The Fierce Urgency of Now

Interweave Continental 2012 Sermon Award

by Rev. Erin Splaine

The plan this morning was to preach a sermon

entitled - Fragile and Rooted. Well that was the

plan anyway. I have moved that sermon to the 29th.

Today’s sermon might well be titled Best Laid Plans

of Mice and Ministers as this morning is a perfect

example of what happens when something happens

during the week that catches my attention. The

sermon I had planned and was preparing to write

at the start of the week was not the sermon I felt I

needed to write by the end of the week.

The same thing happened twice last year. It has

happened in other years as well and will happen

again in years to come usually with only a little

consternation. Yet, today’s sermon comes to you

after a few sleepless nights and fretful days because

the larger issue that has my attention and deep

concern has direct personal meaning for me.

What does one do when the issue at hand is

about you? Ultimately, I concluded that regardless

it is my job to bring issues into this moment in a way

that allows for access points along the way so that

we might navigate them together. Every sermon is

meant to be a starting point for conversation and

consideration. Today is no different. For those of who

might want to continue the conversation sooner rather

then later — please join me in the Children’s Chapel

at 11:30.

So what happened? Late Wednesday news broke

that the Obama Administration would not sign an

Executive Order barring discrimination by federal

contractors against employees who happen to be

lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgender. In doing so

the Administration cited that they would instead be

focusing on a similar legislative process involving

the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that

resulted in the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

The upset about this news, as expected, came

from every corner of the LGBT community but from

nowhere else. And why would it, on it’s face it is a

strategy that makes sense — not to mention that it

is an election year and the democrats need to be

careful. Yet for several reasons when we take a look

at the deeper meaning and repercussions the picture

is far from clear.

First, one can argue that morally the end of Don’t

Ask Don’t Tell came years ago and the Administration

risked very little political capital to make it a reality

— they came in at the end of the wave. Second, as

the ACLU stated the Executive Order was the best

chance of protecting federal employees, as there is no

end insight for ENDA — which has been introduced

in every Congress since 1994 and yet passed the

House only once in 2007 — only to die very quickly in

the Senate.

Finally and most importantly to this morning’s

sermon — national support for ending workplace

discrimination against LGBT Americans has the

support of 74% of the country. For generations the

LGBT community has been told that change comes

slowly — incrementally and we have also been told

for decades that risks can’t be taken during election

years — there are just too many more important

issues at stake.

A Presidential signature seven months away

from an election on an issue that ¾ of the American

electorate supports feels like safe incremental change

and yet it didn’t happen. The Administration made

what turned out to be a smart political calculation —

that the only part of the electorate that would be upset

by this non-event would be the LGBT community.

My message this morning is not about any one

politician or political party but to the larger community

to begin the conversation about our national priorities

as a people. To raise the moral argument that it is

time — past time — that full and equal protection for

Transgender, Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Americans

become one of our top priorities and no longer the

issue that waits.

listen to the sermon

 

These last few days I turned to Dr. Martin

Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” for

inspiration. Let me be very clear about this point

— in using Dr. King’s letter for inspiration, context

and connection I am in no way equating the LGBT

struggle for civil rights with the civil rights moment of

the 1960’s.

Yet, I was drawn back to Dr. King’s letter for many

reasons primarily because he was writing to an

audience that surprisingly was not yet fully supportive

of his actions and his resolve — white colleagues

who were considered moderate theologically and

socially and yet who had gone about criticizing his

actions, cautioning him that it wasn’t the right time

to push back against social norms and the laws of

segregation, telling him that people weren’t really

quite ready to change — that change doesn’t happen

overnight.

To the admonition to slow things down — to wait

for people’s comfort levels to change before full and

equal citizenship could be expected Dr. King wrote,

“This ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never’. It

has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the

emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an

ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see

with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that ‘justice

too long delayed is justice denied’.” What is true in

terms of his urgency then is true for the urgency of our

need now.

When we look at a more complete picture one

begins to understand that slow and incremental are

in-fact red herrings. When considering whether or

not it is time that LGBT Americans be granted full and

equal citizenship the question I would ask in return

to those who would still advise me to wait is just how

long is enough time?

In October of 2010 over half a million people took

part in a grassroots march for equality in D.C. So I

ask is 2 years enough?

In May of 2004 equal marriage was ruled to be

constitutional in the Commonwealth. So I ask is 8

years enough?

In 1994 ENDA was first introduced in the Congress.

So I ask is 18 years enough time?

In April of 1992 almost a million people took part

in the last organized march on Washington, D.C. for

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender civil rights.

So I ask is 20 years enough?

The first national march on Washington for Gay

Rights took place in 1979 almost a year after Harvey

Milk was assassinated — is 33 years enough?

The first rally for Gay and Lesbian civil rights took

place in Philadelphia on July 4, 1965 — 4 years

before the Stonewall Uprising — is 47 years long

enough?

The first Lesbian rights organization was founded in

San Francisco in 1955 — is 57 years enough?

The first Gay Rights organization was founded in

Chicago in 1924 — is 88 years enough?

Emma Goldman — a voice that could not be

ignored — began speaking out publically for

Homosexual Rights in 1910 — is more than a century

enough time?

The first trial and conviction — in this country — of

a woman accused of being a lesbian took place in

Plymouth, MA in 1649 — is 363 years enough?

Moreover, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Gay

people have been part of every community, of every

generation, of every civilization, of every culture since

the beginning of time. So I ask is forever enough time

to wait?

I respectfully submit that just because most of

America has not been paying attention does not

mean that we are a new voice in the struggle for our

own basic civil rights. Just because most of America

has not been listening does not mean we have only

silently lived our lives in the shadows.

Just because most of America has not cared

enough to realize the enormity of the toll our

community has borne — and still bears — does not

mean that we have lived in peace.

Bisexual, Gay, Transgender, Lesbian Americans

and our allies have been marching and organizing

for years upon years. Transgender, Lesbian, Gay,

Bisexual Americans and our allies have been

pounding on the door of equal treatment under the

INTERWEAVE CONNECT JULY 2012

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law and equal opportunity for decades upon decades

— generation upon generation.

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Americans

have been killed and injured because of who we are

— we have suffered physical and emotional violence

for centuries upon centuries. It is past time that our

civil rights become one of our countries top priorities.

I don’t know why I am who I am — I just know that

I have been who I am for as long as I have had blue

eyes, for as long as I have been dyslexic, for as long

as I have had a greater aptitude for athletics rather

than mathematics. I know that the same is true for

some — not others on the continuum. In so many

ways beyond but most definitely including sexual

orientation and gender identity — life is an unfolding

— a journey — a process of becoming who we are.

That we live in a world that says that here and

now in 2012 it is okay for our government to create a

second-class of citizenship because of who we are is

a sin.

LGBT Americans are not asking for special

consideration and treatment anymore than we are

asking for special rights. We have been asking

for equal rights and now we are asking for equal

consideration and treatment. That we have to ask at

all is maddening.

Nonetheless, we are asking that our generations

long struggle for equal rights become a priority

— do so means changing how we engage in the

conversation — how we act — what we expect and

accept from our political representatives regardless of

our party affiliation.

In ‘The Letter From a Birmingham Jail’ Dr. King

answering those who would have the protests in

Birmingham put on hold in order to give the new

mayor who was seen to be more “gentle” than the

outgoing mayor a chance wrote “the new Birmingham

administration must be prodded as much as the

outgoing one, before it will act.” Regardless of his

friendliness Dr. King wrote like the mayor before him

the new mayor is “dedicated to maintenance of the

status quo.”

It is true that the current Administration is

considered to be more ‘gay friendly’ than any other.

Yet when expected to fulfill a campaign promise

to sign the Executive Order barring workplace

discrimination the Administration balked. There is

widespread doubt within the LGBT community that

without prodding and a growing chorus of support the

administration will spend only limited political capital

now or in the future to further the cause of equal

treatment under the law for all citizens.

Because that is what we are talking about equal

treatment under the law — the assurance that the

government will prosecute if someone is fired from a

job or denied housing because of their gender identity

or sexual orientation; that we have equal access to

adoption; that we not worry as we do in certain states

that we would be kicked out of a restaurant because

of who we are; that our birth certificates and passports

match our identity; that we become eligible for the

1000 plus different federal rights and protections that

are denied us because regardless of state laws our

federal government prohibits us from marrying those

whom we love.

There are some who have said that the fact that I

am an out lesbian minister living in a predominantly

straight community has had some small measure

of benefit not just for LGBT youth and adults but for

those who identify themselves as straight as well. I

have to admit that there have been times that I have

believed that might be true.

Yet of late I have begun to question if perhaps I

have unwittingly contributed to the lack of urgency

in the ally community to the issue of full equality

under the law for LGBT Americans. I have begun to

question whether or not by blending in I have perhaps

contributed to an understanding among those who do

not identify as Bisexual, Lesbian, Transgender or Gay

that our lives are fundamentally the same — because

the are not.

I don’t know what it is like to walk into CVS, or the

mall or Fenway Park and not worry if it is safe to hold

my girlfriends hand. I don’t know what is like to live in

a world where I don’t have to think before I speak for

fear of calling her hon or sweetheart because I know,

even here in Massachusetts, what can happen if the

wrong person hears me say just that.

I don’t know what it is like to have my government

acknowledge me as a full citizen. I don’t know what

it is like to turn on the television and not hear how I

am wrecking the institution of marriage, or that I am

by the very fact of my existence immoral — grotesque

— sick — that I am unfit to be a parent, or a teacher

or a minister — that it is not safe for me to be

around children — not because of the content of my

character, because I am a lesbian.

I do know what it is like to live in a world where the

very core of who I am is dismissed as a mere choice

— as if it were akin to picking out a new set of drapes.

How is it possible that there are those who still

believe that after thousands of years of oppression

— after thousands of years of violence against

us — after thousands of years of governments trying

to legislate us out of existence — of organizations

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INTERWEAVE CONNECT JULY 2012

creating doctrine to demonize us — of individuals who

would demean and threaten us — and still do — how

is it possible for anyone to think that the strength my

community has needed to endure all of that and more

hangs solely by the thin filament of a choice?

The enormity of our strength comes from being who

we are — the fact of us will never change no matter

how many people would wish it were so.

I do know the spiritual, psychic, emotional, and

physical energy it takes to get up every day and live

in a world that at best dismisses me. And I’m lucky

because I live in the relative — but by no means safe

confines of Metro-West Boston it is painful to think

what it takes for Transgender, Gay, Bisexual and

Lesbian Americans to go about living their daily lives

in places like Charlotte, NC — or — Louisville, KY —

or — Phoenix, AR.

I do know what it is like to come within a hairs

breadth of physical harm because of who I am — but

thankfully I am one of the lucky ones because I have

only endured the threat of physical violence. Justice

Department statistics show that crimes against LGBT

people are rising by steady and alarming rates every

year.

I do know all too well that this kind of violence is

nothing compared to the violence my government has

wrought on my community. Had the AIDS pandemic

started in a community that my government actually

cared about — had it not been known as “the gay

cancer” then perhaps my government would not have

ignored for years the request by the Center for Disease

Control for funding for much needed research

and education.

If action had been taken earlier who knows how

many lives could have been saved — how much suffering

could have been avoided. Yet starting in the

early 1980’s in the face of our government’s sinful

indifference the Bisexual, Lesbian, Transgender and

Gay community did what we had to do — we tended

to our sick and we buried our dead. We did so in very

large measure on our own.

There is a growing anguish fashioned by indifference

and institutionalized inequality in the Gay, Lesbian,

Bisexual and Transgender community the size

of which I have not sensed since the AIDS crisis. Yet

unlike then we cannot overcome on our own.

I know that many of you have done so much to make

civil rights for all Americans a reality. I know that

many of you have been speaking up and out for equal

rights for Gays, Lesbians, Bisexual and Transgender

people for years. I would never and could never

diminish or discount your work — your intentions —

your strong hearts — because I am grateful.

But as I said earlier this is a different moment — a

moment that if we are to live up to our First Principle

– that we would honor the inherent worth and dignity

of every individual then now is the time — we are the

ones we have been waiting for.

In the beginning of the letter Dr. King wrote, “we are

caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in

a single garment of destiny.” He is right.

We are interdependent, connected to each

other, related to each other simply by virtue of

our existence together. Our lives, our world, our

universe are ordered toward and depend on our

interdependence. No one — nothing can exist on

it’s own. If it is unacceptable to you regardless

of your sexual orientation or gender identity that

our government treats people unequally under

the law based on sexual orientation and gender

identity — than