Gnetwork
Vol 1 Issue 6, March, 1998 Excerpts
Box 44, Silver City, NM 88061 rustypig@zianet.com
Send today for a complimentary copy
Unitarian Universalists’ Outreach You and The U.U.A.
The UU Fellowship of Silver City seeks to support its members on
their shared life journeys through stimulating, inspiring worship services and caring,
nurturing programs.We also strive to serve the larger community within which we
live,committing ourselves to socially responsible outreach while building connections with
the community that will encourage diversity and growth within the fellowship.
These are the words read at the onset of the Unitarians’
meetings. The Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered residents of the Grant County area
are a definite part of the diversity which is encouraged by this unique group. It has been
an organized presence in this area for the last four years.
Sally Nelson is a warm friendly open minded woman who is the
Adult Education Coordinator. She has a gay family member and has been a supporter of
Gnetwork since its inception. She invited our community in late February, to attend the
service at which they examined ways to become non-judgmental, and less prejudiced
regarding sexuality issues. Nine of “us” who attended were treated with
enthusiasm and acceptance that was truly remarkable.
Scott Alexander of The Church of the Larger Fellowship was heard
via video tape, describing the merits of truly celebrating, rather than just tolerating,
the presence of homosexual persons in their midst. One of the useful concepts Rev.
Alexander introduced is called “heart lag”. His example was that of a person who
believes in the feminist movement, and tries to promote the causes of women, yet the first
time s/he is seen by a female physician, still wonders if the woman is qualified. Several
members of the congregation who are parents of gay and lesbian children confirmed their
willingness to accept their childrens’ sexuality intellectually, but still were not
comfortable with it, worrying greatly about their childrens’ safety. Rev.Alexander,
who is gay, suggested people on both sides be patient regarding this heart lag.
Members of the LBGT community were invited to speak.
What follows is a portion of their comments.
“I have been an “out” lesbian for all of my adult
life. I prefer the term “affectional preference” to “sexual preference or
orientation” because I think it is more accurate. Heterosexual people do not marry
someone because they are going to be having sex all the time. It isn’t about the sex
ultimately. They marry the person they want to live with, eat with, laugh with, go to the
movies with, spend their time with. It isn’t any different for me. When I talk to my
mother, I can actually speak of my “affectional preference” too, without making
the hair stand up on her neck! “
“I grew up in an evangelical fundamentalist religion. I well
understood by the time I was a teenager that homosexuality is both a sin and a crime. As a
young woman, at a Christian college, while getting a minor in Bible, I fell deeply in love
with another woman and she with me. No one, and I do mean no one could have been
more surprised than I was.
When such a thing happens, there is a conflict between one’s
belief system and internal life. It took me 18 agonizing years to work through that
conflict, namely, how to live the life which I knew was more honest and reflected my
reality.
When a person “comes out” the institutions which are
supposed to be their support system, the family and the church, are usually the first
supports to be withdrawn. For that reason, my gay and lesbian friends have become my
family, and in many ways, my church. This does not mean I want to be associated with them
exclusively, any more than I want to only be with musicians or doctors, just because I
happen to be one. “
Question: “How did you resolve the conflict between who you
are and what you believed to be wrong?”
Answer: “I had to come to two conclusions. The first was
that this life is not a choice. You do not have to worry about me recruiting your children
to be gay. It is impossible for me to do, anymore than I could recruit them to be of
another race, or to recruit someone to be born with a deformity. We are just born who we
are.
“The second conclusion I had to reach, was that I cannot
continue to interpret the Bible literally, with every sentence applicable to my
life.”
Comment: “Perhaps you did choose this life in a prior
lifetime, for the purpose of becoming stronger this time around.”
Short Story About A Long Night
By Honeylambe
I should warn you, this is a coming of age tale, of sorts. Stick
with it if you can.
As a school-girl, I was deeply enamored with my friends. They
offered me an escape from the impersonality of an orphanage-sized family. Their gentle
kindness was an astonishingly refreshing break from my all-male siblings, who regularly
injured me physically and emotionally. My loneliness and isolation in a full house was
nearly suicide inducing.
I learned the basics of reproduction by accident while flipping
through The American Heritage Dictionary of English. I have no idea why a 10-year-old
would spend a summer afternoon absorbing such a text. “Spermatazoa” swam right
off page 851 into my consciousness. It is easy enough to piece the story together by
tracking down the definitions of each unknown word in the last definition. Go figure.
American Heritage didn’t elaborate as to why, the next
summer, so many neighborhood boys spent inordinate amounts of energy trying to persuade or
force me to let them stick their uninteresting spermatozoa ejectors into various parts of
my body. My friend Peggy got curious or raped, and had a child at age 12. Bummer that she
hadn’t read the dictionary, too.
You know what bittersweet nostalgia is, if you can look back upon
“slumber parties” full of laughter, couch arm cabaret dancing, pizza 'til you
puke, and fake talking in your sleep. Bob Dylan’s verse,
While riding on a train going west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself, and the first few friends I had
... I wish, I wish or I wish, I wish in vain,
I could sit simply in that room once again
makes me think he may have been to such parties. I wonder if he
wore an oversized T-shirt and bikini underwear, too.
Enough background. My wonderful friend and confidante, Laney
helped me over nearly every adolescent hurdle, almost the only water in the desert of my
youth.
One night, she stayed over, upset about a family fight. We laid
on the bed, staring at the ceiling commiserating on the gross lack of understanding
exhibited by parents. She turned to me suddenly, buried her head in the hollow of my
shoulder, sobbing. Being good little Protestant girls, we were quite averse to touching,
but I did manage to put an arm halfway around her and pat her head for a moment.The trust
in that moment made all sensation in my stomach fall away. I felt the trunk of my body
turn into a vacuum the equivalent of Einstein’s curved infinite space.
She turned away and said good night. Speechless, I pulled up the
covers, faced her back and tried to sleep. But the vacuum kept sucking. It pulled in all
my past and future, and reality and belief system. It was overwhelming. I had to look. All
the vague longing pressing on me for years and all the disappointment about what life was
adding up to be, began to assemble before my eyes, in the center of the vacuum. “Hey,
dummy!” it shouted, “Intimacy is a consolation for everything else that really
sucks!”
What is a dictionary reading, gangly, nerdy, half-grown girl
supposed to do with that piece of information? After long thought, I whispered as softly
as I could, to the back of her hopefully slumbering skull, “Laney, turn over.”
Un-believably, she did, sliding her hands behind my shoulders, clutching me with an
urgency difficult to process. The vacuum pulled her in, speeding my heart and breathing,
making me shudder with a tremor equal to waking naked in a snow bank. And it wouldn’t
stop.
Amazingly she gave me the sweetest kiss in the history of
kissdom, (henceforth known as kistory). We were clueless as to how to properly perform
this interaction, but spent the next hour figuring it out. Her breath was rain scented,
and on exhaling a deep sigh, a veritable monsoon. The vacuum filled and filled, the
incessant ache for life’s missing part dissolving.
Suddenly, I wanted to know everything about my long time friend.
How did her skin taste? Where was it sensitive? How would her weight feel on me?
We began a sensuous massage of each others arms, and legs, backs
and faces, nibbling. I wildly inhaled her. I interlaced our fingers, rolled to my back,
with my arms spread. Her palms pressed my palms, forehead on my forehead, feet on my feet.
Navel to navel, as with all peak experiences, time disappeared
from my reality. I felt myself become transparent, my soul exposed, which melted into her,
through the paradoxical crush of her velvet skin and soft clothes. She was in contact with
nothing on earth but me! The cosmic significance, the palpable romance, of that sensation
cannot be translated into any words I’ve yet found in the American Heritage
Dictionary of English .
We fell asleep like that, about 5 a.m., too innocent and ignorant
to explore any further possibilities. When the sound of Saturday cartoons woke us, we got
up, threw on our jeans, splashed or faces with water and went to the routine assault of a
breakfast with all my rowdy, caustic brothers.
Although I had a universe-sized desire to breathe next to her for
a lifetime, tangled night after night, skin to skin, we never spoke of that night. We went
on to fall in love with and marry handsome, upstanding, intelligent young men, who beat
us, cheated on us, and never cared to know us as soon as we said “I do.” She is
still there, living her all-American dream, turned nightmare, with her three kids and her
man.
As for me,
I said I do and I signed I don’t,
and I swore I’d never do it again
(K T Oslin).
It took me from age 14 to 35 (=21 years, a lifetime) to be
comprehend what that night meant, and to be willing to suffer the societal consequences of
publicly honoring my internal world. If someone taught you, or is still teaching you about
intimacy, let this be a reminder to thank them with all your hear.