn!... It was one of the greatest moments in my
life." --Sylvia (Ray) Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) from the companion book to the series, "The Question of Equality".

Forty years later, in the Deep Southern capital city of Tallahassee, we lit our candles as we re-membered ourselves with those whose anger at their conditions of constantly enduring raids and harassment in mafia-owned bars finally said, "No!"

We were much more polite.

Our ceremony showed the direction that out movement has gone over the course of time: appealling to those in power with the demonstration of who we are at our core: loving human beings who simply want to love and live with the people whom we love. A reporter was asking me questions before the ceremony about the difference between then and now. And really, I see it as a matter of assimilation. More and more gay people are coming out. More and more gay celebrities are on TV and in the movies. Queers of all colors and creeds are taking a stand in the name of love. And we look 'normal'. We aren't ONLY women dressing in men's suits, or men slipping on skirts. And because of that, the majority is feeling more comfortable with us. And we, the queer community, have become more comfortable living among the straights.

But this comfort is coming at a price. It is leading to complacency. It is resulting in us seeming so 'normal' to the 'normal' people that they don't understand that we ARE still second-class citizens. And we are becoming our own worst enemies. We like our comfortable life. We like our status as part of the "mainstream". And we, I think, are forgetting that our foremothers and fathers of this movement were anything but that.

And so with the assimilation, there is also a schizophrenia. We are accepted... but only if we don't ask for "too much". We are included... but only if we agree to wait "for a season" while the straight community adjusts to the temperature change. We can participate... but only in the assigned roles as determined by the majority. Is it time for another riot?

No. Not like the nature of Stonewall. Different time. Different circumstances.

But re-membering ourselves with those rebellious outcasts of 1969 is important. Those candlelights flickering in Florida, a state known across the nation as one of the worst in its treatment of the LGBT community, must be the spark to action, and a beacon toward real change. Let it shine... let it shine... let it shine.

Stonewall and Stories of Old

Let's hear it for the drag queens!! Give it up for the bulldykes!! Can I get an "Amen!" for all those queers who, on a hot night in 1969 in New York City's Greenwich Village at the Stonewall Inn, took a stand and did their own stonewalling against police brutality and harassment!

Forty years ago, brave and bothered souls lit the wick on the candle of our crusade for civil rights. And we, today, remember that action as we commit to live into the legacy of demanding that we are treated equally under the law. In some states, the LGBT community enjoys protection of our relationships through marriage, and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is illegal. But those freedoms don't exist everywhere. Certainly not in Florida. And so, we fight on.

Interestingly, as I reflect on the gospel story read in church Sunday... I got a sense of where our LGBT community, at least in Florida, is at today. There was the story from the Gospel of Mark where the UNnamed woman who has been hemorrhaging pushes her hand through the crowd to touch the cloak of Jesus. Jesus notices that somebody in specific has touched him and seeks out who it was. His disciples, being their usual pedestrian selves, look at Jesus like he's a nut job (Hello, teacher?!?!? Haven't you noticed the crowd and you ask, 'Who touched me?'). But, of course, he's not a nut job; this woman is the demonstration of what it is to reach out to God as the last ditch stand to stop the pain, stop the bleeding. Not only does her action cure her, Jesus stops to find out who that was, so he can praise her for her faith in him (which is faith in God).

I believe this is very much like what the LGBT community in this state is seeking... especially post-Stonewall, post-Anita Bryant, post-Amendment Two. We keep wanting to reach out and touch the cloak of a Savior to stop the pain and the hurt and the trampling on of our self and relationships. We want the magic. But when we put our faith in earthbound leaders, there isn't the same magic. And when we put our faith in God and we don't think God answers because we didn't get the answers we want, we fall prey to the belief that God doesn't give a crap about gay people... a lie that some of the thieves of Christianity have been more than happy to feed and spread.

What I believe is true is that perhaps what we're asking of God is for God to do the one thing God won't do: choose sides in a fight. It's not that God chooses sides: God hears the cry of the authentic heart that seeks help. In the case of the UNnamed woman, what's in her heart as she reached out was: "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." There was an "If". Not a "When". She didn't really know if this latest attempt to cure herself of the bleeding was going to work. But she reached out any way, and thus the magic occurred because it was an act of faith that made her do it. And when Jesus felt that contact, he knew it was different than just the crowd pressing against him.

Perhaps, rather than reaching out to God in a way of seeking "my will be done", perhaps we would be best serve to seek out God with the knowledge that God's will is done... both on earth as it is in heaven. And can we trust that the will of God does include us?

Believe me, I don't think the rioters at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, were contemplating theology in the moment of their brave stand. And yet, I believe, their stand was a moment where the desperation of being brutalized finally led them to take a bold stand, a life-affirming stand, rather than retreat into the darkness of discrimination.

Here's to courage! Give it up for gumption! And can I hear an "Amen!" for a God who continues to be in the world nudging us along toward acceptance, and understanding.