Tonight the NYC queer community expressed its anger at the passage of Prop 8 in California with an old-fashioned street demonstration outside of the LDS church on Broadway and 65th Street. It was encouraging to see thousands of us to fight for marriage equality, even though it was for another state. How many of those that were out tonight have been part of the marriage equality fight in New York state? Certainly quite a few, since I recognized quite a number from the annual lobbying day in Albany. But many are not connected to any organized efforts. And there were some who chanted slogans that were anti-church.
Now, I am not exactly pro-church. I continue to be amazed that the one thing that brought together all the feuding religions to sit down in Jerusalem was their desire to issue a statement condeming queer people. It's enough to make a queer Jewish Buddhist into a militant atheist. Except that's actualy accepting their definition of queer folk — outside the spiritual. And quite frankly, I refuse to deny my connection to the Divine.
Ours is a community that has been spiritually wounded by the religious establishment. And often, at demonstrations like these, where the religious establishment has truly done something heinous, the pain of this wounding comes out in expressions of hatred for religion and denial of our deepest longings for experiencing the Divine. The reason I seek loving relationships with men is that is where I experience the Divine Presence. I experience divinity and mystery in all my relations (to steal a phrase from Body Electric) whether they are physical or not, with men and women. But that highest connection has been in loving relationship with another man.
This evening I heard a lot of anger. And anger is appropriate. But I don't want my queer community to throw out the baby with the bath water by jettisoning spiritual connection while fighting organized bigotry and ignorance masquerading as religion.
Over at fivethirtyeight.com, Nate Silver has been debunking the analysis that it was the black
community that was responsible for the Prop 8 loss. His analysis of the voting patterns showed that it was a demographic I fall in, that is voters over 45, that made the difference.
But the point i really want to make here is the lesson that needs to be learned from the Obama campaign. The queer community in California created advertising that talked to people who were already on their side. Or just to themselves. They did not get shoe leather on the ground organizing in communities around the state. They did not work hard to engage people in the middle who could be swayed one way or the other. Sure, the LDS poured lots of money into the state. But churches are also communities that are highly organized. Where is our community organization? Our leaders are not deep in the community — and they sure dont' do much cross community organizing.
The very fact that we are even having this issue be fought so closely is something I never expected to see in my lifetime. I expected when I came out and joined the gay movement in 1970 that I would see a world where we felt safe, and were not objects of ridicule, disrespect or violence. That how we expressed our love would not be a violation of the law. I wasn't expecting to see legal recognition on the order of marriage. In fact, in 1970 there were many in the movement who wanted nothing to do with the institution they saw as obsolete.
I deeply believe marriage is important and makes communities stronger. And so I want it for my queer community. I believe deeply in the American value of freedom of religion. That means there will be religions out there that will never recognize my relationships as either valid or expressions of Divine love through human action. That's okay with me. I don't have to join that religion. And they don't have to marry me to anyone.
The mixture of marriage rites and marriage rights are some of the confusion that makes this a problem in the pubiic arena. But we are not engaging the people of faith who would be on our side. I am thrilled that the Empire State Pride Agenda has a program called Pride in the Pulpit, which engages communities of faith and leaders of those communities so that they actually are a large part of the efforts in Albany to extend marriage rights. I would have liked to have seen those people at the demonstration tonight. I chose to wear a star of David and a kippah at the demonstration be be out as a person of faith, because I felt it was important not only to be queer identified, but identified with Divine love. Which transcends religion.
May we open up to the pain of our spiritual wounding and use it to reconnect. May we use this reconnection to reach out to those who would hear us and support us if we learned to listen to them and truly hear their concerns. And I know we will prevail in our cause, because ultimately, nothing can withstand the power of love.
And as I left I saw the line of police cars that we so often see even when there are no demonstrations. As though they were there to intimidate the population. When Ann Northrup was instructing the marshalls on how to make sure there was no violence at the march, all I could think was, there are provocateurs in this crowd. There are secret police taking photos. And the line of police cars did not make me feel safer, they reminded me that the Bush years have been a growing police state, that used the terrorist attack of 2001 as an excuse to further strip us of our freedoms. I can only pray that the new president can reverse this trend, even though so much of this erosion is local.
Good post Mark, especially good remembering that many things in our society have come a long way even when there is much further to go.
I am hopeful that the new administration in DC will be healing and if the G/L community learns from the brilliant Obama campaign, the community's goals will be realized.
Gay marriage is truly a "choice" issue...that is having the right to choose to marry.
Posted by: Lily@GothamGirl.info | November 14, 2008 at 01:14 PM