The Endpoints and Everything In Between

As many of you know, this month is designated as Pride month. While the original idea was to honor and celebrate the Stonewall uprising in 1969[1] (which was a tipping point for what was called the Gay Liberation Movement back then), Pride’s meaning has expanded immensely. Today it seeks to celebrate, elevate and make visible the variety of identities that make up the LGBTQIA2S+ community.

Last weekend, my daughter, Kateri, who identifies as queer and has been a tremendous mentor and teacher for me related to LGBTQ+ identities, gave a homily at her home church, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, in Detroit. It was such a great homily that I asked her after, “Can we use that for our blog?!”   And she humbly consented!

In her reflection, she spoke of how Christianity, in general, has been a downright unwelcoming and hostile place for those from the LGBTQ+ community.  She joked that coming out as queer to her Christian friends was almost less risky than coming out as Christian to her queer friends. Many who know her would say tongue-in-cheek and also part seriously, “Why would you even want to be Christian?”

Kateri went on in her reflections to talk about a recent workshop she’d attended where the facilitator was helping to deconstruct Genesis. One of the great gifts to the wider Christian community from LGBTQ+ Christians is the deconstruction of traditional passages that have been used to oppress, marginalize and harm people.  This reclaiming of our scriptures helps to free us all and is such an essential part of liberatory practice.

The facilitator was reflecting on how, in the book of Genesis, for example, we’re presented with what has been termed the “gender binary” – the idea that there are male and female. This has become accepted theology of most Christians. And as the old saying goes, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.”

Hold on a minute. Not so fast.

Kateri says, “But if we look more closely the story doesn’t actually seem to end there. Let’s go back to God’s other creations on this list. Day and night, land and sea, creatures of the sea and creatures of the sky. Queer theologians have pointed out that in these categories, what God is actually creating is not just what is named, but actually everything in between.

God didn’t just create day and night… But also dawn and dusk and sunsets and sunrises, those first moments in the early morning when the sun has not come up yet but the birds have just started to sing. Could that be characterized as either day or night?

And God didn’t just create land and sea… But also all those places where water and soil meet. Marshes and beaches and bogs, deep estuaries where tidal pools gather. The brilliant blues and oranges and reds of our ocean’s coral reefs. Would those be land or sea?

And even the difference between creatures of the sea and those winged creatures of the sky. Queer theologians have brought out some truly hard-hitting apologetics by reminding us of the existence of penguins. These beautiful in-between creatures who use their wings not to fly but to swim. What category would they fall in? Who would argue that they are not a natural part of creation?

By the time we even get to this verse about male and female, the supposed binaries named by God have been expanded by the strangeness and beauty of the natural world. What if the naming of male and female is not a way to describe the only two genders, but actually to show, as with all these other parts of creation, the beautiful endpoints that hold an expansive, infinite array of expressions between them? An expansive, infinite array of ways to be human and love other humans here too?”

The beautiful endpoints “hold an expansive, infinite array of expressions between them.” And God called them ALL good!

Just let these words sink in.

Kateri goes on to say, “…these texts seem to be proof that queerness is an ancient and natural phenomenon, as natural as any attempts to create human community, as natural as being human itself. Over thousands and thousands of years, even when there have been efforts to stamp out or subdue or marginalize queer folks… We have not gone away. We have persisted. No matter if those in power have named it “unnatural,” no matter what any specific laws have said about us and what we can or can’t do.” [2]

In a tradition that has a God with “three persons” it always strikes me as strange that we have been so hostile towards anyone who does not fit into binary categories. In a tradition that has a God with three persons, it always strikes me as strange that we have been so hostile towards “they” or non-binary pronouns. In a tradition whose leader said that their only purpose was to come into the world so that creation would have “life to the full” it strikes me as strange that we have denied full life and membership to so many.

During Pride – and throughout the year – it is paramount to hold up, celebrate and affirm all of the identities from the LGBTQ+ community who have persisted and not gone away – in spite of great harm and opposition. In this moment of crisis around our country – when LGBTQ+ rights are being assaulted daily and people’s physical and emotional safety remains at high risk – we must work even harder, especially as people of faith, to rise up and resist.

While Pride is about parades and celebrations, it also invites us into the serious work of affirming the goodness of and resisting any forces (internal or external) that seek to “stamp out, subdue or marginalize” people from the LGBTQ+ community. It is about deconstructing harmful texts from our tradition. It is about doing our inner work to dismantle heterosexism and transphobia.

And may we all remember things like penguins, marshes, dusk and dawn – reminders that God created the endpoints and everything in between and called it all GOOD!

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[1] https://www.loc.gov/lgbt-pride-month/about/

[2] You can access a recording of her remarks here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zTeiJ5tX8Q – her reflections start around 26 minutes