Get Used to It: Ep. 18, "Religion"

ah [Applause] [Music] welcome to get used to it i'm malcolm boyd your host and uh i'm an author and an activist and an episcopal priest at saint augustine by the sea episcopal church in santa monica and with me today are three wonderful people rabbi denise eger from reformed judaism congregation of koala me the reverend freda brown from saleh community church and the reverend jose marco gonzalez from metropolitan community church of los angeles we're all gays and lesbians and we're all in the church we're all in religion and spirituality and to some people that's like oil and water there's woundedness there's pain misunderstanding where are we with all of that let's get into that for a minute uh frida uh where are you as a gay and a lesbian in terms of the church and religion we know malcolm i think today it's very clear to me that i'm okay in terms of my service to god in the church i served the united methodist church for 14 years 14 years 14 years in the closet as a pastor college minister and counselor and i enjoyed my service to god but always knew that there was something missing in my own personal life my own ability to be whole and it had to do with of course self-acceptance and of course after a while uh 1989 i came out of the closet and decided to go independent as a pastor what happened to you when you came out of the closet oh wonderful things and yet very personal striving things wonderful things meaning that i was not ostracized by those i came out of the closet to they had known me for years as a worker and had accepted me as an individual first and i think that made my journey a bit easier and in fact my church was very very good to me and very much welcomed me to stay and be who i was and i was very appreciative of that also the new community that i was in route to serve was a very wholesome community already in ministry to the gay and lesbian community so as an individual i have found a very good place to be into to rest and that is because the service of humanity the service of god has not been hindered or shortened by taking that decision and to go forth with god in a new arena jose you're from chile yeah what was your experience did you did you come out at a point and yeah i i it's very difficult to come out in chile from social situation and everything and for the family too but i was for six years in the catholic seminary and it was a big decision for me to come out to my superior and i said did you yeah i do and i said i i actually i went to a retreat for a month so to think about it but i i said you know enrique was my superior said enrique i think i love god i love the church i love i love the people we serve but i'm gay so is any problem with that i said yes it's a problem so i said okay bye and then was to come up with my family you know because all your family especially my father is very catholic so now they was like we're gonna have a son who is a priest so try to explain my mother about this and said you know what give me a reason my mother said i said i think i'm gay i said what is that what is that what is that i said okay i'm a homosexual and she looked at me i think that it was a precious moment of love and he said i knew it so but i i want to give you a time to you to you tell me that and my father wasn't very happy but uh i feel very so i feel that my mother's support and that was very important for me and i then i feel all the acceptance of my brothers and sisters have a big family what happened to you religiously then in other words the catholic was over i continued to meet with other people christian people from different denominations so we started a group called gay christian reflection something like that and then i knew about mcc so i was the founder of mcc in chile and i was new and some kind of clandestinity that's exciting yeah that's exciting so sometimes we meet in this place then we meet another place but that was very nice to put your witness and eventually come into these mormons together in this group and was a great experience for me well denise what has been your experience as a lesbian in in judaism well for me my spirituality my jewishness was always so much a part of my family life and growing up and my decision to become a rabbi was really based on the wonderful positive loving experience that i found in the jewish community and the support and as i struggled through my adolescence early and laid out lessons with my sexuality there was a part of me that said oh you can't be a religious person and also be a lesbian um and uh i struggled with it because i so wanted to serve my community to share the wonderful richness of jewish tradition and history and social action social justice issues that's so much a part of reform judaism and as i grew to accept myself and love myself more and my had my family support i was really able to take those steps towards the you know becoming a rabbi and and understanding that um as a lesbian i didn't have to deny myself my spirituality which is what they all want you to believe that we have to deny our spirit our religious feelings and i think that's been the avenue for me to continue my work in the gay and lesbian community here for so many years is that we can really tap into what is i think our gay lesbian spirit our religious heritages and our traditions and not deny that and our love of self is a reflection of our love of god um and so that's kind of propelled me in my work and coming to to know that it doesn't have to be oil and water maybe oil and vinegar in that sense and then you shake it up and you make a fabulous dressing i had an experience in my life as a priest and as a writer it seemed to me that it was essential to come out because if i'm counseling other people i don't want to be phony yes with them and as a writer also it's very difficult because that's very vulnerable and very sensitive and so i didn't know what would happen i was rather well known at that time and had written a number of books and when i came out some of the books were burned and there was there was a reaction i was unemployable in the church for a while and went through a real wilderness experience it was very painful and then um but i never doubted the love of god or or my own dignity as a human being and then saint augustine by the sea invited me took some courage yes uh i think after the first sermon uh 20 or 30 thousand dollars was cancelled in pledges some people left but the church was prepared to absorb to absorb that and basically there was one couple who prayed in their house for 36 hours and they were in great pain but then they their prayer led them to love me okay and accept so we've we made it and we've we've all had such different experiences um now your rabbi calling me so you're spreading the word you're helping people you're witnessing to what happened in your own life aren't you absolutely i mean i think the synagogue that we're building here in west hollywood is really a reflection of that sense of wholeness that that we've all kind of spoken about and alluded to that we can be proud of who we are we can love ourselves serve the community serve god and in our congregation we invite our straight and bisexual family and friends to be with us we don't live in just a gay and lesbian ghetto we live in a community of the world in a in a larger sense and so we want to create that opportunity for interaction and hope and and i think that's a very important very important concept what what is the salah community church frieda and your place in it okay i'm the founder of the sailor community churches and it's a church community church and its main interest is to of course build on behalf of god the lives of gay men and women we have two church segments one in los angeles and one in the long beach community the saylor community churches started as a result of my desire to come out and build something unique by way people could build a sense of family who did not have a sense of family uh malcolm i'm also a school teacher and a writer and part of the independent edge that i feel now in terms of ministry is producing me also some of the opportunities to write on subjects i had not had the opportunity to do before so one of the books i'm writing right now is entitled the lesbian woman and spirituality particularly from the african-american woman's perspective and uh i'm enjoying important it's very important because religion has always been a vital part of the african-american experience even throughout slavery the faith of the african-american people sustained them and of course being an african-american lesbian woman through some of the trials and tribulations i've had as an african-american woman it has always been my faith whether it be an attempt to come out or whether it was an attempt to make a school classroom look like a place of learning the faith my faith has always played a big role in my life and so certainly when i decided to come out of the traditional setting of religion that was the one faith element that i called upon and asked god to now show me that i could be blessed and serve you in an out position because that was a position that i had not taken before i had always helped and served the gay and lesbian community but like most gay and lesbian people who were professional as i was it was always a kind of get away from the regular job thing to the experience of the weekend or the experience of helping but in the closet but now i wanted god as i stepped out of my full-time position as a pastor and minister of a traditional church setting to step now into the larger arena where again lesbian men were now politically active were now socially and religiously involved that god would show me that this too would be a blessing for me and i have so been blessed by coming out of the closet and being the wounded healer is the concept of that we all know from the seminary setting and i think that nothing is more prevalent and more real than the wounded healer in terms of the gay and lesbian pastor one who knows the journey of the experience of being within and now having to come without challenges us to the height of our religious training in terms of union psychology and uh other traditions it's it's the it's also the shaman yes it's the it's the person who has been wounded yes who has in effect uh died and has a new life and is now healing [Music] jose how did you make the transformation from chile then where you had founded mcc uh to coming here and being uh associated at the metropolitan community church in los angeles it's very difficult to learn this culture and to focus on something but i knew by my special ministry is with this hispanic people here especially in la and has been a wonderful experience when you said about we are not a ghetto we are not only gay or lesbians and people i said this is a gay church and he said no this is true for all people and sometimes we have to work so hard to make that possible uh my in my ministry with the hispanic community i saw a lot of that um you know this we struggle with machismo in our own culture but i have a lot of um work with aids a visitation the hospital or some counseling and i i was i'm witness of a lot of reconciliation between son and daughter and all family and that was wonderful when the family come to the church when brothers and sisters come to the church and they are not gay they feel welcome because it has been rejected you know some people said can you come to hospital because this priests or these people don't want to visit him so can you please come and that is that for me it's difficult to understand how people don't realize who is his neighbor yes and how people feel very isolate and how we can do all this i think this sign of reconciliation and we can be a wonderful witness about that and you know i have sometimes struggled with women's how we give a place to um hispanic woman at the church because it has been so oppressed you know with a lot of uh right who has been related so how we give a place how myself as a gay man i can give a place an opportunity today can express his own spirituality because it's a wonderful richness for the church how else do you do the hispanic ministry within the church it's difficult because you know you have attention here are three different cultures it's a american culture it's hispanic culture it's afro-american so three group different we do church in different way we think the way we uh do our mission is very different and sometimes we have conflict especially with america we have a lot of conflict how we can accomplish you know this mission i and you know i try to set we have our own traditions or our own way to celebrate our faith or faith and express our faith so we cannot move in your way you know and you can understand that yeah and the it's it's interesting too um freda the role of the african-american church because it was always a it was a super role in other words the church had to be more than the usual caucasian church had to be it had to be a lot of things yes it had to be the political um gathering place it had to be the place for educational uh training it had to be the place for solid family building and so the church has always been the nucleus of the black family life experience yeah and it has also been the most difficult place for the african-american gay or lesbian man or woman to come out to to find a sense of acceptance and again lesbian member has always been a strong and adamant contributor if you will to the african-american church we have had humorous uh numerous rather uh musicians preachers and teachers and and for years it has been the most difficult place to come out uh because the the black church experience is also deeply rooted in an understanding of family and the more race of the african-american black family tradition is very heterosexual in terms of the role of the black woman the role of the black man but it's changing the african-american and the hispanic culture and the carcass are the white culture if that's the word okay uh they all have different approaches to uh homophobia homophobia and and and how to deal with it we're going to end this segment of get used to it now and we'll be back in in a moment with our guests and stick around join us at first we didn't know what to think he said he was gay we thought we had done something i was so angry so hurt we didn't know where to turn talking to other families at parents flag was a lifesaver now we're closer than ever she's the same daughter she always was we love him just as much as always parents flag helped us through it you are not alone talk to us we understand for the parents helpline nearest you call 1-800 for family we're back with uh get used to it and i hope you do get used to it i'm malcolm boyd your host and denise agar is with me and freda brown and jose marco gonzalez uh denise uh as there's a feminist theology and spirituality coming out of a feminist sensibility and experience as there's an afro-american and a hispanic or latino theology and spirituality coming out of those ethnic experiences sensibilities and feelings so i'm convinced there is a gay and lesbian theology and spirituality coming out of gay and lesbian sensibility and experience but i don't think there's enough of it i don't think we've done enough work yet serious hard work it's this isn't glamour right uh what are your feelings about that well i think you're absolutely right i think it's one of those areas in our gay and lesbian life that we haven't paid enough detail a detailed attention to but i do think as i guess i intuit or the more i work in our community feel that there is indeed emerging a sense of our own kind of way of being in the world way of thinking way of having our spiritual life unfold uh taking into account all of our various ethnic uh and religious traditions and how that informs it as well and i think that something we spoke about in the earlier segment may may shed some light and that is this notion of wholeness or completeness and i really think we have to take a first hard theological look at the coming out moment because it is that a self-acknowledgement it is that moving through the steps of coming out towards public acknowledgement it's an incredible spirituality it is a transformative spiritual moment and uh this is an area that we all must take a much harder look at i think in our in our religious work because that's really but religion what does religion do try to give us a way to see the world and to see how god works in the world and in our lives and how we relate to that and i think coming out as a god-blessed experience i mean it is for me i mean it's not something that god frowns upon and god god made us created us in the divine image and so i think we have to really look at that coming out moment as kind of the kernel if you will of our theological uh experience yes i feel the divine image is very central to this oh absolutely this is a source of our dignity our worth our esteem uh it's interesting the some of us have struggled in mainstream settings of church and some of us have struggled in non-mainstream new fresh experimental ways to do the same thing to worship to have an authentic experience and we i think we struggle to not lose all the roots to hold on to roots and at the same time to liberate ourselves from some things that uh can hold us back and and i i i wonder jose uh how you feel about your worship experience where you are bringing into it the the roots that come out of the judeo-christian culture particularly and the the new experiences and needs of gay men and lesbians who sometimes need something fresh a new perspective how do you feel about that where do you where are you finding this that has been an interesting experience because most of the congregation as a kind of background catholic so sometimes they want a lot of catholic same thing but i like that too but some i have to see the whole congregation so i think that it's a it's a moment of create new things uh catholic are used to everything is the priest through everything so why what we try to do is give participation to the community you know they we have to express our faith and or we have to pray together um sometimes when people pray put all this oppression we have inside of us out is some kind for me that's very important like liberation theology that is my perspective you know it's a theology of the oppressed so i feel and we are oppressed and we are a presence and i feel myself when i was in chile oppressed because this is a third wall for people from other worlds and but in that third world is other groups who are more oppressed and one of the groups is a gay lesbian group so it's some kind of we together have to work so hard to do way of liberation you know so i i try to put that in myself and and don't forget everybody who come to the church has coming with a lot of thing oppression oppression a lot of pressure inside so in which way we're doing this uh libre liberation process so i think one of the ways when i when we said okay we want women here and give there you know give her a participation and sometimes i invite a woman to preach and that has been a wonderful experience for me to hear other women this is it's great for me to have both of you here you know that teach me other things so so gay and lesbian theology then in a way is liberation theology isn't it it must be a liberation theology that's the point of what we are all doing is we are all oppressed in in some of us two and three times layers and layers of oppression as jose correctly articulates but we have to figure out ways to throw off that oppression and to kind of free the shackles of that enslavement and i think to build upon the traditions of the church yeah one of the things that liberates you have begun a church which is fascinating yes uh now liberation theology is very much the basis of your work absolutely and while i was in seminary as well one of the things that uh took root for me of interest was liberation theology and that started first as an african-american woman serving a church and a denomination where women had not necessarily as african-american women taken their full places in the work of god in fact the conference that i was ordained in as a united methodist pastor had not had its first african-american woman ordained until i came along so there were many doors and barriers for me to of course cross and go through and so an understanding of liberation theology first started as a as an african-american woman then of course later as an african-american lesbian woman but i think that for the coming out experience and the liberation theology in general uh is more than a political experience of coming out but it it carries us to the traditions that of course we have to be a part of as men and women that would serve god and for me that's a safe place now because i would not have wanted to throw away the traditions of the church just to be a religious gay christian that it was very important to me that i understood those traditions and also know that i could build upon them which is the new air breathing through the windows of new understandings in the religious experience and i think that james cohn for me uh in the the father of black liberation theology uh helped me to understand that gay liberation theology was very very much a necessity for our own understanding of how to define ourselves because that's the thing that of course liberation theology did for the church's understanding of how black people saw themselves in the way of worship in the world in which we live and in also in terms of the oppression that we experience as african-american people so now gay liberation theology is our opportunity to express and define ourselves in the light of who we see ourselves to be in the light of god building upon the traditions of the church not throwing them away at all but to do a better job at defining them out of our own mouths rather than the mouths of the church who took in many instances just a portion of thus saith the lord from the word and not taking a look at the very cultures out of which the church was preaching and uh just being a little bit disconcerned about the whole message uh and not necessarily to affect us but perhaps not really understanding us it's interesting that i wouldn't probably be sitting here if it weren't for black liberation theology okay because i was um in the church minding my business doing my work when the civil rights movement stirred my conscience and i was invited to go on a freedom ride that's where we black and white together we got on a bus in the deep south people were wounded they were killed it was very dangerous i'm not courageous at all i'm really quite a shy person but i realized on that occasion that if i didn't do this i couldn't talk about it anymore i couldn't be real i just had to do this and so that then martin luther king came into the scene and he instructed us in non-violence he said it was like picking up a phone i always thought this was so wonderful his explanation of this because the way you pick up a phone is it non-violent or is it violent we live such violent lives we're so angry we're enraged we pick up the phone in a violent way you know but non-violence in other words then not as public relations or a technique but a way of life a way of life and so and this comes back to gandhi to martin luther king it comes back to jesus it comes back to a lot of things it comes back to the hebrew bible we find it everywhere so this led me then to a lot of jailings and a lot of experiences i was with dr king on a number of occasions changed my life and it meant that i wouldn't have advancement in the church in a way because i had become dangerous and that was okay that was okay and so um because of that and there were a number of gays and lesbians i'd met in the civil rights movement i was able to come out so so it seems to me what we've got here is linkage between our experiences where we deeply touch each other and affect each other's lives don't we wouldn't you say that and from a jewish from our jewish perspective so much of our theology is based on the liberation experience of moving from egypt through the promised land and that wandering and hungering for the promised land and moving into it and and so that kind of hunger for that liberation i think that's promising that promised land and and moving in even if you have to wander for 40 years till you find it yeah i think that that fuels that and i think that also that held me to building and spirituality and can be the spirituality of the oppressed i don't know but in the way that i feel now when i feel with uh i feel like i'm naked when i pray because i don't have nothing to scare i don't have nothing to put away you know that is my self my whole self in front of god in the presence of god and that is such a wonderful experience so when i when i in doing this also that every situation that i have in life come together every you know difficult moment you know sometimes a struggle sometimes people who are dying of people who are continuing this oppressing you know you see what happened in mexico with gay alaskan people what happened in brazil every day they kill people in brazil every day so how don't put how do i bring all this thing to my prayer so that has been for me a wonderful spiritual experience one of the things that i i focus on and some of the theological work that i've been doing is this notion of completeness which in hebrew we use the word schlemut wholeness which comes from the word shalom for peace not just peace from the outside world but as you said this inner peace this inner strength and so we have that sense of relatedness that you know when there's no more closets there's a hamosha the african-american experience it's unity there's a community of soul a unity of experience and it's i think that liberation theology calls us to that sense of accountability for our lives for our religion for what the churches our institutions that we represent say about god because the activity of god must be questioned always when there is oppression and i think that was the one secret of liberation theology at least to begin the dialogue where is god in the sight of oppression where is god in the life of the closet when persons are not whole when persons are absolutely without the ability to be free when they're self-esteem their self-esteem is so low the church has always taken a sense of negativity i feel against pride not and yet without pride for the gay and lesbian person there can be no wholeness but this is good pride it's not hubris that's right it's not humorous and this is another i'd like to segue for a second because we're talking about spirituality and theology and one practice in which we can find gay liberation spirituality and theology i think is in the gay and lesbian unions okay the marriages because this is a concrete expression people come to us i've for the last 10 years i've done a number of these for all sorts of people lesbians gay men a number of roman catholics a number of other people i've always really felt a sense of great humility in doing it because you know all they're asking for the people is a blessing yes and and and the fathers and mothers the siblings can come together but i i i just think it's one of the more beautiful experiences that we can have in in offering something here do you offer that in in your in the in the sale yes i do yes i do and i really believe in the holy unions of gay and lesbian men and women i believe in it because we first had to live out our expressions of love in a society of oppression that in many instances denied our love and in many instances kept us in the club in many instances kept us with a sense of uh not having a public expression of our love and also their relationships terribly a lot a lot of them and certainly from the legalities and the legal rights that we deserved as human and women men and women who were willing to say that i commit myself to you so for me it's a very important union because it denounces all of that which was our early beginning and it also shows to us to us who are the first dollars of our capabilities to love and be in committed relationships where we can of course have the sanctions of the blessings of god and feel the blessings and the support of god almighty not to mention the fact that we have some of the legal protections that would be there for us in case things didn't work out the nurturing the nurturing the healing yes and the church and someone that you can talk to malcolm and the support of the people the people to share that spiritual moment is very important and one of the reasons i think our gay and lesbian civil rights agenda must push much harder for domestic partnerships bills across this country to include in the civil rights bill the opportunity to make our relationship sanctioned by the state we must find continue ways not only to make that spiritual moment but also that legal moment absolutely we'll be right back and we'll because we'll continue a discussion of gay unions which we're just getting into so stay with us and and we'll be back in just a moment it would be nice if latex condoms were automatic [Applause] but since they're not using them should be simply because a latex condom used consistently and correctly will prevent the spread of hiv [Music] get used to it that's what we're doing i'm malcolm boyd and we're back with denise and freda and jose we're discussing um gay and lesbian unions and marriages and i think denise you said you had something on symbols you wanted to say about the i think this is one something that we ought to be doing more and more and celebrating our commitments and our love for our partner and one of the things that i've been working very much with is a jewish wedding ceremony for the couples that i work with and i've done hundreds of gay and lesbian ceremonies over the last almost eight years now in our community um and really working with the old jewish symbols like the wedding canopy this is roots this is roots and and the ketubah which is the jewish wedding document but now taking those symbols and renewing them for our own gay and lesbian lives and community um so that we feel a sense of authenticity to our roots on the one hand in our culture and yet on the other hand we're not imitating anything that perhaps may be heterosexist inherently and in the best example that i just quickly want to share with you in the end of a jewish wedding they break a glass there's lots of interpretations to chase away the evil spirits to remember sad times in the midst of joy but in our gay and lesbian ceremonies what i do is have both partners in the union break a glass an egalitarian statement and we reinterpret it in terms of the partnership and the act of the initial act of shattering and of creation that the mystics understand so that their union begins a partnership with themselves with god with their community absolutely and so that this an old symbol renewed given new life it's a wonderful idea and i think that's more than what we have to do in all of our ritual lives is do that with a particular gay and lesbian uh understanding about them i just was reading a ritual from england you reminded me of it and it it's about the end of a relationship and how we need to ritualize that and help people face it deal with it be able to get on with their lives and in that instance there's a breaking yes and i i do ceremonies that helps you do that i've done that and the document that we use and we we write and the couple makes their commitments and vows in that document we use i've used in separation ceremonies where the documents ripped or cut in some way to symbolize the tearing apart of this holy relationship the facing of it yes and and it really helps to end and to finalize and to heal which is very important and i think where are you with this i'm um all for it but i i particularly uh want to applaud your work there because i think in the gay and lesbian community when there is a separation of couples there's a deeper sense of pain felt by us because we are so oppressed in the society in which we live so that when we lose a family member in this context we feel the loss in a greater sense of the way because it becomes our friend our family member our supporter and the like and so it's a strong need to have that support then too but back to the union itself i've been in the union uh for two and a half years now and and my spouse and i have been in a committed relationship and one of the things i have learned about it in terms of the religious edge and i challenge persons to bring their their uh experiences of love to a union uh is that it it brings out your capacity to to your roots your religious roots that is it allows you the opportunity to see god challenge you to pray and to see god challenge you to to remember the things that you were taught in your family experience especially if you had a strong religious rootage in which you were given the opportunity to be taught about love and sharing giving and taking and uh the union reminds you that you're under an umbrella of support that you're not alone that when times get tough when you don't know exactly what to do that you do have the resources of prayer that you do have the resources of a counselor or a pastor a supportive community if you don't bring it to that of course you have your friendship community but there's something about knowing that you have the strong loving presence of god in your relationship and it has something to say about it in terms of those persons around you too who believe in god the heterosexuals who may be your support systems can honor your union too no matter what the world thinks about it i've been in a relationship for about eight years now that is kind of the central thing in my life and [Music] i'm so grateful for it what a gift it's it's uh i think it helps you so much to live with um or compromise it isn't just one person here having you don't play god in in a bad sense do you in other words you uh uh it's love and and it learns always opening up your life being vulnerable and being vulnerable which is so important jose what about the unions at the metropolitan community church that you do i have i have my experience in in that sense too is the way people commit each other and how we can bless this uh love because it's really a commitment but in this eye of eyes hispanic eyes uh one of the things i discovered was for people all these things are very important so put them together and do a ritual is you know for the family it's important and one i have to experience when people they have we holy union but they uh they said can you go to our house and bless the house it's some kind of you know they they feel the presence of god in that uh commitment but also they want to bring that to the to the house yes so they asked for that and i have uh i have a wonderful experience you know also in in the in the way we prepare that you know that's we usually have three sessions with people when we talk what this mean for them you know also what what they mean for the whole community because you are you are some kind of testimony you are giving a testimony i i went to the one of our general conference and troy perry said uh if any couple who have here 50 years together and one couple reasons and it was wonderful for me i said oh my god you know but it was beautiful to see people they spend 50 years together and they are celebrating love every day you know it's not what we can do you know that is what's we can do it and we need more role models in this area i think and i think that it's uh we're getting more and i think the church is playing a vital role in providing it for us and i'm very very happy that we are because i was always the marrying type always the kind very type and my spouse and i are very happy and i thank god for her name is catherine white and i just want to say that but i think that we need the role models because we need their number of single persons that have just not seen the compromising and the sharing and the giving and taking no i agree with you um my partner my lover and i it's funny we get his name is mark thompson and we get male malcolm thompson mark boyd or they've confused malcolm boyd thompson it's nice it's a whole new family the point is it is a new family which brings us to the religious right okay which claims to have family values and and to and who claims that we do not and here we are just talking about our family values our extended family see i keep wondering is why they get to define well they don't what that is they like to think they like to think they do and sometimes in our own queer community we let them define it instead of taking the queer offensive as it were and listen denise isn't one of the problems that when we in a queer way make the mistake of throwing out god and giving morality and god to the religious right isn't this the worst thing to do not just morally and politically but personally absolutely because we we lose a sense of self in that and you know if we if we see ourselves as reflection of the divine including the gay and lesbian being then to throw that out and to accede that only to the radical right i don't want to call him a religious but a radical right we we do not do ourselves any service no in that way nor can we simply hate we've got to have a program we have to we have to win and you win by non-violence and you win by love and by knowledge knowledge that was my point denise i think you both agree with denise and freda acknowledged we have to be knowledgeable of our uh we have to be knowledgeable of what is being said about us the rootage of which it comes and also the interpretations of what it was meant to be in order to interpret our own lives so i advocate for education and religion i advocate for the persons who are of the religious right to come to the tables and be held accountable for what they say particularly in the african-american religious experience particularly in the african-american church experience because african-americans have not challenged that area of the religious experience of african american gay and lesbian men and women and a lot has been said to keep us in the closet and i think that the world church council is a good place to use an example uh for years you know the world church council has called to uh called a dialogue if you will among the church leaders among the educated church leaders if you will to say let's see what's the text what does the text really say what's behind the text and that's one of the areas that i'm a real adamant believer that we have not done enough work knowledge and education what does the bible really say and let us come together we are graduates now of the same theological seminaries we are graduates now of the same religious experiences how is it we come out we're seeing so many different things on one particular context and how is it we can allow ourselves to say the things that have been said if we're scholars of the bible a friend of ours nancy wilson nancy wilson from the community mcc is is writing a book called outing the bible okay and it must be it required reading in the gay and lesbian community because our own people do not know yes the bible you cannot fight that radical right you've got we've got to know the bible we've got to talk their language in some way and we've got to know it we've got to say it's our language yes we've got to make it a language right and we've got to make it our own denise and i shared an experience that was interesting with the reverend nancy wilson incidentally why don't you tell about that because in other words we were responding to the religious right by doing that several years ago here in los angeles the county was holding back funds for aids funding and we went before the county board of supervisors on their tuesday morning regular session and and i had just been there a few weeks ago previous to that to deliver the invocation um but we stood before them and and disrupted their meeting in a non-violent way through singing and we're saying we are a gentle loving people and we prayed and we were arrested and we were arrested and we were dragged from the chamber and incarcerated for with lots of big deputy sheriffs and gloves and masks as if you know we were all falling over ill well i was trained to somebody else and chained to a bench for 10 hours which i thought was cruel and unusual punishment from my constitutional right to go before this body of the government and ask for support yes it was not uh it was not a fun experience and then the los angeles times did a very stupid thing in reporting it they said that uh five or six people of the number that we were had been dressed as clergy when all of us were and we worked first and you know ordained in our various churches and denominations and this is the kind of uh spin that the religious right wants to give to our communities that we're not authentic that we yes that that our issues are not real issues such as aids funding that we're playing at it that we're not real the worst for me is that we are abominable creatures again that's an old term still used to define who we are and one they don't even really know because they haven't looked at the hebrew which is where that saint king james version got translated from uh from greek not looking at the hebrew and that the word abomination in the hebrew text means a blasphemy because they're really talking about a way to worship god yes and in those days they worship god through all kinds of sex these are the gods and goddesses of the ancient nereids the broken bible society was in 1900 uh published a book called the negro a beast yes and it said that to african americans that black people didn't possess souls and consequently couldn't be baptized it's this background that we need to expose in the religious right their intolerance their blasphemy because to say that is blasphemous blasphemous was always then and but it took the courage of the african-american religious being to define god for self to know god for self to know where god had been working in his or her life to come forward and say this is where god is in my life and i think that's the same challenge that's before us because there will always be a body of people in particular particularly the religious right to define what god thinks of us when indeed we know what god thinks of us by the very fact that we got up this morning by the very reason that we're allowed to sit here and to talk and to see each other smiles tells us what god thinks about us you see i think that is important what you said about education but also what is what is some time i think we have as a gay or lesbian christian community be more united sometimes we're so separate you know we don't spend too much time together to talk about our issues uh what we do sometimes we put together our background our church and that is important but i think most most important is our prophetic mission and 101 one of the prophetic mission right now is to confront these people yes because they are doing no good work they are hurting people you know that harass people you know some people go to church very scared what those people said what my mother said influence when they hear all these programs so i think we have to work more in that and we also need to respect each other in the gay and lesbian community more in terms of coming from different points of view and places and and realizing that we we have an enormous job to do of self-realization and of peace in terms of living with the religious right which is a very flagrant virulent enemy that isn't playing games at all thank you so much for being here today i i our time is drawing to a conclusion a rabbi denise edgar reverend freda brown reverend jose marco gonzalez from saleh community church congregation call on me and the metropolitan community church i'm malcolm boyd from saint augustine by the sea in santa monica and well we're getting used to it [Music] so [Music] you