I was pleasantly surprised this week to read about
Senator Rob Portman's change of heart
regarding gay marriage. A few comments I read expressed regret that it
required a personal connection—Portman's son is gay—for him to
reevaluate his position. But I contend that nearly all of our best and
most important transformations are prompted by personal connections.
What was once theoretical becomes immediately, achingly personal,
powerful enough to blast through our preconceived, long-held beliefs. We
can all be glad that Portman was willing to let his personal connection
to his son change his beliefs. Many of us know of parents who are
unmoved and unsupportive when their children come out. Thank God for
those who
do better.
Few people are able to effect such metamorphoses only on a theoretical
basis. It's a big reason why the personal really is political. And it's
why, with fewer and fewer gay people staying in the closet, more and
more of us are being transformed by those personal connections, to the
extent that marriage equality is indeed beginning to look inevitable.
These days we all have friends, cousins, brothers, sisters, fathers,
mothers, mentors, and heroes who are gay. If your heart is open to them,
then it is necessarily open to marriage equality and justice. Such is
the nature of the personal connection.
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"Our calling is not to cross boundaries,
defy restrictions, or escape compartments.
It is to embrace a universe
that does not admit their existence."
"Our Calling," artwork and quotation
by Ricardo Levins Morales. | |
For example, when I was younger, I was an enthusiastic
evangelical Christian (whereas nowadays I'm a mild-mannered, unassuming
Episcopalian). I believed that homosexuality was wrong for the simple
reason that people I loved and trusted told me it was wrong, and I
didn't have any better information than that. One of my very best
friends also believed what we were told; only for him, it was anything
but theoretical. Because he was gay.
I met Patrick in high school when we were on the newspaper staff
together. I went to the same university Patrick did, and seeing as how
he was a year ahead of me, he took some pleasure in showing me around
the big U. We did the obligatory bar-hopping tour, and he introduced me
to the very exciting if somewhat daunting
Plato system—my
very first encounter with a computer! He was brilliant and funny and
always kind. He studied Hebrew, Greek, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic
just because he enjoyed learning them. He learned American Sign Language
and rode a unicycle all over campus. I affectionately called him
Petruchio (the romantic lead in
The Taming of the Shrew). He was my very best friend from 1974 until he died at the tender age of 32 in 1987.
When I had a religious conversion experience in December of my freshman
year (1974), I took Patrick along for the ride. He came to church with
me and joined the same Christian group on campus. We had known each
other—very well, I thought—for maybe eight years before he told me about
his sexual conundrum: he was attracted to men. I was shocked. No one
had ever come out to me before. It was totally outside my sphere of
experience or understanding. Still, neither of us questioned what we had
been taught.
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"Our Spirit" is an organization which
provides LGBT youth with affirming
faith-based messaging via web video.
Click the image for more information. |
Patrick
struggled mightily to resist temptation, and he despised himself
because he wasn't able to change. I will never forget him dissolving in
anguished tears on my couch. His "failures" consisted of loveless,
anonymous sexual encounters, after which he would castigate himself and
resolve to do better. It was a nasty, vicious cycle of torment and
self-loathing. Only a few months before he contracted HIV, Patrick said
how lucky he was not to have come down with some dread disease.
Obviously, his luck didn't hold.
Patrick moved to Texas a few years before he died. The first time I went
to visit him there we were both struck by how nice it was to be with
someone with whom we didn't even have to finish our sentences to be
understood. Then he told me about his diagnosis. Back in those days, HIV
was a swift death sentence. I went to Texas to visit him twice before
he died.
The first time I saw him after he was diagnosed with AIDS, I was stunned
by his appearance. He looked like a concentration camp survivor. For
the first half hour or so I was with him, I found it difficult to
breathe, as though I'd been struck on the back and had the wind knocked
out of me. The change in him was so hard to process. While others
shunned him, feared contagion, and worried about sharing a salad with
him (I kid you not!), I cooked enormous amounts of food for him because I
noticed that no matter how much I put in front of him, he ate half. I
cleaned his bathroom and organized his cornucopia of prescription drugs.
I never considered doing anything less. This was my Petruchio. What
else could I have done?
I read as much about AIDS as I could get my hands on (most notably,
And the Band Played On,
by Randy Shilts) in the vain hope that understanding what was happening
to Patrick would help me cope. I ran interference between him and his
mother. When he lapsed into a coma during the last month of his life, I
insisted that his mother hold the phone up to his ear for ten minutes
every day so that I could prattle at him, whether he could actually hear
me or not. Finally, I picked out where he would be buried and made
arrangements for his funeral (the first funeral home I called didn't
want to handle someone who had died of AIDS).
Patrick died on July 12, 1987. For years afterward I was furious with
God, not because Patrick had died but because he died what seemed to me
to be a small, miserable little death. He was in denial about his
impending death right up to the end. He never faced himself or his
disease. But to me he was so precious, so beautiful, so extraordinary.
He deserved so much better. I know now, too, that I was uncomfortable
with Patrick's rejection of his gayness, even though I wasn't ready to
fully accept it either.
During that time, I began experiencing what is sometimes referred to as
cognitive dissonance—my experiences didn't jibe with my beliefs. I
talked to some friends who were gay and asked them obnoxious, personal
questions like "Do you still consider yourself a Christian?" and "When
did you realize you were gay? What made you think that?" I knew a
lesbian couple whom I loved very much (still "hating the sin while
loving the sinner"). I realized one day that I liked them very much
as a couple,
and I couldn't imagine them in relationship with anyone else. Gender
didn't really even seem to come into it. They were just right for each
other.
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"Inclusiveness" Window,
McKinley Presbyterian Church,
Champaign, Illinois
The "Inclusiveness" Window at
McKinley Presbyterian Church,
Champaign, Illinois, was
installed in 1997 in honor of my
late mother-in-law, Carolyn
Juergensmeyer Worley, longtime
member of
McKinley's Social
Action Committee and a
woman with as kind, generous,
and accepting a heart as anyone
I've ever known.
To our knowledge, this is the only
stained glass window
devoted to
inclusiveness as a theme in America.
Symbols abound and the
most
dramatic is at the top. A pink
triangle set against a white Celtic
cross recalls the suffering and
repression of GLBT persons at the
hands
of the Nazis in Germany in the
30’s and 40’s. Also included are
the
rainbow flag, an AIDS ribbon,
and male and female hands
clasping one
another and supported by the
hand of God.
| | | |
In 1991, I moved to Madison, where I began attending an
Episcopal church, still pretty mad at God and still confused. There I
met Clay, who was our choir director. I learned not long after I met him
that Clay was married to his partner, John. When I went to their home, I
looked through their wedding album. It was oh-so-ordinary. And lovely. I
finally thought to myself, "Well, maybe in an ideal world, people
wouldn't be gay. But since when was this ever an ideal world?" I was
still processing, still questioning, and not quite ready to fully
embrace and celebrate "the gay," but no longer willing to judge or
reject just because I was taught to.
I found myself wishing with all my heart that Patrick could have been
able to enjoy what Clay and John had: a loving, committed, fulfilling
relationship. How vastly better than furtive, anonymous,
life-threatening sexual encounters followed by weeks of self-loathing
and unremitting remorse. I loved being with Clay and John, because I
found their love healing and comforting. I let go of the last of my
reservations in the shelter of their love for me and for each other.
In 1997 Clay started
Perfect Harmony,
Madison's gay and gay-friendly men's chorus. I got to sing the part of
Dorothy for "Over the Rainbow" in their very first performance. Imagine
being the only woman singing with a chorus of 25 men. It was glorious!
At many of the Perfect Harmony concerts for several years after that I
got to sing either solos or ensembles with the men. It was thrilling.
One year I sang "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and leaned a
little extra on the line "Make the Yuletide — gay," to the audience's
delight. Clay said to me at one point, "You know, most of the audience
probably thinks you're gay." The thought hadn't occurred to me. I paused
for a moment, smiled, and said, "Cool! I'm honored." I think you could
say that by then my transformation was pretty well complete.
As it happened, Clay also had AIDS, only by that time treatments were
much better, so he lived with his disease for ten years (instead of
Patrick's ten months) before he died. And John, Clay's husband, was a
nurse, so Clay was very well cared for during his illness. I got to
visit him the day before he died. "You're going to die too, you know,"
he said to me. I assured him that I knew. He also told me he'd look up
my friend Patrick when he got there, wherever "there" is. I still love
the thought of them meeting each other.
The day before he died, it seemed like the veil was already
disintegrating for Clay and he could see well beyond it. He faced his
death with courage and even joy, ready for whatever came next. His
funeral was one of the most beautiful church services I've ever been to.
Because he had picked out all the hymns and the readings, his presence
was palpable. I felt so close to him. His was a good, courageous death,
unsullied by self-loathing and recriminations. It was the perfect
counterpoint to all that had distressed me so deeply about Patrick's
death.
I'm no longer angry at God. I celebrate both Patrick's life and Clay's.
I'm grateful that God made them exactly as they were. Had they not been
gay, they would not have been themselves. And who they were is one of
the greatest gifts God has given me. I have been enriched beyond measure
by knowing and loving them. And I'm so grateful there was more to the
story of "the gay" than what I was first taught. I have had the
remarkable experience of personal connection, transformation, and love. I
wish Senator Portman—and his son—much joy as they navigate the
experience of connection and transformation together.
Mary Ray Worley is freelance copy editor and a member of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, Wis., where she leads the music at the noonday Spanish service. She blogs at http://worleydervish.blogspot.com, where this was originally published.
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Integrity encourages the use of personal narrative like Mary's to gracefully engage those who are struggling with the concept of LGBT inclusion in the church. We offer
workshops across the country to equip individuals and congregations to do this work.
