I want to remind us of two anniversaries. One is coming up. June 28th, 2009 will mark the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion which launched the modern gay and transgender rights movements in the United States. There’s a 1969 photo of the Stonewall Inn on the front cover of your order of service. The inn was a mafia-run gay bar at 53 Christopher St. in New York City’s Greenwich Village. At that time gay bars were illegal; their proprietors couldn’t obtain liquor licenses; and they were subject to frequent police raids. Not only did the police attempt to confiscate illegal alcohol, but they also arrested drag queens and kings—cross dressers who performed at the bars. The New York City Police Department had a Public Morals Squad whose responsibilities, among other things, included arresting cross dressers. The police were notoriously demeaning and violent towards the patrons of such bars during these raids. On June 28th, 1969, as the Public Morals Squad entered the Stonewall Inn, the patrons and the performers, in a spontaneous, disorganized way, resisted police brutality. There are conflicting accounts of how it started, but a riot broke out. Gay men, lesbians and trans people who frequented the Village’s gay bars were tired of harassment and humiliation at the hands of the police. Many people who were there that night sum it up with some version of the phrase, “We weren’t going to take it anymore.” As word of the riot spread, hundreds and then thousands of people came to the West Village for four days of clashes with police.
Following the rebellion a flurry of organizing for justice and equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people spread across the country and has never ceased. The following year, on June 28, 1970, activists organized Christopher Street Liberation Day to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. It featured the first Gay Pride March in U.S. history, covering 51 excited and nervous blocks from Greenwich Village to Central Park. Pride is now celebrated every year in cities and towns across the country, usually in June to link to the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion.
Yesterday, in honor of this anniversary, Hartford and Connecticut celebrated gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride. This morning we continue that celebration in worship. The organizers of yesterday’s rally and festival at Bushnell Park have said Pride is an opportunity to celebrate; to remember who we are, where we’ve come from, and how far we still need to go. Pride is an opportunity to emphasize and demonstrate awareness, tolerance, acceptance and equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals, their families and their friends. Pride is an opportunity to provide a safe public space. Pride is an opportunity to provide a healthy and expanded sense of family and identity. Pride is an opportunity to save lives.1
We have similar opportunities in our congregations—not just once a year—but all year long—opportunities on behalf of and in solidarity with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to celebrate, to remember, to look forward towards work and struggle yet to come; to deepen our awareness; to stress tolerance and acceptance; to seek equality and justice; to be safe public spaces; to foster healthy and wide-ranging understandings of family and identity; and to save lives.
This brings me to the second anniversary in our midst. Our congregation is a Welcoming Congregation. Certainly that means we strive to be welcoming to all kinds of people; we strive to include all kinds of people; we strive to empower all kinds of people; we strive to embrace many theologies, many spiritual practices, many ways of being religious. We strive and we struggle with how to do all of this well. But within the Unitarian Universalist Association, the phrase Welcoming Congregation has a very specific meaning. It indicates a specific congregational identity, one we collectively earn. It refers to congregations that have intentionally and publicly made the commitment to fully include gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in all aspects of congregational life. Our congregation made that commitment a decade ago on May 18th, 1999. This is the ten-year anniversary of that commitment.
In ten years we’ve learned a lot about what it means to sustain this commitment, both in the local congregation and at the denominational level. We’ve learned, most significantly, that none of us can take this commitment for granted. We need to renew it over and over again. We need to earn it over and over again. The status of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is certainly improving in the larger culture, certainly improving in Connecticut, but the pace of change is still painfully slow. The struggles aren’t over. Though the cause of civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people continually moves forward, it also takes monumental steps backwards, as we’ve seen recently in the California Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Proposition 8 which prevents same gender loving couples from obtaining civil marriage licenses; or as we’ve seen recently in the failure of the CT legislature to pass a bill protecting transgender people from discrimination.
We cannot take our identity as a Welcoming Congregation for granted because being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender in the United States is still a death sentence for too many people. Study after study after study confirms this. While suicide is the third—some reports say second—leading cause of death among 15-to-24-year-olds, gay teens are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.2 A 2008 study by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center finds that 45% of transgender youth report contemplating suicide,3 and statistics for transgender adults are slightly lower though no less serious. A conservative estimate says “Forty-five percent of gay men and twenty percent of lesbians report instances of verbal and physical assaults in secondary school specifically because of their sexual orientation.”4 Some surveys suggest that as many as 90% of sexual and gender minority youth experience assault and harassment by their school peers. Sexual and gender minority youth are at a higher risk of being kicked out of their homes by families who will not accept them. They are more likely than their peers to start using tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs at an earlier age. And they are three times more likely to drop out of school than their peers.5 Every November a group of us gathers with Metropolitan Community Church in Hartford to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance, and honor the lives of transgender people who’ve been murdered in the past year because of their gender expression. And just this past week, Hal Turner, the New Jersey-based white supremacist, internet radio talk show host and blogger, was arrested for inciting his listeners to assassinate CT State Senator Andrew McDonald and State Representative Mike Lawlor, both of whom have been staunch, public supporters of marriage equality for same gender loving couples.
Just as insidious though more subtle in its impact is the negative response to a children’s book like Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s Tango Makes Three which I read earlier. Efforts to ban this book from libraries and schools are underway in North Carolina, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois.6 Another such book that has encountered resistance, most notably in Massachusetts, is Linda DeHaan’s King and King. When books like these are removed from shelves in libraries, sexual minority youth have fewer and fewer resources that affirm who they are. As affirmation dwindles, it is no wonder that depression might set in, that by the time they become teenagers they are prone to contemplate suicide.
Yes there has been change. Yes we live in a culture that is increasingly accepting of sexual and gender minorities. Nevertheless, in terms of safety, health and well-being, equal treatment under the law, and long term survival, the status of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and their allies remains far too tenuous. Instilling pride is a matter of life and death. And thus, we Unitarian Universalists and other people of liberal faith must boldly, joyfully and continually proclaim the full humanity of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Those of us who affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person; those of us who affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations—without apology, without weakness in our voices, without misgivings—must boldly and joyfully support, celebrate and own the pride that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are celebrating this weekend. That is fundamentally, in my view, what it means to be a Welcoming Congregation in the Unitarian Universalist Association and in the United States of America.
A few years ago, as our congregation was developing its strategic plan, we realized it was past time to renew our Welcoming Congregation commitment. We created a space in which people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning or queer could come together and begin building a greater sense of connection to each other, a greater sense of community within our congregation. The Rainbow Alliance formed out of that effort. I see the UUS:E Rainbow Alliance as the home of UUS:E’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, as the home for UUS:E’s queer community. I also see the Rainbow Alliance as the entity within our congregation that shapes our welcome to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people; that shapes our relationships to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organizations in the larger community; and that challenges us as a congregation to put our time and energy into social justice struggles pertaining to the rights and freedoms of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
In preparation for this service, I asked the Rainbow Alliance to let me know what message they want to send to the congregation this Pride weekend. This is the answer: The Rainbow Alliance is committed to UUS:E and we want to encourage our members to participate fully in the life of UUS:E. We want to be a welcoming, safe space for new people. We want to encourage the congregation’s continued development & participation as a Welcoming Congregation. We want our collective voice to be heard. We are concerned about civil rights for Transgender people and protection of transgender people from discrimination. Transgender people have supported struggles for gay and lesbian civil rights which have been so important to so many in our congregation. The transgender community needs UUS:E’s suppor now.
I take this message—these messages—very seriously. I want to do what I can—and I call on each of us to do what we can—to make all these ideas real in our congregational life. That’s what it means for us to be accountable for our Welcoming Congregation commitment. But I admit it is not as easy as it might sound. Unitarian Universalism has long been criticized as a religion more of the head than of the heart. One way this manifests is in the difference between what we think and say vs. what we feel and do. We think and say we are a welcoming congregation, but how deeply do we really feel it? How deeply do we strive to make it real? The words ‘gay,’ ‘lesbian,’ and ‘bisexual’ roll off our tongues, but it is also true that our cultural and social norms are still heterosexual. This means, I believe, that we—all of us—haven’t yet felt our Welcoming Congregation commitments in a way that transforms us as a community. There’s a place of deep, heart-felt engagement we have to get to in the coming years in order to fulfill the promise of those commitments. Similarly, the word ‘transgender’ rolls off our tongues much more easily than it used to, but it is also true that our social and cultural norms around gender still need broadening to be fully inclusive of gender non-conforming people, gender outlaws, gender queers, gender-benders—identities that still make many of us uncomfortable. There’s a place of deep, heart-felt engagement we have to get to in the coming years in order to fulfill the promise of our Welcoming Congregation commitments. We’re going to get there!
In the end, pride is not a thought. It’s a feeling. It’s not something we intellectualize. It’s something that moves in us, inspires us, compels us. It’s something we experience: in our hearts, in the pits of our stomachs, up the lengths of our spines. Pride moves us to celebrate, to struggle, to seek justice and equality, to stand on the side of love. It is one of the ways we demonstrate the ancient near-eastern, Jewish and Christian spiritual call to love what is holy and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Pride, felt at that deep heart-gut level truly saves lives.
So happy anniversaries, my friends! And may the joy and the pride we celebrate this weekend inspire us once again to renew our commitments, to fulfill all the promises of our Welcoming Congregation identity, to be transformed!
Amen and Blessed Be.
1 See the Connecticut Pride website at http://www.connecticutpride.org/.
2 Gushee, David P., “Church-based Hate,” Christian Century, vol. 126, #11, June 2, 2009, p. 28.
4 Gushee, David P., “Church-based Hate,: Christian Century, vol. 126, #11, June 2, 2009, p. 28.
5 Ibid., p. 28.
