MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

Today’s the Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia is today, May 17.

This year the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) campaign focuses on the role of religion in promoting -- or ending -- violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.

We join LGBT people and our allies around the world in calling upon religions to condemn violence and prejudice based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and to create communities of respect for all people. Click here to read and sign the official IDAHO appeal. I signed it on behalf of JesusInLove.org.

Many IDAHO events are happening around the world, including the Great Global Kiss-In and an arts exhibition in New Caladonia.

May 17 was chosen for IDAHO because the date is the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s May 1990 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. I was shocked when I learned recently that this decision was made only 20 years ago. The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a disorder in 1973.

I especially want to support the Day Against Homophobia because it is international. I have personal experience with religious homophobia at the international level, so I know how important it is. I confronted it when I worked with the World Council of Churches as ecumenical officer for Metropolitan Community Churches in the 1990s.

I also know how “internationalism” can be used to mask homophobia, because progressive religious leaders don’t want to “offend” the developing nations that they imagine are more prejudiced against LGBT people.

I pledge to do my part in making this world a safe space where everyone is treated with respect. I pray for an end to hatred and violence against GLBT people in every nation.

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This post was written by lesbian Christian author Kittredge Cherry. She blogs regularly on GLBT spirituality and the arts at the Jesus in Love Blog.

Art confronts homophobia in new paintings

Men killed in gay-bashing murders are honored in powerful new paintings by gay artist-philosopher Matthew Wettlaufer. He painted Matthew Shepard (1976-98), a university student who was killed in Wyoming, and Allen Schindler (1969-92), a naval officer who was killed by two of his shipmates in Japan. Both were brutally beaten to death for being gay.

Wettlaufer makes connections between the anti-gay hate crimes, other human-rights struggles and his own art in the following interview with Kittredge Cherry, founder of JesusInLove.org and author of “Art That Dares.”

Born and raised in America, Wettlaufer lived in El Salvador and South Africa before returning recently to California. He has a doctorate of philosophy from South Africa’s Kassel University and moved to Capetown to teach philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch. He paints a variety of subjects, but his large political landscapes focus on issues of homophobia and political violence.

It is especially appropriate to reflect on gay martyrdom now during the season of Lent, when the suffering and death of Christ are remembered. In the following interview, Wettlaufer is especially eloquent at discussing the meaning of his art because he is a philosopher as well as an artist.

KC: You have a doctorate in philosophy and taught philosophy at the university level. That's unusual for an artist. So I am going to ask you some about the philosophy behind your art. Why did you decide to paint the difficult subject of the gay-bashing murders of Allen Schindler and Matthew Shepard?

MW: I was strongly affected by their murders, it was one of the reasons why I found myself leaving the United States, because of the entrenched homophobia in society which served as a foundation for these acts of brutality. In 2006 I saw the film Brokeback Mountain and it reawoke all these feelings of anguish and pain that I had managed to put aside after moving to South Africa. I walked around in a daze for a week. Then I painted the Matthew Shepard painting, which was my first political narrative. I was actually embarrassed about showing it to anyone, it was too personal and too private, but over time I grew out of that reticence as I started to get feedback from people about it.

I m not sure if this is related but I was at the March on Washington in 1993 and I saw Allen Schindler's mother address the crowds on the Washington Mall. I knew his story already because of an article I had read that described the events leading up to his murder and the murder itself, which the Navy initially tried to cover up. Hearing his mother speak brought me to tears.

All my life I have sought ways of recording the memory of people martyred under conditions of oppression, by working in El Salvador during the 1990s in health care, by teaching philosophy (critical theory) in El Salvador at the University in San Salvador, by activism in the gay community. Painting these people made sense to me as a way of creating an archive of what their deaths meant, so that they never be forgotten. It was in some ways easier to paint Salvadoran subjects as I am not Salvadoran, it was much harder to bring myself to paint gay subjects, especially the subjects of Shepard and Schindler, as this was so close to home and so personal...

(Click here to read the whole interview and see more Wettlaufer art at the Jesus in Love Blog on GLBT spirituality and the arts.)

(Image credit: The Murder of Matthew Shepard by Matthew Wettlaufer, [email protected])

Idiots for Christ

Gay-Bashing in Queens Reminds Us How Far We Still Have to Go.

My friend, Rev. Dr. Mel White (Soulforce.org), has been talking for 10 years about the connection between anti-gay preaching and anti-gay violence.  It's hard to imagine a more direct demonstration than Marcel Gelmy's tattoo, caught on camera by the local news as he defends his friend, one of the two men who gay bashed 49 year-old Jack Price.

The tattoo quotes Leviticus 18:22, saying, "You shall not lie with a male as one does with a woman. It is an abomination."  The man claims the attack was not an anti-gay hate crime but was justified because, he claims, Price hit on his attackers before the "beatdown" that sent Price to the hospital in a coma with a fractured jaw, rib fractures, collapsed lungs and a lacerated spleen.

You can watch video of the brutal attack here.

THIS is what it comes down to: religious leaders preach an idiotic misinterpretation of the Bible and people believe them and behave accordingly - with violence and discrimination.  

I pledge to spread the TRUTH - the Good News, if you will - about What the Bible Says, and Doesn't Say, About Homosexuality, and that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer questioning people are sacred, loved and whole, just as they are.  That's part of what MyOutSpirit.com is FOR.

At last week's National Equality March, hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ people demanded "equal protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states."  And that kind of top-down change will be an enormous help.

At the same time, creating long-term, deep-rooted change in our culture, particularly in conservative Christian communities, requires a completely different kind of activism. 

No law would have prevented the savage beating of Jack Price.

But the far-sighted activism of Soulforce, Empowering Spirits Foundation, the American Friends Service Committee LGBT Issues Program and its Faith Action Network, PFLAG, and others, will help prevent such violence in the future by changing how people think right now.

Jamaican Gays Worship in the Closet

Read Micah Fink's full article on MinnPost.com

It takes just 15 minutes to set up an underground church.

Two boxes and a white sheet make up the pulpit. The altar is a card table. Folding chairs constitute the pews. Then Rev. Robert Griffin, a solidly built gay American minister in his mid-40s, unpacks a battered cardboard box; inside is a wooden chalice, two candle holders, a communion plate and a dog-eared copy of the King James Bible. Add a pianist warming up on an electric keyboard and suddenly an empty meeting room is transformed into the Kingston branch of the Sunshine Cathedral, Jamaica's only gay church (an affiliate of the Metropolitan Community Churches).

"We call it church in a box," said Griffin, who travels to Jamaica once a month from Florida to hold services for Jamaica's gay community. He helped found this congregation five years ago after reading a Human Rights Watch report about institutionalized anti-gay violence in Jamaica...

Jamaica is a hostile place for gay men and women and homophobia is woven into the everyday fabric of society... In just one packed afternoon, I met one woman who was shot several times by a gunman who shouted out "de lesbian fi dead" (the lesbian must die), as he pulled the trigger. One man told me his best friend was murdered, chopped into pieces with a machete, and had the skin flayed from his face; he then went on to relate how another gay friend was locked up in his parent's house by a group of gunmen who then set the building on fire and burned him alive.

Then there was another congregant whose features appeared in video shot at a gay birthday party that became a black-market best seller after a copy was stolen and then released on the streets. He's had to abandon his home twice, in two different cities, after neighbors saw the video, recognized him and made plans to kill him. And he's one of the lucky ones, the man says, since he's lived to tell the tale — unlike four other gay men he knows who had the misfortune to appeared in the video and were later hunted down and murdered...

"Ministers here are endorsing violent acts, calls for murder, to incite riots," Griffin said. "I hear it being done here, I read it in the papers here, I have even heard it myself. They tell me: 'We don't believe in homosexuality and homosexuals should be killed because that's what the scripture says.'"

Read Micah Fink's full article on MinnPost.com

Photo Credit: "Interlocking" by John K.

Matthew Shepard: A gay martyr remembered 10 years later

Matthew Shepard died 10 years ago today, bringing international attention to anti-gay hate crimes. 

In his memory I post this icon by Father William Hart McNichols.  The striking image is based on the report of the officer who found Matthew after he was beaten and left to die -- covered with blood except for where the tears ran down.

McNichols dedicated his icon The Passion of Matthew Shepard to the 1,470 gay and lesbian youth of commit suicide in the U.S. each year, and to the countless others who are injured or murdered.

Shepard was a 21-year-old gay student at the University of Wyoming at the time of his death.  He was brutally attacked near Laramie, Wyoming, on Oct. 6-7, 1998 by two men who later claimed that they were driven temporarily insane by “gay panic” due to Shepard’s alleged sexual advances.  Now the Matthew Shepard Foundation seeks to replace hate with understanding, compassion and acceptance.

McNichols’ own moving spiritual journey and two of his icons are included in my book Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More.

Image credit:
The Passion of Matthew Shepard
© William Hart McNichols
St. Andrei Rublev Icons

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Cross-posted at the Jesus in Love Blog

Changing the Way We Talk About "Gays with Guns"

A few weeks ago, I was blown away at the fear and violence that was being vented on in the discussion under the Joe’s post “Gays with Guns.” I don’t deny that physical assault is a real danger faced by many queer people, both because of their queer identity and because all people face a statistical threat of physical violence. However, I question the usefulness of guns, ostensibly for self defense, as a reaction to this danger. I firmly believe that the prevalence of guns in the marketplace only perpetuates an arms race between potential victims and potential attackers. We only drift into a situation where large numbers of people are carrying lethal weapons. These weapons tend to cancel each other out in terms of effectiveness for attacker and defender, which only encourages both sides to seek more powerful guns. The arms race becomes a vicious cycle, driven by the fear of potential victims and the desire of attackers to overpower their victims. Meanwhile, with little increase in safety, we see huge increases in the danger of collateral damage, i.e. people who were not even initially targets of violence becoming victims of the range and lethality of the bullets.

 

In his post, Joe mentions several responses to the danger of physical assault that are good alternatives to guns and that would allow us to break the arms race cycle. However, his most useful suggestions are ignored by those caught up in the arms race, who instead prefer to point out that within the context of the arms race cycle, taking a self defense class is not as good a solution as I high-powered, easy to carry sidearm. In this post, I’d like to move away from the discussion under “Gays with Guns,” which has become trapped in the rhetoric of the arms race cycle, and instead introduce the language, understanding, and techniques of non-violence into the discussion.

Gays with guns

by Joe Perez

"What would you do if armed terrorists broke into your church gay bar and starting attacking your friends with automatic weapons in the middle of a worship service night out cruising? Would you be prepared to defend yourself and other innocents well... ? Would you be justified in doing so? Is it time for Americans to consider such once-unthinkable possibilities?"

The Christian right-wing website WorldNetDaily asks these, um, poignant and timely questions in its review of Shooting Back, a "biblical defense of bearing arms." The review says: "Using the Bible as his guidepost, [Charl] van Wyk makes the case that Christians not only have the right but the duty to defend themselves and other innocents from ... aggression." I guess "turn the other cheek" gets conveniently forgotten.

The new book tells the story of van Wyk, a South African defender of Good People against Terrorists. Wyk: "Instinctively, I knelt down behind the bench in front of me and pulled out my .38 special snub-nosed revolver, which I always carried with me ... I would have felt undressed without it..."