HomeGood Morning!
You have just heard a powerful personal statement of life as part of a sexual minority, of a life lived in discomfort about oneself. I am going to speak today to the issue of justice and gender identity.
But before I do that, I need to speak to the individuals out there who are unhappy with me this morning.
Some one, some persons, are sitting in this room this morning and are feeling frustrated or annoyed. And what they are thinking to themselves is, “we have already had three Sundays in which David has spoken to us for at least part of his sermon about same sex marriages and gay rights. Now we have yet another Sunday devoted to politics and to the concerns of ‘those people’. When do we get back to us and to spirituality?”.
Still others are sitting here this morning thinking to themselves either “I am already not comfortable with all this homosexual stuff we’ve been doing, but this…”.
And still others are saying, “I really am open and tolerant to homosexuals, but this…” .
And someone may be sitting out there saying to themselves, “Now, you see, this is what gives we homosexuals a bad name.”.
So I feel a need to speak to anyone who is feeling those things.
First, to those who want to stop talking politics and social action and get back to spirituality, I want to say that I agree with you--and that I do not.
I, too, would like to speak from the pulpit about spirituality and not politics and I will do so often. I would like to talk about living a good life and never have to make reference to social justice or political action. I know that some of our Unitarian Universalist congregations have been accused in the past of talking politics and pretending that was religion. I do not wish to do that. Unfortunately, we live in a broken world. It is not perfect, there is much that needs to be changed in it, and many people are suffering. We cannot be religious people, claiming religious principles, without speaking to that brokenness and to healing it. We cannot claim to be religious people and ignore what is happening around us.
At least, we cannot do that and still be true to our proud heritage as Unitarian Universalists.
Today, a spark has been lit and has burst forth into a bright flame. The movement for justice is taking a huge leap forward. I cannot ignore it. We cannot ignore it. I will preach sermons with greater focus on other issues, but we are called to justice as well.
To those who think that perhaps the particular effort for equality I speak to today, the effort to include transgendered people, goes too far, I respond I this wise:
We Unitarian Universalists say that we believe in justice and universal love.
In my view, we cannot divide justice.
In my view, we cannot divide universal love.
For myself, I believe that one of the greatest religious acts that one can engage in, is reaching out a hand of welcome to an individual who is isolated and lonely, or to a group of people who are experiencing social isolation and scorn, and to bring that person or those people into the circle of love and inclusion.
But I also believe it is not sufficient to act on an individual basis alone; it is not sufficient to be kind and loving solely in our private acts. Love and inclusion require that we work for social justice so that the whole life experience of people is one of having a place at the table. It is not sufficient to provide an isolated place of shelter; true healing takes place when one’s entire life is made whole.
Throughout the history of this nation, the struggle for equality has had to be ongoing, because we as a nation have never lived up to our own best principles of liberty, equality and justice for all.
Just this past week, the Rhea Tennessee County board asked the State for permission to ban homosexuals from the county. 8-0. They have changed their mind and rescinded that request but the attitude behind the request remains.
Our Unitarian and Universalist movements have long histories of engaging in the struggle for human rights. The Universalists in America first called for an end to slavery back in the late 1790’s. And they did not meet as a movement until 1793.
Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister, so despised the fugitive slave law in the mid 1800’s that—in defiance of the law--he publicly announced that his home was a haven for runaway slaves and he sat each evening in a chair by his fire with a pistol on the armrest to protect those he might be sheltering.
Julia Ward Howe and Susan B. Anthony were among those who worked for women’s rights in the late 1800’s.
The great legal champion of the underdog, Clarence Darrow, was a Unitarian who, among other things, represented the defendant in the Scopes Monkey Trial in Rhea County, Tennessee.
In 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King issued his call from Selma for the clergy of this nation to join him there, 25% of all UU ministers went to Alabama, and the Board of Trustees of the UUA, then meeting in Boston, adjourned its meeting and reconvened in Selma.
For the past twenty years or so, some within the Unitarian Universalist movement have argued that we have largely become irrelevant, that all of our great social justice heroes are dead 19th century activists. That we are a religious movement that can only look backwards to an idyllic time that was.
I want to suggest that this is an incorrect view.
There is a great struggle taking place in this nation, and we have been part of it. Some date the modern struggle for rights for sexual minorities to the Stonewall riot of 1969. Beginning in 1970, a mere two years later, the Unitarian Universalist movement became actively involved in the struggle by calling for full rights for gays, lesbians and bisexuals. My comment over the years has been that we came late to the struggle; given our principles we ought to have called for equality for Gays and Lesbians a hundred years before we did. However, though we came late, compared to other religions, we were relatively early.
The Office of Gay Affairs was established in 1973, changing its
name several times over the years until it was named the Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Affairs in 1996. We have made many efforts to improve our attempts to serve the people who fit in those categories both within our religious movement and in society at large.
And beginning ten years ago, this congregation started the Welcoming Congregation program, a long process that took us over six years. On October 15, 2000, we as a congregation voted the following: Resolved, that the First Unitarian Society of Westchester should apply to the UUA to be designated an official Welcoming Congregation to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.
That vote passed by an official margin of 34 to 1 with 2 abstentions. Because our youth group members and some others wanted very much to have a voice in the decision, we counted both absentee and youth group votes as unofficial ballots, bringing the total to 44 in favor, 2 opposed and 2 abstentions.
So, we voted to be welcoming to transgendered people. What does that mean? When I say that, the first thing I mean by “what does that mean” is what does the word “transgendered” mean?
I have discovered that, like any label, it is both too limiting and too broad. The earliest description I heard is that a transgendered person is someone who is psychologically one gender and is physically another, so they are a woman in a man’s body or vice versa. Some people stop using the term transgendered if they have the surgical procedures that change their body; some do not.
Being transgendered and being homosexual are not the same thing, but one does not exclude the other. One can be a woman in a man’s body who is attracted to men. One can be a woman in a man’s body who is attracted to women. Or one can be attracted to both. Or to neither; because it is not about sexuality it is about self identity and self expression.
There are also people with both male and female attributes, some of whom are happy with that ambiguity, or, perhaps more accurately, with that mix. They are often included under the heading “transgendered”, though they might disagree with that label.
And there are other people with different circumstances who are included in the same category. Some of them are happy with that, and some are not.
For today’s sermon, when I use the term “transgendered”, I make reference to all of those people who challenge our notion that individual human beings are easily categorized as either male or female. I use that term for those whose gender identity or gender expression are “gender bending”.
I would remind you of the fish called the guppy. I spoke several weeks ago about the fact that if one separates guppies into male and female groups, the largest and most aggressive of the females will transform into a male.
So nature is not willing to accept our assumptions about gender divisions as readily as we are. Instead it poses challenges to our presumptions. Nature is more wondrous, more varied, more astonishing than we usually recognize. Isn’t it fabulous that we will always have so much more to discover and to learn and to see. If that can be our response, if we can say, “Isn’t that fabulous.”, then all will be well with the world. It is when we decide that wonder and variety and the astonishing are wrong, are evil, are threatening; it is when we yield to fear of the different that oppression and injustice arise.
That is the source of all of our “isms”; racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism, all of them. When faced with the different, we too often respond with fear, we seek to ensure in our own minds that we are better than what we fear, and that, since it is lesser, it must be controlled and contained. The fear of the different is what gives rise to the real evils in the world, the fear of that which challenges our limited visions of the world and the universe, the fear of that which challenges our view of what the world OUGHT to be like if it just did things our way. That fear gives birth to hate, and hate destroys.
Love gives rise to wonder and awe. Love gives rise to more of itself.
There is a fundamental issue I want to speak to: whether we understand various forms of gender identity and gender expression, whether we can relate to it or not, is in some sense irrelevant to the question whether as children of God, as children of the Goddess, or as children of the Cosmos, people have the right to be treated with respect and dignity; have the right to be treated as people of inherent worth; have the right to be treated with justice, equity and compassion. We claim those for ourselves, we owe them to everyone.
We say we are a Welcoming Congregation; that our hand of friendship and a seat at the table extends to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons.
We say they are welcome as full participants in our community.
We say they are welcome as they are; not as sinners to be saved, not as sick people to be made well, not as pitiful outcasts to be saved from themselves but rather as whole persons welcomed into full community with us.
We say we affirm their presence, affirm their membership, and affirm their inclusion in all aspects of our congregational life.
I stated earlier that I believe that the greatest religious act that one can engage in is reaching out a hand of welcome to an individual who is isolated and lonely, or to a group of people who are experiencing social isolation and scorn, and to bring that person or those people into the circle of love and inclusion.
In calling ourselves a Welcoming Congregation, we have said that we are committed to doing just that.
Now we have a chance to do so.
Now we have a chance to do more.
Now we have a chance to live up to the words of our faith, the Principles of Unitarian Universalism.
Now we have a chance to live up to our claims of being a caring, nurturing community in which all are welcome.
Now we have a chance to live up to the words of our stated commitment as a Welcoming Congregation.
Now we have a chance to be part of a movement that is making our general culture more open, more accepting, more tolerant.
Now we have a chance to support those who seek to redress injustice and bring greater equality to our nation and to our world.
There are a few small steps that you are invited to take as a member of this congregation.
You will have noticed that some people’s nametags bear small pink triangles. Those are symbols of the movement for gay rights, and symbols here of our congregational welcome and your personal welcome to gays and lesbians.
There are also rainbow flag pins. That is used to represent a more general welcome to those who do not feel represented by the pink triangle.
You are invited to wear either or both.
There is another step to take, one that works for change in the broader society.
After the service today, there will be a letter-writing table set up where you may write letters to your New York State representatives urging passage of a bill that would extend Hate Crimes protections to people regardless of their gender identity or gender expression. Also, there are letters supporting same sex marriage rights. You are invited to sign both of these.
I ask you to consider all of these actions and any others that might help to bring equality to our nation.
I ask you to do this in the name of justice and love.
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