Led by Rev. Katie Kandarian-Morris and members of the congregation.
Thursday, October 11th is National Coming Out Day. Today we’ll celebrate Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Transgender folk exactly as they are, and honor too, those straight people who are allies. How can we continue to be a Welcoming Congregation that walks its talk?
Text of Reflections
By Beth Ogilvie
My partner Susan and I first became aware of Unitarian Universalists through a bumper sticker the Kinnears had that said “Born OK the first time.”
When we checked out the church, we learned from the website that this was a welcoming congregation – and that wasn’t just a decision someone had made. The congregation had actually prepared for it – worked on it. That seemed important to me. Now we’ve been here a few years, I can say that this is a very safe place for us. You make it a safe place. And that’s no small thing. Even here, in the most liberal county in the state of California, there are plenty of people who believe we were not born ok the first time. At Castro Valley Pride in July, I was overwhelmed by the number of straight people from the church who showed up to staff our table. This shows not just passive acceptance, but an active commitment to work with us and for us. That means a lot to me. Thank you.
Last spring I mentioned to Heidi Green that I’m really bisexual but I call myself lesbian because I’m partnered with Susan, and it doesn’t seem right to show an interest in men. Heidi said “But calling yourself lesbian only excludes half the human race. If you’re really only interested in Susan, you should call yourself a Susanbian.” So today I’m coming out as a Susanbian – and a bisexual. I’ve realized that my reluctance to publicly claim my bisexuality was based unconscious acceptance of a myth – that bisexuals are attracted to everyone and naturally promiscuous. I can tell you now that bisexuals are not attracted to everyone. For me, the essence of bisexuality is being attracted to a person first, irrespective of gender, and then a sexual interest sometimes follows.
I fell in love for the first time at age 11, with a girl named Susan. In those days, the apex of intimacy was sharing a piece of chewing gum. I never got that far. By junior high it was obvious to me that I was different from other girls. They were having crushes on boys and men teachers, and I was having crushes on girls and women teachers. By high school I was starting to feel a little left out of the dating scene, but in 1970 girls did not date other girls, and none of the boys was interested in a tomboy geek like me.
That all changed dramatically in the fall of 1971 when I started college. Caltech had just admitted its first undergraduate women the year before, and when I started there were about 1200 undergraduate men and 60 women. There were 20 horny guys for every woman! And they were all geeks! I fit right in! That was when I learned that men could be attractive too. In my senior year I met my first “out” lesbian, and had my first experience of prejudice against bisexuals. “My brother says he’s both,” she said. “I don’t see how anyone can be both.” In spite of that, I had a few lovely years in which I was “both”, dating both women and men. Then I fell in love with a male colleague and married him – and it wasn’t one of those phony trying-to-be-straight marriages.
One thing that puzzles me about my teenage years is that my interest in other girls didn’t worry me. I never discussed it with anyone; I just figured I’d grow out of it. I never thought it was anything wrong with me. What was wrong with me is I’ve never been completely comfortable in my body, and I always thought this was something I had to fix – my attitude, that is. I don’t want to switch to being male, but the ideal, for me, would be if we could all be either gender, like in that novel by Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness. The story takes place on a planet where all the people are gender neutral most of the time, but for a few days each month they blossom into one gender or the other – and not necessarily the same one each time. In their culture, the “sexual perverts” are the ones who are stuck in one physical gender all the time.
Back on Planet Earth, I’ve come to see that my ambiguous feelings about my own gender will probably always be with me, and that I don’t need to try to make them go away. I’ve reached a kind of acceptance of my non acceptance, if that makes any sense.
Susan and I had our 21st anniversary a few weeks ago. We hope someday to be married in this church. This is partly a political gesture, since the more of us marry, the more ho-hum it will become, and eventually the marriage controversy will shrivel up for lack of interest. But there’s more to it than that, and it relates to a paradox. This congregation genuinely doesn’t care if a couple is married or not because we understand that the quality of a relationship is what matters, not the legal label. At the same time, I feel that to be married in this church, to have our union blessed by Katie and by you, would be profound and sacred and healing.
Thank you.
By Heidi Green
When I think about what National Coming Out Day means to me, I feel a physical reminder of the deep-breath-in, rapid-heart-beat flush I feel each time I take the risk of letting another person into the core of how I define my sexual orientation.
I have less of that feeling up here today, because many of you already know that I am bisexual. Given the warm, embracing nature of this congregation – of each one of you who is a part of the Starr King community – I feel confident that saying I am bisexual is less of a risk than a statement of fact. Nonetheless, it makes me vulnerable to what you say to me after the service, or, what you don’t say.
Coming out is about sharing the deeply personal, it is about taking a risk, about letting another inside. Telling another person about your sexual orientation, when you are anything other than heterosexual, when the relationship has not gone to that level of intimacy before, is like reaching out your hand and saying “come walk with me.”
I’ve come out to a lot of people over the years. I have been an activist since the womb, and about sexual orientation since the early 80’s, when I was in my early 20’s. I came out to myself in my first real job, when I realized I had a crush on my boss, the editor in chief of a women’s newspaper inSanta Cruz. It took me nine months to summon the courage to tell her how I felt, a sort of coming out all by itself. When I finally did, this wise and worldly woman twelve years my senior, listened to me quietly and, with a twinkle in her eye, said simply, “I know.”
Coming out is a gift. If someone comes out to you, it is best to pay attention and treat it as something precious and rare. The person is holding a piece of their heart out to you after all. It’s not always obvious that they are offering a gift, as the message can get lost in anger or fear, but if you can hear it, it is a direct call from one heart to another. If you can respond with your own gift, it is the best validation of the giver’s trust in you that the giver can receive, because you are, in effect, taking their hand and saying “yes, I’ll walk with you.”
So when I think about National Coming Out Day, I think about celebrating the courage to take the risk to let others know my real authentic self. Coming out is putting my real self out there first, before someone else paves the way. Coming out is about intimacy, about vulnerability, and about deepening the relationship and the conversation.
Coming out, being real, can be hugely painful. It can result in loss of livelihood, loss of community, loss of friendship, loss of life. But not coming out destroys the soul, destroys humanity, destroys joy. National Coming Out Day to me is both joyous, and sacred. Joyous because we celebrate people being their authentic selves. Sacred because it is the hand held out, asking you to walk with me, to witness me, to understand me, and to protect me. Not just for me, but for that real and authentic self within each of us.
By Maya Joy Para
Hi everyone! My name is Maya and I’m a youth activist that has grown up at Starr King. I’m really happy that so many people showed up! Thank you for that.
I wanted to start by talking about the world “ally.” Apparently it’s Ally Appreciation Week. I saw a post on the social networking site tumblr that basically they and some of the LGBT community don’t like the word “ally”. The post went on to say that a lot of people use the word just to be politically correct and state they’re not a homophobe. I don’t call myself an ally to be politically correct. To me, the word “ally” means “someone who fights alongside you.” You’re not quite an “ally” if you just are okay with LGBT people. To be an “ally” means to go to rallies, raise awareness, sign petitions, stand out on street corners, and maybe change some hearts along the way.
My activism started the summer before Freshman year, when Castro Valley had its first Pride event. My mom told me that a man named Billy Bradford, a gay rights activist in Castro Valley, was having a march for equality and was asking people to help. We both agreed to help spread the news that our formerly very conservative community was having its first LGBT-oriented parade. Once the news spread, there were way too many people attending for the county to give us a parade permit. Billy changed the name of the event to Castro Valley Pride and we found a new venue-the Junior parking lot at Castro Valley High. On July 23, 2011, Castro Valley had its first Pride event. I passed out stickers for five hours. People performed, spoke, and sold their wares. We had five protesters, but most people that came by were very nice and said that Castro Valley had taken a step in the right direction.
This past year, Castro Valley Pride marched in the Rowell Ranch Rodeo parade for the first time. The support from the crowd was amazing. We had a little Radio Flyer wagon with a stereo blasting Lady Gaga, P!nk, and fun. I was really nervous starting the parade. I really wasn’t in the mood to have anyone yell at me. As we started the route, we saw two men sitting in lawn chairs looking at us. When we passed by, they raised their interlocked hands in support and wore huge grins on their faces. At that moment, I knew the community would receive us well. We passed out flyers for Castro Valley Pride 2012 for about an hour and a half. I came home sunburned but satisfied that day. Since then, I’ve volunteered at Castro Valley Pride 2012 and the Castro Valley Pride booth at the Castro Valley/Eden Area Fall Festival. Both events went relatively smoothly. Even if there were a couple of negative comments from passersby, I knew I was doing the right thing.
I wear my Castro Valley Pride bracelet every day. Because of that, I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked, “Are you a lesbian?” When I reply, “no”, people then ask “oh so you’re bisexual then?” The information that I’m straight and wearing a rainbow bracelet confuses a lot of people, even while my straight boyfriend and I are holding hands while wearing our matching rainbow bracelets. Then comes the inevitable question: “Then why do you wear it?” I wear my bracelet to represent my love for my LGBT family members, friends, teachers, classmates, choir members, followers on social networking sites, and people I don’t even know. I wear the bracelet to remind myself that we are working for equality and that someday it’ll come. I leave you with one of Billy Bradford’s favorite quotes, said by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
By Rev. Katie Kandarian-Morris
On the Unitarian Universalist Associaton’s webpage it says in bold type, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Ministries: Risking a new vision for our world since 1973.”
When my sister came out in 1978 I wasn’t surprised. She had been my sister since my second birthday, on which day she was born, and I always knew her as who she was—she didn’t change. But she had never been able to speak aloud of her affectional or sexual orientation, which was different from mine, being as I was so interested in boys, and different from our parents who had been married to each other since they were 23. For something so essential to each of us, our self-understanding, our self-expression about gender, affection and sexual orientation, she was not able to speak aloud, or be understood, to love who it was she loved. Even in our liberal Unitarian Universalist household, this “coming out” wasn’t easy. I would like to be able to say that her brave declaration was met with immediate love and acceptance by our parents, but instead it was met with doubt, misunderstanding, anger, and selfish hurt.
Even as a sister, I wasn’t exactly sure how to celebrate her joy of being able to be as open as I was about love and self-expression. And she wasn’t as able, actually, to be joyfully open.
Today, my sister and her wife have been together over twenty-two years, now married legally in the state of Massachusetts, but still not able to have their federal taxes filed jointly, only one of a long list of other things they can’t experience. In most parts of the country their relationship is not acknowledged, and in their professional careers, they must be silent about their personal lives.
In 1980, this congregation called a gay man, who was “out” to the congregation. Mark Belletini served here for eighteen years, and yet it was not until after he left that we acknowledged that we needed to do our part to become straight allies. Each of us would need to look at our hearts, and truly see where we might “come out” of our own fear and misunderstandings and explicitly welcome people of all genders and orientations.
I’m reminded again of the ethic of risk, that “it is easier to give up on long-term change when one is comfortable in the present—when it is possible to have challenging work, excellent health care and housing, and access to fine arts. When the good life is present or within reach, it is tempting to despair of its ever being in reach for others and resort merely to enjoying it for oneself and one’s family.”[1]
But when we reach out, outside of our comfort, into what is a courageous vulnerability, we achieve spiritual growth; we are more grounded in community, we are living toward that sense of the sacred and meaning-making that makes us more fully whole. We can attend deeply to the question, “How are we together?”[2]
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Ministries (LGBTQ Ministries) is guided by the vision that someday we will be able to put ourselves out of business and that oppression against people of all ages, abilities, colors, and economic classes who are marginalized on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity—whether the oppression be overt or subtle—will be a thing of the past.[3]
Let us give thanks to the grace that we are able to do this work here, in relative safety, and in a place that allows us to see the beauty in each other’s eyes, in a place that welcomes all the colors.
Amen
[1] Welch, Sharon, The Feminine Ethic of Risk
[2] Forde, Alicia, Multi-Cultural Welcoming: A Resource for Greeters
Hi everyone! My name is Maya and I’m a youth activist that has grown up at Starr King. I’m really happy that so many people showed up! Thank you for that.
I wanted to start by talking about the world “ally.” Apparently it’s Ally Appreciation Week. I saw a post on the social networking site tumblr that basically they and some of the LGBT community don’t like the word “ally”. The post went on to say that a lot of people use the word just to be politically correct and state they’re not a homophobe. I don’t call myself an ally to be politically correct. To me, the word “ally” means “someone who fights alongside you.” You’re not quite an “ally” if you just are okay with LGBT people. To be an “ally” means to go to rallies, raise awareness, sign petitions, stand out on street corners, and maybe change some hearts along the way.
My activism started the summer before Freshman year, when Castro Valley had its first Pride event. My mom told me that a man named Billy Bradford, a gay rights activist in Castro Valley, was having a march for equality and was asking people to help. We both agreed to help spread the news that our formerly very conservative community was having its first LGBT-oriented parade. Once the news spread, there were way too many people attending for the county to give us a parade permit. Billy changed the name of the event to Castro Valley Pride and we found a new venue-the Junior parking lot at Castro Valley High. On July 23, 2011, Castro Valley had its first Pride event. I passed out stickers for five hours. People performed, spoke, and sold their wares. We had five protesters, but most people that came by were very nice and said that Castro Valley had taken a step in the right direction.
This past year, Castro Valley Pride marched in the Rowell Ranch Rodeo parade for the first time. The support from the crowd was amazing. We had a little Radio Flyer wagon with a stereo blasting Lady Gaga, P!nk, and fun. I was really nervous starting the parade. I really wasn’t in the mood to have anyone yell at me. As we started the route, we saw two men sitting in lawn chairs looking at us. When we passed by, they raised their interlocked hands in support and wore huge grins on their faces. At that moment, I knew the community would receive us well. We passed out flyers for Castro Valley Pride 2012 for about an hour and a half. I came home sunburned but satisfied that day. Since then, I’ve volunteered at Castro Valley Pride 2012 and the Castro Valley Pride booth at the Castro Valley/Eden Area Fall Festival. Both events went relatively smoothly. Even if there were a couple of negative comments from passersby, I knew I was doing the right thing.
I wear my Castro Valley Pride bracelet every day. Because of that, I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked, “are you a lesbian?” When I reply, “no”, people then ask “oh so you’re bisexual then?” The information that I’m straight and wearing a rainbow bracelet confuses a lot of people, even while my straight boyfriend and I are holding hands while wearing our matching rainbow bracelets. Then comes the inevitable question: “Then why do you wear it?” I wear my bracelet to represent my love for my LGBT family members, friends, teachers, classmates, choir members, followers on social networking sites, and people I don’t even know. I wear the bracelet to remind myself that we are working for equality and that someday it’ll come. I leave you with one of Billy Bradford’s favorite quotes, said by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
