Fear, Regret, and Witness
Two questions I have been pondering lately, both of which came to me in a dream from my grandmother, who spoke in perfect English as she never had in life, pressing in against the cold, asking me:
What is your life’s greatest regret?
To what are you called to bear witness?
Let me begin at the beginning, in September 2001, when the GLBT campus organization at the University of Minnesota, Morris, called Equality, nominated a gay man for Homecoming Queen. He wins in October of that same year; the student who is crowned king is also a gay man.
Let me bear witness to what happens next. The letters to the paper, from farmers and ministers and out-of-town parents, saying hateful, horrible things: We are all going to hell. How dare we break such a sacred tradition. How dare we live in Morris. How dare we exist, period. Let me bear witness to the phone calls the student receives, hateful and threatening, and to the way he quietly leaves the campus and the town as a result, gives up on college altogether.
(Let me bear witness to another gay man who will not reach his full potential because of other people’s hatred. At least, I think, he is not dead or addicted to drugs like so many of the GLBT people I knew in college—this is my only comfort).
Fast forward two years to 2003. The GLBT campus organization gets permission to raise a rainbow flag on the flagpole. The flag is torn to pieces in the middle of the night. The incident is not reported as a bias-motivated incident because the administration contends that “maybe the person who did it would have done the same thing to any flag. We can’t be sure.”
We can’t be sure, of course, because hateful people find ways to get away with being hateful.
The same week, two gay men kiss lightly in front of the video counter at the local grocery store. They are with their friend, a bisexual woman who wears her politics, literally, on her sleeve, buttons weaving like a ribbon up and down the arms of her jean jacket.
Let me bear witness to what happened next. Three high school boys see that kiss and decide to do something about it. They follow the men and their friend out the door, yelling, “We don’t want any fags in Morris.” They follow the students in their car, and when the students park and get out of the car on campus, they swerve a few times—to scare them or hurt them, who can know for sure—and continue to shout.
Let me bear witness to what happens next. The students call the police, who investigate responsibly. A spiral of silence falls over the town. Grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, ministers—nobody speaks. Everybody knows who did it—again and again, people will whisper the boys’ names to me but claim only to have heard it was them but not to know for sure. The case is never solved.
The victims leave UMM, as does one of the students who found the flag in the first place. For privacy reasons, I will not include information about what happens to them next—only that the events of this night affect them for the next three years and beyond.
I become terrified. My partner and I are only a few years away, I think at the time, from starting our own family. I don’t want my children to grow up in the kind of school or community that could produce kids capable of hating “fags” enough to feel entitled to say and do the things those high school kids said and did. I don’t want to raise my kids in a town with a campus capable of admitting, educating and graduating kids capable of destroying a symbol of struggle and peace.
But, I believe, most people in Morris are reasonable. There has been, after all, a community meeting, including teachers from the high school and community leaders, even the mayor herself. There have been plans for a Day Against Hate—plans that never materialize.
I decide to research and collect resources for high school principals about ways to create safer, more affirming spaces for GLBT students. I make an appointment with the principal to talk about these resources. Two days before the appointment, I get an invitation to lunch by an administrator at my college, who tells me not to pursue the meeting. “We can’t tell the schools here what to do, and we don’t want them telling us what to do.” I listen and cancel the meeting, even though I have plans to meet with the principal as a concerned future parent, a community member, and not an employee of the university. “In this town, there is no distinction,” the administrator tells me, and perhaps she is right.
What is your life’s greatest regret?
I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, but this is the mistake I regret the most. I should have kept that appointment. I should have been firm about my right to speak out for my future children. I should have begun to lay the groundwork, as much as possible, for a safe and just school in our community that so desperately needs justice and safety.
2004: The town’s ministerium writes a letter in support of “traditional families.” I read the letter and weep in my office for an hour. A friend stands beside me, his hand on my head, trying to calm me. My partner, who has never understood my continued commitment to my faith—a faith that has caused her so much damage—cannot understand the depth of my grief. She is bewildered but, sadly, not at all surprised.
Later that day, I call my minister. She does not apologize. I hang up.
I don’t go to church for a month. I write a letter to the paper condemning the ministers in town for supporting the kind of hate that leads to violence.
My minister calls to ask me to meet her for lunch. Over and over, I dream that lunch from a year earlier when I abandoned my plan to meet with the school principal. In my subconscious mind, I have begun to associate lunches with a loss of resolve. Reluctantly, I meet with her, and then agree to go back to church, just once, to talk with a group of committed church members who want to start an open and affirming committee. When I get to the church, I see that they are sincere. I agree to help with their efforts.
Let me bear witness to their kindness, to the depth of their pain for me, to their desire to change the church, and, by doing so, to make the community a better place for GLBT Christians.
2005: In January, the Open and Affirming committee puts forward a resolution to study the issue of gays and lesbians in the church for at least a year. Several people stand up and speak out against the resolution. Others speak out in support. I find my strength and stand up to speak also. I say that I want to go to a church where I will feel comfortable baptizing my child, where I know that child will learn not to hate, and not to simply tolerate, but to affirm and love. Everyone is quiet.
The resolution passes. Let me bear witness to my gratitude. I spend the day writing thank you notes to everyone who helped.
Later that day, my minister calls to tell me she would love to baptize any future children I may have.
Even though there are still no leads in either the destruction of the Pride flag or the hate crime from 2003, I begin to regain my hope. And then, in March, another controversy emerges. At UMM, the annual children’s play focuses on diversity issues. Even though all the gay content has been removed from the script, most schools in the region boycott the play. My friend, the director, invites the ministers and parents in town to see a preview. Hardly anyone shows up. There is no attempt by the faith community to respond to what happens. There is no attempt by the administration to dialogue with the principals of the school, no public attempt to stand behind the play—or if there is, it is so invisible that my friend the director weeps openly one afternoon in his office, vowing to leave our town as soon as he is able. Where are the administrators? Where are the clergy? Where are the teachers I thought were our allies? he asks over and over, doubled over, his hand on his stomach.
My friend eventually figures out a way to work out of town as much as possible through leaves and sabbaticals in upcoming years; his partner gets a job in another city. Another gay professor also finds another job, as does a biracial family. “I don’t want to raise my kids here,” the mother says. Again, I dream that dream, that lunch conversation that resulted in my cancelling my appointment with the principal. Would things have been different if I had kept that appointment? By now, I am cynical. Probably my appointment would have amounted to nothing, but at least I would have tried.
Let me bear witness to this, my greatest regret, which haunts me still. Let me bear witness to what my grandmother tells me in another dream, this time in the island-Greek marked by poverty and hopelessness, through a body branded by soldiers’ beatings: Don’t raise your children in a place where you are hated, she says. I realize she has two faces, maternal and paternal, bearing the two names I have been given. I wake in a pool of sweat, shout out at her in Greek, and then fall immediately back to sleep. As soon as I’ve crossed over into the world of dream, my mother comes to me: Finish what you started, she says. My mother, her mother, and her mother-in-law were always arguing in life as in death. I have to laugh at their conflicting advice.
I listen to my mother. I organize a reading of the gay-themed skits from the script. I invite members of Rainbow Families, Outfront Minnesota, other GLBT organizations in the Twin Cities. Nobody comes except friends of the actors and director and one row of high school girls who, in the dialogue following the play, say that are teased regularly and called “lesbians” because they “dare” to wear shirts that say “Gay? Fine By Me” to school. They are asked by their principal to stop wearing the shirts; they refuse.
The organizations in the cities are not interested in our little town, our inconsequential homophobic dramas. One mother—the only member of Rainbow Families who responds to our invitation--calls to tell me she and her partner would love to bring their children to the play, but they are afraid to bring their children to rural Minnesota, especially to a town with no GSA or PFLAG or open and affirming churches.
But we have a university here, I say.
Where have your administrators been in all of this? she asks. Where is the faith community? Where are your allies?
I don’t have any answer.
Four more GLBT students drop out of school. One e-mails me that she does not plan, ever, to go back to college. Another statistic, I think again. Another GLBT person who won’t reach her full potential because of fear. At least she’s not dead, not hurt, like so many people I knew from earlier in my life, I think, trying to console myself. I feel a pain in my throat: I have thought this before. The other three students go to campuses where they hope they will be safer or at least more anonymous.
My church begins the painful dialogues about the open and affirming process that tear my heart apart. People’s true colors come through, sometimes for the best, but many times for the worst. Some tell me they are OK with me, OK with gay people in general, but that they don’t want to “make a big deal about it.” I weep a lot, raise my hand and respond to comments a lot, wonder over and over how much to be involved. I grit my teeth while even the most well-meaning people say we have to slow down, that nobody is ready to hear the voices of gay Christians or their families “at this phase in the process.”
On Ash Wednesday, I happen to be the last in line for the sacrament of ashes. I put the sign of the cross on my minister's forehead. I weep and pray that I will find it in my heart to forgive her. On Easter, I am asked to serve communion, and finally, when I offer her the bread and cup, I find my heart warming, the anger dissipating.
2006: The open and affirming process goes on, no end in sight. I am frustrated and horrified and saddened and full of hope each time the issue is discussed. Almost two years after the initial resolution was drafted, I am still waiting for the day when GLBT Christians will have the chance to speak.
My partner and I split up. She sabotages our plans to start a family over and over; finally, she admits that she is terrified. “This isn’t a good place to raise kids. Besides, we don’t have enough time in our lives to be mothers and activists,” she says. “And maybe we would have the time in another place where less was required of us, but I don’t want to leave.” For this reason, and others, we decide to call it quits after six years. There is no ritual for divorce in the GLBT community—not even a paper to sign. Some of my closest friends ignore what is happening, talk only about their own lives, the weather, politics. Others come through, sit with me while I weep, listening to my grief and confusion. I spend a few agonizing months wondering what to do next—leave or stay. It is too late to leave, really—too late to find another academic job—so I stay. Reluctantly, fearfully, prayerfully, I stay.
Finish what you started, my mother whispers to me as spring bursts into blossom and the divorce is complete. My grandmother, for once, is silent.
“You’ve started so much here,” one of my friends assures me the night before I sign the paperwork to purchase a small home for myself. “You have to stay and see it through.”
A single mother who has adopted two children comes over with sparkling grape juice and demands to see the room where, eventually, my baby will sleep. She tells me it is not going to be easy. She tells me that neither of her dark-skinned girls attend the local schools, suggests I start looking into all of my options, offers to give me any advice I need.
The dream comes back: that lunch, that phone call to cancel the appointment, the phone’s receiver in my hand. How long it took for me to put it down after the office secretary had carefully taken my message and hung up.
I begin looking into starting a family on my own. Several friends are doing the same. It is that time in all of our lives when we are looking for ways to deepen our spiritual lives through commitments to the future, whatever form they take. More and more people tell me, “You will make such a good mother. Don’t let the hateful people take that desire away from you.”
I start to heal. The hope returns.
And then, somebody writes “All Gays Die” on a whiteboard on campus. A man claiming to have been in that car in 2003 goes after gay students again, this time pushing one to the ground twice, verbally assaulting five students, attempting to break the windows in a home, and succeeding in breaking one student’s windshield. Seven students who are not involved in these incidents, including two I do not know, call me at home, afraid for their safety.
“I’m looking for another job,” a straight friend confesses to me—the same friend who earlier in the year urged me to stay. “I can’t fathom raising my child here. I can’t believe you’re considering it.” Two other friends with young children ask me for letters of recommendation, citing the schools as their main reason for wanting to leave.
I know what they mean. I either have to leave—to go to a place where there is a GSA in the high school and a PFLAG meeting in a local church and a church that will teach social justice to my children, will welcome me and them and all people with open arms, no matter what else is happening in the community—or else I have to stick it out and do the things I’ve wanted all along to do.
I can’t raise my children in a town with a school district that does not want to educate for tolerance, for justice.
I can’t work for an institution that will not allow me to be a citizen first and an employee second.
Let me bear witness. I can’t continue to stay silent.
Tomorrow, I’m going to find that envelope of information about ways to make high schools safe for GLBT people, ways to teach tolerance and justice and peace, the one I was told to keep to myself. I’m going to call the principal again and make that appointment. I’m going to call my administrators to let them know I’ve decided to go ahead, three years later, with my plan to start the conversation.
I think I will sleep well tonight—no nightmares about lunches that lead to cancelled appointments. I have answered my grandmother’s questions, and if she comes to me at all, she will be resigned to what I’ve chosen. She will throw up her hands and say to me, “Kane oti thelis,” which means, roughly, do what you want, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t turn out the way you expect.
And if my mother comes to me, she will touch my chin and kiss both my cheeks to bless me and to greet me and to send me off all at the same time, the way my priest kissed her body in her coffin. For years they had battled over the role of children and education and social justice issues in our church. At her death, he asked for her forgiveness in that kiss. My mother will kiss me not to ask for forgiveness, but to give me the forgiveness that I need for all the times I’ve failed to act.
Let me bear witness to this fact: I don’t want to live with any more regrets.
Hope, again: on Thursday night, in between a conference and a visit with my family, I spend an evening at the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church at a worship service for full inclusion of GLBT people into the life of faith. As we pray for forgiveness for our institutions and strength to carry on our work, I weep and weep, praying silently for all the institutions that have caused misery and spiritual and actual deaths, churches and schools and colleges and families and governments.
Let me bear witness to what the Bishop who gives the sermon says, to how honestly she speaks to us of her own failings to care for the GLBT people in her congregations earlier in her ministry—at her deep pain at being part of an institution that has contributed to the spiritual deaths of so many GLBT people. Let me bear witness to the elderly straight couple beside me who whispers, in unison, Amen.
I weep some more. The woman beside me whom I don’t know puts her arm around my shoulder. Her husband reaches over her and touches my cheek. Soon we are all invited to the table for the ritual of healing with oil. As a lay minister makes the sign of the cross on my forehead and says, “You are a child of God, welcomed and loved and forgiven. Forgive those who have hurt you in even the deepest ways, and go on with new strength to work for justice,” I double over in pain. I remember my gay friend, the director of the children’s play, doubled over in the same way in his office. I remember how he wept and wept, and then, finally, got up and made the calls he shouldn’t have had to make to the ministers and principals and parents in town to invite them to the free screening. Let me bear witness to how he went on, and to how I, too, stood still for a moment, waiting for the pain to pass, and then stood up and whispered, “Amen.”
Later, during a panel discussion of leaders from the Jewish, Native American, and Christian traditions, Anita Hill, the lesbian minister who was ordained in the ELCA church despite her denomination’s stance against GLBT people in ministry, said, “When I think of all the women who died fighting for the right to vote, who never got to go to the ballot box, I am humbled. When I think of all the blacks who died fighting for civil rights, I am humbled. I have to believe that, like them, I have done what I can. I pray I will continue to do what I can until the day I die. Will GLBT people have full inclusion in the church in my lifetime? I don’t know. But I have faith that even if I don’t taste the fruits of my labor, somebody will.”
Somebody—me, or my children, or, if I decide to leave this town for a place that will be safer and more affirming for my family rather than sticking it out, somebody else’s children--will hopefully reap the benefits of my work here, just as I have reaped the benefits of so many GLBT and allied people who came to rural Minnesota long before me and laid the groundwork that allowed me to come to a place with domestic partner benefits and an anti-discrimination clause and an active GLBT student group and an ally program.
I need to have faith. But I also need to remember Saint James’ edict that faith is only shown through works. Let me bear witness to what I haven’t done yet, to what I will do now in faith: take on the school district, get over my fear and work more actively toward my goal of becoming a parent. And let me bear witness and live out another edict by another saint named Audre Lorde: “If I choose to be powerful, to use my faith in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
What is your life’s greatest regret?
To what are you called to bear witness?
Let me begin at the beginning, in September 2001, when the GLBT campus organization at the University of Minnesota, Morris, called Equality, nominated a gay man for Homecoming Queen. He wins in October of that same year; the student who is crowned king is also a gay man.
Let me bear witness to what happens next. The letters to the paper, from farmers and ministers and out-of-town parents, saying hateful, horrible things: We are all going to hell. How dare we break such a sacred tradition. How dare we live in Morris. How dare we exist, period. Let me bear witness to the phone calls the student receives, hateful and threatening, and to the way he quietly leaves the campus and the town as a result, gives up on college altogether.
(Let me bear witness to another gay man who will not reach his full potential because of other people’s hatred. At least, I think, he is not dead or addicted to drugs like so many of the GLBT people I knew in college—this is my only comfort).
Fast forward two years to 2003. The GLBT campus organization gets permission to raise a rainbow flag on the flagpole. The flag is torn to pieces in the middle of the night. The incident is not reported as a bias-motivated incident because the administration contends that “maybe the person who did it would have done the same thing to any flag. We can’t be sure.”
We can’t be sure, of course, because hateful people find ways to get away with being hateful.
The same week, two gay men kiss lightly in front of the video counter at the local grocery store. They are with their friend, a bisexual woman who wears her politics, literally, on her sleeve, buttons weaving like a ribbon up and down the arms of her jean jacket.
Let me bear witness to what happened next. Three high school boys see that kiss and decide to do something about it. They follow the men and their friend out the door, yelling, “We don’t want any fags in Morris.” They follow the students in their car, and when the students park and get out of the car on campus, they swerve a few times—to scare them or hurt them, who can know for sure—and continue to shout.
Let me bear witness to what happens next. The students call the police, who investigate responsibly. A spiral of silence falls over the town. Grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, ministers—nobody speaks. Everybody knows who did it—again and again, people will whisper the boys’ names to me but claim only to have heard it was them but not to know for sure. The case is never solved.
The victims leave UMM, as does one of the students who found the flag in the first place. For privacy reasons, I will not include information about what happens to them next—only that the events of this night affect them for the next three years and beyond.
I become terrified. My partner and I are only a few years away, I think at the time, from starting our own family. I don’t want my children to grow up in the kind of school or community that could produce kids capable of hating “fags” enough to feel entitled to say and do the things those high school kids said and did. I don’t want to raise my kids in a town with a campus capable of admitting, educating and graduating kids capable of destroying a symbol of struggle and peace.
But, I believe, most people in Morris are reasonable. There has been, after all, a community meeting, including teachers from the high school and community leaders, even the mayor herself. There have been plans for a Day Against Hate—plans that never materialize.
I decide to research and collect resources for high school principals about ways to create safer, more affirming spaces for GLBT students. I make an appointment with the principal to talk about these resources. Two days before the appointment, I get an invitation to lunch by an administrator at my college, who tells me not to pursue the meeting. “We can’t tell the schools here what to do, and we don’t want them telling us what to do.” I listen and cancel the meeting, even though I have plans to meet with the principal as a concerned future parent, a community member, and not an employee of the university. “In this town, there is no distinction,” the administrator tells me, and perhaps she is right.
What is your life’s greatest regret?
I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, but this is the mistake I regret the most. I should have kept that appointment. I should have been firm about my right to speak out for my future children. I should have begun to lay the groundwork, as much as possible, for a safe and just school in our community that so desperately needs justice and safety.
2004: The town’s ministerium writes a letter in support of “traditional families.” I read the letter and weep in my office for an hour. A friend stands beside me, his hand on my head, trying to calm me. My partner, who has never understood my continued commitment to my faith—a faith that has caused her so much damage—cannot understand the depth of my grief. She is bewildered but, sadly, not at all surprised.
Later that day, I call my minister. She does not apologize. I hang up.
I don’t go to church for a month. I write a letter to the paper condemning the ministers in town for supporting the kind of hate that leads to violence.
My minister calls to ask me to meet her for lunch. Over and over, I dream that lunch from a year earlier when I abandoned my plan to meet with the school principal. In my subconscious mind, I have begun to associate lunches with a loss of resolve. Reluctantly, I meet with her, and then agree to go back to church, just once, to talk with a group of committed church members who want to start an open and affirming committee. When I get to the church, I see that they are sincere. I agree to help with their efforts.
Let me bear witness to their kindness, to the depth of their pain for me, to their desire to change the church, and, by doing so, to make the community a better place for GLBT Christians.
2005: In January, the Open and Affirming committee puts forward a resolution to study the issue of gays and lesbians in the church for at least a year. Several people stand up and speak out against the resolution. Others speak out in support. I find my strength and stand up to speak also. I say that I want to go to a church where I will feel comfortable baptizing my child, where I know that child will learn not to hate, and not to simply tolerate, but to affirm and love. Everyone is quiet.
The resolution passes. Let me bear witness to my gratitude. I spend the day writing thank you notes to everyone who helped.
Later that day, my minister calls to tell me she would love to baptize any future children I may have.
Even though there are still no leads in either the destruction of the Pride flag or the hate crime from 2003, I begin to regain my hope. And then, in March, another controversy emerges. At UMM, the annual children’s play focuses on diversity issues. Even though all the gay content has been removed from the script, most schools in the region boycott the play. My friend, the director, invites the ministers and parents in town to see a preview. Hardly anyone shows up. There is no attempt by the faith community to respond to what happens. There is no attempt by the administration to dialogue with the principals of the school, no public attempt to stand behind the play—or if there is, it is so invisible that my friend the director weeps openly one afternoon in his office, vowing to leave our town as soon as he is able. Where are the administrators? Where are the clergy? Where are the teachers I thought were our allies? he asks over and over, doubled over, his hand on his stomach.
My friend eventually figures out a way to work out of town as much as possible through leaves and sabbaticals in upcoming years; his partner gets a job in another city. Another gay professor also finds another job, as does a biracial family. “I don’t want to raise my kids here,” the mother says. Again, I dream that dream, that lunch conversation that resulted in my cancelling my appointment with the principal. Would things have been different if I had kept that appointment? By now, I am cynical. Probably my appointment would have amounted to nothing, but at least I would have tried.
Let me bear witness to this, my greatest regret, which haunts me still. Let me bear witness to what my grandmother tells me in another dream, this time in the island-Greek marked by poverty and hopelessness, through a body branded by soldiers’ beatings: Don’t raise your children in a place where you are hated, she says. I realize she has two faces, maternal and paternal, bearing the two names I have been given. I wake in a pool of sweat, shout out at her in Greek, and then fall immediately back to sleep. As soon as I’ve crossed over into the world of dream, my mother comes to me: Finish what you started, she says. My mother, her mother, and her mother-in-law were always arguing in life as in death. I have to laugh at their conflicting advice.
I listen to my mother. I organize a reading of the gay-themed skits from the script. I invite members of Rainbow Families, Outfront Minnesota, other GLBT organizations in the Twin Cities. Nobody comes except friends of the actors and director and one row of high school girls who, in the dialogue following the play, say that are teased regularly and called “lesbians” because they “dare” to wear shirts that say “Gay? Fine By Me” to school. They are asked by their principal to stop wearing the shirts; they refuse.
The organizations in the cities are not interested in our little town, our inconsequential homophobic dramas. One mother—the only member of Rainbow Families who responds to our invitation--calls to tell me she and her partner would love to bring their children to the play, but they are afraid to bring their children to rural Minnesota, especially to a town with no GSA or PFLAG or open and affirming churches.
But we have a university here, I say.
Where have your administrators been in all of this? she asks. Where is the faith community? Where are your allies?
I don’t have any answer.
Four more GLBT students drop out of school. One e-mails me that she does not plan, ever, to go back to college. Another statistic, I think again. Another GLBT person who won’t reach her full potential because of fear. At least she’s not dead, not hurt, like so many people I knew from earlier in my life, I think, trying to console myself. I feel a pain in my throat: I have thought this before. The other three students go to campuses where they hope they will be safer or at least more anonymous.
My church begins the painful dialogues about the open and affirming process that tear my heart apart. People’s true colors come through, sometimes for the best, but many times for the worst. Some tell me they are OK with me, OK with gay people in general, but that they don’t want to “make a big deal about it.” I weep a lot, raise my hand and respond to comments a lot, wonder over and over how much to be involved. I grit my teeth while even the most well-meaning people say we have to slow down, that nobody is ready to hear the voices of gay Christians or their families “at this phase in the process.”
On Ash Wednesday, I happen to be the last in line for the sacrament of ashes. I put the sign of the cross on my minister's forehead. I weep and pray that I will find it in my heart to forgive her. On Easter, I am asked to serve communion, and finally, when I offer her the bread and cup, I find my heart warming, the anger dissipating.
2006: The open and affirming process goes on, no end in sight. I am frustrated and horrified and saddened and full of hope each time the issue is discussed. Almost two years after the initial resolution was drafted, I am still waiting for the day when GLBT Christians will have the chance to speak.
My partner and I split up. She sabotages our plans to start a family over and over; finally, she admits that she is terrified. “This isn’t a good place to raise kids. Besides, we don’t have enough time in our lives to be mothers and activists,” she says. “And maybe we would have the time in another place where less was required of us, but I don’t want to leave.” For this reason, and others, we decide to call it quits after six years. There is no ritual for divorce in the GLBT community—not even a paper to sign. Some of my closest friends ignore what is happening, talk only about their own lives, the weather, politics. Others come through, sit with me while I weep, listening to my grief and confusion. I spend a few agonizing months wondering what to do next—leave or stay. It is too late to leave, really—too late to find another academic job—so I stay. Reluctantly, fearfully, prayerfully, I stay.
Finish what you started, my mother whispers to me as spring bursts into blossom and the divorce is complete. My grandmother, for once, is silent.
“You’ve started so much here,” one of my friends assures me the night before I sign the paperwork to purchase a small home for myself. “You have to stay and see it through.”
A single mother who has adopted two children comes over with sparkling grape juice and demands to see the room where, eventually, my baby will sleep. She tells me it is not going to be easy. She tells me that neither of her dark-skinned girls attend the local schools, suggests I start looking into all of my options, offers to give me any advice I need.
The dream comes back: that lunch, that phone call to cancel the appointment, the phone’s receiver in my hand. How long it took for me to put it down after the office secretary had carefully taken my message and hung up.
I begin looking into starting a family on my own. Several friends are doing the same. It is that time in all of our lives when we are looking for ways to deepen our spiritual lives through commitments to the future, whatever form they take. More and more people tell me, “You will make such a good mother. Don’t let the hateful people take that desire away from you.”
I start to heal. The hope returns.
And then, somebody writes “All Gays Die” on a whiteboard on campus. A man claiming to have been in that car in 2003 goes after gay students again, this time pushing one to the ground twice, verbally assaulting five students, attempting to break the windows in a home, and succeeding in breaking one student’s windshield. Seven students who are not involved in these incidents, including two I do not know, call me at home, afraid for their safety.
“I’m looking for another job,” a straight friend confesses to me—the same friend who earlier in the year urged me to stay. “I can’t fathom raising my child here. I can’t believe you’re considering it.” Two other friends with young children ask me for letters of recommendation, citing the schools as their main reason for wanting to leave.
I know what they mean. I either have to leave—to go to a place where there is a GSA in the high school and a PFLAG meeting in a local church and a church that will teach social justice to my children, will welcome me and them and all people with open arms, no matter what else is happening in the community—or else I have to stick it out and do the things I’ve wanted all along to do.
I can’t raise my children in a town with a school district that does not want to educate for tolerance, for justice.
I can’t work for an institution that will not allow me to be a citizen first and an employee second.
Let me bear witness. I can’t continue to stay silent.
Tomorrow, I’m going to find that envelope of information about ways to make high schools safe for GLBT people, ways to teach tolerance and justice and peace, the one I was told to keep to myself. I’m going to call the principal again and make that appointment. I’m going to call my administrators to let them know I’ve decided to go ahead, three years later, with my plan to start the conversation.
I think I will sleep well tonight—no nightmares about lunches that lead to cancelled appointments. I have answered my grandmother’s questions, and if she comes to me at all, she will be resigned to what I’ve chosen. She will throw up her hands and say to me, “Kane oti thelis,” which means, roughly, do what you want, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t turn out the way you expect.
And if my mother comes to me, she will touch my chin and kiss both my cheeks to bless me and to greet me and to send me off all at the same time, the way my priest kissed her body in her coffin. For years they had battled over the role of children and education and social justice issues in our church. At her death, he asked for her forgiveness in that kiss. My mother will kiss me not to ask for forgiveness, but to give me the forgiveness that I need for all the times I’ve failed to act.
Let me bear witness to this fact: I don’t want to live with any more regrets.
Hope, again: on Thursday night, in between a conference and a visit with my family, I spend an evening at the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church at a worship service for full inclusion of GLBT people into the life of faith. As we pray for forgiveness for our institutions and strength to carry on our work, I weep and weep, praying silently for all the institutions that have caused misery and spiritual and actual deaths, churches and schools and colleges and families and governments.
Let me bear witness to what the Bishop who gives the sermon says, to how honestly she speaks to us of her own failings to care for the GLBT people in her congregations earlier in her ministry—at her deep pain at being part of an institution that has contributed to the spiritual deaths of so many GLBT people. Let me bear witness to the elderly straight couple beside me who whispers, in unison, Amen.
I weep some more. The woman beside me whom I don’t know puts her arm around my shoulder. Her husband reaches over her and touches my cheek. Soon we are all invited to the table for the ritual of healing with oil. As a lay minister makes the sign of the cross on my forehead and says, “You are a child of God, welcomed and loved and forgiven. Forgive those who have hurt you in even the deepest ways, and go on with new strength to work for justice,” I double over in pain. I remember my gay friend, the director of the children’s play, doubled over in the same way in his office. I remember how he wept and wept, and then, finally, got up and made the calls he shouldn’t have had to make to the ministers and principals and parents in town to invite them to the free screening. Let me bear witness to how he went on, and to how I, too, stood still for a moment, waiting for the pain to pass, and then stood up and whispered, “Amen.”
Later, during a panel discussion of leaders from the Jewish, Native American, and Christian traditions, Anita Hill, the lesbian minister who was ordained in the ELCA church despite her denomination’s stance against GLBT people in ministry, said, “When I think of all the women who died fighting for the right to vote, who never got to go to the ballot box, I am humbled. When I think of all the blacks who died fighting for civil rights, I am humbled. I have to believe that, like them, I have done what I can. I pray I will continue to do what I can until the day I die. Will GLBT people have full inclusion in the church in my lifetime? I don’t know. But I have faith that even if I don’t taste the fruits of my labor, somebody will.”
Somebody—me, or my children, or, if I decide to leave this town for a place that will be safer and more affirming for my family rather than sticking it out, somebody else’s children--will hopefully reap the benefits of my work here, just as I have reaped the benefits of so many GLBT and allied people who came to rural Minnesota long before me and laid the groundwork that allowed me to come to a place with domestic partner benefits and an anti-discrimination clause and an active GLBT student group and an ally program.
I need to have faith. But I also need to remember Saint James’ edict that faith is only shown through works. Let me bear witness to what I haven’t done yet, to what I will do now in faith: take on the school district, get over my fear and work more actively toward my goal of becoming a parent. And let me bear witness and live out another edict by another saint named Audre Lorde: “If I choose to be powerful, to use my faith in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
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