Tag: lgbt

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Social change often comes as a result of suffering

Soon after I became a Quaker, I read Gene Sharp’s three-volume The Politics of Nonviolent Action (the connection being the traditional Quaker testimony against violence—see footnote). It deeply affected my thinking about social change, most notably that activism needs to have specific goals and that specific actions within it need to be strategic towards a goal as well as consistent with ethical and moral standards of the particular activist movement (i.e., the ends are not more important than the means).

One of the things that surprised me and that has stuck with me is that Gandhi’s systematic theory of resistance, satyagraha (“truth-force” or “love-force”), included nonviolence not only as a moral choice but as strategy. Ahimsa (“not to injure”) is a Hindu religious virtue. And within the context of Gandhian civil resistance, accepting violence upon oneself without retaliation is intended to awaken compassion in the opponent and bystanders.

In both Gandhi’s movements in South Africa and India and in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, nonviolent resistance was not passive. Participants actively broke unjust laws and courted punishment. The accusation that pacifists are passive is wrong. Some pacifists (some religious sects notably among them) are in fact passive, but most pacifists are active in a range of efforts from resisting war to creating the conditions of peace. Pacifists regularly connect peace and justice. True peace is not an absence of war or conflict, it is a positive condition that includes justice.

So that’s very brief notes on a theoretical and historical view of suffering bringing social change.

But I have a subjective perspective as well, and sadly it does not involve voluntary suffering, but involuntary. From my own viewpoint, I conclude that many of the advances in LGBTQ+ rights, and the speed at which cultural changes are happening, are a direct result of the very public suffering and deaths of young gay men from AIDS. Being homosexual had moved from a shameful secret to an actively claimed personal and political statement (“You must come out,” said Harvey Milk), but the HIV epidemic forced thousands of young men out of the closet in a way that, in my opinion, awakened compassion in many of their friends and families. And the additional suffering of those who were rejected by those friends and families also served to awaken compassion in others. I feel very deeply this connection between that awful time and political and cultural changes. It was a terrible price to pay.

It’s also terrible that hundreds of thousands of people continue to die of AIDS, many of them heterosexual women in Africa. HIV is now largely preventable as well as treatable and deaths from AIDS are a failure of political and economic decisions, much like deaths from starvation. Not all suffering results in positive social change.

Footnote

A number of things associated with Friends took a while to take shape in the early years of the Friends movement, the Peace Testimony included. But by 1660, an influential group of men Friends, responding to political forces, made a statement to King Charles II, often summarized as “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever; and this is our testimony to the whole world. The spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil and again to move unto it; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the spirit of Christ, which leads us into all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.” As early as 1651, George Fox had said that he “lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars and I knew from whence all wars did rise, from the lust, according to James’s doctrine. . . . I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strifes were.”

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The world has changed

I marvel at how the world has changed in 40 years and sometimes struggle to keep up.

Remember the context for these prompts is a coming-out day post, hence the 40-year frame. I marvel even more at the way the world has changed in 60 years, though I don’t remember much about the first few. But blogging about the increasing difficulty in keeping abreast of new technology would just make me sound like an old man.

When I was young, I didn’t grasp how much what we see around us limits our imaginations of what is possible for ourselves, or at least limits what we think is possible, even if we imagine it. This is made clear by how young people are when they realize they are not straight or not one of the genders routinely assigned at birth. I absolutely marvel that people so young have such self-awareness. When I was that age I had no idea. I have to conclude that having examples of alternatives visible in media and in the people around them allows them to reflect on the implications for themselves.

There’s also the routine social norms that have changed in ways I might have imagined but never thought would happen so soon. While advances for LGBTQ+ people remain tenuous, the speed with which some changes happened amazes me. I attribute some of that speed to the spectre of thousands of young men dying before the very eyes of their families and loved ones. Just as there’s nothing like a war to create anti-war activists, there’s nothing like a plague to reveal how widespread (and close to home) gay lives are.

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I don’t consider myself bi or queer

I’ve had sex with women, but do not consider myself bi or queer. As I said at the beginning of the month, I believe being gay is about identity and self-awareness as much as (or perhaps more than) behavior. The times I had sex with women it was driven by emotional attraction rather than physical attraction. I suppose you could say I’m functionally bisexual, but my sexual interests are pretty entirely focused on male bodies.

Queer is becoming a default giant tent term, but it conveys very little information. A category that can include both asexual heterosexuals and sexually active (and exclusive) gay men won’t tell you much about any specific person. So when I want to publicly self-identify on the basis of sexuality, I say I’m a gay man.

A corollary to this bit of terminology is that it does bother me (a bit, not an enormous amount) when straight people very casually use the word queer. In spite of its use in academic contexts, it has not entirely shed its pejorative connotations for me. I’d rather people, unless they are including themselves in the group “queer”, use LGBTQ+ or a similar acronym. Both usages, of course, have their benefits and weaknesses.

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Holding hands in public

In spite of all the changes both personally and in American culture, I’m still often uncomfortable holding hands with another man in public. There are places I see younger couples holding hands that I really just wouldn’t, and even when I’m someplace I feel safe, there remains this little thrill at holding hands. “The past is not dead. It isn’t even past.”

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My father wouldn’t speak to me

I spent a year or so when my father wouldn’t speak to me.

I realized I was gay in the late fall of 1978. I told my mother I was gay in the winter of 1979, and she told me not to tell my father (who was paying my way through college).

In 1985 I moved to Philadelphia. I didn’t much like it at first, which I told my mother, but I met someone I decided to move in with (my first live-in partner). When I told my mother I was staying in Philadelphia in order to live with Joseph, that was what finally broke her years-long silence. (She had told no one in all those years.) She told my father, and he was unwilling to speak to me. (Unlike my mother, however, he immediately talked to his cousin Milo about it.) If I called and he answered the phone, he would pass it to my mother. My mother stopped calling because she didn’t want him to see my number on the bill.

In 1987, my father was working on a cotton-picker, which was up on blocks, and it fell on him. It fractured his skull, broke his pelvis and at least one of his legs, and caused some internal damage. He was very lucky not to die. There was a massive blood drive in my hometown for him.

Very early in his recovery, he said that as the cotton-picker fell on him he realized (had a revelation?) that being a family was more important than my sexuality. It was the phone call when my mother told me that he had said this which prompted me to sit down suddenly at work and start crying, and my coworker Ruth to seemingly jump over her desk to come stand by me.

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Attacked on the street

I’ve been attacked on the street on my way home from a bar with my lover. It was in Philadelphia in the late eighties or early nineties, and we were crossing Broad Street (in the crosswalk, with the light). When a car full of guys pulled into the crosswalk, Paul turned and pointed at the lines on the street. They reacted by jumping out of the car and beating us.

It happened so fast I don’t really remember what went down (besides me, to the pavement, with some kicking involved). My glasses were broken. We took a cab (I remember saying that I was bleeding but that I was not going to bleed on his car) to an emergency room, where I got some stitches in my eyebrow and an x‑ray revealed a hairline fracture in my nose. (I remember flirting with the nurse.) I had rather spectacular bruises for a while. (I’ve had pierced ears for ever, and had a pierced nipple for a while, and have pierced my nose twice, but the idea of piercing my eyebrow still gives me the heebie-jeebies.)

A bystander got the license of the car, and a police officer took a report while we were still at the hospital. The police eventually said the registered owner wasn’t driving the car, so there wasn’t anything they could do. (The police in Philadelphia were notoriously corrupt and insular, so I suspected homophobia and/or ethnic or extended family solidarity.) One of my coworkers, however, had a son in the police and offered to have someone make inquiries and rough someone up. I declined with a good bit of embarrassed affection.

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Personal conversations with Evangelical and African Quakers

I’ve had personal conversations with Evangelical and African Quakers about being gay.

There really is nothing like meeting people one-on-one while working on a shared project. For many years I was part of Quakers Uniting in Publications (QUIP), which brought together Friends from across the theological spectrum who shared a concern for the printed word. In annual meetings, shared projects, and correspondence, I had occasion to get to know Evangelical, Conservative, and Friends United Meeting Quakers. I haven’t been an active Quaker in over a decade, but I still have fond memories of these individuals.

Through both work and volunteer leadership positions, I’ve attended triennial meetings of Friends United Meeting twice (in Greensboro, NC, in 1987 and Indianapolis, IN, in 1996), a World Gathering of Friends (in Elspeet, Netherlands, in 1991), and the triennial of Friends World Committee for Consultation once (in Birmingham, UK, in 1997). In each of these meetings, to some degree, I have had the privilege of getting to know people quite different from myself in small groups. Several times I was also able, with the support of other Friends, to hold worship or discussion sessions on gay and lesbian concerns. In all of these meetings, I was not the first openly gay or lesbian person to participate. But in each case, I may have been the first openly gay person some of these Friends engaged in conversation. And I loved the conversations and the people I met.

One aspect of coming forward as an openly gay person and requesting time and space is the opportunity it gave straight Friends to be supportive.

At the time this activity didn’t seem a burden, but eventually I wasn’t able to continue doing it. In a Quaker context, I might say that I did it with love and joy when it was a ministry or calling, and when the calling left I could not continue under my own power.

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Hospice work and traveling in the Quaker ministry

I’ve supported people doing hospice work and traveled in the Quaker ministry with a concern to get Friends to talk about AIDS.

One aspect of the height of the AIDS epidemic was how many people were estranged from their families. So, if they were going to have help in their sickness and dying, it meant that their friends (and all too often, strangers) had to step up. I was not some Florence Nightingale, but rubbing hand lotion on a friend’s feet to soothe the neuropathy, or making sure they have a hot meal, or sitting in the hospital as they sleep, or keeping vigil on their deathbed really changes a person.

In 1992 I helped create an AIDS Working Group in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Responding to a proposal from Carolyn Schodt, we created a Quaker Ministry to Persons with AIDS, which trained volunteers and paired them with people with AIDS for weekly visits. Usually the partners were people in hospice, and volunteers formed friendships, gave support, and provided respite to caregivers. I was involved in the training program and in a monthly support group for the volunteers.

My religious work among Quakers around AIDS had begun earlier, when I shared with my monthly meeting my concern that Quakers should be talking about the epidemic and considering what, if anything, God was calling them to do in response. After a discernment process, I was given what’s colloquially called a “travel minute,” which is an official statement of a Quaker body endorsing the activities of a specific Friend on a specific topic. Initially I travelled to other monthly meetings in Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting (roughly the city of Philadelphia) and later to other meetings in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. By the time the AIDS Working Group had formed, I also travelled to other yearly meetings in North America.

Quaker practice varies widely (as does Quaker theology), and one striking memory I have is visiting Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative. The “conservative” in their name refers to largely to practices of worship and to some degree cultural practices. Certainly the way they conducted their meetings for business was an eye-opener. When my travel minute was presented and read, upon acceptance of the minute, it was clear that Friends were prepared to hear whatever message I had, right then, should I have one. I was so used to very carefully and heavily scheduled agendas that I almost missed the significance of the moment.

My work around AIDS is part of what led me to enter a yearlong program, “On Being a Spiritual Nurturer,” led by three Friends who had created an organization called School of the Spirit. In monthly residential weekends, participants heard from a variety of spiritual nurturers from different traditions, experienced various contemplative practices, and reflected together on what we were learning. Between times we did lots of reading and reflection papers, practiced local ministry under the care of oversight committees, and considered our own particular calls to ministry.

What I learned in the School of the Spirit has informed my approach to friendships and care and support for others, although I did not formally become a spiritual director. As I’ve been taking a fresh look at my life around the occasion of turning 60, I’ve given consideration to renewing and deepening my own spiritual practice and to the possibility of offering spiritual direction to others.

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The first safer-sex pamphlet in San Francisco

I helped support the production of the first safer-sex pamphlet in San Francisco as part of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. I grew up in a nonreligious and nonspiritual home, but while in college began exploring personal spirituality. This led eventually to becoming a gay male nun and to meeting SPI sisters. When I moved to San Francisco, I joined the order and was involved until not too long before I moved away.

The early history of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (before my time) included protesting nuclear power in the wake of Three Mile Island and fundraising for gay refugees from the Mariel boatlift. While I was a member we raised money to produce Play Fair! as well as continuing to do benefit fundraising in the community. We were involved in antiwar protests against US involvement in Central America and rarely missed an opportunity to subvert archetypes with a goal of releasing people from shame and guilt and “promulgating universal joy.” Some of us were involved in gatherings of the radical faeries.

Today the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence around the world include members of all genders, but at that time in San Francisco it was all men. And today most members wear “white face,” a practice I disliked back then when only a few did it and dislike even more today. Some sisters, when they put on the habit (and makeup), became larger than life and bloomed into wonderfully strange flowers. A few of us became more focused and contained. The reasons for becoming nuns were individual to each, but I felt there were three major elements reflected in varying degrees by each of us: drag, politics, and spirituality.

My interest in drag has always been minimal (and it’s all drag: we’re born naked), but critical engagement with politics and spirituality continue to be important to me.

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Redacted

“I’ve loved men deeply and only a couple of times come to regret being involved with them.” I’m sure readers will understand that I’m not going to make a public post about this kind of thing, beyond saying that unfortunately I do regret a couple of my relationships, for reasons having to do both with me and with the other party.