Living In A Crucified Place

BILL MOYERS: You've even been criticized by some of your liberal colleagues in the American fellowship because you have called for a moratorium for a season on ordaining more gay Bishops. Why did you do that?
BISHOP KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI: It was a very painful thing to do. My sense was that there might be hope of some kind of broader understanding if we were able to pause. Not go backwards, but pause.
BILL MOYERS: Is it fair to ask some aspiring gay or lesbian person who wants to become a Bishop, like Gene Robinson did in 2003, to wait?
BISHOP KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI: Is it fair? No. It's not fair.
BILL MOYERS: But it's necessary?
BISHOP KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI: It's a crucified place to stand.
--From the Transcript of Bill Moyers Journal, broadcast June 8, 2007

I am glad that Katharine sees that what is being asked of the lesbian and gay members (not to mention the bisexual and transgender ones) of the Episcopal Church--and of the entire Anglican Communion--is unfair. I am glad she recognizes the difficulties it represents by calling it "a crucified place to stand." I find myself feeling deeply hurt that she continues asking us to stand in this "crucified place" without truly understanding the realities of it.

From the time we first become aware of who we are, lesbians and gays do not just stand in a crucified place, we live in a crucified place. It begins with schoolyard taunts directed at us and others--taunts that we do not at first fully understand. It continues in classrooms where teachers refuse to recognize the hurtfulness of these taunts, or do not see them as hurtful as racial and ethnic slurs, when used by students and even other teachers. We endure it in our churches and the streets of our communities as grown men and women fling insults and misinformation. We even suffer it within our own families.

Faggot. Dyke. Queer. Homo. Lesbo. Fairy.

The name calling is only the beginning and just the surface of what it means to live in this crucified place. There is massive familial and social pressure to not be honest about who we are and the realities of our lives. As larger numbers of us have dared to leave the Closet to live openly and honestly, and to work for our civil rights, religious and secular conservatives try to make us scapegoats for the moral decay of society. Within many of our churches we are called many other hurtful things.

Sinner. Heretic. Possessed. Unnatural. Immoral. Diseased.

We have been taunted, blamed, beaten, and even murdered. Some of us have taken our own lives rather than live in this crucified place. If only we would choose to be "normal," we are told, then we would not be subjected to this abuse. If only we would remain hidden, then everything would be all right. It would be preferable to the conservatives--and, truth be told, many moderates--for us to live in the crucified place out of sight so that their comfort zones are not breached.

So the Anglican Communion continues to squabble about whether or not the Episcopal Church can remain a member if it continues to move toward full inclusion of its lesbian and gay members. And once again, in a public forum, we lesbian and gay Episcopalians were asked by the head of our church to stand in a crucified place. Yet again a supposedly supportive heterosexual person in a leadership position has asked us to pay the price of a place at the table.

We are familiar with this crucified place because we have been living here most of our lives. The mostly unspoken implication is that the entire Episcopal Church is being asked to stand here. It is not. Heterosexual bishops are still being consecrated. Opposite gender marriages are still being blessed. Unless there is a moratorium on all consecrations and all marriages while the Anglican Communion sorts through these issues, then the heterosexual members of the Episcopal Church are not standing in this crucified place.

Peace,
Jeffri