A Queer Friendly Spirituality

I saw the DVD “Milk” last night–a poignant reminder of our not so dis­tant past and the ongo­ing strug­gle for equal rights for all. I want to make it clear that Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism is open to and affirm­ing of queers of all types.

I’ve always been an out­sider myself. My strug­gle against the con­ser­v­a­tive ele­ments Milk also fought against has been life­long. At my draft phys­i­cal, I even told the psy­chol­o­gist I had homo­sex­ual ten­den­cies and avoided Viet­nam. I think the ten­dency is there in every­one, some more strongly than oth­ers. We’re all on sort of a slid­ing scale between gay and straight, and bisex­u­al­ity is prob­a­bly nat­ural for the species but has been sup­pressed. I con­sider myself an androg­y­nous het­ero­sex­ual and have a num­ber of gay friends.

In the early 1990s, I led a study of homo­sex­u­al­ity in the Iowa church I pas­tored to get them to be more open and affirm­ing of queers. It affected those who attended pos­i­tively includ­ing a local les­bian who was not a church mem­ber but felt com­fort­able coming-out in that group where she was warmly received. I also did a memo­r­ial ser­vice for the gay son of a promi­nent church fam­ily who died of AIDS in Cal­i­for­nia. His part­ner attended, and that also brought the issue home. Milk was right. When peo­ple get to know gays it’s harder to main­tain stereo­types and con­tinue the hatred. Unfor­tu­nately, con­ser­v­a­tive ele­ments in the church couldn’t even accept me, what to speak of new gay members.

When I moved to Michi­gan and pas­tored a church there, I became a mem­ber of Con­cerned Clergy of West Michi­gan. We com­mis­sioned an orig­i­nal play, “Come In from the Rain” deal­ing with church-gay rela­tions. I mod­er­ated a tele­vi­sion panel dis­cus­sion and took part in pan­els after the per­for­mances to sold out audi­ences. We also sup­ported a the­atre group that was not allowed to per­form the play “Cor­pus Christi” in the local com­mu­nity col­lege the­atre they nor­mally used due to right-wing oppo­si­tion. The play was held in a large down­town Grand Rapids church instead, and again I led the panel dis­cus­sion after­ward and had much media exposure.

When we allow the rights of one group to be tram­pled on, how long will it be before ours are too? This is an open invi­ta­tion to mem­bers of the LGBT com­mu­nity. God-dess made you the way you are, and it’s beau­ti­ful. We wel­come you to the Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism com­mu­nity as a safe place to grow spir­i­tu­ally. Aloha.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 10:44 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.