Something Inside So Strong” Unitarian Universalist Church of the Desert Rev

“Something Inside So Strong” Unitarian Universalist Church of the Desert Rev. Suzanne M. Marsh October 11, 2015 Today is the 27th Annual National Coming Out Day. The holiday was founded in 1988 to commemorate what was then the largest demonstration ever for Lesbian and Gay rights. The march was on Sunday, October 11, 1987 in Washington DC. Nancy and I were there, as were between 500,000-1 million other folks, depending on whose estimate you believe. That day was a marker, a milestone in the relationship between the heterosexual public and gay and lesbian people. So many people turned out that day, many risking exposure for the first time, facing the possible loss of a job, a home, and custody of their children or the love of their families. Nancy and I debated whether to go or not, but in the end, knew that it was only in our collective coming out, in whatever way we could, that we would be a part of the liberation of the vast majority of the gay and lesbian people in the country who lived in each day in fear. That day was pivotal, largely because so many of us just showed up, and it began the process of changing the minds of many people who held damaging and inaccurate ideas about gay and lesbian folks. It was powerful for many to see who “those people were” their sons and daughters, moms and dads, cousins and even our grandmas and grandpas. Seeing these regular people served to challenge their myths and shatter their stereotypes. And it dissuaded many of them from the idea that they did not know any gay or lesbian people. I think that, at least in part, the terrible ravages of the AIDS epidemic brought people to come out, because it was the existence of these myths and stereotypes that had prevented effective treatments and research being funded, because as the story went, only “those people” got it. And what a day it was! To the capital of the most powerful, wealthiest and most privileged country in the world, came couples, families and singles, old, young, all shades and all classes. It was heady stuff for most of us, who had never been in the company of more than a dozen or so kindred beings. We danced and marched and smiled at each other until our faces hurt. For just that moment in time, we were surrounded by folks who didn’t look upon us with pity or scorn, but who were like us. There was a powerful sense of belonging in the air that day. One of the guest speakers, Jesse Jackson, told the crowd, "Let's find a common ground of humanity... We share the desire for life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, equal protection under the law. Let's not dwell on distinctions." 1 Eleven years later, sometime after midnight on October 7, 1998, an openly gay college student in Laramie, Wyoming struck up a conversation with two men in a bar, who offered him a ride home. These two men then drove him to a rural area where they robbed, verbally abused, beat and tortured him, then lashed him to a fence. Unconscious, cold, beaten, and bleeding he was found 18 hours later by a passing biker. He was still hanging from the fence, his hands tied behind his back. He died five days later without ever waking. I am sure you remember that young man, his name was Matthew Shepard. Ten days later at Matthew’s funeral in Casper Wyoming, Fred Phelps, the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas and some of his followers, picketed. Two of the picket signs read: "No Tears for Queers" and "Fag Matt in Hell." On that day in Washington DC in 1987 and on many other occasions since, I have stood with gays and lesbians, bisexuals, transgender folks and straight allies and felt a great hope for the future. The times we live in are making it more difficult for those who wish to hide or ignore or pretend away the contributions of GLBT folks. But it is far from a solved problem. And if you are a person of color, disabled, a woman, poor or working class, you are often still deeply and profoundly invisible. Sometimes you are ignored or erased from history. Sometimes your life is taken from you. And I am always very aware that there are many names we do not know and never will? Whose accomplishments, triumphs, heroic acts are unknown to us because they were gay, lesbian or transgendered? Willem Arondeus was born in 1894 in Naarden, The Netherlands. He worked as an illustrator, designer of posters and tapestries and a painter. These pursuits did not allow him to earn a decent living, so in 1935, he became an author, at which he achieved moderate success. He soon became involved in the Dutch resistance and in the spring of 1941, he started an underground publication in which he encouraged his fellow artists to resist the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Early on he understood the required registration of all Jews with the local authorities was not, as the Nazis claimed, for their own safety, but rather so that, in the future, they could be deported to concentration camps. With various underground publications he and a number of other artists and intellectuals called for mass resistance against the German occupation. The Dutch resistance was actively working to hide Jews among the local population, and a pivotal part of the operation was to prepare forged documents for Jews. When the Nazis began to expose the false documents by comparing the names with those in the local population registry, Arondeus led a group that bombed the Amsterdam Public Records Office. Thousands of files were destroyed, and the Nazi’s 2 could no longer compare forged documents with the registry. Arondeus and the other members of the group were arrested and soon were executed by firing squad. In his last message before his execution, Arondeus, who had lived openly as a gay man before the war, said, "Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.” Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were a courageous lesbian couple who were together more than 50 years when they were legally married in California shortly before Del’s death in 2008. They were groundbreaking organizers and activists for lesbian visibility and rights. They founded the Daughters of Bilitis in San Franciso in 1955, which became the first social and political organization for lesbians in the United States. They both acted as president and editor of the lesbian magazine “The Ladder”. Both women worked to form the Council of Religion and Homosexuality (CRH) in northern California to persuade ministers to accept gays into churches, and used their influence to decriminalize homosexuality in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They became politically active in San Francisco's first gay political organization, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, which influenced Dianne Feinstein to sponsor a citywide bill to outlaw employment discrimination for gays and lesbians. Both served in the White House Conference on Aging in 1995. Their names are widely known among lesbians, but their courage and political savvy are rarely mentioned outside these circles. I had the opportunity to meet them in the late 90’s and they were lively “old women” as they called themselves. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin. He was one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Although he married and sired two children, Oscar was known to prefer men. Wilde was a prolific and gifted writer and was known for his exuberant personality and consummate wit and his imaginative and works, in particular his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and his play The Importance of Being Earnest, are considered among the great literary masterpieces of the late Victorian period. Around the same time that he was enjoying his greatest literary success, Wilde began an affair with a young man named Lord Alfred Douglas. When Douglas's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, got wind of the affair, he left a calling card at Wilde's home addressed to "Oscar Wilde: Posing Sodomite," Although Wilde's homosexuality was pretty much an open secret, Wilde was incensed by Queensberry's note and he proceeded to sue him for libel. At the trial, Queensberry’s lawyers presented evidence of Wilde's homosexuality—homoerotic passages from his literary works, as well as his love letters to Douglas—and soon the tables turned. Wilde’s suit against Queensberry was not only dismissed, but Wilde was arrested on charges of "gross indecency." Wilde was convicted and 3 sentenced to two years in prison. When he was released from prison Wilde was physically and emotionally broken and flat broke. He spent his last years in France staying with friends and in cheap hotels. He wrote very little more before he died in late 1900. He was 46 years old. One of the indelible memories for me from the 1987 March on Washington was the chant I first learned that day: We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it. Now that is not a very good way to start a productive conversation, but I must admit that, sometimes, I do feel like saying just that. What if people just had to get used to it? What would our world be like, how would we be better, stronger and richer, more focused on what is important? What if we stopped investing our energy in trying to deny, cover up, cure or change our own or other people’s preferences and identities? What if we just stopped labeling and categorizing people at all? Think of what we could do with all that time and energy.

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