From my colleague, Jan Adams, attending the "Creating Change" conference in Denver this week:
The Rev. Deborah Johnson of Inner Light Ministries knows how to preach it. She's convinced we're coming into a new time and we must not try to put new wine into old wineskins. So she brought some admonitions.
"There are no gay issues -- there are simply justice issues."
"If we are gay by nature, it is by God's design and it is good."
"I did not join this movement to get heterosexual privilege!"
On the last point, she urged us to remember that we face discrimination because we don't conform to "the rules" of gender and we should not be hoping to become insiders--we need to understand ourselves as being about destroying gender-based privilege, along with other forms of power over each other. She concluded:"The world, the planet, is waiting for America to come to grips with its privilege!"
Here's a video clip from the conference-in-progress:
6 comments:
we need to understand ourselves as being about destroying gender-based privilege, along with other forms of power over each other. "
Preach it Sister!!! and AMEN!!
and I might add, stereotypes of all sorts, even the preconception of how we are supposed to act as LGBT folk.
Don't all critics proceed from a position of privilege? Somebody's working while the critic gets to flap his or her gums, eh?
I'm diressing from the implicit assertion that there is heterosexual "privilege" like there is white "privilege." I'm not sure I buy the analysis that yields this particular definition of privilege.
"If we are gay by nature, it is by God's design and it is good."
Seems to me that Christian theology holds that people are sinful by nature, that it's NOT good and that Christians though the sole agency of God's grace are to repent of and resist sin.
Never mind the fact that science does not in fact hold that anyone is "gay by nature".
It seems to me that presuming to speak for "Christian theology" -- as if that's a singular term and as if there have not been centuries of lively debate over the essential nature of humanity, sin, evil, goodness, etc. -- is ... well, to put it kindly ... a bit presumptuous.
There are indeed those Christians who espouse a theology that "we are by nature sinful and unclean" (as I believe the words were in the Lutheran Book of Worship I remember sitting through as a child in day school) but there are also schools of thought that the transcendent nature of our being created in the image of God and declared "very good" trumps that which gets in the way of our living fully into the stature of the creatures we were created to be.
There was a time in the life of the Church when the full humanity of women was open to debate. Future generations will look back on the current controversy about LGBT folk with the same incredulity we look back on those ancient debates now.
And the GOOD news is the Episcopal Church is -- I believe -- going to end up on the right side of history on this one.
Get onboard, get onboard!
RonF also presumes to speak for "science."
So ALL of the medical, psychiatric and psychological professional organizations listed in "For the Bible Tells Me So" are bogus? Really?
Have any "straight" persons here ever been denied an apartment rental or a job because they were "straight?" Any "straight" person here ever been beaten by a group of thugs yelling "Straight Guy?" Any church organist you know of ever been fired because of the sudden discovery that they were "straight?" Any "straight" person here ever been denied permission to consult on their spouse's medical condition while in an ER?
There's a reason they call it "unexamined" privilege.
Post a Comment