We Are Family
A SERMON BY REV LINDA A HART
It’s nearly 12 years ago that my niece Stefanie got married. Peter and I went to her wedding in Maryland. It was what we called Indian Summer in the US. The weather was hot and humid in October. The day started out bright and lovely, but eventually huge storms rolled in and it rained buckets. It was so humid that I feared if I stood still too long, moss would form. But we were of good cheer nonetheless, and when the DJ began playing music, we began to dance. The floor filled when he played YMCA by the Village People, and we danced ourselves to the point of being out of breath. Trying to catch a bit of a breeze, we went out onto the deck that surrounded the hall where the reception was being held.
The DJ wanted to fill the floor again and so he put on another favourite number, or so I discovered. Women of all ages came racing up to the dance floor, my niece and her mother chief among them. I was a bit puzzled, though. ‘Wow,’ I commented to my brother’s second wife, ‘I’ve never heard this song outside of a gay bar.’ The song ‘It’s Raining Men’ always had the same effect in the gay bars that I used to go to with friends, though the floor filled, not surprisingly, with men. I later learned that it was a popular song for exercise classes, something both my niece and her mother took part in.
My sister in law looked at me even more puzzled than I. ‘Why,’ she asked, somewhat aghast, ‘would you be in a gay bar?’
It was as if two alien creatures from vastly different parts of the universe had been set down next to one another in some sort of waiting room, and were in need of making small talk without a common language. Mary couldn’t imagine a life in which she might have gone into a gay bar. I couldn’t imagine a life without the gay friends with whom I had danced and played in all sorts of settings, bars included.
It is just that sort of interaction that is the reason to speak about Gay Pride in such a setting as this.
It’s the end of Gay Pride fortnight for London, and the message I want to communicate is really simple: we’re a human family, and it makes sense that we cheer each other on, support each other. We should be celebrating each other. It’s a simple message, and one that it seems unlikely that anyone would truly object to, and yet it needs to be said.
I suppose it seems less critical these days to have something like a Gay Pride parade, or indeed a full fortnight of celebration. In the 40 some years since the Stonewall riots that started the Gay Pride movement, there’s been a lot of change. The patrons in the bar in New York’s Greenwich Village that was raided – as it was routinely as a part of ongoing harassment by the police – on that one night in June in 1969 fought back, and kept fighting and a new liberation movement was started. Keeping with the spirit of the day, with liberation movements for blacks and for women, Gay Pride was shaped by the wish for gay men and lesbians to be able to live their lives and love the people they loved without fear of being attacked or arrested.
And of course it was only two years earlier here in the United Kingdom that male homosexuality became decriminalised after high profile cases where men were prosecuted for what was private, their intimate life somehow a matter for police control.
The words of Lord Arran upon the passage of the decriminalisation bill tells us something about where the culture was at the time. He said,
Homosexuals must continue to remember that while there may be nothing bad in being a homosexual, there is certainly nothing good. Lest the opponents of the Bill think that a new freedom, a new privileged class, has been created, let me remind them that no amount of legislation will prevent homosexuals from being the subject of dislike and derision, or at best of pity. We shall always, I fear, resent the odd man out. That is their burden for all time, and they must shoulder it like men—for men they are.
It takes my breath away. Compare that to the apology offered by David Cameron for his party’s support of Section 28, which forbade ‘the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’.
It is easy to forget how far we’ve come – particularly for those of us who are heterosexual whose lives are not directly affected by such laws and rules and regulations. It’s easy to forget when kissing a partner or holding hands or having a quiet moment of intimate conversation in public never has elicited the derision that Lord Arran spoke about. I’ve never experienced it myself.
The closest I’ve come to having that experience was when I served as a trustee for an organisation called the Pride Foundation in Seattle. A charity that offers scholarships to GLBT youth, and small grants to other charities that support the GLBT community, Pride Foundation is an incredibly healthy functional organisation that carries out its mission with both integrity and delight. We had a retreat for all the trustees and staff and in the midst of one of the sessions where there were a few dozen people from the local community present, the leader noted that I was one of the few allies – that is, straight people who actively support gay rights – who had served as a trustee.
It was a very odd moment. I didn’t know most of the people in the room, and had the very curious experience of what seemed to be the whole room turning as one to regard me with some curiosity. ‘Funny,’ it seemed they were thinking, ‘she doesn’t LOOK straight!’ At the next break while in the loo, a staff person who knew me asked, ‘so how did it feel to be outed in front of the whole group?’ and we laughed together at the lovely turnaround that happened.
It is easy to forget how far we’ve come, what a distance it is for those who lived through the more fearful times of possible prosecution and physical attacks that would be overlooked as something a gay man ‘deserved’. It’s easy to forget that the culture is on the move still, working toward greater acceptance. Legal rights too are increasingly in place from laws regarding non-discrimination to the removal of restrictions on adoption.
Yet there is still more to do. For example, the proposed rules were published this past week for the licensing of religious buildings for the registration of civil partnerships. This is what we would want to do in order to celebrate civil partnerships in our building as marriage is still out of reach of same sex couples. Derek McAuley, the executive officer of the General Assembly, our overarching organisation, sent in a reply to the suggested rules:
The cost of registering a place of worship for the solemnisation of marriages is a statutory fee of £120. The estimate of the cost of obtaining a licence to host a civil partnership registration is £1505. Such a huge difference is not justified.
He comments:
The difference in fees will undermine the equality of access to civil partnership registration as to religious marriage which was the intention of the legislation. This will have the direct effect of reducing the number of premises offering this service and limiting the opportunities to same sex couples to register their partnerships in religious premises in accordance with their sincerely held views.
There is still work to do to reach equality. We have come a long way. And there’s a long way yet to go. It matters that we all keep working small bit by small bit for greater equality. Because we are connected, all of us, one to another, and as Martin Luther King reminds us, inequality for any is inequality for us all.
And the first work to do is always, I think, the work of the heart that we have to keep doing, the work of seeing each other as part of a family. We need to do it again and again and again because it is so easy – especially for we who are allies – to forget how far the journey has been and to simply not see what it means if we are related and connected and joined together. Like Rachel Naomi Remen’s cousin, we have to keep looking again, to see what’s really there, who is really there and how it is for them in their lives. How is it for these brothers and sisters who are just trying to get through their days, to live lives that have a little comfort, to love and be loved? We have to keep looking to truly see who is there.
Our world is splendid and amazing and broken and lost all at once. There is much to be done all around – the broken to mend, the lost to find, the hungry to feed, the mourning to comfort. Can we afford to lose any bit of love that comes? Can we afford to ever lose any bit of love? The world is too damaged and hurting to lose any gifts, any small piece of love offered; the world can truly be too sad, how could we miss any delight of hearts and bodies and souls touching.
It’s a simple message really. We’re family. Family. You and him and her, that strange one over there, too. We’re family. Let us look at each other, and see in that we are indeed brothers and sisters, and opening our hearts, and helping as we can.
Prayer
Spirit of love and of life,
open our hearts this day,
and help us to see.
Let us see in each other’s eyes
the reflection of our own,
and know that we are one.
Open our hearts this day
and help us to know
May we know that
we are inescapably joined
to the human family,
that there are no real strangers.
In these moments of stillness,
joined with each other,
sharing breath in this room,
sharing life with all those we meet,
one human family,
let us open to each other,
open to the web of connection,
that connects us all,
to these companions,
to all of humanity,
to our world,
and the wide universe,
all turning as one, together.
:::::::::::::::::::: stillness ::::::::::::::::::::
Let the feelings of connection, of sympathy,
of compassion and love,
attend us this day,
and in the days to come.
Amen.