Tag Archives: religion

presentation @ boston college

07 Monday Apr 2014

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On March 29th I attended the Biennial Boston College Conference on History of Religion and presented a paper that tried, for the first time, to offer up some analysis regarding my current project. A big thanks to the conference coordinators for a great experience!

This project is, broadly, exploring the ways in which the Christian left negotiated sex, sexuality, and gender during the thirty year period between 1960 and 1980. Narrowly, for this paper, I looked at a ten-year period of the Methodist publication motive for clues regarding mainline Protestant conceptions of gender and sexuality. As I’ve mentioned before in this space, I’m particularly interested in what the magazine had to say about sexuality because after breaking with the church, the publication’s final two issues focused on the topics of gay liberation and lesbian/feminism (their terminology). Rather than seeing this break as a natural, inevitable conflict between a traditionalist anti-gay church and more radical youth activists, I am asking why Christian left theology ultimately failed to provide a hospitable atmosphere for meaningful, nuanced discussion about queer sexual morality.

At least, that’s what I’m fumbling my way toward asking. I’m not sure how close this one conference paper gets to that goal — but it is a start. So for those who’ve been following my research this past year, I offer this work-in-progress as a reward.

Access the PDF online via Google Drive.

I’d also like to give a shout-out to my two excellent and inspiring co-panelists, Trevor Burrows (Purdue University) and Casey Bohlen (Harvard University), both of whom are working on aspects of Christian faith and political action during what we might term the “long Sixties” — looking back into the 1950s and forward toward the 1980s.  I look forward to watching their progress as scholars and writers in the field.

from the archive: reactions to women’s lib

03 Monday Feb 2014

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For the past several weeks I’ve been reading through motive magazine from 1962-1972 in preparation for a conference paper I’m delivering in March. I’m looking at the way the magazine employed gender, sex, and sexuality during the ten year period leading up to its break from the United Methodist denomination.

One of the precipitating events leading to the break was a special issue put out in March/April 1969 on what was then referred to as the women’s liberation movement. The issue proved so controversial, not least because the word “fuck” appeared in one of the articles, that the May 1969 issue was embargoed and the editor, B.J. Stiles, was asked to step down. This weekend at Boston University’s Mugar library I read through the letters to the editor that poured in in response to the “women’s” issue, and I thought y’all would enjoy reading some of the reactions the motive staff saw fit to print in the October and November issues the following fall.

They were introduced by Joanne Cooke, staff member and guest editor of the women’s liberation issue:

Response to our March-April issue on women was overwhelming. At first it seemed to reveal a great split among our readers, but on closer examination we saw as much similarity as difference.

Everyone who wrote, whether they had burned the issue or bronzed it, believed they did so as an affirmation of the same basic values: belief in and respect for human dignity, belief in individual responsibility for actions and mutual responsibility for and to one’s brothers and sisters, belief in the right (and duty) to ‘vote’ and to make one’s voice heard, belief in the right (and duty) of individuals to join together to organize and to coordinate their efforts to achieve a common goal, and rejection of the Playboy Philosophy as an attitudinal and behavioral guide.

Curiously, almost all the letters were addressed, ‘Dear Sir’ or ‘Gentlemen,’ in spite of the fact that the issue was written and edited by women. Response ran about 60-40 in our favor, but only 24% of our supporters and 11% of our detractors were subscribers. Sixty percent of those responding favorably were women, while sixty percent of those responding negatively were men.

Twenty-year-old Jessica J. Powers (Glenside, Pennsylvania) wrote in to complain that the disgruntled feminists were ruining it for everyone else. I’m particularly fascinated with her construction of women as either mothers and “lovely, loving women” or bread-winners/fellow-workers. At the level of cultural narrative, at least, it seems women couldn’t be both:

I love my femininity and womanliness and I am proud of my sex. I like to have men open doors for me, hold my chair, help me with my coat. … I find that any woman who has a valid opinion about pertinent issues will find acceptance if her opinions are, in fact, valid. … If you achieve your goals in liberating the women of this country [, our] children will no longer look to us as their ever-loving mothers but rather another bread-winner. Our husbands will no longer look upon us adoringly as feminine, lovely, loving women but rather a fellow-worker … Please, in your quest, remember those of us who love our womanhood. Don’t ruin it for us.

A.J. Gunther from Dynnyrne, Hobart, Tasmania, concurred. I’m particularly impressed by Gunther’s ability to suggest a solution to the problem he presents (“they both take on the home chores”) in the context of completely dismissing it as a possibility for home life:

In this crazy world of computers, wars, and crass commercialism, it is up to the women to put human values first. It is the wife’s job to meet her husband morning and evening, to share some things in common, and to provide beauty and comfort in herself and in the home. … If Mrs. works at being a woman of the world all day … When she comes home after a day in the world outside—unlike Mr. who can relax from his job—she goes into high gear to tackle the T.V. Dinners and household requirements. Unless they both take on the home chores, something has to give—what?

Time for relationships, time to listen, time to make a real pie. It is no coincidence that the divorce and delinquency rates are directly proportional to the freedom of the ‘liberated’ working wife. … It is an even wiser woman who realizes that her role in the home is the first and most important job—the cultivating of human relationships in an atmosphere of love.

And in defensive terms that would be perfectly at home on Reddit today, Harold O. Harriger from Lubbock, Texas, assures motive that his woman most certainly isn’t an angry feminist lesbian … although she might morph into one if he allowed her to read about this women’s liberation stuff:

Deep, dark forebodings beset me as to what might happen if my Rebecca got hold of the issue; poor lass—four kids, 100% female, and swears she wouldn’t trade me as a playmate for the best Lesbian in town. Just doesn’t understand the situation, I guess.

Of course, saner voices such as those from a female seminarian, Mrs. Susan Whitledge Nevius (President, Boston University Theological Students Association), also weighed in:

Certainly the ‘four-letter words’ used in the March-April issue were not out of place, especially with the excellent explanation given for their use on page five in the editorial. … Certainly the Methodist Church and its officials have more important things to do than hassle over ‘four-letter words,’ especially when male chauvinism is so rampant in The Methodist Church itself. When our denomination has been ordaining women since 1956, how can it still make recruiting films called ‘It Takes a Man’? Why do most of the official forms still ask for ‘wife’s name’ instead of ‘spouse’s name’; and why does the Discipline continually refer to ‘the minister and his wife’ rather than ‘the minister and spouse’? Why is no recruiting for the parish ministry done among women? I did not even know that it was possible for a woman to be a parish minister until I got to seminary. However, seminaries are no exception, for it is my seminary experience so far that has convinced me of just how deep the prejudice against women is.

And a chaplain from Michigan State University, Keith L. Pohl, who (likely unwittingly) undercuts his praise by referring to the women who assembled the issue as “girls”:

As most ‘red-blooded’ American males I should respond to the March-April issue of motive with resentment and indignation. However, good sense does on occasion win over the emotion of male pride, and superior journalism deserves to be recognized… Thank the girls for a job well done, and I continue to look forward to each issue as usual.

I do find particularly fascinating how even some who began their letters on a fairly even note of acceptance found that they needed to distance themselves from those women represented therein:

You presented two sides of the picture. 1) the career woman who has heard ‘When are you going to get married?’ once too often and 2) the Lesbian who is a human being but has had to live as something less than a whole human being because of a stereotype built out of misunderstanding and fear. “You did not present the third side of the picture: We women who are proud to be wive and mothers, who know that we have an important job to do, a job that no one else can do for us, we women who have dignity in the role that we have ‘chosen.’ … We are the women who were liberated long ago … liberated from envy, self pity, bitterness and guilt because we respect ourselves as human beings with an important job to be done. (Donna R. Brancy, Sparta, New Jersey)

The women’s liberation issue and the letters in response to it are, actually, the very first instances since 1962 that I have seen the word “lesbian” appear in the magazine (“homosexual” is used in the few instances prior to this when same-sex desire is referred to).

Women’s liberation and Lesbianism were, of course, but two nodes on a nexus of threats facing the American family during the Cold War period. Sharon R. Swenck, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, Virginia) raises another:

We are reminded that if the communists can destroy the structure of our homes, their job of destroying our society is well on the way to establishment. Being a wife and mother is a lovely and beautiful life and just whom do you want to ‘Liberate’ and for what? Shame on the Methodist Church for allowing such a publication. May God help us all is my prayer.

Still, more than the question of women’s role in society, it was the use of the word “fuck” that really seemed to get under the detractors skin:

The college students of our church have brought to my attention the March-April 1969 issue of motive. They are honest, modern, exposed college and university young people. They view the current issue as being plain, raw pornography. Their question is a simple, sincere one: ‘Is there any place left where we can get freedom from the trash that is spelled out in the four-letter words that little boys and girls learn to write on the toilet walls?” (Ramsey Bridges, Minister, Cross Lanes United Methodist Church, Charleston, West Virginia)

And people were, of course, always willing to haul out the “tone” argument:

Too many of the articles in the issue of motive were angry, self-defeating, and, as B.J. Stiles suggested, ‘anti-male.’ To put the male ego on the defensive and to impose on the male population an abundance of guilt is to perpetuate the set-back in openness and understanding acceptance for which women have been paying the price since the feminist movement days” (Beth E. Rhode, The Hunter College Protestant Association, Inc., New York, New York)

And even though this letter was written in praise of the issue, I’m honestly uncertain what Mr. Bill Garrett of Nashville, Tennessee is talking about — or how it relates to women’s lib:

 The current issue on ‘The Liberation of Women’ focuses on an issue which is of growing concern to the whole younger generation. Facets of the issue include (1) the demythologizing of that language phenomenon known in the minds of many adults as ‘the four-letter word,’ (2) a willingness to deal openly with our society’s hang-ups, perversions and misunderstandings about sex, (3) an awareness of the total-environment orientation of much of life today, and (4) the basic need for handles and/or role models to begin creating and finding meaning in the midst of conflict and ambivalence.

And finally, in December 1969, a letter which is succinct in its condemnation:

Do any of you people connected with this magazine even faintly know what it means to be born again or to be saved? … This issue looks like it was put together by a bunch of sick people and women who hate men!

I applaud Mrs. Gus Rivalto (Memphis, Tennessee) for working in the evil feminist trifecta of ungodliness, lesbianism, and man-hating in a brief two-dozen words.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this stroll through a thin slice of my 50+ pages of research notes! In a couple weeks more it’ll be time to stop with the reading and start with the writing (gulp). If you’re in Boston and interested in the history of religion, check the conference out! See you there (maybe). And I’ll be posting the conference paper here after the presentation.

quick hit: a must-read piece on ex-homeschool activists

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

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The American Prospect has a most excellent article up today, The Homeschool Apostates, by Kathryn Joyce, exploring the growing visibility of young adults who are organizing and pushing back against their parents’ decision to use home education as a tool for familial control:

Even conservative Patrick Henry felt like a bright new reality. While much about the college confirmed the worldview Lauren grew up in, small freedoms like going out for an unplanned coffee came as a revelation. She describes it as “a sudden sense of being able to say yes to things, when your entire life is no.”

Family ties began to fray after she met John, a fellow student who’d had a more positive homeschooling experience growing up; he took her swing dancing and taught her how to order at Starbucks, and they fell in love. Her parents tried to break the couple up—at one point even asking the college to expel Lauren or take away her scholarship for disobeying them. Their efforts backfired; soon after her graduation, Lauren married John and entered law school.

As someone who grew up within the early unschooling wave of the modern home education movement, and thrived within it, I often find myself frustrated by most media coverage of homeschooling — it is too often simplistic, judgmental, one part awe (such well-behaved children!) one part hysteria (equating home education, per se, with child abuse). In contrast, Joyce does an excellent job of covering a specific type of homeschooling, as well as teasing out the highly gendered nature of Christian homeschooling culture. She also foregrounds the thoughtful, passionate voices of home-educated young people who look back on their childhoods and the Christian subculture they were immersed in with a critical eye.

While I don’t agree with everything these ex-homeschoolers have to say, I think their voices are crucial ones for us to listen to — particularly those of us who have benefited from the low level of state oversight that enabled our families to do our own thing while these controlling parents to did theirs. I don’t always agree with the remedies these ex-homeschoolers propose, but I do believe their experiences must be taken seriously. We can’t in good faith build a culture of learner-led education on the backs of young people who have been denied a very basic level of self-determination and autonomy.

Anyway. Go read the whole thing.

booknotes: does jesus really love me?

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

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cross-posted from the family scholars blog.

On Friday, while stuck at home due to the “shelter in place” orders here in Boston, I read Jeff Chu’s recent book Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America (Harper, 2013).

Part memoir, part ethnography, part journalistic endeavor, Does Jesus…? is more impressionistic than it is polemical or scholarly. Chu offers a series of portraits, featuring both people (pastors, congregants, ex-Christians, agnostics) and institutions (from the Metropolitan Community Church, overwhelmingly queer in membership, to the Westboro Baptist Church). Across sections titled “Doubting,” “Struggling,” “Reconciling,” and “Hoping,” Chu offers us a tour around America and the religious and sexual-identity spectrum  as well, introducing us to individuals and congregations wrestling with the relationship between faith and queer sexuality. Chu himself has settled into a life of being gay and Christian, he nevertheless draws empathic (if at times slightly baffled) portraits of LGBT individuals who have forged other paths: queer folks who have been driven from the church or simply drifted away, a gay man who has chosen to remain celibate, a straight woman and gay man in a “mixed orientation” marriage. While he features a few high-profile individuals (Ted Haggard, Fred Phelps, Mary Glasspool), more of the voices in Does Jesus…? are unknowns: the Bible teacher fired from his job for a same-sex affair, the closeted young adult wrestling with if, when, and how to come out to his parents and community, the Christian musician who describes with charming self-deprecation her first gig at a lesbian bar.

I found myself thinking, as I read, a very librarian question: to whom might I recommend this book? One of the pastors Chu interviews offers the following observation: she sees anti-gay Christians and affirming/welcoming Christians trying to have two very different conversations in their discussions around homosexuality. The anti-gay contingent, she maintains, is focused on scriptural authority. The affirming group is focused on stories — on personal testimony. If this is true (though I’m not ready to buy the theory wholesale), then Chu’s book will not have much success in convincing those who believe Christianity demands abstaining from same-sex sexual activity. It is not a work of exegesis, of Biblical interpretation. It is not making a theological argument. Rather, Does Jesus…? is offering us a chance to reconsider our simplistic notions of what “Christian” and “gay,” and the assumption that there is but one type of relationship between the two: a repressive or alienated one.

This is an approach that I think might resonate more strongly with the “personal testimony” contingent. With LGBT folks who are, themselves, wondering, “Does Jesus really love me?” Or with queer activists asking how to engage American believers in the LGBT push for equality and acceptance. Or with unchurched/secular-identified queer folks and allies who see the church as bolstering anti-gay sentiment and are baffled why queer Christians seek to remain in the fold.

For example, as a queer woman who grew up in a conservative Christian community (in a region settled by the Reformed Church in America, Chu’s present denomination!) and attended a college with deep RCA roots, one of the chapters which spoke most directly to my own experience was the chapter about Harding University.  Or, more specifically, Harding University’s student-published Queer Press zine, created and distributed by queer students and alumni primarily to reach out to other (largely closeted) students on the conservative Christian campus. Not only did the creators face a backlash from the administration, they also discovered that their sectarian struggle didn’t always translate very well before a secular audience:

[Secular] bloggers would praise the zine but add, “Why would you go to a school that doesn’t accept you for who you are?” or “Why not just leave?” These questions reflect a different type of thoughtlessness. For one thing, Harding students are just like millions of others who depend financially on Mom and Dad [to attend college]. Then there’s the fact that, again like millions of others everywhere, these students are in a season of fragility and flux. They’re still wrestling with their identities, their faith, and their homosexuality, which may not even be acknowledge before college. As one puts it to me, “It’s not like someone woke up one morning and said, I’m gay but I’m to go there and make my life suck.”

When queer students and allies at my alma mater were making a concerted effort to get the Board of Trustees to revisit their official anti-gay stance, some high-profile queer-friendly blogs got wind of the struggle and there was a lot of puzzlement over why these students had enrolled in, or remained at, such a hostile institution. Setting aside the reality that secular institutions are not always bastions of acceptance themselves, it seems important for non-Christian LGBT activists and allies to remember that “Christian” is often as deeply-held an identity as “lesbian,” “bi,” or “gay.” To ask a queer person raised Christian why they don’t just quit their faith is profoundly lacking in compassion or understanding for the complexity of the human soul.*

Overall, I highly recommend Does Jesus..? to anyone interested in reflecting on the human face of the culture war (for lack of a better term) over sexual diversity in American Christianity. It might also, given its episodic nature, make for really good Sunday School or Church reading group material.

Related: For those unable to put their hands on a copy of the book, Chu was a guest on the Diane Rehm Show back in March, and it was an excellent conversation. You can listen to the audio or read a full transcript of the interview (your support for NPR at work!) courtesy of WAMU.

*On a side note, I know many feminists who’ve encountered similar disbelief that they choose to reconcile their religiosity and their feminism — often, in fact, grounding their feminist values in their faith. It’s fascinating to me that so many people on both sides (the religious side or the queer/feminist side) view these aspects of self as oil-and-water opposites.

fun with amicus briefs! [doma & the supremes]

11 Monday Mar 2013

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cross-posted from the family scholars blog.

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Thanks to Amy’s recent post that linked to John Culhane’s piece on the importance of amicus briefs, I spent a nerdy afternoon this past weekend browsing through some of the many briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in relation to the two same-sex marriage cases that will be reviewed by the court this session. They are all available to read in PDF at the American Bar Association’s website; you can also find a list at the SCOTUSblog. I thought I’d share a few highlights with you. Of particular interest to the folks at Family Scholars might be the brief submitted jointly by the Family Equality Council, Colage, Our Family Coalition, Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, the Center on Children and Families,  the Child Rights Project, and Sarah Gogin. Together, they seek to represent the children raised by same-sex parents as well as young people who experience same-sex desire as they look toward a future forming adult relationships. They begin:

The voices of children raised by same-sex parents — those who live every day within the family structure at the heart of these lawsuits — are too often unheard in debates about same-sex couples and marriage. Their stories are too often missing from discussions of “traditional” families or “family values,” and their personal experience too often discounted as irrelegant. Although those who oppose marriage for same-sex couples frequently make assumptions about the quality of the children’s family lives, the children themselves are rarely asked to explain what they actually experience.

Throughout the brief, they foreground the voices of young people who are growing up with LGBT parents, and their list of “authorities” (the brief equivalent of a bibliography) offers a valuable starting point for thosee interested in learning more about the experience of people who have grown up within LGBT households. As the brief asserts,

Although the Proponents [of Proposition 8] claim an interest in stabilizing the American family structure, the elimination of marriage for same-sex couples in California and the refusal to recognize valid married couples on the federal level have the exact opposite effect. Placing an official stamp of governmental opprobrium on the relationships of same-sex parents instead serves to stigmatize and de-legitimize the relationships, and, as a result, the children themselves.

Not to mention, the children of our nation who will grow into adult same-sex desires and relationships:

By officially sanctioning their exclusion from marriage and placing existing marriages of same-sex couples in the singular position of being “not marriages” for federal law, these measures exacerbate feelings of hopelessness about the future and perpetual “different-ness” that many LGBT youth already feel and discourage them from aspiring to full participation in civic life.

As an historian, I was also pleased to see both the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and the American Historical Association  (AHA) had filed briefs discussing the history of marriage law in the United States. The AHA draws on the scholarship of its professional membership to make several key arguments: that the federal government has historically deferred to state law when determining marital status; that the meaning of marriage is not limited to procreation; that marriage practices have changed over time, and that this is a strength not a weakness of marriage as a social institution. From their summary of the arguments:

Control of marital status is reserved to the states in our federal system. Marriage has always been understood as a civil contract embodying a couple’s free consent to join in long-lasting intimate and economic union. In authorizing marriage, states turn a couple’s vows into a legal status, thus protecting the couple’s bond and aiming moreover to advance general social and economic welfare. Throughout U.S. history, states have valued marriage as a means to benefit society. Seeing multiple purposes in marriage, states have encouraged maritally-based households as advantages to public good, whether or not minor children are present, and without regard to biological relationships of descent. …For two centuries before 1996, state marital diversity reigned, along with serious inter-state contestation, without Congress stepping in to create marital “uniformity” for federal purposes. Congress never took a position on a marital eligibility question pre-emptively so as to discredit a policy choice that a state might make. Before DOMA, federal agencies assessed marriage validity by consulting the relevant state laws. In historical perspective, DOMA appears as an attempt by Congress to single out particular state-licensed marriages for disfavored treatment.

The OHA, in a brief filed with the American Studies Association, takes up a slightly different aspect of the case.  They outline the history of discrimination towards sexual minorities in the United States, and pointing toward legal precedent for taking history into account when assessing the full weight of discriminatory practice:

As professional organizations devoted to the study of American history and culture, amici are not before the Court to advocate a particular legal doctrine or standard. But they wish to advise the court that the historical record is clear. Gay men and lesbians in America have been subjected to generations of intense, irrational, and often violent discrimination, commencing as soon as they emerged as a group into American public consciousness and continuing today.

The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund reminds the court of its historic role in guaranteeing equal protection rights to all citizens, asserting that “The role of the courts is to safeguard the rights of historically subordinated groups by applying heightened scrutiny to laws like DOMA, that disadvantage them as a class.”

And finally, it was also heartening to see a number of briefs from religious organizations supporting marriage equality, including one filed on behalf of a truly heartwarming number of faith traditions: the Bishops Of The Episcopal Church In The States Of California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and Washington and The District Of Columbia; The Jewish Theological Seminary Of America; Manhattan Conference Of The Metropolitan New York Synod Of The Evangelical Lutheran Church In America; The Rabbinical Assembly; The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association; Reconstructionist Rabbinical College; Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld Of Shaarey Tphiloh; The Union For Reform Judaism; Unitarian Universalist Association; United Church Of Christ; The United Synagogue Of Conservative Judaism; Affirmation; Covenant Network Of Presbyterians; Friends For Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, And Queer Concerns; Methodist Federation For Social Action; More Light Presbyterians; Presbyterian Welcome; Reconciling Ministries Network; Reconciling Works: Lutherans For Full Participation; and Religious Institute, Inc. (yes really!). Their premise is:

Americans are a religious people, but diversely so. Religious adherents differ on contentious issues, and religious bodies have themselves evolved and disagreed over time — on marriage as well as other civil rights and social issues. In view of that history and the wide range of modern religious thought on same-sex unions, it would be a mistake to elevate any one view on marriage above all others as the “Christian” or “religious” view. Indeed, it would be constitutionally inappropriate, because civil marriage is a secular institution … and the Constitution bars the government from favoring certain religious views over others … Religious freedom means that all voices may contribute to our national conversation, but particular religious perspectives on marriage cannot be permitted to control civil recognition of marriage for all.

These highlights represent just a handful of the perspectives filed with the court, and I encourage all of you to go explore on your own — and share what briefs spoke to you, and why, in comments.

so, that happened [a new guest blogging gig]

26 Tuesday Feb 2013

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Ah, the strange and wondrous things that happen when you go traipsing around The Internet.

As you know, I’ve been hanging around the comment threads at Family Scholars Blog for awhile now. In part because I’m interested in how the other half lives thinks.  In part because I like to argue.

And in part because, in the very selfish, immature corner of my brain-heart-body it irks me that there are people out there who really think that I’m “depraved on account I’m deprived” (or some variation thereof). I’m fascinated and appalled that people feel so threatened by my existence as a (gay) married, sexually-active bisexual that they try to pass laws to erase my (gay) married existence, and — when that fails — simply say that my marriage isn’t real.

It’s fascinating, as I say, and appalling.

And not a little frightening. To know that my life excites such fear, angst, anger, and loathing.

I like to keep all that in sight, watchfully.

Well, then a couple of weeks ago they invited me to blog with them, as a regular guest blogger. 

And my first reaction was absolutely not, no. But I said I’d think about the offer. Talk to some people. Sleep on it.

What could I possibly bring to that site, as a guest blogger, that I wasn’t already bringing in comments? And, more importantly, why did they want me? I admitted to myself fears that I might simply be being recruited as a Poster Lesbian: “See? She plays well with others!” they might say, and when accused of anti-gay bias the group could point to my guest blogger bio: “See?! We even have a Queer Feminist Gay-Married Bisexual writing for us!”

Wouldn’t I be risking, on some level, being their Queer Cover? The sexual-identity equivalent of the Black Friend?

But then I started to think about what I might be able to offer in such a space, to those who were truly open to listening (and, yes, though I complain about those who revile and erase me more, the more contemplative conservatives exist).

And this is what I thought. That much of the conversation about queerness, feminism, and other lefty-liberal modes of being at the Family Scholars Blog (FSB) takes place without reference to — let alone centering of — actual queer / feminist / lefty-liberal voices or experiences. Even when those voices are referenced, it’s generally in the form of a sound bite we’re all supposed to know is ridiculous or wrong-headed (“pfft, look at those hysterical feminists with their foolish notions about gender equality — what do they know”).

Well, I’d like to talk about what it is we do know, and what life looks like from where we stand.

So I’ve accepted the FSB offer, and I’m going to start a monthly series there (cross-posted here), “The Feminist Librarian’s Bookshelf,” with 3-to-5 titles per post as suggested reading on a theme (“gender and neuroscience,” “teenagers and sexuality,” “queer families”). My hope is that I can offer a glimpse into the literature that informs those of us who take a quite different view than many, if not most, at the FSB, with regards to family life. I’m not particularly aiming to convert, although obviously it would be nice if some of my favorite authors resonated with readers here and there. My goal is to encourage people to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” and think about what it might be like if you were to look at the world through the eyes of a lefty lesbian teenage, a liberal Latina mama, a feminist trans* woman, an asexual anarchist, a socialist living in poverty, or hippie home-educators.

There’s talk over at the FSB about civility of discourse, about meeting people halfway and compromising, about being willing to doubt (one’s own truths) and being open to having one’s mind changed.

I’m not sure how I feel about these values. I sometimes feel there is a type of privilege at work here, in which  unexamined certitude is disproportionately a problem of those whose worldviews and values are reflected back at them from mainstream culture. Those on the margins not only have the value of self-doubt shoved in their faces 24/7, they must learn to see the world through the eyes of the privileged and powerful in order to survive. Indeed: part of my fascination with the religious right comes from growing up a liberal-progressive (dare I say radical!) minority within a conservative Christian culture. I had to learn how Christian conservatives understood the world in order to survive. They didn’t have to learn anything about me, if they didn’t care to.

So I’ll be walking a mindful line over there, at FSB, between recognizing the true values of civil conversation, of lovingkindness and compassion, of being open to new experiences and viewpoints, of being open to the change those experiences and viewpoints will wreak within me — and at the same time holding my own, in part by example demonstrating that it is possible for a diversity of individuals with very different lives to co-exist in a democracy without the world imploding. We don’t all have to be alike, and that’s okay. We don’t all have to fear others who are different from us and/or those who choose a different way of life. Their different choices don’t, for the most part, constrain our own freedom of choice unduly.

You can read my self-introduction over a FSB and I’ll be cross-posting Thursday’s bookshelf post (five novels that influenced my adolescent perspective on love and romance) here.

booknotes: book of mormon girl

17 Saturday Nov 2012

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I rarely have the time these days to invest in comment threads on blogs, though I skim hundreds of RSS-scraped posts every day via Google Reader. Yet over the past few months, I’ve spent quite a bit of time over at the Family Scholars blog, engaging with socially conservative bloggers and commenters about issues such marriage equality and queer family formation.

I actually find the practice almost … soothing.

Hanna, meanwhile, is mystified about my motivations, since just having me describe some of the interactions I have there ramps up her anxiety and stress levels to uncomfortable proportions. And I find I don’t have very articulate reasons for why I find arguing with the opposition — bearing witness, speaking up for my point of view — to be an almost meditative practice.

Except that, growing up and going to college where I did, it’s what I’ve had to do by default most of my life. So it’s what feels comfortable, feels familiar: standing on the edges knocking politely on the door to remind those on the inside (of the mainstream culture, church, school, whatever) that I’m still here.

I don’t necessarily want to be let in? It’s a nice world, in many ways, where I am out here. I’ve always been a fan of fresh air and expansive horizons.

But I don’t want them to forget that I’m out here.

Another aspect of my insistence on being a complicating presence came home to me while I was reading Joanna Brooks’ Book of Mormon Girl (Free Press, 2012) this past week. It had been on my radar for awhile, but what prompted me to read it was an email from a friend of mine, a former member of the LDS church, who has walked away from the faith in his adulthood for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the fact that he’s gay and the Mormon church is not all that cool — at least at an institutional level — with queerness. He’d found the book a disorienting read, he reported to me, because while he’s quit the church entirely Brooks continues to struggle mightily with her inherited faith and childhood experience, and the betrayal of the community she once felt safe within when she stepped outside the bounds of orthodoxy (as an outspoken Mormon feminist, queer ally married to a Jewish man). Why did she continue to fight to belong in a church that clearly pushed her away, hard, with both hands?

It’s a stubbornness I recognize, though I wasn’t actually raised in the church (Mormon or otherwise). The faith of my heritage was loosely Protestant, my father the son of a New Testament theologian, my mother the mostly unchurched daughter of a Christian Scientist and disbelieving Scotch Presbyterian. In my adolescence, we attended a liberal Dutch protestant church (a denomination in the Reformed Church in America) for a handful of years where I argued passionately with Conservative youth leaders from my position as a nascent feminist and tried to envision the Church as a pathway to effectively channel my welling passion for social justice.

Then I went to college and discovered feminist theology which offered (though I didn’t have these words at the time) a way of thought and action that was both intersectional and spiritual: a faith of uncompromising social justice, nonviolent action, solidarity, and equality: each and every one of us is a child of God. Full worthy to be loved and capable of loving.

It’s a theology that I, unchurched though I am, continue to strive for in the spiritual practice of daily living.

And it felt like a theology that many religious folk around me were uninterested in pursuing.

I’ve said before, and I’ll repeat it here, that I found my Christianity and left the church in more or less the same breath.

I saw what Christianity could be and is, at its best and brightest, and in my adolescent impatience had no time for those preoccupied with orthodoxy at the expense of lovingkindness. Lacking the deep roots of religious history, community, family, and faith that ties women like Joanna Brooks to the church — and I know many of them, ardent feminist thinkers, queers, social justice workers, all fighting past the burnout to build a Church I would be proud to call mine — I up and quit and walked away.

But in part because of the women (and I know there are men, too, but it’s the women I think of in these moments, the ones who stand up and refuse not to be counted) I keep circling back. I keep tapping on the door, poking my head in, and reminding folks that my life, too, is relevant to the conversation: You’re talking about the welfare state? I might be financially secure right now, but I’ve had state-subsidized healthcare. You’re talking about male headship? Let me talk to you about sex, gender, and humanity. You’re talking about same-sex marriage? Let me introduce you to my wife, our two cats, and quotidian details of our lives.You’re talking about war? Let’s talk about the history of religious nonviolence.

My mother has always said that she won’t join any church that constructs an “us” from which a “them” is excluded, kept at arms length, on the outside. Which is why, to this day, she remains unbaptized (and why none of us children were baptized), and certainly informs my own decision not to seek church membership.

But I keep tapping at the door. I keep having the conversations. I want to bear witness (imperfect, broken, human, though I am) to the fact that we could do better and that I know there are those working mightily within the Church, as well as without, to make it so.

Hmm. The plan was to write a book review, but clearly I had other things to say. Still: Book of Mormon Girl is sweet, funny, heartbreaking, thoughtful, and passionate. As a queer American I found the chapter on Proposition 8 particularly painful to read; as a woman who came of age about 5-10 years after Brooks, I found her chapter on feminism and faith, and the trauma of the LDS purges in the 90s (when the hierarchy excommunicated a number of liberal intellectuals and activists, and declared feminists, gays, and lesbians the “enemy”) to be particularly resonant. As an historian with an interest in the personal journeys of those who grow up in fundamentalist, evangelical circles, Brooks’ narrative was of scholarly interest to me as well. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to think more deeply about what it means to be a politically and socially progressive person in the context of a reactionary religion.

in which I write letters: dear alma mater … again

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in think pieces

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Diane De Young
Associate Director of the Hope Fund
Hope College
PO Box 9000
Holland, MI 49424-9000

4 September 2012 

Dear Ms. De Young,

Thank you for your recent letter alerting me to the upcoming Hope College Phonathon. I am writing to explain why I will not be contributing to the campaign; you are welcome to share my reasons with whomever might benefit from this information. 

As I’m sure your records indicate, I attended Hope College from 1998-2005, graduating with a BA in Women’s Studies and History (double major). During my seven years at Hope, I formed lasting relationships with my faculty mentors and received what I would consider a superior college education. While at Hope, I benefited from merit and need-based scholarships, as well as the tuition benefit awarded to children of Hope College employees (my father is Mark Cook, director of the Hope-Geneva Bookstore). The quality of my Hope College experience was part of what enabled me to make the most of my graduate education at Simmons College, where I completed an MA in History and an MS in Library Science. Today, I serve as the Reference Librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and this past March I had the rewarding experience of returning to Hope College as a guest speaker at the Women’s Studies Celebration. I was recently asked to provide a letter of support for Dr. Jeanne Petit as she is considered for promotion to the rank of Full Professor, a request it was my pleasure to fulfill.

However, as a woman who will shortly be marrying my girlfriend of the past three years here in Massachusetts, I am a Hope College alumni who feels unwelcome and unloved by the institution as a whole. In April 2010, as the Board of Trustees was revisiting their support of the current Institutional Statement on Homosexuality, I wrote to then-Chairperson Joel Bowens and explained that until Hope College alters its position on human sexuality to be affirming of all a full range of human orientations, identities, and desires, I will not support the college financially. I cannot in good conscience send money to an institution that does not recognize the legitimacy of my primary relationship. I will speak up whenever given the opportunity — such as during fundraising campaigns — against the actions and words of the Board, and of Hope as an institution, that continue to create a hostile environment for faculty, staff, students, and alumni who are not straight or do not believe that non-straight sexuality is immoral.

I will continue to speak highly of the faculty who mentored me, and provide what support I can to individuals and programs that are welcoming and affirming to all (such as the Women’s Studies program). Yet I will not be participating in the Phonathon, in the Hope Fund, or any other fundraising campaigns until Hope College as an institution recognizes and affirms the lives of those of us who find joy and meaning in same-sex relationships.

I look forward to watching Hope’s progress toward a more inclusive future, and hope that someday I will be able to respond to your requests without reservation.

Sincerely,

Anna

Anna J. Cook (’05)
# Xxxxxxx Xx. Apt #
Xxxxxxx, MA
02134

in which I write letters: the problem with throwing religious home-educators under the bus

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Dear Claire,

I’m writing to you as a long-time reader of The Tenured Radical, as a fellow blogger, fellow leftist, and individual who spent the first seventeen years of my life learning outside of school — as did my fiancee, until she entered public high school. I wanted to respond to your post regarding home education and the religious right.

I realize that in our contemporary landscape “homeschooling” in the public eye has become virtually synonymous with conservative Christian organizations like the Home School Legal Defense Fund (which actually financed a lot of the court battles that made home education legal for families of all political persuasions), and families who take their children out of public schools for fundamentalist religious reasons. However, I find your characterization of home education “as a grassroots movement” being anti-intellectual and anti-citizenship troubling.

Yes, you are talking about a specific subset of home-educating families and philosophies, but throughout your piece you obscure the wide variety of motivations to home education and styles of learning and teaching by using “home schoolers” as a substitute for “fundamentalist-evangelical Christian conservative homeschoolers.” As a woman who grew up as part of the “grassroots” home education movement in Michigan during the 1980s and 90s, this erases my experience — and the experience of many of my contemporaries — whose home-based education expanded horizons, rather than limiting and controlling them.

You say in your post:

Public education is about putting citizens in the making in one place to talk to each other and learn together.  Is it an accident that when large numbers of voters fail to participate in a common enterprise with Americans not of their choosing that we have so little to say to each other during an election season?

I have seen a lot of anti-homeschooling liberals express similar sentiments, that home education is somehow inherently un-democratic because it removes children from the public square. This is a very limited understanding of the potential of learning outside of school, and in fact many of the progressive home-education folks I know would argue precisely the opposite: that home-based education takes children out of the age-segregated ghetto of school and brings them into the community at large.

As a home-educated child, rather than spending my days in a school building I volunteered at cultural institutions such as the public library and the local history museum, participated in community art classes and music groups, in sports activities and “field trips.” I held part-time jobs as a teenager that not only gave me excellent work experience but also further grounded me in the community. I was involved in church, another locus of social interaction and civic participation.

Obviously, this is not an automatic benefit of home-based education. But I would argue that exposure to a wide range of viewpoints, diversity, and the values of civic participation is not an automatic benefit of public education either. Public schools can be homogeneous, and educators narrow-minded, just like individual parents and families can be. My siblings both attended public high school for part of their grade-school education and benefited from that experience; my brother now teaches art in a public middle school. I am grateful that public provision of education is part of our nation’s commitment to its citizens, and feel that — like hospitals or roads! — public schools are our responsibility to fund whether or not we choose to, or need to, access those services.

Suffice to say, I believe it is a profound mis-characterization of home-education per se to suggest it is at root an anti-democratic, anti-public-spirited endeavor. Obviously, some people who make the choice to home-educate will do so for sectarian reasons, to withdraw from the society at large, because of profound disagreement with mainstream policies. There are examples to be found on the left as well as the right in this regard. But I would argue that this is a freedom-of-conscience decision. There is a long tradition in the United States of allowing parents to decide what the best method of education provision for their family is; compulsory education does not mandate form or content for good reason — local, familial, and religious priorities and needs vary. There is no “one size fits all” that would work well for the majority.

I believe that demonizing/scapegoating people who choose to home-educate for religious reasons actually threatens the freedom of all of us to form and organize our families as we see fit (see: same-sex marriage, polyamory, attachment parenting, etc.). It is certainly within our rights to point out that some forms of parenting foster us/them thinking — but home education is not the cause of that parenting outcome. It is simply the chosen method of delivery for some families. It is a tool, not a uniform ideology, and the values a family holds will shape how home education works for that family, rather than home education pre-determining an exclusionist, reactionary outcome.

In closing I want to thank you for your articulate, insightful blogging at The Chronicle; I have your blog in my Google Reader and regularly click in to read what you have to say. As a fellow blogger I realize that no one post can cover all aspects of an issue. In this instance, I just wanted to share my perspective as someone “on the ground” as a home-educated adult, who has been on the receiving end of fellow liberals’ suspicion of home-based education for many years! I think that the picture is (as always) much more complex than outsiders perceive it to be, and conflating “home education” with “reactionary conservative isolationist” does more harm than good.

Sincerely,
Anna

booknotes: pray the gay away

28 Tuesday Aug 2012

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Between the winter of 1987 and the summer of 1988, Boston-based journalist Neil Miller traveled across the United States “in search of gay America.” Though he spoke to women and men in the “well-trodden … urban gay ghettos” of Washington, D.C., New York City (the “gay metropolis”), and San Francisco, his primary purpose was to document the experience of queer folks living in what coasters refer to as “flyover” states, the “red state” regions of the American South, Great Lakes, Midwest, and Plains states. As Miller writes:

Acceptance and self-acceptance amidst the anonymity of cities like New York and Los Angeles and even Boston meant little, I was convinced. One had to travel beyond the large metropolitan areas on the two coasts to places where diversity was less acceptable, where it was harder to melt into the crowd … that was where the majority of gay people lived anyway, even if you didn’t read about them in the gay press or see them on the evening news (In Search of Gay America, 11).

What Miller found in his travels was that queer people in the heartland were often less visible than their East and West coast counterparts; they kept their heads down and their mouths shut, maybe living in a community where everyone knew they were gay but no one openly acknowledged it. Many of Miller’s interviewees talked about the social isolation, particularly if they were un-partnered; in the pre-internet era single lesbians and gay men often had to travel regularly to urban centers to meet and socialize with others like themselves.

In the two decades since Miller’s travels, much has changed in the world of LGBT visibility, culture, and activism — yet our collective understanding of queer culture remains focused on urban, coastal areas as gay-friendly, while the rest of the country is dismissed (especially by those who don’t live there) as a place where “diversity is less acceptable” and life is harder for queer men and women trying to make their way in the world.  Bernadette Barton’s new study, Pray the Gay Away: The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays (New York University Press, October 2012) both confirms and complicates this narrative.

A Massachusetts-born academic who moved with her partner to Kentucky, Barton was taken aback when a neighbor denounced homosexuality as a sin after Barton came out to him. Curious to understand how “Bible Belt gays” experienced this climate of casual anti-gay sentiment, she began interviewing gays and lesbians who grew up in what she terms the “Bible Belt panopticon,” the southern mid section of the nation in which tight-knit communities and strong evangelical, fundamentalist Christian culture come together to create and police conservative norms. When the normative culture is implicitly anti-gay, open bigotry is not needed to encourage self-policing. For example, Barton quotes an interviewee reacting to a church billboard proclaiming, “Get Right or Get Left”:

Get right means to be saved and get left means to be left behind at the Resurrection, but this also conveys the dual message of the church’s political affiliation as well. It’s very polarizing, and when I read it, it sounds like a threat.

Barton observes:

This is an example of how antigay rhetoric, especially to a Bible Belt gay, doesn’t have to say anything at all about homosexuality. It’s the associations. A Bible Belt gay knows homosexuality isn’t included in the right column.

Pray the Gay Away explores different ways in which this Bible Belt panopticon manifests, from family expectations to ex-gay ministries, gay-unfriendly workplaces and legislation to ban same-sex marriage. Throughout, the voices of Barton’s interviewees are powerful evidence in support of her thesis. One graduate student, for example, tells Barton about how his parents tried exorcism when they found out he was in a same-sex relationship. When he remained unrepentant they not only disowned him and cut all financial support, but also removed all of his belongings from his dorm room before they returned home. Through the support of his campus community, the student was able to remain in school — but the resilience of the child does nothing to redeem the horrific behavior of his parents.

I grew up in West Michigan, an area that is — though technically outside the Bible Belt proper — incredibly religiously and politically conservative. Reading Barton’s work, I found much to identify with in its descriptions of life in a community that resists difference and where anti-gay feeling is commonplace. I was particularly struck by her observation that in such communities, “gay” and “straight” are the only two categories a person can belong to. Anyone who is something other than straight is “gay.” You’re either “right,” after all, or “left.” That observation made me wonder whether it took me so long to recognize my own sexual fluidity in part because I literally had no language with which to describe myself.

Though I no longer have to live in a culture that makes it difficult (if not dangerous) to speak of my existence, I am mindful that what Barton terms the “toxic closet” effects everyone whom anti-gay bigotry touches, not just queer folk. My parents, for example, felt profoundly alienated when the city council rejected an anti-discrimination ordinance last year. And my grandmother is uncertain with whom she can safely share the joyful news of my marriage. The “Bible Belt panopticon” constrains us all.

At times, Pray the Gay Away seems to paint the Bible Belt as a monolithic culture of hate. I was pleased to see how careful Barton is to point out that she “deliberately sought out individuals who grew up in homophobic families and churches to best explore their consequences,” and that her narrative describes the normative culture of the Bible Belt, rather than attempting to describe all people therein. (For a broader examination of queer folks’ relationships with their families of origin, see the excellent Not in This Family by Heather Murray.) Barton’s conversations with gay Christians and gay-friendly church leaders, as well as her nuanced exploration of ex-gay ministries help show that even situations which appear toxic at first glance often contain more complex realities.

Yet ultimately, Barton argues that in the Bible Belt region “rampant expressions of institutional and generalized homophobic hate speech in the region bolster individually held homophobic attitudes and encourage those who have dissenting opinions to remain silent.” One lesbian student whom she interviews theorizes that it might even be accurate to identify these anti-gay attitudes and actions as “gay cultural genocide.”

I highly recommend Pray the Gay Away to anyone with an interest in contemporary queer experience, in Bible Belt Christianity, and the intersection of the two. I’d go so far as to say it’s required reading for anyone who cares about what it means to be gay in America today. Whether or not you’ve ever lived in the “toxic closet” yourself, too many of our fellow citizens still wake up there every morning. We owe it to them to listen to the stories they have so generously shared.

Cross-posted at In Our Words.