© Dee Graham 1997

July 21, 1997

Unitarian Universalist Church of St. Petersburg, Florida

When she said it, I stared incredulously at my colleague. "What do you mean?"

"It just doesn’t seem like a very important thing," she said of Ellen Degeneres’ Coming Out, "I mean, among us it seems so common, it really isn’t a big thing anymore."

That’s living in a world of Unitarian Universalist privilege, something most of us would like to do all the time but that few of us can really do at all. Of course, I suppose it didn’t hurt her perspective that she’s been living where we went to seminary, in California.

California, where families with two moms have access to a process where they both can be declared the legal parents of their joint children. San Francisco and Berkeley, where committed same-sex couples can become legal domestic partners, although marriage is still outlawed.

Then there’s Florida, where legislation prohibiting same-sex marriage reached the governor’s desk the exact same day that ABC broadcast the Ellen coming out episode. Florida, where only months ago the court awarded child custody to a convicted felon rather than leave the children with their mother, a lesbian. How easily we forget...

This Unitarian Universalist minister didn’t mean to imply it wasn’t important that television producers finally allowed a main character to declare she is gay. I believe she meant it should have happened long before and all the hype in the media was overdone.

Maybe so.

But for those of us waiting in the wings since the dawn of the television era, it was a tremendously big deal, indeed.

Since I was called to this church two years ago, this is the first sermon I’ve preached where anything gay was the main topic. Still, I was accused last year of "pushing homosexuality down the throats" of parishioners.

Others have suggested to me that those of you in the congregation wanted more of a chance to get to know me better, which is a good thing. Yet, at the same time, some of you wanted me to say nothing about my self in sermons, to refrain from stirring your emotions and to concentrate on the intellect alone. So, in an attempt to please everyone some of the time, my partner and I offered to make lunch and socialize once a month. The first one was well attended, but there were few takers after that and the events were discontinued.

One of my strongest assets in seeking a church settlement was the fact I have a family and children who participate in Religious Education programs. Yet, I hear comments from some of you, always quoting others, who are concerned about having their children in Sunday school where the minister is a lesbian. How do we explain this to the kids?

Of course, no one mentions that we weren’t the first gay family to participate in this Sunday school. It makes me wonder if those children, and any of our teenagers who knew in their hearts that they were themselves gay, felt they had to stay in the closet of the Sunday school wing before I arrived.

Those same colleagues of mine who thought coming out on television shouldn’t be such a big deal, after all, it happens in our religious community all the time, were the same ones who reacted with amazement when I told them I had been called here, to this church.

And you know what, I love this congregation!

Recently we’ve had Unitarian Universalist visitors from other parts of the country. Our population presents a stark contrast, apparently, to those in Massachusetts and other supposedly more liberal places up North or out West. I believe the differences are good ones. We are an urban church, where professors and physicians do church in respectful, loving relationships with members who never finished high school or who choose to live far more simply in the midst of an upwardly mobile culture. Our membership is far more diverse in these ways than they could ever hope theirs to be.

Perhaps that’s why this congregation, having never done the denominational programs aimed at making the church more welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, still enthusiastically called a spiritual leader who happened to be gay.

Perhaps our congregation behaves in a more Christian manner than our neighbors who wave the flag of the Radical Religious Right when we adhere to our motto, "deeds not creeds."

It was Jesus who said in Luke 6:37-38 (NRSV), "Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back."

This is wisdom not only found in Christianity, but also in Eastern religions where what one does returns to the person in the form of karma, a force of the universe and not of humanity. In earth-centered traditions, one becomes even more at risk when acting to oppress or harm others, for pagan laws return the same effect to the doer three times.

There are plenty of religious communities that reject many of us in this Church, and there are those who don’t know us who judge us harshly. It’s difficult for those who are strangers to this faith to envision values that come, not from a rule book, but from mutual respect. Yet that is the essence of how we live our faith, together.

This church has had a number of coming outs this year. During the rioting, we were visible leaders among those working for and investing ourselves in a more anti-racist city. Yesterday, some of our members and friends appeared in the St. Petersburg Times under the headline of "The Witches Next Door." All that was said about our Unitarian Universalist Church was that it was the location for the Beltane celebration, and the story failed to even mention CUUPS, the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans.

But our connection was important enough for the reporter to have called me earlier in the week to ask what doctrines of Unitarian Universalism allowed for the inclusion of Wiccans. It wasn’t difficult to quote our newest principle, which speaks of earth-centered traditions as one of the sources of our collective wisdom, but I wonder if the concept was too difficult for her to translate into a newspaper story.

Today isn’t only about coming out. It’s also about the joyous Beltane religious holiday, the beginning of summer, when youthful energy and abundant lust for life is celebrated with the Maypole dance and firelight.

And today is about remembering the Holocaust victims, those many people who lived and were tortured and died at the hands of a leader in pursuit of superiority.

You can be sure, while the most visible target of the Nazis was the Jewish community, they were not alone. Gypsies and others who dared follow so-called pagan religions were carted off to concentration camps and murdered, along with other religious minorities including Unitarians.

What some of you may not know is that gay men and lesbians, especially those who had come out openly in the previously liberal German climate, were targeted by Hitler early on. With male leaders who simply could not envision the reality of women loving one another, the Nazis ushered lesbians into camps along with prostitutes and female criminals. They were forced to wear black triangles to signify their classification.

Gay men, however, were much more threatening. Not only were they marked by wearing pink triangles, but they became the lowest class inside the concentration camps, more despised than any other group of people including Jews.

We might think this were bad enough, grateful for the fact the Allies won the war and the remaining prisoners were eventually freed.

Only, for gay men, this wasn’t the case.

Those men wearing pink triangles on their clothing were NOT freed by the Allied forces, but were ushered into other prisons where they remained. The one person I know about who escaped this fate was a young teenager, who was freed by Allied soldiers who assumed, because of his age, that he was wearing the pink triangle because it was all the clothing he could scavenge at the time. He lived to come to America and spend his life with a male partner of his choosing.

Only in America, we might say. Yet freedom, like truth, is relative.

Fewer than 10 years ago, a man whose housemate mistakenly allowed a police officer into his bedroom was arrested for sodomy in Georgia. Not only was he convicted and is serving time in jail for consensual behavior in his own bedroom with the assumption of privacy,but the United States Supreme Court upheld the verdict and allowed the law to stand.

Being gay is not something to hide. There is no protection in invisibility.

Hiding was something I didn’t know I should have been doing when I was invited to leave Florida Southern College after I found myself in love with another woman. It was the first time I experienced such a thing, having been brought up with Father Knows Best rather than Ellen.

At that time in my life I was a most devout United Methodist. Even though I believed homosexuality to be against the Bible, I had learned to trust more in a direct connection with God. Today I might use different language to speak of my spiritual expression, but then I knew only the conservative Christian version of what God means. So please bear with me while I tell this story with Christian language.

Having had only 6 hours of academic religion classes, I learned about the six or more male writers of the Bible, and about the translations and editing done along the way. Perhaps it was that little bit of academic exposure that allowed me to look beyond the troublesome passages in the Bible to my personal, spiritual relationship with God.

You see, this human love of another person who happened to be a woman took me by surprise. It never entered my mind such a thing could happen. The fact that it did, in spite all odds, happen, and the very depth of my spirit in feeling this kind of love, came to me as a direct revelation from God.

No one but God could bestow such a love. Like most Christians, I believed in God’s ongoing revelation to humanity. I had accepted the "God as love" theology of Wesley. So, regardless of what my religious history told me, I had to believe in the God whose word came to me in this very unique way.

Love was a gift from God. God was love. To ignore, reject or in any way turn my back on this divine intervention in my life would be far worse than the ejection from that particular college or the rejection of friends and family. And the depth of this sense of spiritual connection was far greater than one relationship, one woman, one experience at the age of 18.

In a very real sense, it was faith that saved me, saved my sanity and also my life. All week, with Ellen in the spotlight, we heard statistics that one third of teenage suicides are committed by youths who are gay or lesbian, or think they might be. This is no laughing matter. When our Christian and other religious leaders tell us death is the appropriate punishment for homosexuality, some of us believe them. Without trial, judge or jury, we take our own lives not out of compassion and dignity as is supported by the Hemlock Society, but out of fear, self-hatred and social pressure.

I even knew one young man who, when he told his father he was gay, was handed a gun. The father told the son to go down into the basement and do what he had to do, meaning to shoot himself.

The young man lived in Georgia. No small coincidence there.

Thankfully, when I came out, I survived. That first relationship ended eventually, butthe spiritual experience of coming out spurred me into a religious quest that continues today. Because I believed so deeply in God and God’s divine intervention in my life, I had the courage to step away from United Methodist dogma and into a free theological journey.

Don’t think the funny, light-hearted experience that Ellen translated into a television sitcom is by any means the common experience in America today. Like much of situation comedy, Ellen Morgan’s coming out was as far from most people’s reality as is a dancing dinosaur named Barney.

I know some of you know this. Some of you have come out yourselves. Some of you have children who have opened their hearts to tell you of their own coming out. And, for those of you who think that is any easier, let me bear witness that it isn’t. If you have any question at all, I urge you to attend a meeting of the local chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, which meets at Good Samaritan Church in Pinellas Park. In fact, you may be surprised who you meet there.

But the point of this sermon is not really about coming out at all. It’s about courage, a courage of conviction, a sense of self and a testimony of spirit that goes far deeper than one love affair or gender-appropriate clothing.

Native Americans experienced gender far differently than European culture. The author of the book Spirit and the Flesh, which studies same sex relationships in Native American traditions, points out that only when the Spanish priests discovered cross-dressing and homosexuality among the Natives did they approve of raping, murdering and pillaging the so-called "savages" in order to convert them to Christianity.

It seems, even in the eyes of religious leaders, being gay merits the penalty of death -or worse.

Yet, for Native Americans honoring earth-centered spirituality, being gay was a religious, or spiritual calling. It often happened that a young person would have a dream that foretold their life, seeing themselves living in a role other than the one their physical body might have dictated in other people’s minds. If the dream were powerful enough, the young person might be immediately directed in the study of tribal wisdom, becoming a Berdache or spiritual leader.

This vision was seen as a Divine calling. A young Christian might interpret a similar experience as a gift from God.

Whatever the personal translation, we are not here talking about a choice.

Like going into professional ministry, coming out is what we do when we can no longer do anything else.

Now, this is not to say there is never a choice in sexual preference. I have known women who say they choose to be only with other women because of a political position or because of a particular individual, which flies in the face of claims that "no one would choose to be gay in this oppressive society." It seems some people actually believe they do choose.

But I have to say what I believe about this is more in line with my colleague, the Rev.Mark Bellitini, who points out, if you have a choice at all, then you are really bisexual. Because those of us who feel we have no choice, who know in our heart of hearts - once we find our true orientation - that being gay is not about choice but about who we are, are as lesbian or gay as those who find absolutely no attraction to the same gender are heterosexual.

What Ellen Degeneres did this week was a very big deal.

She came out personally, risking her career and privacy.

She came out in the media, letting those at-risk teenagers and their parents and their ministers know that a person can be gay and happy too.

Today, remembering the Holocaust victims of the Nazis and the native victims of the Christian conquistadores, I tell you a person can be gay and very deeply, spiritually attuned.

We Unitarian Universalists are here about loving one another, about respecting the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Can we, too, be here about being proud? Can we be here as living testimony that somewhere, some day, coming out can be really no big deal?

One of the commentators this week made a very good point about Ellen and television history. In today’s culture, our televisions have become family members. They are background in the kitchen, company at dinner, babysitters for our children and medication for loneliness or pain. Television makes us laugh, makes us cry, inspires our passions.

Almost every family in American history has been touched by someone gay - the favorite spinster aunt, the brother who never brings home girlfriends, the career daughter or the bachelor son. And this has been the case with our television friends - an ex-wife on Friends, a co-worker on E.R., a sister on Mad About You, a mother and a boss on Roseanne.

But now the quietly gay person is no longer a distant relative, one we only see on holidays or at funerals. Because now the television relative is the main character, Ellen. Now someone gay is immediate family.

For you in this congregation, this is a gift. Because in your life it is your minister who is gay, whose family has two moms in a 20-year relationship and whose children have absolutely no qualms about telling their friends.

In California, people found us a boring, conventional nuclear family.

Here, we and our family and friends are coming out every day.

And so are you.

So this sermon is a thank you to Ellen, for her courage and leadership. But it’s also a thank you to this congregation, for believing enough in our ministry together to call a minister who, by the way, is gay.

This is the kind of courage that, in life and in spirit, survives the terror of a Holocaust and the ravages of religious zealots.

And, friends, we have only just begun.