An Apology and a Question
by: Amanda Udis-Kessler on November 25th, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Rochester, MN UU church sign (photo by Jonathunder)
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to blog, something I have been learning about over these past few months. You have to be pretty sure of yourself. But sometimes, the ethically and spiritually right thing to do is apologize. And I owe you my readers an apology. (We’ll get to the question later. It is on a different topic.)
A few days ago, I posted on DADT for the first time ever. I did so because I felt that a particular argument needed to be made and offered to the public, and not having seen anyone else make it (maybe I just haven’t been reading broadly enough), I decided it must be mine to deliver. But I did so with trepidation, and my trepidation proved well-founded.
I can deal easily with antigay comments from conservative religionists; indeed, I signed up to receive them when I started writing for Tikkun. But I cannot deal easily with people who point out that the US’s current military engagements are ethically problematic – because I agree with these people more than I agree with what I originally wrote. I am not the patriot for the US my blog posting may suggest; if I had a bumper sticker about this it would be the one that reads, “God bless the whole world – no exceptions.”
In order to make a point, I took a public position that does not represent my own position very closely. In retrospect, I am not sure this was the right thing to do. And so, while I do not wish to de-list the posting, I do wish to apologize. Critics of the US war system, I am with you.
Yes, as long as we have a military LGBT people should not in any way be barred from serving in it. (And interestingly, the Association of Professional Chaplains does not think repealing DADT would preclude chaplains from serving with clear consciences.) But believing in full civil rights for all people may sometimes be in tension with a more radical critique of the very social institutions that LGBT people are trying to integrate. (Marriage, anyone? Wall Street, anyone?)
I’ve made my civil rights claim. Now, I want to be on the record as being deeply concerned about what exactly our military spends most of its time doing around the world, how much money we throw at it, and how many better uses there could be for that money. I care about human flourishing. Put simply, the best way to guarantee human flourishing is to put our time, energy, passion, and money into the things that make for human flourishing, not the things that destroy it. The god of war is not worthy of human worship.
Which leads to the question, or rather, questions. They need a little context first.
Recent research indicates that relatively few Americans think US places of worship handle the issue of homosexuality effectively (regardless of the respondent’s own perspective on the topic). We could ask why this might be, or how such places of worship might improve, but here’s a different question: What is going right at those places of worship that do “handle the topic” well? What can other congregations learn from them? What impact are their theology/thealogy, worship, religious education, social action, community outreach, and even time for socializing having on their inclusiveness around sexuality? What makes them places where an LGBT teenager could go and never once get the message that God hated homosexuality or gender variation?
Today is Thanksgiving, and I am grateful for these houses of worship. I go to one; maybe some of you do as well. So if you are inspired to write in, I would love to hear your responses to my question(s).
Happy (belated) Thanksgiving – and peace, all.
Please, don’t beat yourself up. We live in what Parker Palmer calls “the tragic gap,” the space between what we know to be a real situation (messy and incomplete) and what we yearn and strive for as the ideal situation (just and complete). It’s another way of accepting what many traditions call “grace,” the forgiveness and compassion offered for our incompleteness in the tragic gap. Thanks for all you do and are. R
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Ralph. I only take issue (a bit) with the idea that I was “beating myself up” since I do think there is a distinction between insecure, low-self-esteem-type responses and those that are about both healthy egos and healthy humility – at least I hope I was working from the latter…but thanks nonetheless.
This may not be a direct response to your dilemma (repeal of DADT versus the whole idea of war) but it reminds me of mine. Which is the “whole thing” about the military. The other night David Letterman devoted almost his entire show to the young man who got the Medal of Honor and an honorable person he surely is. But when I heard him say that our first goal in Afghanistan is to win “their hearts and minds” I gagged. They haven’t even bothered to change the rhetoric from Vietnam. Almost without exception people express gratitude to our military for saving our freedoms (which we are giving away at home as fast as we can) but I do not for a minute believe that Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan had anything to do with our freedoms. What are we grateful to our soldiers for? They are victims and we are encouraging their victimization by applauding their “sacrifice.” Yet we don’t dare say so. We are avocating for LGBT folks to do what? Something we abhor. It is a dilemma that we have made and deserve.
Thank you, Joan. That is a helpful way to put at least one aspect of the dilemma as I understand it (yes, there are other elements, but this one is very important). Beautifully spoken. I have long thought that if we could make peace as sexy and exciting and creative and community-building as war turns out to be (in its own twisted way), we would have gone a long way toward becoming peace-lovers.
I don’t believe I can come close to the eloquence of those who have already responded, but I wanted to add two points — both of which have been alluded to, but which I think need some emphasis.
One is that war has historically been seen as a glorious endeavor, and, when a nation goes to war, or wants to go to war, the war drums drown out most rational discourse. We saw that with Iraq, when even though there was no connection with 9/11, the patriotic fervor that was manufactured led a majority of Americans to believe it did — and to indulge in other pseudo-patriotic acts like “Freedom Fries” in symbolic defiance of a nation which tried to be the speed bumps in the road to that war. When that happens, it is too late to talk about what could have or should have been handled differently in the run-up… even the LONG run-up. (It is my theory that when Afghanistan started drifting off the front pages, and Americans no longer were thinking we were “at war,” a new drum-beat emerged out of nowhere, it seemed, and whipped up the fervor again.)
There is also a good argument for perception of strength, and being able to defend against those who WOULD attack militarily. (Despite my wholehearted agreement with Amanda, in being “deeply concerned about what exactly our military spends most of its time doing around the world, how much money we throw at it, and how many better uses there could be for that money.”) Nevertheless, I believe that good men and women can, in good conscience, and with good motives, join the military. There is also the out-and-out bribery of dangling $25,000 sign-up bonuses in front of kids who can’t find a job — but that is another issue — and so are the 1984-ish “justifications” both for what seems like perpetual war and for the freedoms that we, as Joan pointed out so well, are throwing away as fast as we can.
However — and finally I get to my second point!! — I was a Navy Hospital Corpsman during the Vietnam War era. I enlisted not out of patriotic fervor or bribery or any of those more obvious reasons. It was far more naive — a mixture of “the draft will get me eventually” and I was also gay, didn’t like the idea, and thought it might somehow do “something” — something along the lines of “growing up” — either I was gay or not, and I thought that that environment might “straighten me out” (so to speak) one way or another. So MOTIVES are often hard to fathom. In the end, it became clear to me that I am gay, that the war was corrupt and wrong, and that I really didn’t have to be the chameleon I’d become in high school. So it did what I wanted it to do, even though I was bounced out — which also wasn’t a bad thing.
I do not believe in the Buffy Ste.-Marie “Universal Soldier” philosophy — “they’re the ones who give their bodies as the weapons of the war, and without them all this killing can’t go on.” I cannot “blame the victim,” or even question his or her motives — whether it’s patriotism or a sense of it being part of growing up, or a calculated desire to get a bribe, free training, and then 20-and-out with a pension and Tricare. And if it’s an LBGT person who has any or all of those motives, that should not be denied them because of who they are. So yes, fighting for repeal of DADT is in a sense fighting for the right of gay people to engage in an activity that — at least at the present time — we regard as ethically questionable at best. It is a point I’m glad you made, Amanda, but in the end, I wonder if we are to “protect” only them.
War has long since become an industry. Jefferson and Lincoln both warned us about the potential of corporations to corrupt government. Truman investigated war profiteering as a Senator and asserted civilian control as President. Eisenhower warned us again about the military-industrial complex…. We have seen decreasing success of most military actions since 1945. Yet we continue to throw more and more money (though fewer and fewer people) at it. War has become the excuse for erosion of liberty, but never a reason for general sacrifice — and therefore it is “not an issue” in most minds. And so here we are in 1984.
And while I don’t actually FEEL as pessimistic as this last paragraph does, I think that gay people have just as much reason or non-reason to serve as anybody else, and our presence or absence is unlikely to affect the course of that juggernaut. (And besides, we are within a hair’s breadth of making one inroad — a very symbolically important one — on this civil rights mission.)
Dave, thanks for your thoughtful comments. I agree with most of them; being a sociologist, I may hold a slightly different position from you in that while I do not want to demean the dignity of the soldiers I do believe that, in the most technical and tactical sense, the war cannot go on without them. But the war could not go on without plenty of other elements as well, like political and military leaders, a broader culture that supports war, the military as an institution, etc. So I see your point in not making the soldiers more responsible than anyone else.
At the end of the day, it is devilishly hard to figure out how to live in the present and work for the longer term when the two are in conflict.
Peace, Amanda
Thanks, Amanda for your clarification about DADT and the military. Your questions about religious communities welcoming LGBT are also very good and worthy of careful research. You probably know (but other readers may not) that The United Church of Christ (Congregational) has for some time had an Open and Affirming movement (ONA) which has encouraged our congregations to study the issue, and upon (hopefully!) reaching a welcoming conclusion, add their church’s name to the growing list of ONA
congregations. I am not aware of the total number of congregations to date, nor have I read anything about what difference such an affirmation has made in the life of these congregations or the community in which they exist. I’d suggest that you and anyone else so interested contact the Conference Minister of the UCC in your State, and/or the national office of the UCC to see whether such data exists and/or to urge research along the lines of your good questions.
Thanks for your comments, John. I know and love the UCC (though as a UU friend, not a member), and when I visit the local UCC church, I am delighted to see the greeters wearing “red comma” stoles, which I know refers to the “God is still speaking,” campaign, which in turn is part of the UCC’s open and affirming program. I agree that someone should do the kind of research you suggest, but right now it is not likely to be me (between the day job, seminary, regular preaching and church music, and this blog). I had hoped that anyone so inspired would actually write in with their own particular observations so that people who read my postings would get to have a conversation with each other. But I am glad of your observations. Peace, Amanda