“Caught in Methodism’s Split Over Same-Sex Marriage”

“In Shadow of the Stonewall Inn, a Gay Man Is Killed”

Maybe to see the connection, the headline “In Shadow of the Stonewall Inn” should be replaced with “In Shadow of the United Methodist Church.” For all the sunshine and goodness the church may bring to people’s lives, the shadow side of its policies against LGBT people is often the root that feeds the tree of evil oppression. When a church continues to affirm that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching,” the distance between discrimination and acts of violence is shorter than church leaders think.

In Uganda, for instance, a bill is still in play that would give homosexuals the death penalty is directly linked to Christian teaching. Those sentiments were heard from delegates to the 2012 United Methodist Church General Conference, the legislative branch of the denomination. (Yes, 2012!) These abhorrent and evil-causing statements were not voted down by the majority of delegates. No, instead the anti-gay stances and policies were upheld. (Yes, 2012!)

This while all around the church, a majority of Americans favor making same-sex marriage legal and while most Protestant denominations have moved way beyond prohibitions of LGBT ordination and pastor’s presiding at same-sex weddings. Openly gay and lesbian pastors have been consecrated as bishops while the United Methodists still hold church trials for LGBT pastors who are open about their sexual orientation, who choose to live lives of balance and truth. Enforced silence is its own kind of death penalty.

While there is no known connection between the killer and the church, the anti-gay religious stances have fueled legalized discrimination and degradation more than any other source. We celebrate the bridge builders, the pastors and church members who intentionally step out of line, who speak faith to fear and love to disenfranchisement.This is the United Methodist Church at its best; the message of “less than” in the name of God is its worst.

Since her ordination in 1985, Kathryn has served as a United Methodist missionary in the Philippines, the pastor of Bethany United Methodist Church in Roslindale, MA and the West Roxbury United Methodist Church in West Roxbury, MA, Executive Director of the Church Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, Executive Director of the Methodist Federation for Social Action and Interim Executive Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

MEMO

TO: The United Methodist Church

FROM: The Rev. Kathryn Johnson

DATE: May 9, 2013

RE: What If the Church Gave a Trial and Nobody Came

The Rev. Dr. Thomas Ogletree. Seriously? This is just becoming silly.

In the event that this is for real, I just want you to know that I’m done. I am so far over this whole “charges and investigations and trials thing” that it isn’t even funny.

I’m not done following Jesus. In fact it’s because I intend to keep following Jesus and his word and example of loving God and one another that I’m done with spending any more time even thinking about church trials, something so contrary to the Gospel and so utterly devoid of love and grace. Let this serve as my notice that I intend to totally ignore the unjust laws of the church related to sexual orientation and same-gender weddings from here on out.

For the record, I have never and will never disclose my own sexual orientation. I mean, it’s just so irrelevant. How did we ever get the idea that it had anything to do with being qualified to be a pastor? It seems kind of funny when you think about it. I mean, why in the world would you care?

As one who has mostly served in appointments beyond the local church it has never been something I’ve done all that frequently, but whenever I’ve been asked to preside at a wedding I’ve done so with a sense of joy and humility. I performed my first holy union in 1988 when I was the pastor of Bethany United Methodist Church in Roslindale, MA and I have been performing holy unions and weddings between same gender persons, once that became legal, ever since.

Now that’s something worth caring about. That’s something worth shouting from the rooftops. In a world where there is so much hurt and pain, I have been honored to stand with couples affirming their covenantal love before God, the community of faith and their families. And to pledge with those present to uphold these couples as they continue to care for and to love one another.

At first I was discreet about performing holy unions and same-gender weddings because I understood that many in the church needed time to study and dialogue and reflect. I’ll never forget the night my 80+ year-old organist called and said that she figured homosexuality was ok with God after all. But what she really didn’t understand was anal sex. We were in the middle of a six-week study about homosexuality and she had clearly taken it to heart! After I picked myself up off the floor of the parsonage kitchen I told Virginia I didn’t really get anal sex either, but that I really didn’t think that mattered. She allowed as how she agreed and that was that. Virginia just passed her 100th birthday and as far as I know has been fine with same-gender marriage for these past 20 years.

Not that pastors won’t still get that kind of call from parishioners struggling to figure out where sexuality fits into the picture, whether it be opposite or same gender, but the point here is that that call came 25 years ago. When it comes to sexual orientation being a determining factor in whether one can be ordained, and the gender of two people seeking the blessing of the church when wanting to get married, the ship of “time for study and dialogue” sailed a long time ago. The institutions that support and surround physicians, psychiatrists, teachers, police officers, business people, politicians….have all come to a place of understanding and acceptance. Will the church, those of us who gather in the name of Jesus to be about the business of sharing God’s love, really be the last bastion of rejection and ignorance?

Together 33 years, Gay Marriage in Brooklyn, July 24, 2011 — fabulous photo by Diane Greene Lent

So, for what it’s worth, I’m just “over it” when it comes to anything related to charges and trials. Not that I was ever going to stop marrying people, same or opposite gender, as I have been honored to do for the entire length of my ordained ministry. But now, and here’s what feels different, I don’t think I’ll even participate in discussions or strategy about how to outwit or change the injustices in the polity of the church that provide for charges to be brought and trials to be had.

It’s just all so 20th century….kind of like shoulder pads in women’s suit jackets. It’s time to clean the UMC closet. It’s embarrassing every time we wear one of those things out in public. Should someone file a complaint against me I think I’ll just ignore it. Should my bishop call me in to account for my actions (in so far as it relates to performing same-gender weddings) I have a hunch I just won’t go. Should a trial be scheduled, I’ll be hard pressed to participate and would ask my clergy colleagues to refuse to serve on a jury to convict me for breaking a law which is so clearly unjust to begin with. In fact, let’s have a pot luck clergy party. I’ll bring the chocolate chip cookies. Anyone else in?

I don’t want to sound cavalier about this. I know that many are in positions far more vulnerable than mine. I do want to share, however, the sense of joy and freedom that I have experienced of late in coming to this place.

I have a strong sense of peace, of realizing that this battle is won. There will still be some casualties, but it is becoming wonderfully clear that the unjust laws of the church have lost their power. United Methodist clergy are declaring in large numbers that they simply will not follow the law when it comes to performing same-gender weddings and living openly in loving, covenanted same-gender relationships.

And so, I join the thousands of clergy across the country who are now saying to same-gender couples wanting to get married in a United Methodist Church and/or by a United Methodist Clergyperson, “you are precious and loved by this representative of the church and I will gladly celebrate your love and your desire to enter into the covenant of marriage before God, the community of faith and your family.” I will do so as long as I am able. And should I lose my clergy orders and be unable to do so in the future, another clergy person will take my place. And another after that and another after that. We have reached the tipping point. The tide has turned and there is no holding it back.

Love is far greater than fear, so fear not. Thanks be to God.

Love,

Kathryn

Rev. Kathryn Johnson, Elder
New England Annual Conference

BIG THANKS to Kev Hamm and Studio 19 Productions.

Retired Bishop Gene Robinson was the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. He now works as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive research and policy organization, on issues of faith and gay rights.

Here is an excellent interview, “Retired Bishop Gene Robinson On Being Gay And Loving God,” on the NPR program Fresh Air.

Truth in Progress needs your support. Click here to find out how!

Retired Bishop Gene Robinson was the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. He now works as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive research and policy organization, on issues of faith and gay rights.

Here is an excellent interview, “Retired Bishop Gene Robinson On Being Gay And Loving God,” on the NPR program Fresh Air.

Truth in Progress needs your support. Click here to find out how!

Retired Bishop Gene Robinson was the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. He now works as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive research and policy organization, on issues of faith and gay rights.

Here is an excellent interview, “Retired Bishop Gene Robinson On Being Gay And Loving God,” on the NPR program Fresh Air.

Truth in Progress needs your support. Click here to find out how you can help!

I promised myself last night that I would not wake up this morning (Thursday, March 28th) and sit at my computer seeking to write something about that I have read, heard and felt during the last 2 days. When I realized that today is March 28th, I remembered that in my “count down” to reaching the glorious age of 80, October 28, 2013, there are exactly 7 months left. Possibly, because of that fact, I share the following.

When I was a pastor in Denver from 1997 to 2001, a United Church of Christ clergyman, Phil Campbell and I led workshop discussions on race and racism. Phil, now living in Alaska is white and I am black. Those groups were mostly composed of white persons. Phil was bold, brave, and effective as he spoke, listened and responded to the groups.

The Rev. Phil Campbell

Some of the white members revealed they had not yet confronted within themselves their unawareness, their insensitivity and their attitudes and actions that were at best, racially insensitive, at worst, racist. At the end of our workshops, Phil and I would debrief, and I would ask him, “Why were you so candid, clear and forthright as you confronted the insensitivity, sometimes racism of some of the white members of the group?” Phil, in his quiet, deeply sensitive and academically sound way, would say something like this, “Gil I had to”. Phil as a white ally of racial justice said things to white persons, that would not have been heard as clearly if I as a black person had said them.

Here are some of the things that I feel compelled to “say” in this essay to “straight persons” as a straight person to other straight persons. Over the years I have learned from and been appreciative of white persons who have been consistent and effective as allies of black persons and our racial justice struggles. I have sought and seek to be a consistent and effective ally of gay persons and same sex couples as well.

1. We are on the edge of “changing without changing.” I, as a black person am aware that racist language and legislation might change, but that change does not mean that persons and a nation have changed. We are in the process of altering our anti-Constitution language and legislation in regards to same gender loving persons, but that does not mean that we who are heterosexual have wrestled with and been healed of our less-than-positive assumptions, attitudes and actions regarding same gender loving persons. Martin Luther King once said, “A law may not make a man love me, but it will discourage him from lynching me.” No law will evoke love, nor should we expect it to, but new laws if they do not bring forth a deeper respect for the humanity of those whom we have historically demeaned, will mean that future generations will have to engage in seeking to do again. What we thought we were doing in this time of significant change. I, as a straight person hope that for those Justices who need it, and the rest of us who do as well, we will begin to develop large portions of Aretha Franklin’s R-E-S-P-E-C-T for those who because of their gay sexual orientation have throughout history been made invisible, have been ignored and have been disrespected.

2. Maureen Dowd’s op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times was titled, “Courting Cowardice.” She wrote of the fact that one of the arguments against interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia, 1967) was this, “the social science is still uncertain about how biracial children fare in this world.” Dowd, wrote, “a biracial child is faring pretty well in his second term in the Oval Office.”

The kid who would be president.

The presidency of Barack Obama, regardless of support or non-support for him, illustrates how foolish it would have been to delay eliminating prohibitions against interracial marriage until the social science analysis was completed. No logical and reasonable person, no matter how much their dislike, even hatred of President Obama, could say that the fact that he is the product of an interracial marriage makes him less than the president he would be if he were the product of a marriage between two persons of the same race. (I have written elsewhere about how the Obama presidency has revealed that racial insensitivity; ignorance and racism have not yet been relegated to the dustbin of history).

3. We who are the straight allies of LGBTQ persons and same sex couples, have a responsibility I believe, of not allowing the nation to be seduced by the admirable “sea change” that is taking place as attitudes and actions vis-à-vis homosexuality are changing. As winter in the nation slowly ends, we would do well to remember what Robert Frost said to the horse that was propelling him through the snow, “We have miles to go before we sleep.” We are on the journey toward full equality for same sex couples, but there are miles in front of us. Let us travel those miles with joy and determination, knowing that the end of the journey is not far away, even though the journey never ends.

But, after writing the above as a way of reminding and presenting a challenge to those like myself who are heterosexual (“straight”), I want to be clear about my hope that the Supreme Court will in its decision making leave no doubts about the Constitution-based legality of marriage equality for same sex couples. Two letters in today’s NY Times say this much better than I can,

“The justices need to enforce our (Gays) rights regardless of those who oppose them.”

And

“To advocate inaction, to let same-sex marriage ‘propagate organically’, is to condone inequality indefinitely.”

AMEN!

* There will never be another “Day After” like this. Thus for me, the “sound of silence” is not an option.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T –TIP with jazz musician Eden Atwood
From the FAIR IS FAIR in Montana Tour, September, 2011
Pinewood Studios, Missoula.

CLICK HERE for Day 1 Reflection HERE FOR DAY 2 Reflection.

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First was a judge known as Pontius Pilate who presided at the trial of Jesus. The coincidence of the proceedings regarding marriage equality for same sex couples taking place during the week when Christians re-visit the Biblical description of the trial of Jesus during the week Christians call Holy, cannot be over looked.

Second was Chief Justice Taney who on March 6, 1857 issued the infamous Dred Scott decision.

The Gospels in the Christian (New Testament) Bible offer these impressions of the role of Pontius Pilate as he presided at the trial of Jesus. Book of Matthew: Pilate washes his hands as a way of avoiding responsibility for the execution of Jesus. Book of Mark: Pilate believes in the innocence of Jesus and is reluctant to send him to be executed. Book of Luke: Pilate agrees that Jesus did not conspire against the Romans. Book of John: Pilate asks the crowd if Jesus should be released.

Chief Justice Taney said this as justification for the Dred Scott decision: “They (Negroes) had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit…” *

Some of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices during Holy Week 2013 seemed to manifest a bit of Pilate who presided at the trial of Jesus. They believe for a host of reasons that same sex couples are innocent of any charge of conspiracy to weaken “Traditional Marriage” (One man, One woman). Nor were they for reasons of rationality, intelligence and common sense willing to accept the argument that the major purpose of marriage was for procreation. But there seemed to be hints of reluctance among some of them to acknowledge and/or admit that equal access provisions of the Constitution require an immediate embrace of the right of marriage equality for same sex couples.

One hopes that this reluctance will not be reflected in their decision that will be announced in June. The oft-repeated words; “Justice delayed, is Justice denied” cannot be avoided as the Justices make their decision. My often-remembered Grandmother Mama Irene, who over and over again brought forth her South Carolina “mother wit and folk wisdom” before those of us who were her grandchildren, used to begin some sentences with these words, “When push comes to shove….” It was her way of saying that there are times when pushing is not enough because that which is being pushed does not move. She suggested that when that happens, shoving is in order.

Many of us hope that if the Justices are serious about all they have said and written about the Constitution and its pre-eminence in describing/defining ways the nation and we must act, they will make a decision affirming Constitution-based rationale for the rights of same sex couples to marry. May their language in doing that, “push, pull and shove,” if necessary, the nation to respond to their decision.

Any semblance of “gradualism,” in their decision, will diminish the importance of the Constitution. We as a nation are “pregnant” with the equality provisions of the Constitution, or we are not. Partial equality, as is true for partial pregnancy are both non-existent. Same sex couples have been present from the very beginnings of the experiment named “The USA”. It is time for them and all of us to celebrate the “birth” of the child called Marriage Equality”.

I do not have more to say about the words of Chief Justice Taney. I simply ask the reader to insert “same gender loving couples (SGL)” wherever the word Negro appears or where it is implied. SGL couples “have had no rights” worthy of respect by the nation and its practices. The U.S. Supreme Court of 2012-2013 has the opportunity to declare that the right of marriage equality for same sex couples is valid and worthy of respect by all of us.

Next week, on April 4th, many of us, particularly those of us who knew him and marched with him will acknowledge the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. I, as a straight ally/advocate of gay rights in society AND church have allowed his words to become almost a mantra for me; “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” My hope is that the Supreme Court in its decision-making believes that as well.

* “The Negro in the South” by W.T. Couch in CULTURE IN THE SOUTH, Edited by W. T. Couch (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1935)

CLICK HERE FOR DAY 1 REFLECTION AND HERE for the “DAY AFTER” the hearings.

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I am writing this on Tuesday, March 26, 2013. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court has considered the Constitutional validity of California’s Proposition 8 that defines marriage as being valid only between a man and a woman. On tomorrow, March 27th the Supreme Court will consider the same question as it considers the Defense of Marriage Act/DOMA. It has been the Constitution and not the Bible that has guided us as a nation to move from segregation to desegregation. And, it will be the Constitution and not the Bible that initiates marriage equality.

What do I mean? The Church and many Christians related to the Church have linked their bias to the Bible under the cover of protecting an “Institution.” Slavery and Racial Segregation have historically been viewed by many Christians as “Institutions” worthy of protection and survival. It was the Constitution and not the Bible that invalidated slavery and segregation. Many Christians viewed interracial marriage as a threat to the “Institution” of marriage. It was the Constitution and not the Bible that provided the rationale and basis for the ending of prohibitions against interracial marriage. It has been the Constitution that has led us to affirmations of equality and equal access for women and not the Bible. (Today, many Christians still believe in and support restrictions of the roles women might have within the Church).

And, it is the Constitution and not the Bible as interpreted by most Christians that is moving our nation toward marriage equality for same sex couples. Years ago, Governor George Wallace uttered his oft-quoted words, “Segregation yesterday, today and forever (paraphrased).” He has been proven to be wrong. Today, there are Christians and others, who offer their versions of Governor George Wallace by saying; “Marriage only for one man and one woman; yesterday, today and forever.” They are wrong because the Constitution of the USA will no longer support their limiting definitions of marriage.

The African American historian, Lerone Bennett wrote, “We misunderstand racism completely if we do not understand that racism is a mask for a much deeper problem involving not the victims of racism but the perpetrators.” *

The Supreme Court will during this season (or in another season) declare the
Constitutional validity of marriage equality for same sex couples, thus confronting the heterosexism that has been the source for those who are anti-marriage equality.

The challenge that remains for the nation and the Church is to unmask the problems of those who continue to perpetuate and perpetrate, racism, sexism and heterosexism. They, in and through the insecurities expressed through their biases, too often bigotry, represent the “much deeper problem”, as Bennett suggests, that we must begin to explore, understand and correct.

Martin Luther King asked the question; “Why is the Church so often the tail light and not the headlight (on matters of justice)?” It has not been the Bible of the Church, but the Constitution of the nation, that has led us away from institutionalized inequality to equality. Could/Would the Church guide us in ways to understand, correct and heal the perpetrators of the “isms” that keep us from being “Family”.

* African American Quotations, Richard Newman, editor, The Oryx press, 2000

CLICK HERE FOR DAY TWO REFLECTION and HERE for the DAY AFTER
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