Past Sermons by Rev. George Smith, Retired

In Defense of Love

February 29, 2004

Reading: “The Gay closet has many points of discomfort. One is the sheer shame that life must be so secret, that one’s citizenship is always dependent on how camouflaged as a heterosexual one appears. The necessary double life means that the Gay person can never simply stand flat-footed on the earth; there are always two people operating in one body, and one of them is a liar. This creates problems of distrust and disorientation. Fear is always present and affects every part of Gay life.” Judy Grahn, American Writer.

Reading: “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction, both are transformed” Carl Jung

Reading: “…what gay life does offer is some give in the social machine. If Americans, those least political of all social animals, must doubt the sexual given, then the skepticism may shift to other aspects of our national life.” Edmund White, American Writer.

“To Protect Marriage”—our evangelical compatriots cry!!! No Gay or Lesbian marriages, they insist because the same would irreparably harm marriage. I did not realize until I sat down to write this sermon how angry I am with regard to this issue. How angry I am that people, well intentioned people for the most part, must meddle in the very intimate lives of others. How angry I am that people are condemned for their way of life. I realized how angry I was as I pounded on my computer. I apologize to the computer because I really beat it hard. I have thought about this sermon for some time, but I can not get beyond the anger. I wanted to write a very erudite sermon full of philosophical and theological arguments for homosexuality and sociological studies and data to prove the truth of homosexuality. But I can’t because the issues are too close—too hurting—too important to just sit back and coolly assess the situation. And the anger is centered on this one issue for the moment at lease, gay and lesbian marriage.

“To Protect Marriage”…..this is the current catch phrase that could easily be translated into the words, you are not acceptable, you are not appropriate, you are sinful, damned to hell if you do not repent of this sin of homosexuality and change your ways. That is why this phrase, “to protect marriage” has little meaning because what needs protecting, if a loving couple who happen to be gay or lesbian decide to get married how does that cause destruction to straight marriage? What would change if gays and lesbians would be allowed the full rights of civil marriage? Maybe I am stupid but I do not see anyway that this would harm another’s marriage in any real sense. Yes the arguments against gay and lesbian marriage do include where do you draw the limit, at polygamy, incestual marriages, etc. But these arguments from the most absurd position could be said for marriage in general, because we have it, we could eventually have any form of marriage. But these words are spoken so authoritatively that just the shouting of them seems to make them true. To protect marriage!!!! A columnist in the Virginian Pilot several months wrote about the quickie marriage of Brittany Spears or one of her ilk and the quickie dissolution of the same, he asked is this what needs to be protected?

My response is that we need to enhance life in this country by giving the right to marriage to all regardless of same or different sex partners. We need to do this because honoring the being together of those who love each other is the right thing to do and the thing that stabilizes cultures. I propose a counter program to the “To protect marriage” one—that is “To protect love.” That being there is so little of it in this world today that we encourage love in almost every place that we find it, including GBLT loving couples. And that we foster its long term relationships in marriages that honor the love of each other and give the couples full rights in our culture.

But marriage is just a part of the issue with regard to Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian, Transgendered life. The Massachusetts Supreme Court put this whole issue into perspective when it stated that to deny the very basic rights of marriage to all, you are denying equal treatment under the law. The issue is more than just marriage; it is all rights and privileges of being citizens of this country--the issue of equal treatment. In California a judge basically throw out of court the challenge by some evangelical groups to the San Francisco gay, lesbian marriages because they could not show that they incurred any harm because of their actions. No one is being harmed. Thus we need to treat each other equally. There needs to be respect for the individual human, for the worth and dignity of every human being regardless of their sexual orientation, and the compassion to understand another person and their differences, the sense of equity in life’s relationships and the right to be an individual, and the justice that inevitably cries out that we need a change. So is, my anger stoked, again and again by the actions of others who do not respect these basic life principles. It is more than just political rights. It is in its most subtle form as Laura Stivers pointed out yesterday about the privilege and who has those privileges. In this case it is heterosupremacy, defined in a set of definitions that Nick shared with us as the sense that LGBT just isn’t quit as good as hetero, in any sense (except maybe style!).

I am angered by the losses that others incur because of these societal restrictions on their lives by others who would invade the sanctity of their individual inner selves. Over and over again we hear of the gay or lesbian couple whose one member may be at death’s door in the hospital and the other is not allowed to visit because they are not married and thus not a family member. Or the teenager who is so depressed because he can’t openly discuss and discover who he is and ends up committing suicide because of this lack of openness. Or the woman that finding that she is really a Lesbian leaves her husband who then gets the children awarded to him because a Lesbian she is not considered a fit mother. She looses all rights to see the children or to participate in their development. Or the Lawyer who even though, a foster parent in Florida, is unable to adopt children because the state will not allow it. True these are extreme cases and may not be so many in number, but they exist because some people refuse to respect the individuality of others.

I wish I were preaching today to a group who did not believe what we believe. I wish these words could ring through their hearts and change their way of thinking and behaving. I wish that they would listen to what I have to say. That would make me feel that I had done something of importance in this whole matter. I have put together a fairly respectable sermon on this issue and you may gently if not vigorously nod your heads to it, but does it change the very basic elements of the drama that is taking place today in this country. We have a president who wants to out law by constitutional amendment the rights of homosexuals to be married by the state. We are not sure if he wants a ban civil union as well. But regardless and because of the “in defense of marriage act” passed during Clinton’s term of office and signed by him, civil unions would not give gay and lesbian couples access to federal marriage perks. We have radio personalities who continuously argue against basic rights for homosexuals, such as non-discrimination in housing, employment, etc. There are churches who will only accept homosexuals if they have confessed their sins and repented and intend to lead a straight life. We are in a time when we have those who would see the homosexual as evil, someone to be despised. We are in a time when some governmental agencies are allowing homosexuals to be married and others are fighting to keep them from having this right. It is a difficult time and who knows what will result from all of this turmoil.

We have been and are working this weekend on the issue of becoming a welcoming congregation. That is that we say we are a safe place for gay bisexual lesbian transgendered persons to come to. I wish that we did not need to go through this process that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons could find safe havens no matter where they went. But that is not true for our culture as a whole and is not true for all UU congregations. I say this with shame, but it is true. It would seem on the face of it that we as UUs would not need to work on this. That it would be a forgone conclusion that our principles would say it all. To the contrary, there are homophobic UUs. Let me say that again, there are homophobic UUs. I’m sure that some of you through yesterday’s program struggled a bit with some of what you were experiencing, because this is a vital part of the process to ferret out these issues and feelings and to effectively confront them. This is not an easy process. Nor should it be. Because to really deal with becoming a welcoming congregation is to really deal with our straight and gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgendered issues.

I am your minister and I too have to confront issues that I am not comfortable with. Let me give you a bit of history and it isn’t pretty. It is what I have lived and what has shaped me. I have two experiences I want to relate to you. The first was when I was in 8th grade. I was delivering papers in the little town I lived in and one of the men on the route took me on his lap and unzipped my pants and fondled my penis. I got away as soon as I could; needless to say I never went back there again. I told no one else about this incident and felt my own shame and even guilt over it. The second one was when I was in between my 11th and 12th years in high school. That summer, I had “fallen in love” with a neighbor girl. One evening her father invited me to camp overnight with he and his sons. We all slept together in the same area. I awoke in the night to experience his hand on my penis which I promptly removed. He apologized and as was the custom of the time I again remained silent feeling ashamed and guilty. These two stories are not my only encounters with gay men and lesbian women. For most of my adult life I have had remarkable friendships with a variety of people and not the least of them being gay and lesbian individuals. My two negative experiences have not caused me to love others any less. I have come all the more to appreciate the difficulties that others who are different from me have in expressing their love and concern for others. On the other hand I have a dear friend who still believes that all gay men molest boys. What studies have shown us is that they do not molest in any greater numbers than straight men do. What I want to challenge you with is you need to see my history and see your own as what has brought you to this point in your life with all of its warts and beauty. But it is not what has to lock you in at this point in your life. If we take seriously the first principle, it asks us to look at others as individuals and not to be treated as members of a tribe saying well he or she is one of them. To see the beauty in the individual’s life and to understand the crookedness that gets there as well, is to understand the flakes of homophobia that settle into the broad beautiful landscape that is your life. Notice I did not say just you straight people need to do this as even gays and lesbians have their own homophobic pieces to deal with.

To focus on this is the issue before us today. Hopefully this whole weekend will point each of us onto our own path of understanding that gets directly to our own complicity in living acceptably in this homophobic world. It is partly image, partly prejudice, partly struggle, partly loss of self which limits our acceptance of the full rights of homosexuals.

There is a Buddhist saying, “The everyday practice is simply to develop complete acceptance and openness to all situations, emotions, and people.” It is a simple statement, but not so simple in implementation. This is not an easy thing to do especially with the prejudices that we have developed throughout childhood and into adulthood. Let me illustrate with a word that we use rather frequently here but is not so well received elsewhere. That word is Pagan. How many of you have in the past or continue to cringe when you hear this word? Does it muster up in you images of devil worship, human sacrifices—or maybe not so extreme a set of images, but certainly it brings to the for a negative content. For all of our very openness to pagans and paganism that word still can make us cringe so much so that we don’t want to hear it. Now think about this word homosexuality and its content words gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, we sometimes struggle with these words. Look at that phrase above. “The everyday practice,” what I include in this idea is learning, studying, and just plain taking in. It is what we UUs are good at. We read, we go to conferences, we have taken courses, we know the real deal when it comes to homosexuality. “…is simply to develop…,” this also is an easy part of this saying. The gathering in, the practicing of using the right words about homosexuality, the sense of doing things politically correct when we come to dealing with homosexuals, knowing what to do in any given situation. It is simply putting into words what you have learned. And yet the last part of the saying, “…to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations, emotions, and people,” is the part that really requires our radical change. Because here we no longer just mouth what it is that we have learned about homosexuality, we now do what we have learned. In this case it is the practice not just of the principles but the genuine living of them. This sense of radical acceptance and this moving with openness frees us to see, to understand the situations, the emotional content and the person. There was the Buddhist master who had a very precocious student who felt after he had meditated for some time that he had attained enlightenment. His master when confronted by the student said when you meet the Buddha on the road kill him. It is the same thing as the understanding of this Buddhist saying—it is more than practice, it is more than learning, it is more than just simply putting these two things together. It is radically living out this practice this learning that helps you to get into the deep acceptance; the openness to others that is what it really is all about to become a welcoming congregation and to have a safe haven for homosexuals.

Many years ago there was an elderly woman who was a faithful member of her church who in great distress went to see her pastor. She had just found out that her favorite nephew was gay. She worried about him, his salvation and what should be her response to him. Even more was her distress that he was a minister. What should she do? Her own pastor, carefully and slowly guided her through her feelings, through her concerns, and through her spiritual dilemma. In the end he spoke these words to her, “you know there have been many ministers in the past who have been gay or lesbian. You just have not known it. In fact, some have probably even been ministers to you and have given you great and wondrous help on your journey of life. It seems that if God had not wanted them to be there to help you, if God had condemned them, then they would not have been there for you. Your nephew has been kind to you, and has given you companionship, love, care and concern. All of these without any expectation of return to him and without you knowing that he was gay. What has changed? Not him, but you. What you were then unaware of, you are now aware of. It hasn’t changed what transpired in the past. It will not change, unless you let it, what will transpire in the future. Do you want that unconditional love, care and concern to continue? Then continue to be open to him. Continue to receive his love, care and concern. He is no different than he was before. But it is your eyes that can corrupt and change something that was beautiful and wonderful into something that would be less so. She struggled with this. It was hard because of what she was taught from the past. It is hard to step back, to accept. To be open to. To open up the self in all of its finitude to the feelings of others and that which is another human being in their pure unadulterated self.

Can you this day take that step to accept, to be open to another no matter who they are.