Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson, the first non-celibate gay bishop, spoke this past Wednesday in Rollins Chapel to kick off Pride Week. His talk, Sexuality and Religion, was organized by the Pride Planning Committee and the Tucker Foundation and was well-attended by members of the LBGTQA and faith communities alike.
Bishop Robinson is described as humble by his diocese in New Hampshire. An effective speaker, he spoke with me last November, at DGALA, the annual gathering of Dartmouth LBGTQ Alumni. Like the last time, He did not fail to impress.
Robinson began his talk by emphasizing the importance of a Pride Week even in a place like Dartmouth, which on the surface seems absent prejudice. Pride Week is a celebration of how far LBGTQ people have come, but it also serves as reminder that even in places like Dartmouth or New Hampshire, there remains work to be done. Visibility is a public and political statement that not only strengthens the LBGTQ community but a community as a whole.
He then opined that other great civil rights movements of the past, such as those for racial and ethnic minorities, women, the elderly and the disabled, truly gained momentum when members of the dominant majority—whites, men, the young—joined forces with the oppressed and helped bring about justice for all. Civil justice becomes more attainable once all realize that discrimination negatively affects both the oppressors and the oppressed. The need and appreciation for straight allies is more important to the LBGTQ community than ever before. He stated that when people know at least one gay or lesbian, they are less likely to discriminate. When someone says, “that’s so gay” to refer to something lame or stupid, a face pops up. That is why Robinson stresses the adage of the late Harvey Milk: “Coming out is the most political statement you can make.” Today, most of the younger generation may know someone who is gay, but people from Robinson’s generation, contemporary lawmakers and politicians, may not. So for him, visibility is vital.
Yet coming out, for some, can be a difficult process. Here, Robinson delved into the religious side of LBGTQ issues. He described how most moral justifications for gay bashing and hate crimes originate in the Bible, the Torah, or the Koran, illustrating how a sense of religious alienation pervades the LBGTQ community. For instance, Robinson once led a workshop for LBGTQ youth who all came from fairly secular households. However, every one of them was aware of the word “abomination” and its perceived reflection on their lives.
Despite this intimidating precedent, Robinson does not feel that spirituality and homosexuality are incompatible, and in fact argues the opposite. His problem instead lies in how the seven or so verses that condemn homosexuality in the Bible are interpreted, and he He outlines three ways in which LGBTQ people can reinterpret those verses.
First, many if not all of supposedly anti-gay verses are taken out of their cultural context. For example, the most explicit condemnation of homosexuality in the Bible, Leviticus 18:22 (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination”) occurs only a couple chapters away from Leviticus 15:16-18, which condemns the “sin of Onan”—better known as “spilling seed” (in Genesis 18:8-10, Onan pulls out before ejaculating while having sex with his wife and God slays him. This passage has historically been used to condemn male masturbation and birth control). Robinson then questions, then, why society at large turns a blind eye to the sin of Onan but not to a similar passage condemning homosexuality. These two parts in Leviticus must obviously be taken together; spilling seed, whether by pulling out or through homosexual acts, was prohibited within the young Hebrew nation, which prized male sperm as a means to increase population. Also, those verses condemning homosexuality operate on the assumption that all people are heterosexual. People living at the time had no conception of homosexuality, so any person, any heterosexual, was going against his or her nature by engaging in homosexual acts. The Bible doesn’t prohibit homosexuality per se, but instead the act of going against one’s nature.Second, verses condoning slavery and sexism have already been reinterpreted within their cultural contexts, and preachers no longer invoke them according to original understanding. Should the verses condemning homosexuality be treated any differently? Robinson doesn’t believe that the living God presented us with a religious text that was only culturally relevant through the first century. No, the living God continues to work with humanity, helping it to gain a greater understanding of what it means to have justice and equality for all. Robinson quoted John 16:22, in which Jesus says to the disciples, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…he will shew you things to come.” The message of Jesus was culturally and politically revolutionary for its time. The disciples did a good job of absorbing the controversy of “God is love” (1 John 4:8), but throughout the resulting centuries we still struggle with a full understanding of what it means to love all regardless of race, gender, and sexual orientation and presentation. Robinson feels that the living God still continues to sends the Holy Spirit to guide believers to a greater acceptance of all God’s children, whether gay, straight, and everything in between.
Third, Robinson encourages members of the LBGTQ to no longer fear or shy away from religion. Too often LBGTQ people feel terrible pain when their faith communities reject them, barring them from attendance or refusing to marry them in synagogues, churches or mosques. Yet LBGTQ people must learn to see religious texts as their texts too. Although there are no (so far as we can tell) openly LGBTQ Biblical heroes, LBGTQ people can still feel empowered by Bible stories. For example, Robinson sees the Exodus as biggest “coming out” in history. He compared being in the closet to being enslaved until a great person comes and leads you out. When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, Robinson feels Moses’ parting of the waves was little less dramatic than presented in the film The Ten Commandments. Instead of clearing a giant boulevard across the sea, Moses had to embark in faith, and with each step of faith just the right amount of land for a dry footfall was cleared. Robinson feels the process of coming out is just as gradual and terrifying. It involves stepping out in faith, stepping out into the unknown, without seeing what lies ahead. And even when the other side is reached, there’s still a long trek to the Promised Land.
The LBGTQ community has yet to reach its Promised Land. Although there is greater awareness of LBGTQ people and issues than ever before in history, homophobia still pervades the discourse in many more circles than we’d like to believe. Robinson prefers the term heterosexism as opposed to homophobia; linguistically, he argues, homophobia is the fear of homosexuality. It’s a prejudice, but as Robinson points out anyone can have an irrational prejudice against anything. What’s truly troubling is an “-ism,” a linguistic construct according to which a prejudice is no longer simply a prejudice, but is paired with the power to actively silence and discriminate by way of its recognition. We are aware of racism, prejudice paired with power favoring white people, and sexism, prejudice paired with power favoring men, but what we know as homophobia is really heterosexism, prejudice paired with power favoring straight people. When a minority is denied basic civil rights, the majority is actively and/or passively using its power to oppress said minority. The members of said minority are second-class citizens—it’s as simple as that.
The kind of acceptance that enables Pride Week snowballs into greater awareness and acceptance. As LGBTQ people continue to empower themselves politically, socially and spiritually, more people will begin to see that LGBTQ awareness is here to stay and that such powerful voices cannot be silenced. Robinson notes that some people may wonder if a there is need for Pride Week at a place as open and diverse as Dartmouth. but acknowledge the need to celebrate the strides made by the flourishing LBGTQ community here and, more importantly, the strides to come.
