Gifted by Otherness: 3 of 6

June 5, 2008

We Model What it Means to Love No Matter What the Cost

Whenever D and I go out we tend to be touching each other. It might be a hand on the back or an arm around the shoulder or simply holding hands while we wait in line at Starbucks or to receive communion at the table. We don’t do it for show. We do it because we love each other and having her hand in mine is the most natural place in all the world for it to be. Okay, and yes, there are times I’m so delighted to be the one she loves that I want other people to know I’m hers and she’s mine and so I take her hand to say “Look everyone, this beautiful woman loves me! Am I a lucky dog or what?!”

AS GLBTQ people there’s something about this simple human action that makes us unique. Imagine this. You’re sitting at Starbucks sipping your triple-shot-mocha-light-half decaf-latte topped with whipped cream and a squeeze of caramel, when you notice two couples standing in line, one gay, one straight, and each couple holding hands. Look around the room at the predominantly straight crowd of caffeine chugging Starbuckeroons and imagine how they’re observing the couples. There’s the sweet young couple; the blonde-haired girl with a backpack slung over her shoulder holding hands with a lanky boy dressed in jeans and a letterman’s jacket from the local high school. Behind them is the LESBIAN couple. Most observers won’t give a thought to the sexual orientation of the young couple. They’ll notice their appearance, how they stand, what they’re wearing, and how they’re interacting with each other; how he whispers in her ear and she responds with big surprised eyes and a giggle. The letterman’s jacket will make someone wonder what sport the boy is involved in and someone else will have a passing thought that kids today are going to grow up with some real back problems from carrying all those overloaded backpacks to school everyday. Everyone will have a different thought about that couple if they even notice them at all, but with few exceptions the thoughts of everyone in the house will be the same when it come to the second couple. LESBIANS. Whatever feelings come attached to that word, whether it’s anger, delight or nothing at all, the word will be there.

And this is what makes us unique. We’re identified by who we love and really, when you think about it, isn’t that an awesomely cool thing. We’re known by our love and as such we have the opportunity to model what it is to love even when that love comes at a cost. And it does, for some more so than for others.

• In Iran the cost is execution with the method of death being determined by the presiding judge. The method chosen for two teenage men boys who were known to be lovers among those in the underground gay community of Mashad, was hanging in the public square.
• In Afghanistan in 1998 the cost to three men accused of sodomy was to be buried alive under a pile of stones and then a wall was pushed on top of them by a tank. Their lives were to be spared if when the stones were removed 30 minutes later they were still alive.
• In Gambia the cost being threatened by President Jammeh on May 26, 2008, was that gays and lesbians would be beheaded for their crimes and he called on all gay people to leave the country within 24 hours.
• In Uganda the cost is seven years imprisonment.
• In Jamaica in 2005 it came at the cost of to Lenford Harvey, an AIDS activist, of being abducted and murdered by gunmen, in a country where the cost for two men engaged in sex is 10 years hard labor.
• The cost of being gay and loving someone of the same gender is a punishable crime in Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Libya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, and Mozambique with penalties ranging from monetary fines to years of imprisonment and time spent in labour camps. Loving comes at a price in Bangladesh, India, Lebanon, Malaysia, Burma, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Yemen with the cost ranging from minor fees to flogging to death. In Antigua the cost is 15 years imprisonment and in Barbados the maximum cost is life. Trinidad the cost is 25 years imprisonment, the Cook Islands 14, in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands 14, and in Guyana, its life. This is only a partial list of the places in the world where loving someone of the same gender remains a punishable crime.
• The cost to a lesbian couple in Medford, Oregon was death at the hands of an assailant who justified his action by charging them with living a sick lifestyle. Roxanne and Michelle been together for 12 years and served on the board of their church. In Wyoming the cost to Matthew Shepherd was being beaten and tied to a fence to spend the last hours of his life alone in the cold darkness. The cost of being identified by who they loved came at great cost to Charlie Howard, Paul Broussard, Pfc. Barry Winchell, Danny Overstreet, Fred Martinez, Sakia Gunn, Richie Phillips, Nireah Johnson and Brandie Coleman, Jason Cage, Michael Sandy, and Sean William Kennedy.

Several years ago I received an email from a young woman living in Pakistan. She wrote to tell me that she and a girlfriend had fallen in love and she feared that if her father learned of it he’d instruct her brothers to kill her to save the family honor following a cultural tradition known as Karo-Kari. One of the many times I’ve wept over email.

The cost you or I might pay for loving who we love may never exact the ultimate price, but there remains a cost for all GLBTQ people no matter where we live or how in or out of the closet we are. We all know the cost that’s come to us individually along the way, and while we work to change it, to advocate for full rights under the law and to silence the anti-gay rhetoric and attitudes that serve as fuel for those who perpetuate anti-gay violence and discrimination, we continue to love who we love without denial or shame. We love because the alternative is not to love and wouldn’t the price for that be even greater in the end?

And so as GLBTQ Christians our lives carry the message to the church that we’ll love who we love no matter what the cost. Mock us, exclude us, condemn us, but we’ll go right on loving who we love in wholeness and in joy. M.R. RIley says it better than me in Gifted by Otherness:

We are a people defined by our loves. It is a wholly Christian message: Love is always costly; love is worth the cost. We are living icons of love’s indestructibility, we who have loved despite two thousand years of suffering and terror. Nothing – not physical abuse or moral sanctions, not explusion from our families or even the threat of death – has kept us from loving. This, if anything, is an icon we all ened to contemplate from time to time, a living reminder that in the end, love can endure and outlast every other thing. (p. 153)

And for those of us who remain inside the church, we offer another glaring example of love because not only will we love our partners/spouses/lovers but by remaining inside the church we’re saying with our lives that “We are committed to loving you. We will stay here in relationship with you even when you don’t think we belong here because this is where we belong. Give up on us but we won’t give up on you.” I know more than a few GLBTQ Christians who’ve left the church because they couldn’t take it any longer and I understand, empathize, and support their decision. When a relationship, any relationship, turns abusive then leaving is sometimes the most right thing a person can do. But others of us remain, not because we’re more long-suffering and God knows, not because we’re more holy, but because staying in the church is something to which we feel called. Maybe not for forever, but at least for now, and so we stay and maybe in staying one heart will be changed by the demonstration of our love to one another and to our commitment to remain in relationship with the church. Or maybe they’ll think just we’re nuts. Who knows…maybe they aren’t so wrong.

Among all the things I don’t know, there’s one thing I do know: as GLBTQ Christians we’re not doing anything new here. Love that comes at a price is at the very heart of the Christian message and always has been. Jesus loved no matter what the cost. Jesus loved who others thought he shouldn’t love, and it was his unrelenting message that proclaimed God’s love took no notice of adherence to the law or sacrifice but was available to all for the sake of love and love alone that  Jesus was despised, rejected, and died.

They’ll know we’re GLBTQ by who we love and I hope all the more and in ways just as tangible that we’d also be known as Christians for the very same reason; because of the One we love who first loved us.

Children, you belong to God, and you have defeated these enemies. God’s Spirit is in you and is more powerful than the one that is in the world. These enemies belong to this world, and the world listens to them, because they speak its language. We belong to God, and everyone who knows God will listen to us. But the people who don’t know God won’t listen to us. That is how we can tell the Spirit that speaks the truth from the one that tells lies. My dear friends, we must love each other. Love comes from God, and when we love each other, it shows that we have been given new life. We are now God’s children, and we know him. God is love, and anyone who doesn’t love others has never known him. God showed his love for us when he sent his only Son into the world to give us life. Real love isn’t our love for God, but his love for us. God sent his Son to be the sacrifice by which our sins are forgiven. Dear friends, since God loved us this much, we must love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is truly in our hearts. (I John 4:4-12)

Today, I encourage you to be known in all ways and by all people by your love; whoever you are, whoever you love. This is a gift you bring into the world and right through the doors of the church.

For more on anti-gay laws around the world

For more on the public hanging of the two Iranian men

For more on gay issues in Africa

For more on victims of anti-gay and transgender violence

and

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission

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Posted in Gifted by Otherness, Special Series