Thank You, Warriors

If ever American soldiers were truly fighting for freedom, it was the regiments of African American soldiers in the Civil War. “Colored regiments” began forming after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. One of them, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, featured in the 1989 film, “Glory,” was led by a Unitarian, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick in the film), whose faith in human equality accounted for his willingness to take the assignment. Another was the 1st Michigan Colored Regiment. Sojourner Truth provided them with new words to the popular tune to sing as they marched toward battle. (Though Truth claimed authorship, some historians think she may have taken almost all the words from the "Marching Song of the First Arkansas Colored Regiment," written by that regiment's white officer, Captain Lindley Miller.)

Sweet Honey in the Rock has recorded that song. Please take 4 minutes and give it a listen. You can follow along with the words below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwSZgLLqPy8

We are the valiant colored Yankee soldiers enlisted for the war
We are fighting for the union. We are fighting for the law.
We can shoot a rebel further than a white man ever saw.

Look there above the center where the flag is waving bright
We are going out of slavery. We are bound for freedom’s light.
We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight.

We are done with hoeing cotton, we are done with hoeing corn.
We are colored Yankee soldiers just as sure as you are born.
When the Rebels hear us shouting, they will think it’s Gabriel’s horn

They will have to pay us wages, the wages of their sin.
They will have to bow their foreheads to their colored kith and kin.
They will have to give us house-room or the roof will tumble in.

We be as the Proclamation, rebels hush it as you will,
The birds will sing it to us, hopping on the cotton hill,
The possum up the gum tree, couldn't keep it still,

Abraham has spoken and the message has been sent.
The prison doors have opened, and out the prisoners went.
To join the sable army of African descent.

Now that is fighting for freedom.

Peace and justice must go together, and where there is no justice, the only peace there can be is the temporary peace of suppression and enslavement. When it comes to oppressed peoples fighting against an unjust system, my heart is stirred with support for them.

Are there nonviolent ways to resist oppression? Yes. But a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience was not an option -- it wasn't something that US blacks in 1863 would have had any way of conceiving or organizing. Could victims of more modern genocide have responded with Ghandi-like civil disobedience? Maybe, sometimes. Always? I only know I don't have the heart to blame an oppressed person for fighting back with the only means they can think of: violent force.

So thank you. Thank you, fighters, warriors. Thank you for being unwilling to accept domination passing for peace. You died or risked death because you feared death less than you loved hope. Your example shows the rest of us that we, too, can commit our lives to a greater purpose, a purpose for which we may be willing to die.

Abstractions like “country” and “freedom” are the terms we hear from people far from the battlefields when they talk about what the fighting was for. Those in the midst of such battle have little thought of such abstractions. They are motivated in the moment by concrete and immediate loyalty to the mates fighting beside them, not to the large ideals they will later invoke, if they survive. Thank you, fighters, for embodying the value of concrete connection to the people around us right here and now.

We today are what we are because of fighters. There’s that joke that goes: "I'm in favor of sex. I come from a long line of people who had sex.” So, too, we must also acknowledge that we come from a long line of victors in battle. The victors generate more descendants than the vanquished – and even the vanquished are around to be vanquished because they succeeded as a people in previous fighting. Thus each of us has an ancestry made up of those able to fight and win. We all come from a long line of warriors – and we wouldn’t be here without their ability to fight, to kill, their willingness to die.

For most of human history, if there were any communities or tribes of pacificists, they were either under the protection of people who were willing to fight, or they were soon subsumed and conscripted or exterminated. Thank you, fighters. You entered situations more fearful than anything permanent civilians like me can imagine, yet you did not let your fear control you. Because you showed us what courage is, we are better able to bring courage to our peaceful pursuits.

The phrase “warrior mind” refers to a state of being concentrated yet relaxed, smoothly sizing up a situation and deploying strategies to overcome obstacles and challenges. Every time we confront difficulties rather than fleeing from them, we are drawing on the skills of our warrior ancestors – skills which today’s warriors continue to embody. Thank you, warriors. It falls now to us to build a way to transcend our heritage of violence, to utilize warrior mind for the creation and defense of institutions of peace.

Let us be fierce for justice. Essential for success in battle – and thus essential for the tribe's survival for millennia of human history – was the capacity for discipline and organization and courage. That capacity was also essential at Selma in 1965, and before that in Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns. Grateful for the warrior virtues, let us continue to seek ever more effective ways to bring those virtues to the nonviolent resistance to oppression.

Let us also remember this on Memorial Day. If Memorial Day can be described in two words, "thank you," it can also be described in another two words: "I’m sorry." Some of the deaths in war were not much about nobility and courage, let alone freedom. Sometimes politicians and generals made unfortunate choices when better alternatives were available. Some of that killing and dying served no purpose at all. Good people died, families were bereft, and I’m sorry.

Beyond the gratitude, beyond the regret, Memorial Day is simply remembering. Ultimately, the meaning of Memorial Day is described not in two words, but in one: Remember. The dead say: “We were young. We have died. Remember us.” For all who died in warfare or as a consequence of the war, tears.

* * *
This is part 2 of 2 of "War, Peace, and Remembering"
Part 1: "We Were Young. We Have Died. Remember Us"

"We Were Young. We Have Died. Remember Us."

The young dead soldiers do not speak.

Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
who has not heard them?

They have a silence that speaks for them at night
and when the clock counts.

They say: We were young. We have died.
Remember us.

They say: We have done what we could
but until it is finished it is not done.

They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished
no one can know what our lives gave.

They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
they will mean what you make them.

They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.

We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.

- Archibald MacLeish (SLT #583)

Some "bullet" points, in more than one sense of the word:

• 116,516 US servicemen died in World War I. The total death toll from that war was about 17 million.
• 405,399 US military personnel died in World War II. That war’s death toll reached 60 to 85 million.
• 33,686 US military died in the Korean Conflict, which claimed in all about 1.2 million lives.
• 58,209 US servicemen and women died in Vietnam, during the American portion of what is also known as the Second Indochina War. Estimates of the total death toll in that conflict range from 800,000 to 3.8 million.
• 4,404 US military died in the Iraq war from 2003 to 2011. Estimates of the total dead in that war range from 177,000 to 1.1 million.
• We lost just over a thousand in Afghanistan since 2001, in a conflict that, in all, claimed somewhere between 42,000 and 62,000 lives.

Our nation, this nation, lost over 600,000 fighting men and women in the six wars mentioned. They were young. They have died. We remember.

They were apples of their parents’ eyes. Someone's brother, someone's cousin, someone's nephew, and maybe someone's uncle. Someone's boyfriend. Later, some of them were someone's sister, niece, aunt, girlfriend. Increasingly, as the wars get more recent, they were someone’s spouse. They were nexus points in communities and families left torn and bereft by their loss.

And for every one of them killed, those wars also killed 100 others – allies, enemy combatants, civilians killed by war-induced epidemics, famines, atrocities, genocides. Et cetera. Let us remember them, too.

I know that our backgrounds in connection to the US military are highly varied, and our attitudes about Memorial Day are diverse. I have observed that our military dead were people who enlisted for various reasons, and they died in the service. "It’s not clear why," I've said. For some of you, perhaps, it’s very clear why. They did it to protect our freedom, to defend our way of life. For others of us, perhaps, it is equally clear that there was a very different reason. They died for corporate profits, or because a political party was looking to get into a war to solidify popular support.

Both stories are told about all six of our wars in the last century. The "defending freedom" story is always more popular. The "commercial interests" story, though, is never hard to find for those willing to look. Let's go back to the first of the six US wars in the last 100 years and consider World War I, for example. It’s a war that has a particular connection to the early years of our Community Unitarian Church at White Plains.

World War I

"The Great War" began in 1914 July when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Germany -- and later Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire -- joined on Austria-Hungary's side. Fighting against them were England, France, and Russia. The US entered the war in 1917 April, and was thus at war for only the last year and a half of World War I.

In the years preceding US entry into the war, American banks extended to France and Britain a series of loans totaling $3 billion. Had Germany won, those bonds held by American bankers would have been worthless. J. P. Morgan, England's financial agent in the US, John D. Rockefeller (who made more than $200 million on the war), and other bankers were instrumental in pushing America into the war, so they could protect their loans to Europe. This was captured in a scene from the 1981 movie, Reds, in which John Reed, played by Warren Beatty, is talking to Louise Bryant, played by Diane Keaton:

“All right, Miss Bryant, do you want an interview? Write this down. Are you naïve enough to think containing German militarism has anything to do with this war? Don't you understand that England and France own the world economy and Germany just wants a piece of it? Keep writing, Miss Bryant. Miss Bryant, can't you grasp that J. P. Morgan has lent England and France a billion dollars? And if Germany wins, he won't get it back! More coffee? America'd be entering the war to protect J. P. Morgan's money. If he loses, we'll have a depression. So the real question is, why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won't lose money?”

Why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won't lose money? It was a good question then. It's a good question now.

The Unitarian minister, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, opposed World War I and urged his congregation in Manhattan to

“strike . . . at the things which make war— first, militarism; second, political autocracy; and third, commercialism." (“War and the Social Movement,” Survey, 1914 Sep 26, 629– 30)

In his 1917 sermon, “A Statement to My People on the Eve of War,” Rev. Holmes declared that the armed men fighting,

“are grown from the dragon's teeth of secret diplomacy, imperialistic ambition, dynastic pride, greedy commercialism, economic exploitation at home and abroad. . . . This war is the direct result of unwarrantable, cruel, but nonetheless inevitable interferences with our commercial relations with one group of the belligerents. Our participation in the war, therefore, like the war itself, is political and economic, not ethical, in its character.”

Rev. Holmes story is particularly pertinent to the Unitarian Universalist congregation at White Plains, NY. On numerous occasions Holmes traveled up from Manhattan to White Plains as a guest preacher here.

Holmes’ opposition to World War I make him a pariah to Unitarian denominational leadership, which was seeking to have him expelled from Unitarian ministry in 1918 when he saved them the trouble by resigning his denominational credentials. Holmes then urged his church to follow him in parting ways with the Unitarians, which it did in 1919, changing its name to the name it has today: Community Church of New York. For Holmes, denominationalism was divisive, while a community, based on common life, united. Holmes' described the community church as based on these principles:

• It substitutes for loyalty to the single denomination, loyalty to the social group.
• It substitutes for a private group of persons held together by common theological beliefs or viewpoints, the public group of citizens held together by common social interests.
• It substitutes for restrictions of creed, ritual, or ecclesiastical organization, the free spirit.
• It substitutes for the individual the social group, as an object of salvation.
• It substitutes for Christianity...the idea of universal religion.
• It substitutes for the theistic, the humanistic point of view,...the idea of present society as fulfilling the "Kingdom of God" -- the commonwealth of man.
• The core of its [the Community Church's] faith, as the purpose of its life, is "the Beloved Community."

Rev. John Haynes Holmes' community church concept was an inspiration to the members of what was then called "All Souls Church" in White Plains. In 1920, one year after Holmes’ church changed names to "Community Church of New York," the White Plains congregation, which had been founded in 1909, adopted the name, “White Plains Community Church.” “Community” has been in our name ever since.

Rev. Holmes many years later rejoined the Unitarian ministry. Community Church of New York returned to being Unitarian, and White Plains Community Church became Unitarian. But we carry the legacy: the word “Community” in our name, which signified an effort to transcend denomination – an effort spurred on by an anti-war minister’s finding no home in a pro-war denomination.

Two Generations Later

I grew up in a different Unitarian congregation, and a different war was going on. My grandfathers were boys, too young to fight in WWI, and I was too young to fight in Viet Nam. By 1968, when my family moved to the Altanta area and began attending the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, being anti-war did not put one at odds with most other Unitarians. Indeed, most UUs opposed the Viet Nam war, and many of our congregations were hotbeds of anti-war activism. Many of my earliest memories as a Unitarian had to do with learning in church about why we should get out that war, and going from church with other Unitarians to demonstrate against the war.

If Memorial Day is for expressing gratitude to the soldiers who fought and died in wars because they gave their all for our freedom, some of us are really on board with that. Others of us have a hard time seeing US war-fighting as having any connection with any freedom other than the freedom of US companies to make exorbitant profits.

In the midst of whatever cynical exploitations may be at work, however, I do believe there is such a thing as a warrior spirit courageously defending of his or her people from the oppression of conquest.

* * *
This is part 1 of 2 of "War, Peace, and Remembering"
Part 2: Thank You, Warriors

This Week's Prayer

Words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

“Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds. Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves. Let us be aware of the source of being, common to us all and to all living things. Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion, let us fill our hearts with our own compassion -- towards ourselves and towards all living beings. Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be the cause of suffering to each other. With humility, with awareness of the existence of life, and of the sufferings that are going on around us, let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.” (SLT #505)

Dear Great Compassion,

Be with us, that we may be with the heartbreak of the world.

A broken pipeline spilled 21,000 gallons of crude oil off the coast of Santa Barabara, California, with deadly effect on the wildlife there. Be with us as we seek sane energy policy that neither stifles industry nor condemns whole ecosystems.

The people of Palmyra, Syria, fell under Islamic State control extending a reign of coercion, confusion, and violence, and threatening destruction of cultural artifacts. Peace talks between rival Yemeni parties will begin in Geneva on Thu May 28, in a bid to end seven weeks of war in Yemen. Be with us as we seek peace with justice and respect.

The United Nations has established a fund of $100 million to combat epidemics such as Ebola. Be with us as we encourage further such wise preparation.

Political campaigning, now virtually continuous, is beginning to intensify. Be with us that we may remember that more than one path may lead forward and that love of country and love of community take many forms.

More than 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the U.S., nearly a quarter of them, an estimated almost 500,000, have serious mental illnesses. Even when treatment is available, it is rarely informed by the best psychological methods. Be with us Great Compassion as we seek to do better.

The Washington, DC nonprofit, Street Sense, runs a filmmaking cooperative in which the city’s homeless write, produce, and direct their own films documenting aspects of lives usually ignored. Be with us, that we may learn to see what we so often overlook.

Let our hearts be filled with compassion towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Bearing the Unbearable Ambiguity of Sexuality

The field of queer theory, then, examining the vastly different ways that sexuality manifests and is understood in different cultures and times, raises for us the possibility that our cultural changes in the last 130 years might not be a matter of finally seeing the truth that has been there all along. Rather, they might be a matter of the contingent, accidental evolution of concepts – evolving in ways outside of anyone’s explicit control or intention, yet not dictated by something called "objective reality" either.

The evolution metaphor here is helpful. In species evolution, the objective environment establishes conditions in which many species will fail – will never appear or will quickly die out – yet the objective environment does not guide and direct evolution toward one true species. Rather, the objective environment is one in which increasingly diverse species emerge and find ways to be successful. By analogy, we might say that the reality of our biology establishes conditions in which many concepts of sexuality would never appear or would quickly die out – yet biological reality does not guide or direct our understanding toward the one truth. Rather, the array of possible ways of thinking about sexuality, while constrained by facts of biology, remains as infinite as the array of possible species.

OK. Where are we? This is all very heady – and unless you’ve spent a few of the last 30 years hanging out in university Humanities departments, it might be strange and disorienting. What have we got? Let’s review.

First level: forget about labels, categories. Just love people.

Second level: it’s not so simple. People want to be recognized and respected for who they are. We have an identity as a man or a woman – or as intersex or transgender. We have an identity as a person of color, or not. And we have an identity as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or straight. My identity in these areas is not relevant to my rights, not relevant to whether or not I may be oppressed or discriminated against, not relevant to my claim to equal concern and respect. My identity is relevant to my sense of who I am, and I want my society to recognize and honor and respect who I am. A "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy requires me to hide who I am. (Actually, it doesn’t require straight white men like me to hide who we are because under white heteronormativity my particular identity happens to be the one that is assumed rather than hidden – which is why recognizing and respecting alternative identities matters.)

Then comes a third level: the notion of identity itself is challenged. Not only are the categories fuzzy and unreliable, with people falling along continua rather than into one neat box or another, but the continua themselves are contingent social constructs subject to deconstruction and reconstruction into something different.
Sexuality is plastic, and the ways we make meaning of it are even more plastic.

Which brings us to:

Making Peace With Ambiguity

It’s confusing, it’s changing, we can’t really get a handle on the right way to think about it – because any way to think about it is one more temporary product of culture and language and power. Queer theory helps us let go of our assumptions and not replace them with new ones. Queer theory itself is not so much a "theory," as an understanding that no theory can be the one right theory. Queer theory helps us resist the temptation to resolve ambiguity, for in that space of ambiguity, we come back to where we started: simply standing on the side of love.

Tell me what’s important to you. It might be your sexual identity, your gender identity, your racial identity, or it might not be. Tell, or don’t tell. It's up to you. And I might ask, or not ask. If I do ask, you can answer, or not answer, or say it’s not important to you, or tell me that you really don’t know what category you’re in. This is what standing on the side of love looks like: the courage to stand in ambiguity and shine a warm embracing light.

There may once have been good reasons for wanting to resolve the ambiguities of sex and sexuality. It may have even felt unbearable "not to know" -- and know instantly -- who was and who was not "automatically" in the category of potential mates for reproduction. With a little practice, though, we can be comfortable not knowing.

Our journey through queer theory has led us back to “arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.” What we know about this place now is just how indefinite and undefined everything is.

Our stand on the side of love is grounded neither in a rejection of, nor an insistence on, any notion of identity. Our stand on the side of love is grounded in courage: the courage to take each ambiguous moment as it is; the courage to love each ambiguous person, however he or she or ze presents.

* * *
This is part 3 of 3 of "Queer Theory"
Part 1: All You Need Is Love?
Part 2: Sexuality Is Not Natural

Sexuality Is Not Natural

Color-blindness, or gender-blindness, or sexual-orientation-blindness, tries, with varying degrees of earnestness, to pretend that we are all the same. This pretense has the effect of projecting the majority’s norms. That’s how color-, gender-, or sexual-orientation "blindness" plays out.

Pretending that there’s no difference between black and white is basically tantamount to pretending that we are all white. Color-blindness allows the norms and assumptions of white culture to hold unchallenged sway.

In the same way, sexual-orientation-blindness amounts to projecting heteronormativity. Now we start getting into areas that are going to be for many of us a bit more challenging. You see, while many in the LGBT community have worked hard for recognition of same-sex marriage, not all LGBT folk have unalloyed enthusiasm for the spread of acceptance of same-sex marriage. Marriage itself is heteronormative, they point out. Marriage takes the heterosexual model as the norm: one partner, living together and running a household together, for life – or at least starting out with the intention that it be for life. But maybe that model should be challenged rather than pursued. Some queer theorists criticize the traditional family as a deeply problematic institution that ought to challenged and called into question.

Concept Number Three: Identity -- and Everything -- Are Shifting Cultural Constructs

Some queer theorists also challenge the very idea of identity. Concept one was, "let’s ignore it." Concept two was, "let’s recognize identity as a way to respect who a person is." Now we get to concept three: identity is a problematic notion.

Starting with gender, let us acknowledge that the clear black-and-white categories “male” and “female” aren’t really so clear. Some people are born intersex, where the biological sex cannot be clearly classified as either male or female. The practice of forcibly resolving the ambiguity, forcing the child into one box or the other, sometimes using surgery to help resolve the ambiguity on one side or the other, has been harmful and traumatic. Let us learn to accept ambiguity. In fact, suggest some queer theorists, more gender ambiguity might be good for us all. We might all dress and style ourselves in ways designed to make it harder instead of easier for others to categorize our gender at a glance. (See JJ Levine's "Switch" photographs)

Cultural studies professor Nikki Sullivan writes in A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (2003):

“Sexuality is not natural, but rather, is discursively constructed. Moreover, sexuality, as we shall see, is constructed, experienced, and understood in culturally and historically specific ways. Thus, we could say that there can be no true or correct account of heterosexuality, of homosexuality, of bisexuality....Contemporary views of particular relationships and practices are not necessarily any more enlightened or any less symptomatic of the times than those held by previous generations.” (1)

Queer theorist David Halperin describes three very different cultures in which sexual contact between older men and boys has been acceptable: the ancient Greeks, some Native American tribes, and New Guinea tribesmen. He asks: Is this the same sexuality? Such contact has some superficial similarities, including acceptability, in all three cultures, yet the social contexts and meanings of that contact was so varied, the cultural understanding of what was going on so diverse, that we can’t call it the same sexuality.

The brilliant French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault, pioneered new ways to think about and understand ourselves. Foucault is a founding figure for a number of kinds of study, including queer theory. His three volume History of Sexuality revealed how sexuality has been culturally constructed in Western civilization. In Britain, and much of Europe, prior to the 1880s, Foucault points out, “sodomy” meant any form of sexuality that did not have procreation as its aim. Using birth control counted as sodomy – and penalties against sodomy were severe.

Analysis of the time reveals that the laws were directed against acts, not against a particular type of person. There was no understanding of sexual orientation as an identity – any more than we have an understanding of adulterer as an identity -- or, say, “person who parks in a no parking zone.” It wasn’t until the later 1800s that “particular acts came to be seen as an expression of an individual’s psyche, or as evidence of inclinations of a certain type of subject” (Sullivan 3).

Certain forms of sexuality moved from being seen as horrible acts to which anyone might succumb, to being seen as the expression of a particular type of person. As Sigmund Freud expressed and magnified the new way of thinking, sex was at the root of everything about us. Thus, “the homosexual” became a personage – a life form, a certain type of degenerate whose entire character, everything about him, was corrupted by his sexuality.

That hardly seems to us like progress. Yet, as traumatic and disastrous as that cultural phase was for many, it paved the way for our later attitudes. Once we saw sexual orientation as an identity – subject to treatment rather than criminal or moral judgment -- the ground was laid for the next step. Only then could culture move to seeing that identity as not harming anyone else. From there to: not harming themselves either. And then: to being tolerated, to being accepted, to being welcomed, to being celebrated as a worthy and beautiful part of the diverse spectrum of human expression.

That’s a huge change – a series of huge changes – all within the last 130 years or so.

* * *
This is part 2 of 3 of "Queer Theory"
Part 1: All You Need Is Love?
Part 3: Bearing the Unbearable Ambiguity of Sexuality

All You Need Is Love?

In 2008 July, Jim David Adkisson walked into the Unitarian Universalist church of Knoxville, Tennessee during the Sunday morning service and opened fire, killing two and wounding seven others. According to his manifesto found in his pickup truck, as well as subsequent statements to the police, Adkisson was motivated by hatred of liberals, African Americans, and gays. The Unitarian Universalist “Standing on the Side of Love” campaign was launched in response, to answer hate with love. Since then, we have been the “standing on the side of love” people.

The campaign has particularly focused on issues where the national discourse is distorted by hatred – such as immigration, racism (in law enforcement and elsewhere), and LGBT rights. In honor of International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, which is every year on May 17 – and in honor of those prophetic women and men who have in their way, through the development of queer theory, confronted structures of oppression with transforming power of love – I want to reflect with you about our understanding of sexual preference, sexual identity, as well as race and gender.

Standing on the side of love. So simple. So basic. The heart leads us, and the heart yearns for connection in love. That's clear, that's basic. Who needs theory? Didn’t the Beatles have it right: "All You Need is Love"?

The thing is, the head is all the time cooking up one idea or another, and the ideas sometimes get in the way. Sometimes we need good theory just to clear the obstructions of bad theory so we can get back to the basic: standing on the side of love.

I propose today to lead you on a journey – a quick tour through a landscape of ideas and concepts. What we will find is that we are led back to where we started – back to a trust in the heart, back to love. It is an Eliot-esque journey, for T.S. Eliot said:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

When we come back again to no side but the side of love, perhaps, we’ll find that our journey has helped us understand our original stance a little better. Perhaps we will, in some sense, know the place for the first time.

Concept Number One: Ignore It – Or Try To.

According to this concept, the thing to do with sexuality that may be different from your own is ignore it. What consenting people do in private is irrelevant – it has nothing to do with our shared life. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with character, reliability, competence, trustworthiness – nothing to do with whether a person has inherent worth and dignity. So let’s ignore it. Let’s dispense with labels like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and treat all people as just people. In race relations, this attitude was called being – or trying to be – color-blind.

Concept Number Two: Honoring Identity

The problem with concept number one is that people want to be seen and honored, acknowledged and respected for all of who they are.

During the four years in the early 90s that I was a professor of philosophy at Fisk University – a school with a predominantly African American student body – I saw every day how important African American identity was to my students.

Once I was a visiting faculty at Ripon College in Wisconsin. I remember being at a reception and chatting with one woman who professed colorblindness. She didn’t understand why there would be a school where all the students were African American. What difference does race make? Let us judge people, just as Martin Luther King himself said, by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. But after a few years at Fisk, that perspective had become so distant for me that I couldn’t even think of how to explain why I didn’t share it. In that moment, adrift on a sea of white, from the faces in the room, to the thick cover of Wisconsin snow outside, I was stymied.

It wasn’t until later that I thought: hey, wait a minute. What about our gender identity? If someone were to say to that woman, "I can’t tell whether you’re a man or a woman," I don’t think she would have been re-assured. More likely, she’d have been insulted.

When my name, Meredith, preceeds me, people sometimes assume I’m a woman. That’s OK – not a problem for me. If, however, they were to continue to regard me as a woman after we had met face to face, I imagine I’d find that disconcerting. Further, if I were to enter some situation where a number of people were doing that, I’d be a bit spooked, wondering what sort of Twilight Zone I had fallen into. Many of you, too, would find it disorienting if the people around you couldn’t -- or earnestly pretended they couldn’t – tell whether you were male or female. It’s not that we think there’s anything wrong with being the opposite sex – it’s just that we like to be recognized for who we are.

Similarly, for many people of color, racial identity may be important. It’s a part of who they are, and they don’t want that socially erased. We want to be proud of who we are, not told that a key part of our experience is meaningless.

Similarly, many LGBT folk want to be recognized and accepted for all of who they are. We are all entitled to equal concern and respect. But we don’t have to pretend that we’re all the same. We shouldn't have to hide our identity.

* * *
This is part 1 of 3 of "Queer Theory"
Part 2: Sexuality Is Not Natural
Part 3: Bearing the Unbearable Ambiguity of Sexuality

This Week's Prayer

Words of Howard Thurman:

"In the quietness of this place, surrounded by the all-pervading presence of the Holy, my heart whispers: Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in good times or in tempests, I may not forget that to which my life is committed. Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve." (SLT #498)

Dear All-Pervading Presence,

Let our high resolve be perfect love, that we may live what we see.

When we see sunrise, bright promise, the beauty of the day and the laughter of friends, may we fully connect and live what we see.

When we see the suffering of the world, the hungry, homeless, refugees, oppression, may we also fully connect with that, live what we see, bring it into our hearts and live it through compassionate response.

When we see courage, may we live what we see. In Syria, an underground newspaper, Enab Baladi, has become the most prominent independent publication in the midst of that void of order and information. It is staffed largely by women. Three of its editors have been killed, eight reporters detained and tortured, yet this this so-called “gang of girls” continues to provide the only in-depth coverage of how the war affects civilians, families, and day-to-day life for millions of Syrians.

We remember, too, the courage of the six marines and two Nepalese soldiers lost when their helicopter, on a relief flight helping victims of Nepal’s earthquake went down in the mountains east of Kathmandu.

When we see creative beauty that lifts spirits, may we live what we see -- and hear. The brilliant blues guitarist B.B. King, who died this week, lived in his music what he saw of life’s sadness and wrought a music of transcendent power that helped millions rise up from loneliness, despair, disrespect, and alienation.

When we see committed service in places of greatest need, may we, too, live what we see. The Ebola outbreak is coming under control, thanks to more than 10,000 health workers and volunteers from around the world that gradually taught people to avoid unnecessary physical contact, go to a clinic the moment they displayed symptoms, and to forgo the traditional ritual of washing corpses.

Let our high resolve be perfect love, that we may live what we see.

And keep fresh before us the moments of our high resolve.