Saturday, November 8, 2008

An Open Letter Post Prop 8

(Still in draft form...workin on it....comments please!)

Dear children of GLBT parents at FCCR:

You were the first faces to cross my mind on Wednesday morning when I heard about the passing of Proposition 8. I thought about what it must have been like for you to go to school, to face what your peers were saying about your moms and dads, to face the consequences of what the California voting populace had to say about your moms and dads. I assume lots of people are talking about the things that affect you, but very few people are actually talking to you. So I pray, that just this once, you will allow me to reoccupy the position of "pastor" in your hearts because I think you are the first ones that need to hear from your church.

While being your youth minister 4 years ago I watched you struggle with loyalties to family and the need to have friends. You are, after all, living in a place where Calvary Chapels and LDS churches seem to make the loudest squawk about what's Christian and what's not. Your friends told you that your two mommies were going to hell. Adopted children of gay couples were teased and tormented for being part of non-"biblically" structured families. Back then, some of you even started to question whether or not your Christian friends were right. You admitted feeling confused about what you were hearing at school and what you were experiencing at home. I imagine after the passing of Prop 8, these questions are even more confusing, even more unsettling. How could you not feel confused? The truth is, my dear ones, the world is confused about this stuff. I want to offer you an apology today. Some of us adults have been too slow to defend you and your families. Some of our churches have kept silent while mean-spirited people attacked your moms and dads. I am so sorry. You deserve better from us. By G-d's grace, I pray we do better by you from here on out.

I am currently watching an HBO series entitled Carnival. It's about a group of traveling outcasts that creatively attempt to "survive in the tough economic times of the 1930s." The show pales in comparison to the Sopranos and my personal favorite, The Wire, but I was struck by something this morning while watching season 2 of Carnival. The show features a dominant theme of good versus evil. Ironically, the most evil character in the show is a pastor of a Christian church. He speaks deceit and lies, all in the name of "God." And he gets away with it, even prospers because of people's desperation during the Depression. One thing religion has been unfortunately good at doing is selling people false certainties during uncertain times. The evil pastor in Carnival teaches people to cling to their dogmas, to grasp their previously held beliefs about human sinfulness with new found energy. He thinks this clinging and grasping will deliver them from aimlessness and despair. Instead, it results in more misery, more misled groups of people, less love, less deliverance. Unfortunately this is exactly the same dynamic in many of today's Christian churches.

People are losing their homes in this country. Major banks have closed because of greed and bad ideas about money. More and more boys and girls just a few years older than you keep being shipped off to war. Less and less of them are coming home and very few of us see end of that in sight. Political campaigns seem to get more hateful and ugly over the years. Joblessness is at a record high, which causes families lots of hardship at home. These are uncertain times. We've hit our maximum capacity for aimlessness and despair. As a result people are selling and clinging to out-dated ideas about what makes a man, what makes a woman, what makes a marriage and how G-d feels about all of that. It's hard to see this repetition of history and not give-up in despair.

When Barack Obama got elected some of us experienced a lift in this despair. (I am not trying to disclose who I voted for in this letter because my politics aren't the point. I am simply lifting up the fact that the face of leadership actually changed in this country.) People who had been marginalized, brutalized and systematically oppressed for hundreds of years got to see one of their own take the presidential office of the United States of America. What a day for all of us to witness, but particularly the African American community. For a moment, hope entered in and a new-found optimism returned to hearts gone cold. People danced in the streets. Churches all over the country boomed with excitement. Cars honked their horns block after block. Change had finally come!

The next morning they were still counting Prop 8 ballots in CA. Some of us, still spinning from the night before, still believing in miracles, convinced ourselves that a story with an entirely happy ending was possible. We were wrong. I'm sure some of the adults around you have tried to explain, in rational terms, why this happened. I would love to give you a rational explanation, but I don't have one. That's right: this pastor doesn't have any certainty to sell. In fact, I will tell you what I really think: life is unfair. Same-gender loving couples were denied their rights by California voters in an unfair manner. Democracy failed for the GLBT community on November 5 2008. Some of you already know life is unfair because of the way you are teased, because you know there are little ones just like you in other countries who don't have food to eat or clean water to drink. Some of you already know life is unfair because you've watched some of the coolest and most caring members of our church community die way too young, like Claudia Byrd and Mari Ruiz Torres. So I am not telling you something you don't already know.

I'm writing today, not to take away your pain (because pastors of any integrity will admit they cannot do that), but to witness it. What has happened to you and to your families is nothing short of systemic violence. Your hurt and sadness belong to all of us. You are right to cry, to scream, to feel trapped and torn. You are right to feel confused and conflicted. You are right to question the fairness of life and even to question the whereabouts of G-d. The love between your parents is not wrong. Same-gender loving is right and good. It is a gift from and of G-d. Being raised by gay parents does not make you less of a human being, in fact, it might even make you stronger than the average kid because you've had to develop coping skills and alternative ways of looking at the world. That's a great thing! Family is not created by a man and a woman. Family is created by love, period. You have every right to see the stupidity of Prop 8 and to feel outraged.

You also have the right to take care of yourselves while your families are being targeted. In fact, as your pastor, I whole-heartedly encourage you to do just that.

I pray that you will talk about how you are feeling instead of bottling it up inside. I pray that you will explore, with your family and church, what it means to be a target at school, particularly how to defend yourself and how to defend your family when people say mean things. Perhaps my most intense prayer is that you will not become hardened, that in the pain caused by this current affair you will not reject your parents love or try to prove your own gender and sexuality in violent ways. In other words: I hope you do not take the tools of homophobia and use them to oppress yourself and others.

The Bible wasn't Jesus' weapon of hate. In fact Jesus wasn't married and he didn't read the New Testament! There are many ways to interpret that book, and the older you get the more serious I hope you become in studying the scriptures for yourself. Further, there is no one "Christian" opinion out there. Even though certain Christians claim to have the "Truth" with a capital T, we are all people of "faith" and faith is the exercise of risk. We risk believing something we don't have ultimate proof to confirm. So, you might ask, how do we know we have faith in the right things? I don't think we ever really know, but William Sloane Coffin said a brilliant thing once: "It's always a good decision to change your mind when to do so will widen your heart."

What if wide open heartedness became the litmus test for Christians? What a different world we'd be living in...

It's hard to keep a wide open heart when intolerance and discrimination appear to keep winning. So maybe in these days, if you can't keep it wide open, just keep it open a crack by loving each other, by sharing your experience with one another and bearing one an other's burdens. Historically, the kids of FCCR have been incredibly good at getting each other through challenging times. I hope you continue that trend right now.

Finally: what makes me so mad about Prop 8 is that the state of CA has legally shut down what G-d has beckoned us to do: to love one another. So be renegade Christians. Do what the Early Christian Church did: love in the face of hate, love in the face of corrupt government. Love one another until the rest of us start waking up and paying attention. When our societies finally catch on, they will thank you. It might take a while, as we've seen with President Obama, but something tells me there's more dancing in the streets to be done. On that day, believe me, this church will be the "cloud of witnesses" surrounding your joy.

Until then, may G-d keep you inspired and protected in the Spirit of our liberating Christ.
Peace,

Emily Joye McGaughy, M.Div
Chaplain, Oakland CA
Former Director of Youth Ministries, Riverside CA

1 comment:

insta-wade said...

Emily,
This is a beautiful letter, and I hope it gets into the hands of those who need it. I saw Roland Stringfellow earlier today, and he said "I have a different opinion every day" - I resonate with that. Today I'm feeling that Prop 8 is less catastrophic, that its a reminder of the work we need to do as Christians with each other - while all of us in relationships will keep on loving each other well, no matter what the constitution says. You summed that up beautifully.
Today at EBCRS, Rev E said about Prop 8: I know you're disappointed. When you're birthing a child, if you push too hard, you'll hurt the child and yourself. And there are times when you want to push even when you know that. The time will come, and when it does, you'll push, and the child will be born.
That's it. And in the meantime, we gotta keep doing what we do.
Thank you for sharing this letter.
love,
wade