Gender Pronouns And The Challenges of These Days

      My congregation worshiped this last Sunday with three other congregations.  During this pandemic time my congregation has done our worship through YouTube, while many others have been worshipping through Zoom.  So this Sunday, in what was a great change for my congregation, we joined the others through a Zoom worship time.  Several of my parishioners noticed that many of the members and pastors of the other churches had their pronouns listed after their names, "Joe Smith, (he/him)"  "Jane Doe (they/them)" for example.  So at our regular Zoom coffee hour the question came up.  "Why were they doing this?"  "What does it mean?"  "How can an individual be 'they/them' which I've always understood to be plural?"

    Oh, boy.  Good, light, fun coffee hour conversation for the day.

    So I did my best to explain. After all, one of my own children now chooses "they/them" pronouns to self-identify.  If the church cannot get behind them and support them in their self-understanding and self-identification, the church will lose a really good, committed, wise human being.  And probably their siblings as well.  It was past time to have the conversation.  

    So we talked.  I shared about what it meant to be transgender, non-conforming, non-binary, fluid, etc.: that some people simply don't fit into the categories of male and female as we understand them.  Some of this is genetic: folk with XXY or XYY genders aren't going to be "female" or "male" as we understand them.  But as I'm learning from my child, this goes far beyond that.  For my child, there is a problem with being identified primarily by gender before any other identification occurs.  They are not first seen as "person", they are first seen as "female" and they no longer want that.  They want to be freed from gender ideas and gender categories to just simply be who they want to be, who they are, as a unique individual, a person, a human.

    I will be honest and name that this one has been a challenge for me.  At first, I worried that we were taking a step backwards.  The first wave of feminists fought hard for women to get the vote.  The second wave fought hard to allow women to work and to be in roles that previously had been restricted to men alone.  My generation wanted women to be accepted as being whoever and whatever we wanted to be, still as women.  And I was afraid that when my child said they no longer wanted to be identified as female because it felt restrictive, that we were reverting and going back to a time when "female" was so specific and so regulated that women could no longer be whatever and whoever they wanted except to declare themselves NOT female.  My child and I went around and around on this.  Was all our work in trying to say we could be women and still be and do anything we wanted  - was all of that for nothing?  

    I also struggled because this, my eldest child, is so very feminine in so many ways.  They usually wear long, flowy dresses. Their hair is very long and they like to put it in new and artistic styles.  They wear necklaces always, and love pretty things.  They are so much more classically female than I ever was, and yet they no longer want to be identified primarily as female.  I struggled to understand this.

    But I have done the work.  I have had the conversations.  My child is articulate, and smart.  They are wise and clear.  And I have finally heard them and come to understand that this is the next step.  This is the next frontier in allowing people to be who they are, in seeing them in their individuality and uniqueness.  

    Still, it was because of my own struggle that I understood the struggles my congregants were having with this.  I found myself remembering that as a young person, when Lesbian/Gay rights first came into focus, that some of my own grandparents said, "This is too much.  I cannot make this change.  I am being pushed too far this time."  They'd struggled to accept racial equalities, the movement towards more gender equality.  They'd struggled but had understood.  But this next one, pushing to accept that people had different sexual orientations, and that this was okay - this felt too hard.  For me and my peers, acceptance of same-gender relationships had not been an issue.  It was a no-brainer to see that who a person loved didn't matter, as long as the relationship was mutual and consensual.  Why should a person be limited on who they love by gender?  I frankly didn't begin to understand why people were having issues with this at all.  In what way does it negatively impact anyone for someone to love someone else?  In what ways am I affected at all by the choices people make in their partners except that I am blessed by seeing another happy, in-love couple?  Of course we need to push for acceptance of their rights to love whomever they are called and invited to love!

    But I also had enough wisdom to wonder what the next frontier, then, would be.  Where will I be challenged?  Where would be the edges that would confront me?  At what point will I say, "I am too old to change on this one."  And "I can't take this next step."  

    I've written before that I believe life is about challenge, is about growing, is about becoming the most whole we can be, and that includes being able to see others as the unique individuals they are.  It means learning to support and love one another across our differences, across the "walls" that we have put up.  We put things in categories to make sense of the world.  But the work of being an adult, a person on-the-way, a person called to love all of our neighbors as ourselves, is the work of then breaking down the very categories we have created so that we can see each other as the unique children of God that each of us is.  

    And so, while I heard my grandparents say "I am too old to change on this," that is a phrase I never, ever want to utter for myself.  I know challenges will continue to come.  That is the nature of being a human being in the 21st century.  But those challenges are what life is about: they give us the chance to grow, to deepen, to become more fully and wholly the people we are called to be.

    I also heard my grandparents say, "This may divide us even further."  "This may break us apart as a country."  Well, we are already broken apart as a country.  We are.  And it will only divide us further as we choose to let it do so.  To deny people rights because we are afraid it will upset some people is not a good justification to me.  It never has been.  It never will be.  In this case, to not listen, to not move on this, to refuse to allow people to choose their own identities is to deny people the right to self-identify, to figure out who they are and to claim it for themselves.  

    My child, along with all of those who do not choose to self-identify in terms of gender (or anything else for that matter) as we would first have them do, is still a beautiful, deeply loved child of God.  And we are called to love them as we love ourselves.  That's the bottom line.  Always.  That's our call from God at every step of the way.  To love them as I love myself means to allow them their own journey, to support them in their own walk, and to take on myself the burden of seeing them for who they are claiming they are, not as I would want to see them for my own comfort.  

    I found myself reminded of the Kahlil Gibran writing "On Children" (The Prophet. New York: Alfred A Knopf. 1995, p 17)

    "Your children are not your children.

    They are the sons and daughter’s of Life’s longing for itself.

    They come through you but not from you,

    And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

    You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

    For they have their own thoughts.

    You may house their bodies but not their souls,

    For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

    You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

    For life goes not backward nor tarries from yesterday.

    You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

    The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

    Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

    For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."

    This is not about me.  This is about them and their ability to walk their own path towards wholeness.  The only question I have to ask myself is will I support this person in their journey or will I choose judgment and rejection instead?  And once again, this is a no-brainer.  I love my child more than my own life.  And I will do whatever is necessary to support them in being whole, being full, being themself.  I know that I will benefit from that choice as well, as I learn to let go of judgment, pre-conceptions, and the needs to categorize, box and label others.  As I let go of judgment of others, I also release more self-judgment and that can only be a good thing.  

    I know this isn't an easy step for folk.  And people will find ways to justify their resistance.  Some will claim it is against God's will (which is not at all biblical, by the way.  That's for another conversation, however).  Some will claim it is against nature.  People usually do try to find justifications for their own inability to be open, to change.  But again, I cannot choose that for myself.  I have to choose love.  It is what God calls us to do.  And in this case, that starts very much at home.

Lyle's Words on Sunday: Religion and the LGBTQ Community Post-Orlando

I am posting this with Lyle's permission.  Lyle is one of our very active folk at Clayton Valley Presbyterian Church.  He delivered this on Sunday to much applause as well as many tears.  I am grateful for Lyle's courage in sharing his experience and his challenge to us all to be more and do more for those who are so often mistreated by the Church at large:

Religion and the LGBTQ Community Post-Orlando

by: Lyle Swallow

[Delivered at Clayton Valley Presbyterian Church

Gay Pride Sunday June 26,2016]

"I am a gay man in the San Francisco Bay Area who is proud of and committed to his church."  Let me repeat that statement.  "I am a gay man in the San Francisco Bay Area who is proud of and committed to his church."

I say this for an important reason: I am becoming more rare every day.  What you need to know, if you don't already know it, is that more and more members of the LGBTQ community are rejecting religion of any kind – organized or otherwise.  Sometimes they are just being quietly agnostic or atheistic.  Other times – and it is the loud ones you hear – they are openly hostile and vitriolic about religion.  They hate the church and religion.  They see it as evil and the cause of great suffering in the world.  And they are very vocal about it.  The recent incidents in Orlando have raised the fire under that pot.

Let me give you an example.  The Wednesday after the horrible killings in Orlando I attended a meeting of gay leather men in San Francisco.  People were checking in with each other about Orlando and generally trying to take care of each other emotionally.  Someone mentioned the sermon the previous Sunday by the Pastor at Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento and the room exploded.  A thoughtful man I greatly respect said quietly:   "Religion is the root of all evil."  My reply thought was – "No, evil is the root of all evil".  Please note, in my opinion, in acting this way, the LGBTQ folks are actually engaging in their own unhealthy conduct.  They are doing what they say they don't want others to do:  categorizing peoples or groups and then vilifying the entire group.  They are demonizing all religions and all religious people for the acts of some.

Don't get me wrong.  Among my LGBTQ friends in the Bay Area are some who are actively engaged in religious activities and spirituality.  They include a good friend who is the pastor at MCC San Francisco, a lesbian couple who are both very active in their synagogue and at which one is on the board, faculty and graduate students and Pacific School of Religion, and many people whom I consider to be incredibly spiritual, whether or not affiliated with a formal religious organization. 

But, my impression is that the numbers who oppose religion in any form completely are growing.  And the church has to accept that it has played and IS playing a HUGE part in this.  It is no surprise that so many LGBTQ people feel the way they do:

·       Many of them were rejected by or expelled from their churches because they were gay or queer or transgender.

·       Many were told over and over again by their churches that they are hated, they are evil, they are sinners, they will go to hell.

·       Many have been shunned and excluded by their families because of strict religious beliefs.  It is no surprise that such significant numbers of homeless youth are gay and transgender –they have been kicked out by their families, frequently because of religious beliefs.

·       Some have actually been publicly "outed" by others in their religious organization, which threatened jobs and family relationships.

·       They hear about and have to deal with open hatred from so-called clergy, like the pastor at Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento who only wished that MORE gays and lesbians had been shot and killed in Orlando.  There are way too many clergy who preach that gays should be dead.

·       They see a sign outside of a Salvation Army church after the Orlando shooting that says:  "Well, you asked for a sign from God."

·       They drive by a church marquee that says:  "Satan made gays and transgenders"

·       Daily they hear state and federal politicians say awful things about LGBTQ people as a class, and making ridiculous and unfounded statements to support narrow and bigoted views.

·       State legislatures are trying to pass laws to formally permit and sanction businesses discriminating against LGBTQ people because of their religious beliefs.

·       Religious charities go out of their way to prohibit gays and lesbians from adopting kids.

Over and over and over they experience or hear about awful, terrible things that are done to or said about LGBTQ people because of religious beliefs.

So, is it any wonder that these people have chosen to reject the people and institutions that vilify us, that want to deprive us of our rights, even want us dead, don't want us to exist?

And, is it any wonder that I and so many others are ecstatic when a church like Clayton Valley goes so far as to fly a rainbow flag?  I don't think you can fully appreciate what an amazing thing that is to us LBGT folks.

I am going to borrow some questions from a speech made by the Lieutenant Governor of Utah following the mass killing in Orlando and ask that you consider how you and people you know might respond to these questions:

When you heard about the shooting in Orlando, how did you feel? 

When you heard it was mostly LGBT people who were killed, did that change

how you feel?

You care it is gay people now.  Did you care about them on the Saturday BEFORE the

shooting?

Let me be clear, I am not asserting or even suggesting that the horrible actions and statements I have described reflect the beliefs of many in the religious communities.  I am fairly confident they are not the views of anyone in this congregation.

But, the bottom line is that organized religion is losing ground FAST in the LGBT community.  And the only way to counter that is for EVERYONE to affirmatively do something.  So, I am going to challenge you today.  I am going to challenge you to ACT.  Action will speak volumes – much more that platitudes.  And there are lots of ways you can do that:

·       Don’t tell me how you feel.  Do something.  

·       Don’t tell me how sad you are.  Do something. 

·       When someone tells a homophobic joke in a meeting, stand up and say “you can’t say that around me”. 

·       Write to your politicians and object to laws that discriminate against LGBTQ people.

·       When you hear someone in your family or circle of friends say bigoted or unkind things about LGBTQ people, stop them and educate them.  Tell them it is not OK for them to feel that way or to say those things.

·       Support fundraisers for the various LGBTQ causes – from the Rainbow Community Center, to youth programs, to housing for LBGT seniors. 

·       Don't tell me you support LGBTQ people – DO something.

·       Don't just say that you disagree with evil Pastor Jimenez in Sacramento or the many other clergy who vilify gays – ACT.  Write to them and to their congregations.  Attend a protest rally at the Sacramento church.

Don't get me wrong.  I fully appreciate and applaud all that CVPC is doing with respect to LGBTQ issues and to many other causes.  I literally applaud all of you for that and, again, say that this church's stand and its decision to fly the rainbow flag is more meaningful and impactful than you will ever know.  And I KNOW some of you individually are already engaged and taking action in many ways on many issues.  For that I say a heartfelt Thank You.  And to the rest of you I urge you to – stand up, speak out, act up.  ACT!  And be sure that the people you engage with know of your connection to this church so that they SEE the face of the church  You are the church.

I want to close the way I began.  I am VERY proud of this church community.  And I am very committed to this church community.  You have much to show others.  So I urge you to Act.  As Christians and as loving people.  As the Dalai Lama has said:  "It is not enough to be compassionate, we must act."  Thank you and God bless you.

Words for Orlando Vigil

          My name is Barbara and I have the great honor and privilege of serving as the pastor of Clayton Valley Presbyterian Church.  We are the congregation on Kirker Pass Rd – which is what Ygnacio becomes heading East, that flies a rainbow flag from our sign.  While Clayton Valley has always been an open and affirming congregation with a strongly diverse membership in terms of sexual orientation in particular, we have only been flying the flag for the last 8 months.  We made the decision to fly the flag when we became aware of the bullying of LGBTQ youth going on in two of our local high schools.  We came to realize that while for us celebration of diversity has always been an important and obvious component of what it is to be people who profess to believe in a God of love, that parts of our larger community still do not have the eyes to see that we are all family, all created to love and to grow and to learn.  We made the decision that we needed to make a statement that expressed that love, affirmation and celebration of diversity in a prominent and clear way. 

               In the last eight months, then, since we began flying the flag, we have also had our concerns about the hatred and anger that still exist in the larger community confirmed.  Our flag has been stolen, has been burned, and notes of condemnation have been left for us.  We have experienced fear. Some of the parents of the preschool children who attend our children’s center on campus have especially expressed fear, fear that the violence done to the flag might escalate into violence aimed at those on the campus, even the children.  We have experienced fear from some of our members; one, a gay man, sent word that they could not come to church yesterday because they were afraid our flag would attract violence after what happened in Orlando.

               But the reality is that the expressions of hate and anger that we have experienced are nothing in comparison to the tragedy that hit yesterday in Orlando.  Lives, people, our family members, died yesterday; and whole families were devastated by each one of those losses.  Fear has reared its head again, both as a cause and as a result of the violence. 

               It is in the midst of that fear, it is in the face of that hatred that we stand here today, people who are diverse and yet who are all persons, united by our ability to love, united by our ability to care, united by our commitment to be those who celebrate diversity rather than condemning it.  We have a long way to go.  Acceptance of diversity seems such a small goal and yet even that small step towards true celebration, even that small step seems elusive in times like this.

Still, I stand before you declaring that each day there are more people who see, more people who choose love, more people who take that step towards openness.  My congregation as well as so many in this community, in this country and in this world will stay strong in our conviction that love is stronger than hate; that acts of grace and forgiveness are more powerful than violence, anger, or revenge;  that it is possible to build bridges across our differences, to build communities that are, like the rainbow, beautiful because of their celebration of different colors.  We choose to walk in hope and to stand together knowing it is the only way that we can change our world and make it the place of love that it is meant to be. 

As we grieve those who have died in this tragedy, we vow to be part of the solution and part of working to create a world where everyone is safe, despite their race, color, ethnicity, culture, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, differing abilities, religions, creeds, etc etc etc.  We want a world where everyone is free to love and to know they are loved.  We want a world where diversity is recognized for the gift it is.  And where unity does not mean “sameness”.  I am honored to be part of this vigil, though I grieve deeply for the need of it.

--

O Great Mystery, hold us all in the arms of your love.  Bring us a vision of love, of understanding, of acceptance, of celebration for what each of us are and can be.  Help us to see a way towards healing, towards compassion and towards grace.  In your many names we pray.  Amen.