ON BRINGING TWO CASSEROLES
A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford

10 February 2002

I was talking recently with two members of our congregation, a long-time couple in a same-sex relationship. They were mentioning how important our Society was for them. They told me this is one of the few places in their lives where when invited to a potluck they’re not expected to bring two casseroles. They really are welcomed here as they are. And they know it.

We have achieved in this Society a rather profound level of acceptance for gay and lesbian folk. This is a fact I believe we should be aware of, and one that we should celebrate. That small comment about casseroles speaks to a profound movement that has occurred in our hearts and minds.

As a technical term among us, Welcoming Congregations stands for our conscious engagement with issues of sexuality and struggling to find a welcoming place both within our institutions and within our hearts for gay and lesbian, for bisexual and for transgendered folk. And we’ve come a long ways in this regard. Knowing this as a fact, we find ourselves sometimes saying: "By welcoming, of course, I mean everyone." Often with a bit of a chuckle…

We really are welcoming in a broad sense. And there is genuinely an intention among us to do the right thing. But, I suggest, in reality, we possibly are not quite as far along as we might think the case, and maybe this humor at the term Welcoming Congregations is a bit premature.

So on this Sunday when we’ve welcomed new members among us, and when we’re taking a second offering to support the education and reform of a prisoner, amazing acts of welcoming, I think it appropriate to spend a little time reexamining what we mean about being welcoming in the sense of our common struggle to open our doors wide to gay, to lesbian, to bisexual, to transgendered persons.

This really is important. Having a congressman who is openly gay might make us feel we’re beyond this issue. But as long as one of the worst epithets on a school campus is "that’s so gay," we’re in fact a long ways from the goal. A terrible poison continues to run through our bodies. And, we need to see what it is.

For human beings, I suggest, the only natural restraint to our sexuality needs regard the sanctity of relationship. Human sexual urges that cause harm to others need be restrained in the name of a larger good. The current travails of Boston’s Roman Catholic archdiocese speaks to those situations where human sexual urges harm people. Now, just as an aside, while most of us know this, still it might be lost to some in the specific publicity regarding the Catholic Church’s scandals, pedophilia statistically mostly occurs among heterosexual males.

When we talk about homosexuality, and I would throw in here bisexuality and transgenderism, there are no such issues involved. We’re talking about the natural attraction of people to each other, and how we accommodate our lives as a consequence of that. So what is the problem? How does homosexuality get linked to child molestation, and as I’ve heard, cannibalism and murder? How is it that in the playground gay is an epithet?

Actually it’s not hard to put our finger on how this happens. When examining our western spiritual literature concerning homosexuality, it always turns on purity codes. Not science, never any real science, but always on the purity codes of culture and religion.

The terms "natural" and "unnatural" mostly have to do with concerns about the proper placement of things. It’s all about ritual relationship. So matter out of place is dirt. And sex outside a fairly narrow definition is dirty, as are those who move beyond commonly accepted norms.

We carry this assumption of clean and dirt, of pure and impure deep within our culture. And this is important. It is almost entirely unexamined. We just feel these things. Well, really we don’t. They were told to us, by our parents, by our Sunday school teachers, by our playmates in the yard saying, "Oh, that’s so gay."

And what is actually as natural as the air we breathe; our human need to define and differentiate becomes a knife cutting and twisting into the heart of people. The problem is that society needs ways to define and differentiate. Knowing me and not me is an important function. But, it also tends too easily to define people as the other, and out.

We’ve long since noticed that the foundations of any philosophy of homophobia are cultural and religious. It is not unlike the situation for the untouchables in India, people who suffer strictly upon the basis of traditional purity codes. In all secular states there has been a steady movement toward correcting the persecution of such categories of people, most notably gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered.

At the legal level we’ve come a long way. In places like Newton homophobia in the classroom is fought with passion. On balance our sins in this community are those excesses of people trying hard to do the right thing. Of course this is not a battle yet won. There are those today who would and do deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.

This is a spiritual act we openly celebrate in our Unitarian Universalist societies. But it is not accepted in law. And the legal consequences of this, access to insurance, hospital visitation, and inheritance, continues to be denied to people in this state and across our country.

But, it is different here at the First Unitarian Society. We’ve arrived, I believe, at a point in our common lives, where we do welcome people among us whatever our sexual identity. And we try hard never to ask people to bring those two casseroles. Still, I believe we have in fact only seen the holy land. We stand at the edge of the River Jordan. We are looking over and into the land of milk and honey. But, we have not yet crossed the river.

I cannot say how many people have told me they are straight, but not narrow. It’s even on a button people wear. On the one hand this is a good thing. I celebrate this feeling and all the attempts to do good that comes from this realization. But, I suggest, it is in fact not sufficient. I propose for us to truly integrate ourselves into one another’s lives, to find the authentic meanings of community, to explore what a spiritual society might look like that actually includes all of us, whatever our sexuality, we need to take another step.

What do I mean by this? Well, I remember once back in seminary taking a class from Karen Lebacqz, an important Protestant Christian ethicist. We were speaking at that moment of feminism. She asserted that only a woman could be a feminist. I demurred. She responded, you’re right, James. But only so long as you’re willing to be a sister.

I had to sit with that one. Men do have a problem identifying as a sister. It isn’t hard for guys to say no problem with women belonging to our fraternity, but it is a rather rarer thing for a guy to say I want to belong to your sorority. Here as we notice this inclination within us, within you or me--something precious, vulnerable, and powerful is opened. Here, in fact, a pathway is shown to us where we can make our way down the hillside and right to edge of the river, that river which takes us to paradise.

A lot is contained in that phrase I’m straight but not narrow. Possibly the first thing one can unravel is I’m not gay, myself, you understand. We need to look at this. Of course for most of us, it is going to be simply a statement of fact. But why say it, particularly within this context? What are we trying to communicate when we make this assertion at the beginning?

Now the book certainly is not closed on the subject of human sexuality. Special pleaders are very much mixed up even in the science of it. But, if we pull back, just a little, and consider this within the context of mammalian sexuality, perhaps we can get at least a bit of a handle on the question.

When we do this we see that sexuality has a lot more to do with what we are than simply our ability to procreate. Sex and sexuality has to do with pleasure. Sex and sexuality has to do with power. And most of all sex and sexuality has to do with relationships. Sex is in part a way that we communicate. It pervades all aspects of our relationships, and ultimately we can say, probably with great accuracy, that human beings are not in fact heterosexual or homosexual: we are sexual.

There is an erotic spectrum, it seems. And yes there are limits to what might sexually attract us, any given individual. But, the legitimate range of possibility appears wider, certainly much less clear than many of us would be comfortable admitting.

But it is natural. Homosexuality is common to mammals, and almost certainly has something to do with evolutionary biology. Having a certain percentage among us not directly involved in making children seems to be an evolutionary edge. But that’s just science. The questions for us all have to do with how we accept it as part of who we are.

Observations about sexual relationships within prisons suggest much in this regard. Who might be the object of our desire can very much be affected by situations. Probably there are few among us who in fact, in one set of circumstances or another, are completely incapable of affectional, even of sexual intimacy with people of our own gender.

I suggest the poison very near the heart of the questions of homophobia in fact has much to do with male identity, and its unexamined centrality in most cultures. And this has much to do with, trying not to be crude, with who is on top. It’s not about what’s good for families, not what’s good for the community, not what’s good for individuals. It’s just about male sexual identity.

And what do we find as we lift the lid on this pot? Male identity is particularly caught up in what it means to be a "real man." Television is rife with humor based on men having trouble with signs of affection for other men, for what it could imply. And what is that? The great fear is that some man might be like a woman.

Like a woman: what poison is that? In fact I suggest the poison of homophobia is not far from the poison of sexism. These are issues so closely interrelated that we probably cannot separate them. As we seek to find liberation for all of us, we need to look at those unexamined assumptions that give reality to those terms sexism and heterosexism. Here is the heart of the matter. We need to surrender the old assumptions of right relationship, with a particular vision of men at the center of it.

Certainly here is the bottom line. We need to ask why we would be uncomfortable being identified with the other? Why would you mind being identified with the untouchable? Why would you feel uncomfortable being thought gay? Is it just trying to be accurate, or is something else hidden within the assertion?

Today I’m asking us to reflect on our ability to love, and to bring to consciousness what limits may or may not be there. Out of this process, I suggest, we can move to a new place, we can cross the fabled river. Here I think of another button that sometimes people wear. It reads, "Why do you assume I’m straight?" Here is the basis of genuine inclusion, of authentic liberation.

Can you be a sister? Why do you assume I’m straight? These are in fact not questions. Rather they are maps given to us, showing how to cross the river, and to make our way to the Promised Land. Do you want to come along? I certainly hope you do. It is nothing less than heaven itself that beckons.

And the good news is you only need bring one casserole.

Amen.