The queer and genderqueer go to church

My friend Daniel, who identifies himself as bisexual, says, "Think of all the gay—you know, not exclusively heterosexual—people who grew up in a church and have just left completely because they can’t be part of it. They feel so much discrimination. It makes me really sad."

It’s not only heterosexual people who are attached to the church of their childhood. Queer and genderqueer people (my friend Jacqueline, who is open to dating men, women and transgender people, says these terms are the newest and most accurate to describe people whose sexual orientation and gender expression are different from the majority of the population) also love the way church looked and smelled, the feeling of belonging they had as a child, the nurturing they received, the good humor directed their way, the inspiring message of love, the deeply beautiful songs they sang, the energy of the sermons, the pipe organs, the bands and so on. It is part of who they are, just as it is for straight people. Queer and genderqueer people are often not allowed to continue in their relationship with the church.

The Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality (this is the word used by the institutional church for queer and genderqueer) is that every soul is sacred, there can be no discrimination, and homosexual orientation is acceptable as long as it is not acted upon. In fact, the only acceptable sexual activity for human beings is within heterosexual marriage. Other churches and especially fundamentalist churches would agree that sexual activity should be confined to marriage between a biological man and biological woman.

As any queer or genderqueer Christian will tell you, once they realize who they are sexually, to remain celibate is to be condemned to the deepest loneliness. Why would God make them queer and then tell them not to have sexual relationships?

I agree with the churches who are very clear in saying that one’s sexual orientation is not the issue when it comes to the overall message of Jesus Christ.

Why would God call only straight people to lives of compassion? Would Jesus want only straight people to love him? Would God want only straight people to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with their God? Would God’s scriptural guidelines for loving, trusting and fair relationships exclude about 10 percent of the population?

I know so many people who have suffered so much over the church’s preoccupation with "homosexuality." A dear friend of mine used to be a respected leader in a conservative church. Now she is married to her lesbian partner and they are not involved with any church. Years ago, the discipline of life within an evangelical church saved my friend from a careless, promiscuous, self-destructive lifestyle. Throughout her years in that church, where she only read Christian literature, watched Christian movies and listened to Christian music (and, as she puts it, "jumped through hoops"), she maintained her relationship with the God of her childhood who had comforted her and allowed her to survive unbelievable abuse. When her husband left her with five small children, and the church turned against her for not being a good enough wife, she turned back to the God of her childhood who had always loved her unconditionally. Then she fell in love with a woman. She had no guilt, no shame. She gave herself completely to the relationship and knew that within it she was the self she was meant to be. Her talent and creativity flourished. She moved to another state and began to do the humanitarian work she had always wanted to do. However, the church that sponsored her mission didn’t know about her sexual orientation. She herself hadn’t entirely identified herself as lesbian. As time went on and she clarified her sexuality, she felt she was deceiving her sponsors but couldn’t quit her job because of her commitment to the people she was serving. It was very difficult for many years, but now she is retired, surrounded by loving children, grandchildren and animals.

Less wounded by the church is Kathy Itzin, who, as a lesbian committed to a partner and their four children, has found support and acceptance at St. Joan of Arc where she is the coordinator of grade school faith formation.

Her integrity is deeply apparent when she starts talking about her life decisions. She was raised Catholic, went to public schools and then attended St. Benedict’s where she studied theology. It was during that time that she realized her true sexual identity. She knew there was prejudice in society and she knew the church taught that homosexual activity was wrong, but because of her studies she also knew there existed a church teaching called "primacy of conscience" which stated that "every person, after their conscience was informed, had the responsibility to follow their conscience." This gave her the courage to be true to her own nature, which meant she had to honor her lesbian sexual orientation. Also, because she was studying theology, she was able see that "God is bigger than what the Church is." She realized that God and the Church were not synonymous. She knew she could have a relationship of love with God no matter what. It was God’s guidance that led her to falling in love and establishing a committed relationship.

St. Joan’s support for Itzin did not flag when Itzin was attacked this past spring. In May the awards committee of the Archdiocese named Itzin as one of six professional recipients to receive an award for excellence in teaching. A few days before the dinner and award ceremony were to take place, Catholic Parents Online, a conservative group who seek to protect their children from what they see as harmful influences, informed the Archbishop, Harry Flynn, that Itzin is gay. The Archbishop made the decision to rescind the award.

Suspend Abortion Compact, another conservative Catholic group who oppose abortion (murder of the unborn), sodomy (because it doesn’t lead to procreation) and corruption in the church, later put pressure on the Archbishop to have Itzin removed from her position. Arthur Herkenhoff, father of nine and grandfather of 18, who spoke for Suspend Abortion Compact, said Itzin has a "tremendous influence on the lives of others, and children need an impeccable role model." He said the "goal of the church is to get people to heaven and you have to follow God’s established behavior code to get there."

In July, the founder of Suspend Abortion Compact fasted for a month outside the Chancery in St. Paul as part of the effort to remove Itzin. Both he and Herkenhoff sounded much less abrasive on the telephone when I spoke to them in October than they sounded in their July 7 letter to the Archbishop and in the news release I received in August. They said they had ceased their demonstrations out of respect for the Church.

In the news release they talked about the church, "the only home we have," and about the "atheists" and "sodomites" who are corrupting it. The tone of the letter to the Archbishop, in which Itzin was villified for riding in the Gay Pride Parade, was emotional to the extreme. The group flyered Catholic church parking lots as well as parking lots of major department stores with copies of the letter. The verbal attack, which, according to lawyers, legally qualified as defamation of character, and the lengths to which the group went to disseminate it, along with the hate mail that was arriving at Itzin’s home, scared her. She wrote to the Archbishop and asked for a meeting. He responded as he would to any person concerned for her personal safety. Itzin said the meeting was beyond cordial, and the archbishop was open, kind and respectful.

Throughout this trial, St. Joan of Arc has been completely supportive. Itzin received 200 letters from parishioners as well as people all over the country. Nuns and priests have prayed for her (one community of nuns prayed all summer) and sent money. Other parishes have sent flowers to SJA.

A special Mass and reception, embracing a vision of the church which would be more inclusive of gays and lesbians, was held on November 1 at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church. Planned by people from many different Catholic churches, it was a deliberate attempt to welcome sexual minorities. In part it was a response to the campaign waged against Itzin. Rather than confront the organizations that attacked Itzin, the coalition decided to make a positive statement by affirming her and others like her. "We are called to reflect God in the way God created us," said Peg Helminski, one of the organizers.

While wounded by the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality, my friend Daniel has made a long and arduous journey away from and back to the Catholic Church, the church where he was an altar boy and taught catechism in junior and senior high school, the church that he loves. Over the years he has found many places to be spiritually nourished, weaving in and out of various fellowships, some of them deliberately open and welcoming to queer and genderqueer people. Daniel is a good person who struggles with bipolar mood swings. He is flamboyant and talented, strong in self-knowledge and fragile in health—and he doesn’t believe in monogamy. He does believe in good intentions, forgiveness, taking responsibility and atonement.

Daniel broke up with his high school sweetheart to go into the Navy, and became engaged to one of the two women he dated in Spain where he was stationed. With the constant testosterone around him in a society of men, he became more aware of desires he’d been aware of in high school, where he was stimulated by both sexes. The teachings of the church had made it abundantly clear that homosexuality was a sin ("well, in the Catholic church, everything is a sin"), but Daniel believed that "the sacrament of marriage would make everything the way it was supposed to be."

Before he got married, though, he wanted to resolve his ambiguous sexual feelings, because he knew once he was married he would never cheat. A sexual encounter with a gay man he met on the Mediterranean coast convinced Daniel of his own sexual interest in other men.

While he didn’t feel personal shame or embarrassment, “the most gutteral, sickening feeling” came over him. He cried for an entire day. He felt he had been deceived by the church, by “a hypocrisy on the grandest scale.” His faith fell away and for many years he called himself an agnostic. His whole life he had felt that the priests were not heterosexual and, at the same time, the unquestioned authority of the Pope and the Vatican had taught him that homosexuality was a mortal sin. The contradiction was irreconcilable.

When he returned to the United States, he told his family he was gay and agnostic. Whenever he stayed at home, he attended church with his family, out of respect for them, and because he got a lot out of it. But the contradictions still disturbed him.

For a long time he attended All God’s Children Metropolitan Community Church, a place where queer and genderqueer people are not excluded on any level. He fell in love with the community, cried every Sunday and was moved by every sermon. Until that time, God and the Catholic Church had been synonymous, so when he lost faith in the church, he lost faith in God. Now he realized, like Kathy Itzin, that God went beyond a church.

In pursuit of the ocean, he moved to L.A. where he lived for seven and a half years. For some reason he attracted every person in the world who’d ever been molested or abused, and made friendships with them. He learned that "heaven and hell do not exist." While the church had always taught that "sin is sin and fair is fair," he realized that wasn’t possible; people’s circumstances were too different. In the last half year of his stay, when he contracted HIV, became depressed, got evicted, and all the things that go with depression and ill health, he made a friendship with a woman who prayed heartfelt prayers for him and led him to a spiritual non-denominational fellowship.

Since coming back to Minnesota, at the insistence of his caring parents and siblings, Daniel is at home in a welcoming Catholic Church community. He doesn’t see that his sexual orientation has anything to do with his active life in the church. "It’s just not an issue," he says, meaning, "If anyone from any church asks me about my sexuality, I am likely to have no problem responding (granted they’re coming from a "good" place and not a nosey place). Alternatively, in general, I can’t imagine why I would be bringing up the subject of my sexuality in a church setting—that is, any more than any heterosexual person would."

I have spent a lot of time pondering why the "homosexuality issue" is so big in churches. I agree with my mother on this particular theme; she says it took people a long time to get used to divorce in the church and now it’s taking a long time to get used to gay people in the church. When my mother was a child, sometime between 1920 and 1930, her mother told her (my grandmother was a Mennonite minister’s wife in rural Minnesota) that sometimes women lived together, and one was the husband—it was just something that occurred from time to time, and was nothing to worry about. While the explanation was simplified for a child’s understanding, it taught the notion that sexual orientation and expression is not the issue. Love, respect, compassion, responsibility, commitment and honesty are the issues.

According to a pamphlet put out by BMC (a group of Brethren and Mennonite women and men who feel that "the traditional attitude of the church toward lesbian and gay persons is inconsistent with the Christian ideal"), the Kinsey Institute studies show that in the United States 8 percent of men and 6 percent of women are exclusively gay. People who are creeped out, not just in the church, but in society at large, by the idea of homosexuality, and think it is just plain "unnatural," should read "Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" by Bruce Bagemihl. Of course, the carefree and freely sexual bonobos are the poster primates for every kind of sexual expression, apparently without guilt, shame, possessiveness or jealousy. They enjoy themselves and relieve stress and solve conflicts with sexual activity. However, humans have the gift of thought (maybe the bonobos do, too, but just think different thoughts), and hence our ability to make up sins where perhaps there aren’t any.

For many years already, churches have been holding educational sessions about homosexuality, grappling with the "issue."

What do the discussions cover? First of all, there are the scriptural passages believed to provide commentary about homosexuality. There are the horrific stories in Genesis 19 and Judges 19—God only knows what they’re about. And there are the verses in Leviticus and Romans. Maybe there are some more. How do scholars look at the "homosexuality passages"? I have heard that these passages, because of historical context, might actually be talking about idol worship or hospitality or good old-fashioned male chauvinism. And some are mistranslations.

Perhaps there is discussion about which of the sexual guidelines followed today actually come out of the Bible. Are they up for discussion? The idea of the celibate clergy, where did that come from? The idea of monogamous marriage, where did that come from? The idea of exclusive heterosexuality, where did that come from? Were these Jesus’ ideas? Is there any information on the sexuality of Jesus? Does it matter?