CLGS

So what really happened on November 4, 2008? I mean, what happened in California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas, where LGBT people suffered some stunning electoral setbacks? The post-election analysis machine has been grinding out opinions on that question since November 5, nearly non-stop, and with almost as many opinions as there are analysts. This much, though, seems clear: November 4 exposed some deep fault lines among and about LGBT people that have been left unaddressed for far too long – fault lines marked mostly by race and religion.

Communities on the “liberal” or “progressive” end of the political spectrum seem particularly prone to the blame game in these situations. Post-election rallies and punditry last November were no exception. Here in California, the passage of Proposition 8 has been blamed on African-American voters, or people of faith, or the No on 8 Campaign itself – usually a combination of all three. A recent state-wide summit of LGBT activists and organizations came very close to rupturing entirely along those very lines, and this at a gathering of people who were all supposedly on the “same side.”

Critical analysis is one thing; blame is quite another. The former will necessarily involve taking responsibility for failing to build diverse communities of solidarity – and there’s plenty of that responsibility to go around. As Beverly Harrison once wrote, “Endless liberal theological talk about the importance of critical thinking does not produce such thinking. Living out justice-love requires the active seeking of truths we have not yet heard, and those truths come only from others that we have treated with contempt…”*

As Dr. Harrison would likely agree, “contempt” takes both implicit and explicit forms. If I, as a white person, don’t show up at the town hall meeting to strategize around the death of a young black man by a police bullet, or if I don’t actively support labor organizing for API communities in the Bay Area, or if I don’t make it clear (with my voice and my wallet) that immigration reform at the U.S./Mexican border is a spiritual priority – well, how exactly am I going to “listen,” let alone learn anything? How will I ever learn that my fate as a gay man in a heterosexist society is inextricably tied to the fate of people of color in a white supremacist society or to women in a patriarchal society?

Are any of those really LGBT-related concerns? At CLGS we sometimes receive emails and other forms of communication from people who don’t think so. They chide us for straying from our mission when we get involved in racial or ethnic concerns. Please know this: We at CLGS believe that view is woefully shortsighted and misguided. I cannot help but think of Matthew’s gospel, where we read Jesus declaring that “no house divided against itself will stand” (12:25).

Similarly, if primarily “secular” activists view faith communities as merely a location for “voter I.D. drives,” we’re all in a lot of trouble. I’m certainly aware, often painfully so, why religious institutions are so often viewed as the “enemy” by LGBT activist organizations. Thankfully, that’s not the whole story. With sound education and religiously-sensitive training, countless faith communities across the country stand ready to lend their active and necessary support to LGBT communities -- but clergy won’t be told by political campaign managers what they should believe or how they should talk to their congregations.

To engage any of this work depends on listening; and listening depends on showing up.

Let me offer just one modest example, taken from the African-American and Asian/Pacific Islander roundtable projects here at CLGS. By trying to listen carefully (and speak little) at some of those gatherings over the last few years, I’ve learned what most white people rarely stop to consider: marriage, family, and religion are tightly intertwined in communities of color as a key strategy for resisting white supremacy. This means, in part, that strategies devised for full marriage equality by primarily white activist organizations will likely not gain much traction at all in communities of color; more than that, those strategies could easily be perceived as yet another attempt to impose white cultural sensibilities on non-white communities.

Does this mean that there are no African-American or API activists working for marriage equality? Of course not; there are plenty (though you hardly see any in the news media). But unless and until white communities understand that racial and ethnic concerns are not “add-ons” to the real (read “white”) agenda, all of us will keep spinning our wheels in the same rut we’ve been in for some time.

Race, ethnicity, economics, gender, sexuality, and religion are all interwoven in some truly complex ways in American society. Those of us working in LGBT issues can no longer afford the delusion of supposing that any of those potent markers in the U.S. can be addressed apart from all the others. The fault lines run too deep; the wounds are too raw; the consequences, all too evident.

For that reason among many, I’m proud to be a member of the CLGS staff. I don’t mean that we at CLGS have this all figured out and do the work perfectly. To the contrary, CLGS initiated the Racial/Ethnic Roundtable Project precisely because we don’t have all this figured out and that we need to listen and learn. We’re also committed at CLGS to integrating the work and insights of those roundtables into all of the work we do, which is both a daunting and exhilarating prospect.

In addition to the really fine work Rev. Elizabeth Leung continues to do with the API Roundtable, and the work we see emerging from Rev. Irene Monroe with the African American Roundtable, we’re hopeful about launching this year similar initiatives for Latina/o communities. We’re also pleased at the prospect of launching a bit more intentionally a Transgender Roundtable, which will bring all of these concerns together in new ways.

So what really happened on November 4, 2008? It seems to me that we started to name the elephant in the LGBT living room. Like all other such pachyderms, that one – marked by race and religion – creates a lot of uncomfortable, squirmy people. I think that’s okay. As I read the gospels, squirmy discomfort is the prelude to thriving, flourishing human life.

If you’re committed to that long-haul work, please join me. I don’t just work for CLGS, I’m also a financial contributor. With your gift of money, whether large or small, we can go a long way to realizing better that if we’re divided we will surely fall; but if united, by showing up and with careful listening, I dare say that we would witness a profound transformation, not just in electoral politics but in our faith communities as well. May it be so.

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*Beverly Harrison, "Christianity's Indecent Decency: Why a Holistic Vision of Justice Eludes us," in Body and Soul, ed. Marvin M. Ellison and Sylvia Thorson-Smith (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2003), p. 41.

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