172. THE CHURCH OF THE BIG DILDO

From the Archives (December 2005)

You have navigated with raging soul far from the paternal home, passing beyond the seas’ double rocks and now you inhabit a foreign land.—Medea

Yes that would be me living here in this foreign land where my orchids are sprouting brand new stalks and the clementines I purchased just a few days ago are already beginning to mold.

(What is UP with that? I mean jezzzzuslawd I’m eating three a day!!)

Whole Foods’ produce department has gone way downhill recently (and I still don’t understand why they can’t be bothered to buy locally grown produce when it’s so readily available). I mean, throw some (finely sifted sea) salt over your shoulder in these parts and you’re bound to hit some hippie who went back to the land and has been selling organic rosemary or pig-sniffed truffles or free-range something at the local farmers’ market.

Anyway, so here I am with my short attention span changing topics again when what I wanted to say is that yes, indeedy, this here dykestergrrrl has navigated myself relatively far away from my paternal homeland and you better believe that I only looked back long enough to find those barbecue and cornbread and coconut cream pie recipes.

I was fortunate enough to not desire the tiny strictured life that my family designed for me but, wow, do they keep trying to cram me back into their mold.

In fact, it’s beginning to feel as if they’re stalking me—which, no doubt, means that the church had another save-the-queers-from-themselves drive.

My mother asked what church I attend. (The church of the big dildo, Mom.)

My homophobic Aunt Becky informed me in highlighted all caps that I am going to spend eternity in Hell because I don’t believe every rabidly hateful thing that her minister insists is Jezus’s word and because I “live in unnatural sin.”

Oh. Wait. No. The Baptists don’t concern themselves with Jezus anymore. (He was just too liberal.) It’s all about their so-called literal interpretation of the worduvgawwd now.

(Don’t you wonder in what dank cellar they’ve locked Jezus away? It’s apparently the same cellar where they’ve locked the Christians who took “feed the poor and care for the sick” to heart, since the new Falwell/Dobson/Robertson Jezus impersonator promotes giving huge tax cuts to the rich at the expense of the poor and fails to provide healthcare for the indigent.)

(And yes I know that there are plenty of good liberal Christians out there who are mighty embarrassed that Pat Robertson and his cronies are managing to speak for them all, but I am talking about the organized Christianists with an obvious GOP agenda here.)

And don’t get me started on my little sister, who converted to Catholicism and believes their spiel about separate and unequal gender roles being part of God’s master plan and who knows just knows that I can be cured of my lust for gorgeous women—one of whom, by the way li’l sister, brings me to ecstatic screaming climaxes on a very regular basis.

(Think about THAT the next time you’re mumbling some prescribed phrase out of your lectionary.)

Meanwhile our local dyke chorus has, for the first time in its 22-year history, elected to perform a traditional holiday concert that includes Jezus songs.

See, many of us are classically trained musicians who really enjoy challenging carols such as Rutter’s “Mary’s Lullaby” and “Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming” or the lovely “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,” and it is exceedingly difficult to find any classical carols that don't reference the J-Man.

So we bit the bullet and introduced Jezus into our estrogen mix for just this one concert—only we unknowingly did this the same semester that HRC invited us to perform at their Gospel and Unity event (which they, incidentally, presented to us as inclusive of all organized religions).

Turns out their event was actually an attempt to bring African-Americans into their fold ... and I guess they could only envision African-Americans, even queer ones, as gospel-belting churchgoers.

(Hey, ever heard of Audre Lorde or Essex Hemphill or Pomo Afro Homo?)

The HRC event overflowed with evangelical Jezus-farting, but there was neither hide nor hare of Buddha or Pan or Muhammed or Spiderwoman weaving the world or the magnificent golden carp.

So, understandably, my dyke sister-singers are up in arms now about our apparent conversion.

What was I thinking when I voted to perform this Jezus music in the first place? And is it enough that I opted not to participate in the HRC event (because my Jezus allergy can detect allergens from miles away and I was sneezing the second HRC said the word "gospel"). I also declined to design their publicity material for the same reason, but did perform in our holiday concert because, well, I love Rutter and have not yet convinced the chorus to purchase an SSAA arrangement of “Ave Pudendum.”

But anyway, to make matters worse, the local (queer) MCC church asked our chorus and the local gay men’s chorus to perform at their holiday fund-raiser too and, well, we assumed we'd sing “Deck The Halls” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” etc, but, well, they just delivered a song list to us and it couldn’t be more Christian!

(Whee our next board meeting is sure going to be fun!)

Meanwhile, I miss the days when the Christians that our chorus sang about were the blood-thirsty extremists who murdered 9 million European women during the witch hunts, and so plan to propose that we sing Holly Near’s “I Ain’t Afraid” (of your Yahweh. I ain’t afraid of your Jesus. I ain’t afraid of your Allah. I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god) and “Did Jezus Have a Baby Sister?” and “Ave Pudendum” at our next holiday concert, as penance.

LISTENING TO: Maggie Sansone’s Ancient Noels

BEST OF SPAM: last longer John (oh baby I do)

103. FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS

From the Archives

(June 2005) A group of progressive religious leaders who object to the way Christianists use the Bible to promote inequality formed The Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality and read their declaration aloud at a recent event where some of us queer artists performed or just plain made a ruckus.

We gave these mostly straight religious leaders a standing ovation after they read the following statement:

The most fundamental human right, after the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, is the right to affection and the supportive love of other human beings. We become most fully human when we love another person. We can grow in our capacity to be human—to be loving—in a family unit. This right to love and form a family is so fundamental that our United States Constitution takes it for granted in its dedication to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Our state constitution likewise affirms the “inalienable rights" of human beings to "life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Throughout history, tyrants have known that by denying the right of oppressed peoples to form and nurture families, they can kill the spirit of those peoples. From the shameful history of slavery in America, the injustice of forbidding people to marry is evident as a denial of a basic human right. The American laws forbidding interracial marriage, now struck down, were clearly discriminatory. Denial of the status of marriage to those who would freely accept its responsibilities creates legal and economic inequities and social injustice. We feel called to protest and oppose this injustice.

As religious people, clergy and lay leaders, we are mandated by faith to stand for justice in our common civic life. We oppose the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equity to same-gender couples. As concerned citizens we affirm the liberty of adults of the same gender to love and marry. We insist that no one, especially the state, is allowed to coerce people into marriage or bar two consenting adults, whether of the same or differing genders, from forming the family unit that lets them be more fully loving, thus more fully human. We respect the fact that debate and discussion continue in many of our religious communities as to the scriptural, theological and liturgical issues involved. However, we draw on our many faith traditions to arrive at a common conviction. We are resolved that the State should not interfere with same-gender couples who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitments of civil marriage.

We affirm freedom of conscience in this matter. We recognize that the state may not require religious groups to officiate at, or bless, same-gender marriages. Likewise, a denial of state civil recognition dishonors the religious convictions of those communities and clergy who officiate at, and bless, same-gender marriages. The state may not favor the convictions of one religious group over another by denying individuals their fundamental right to marry and to have those marriages recognized by civil law.

As faith leaders, we commit ourselves to public action, visibility, education, and mutual support in the service of the right and freedom to marry.

So here’s data from the HRC website:

RIGHTS AND PROTECTIONS DENIED SAME-SEX PARTNERS

Because same-sex couples are denied the right to marry, same-sex couples and their families are denied access to the more than 1,138 federal rights, protections and responsibilities automatically granted to married heterosexual couples. Among those are:

• The right to make decisions on a partner's behalf in a medical emergency. Specifically, the states generally provide that spouses automatically assume this right in an emergency. If an individual is unmarried, the legal “next of kin” automatically assumes this right. This means, for example, that a gay man with a life partner of many years may be forced to accept the financial and medical decisions of a sibling or parent with whom he may have a distant or even hostile relationship [or be denied the right to see or care for her long-term partner, as happened in a local case].

• The right to take up to 12 weeks of leave from work to care for a seriously ill partner or parent of a partner. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 permits individuals to take such leave to care for ill spouses, children and parents but not a partner or a partner’s parents.

• The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.

• The right to assume parenting rights and responsibilities when children are brought into a family through birth, adoption, surrogacy or other means. For example, in most states, there is no law providing a noncustodial, nonbiological or nonadoptive parent’s right to visit a child—or responsibility to provide financial support for that child—in the event of a breakup.

• The right to share equitably all jointly held property and debt in the event of a breakup, since there are no laws that cover the dissolution of domestic partnerships.

• Family-related Social security benefits, income and estate tax benefits, disability benefits, family-related military and veterans benefits and other important benefits.

• The right to inherit property from a partner in the absence of a will [or to inherit retirement accounts without paying up to 75% if it in taxes, since the laws don’t recognize you as a legitimate spouse]

• The right to purchase continued health coverage for a domestic partner after the loss of a job.

Such inequities impose added costs on these families, such as increased health insurance premiums, higher tax burdens and the absence of pension benefits or Social Security benefits in the event of a partner’s death.

Some same-sex and transgender families consult attorneys to draw up legal documents such as powers of attorney, co-parenting agreements and wills, that will at least permit them to declare who they wish to make health care and financial decisions for them if they become incapacitated; how they wish to share parenting responsibilities or, in the event of a breakup, custody of a child; and what they want to happen to their property when they die. However, these are not a substitute for legal protection under law and cannot provide the broad range of benefits and protections provided by law.