Week in Review: Letting Sunshine In

A rare March snowfall (the second in several days) put me into contemplative mode yesterday, so this weekly news wrap-up is a day late. As I type, the snow is still lying on the ground, with the new season’s daylilies and Louisiana iris beginning to spike through it. A bright scarlet spray of flowering quince bravely fights against the cold, to herald a spring that now seems impossibly far away.

The stillness of yesterday’s snowfall also allowed me to finish Kevin Sessums’ wonderful memoir Mississippi Sissy (NY: Saint Martin’s, 2007). Though Sessums grew up in a neighboring state, and is seven years younger than I am, I can certainly relate to much of his experience of growing up a sissy in a Southern state in which fathers expect to have their masculinity mirrored to them by their sons. Sessums notes that the sense of being identified as different—in an unacceptable way—when one is too young even to understand the mechanisms of prejudice, induces a watchfulness, a tendency to listen and observe, in young gay boys: “That’s what most sissies do when we are children: We sit apart and listen” (preface, unpaginated).

Indeed. The experience of being identified as (and shamed for) being less than the ideal man-in-the-making places one on the sidelines from early on—listening, pondering, trying to put pieces together: above all, trying to foresee the next inexplicable blow, to stay out of its way, when the chastening rod can descend so suddenly and unexpectedly, simply because one is not who one is expected to be. As Sessums notes, “…the one-word condemnation all little sissies must deal with at some point, the one that reverberates in the echo chambers of our collective memory. ‘Shame,’ came the utterance, ‘shame…’ ”(p. 135).

When we survive—and Sessums has done so magnificently; he has not merely endured but prevailed—we hope to give something back. We hope to make it just that much easier for those coming after us, when we tell our stories—easier to know that one is not alone in the world; and easier to identify and avoid cruelty and violence. We hope that, by telling one more story of unmerited pain endured by children identified as gender-inappropriate, the back of homophobic cruelty and violence may be broken in the future.

And so to the news of the week:

I’ve blogged in past days about the recent spate of anti-gay violence in Ft. Lauderdale. As I’ve noted, the violence is fueled by a group of ministers supporting Ft. Lauderdale mayor, Jim Naugle, in what Pam Spaulding calls a campaign of “homo-hate”
(www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4671).

The good news this week is that spotlighting Naugle’s inappropriate use of his office to channel fundamentalist homophobia has resulted in a curtailing of his activities. The organization Fight Out Loud recently led an action alert campaign to make Naugle accountable for the violence he was inciting (www.fightoutloud.org/actionalerts.html).

This week, several blogs have reported that Ft. Lauderdale has decided to remove Naugle’s bi-monthly column from the city newsletter. Since the column had become a forum for Naugle to “spew homo-hate,” shutting down the column will provide one fewer venue for the dissemination of such hate that is fueling violence in this part of Florida.

Among the blogs reporting on this update of the Ft. Lauderdale story week are Bilerico (www.bilerico.com/2008/03/a_victory_in_fort_lauderdale.php#more) and Pam’s House Blend (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4695). For those interested in more information about the ministerial alliance supporting Naugle, several blogs have linked to the following 2007 local news article at the time Naugle began targeting the LGBT community: www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-0904naugle,0,7179279.story.

Since I cite Pam’s House Blend blog so often and have included her in my links list, I’d like to say a few words about this blog. I don’t know Pam Spaulding personally; have never met her. But I read her blog daily, because I find it one of the most level-headed and yet politically daring commentaries on news today—news affecting the LGBT community, to be sure, but news in general as well.

Pam (who is African American) has been relentless in calling for open dialogue about homophobia in the African-American community. As she noted in this 20 Jan. posting about Obama’s remarks at Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta challenging homophobia in the black community (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4223), even though this critique is focused on a segment of the American population, homophobia in the black community is everybody’s problem, and sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Pam continues letting the sun shine in this week, reporting on a recent talk by Mayor Denise Simmons of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the nation’s first openly lesbian black mayor, and City Councilman Ken Reeves, the first openly gay black mayor, at Harvard (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4705). According to Pam, the Cambridge Chronicle reports “most of the homophobic sentiment they've [i.e., Mayor Simmons and Councilman Reeves] incurred as politicians and as people has been at the hands of black clergy and religious leaders.” Pam concludes, “This is a tragic disservice to the black community, and further proves how pathological and deep a problem this is. I'm glad that Simmons and Reeves are speaking out and it's being covered in the media.”

Pam Spaulding’s blog this week also reports on an appearance of Rev. Ken Hutcherson—whom Pam characterizes as a “raging homobigot activist”—on TBN’s “Praise the Lord” show on Thursday (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4707). Pam transcribes some of Pastor Hutcherson’s remarks, and comments on them. Among them is the following eerie observation: “Love hurts! Love hurts! My love hurts my kids sometimes. Hurts 'em good!” Indeed.

Why do I, a white gay man with Southern roots, believe that it’s important to engage homophobia in the African-American community? After all, it’s not as if there’s not homophobia in abundance right within my own community to engage.

I’m interested in addressing this phenomenon—and homophobic violence anywhere it occurs—because I agree with Pam Spaulding: homophobia in any community is the problem of all communities. It happens that the pastors supporting Naugle in Ft. Lauderdale are African American. It also happens that the young gay man buried last week after being murdered in Ft. Lauderdale was an African-American teen. It also happens that Rev. Hutcherson is African American.

Homophobia is a problem in the black community—as it is in the white community. It affects African Americans; it tragically ended Simmie Williams’ life. It affects all of us. We all lose, when anyone dies through unmerited violence; we all lose when gifted young people have their lives snuffed out, and never have a chance to contribute to the community.

African Americans are a churched people, by and large. African-American churches have been marvelous instruments of progressive social change. It grieves me to see any churches siding with oppression, particularly when this oppression issues in violence—whether the “soft” violence of discrimination, or the “hard” violence of actual physical assault. As a theologian, I have always considered it part of my calling to explore the roots of social violence, to expose them, to try to address and contribute to the healing of such violence.

When I began my teaching career in 1984, I had two job offers, one from a prestigious “white” university, the other from an historically black university. The choice was, for me, a no-brainer. I took the position at the HBCU. Though most of my grad-school classmates could not understand why I would turn down a much more lucrative and high-profile job at a mainstream university, I saw the choice as one between the vocation to serve, to make my voice count, to give back, and the choice to live a cloistered scholar’s life that would not have an impact on the world around me. I chose the HBCU.

As Kevin Sessums notes throughout his book Mississippi Sissy, the roots of white Southerners are intertwined with those of black Southerners. There is no way to talk about our future except by talking about a shared future. Sessums’ experience of marginalization as a sissy boy growing up in the American South sensitized him to the ugly oppression of African Americans. He heard the bible used to justify discrimination and violence against black citizens, just as he heard it used to justify discrimination and violence against gay people. The mechanisms of oppression were the same, in both cases. The people promoting the oppression were the same. The white churches bore tremendous responsibility for fostering racism, just as they did for fostering homophobia.

I saw the same picture, growing up as a young white gay boy in Arkansas. My experience of coping with homophobia led me, early on, to question and then oppose racism. I find it extraordinarily painful now to be susceptible to prejudice on the part of African Americans, who have much to gain by remaining in solidarity with others experiencing unmerited oppression. I find it difficult to understand how anyone marginalized by the power centers of society cannot see that those power centers play one marginalized group against another, to maintain their unjust control. In fighting among ourselves, we play into the hands of those who wish to oppress all of us.

This is why I speak out. This is why I call on the African-American churches to renounce homophobia, just as I call on my own and other “white” churches to do the same. This is also why I have been heartened at Mr. Obama’s clear witness against homophobia in the African-American community.

This week, a video clip of Obama’s courageous statement that homophobia is not Christian has been uploaded on several blogs, including the Towleroad blog (www.towleroad.com/2008/03/03/index.html#entry-46534010) and Michelangelo Signorile’s Gist at www.signorile2003.blogspot.com.

And in my own church, the oppression continues. The Clerical Whispers blog reported in the past week that, lest we remain in doubt about Pope Benedict’s stands on gay rights and gay human beings, the pope has praised the United States for its opposition to gay marriage—see http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/03/pope-praises-us-opposition-to-gay.html.

At the same time, the recent Pew Report statistics showing a significant proportion of American Catholics having walked away from the church continue to be studied. This week’s National Catholic Reporter contains an insightful podcast analyzing what’s happening with young Catholics in the U.S. The report concludes that many young Catholics keep believing, but are increasingly choosing not to belong: see http://ncrcafe.org/node/1653.

This week’s National Catholic Reporter also carries an editorial challenging church leaders to sponsor a national discussion to examine the exodus from the church—see www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2008a/030708/030708ze.htm. In my view, if church leaders did sponsor such a nationwide dialogue (and I will be surprised if they do), they’ll find that a very significant reason for the exodus—particularly among young Catholics—is the church’s unrelenting homophobia.

As an example of such homophobia: the Clerical Whispers blog reports this week that St. Stephen’s parish in Minneapolis, a well-attended welcoming community with a vibrant liturgy and many social action programs, is being forced to make its liturgical life conform to the narrow expectations of the diocese: see http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/03/minneapolis-parishs-progressive.html. The blog quotes a former parish council member, Mary Condon Peters, on the liturgical shutdown: "It's incredibly sad. All these years, there was room in the big old Catholic tent for all of us. And now there isn't. And they gave us three weeks' notice." This has traditionally been a rare parish in which gay Catholics have felt at home.

One has to wonder if the big old tent will contain anyone in the future except the righteous remnant, if the church continues along its present path of weeding out those identified as unwashed and unwelcome.

And as all this happens, a reminder that the recent Fight Out Loud video about violence against LGBT citizens of the U.S. in 2008 (www.fightoutloud.org) shows that we who are gay are being murdered at the rate of 1 person every 8 days in 2008.

Do the churches have anything—anything convincing—to say about that?

Teaching Youth Not to Hate

News today that the American Family Association has announced a boycott of the April 25 “Day of Silence” being promoted by GLSEN—Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (see www.afa.net/). GLSEN organizes this event each year to enhance awareness in American classrooms of the prejudice endured by those who are gay and lesbian.

One of GLSEN’s primary objectives is to address the deeply troubling phenomenon of bullying of LGBT youth in American schools. This year’s Day of Silence observance is being organized in memory of fifteen-year old Lawrence King.

As the murder of this gay youth illustrates in the starkest way possible, it is imperative that schools educate our children not to hate. As a video just released by Fight Out Loud—“Hate in 2008 = A Call to Action”—concludes, in 2008, LGBT people are being murdered in the U.S. at the rate of one person every eight days (see www.fightoutloud.org/). And those are only the murders about which we know . . . .

The American Family Association identifies GLSEN as “an activist homosexual group,” despite the fact that, by AFA’s own admission, the GLSEN-sponsored Day of Silence is now observed in thousands of schools around the nation, and despite GLSEN’s status as an organization of highly regarded professional educators from many backgrounds, whose goal is to address school bullying. Shockingly, one of AFA’s action points vs. the Day of Silence is an appeal to supporters to “encourage your church leadership to follow the bold example of Pastor Ken Hutcherson who is vocally opposing ‘Day of Silence’ in his community in Redmond, Washington.”

It was Pastor Hutcherson who stated recently (as a previous posting of mine on this blog recounts) that if another man opened the door for him, he’d rip the man’s arm off and beat him to death with the wet end of the arm.

The AFA’s callous willingness to use children in right-wing political battles runs directly against the direction taken by the nation’s chief teacher accreditation organization, NCATE (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education). NCATE accredits the education schools of colleges and universities according to a set of standards that include the college or university’s commitment to diversity (see www.ncate.org).

As the NCATE standard on diversity (standard #4) states,

One of the goals of this standard is the development of educators who can help all students learn or support their learning through their professional roles in schools. This goal requires educators who can reflect multicultural and global perspectives that draw on the histories, experiences, and representations of students and families from diverse populations. Therefore, the [teacher education] unit has the responsibility to provide opportunities for candidates to understand diversity and equity in the teaching and learning process. . . .Candidates are helped to understand the potential impact of discrimination based on race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and language on students and their learning. Proficiencies related to diversity are identified in the unit’s conceptual framework. They are clear to candidates and are assessed as part of the unit’s assessment system.

NCATE guidelines for standard four note that units of education expecting to receive accreditation must produce teachers capable of understanding and teaching all students. As footnotes to standard four repeatedly state, “‘All students’ includes students with exceptionalities and of different ethnic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, language, religious, socioeconomic, and regional/geographic origins.”

Because of the imperative need for teachers today to reach increasingly diverse populations of students, on 13 November 2007, NCATE issued a call to action emphasizing the importance of teachers’ commitment to social justice. This call to action requires teachers to develop “professional dispositions” that enhance this commitment. NCATE’s call to action emphasizes that well-trained teachers must “understand the impact of discrimination based on race, class, gender, disability/exceptionality, sexual orientation, and language on students and their learning.”

The call to action adds to NCATE accreditation criteria the expectation that teachers exhibit the following Professional Dispositions:

Professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities. These positive behaviors support student learning and development.

NCATE expects institutions to assess professional dispositions based on observable behaviors in educational settings . The two professional dispositions that NCATE expects institutions to assess are fairness and the belief that all students can learn. Based on their mission and conceptual framework, professional education units can identify, define, and operationalize additional professional dispositions.

NCATE expects institutions to assess professional dispositions based on observable behaviors in educational settings: this definition underscores that not merely education units or prospective teachers are now expected by NCATE to demonstrate fair and non-discriminatory behavior towards minorities, including LGBT persons. The entire university in which a unit of education is housed is now expected by NCATE to demonstrate such behavior.

The new NCATE social justice dispositions indicate that universities will be accredited based on their university-wide commitment to just and non-discriminatory behavior towards minorities (including LGBT persons)—e.g., presumably in governing statements forbidding discrimination, in policies and procedures that militate against discrimination, in hiring and firing decisions, and so on. NCATE will now examine institutions of higher education to see what “observable behaviors” towards minorities are displayed within an institution, its policies, its faculty, and especially its School of Education.

The murder of Lawrence King and the out-of-control assaults on LGBT citizens today—one person murdered every eight days!—underscore the importance of these educational goals both for American schools and for institutions of higher learning that produce teachers for those schools. As Pam Spaulding notes in her Pam’s House Blend (www.pamshouseblend.com) blog posting discussing the “Hate in 2008 = A Call to Action” video, something needs to be done in communities such as Ft. Lauderdale, where a tax-funded city newsletter by the city’s current mayor Mr. Naugle “spews . . . hate” against gay citizens.

Mr. Naugle has had vocal support from a group of African-American ministers. Pastor Ken Hutcherson is also African American. Yet, as the “Hate in 2008” video demonstrates, African Americans are well-represented among LGBT citizens now being murdered. They include seventeen-year old Simmie Williams, who was murdered recently right in Ft. Lauderdale.

Given this social reality, it is all the more heartening to remember Barack Obama’s several recent outspoken critiques of homophobia in the African-American community and African-American churches. This week’s Towleroad blog contains a video link to the most recent of these, about which I blogged last week—Mr. Obama’s statement to a group of supporters in Beaumont, Texas, that homophobia is not Christian.

There is much work to do in all of our communities. There is certainly much work to do in Florida, given the epidemic level of hate crimes against LGBT citizens of that state. Church-affiliated institutions of higher learning in that state—particularly African-American ones—have a premier opportunity to make a positive faith-based response to this social problem. If they will . . . .

The American Family Association certainly does not deserve the support of such institutions, given its longstanding positions espousing hate, including a statement in its AFA journal following Hurricane Katrina that the hurricane was “[an] instrument of God’s mercy” that “wiped out rampant sin.” One would like to think that something else was at work in the disruption of so many low-income African-American lives in that terrible event!

Manly Men and Homophobic Churches

A disturbing story today out of Ft. Lauderdale, where a gay couple, Mitchell Mart and Melbourne Brunner, eating at a restaurant Saturday said good morning to a passerby, who turned on them and beat Brunner to a bloody pulp. The whole story is at www.towleroad.com/2008/02/gay-man-beaten.html.

This comes several days after a 17-year old gay teen, Simmie Williams, Jr., was shot and killed in the same city by two unknown young men. Police are trying to determine if this shooting was a hate crime because of Simmie Williams’s sexual orientation: www.towleroad.com/2008/02/gay-florida-tee.html.

The mayor of Ft. Lauderdale, Jim Naugle, has for some time now been leading a crusade against the city’s large gay community, in active collaboration with a group of right-wing religious leaders www.towleroad.com/2007/08/christian-hate-.html. Last year a gay couple visiting the city were dismayed (and frightened) to hear anti-gay scripture verses being read over the loudspeaker of the airport as they retrieved their luggage at the airport baggage terminal.

The news of the Ft. Lauderdale shootings comes on the heels of news that Janice Langbehn, whose partner Lisa Pond died suddenly in Miami last years as the Seattle couple prepared to take a cruise with their children, has filed suit against Jackson Memorial Hospital because of the treatment she received when Pond was dying. Langbehn was refused the right to provide medical information about Pond, was not allowed to see her until shortly before her death, and was told that she was in an anti-gay state with anti-gay laws: see www.365gay.com/Newscon08/02/022208fla.htm.

A posting on today’s Towleroad website (www.towleroad.com/2008/02/is-fort-lauderd.html) asks whether Ft. Lauderdale mayor Naugle is in part responsible for the increase in incidents of violent homophobia in his city. In my view, he definitely is—and so are the ministers and churches supporting him.

I can address the latter from my own personal experiences during Steve’s and my recent time in Florida. Unknown to us, on the day of our arrival to take jobs in a United Methodist college, the Florida United Methodist state conference of 2006 concluded. It did so after a bitterly divisive debate over the status of gay members of Methodist churches, which split the Methodist church of Florida down the middle.

We had absolutely no idea of any of this until months later, when promises made to us at the time of our hiring began to be revoked and we began to experience baffling persecution from the supervisor who had hired us as an openly gay couple. The issue at stake in the 2006 Florida UMC conference was whether gay members can even be admitted to Methodist churches in Florida—not whether gays living celibate lives can be admitted to churches, but whether gay persons should be admitted at all. About half of the churches in the state of Florida wanted, at the 2006 conference, to exclude gay members altogether.

Though we had been told that our being an openly gay couple would not present a problem at the college that hired us, we quickly learned that this was far from the case—at least, in the mind of our supervisor. Within a few weeks, she informed us that the UMC bishop of Florida, Bishop Timothy Whitaker, had told her that, if he had known we were a couple (as opposed to being openly gay but single), he would not have approved our hire. (The bishop sits on the board of the college that hired us.)

During our unhappy year working at this college, we were constantly hounded by the supervisor about appearing together—though we had only one car—about taking lunch together, and even about taking one another to the doctor, though married couples at the school never receive reprimands for such activities. Not a single minister on the college’s board sought to defend us against this unjust treatment.

All of this was baffling to us. Though many people have images of Little Rock as backwards and conservative, with respect to gay issues the churches here are in many ways light years ahead of where they are in Florida. The Episcopal bishop of central Florida has strong sympathies with the breakaway group that continues to protest the elevation of an openly gay priest, Gene Robinson, to the episcopacy. In the area of Florida in which we lived, Episcopal churches even post "anti-gay" scriptures on their websites.

By contrast, the current and former Episcopal bishops of Arkansas have maintained a welcoming space within Episcopal churches for the the gay community. The previous bishop signed a statement some years ago supporting the ordination of openly gay persons to the ministry, and permitted parishes that chose to do so to celebrate gay unions. The current bishop has continued this support for gay persons.

We went to a Catholic liturgy once in our whole time in Florida. The church would have been our parish church, had we attended regularly. On the day we went to liturgy there, the parish deacon employed a dialogue homily in which he asked parishioners to tell him any words of Jesus they could recall.

A woman behind us, who muttered, “Praise the Lord,” throughout much of the homily, shouted out, “Repent!” We did not return to this parish. We were, as far as we could detect, the sole gay couple in the parish that day.

The churches are clearly a large part of the problem in our society, when LGBT people are bashed, killed, disemployed solely because we are gay, prevented from seeing our partners in the hospital, denied healthcare benefits. Given Steve’s and my experiences in Florida, I can without any doubt at all say that the churches play a large role in fomenting homophobia in that state—both through their silence when LGBT people are assaulted or demeaned, and through their active attempts to make LGBT people unwelcome, as with the group with whom Naugle in Ft. Lauderdale has affiliated himself.

It disturbs me that among the ministers egging Naugle on are some prominent African-American church leaders. I am particularly dismayed by homophobia in the African-American community. It seems to me that people who have experienced severe historic oppression should understand the mechanisms of oppression in the present, and should stand in solidarity with other oppressed groups. We who are oppressed have strong reason to stand together. The same groups who now bash gays in the churches were promoting racism a half century ago. I know. I grew up with those Christians. I heard the bible used then to justify subordination and abuse of people of color, just as I hear it used now to justify oppression of LGBT people.

One of the most shocking instances of homophobia on the part of an African-American minister in recent days was a remark made by Rev. Ken Hutcherson of Seattle in a sermon a few weeks ago. After proclaiming that "God hates soft men" and "God hates effeminate men," Hutcherson went on to say, "If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I'd rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end”: see http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/352368_faith23.html.

Hutcherson is a representative of the “men’s movement” in the churches. This movement tries to retrieve the church for men—as in manly men. It quite commonly preaches that men are “naturally” superior to women and have been given authority by God to rule women. It places great stock in assuring that men behave like men and women like women—at least, according to manly men’s definition of how men and women should behave. It believes that “correct” gender behavior is mandated by scripture and by God, and that those who deviated from these mandates are to be scorned and punished.

For this movement at its most ludicrous (and for a demonstration that the same ugly attitudes are alive and well in white churches, too), I recommend (if readers can stomach it) a You Tube video of a recent sermon by Rev. Steven L. Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Rev. Anderson is preaching on a biblical phrase, "him that pisseth against the wall": see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxcyqeRc-4.

Anderson takes the text to mean—I’m not making this up!—that God intends for men to urinate standing up. His sermon mounts a bizarre diatribe against Germans for (so he claims) demanding that men urinate while sitting down. The sermon mocks men who are “male” and not real men. Anderson’s mincing tone of voice when he speaks of males as opposed to men suggests that males are soft men who have allowed themselves to be whipped into shape by women who demand that they pee sitting down.

This would be laughable, if such rhetoric and such attitudes did not translate into the kind of violence we are seeing all too often these days against LGBT people, including gay youth. Note to churches: I find nothing in the scriptures which states that having a penis elevates a person to the status of a demi-god, and nothing which permits penis-endowed manly men to demonstrate their manly entitlement by beating others to a bloody pulp or shooting them to death.