Homsexuality, religion, politics and equality before God: Why interfaith dialogue is important to GLBT Americans.
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By Donna Red Wing | Contact
Donna Red Wing is a Senior Advisor at The Interfaith Alliance in Washington, DC.
She served with the national Dean campaign, was the Democratic candidate for the Colorado House District 25 in 2004.
Prior, she was the Policy Director at the Gill Foundation, National Field Director for HRC and GLAAD.
A Des Moines Register article noted, “You've got activist Donna Red Wing - called the "Most Dangerous Woman in America" by the Christian Coalition - stumping for Howard Dean.”
First recipient of the Walter Cronkite Award for Faith and Freedom. An activist and an advocate for justice.
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Homophobia, in the United States, has often been experienced through the lens of faith in unimaginable ways. The radical religious right, while it has moved from the rancor of the 1990's into a softened ‘love the sinner hate the sin' rhetoric of the 21st century, still purports to speak from a voice of faith.
And it is that particular voice of faith that needs to be challenged by the interfaith movement in this country. The United States is the most religiously pluralistic nation in the world, yet a majority, including many media professionals and government leaders, are functioning with the presumption of an established religion-a "Christian" religion that gives, at best, a condescending nod to other religious traditions and that attempts to determine the moral and legal status of those Americans who are gay or lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
THERE SEEMS TO BE SILENCE...
Amid an explosion of rhetoric regarding democratic values, religious morals, and faith-based initiatives, there seems to be silence where there should be a cacophony of voices of those who continue to be pushed to the periphery: those who hold membership in minority religious traditions, reject any association with religion, or maintain a suspicion of faith-based programs and, hold very different views on the meaning of democratic values, the relevance of religious morals, the reality of religious liberty and the inclusivity of American society.
Historic constitutional principles that have provided the nation with a formula for unity amid diversity and cooperation despite division are now the subject of criticism that blames those principles and their advocates for fomenting a runaway secularism and dangerous and corrupting liberalism.
This kind of misunderstanding and ignorance could alter the nature of our democracy, compromise the integrity of religion, create a confused relationship between religion, politics, and government and set back inter-religious relations and civil liberties.
Clearly, gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans suffer from the manifestations of homophobia that are stimulated within these confused relationships.
EXTRAORDINARY ASSAULTS ON GLBT AMERICANS
I think about the extraordinary assaults on GLBT Americans: Anita Bryant and the orange juice wars; anti-gay laws; AIDS-phobia; the ballot measures in Oregon and Colorado; vile examples of bigotry and homophobia, wrapped in the language of faith. Hate speech to hate crimes-the arc of that perverted understanding of faith.
I remember one woman, in 1992, from the documentary "Ballot Measure 9," who said that she was voting to create a second class citizenship for gays because "...Christianity and homosexuality are diametrically opposed." And another who held a Bible as she proclaimed that God knew that AIDS would happen..."It's all here", she proclaimed.
DIALOGUE WITH THE INTERFAITH COMMUNITY
In the mid-nineties, as I served as the National Field Director of The Human Rights Campaign, we began to have dialogue with an interfaith community. In the beginning, we came together to understand the frightening Promise Keeper phenomenon, as well as a radical religious right that continued to have influence. It became apparent that, as GLBT activists, we needed to know our friends in faith communities and understand our adversaries. The Interfaith Alliance was the national organization that came to our first meetings and introduced us to friends and foes. We not only sat with Reform Rabbis and Unitarian-Universalist and United Church of Christ ministers but with Catholic Bishops and Muslim Imams. The Interfaith Alliance brokered many difficult but necessary conversations.
And, now, a decade later, I find myself still in those complicated circles, as a Senior Advisor to The Interfaith Alliance. It is an organization that I hope you will come to know and appreciate.
Since its beginnings as a challenge to the radical religious right in the early 90's, The Interfaith Alliance has worked to connect the issues of religious liberty and GLBT equality within the context of our first amendment. We have brought to the table not only our allies but also those who struggle, on a denominational level, with the issue of GLBT equality, religion, and gay marriage. We have worked to put the issue of equality, specifically marriage equality, into a framework that can be explored, within a mainline and an interfaith context.
We held a God & Gays Mountain Retreat program in North Carolina that brought together GLBT leadership around marriage equality with mainline and minority religious leaders; a GLBT caucus at our National Leadership Gathering in Nashville, TN that put the issues of equality front and center for our grassroots lay and clergy leadership from around the nation; convened an interfaith public forum, in Chicago, heartland America, on the issues of equality, especially in marriage; integrated GLBT youngsters into our religious liberties camp; and initiated dialogue at the grassroots, on denominational and congregational levels. We have been a strong and consistent voice on Capitol Hill, for the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill and ENDA. We have vigorously opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment. We have had the courage to stand at the intersection of religion, politics and sexual orientation. It is, I believe, at that nexus, where the next chapters of our ‘equality' history will be written. I hope that you will join us.
