JUSTICE 2 - Jan 2010
My former church member was genuinely concerned. She was concerned about the safety of the church, and my safety too, I think. What really surprised me about her request was that she was Jewish. She of all people, I thought, would understand why it was so important that I speak publicly on behalf of the oppressed.
She was asking me to back down on my recent local campaign to support lesbian, gay, bisexual rights. (In our conservative corner of the world, we didn’t even go into rights for transgender and transsexual folks, that was for another century). The issue was marriage and the thousand civil rights that go with legal marriage. I had written a ministerial reflection in the local paper which triggered six months of letters to the editor and op-eds. I was even referred to as Jezebel by another minister, whom I had never even met, so how would he know!
In some of the letters published in the paper, our bastion of liberal religion was accused of not being Christian and other such off-the- topic commentary. To my upset members, who considered themselves Christian, I encouraged them to respond, but to keep to the issue: marriage and civil rights. The office got a couple of rude phone calls, but nothing too threatening. I knew what a threat was, and had intentionally only used my initials when I listed my personal phone number with the telephone company.
Yet here was my church member, wondering if I had pushed things too far. Her comfort zone was being threatened. So, was mine, I responded. I’m not comfortable doing these mock weddings for women or men who deeply love each other, and then encouraging them to contact a lawyer in order to piece together a semblance of legal protections.
What is frightening about speaking against injustice? Many may respond with violence. This, I know, is true since my family home was bombed in the 1960’s when my father was publicly speaking against the neo-Nazis. Anyone alive in the 1950’s and 60’s knows this truism about the potential for violence. Matthew Shepard discovered this truth one cold night in a lonely town.
Yet not speaking out, remaining silent, is also a form of violence -- only much, much slower. So slow it’s harder to identify and point to. Racism, ageism, sexism, able-ism, and so many other forms of oppression often occur in slow motion. So slow we barely notice them anymore. Until someone speaks out and makes us all uncomfortable.
My former church member, my former Jewish church member, was uncomfortable. I thought to myself: good.
