Soul Force

How We Welcome

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

October 23, 2011

Reading: “Why Do We Have To Talk About It?” Peter Atlas, Concord Math Teacher, Sermon at Trinitarian Congregational Church, UCC, Concord, MA, January 19, 2003, as the congregation was considering becoming Opening and Affirming, the UCC equivalent of our Unitarian Universalist Welcoming Congregation.

Why do we have to talk about it? The door to this church is open. Anyone who wants to can walk right in. Why do some people feel they need a special invitation when everyone is already invited? …. Straight people don't walk around talking about who they have sex with—especially in church! It is a supremely private matter…. So why do we have to talk about it?

Why us? In a sense, this is the easiest one to deal with. If you think your congregation has no gays or lesbians in it, think again. We are here among you, whether or not you know who we are…. Unlike race or, to some extent, ethnicity, we can blend in seamlessly with the population at large….

We are here among you, and we hear what you say. We hear when you are charitable, and we hear when you are less so. We hear when you tell jokes at our expense, we hear when you defend us against people telling jokes at our expense….

Your children hear you too, and it's important that I talk about them for a while. Like it or not, ready for it or not, know it or not, a significant minority of you have kids, grandkids, nieces or nephews who are gay or lesbian. I deal with high school kids every day—I deal with your kids every day. Here's what you have to know: by the time they're in high school, they … know [for the most part] what their orientation is. Their only choice is whether or not to be honest about it with you. I can also tell you with certainty that for most kids, while they're in high school, the answer to that question— should they be honest with their parents—is an unqualified and emphatic "no." They would rather do almost anything than tell their parents their orientation. They would rather sit in a math class than tell you….

Second: …. Why talk?

In the senior Bush's administration, the federal Department of Health and Human Services conducted a study regarding health concerns for children. [They discovered] that 30% of suicide attempts among teens were by kids who were gay or lesbian. 30%. That means that gay and lesbian kids are three times more likely than their straight counterparts to attempt suicide…. Why talk about it? 1 can't say it more plainly than this: as dramatic as it sounds, we talk about it because the lives of our children depend on our talking about it. It's a strange fact that when we tell our kids that we'd love them no matter what, they hear we'd love them no matter what—except if they were gay. I don't know what it is about our society that makes them translate the sentence that way, but they do….

Which brings me to my last point. Why do we have to talk about IT? I should hope by now that the answer to that question would be clear. To begin with, talking about orientation isn't talking about sex, it's talking about love, and of all places, I should think the Church would be a place where you would want to talk about love. Secondly, the message we need to take from the way our kids interpret "I love you unconditionally" is that we must, for whatever reason, single this issue out and tell them that unconditionally includes IT…. The chances are the response will be an eye roll, or tsk, or an "I knowwww." The chances are the response will not be, "well that's good, because I am gay." But hearing you say the words will have an extraordinary effect. If they're straight, you're telling them something of tremendous importance: that you really do love them. And if they're gay, you might well be saving their lives.

Finally, as a congregation, you have a choice to make: do you want to believe in a God who loves you unconditionally the way you love your children unconditionally? If not, so be it. But if so, then I hope that you can see why we—the gays and lesbians among you—we who have been trained over the decades to expect hatred, oppression, judgment, incivility, and abuse—we need to hear specifically and often that the love and celebration that God has for his people includes the love and celebration of us.

Sermon: How We Welcome

Meg Barnhouse, currently serving as minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, offers this meditation on “Biblical Family Values”:

I get confused when people talk about biblical family values. I wonder which biblical family they are talking about. Is it Abraham's family, where his wife Sarah persuaded him to sleep with her maid so the maid could bear him a child and then, when Sarah had her own son, convinced Abraham to throw the maid and the boy out into the desert with no food or water? ….

[Maybe they’re] talking about King David's family? He fell in love with Bathsheba who was married to someone else. David had her husband sent to the front lines in battle. When he was killed, David married Bathsheba….

Or is it David and Bathsheba's son Solomon that they are pointing to? He had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. Maybe I'm sticking to the Hebrew Bible too much. Let's look at Jesus' family. His mother was expecting before she was married, and Joseph raised Jesus even though he wasn't his flesh and blood. Those seem to be good values to me, but they aren't usually the ones preached by the family values crowd. Jesus himself certainly didn't grow up to be a conservative pillar of the community with a family of his own, a mini-van, and a job with regular hours. I don't think some of those people would approve of him much. Certainly they would never run him for office.

Biblical families are real, like ours and the ones next door. There are stepchildren and feuds, adultery and intrigue, anguish and love, caring, intimacy, violence, revenge. I can't see the biblical-family-values people wanting to know about actual biblical families. I can't see them wanting those families in their neighborhoods or their churches….[i]

We here at Second Parish are in the middle of the process of considering whether we should declare ourselves a “Welcoming Congregation.” Only the congregation itself can decide whether or not to take this step, but it seems useful for me to share my own thoughts on this decision. As I mentioned in the announcements, you will also have the opportunity to hear from Elaine Cadogan, Mark Slawson and Lissa King after church in two weeks. They will share their thoughts and experiences and you will have an opportunity to ask any questions you may have of them.

I want to talk first about homosexuality in general, then about the contemporary social context in which we are considering this decision, and finally specifically about becoming a Welcoming Congregation here at Second Parish.

The first problem in talking about “homosexuality” is the word itself. Gender identity is only one of the hundreds of characteristics that define each of us as unique individuals. Yet it is still possible for a presidential candidate to reduce all of the complex issues around the recently repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy to just one dimension, when he said in a recent debate: “There’s no place for sex in the military.” This would probably come as a surprise to the millions of practicing heterosexuals who are serving in our armed forces. Being gay is not just about sex, it’s about identity.

A number of studies have shown that about ten percent of any human population is predominantly homosexual in their gender orientation, and this seems to be true cross-culturally and most likely throughout human history. What varies over time and across cultures is how individuals and societies have responded to this reality. Psychiatrists and psychologists at one time regarded homosexuality as deviant and included it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a type of mental disorder, but those professions have long since abandoned that position.

Tragically, the issue of homosexuality has become an issue that has torn Christian churches and whole denominations apart, largely because of overly literal interpretations of the Bible, in particular of the Hebrew Bible, known by Christians as the Old Testament. There are several provisions in the legal codes of the book of Leviticus that condemn homosexual relations, and these are seized upon as forbidding any expression of homosexuality. The book we are currently reading in our adult education classes, The Tenth Parallel, spells out the degree to which this one issue unfortunately pits Christian churches in Africa against those in Europe and the United States.

As it happens, this particular prohibition is embedded in a series of laws that are not on the whole taken very seriously by most Christians. For example, the people of Israel were forbidden to touch unclean animals, including swine; there goes football, at least as long as the ball is made of pigskin. It is permissible to sell one’s daughter into slavery and to possess slaves, but only if those slaves come from another country – Mexico, perhaps, or… Africa. Any work on the Sabbath is to be punished by death; men are not to have their hair trimmed especially around the temples; shellfish are forbidden (so much for eating lobster); farmers are not allowed to mix two crops in a field, something we did regularly on the farm where I grew up to provide silage for our cows to eat during the winter; and it is forbidden to wear clothes made of different kinds of thread – so any of you who are wearing clothes of polyester and cotton blend should remove them at once. Among these, only the prohibition against homosexuality is taken seriously, and there are countries in the world where homosexual behavior is punishable by death.

In the New Testament, Jesus has nothing whatever to say on the subject of homosexuality, but he does explicitly forbid divorce as well as swearing any oath, which is customarily done among us when witnesses are sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or when public officials are sworn into office. The practices forbidden by the Apostle Paul appear to be exploitative relations rather than homosexual relations as we understand them, and Paul explicitly declares that the laws of the Hebrew Bible no longer apply in light of the Law of Love that Jesus proclaimed.

Turning now to the contemporary social context in which we are considering becoming a Welcoming Congregation, we find a growing acceptance of equal marriage and of open service in the military by gays. There is also an increasing awareness of the tragic potential risks to kids who are or are perceived to be gay. The killing of Matthew Shepard by thugs thirteen years ago led to the passage of a series of laws identifying anti-gay crimes as hate crimes deserving of more severe punishment.

The growing acceptance of equal marriage among states in this country and in other countries around the world highlights the reality that families change over time. We note that the ideal of heterosexual marriage based on mutual attraction and love rather than economic necessity or parental imposition is a relatively recent phenomenon. Marriage in the Hebrew Bible was a relationship between one man and at least one wife with the option of additional wives as well as mistresses – referred to as concubines. Mohammed reformed marriage practices among his people by insisting that a man might have at most four wives and that all must be treated equally contrary to previous practice. This would be in contrast to the deeply revered King Solomon of Israel – the wisest man in the world at the time according to his reputation – he of the 700 wives and 300 concubines. As Meg Barnhouse illustrates, “traditional” marriages have come in many shapes and sizes over the centuries and continue to do so. None of this is to advocate or approve the recent distressing rise in the number of children born out of wedlock in this country, a trend that on the whole increases poverty in families and especially for our children. This unfortunate trend suggests that encouraging committed relations between marital partners should be encouraged regardless of gender identity. Equal marriage in Massachusetts since 2004 has not resulted in the breakdown of heterosexual marriage, nor has it led to other dire consequences predicted by its opponents.

Finally, let’s turn to the question of why we need to seriously consider becoming a Welcoming Congregation. The major reservation I have heard from members of the congregation is that we already welcome anyone and everyone to join us. We have a sterling reputation as one of the friendliest churches around, a characteristic of this congregation we have cherished and cultivated for decades. Part of that reputation results from the fact that we are a small church where everyone knows everyone else; but being small is one of our problems as a congregation – we need to grow closer to the size we were forty years ago while maintaining that wonderful friendliness of which we are rightly proud. It is very true that we are already welcoming, and indeed Second Parish welcomed a gay couple to the congregation over a decade ago with no strings attached; they left to start attending Old Ship mainly because they wanted a congregation in which their son would not be the only one in Religious Education who had gay parents – another unfortunate consequence of our size.

While Deedee and I were attending the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood, New Jersey, we were part of the process they undertook to become a Welcoming Congregation well over a decade ago. The first objection raised by those who weren’t comfortable with the process was – not surprisingly – that we already welcomed everyone and that our bylaws explicitly stated that everyone was welcome regardless of race, creed, gender, etc. The problem was that at least one of our members was gay and unsure that the welcome extended to him as well as to everyone else. As Peter Atlas said in our reading this morning, we need to tell our kids that we love them unconditionally because being gay is one of the last taboos, one of the last places parents sometimes maintain an exception to their unconditional love. Given the number of churches that openly discourage and discriminate against homosexuals or that explicitly denounce homosexuality, failing to be explicit about welcoming people of all gender orientations can lead to the assumption that congregations which aren’t explicitly welcoming also hold that last reservation about accepting everyone no matter who they are or to whom they are attracted. At the end of the Welcoming Congregation process in our Ridgewood congregation, there was still one member who remained repulsed by homosexual behavior. After long and difficult discussions, he finally turned to our most prominent gay member and hugged him, recognizing that regardless of his own feelings, they still felt great love and respect for each other as human beings and as members of the congregation.

In our contemporary context, Second Parish has become an outlier in not being explicitly welcoming to gays. Virtually all of the Unitarian Universalist congregations around us have become Welcoming Congregations. The Congregational/United Church of Christ churches in Hingham, Norwell and Weymouth – among others – have declared themselves to be Open and Affirming, the UCC equivalent of our Unitarian Universalist Welcoming Congregation. All of these congregations say this explicitly on their own websites, and the Unitarian Universalist Association’s guide to congregations also lists whether our churches are Welcoming Congregations or not.

In this day, it is still necessary to say out loud that a congregation welcomes everyone regardless of gender identity, just as parents have to say it out loud to their kids. However friendly and welcoming we know ourselves to be, others don’t know that unless we specifically say. In the area from which visitors come to worship with us it is probable that about 10% will be gay, whether it’s evident or not. Regardless of whether they are straight or gay, many potential visitors want to know that we welcome everyone, and the only way we can ensure that they know is by saying it out loud.

Finally, being explicitly welcoming is the right thing to do. As Peter Atlas put it in our reading this morning as he addressed the Congregational Church in Concord, which was facing a similar decision:

… as a congregation, you have a choice to make: do you want to believe in a God who loves you unconditionally the way you love your children unconditionally? If not, so be it. But if so, then I hope that you can see why we—the gays and lesbians among you—we who have been trained over the decades to expect hatred, oppression, judgment, incivility, and abuse—we need to hear specifically and often that the love and celebration that God has for his people includes the love and celebration of us.

We here at Second Parish unite “in the spirit of Jesus.” I’m pretty sure that Jesus would approve.

May it be so, and Amen.