"Conspiracy of Silence"

"Conspiracy of Silence"

Group Size: any
Ages: teen to adult
When or where to use activity: worship, gay rights, coming out.
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Description:
 "Conspiracy of Silence"
Sermon preached by Ned Wight (copied with permission)
at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Las Vegas
February 17, 2002

Lessons: 1 John 4:13-21 and
Excerpts from A Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein

"There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love." (1 John 4:18)

One afternoon during my final year at Harvard Divinity School, I joined a friend for lunch in the cafeteria. A grey-haired lady was sitting alone at the same table. I engaged her in conversation. "Are you here for the Theological Opportunities Program," I asked. This is a program focusing on women's theological issues. "Yes," she said. "I've just heard a lesbian priest give a talk. It's a strange world."

We talked about other things--her marriage of 52 years, the new beginnings she'd had to make after her husband died--including a trip to China--her children and grandchildren, life at a senior citizen complex outside Boston. At one point she asked me my age. "43," I said. "You don't look it," she said. "If it weren't indelicate, I'd ask you yours, and I bet I could say the same thing." "Oh I don't mind," she said. "I'm 89." "Whoa," I said.

We continued talking, and then she asked, "Are you married?" "No, I'm not?" "Why not?" My mind raced. "Well, its just as you said: sometimes you've got to just take life as it comes." I knew this was weak, but what else could I say? Her next question gave me a clue: "Are you gay?" "Well, yes, I am." "It's a strange world," she said. "Yes, I guess it is." We talked some more. She asked me if I'd gone out with women, and wasn't it a shame I couldn't have my own children.

By this time I had to leave for class. "You know," she said, "you're the first gay person I've ever talked with face to face." "That you've been aware of," I added. "I've enjoyed talking with you," she said as I picked up my backpack. "Remember those new beginnings." "I will," I answered. "I will."

89 years without ever talking with an openly gay person. That says something about the power of the conspiracy of silence that has governed our lives here in the United States. What is even more exasperating, I was ready to perpetuate this conspiracy of silence by not telling her I was gay--until she asked me point blank. This is the same conspiracy of silence that cautioned me not to disclose myself to my field work congregation in Belmont, Massachusetts, when I first came there as a student minister. And this is the same conspiracy of silence that served to keep fear alive in me for over 20 years--a fear that if people knew this truth about me, they would not accept me, would not welcome me, would not trust me, would not love me. I almost said "if people knew this 'terrible truth' about me." There's another product of the conspiracy of silence. Such a conspiracy guarantees that negative judgments go unchallenged. Like most of you, I've grown up in a society that has until quite recently said with a loud and clear voice, "Homosexuality is bad . . . evil. Homosexuality is a sin--or deviant behavior--or perverse--or developmentally deficient--or immoral--or unacceptable." I learned without being explicitly taught by anyone that homosexuality is something to be ashamed of--something to hide, to conceal, to repress, to be silent about--perhaps to purge, to change, to stamp out. Harvey Fierstein portrayed my internal reality in this morning's reading from A Torch Song Trilogy:

MA: Arnold, you're my son, you're a good person, a sensitive person with a heart, kennohorrah, like your father, and I try to love you for that and forget this. But you won't let me. You've got to throw me on the ground and rub my face in it. You haven't spoken a sentence since I got here without the word "Gay" in it."

AR: I'm not trying to throw it in your face but it is what I am and it's not just a matter of who I sleep with. Ma, try to imagine a world the other way around. Imagine that every movie, book, magazine, T.V. show, newspaper, commercial, billboard told you that you should be homosexual. But you know you're not and you know that for you this is right . . .

MA: Arnold, stop already. You're talking crazy.

AR: You want to know what's crazy? That after all these years I'm still sitting here justifying my life. That's what's crazy.

Like Arnold, I, too, learned to harbor this terrible secret about which everyone was silent. Silence may be the most powerful teacher. "Homosexuality must be pretty awful if we can't ever talk about it. I'd better keep quiet. I'd better join in the conspiracy of silence. Otherwise, I'm sure to be hurt. Strong disapproval at the least--or maybe ostracism"--the ultimate punishment for a person brought up to seek and value the approval of others.

The trouble with joining in the conspiracy is that hiding gets to be a habit--silence becomes a way of life--silence and deception. "So," my aunt asks, "why don't you bring a young lady along when you visit us next weekend." "Well, I'll see." Or on a date with a woman friend, "I really enjoy spending time with you, but I don't think I can be what you want me to be in this relationship."

One, two, five, ten, twenty years of this can make you feel very split, broken, unhappy, impatient with a part of yourself that you know to be fundamental, but that you can't share openly with people you love and care about because you live in constant fear of their disapproval and rejection--if they only knew.

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love." This passage from the first letter of John just won't let me go. It takes me back to an experience I had over 25 years ago--an experience that, as much as any other, moved me to consider ministry as a real possibility in my life. Let me reconstruct it for you, prefacing it with a passage from the 139th

Psalm:

O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me! Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar.

Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,
lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou dost beset me behind and before,
and layest thy hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high, I cannot attain it. Psalm 139: 1-6

I am 27. For nearly 10 years I have known that I am sexually attracted to men. I have had some very rocky relationships with women. I have joined a therapy group for gay men, thinking that homosexuality is my problem, and I have discovered that barriers to intimacy are the real problem. I am sleeping beauty in her castle surrounded by the densest thicket you can imagine. I am beginning to wake up even before prince charming arrives. And

I am alone.

I am serving as part-time religious education director at King's Chapel. We're considering offering the UUA's "About Your Sexuality" curriculum to our kids. A woman from the parish and I troop off to the Oblate Center in Natick for a training weekend.

The ice breaks on Friday night as we all make fools of ourselves putting on large wall charts all the words we know for body parts and sexual activities. The stage is set for Saturday's exploration of first experiences, love making, and, late in the afternoon, a presentation and small group discussions on same sex behavior and homosexual lifestyles.

I am sitting at a table with seven people I barely know. They are talking about whether homosexuals choose homosexuality or not. The discussion is clinical, abstract, full of conjecture, floating somewhere in outer space. The more I listen, the more I feel like a volcano about to erupt. "I'm listening to them talking about me. I can't sit here invisible and silent. I have something important to say about this. I have something important to say about me." By now I'm shaking inside. My face is flushed.

My pulse races. I have to speak. "Excuse me, but I experience what you're talking about differently. Because, you see, uh, uh. . . I'm gay. And my journey definitely hasn't been about making a clearcut choice between viable alternatives." Or something like that. Who knows what I said. It doesn't matter. For that isn't the point of the story. After I open up, others in the group open up, too. They affirm their own experiences, me, we affirm one another. That evening we watch the Invisible Minority--about gays and lesbians. I watch in a daze. Before going off bed, several people seek me out and thank me for sharing myself with them that afternoon.

I go to my room. I lie down on my bed, and I start to cry. Feeling washes over me, wave after wave. I think of the people at the training who know part of my secret self and still affirm me, and I cry. I think of my family, who love me in spite of everything dreadful I've ever said and done to them, and I cry. I think of all my friends, who love me in spite of my failings, and I cry. I think of God whose love binds all of these other loves together. I can't stop crying.

If others can accept me--even if they know I am gay--might I not be able to accept myself? That night I am baptized by wonder and filled with love and joy.

When the conspiracy of silence gives way to the outpouring of the heart, miraculous things happen. Our self-awareness is transformed. Our relationships to others are transformed. Our community is transformed--in ways we can't anticipate.

The experience at the AYS session happened over 25 years ago, and the pathway of my life has wound through many deserts and swamps and foothills--and a few mountains--since then. But the experience of that day continues to empower me. After my experience of concealing who I was to my intern congregation, I resolved never to do that again. The power of my experience at the AYS weekend enabled me to speak my truth to my congregation in San Diego County even before we ever met face to face. It's power has enabled me to continue speaking my truth in homophobic East San Diego County, which is deeply divided about matters of sexual preference and ethics.

The conspiracy of silence wounds all of us who are trapped within it's confines--whether we know it or not. The conspiracy diminishes our capacity to love one another--to know that we are different, sometimes profoundly different--and to love with faith and courage anyway. The conspiracy perpetuates stereotypes that injure and kill--namecalling in our schools--faggot, queer, homo, dyke, fairy--namecalling that dulls our moral sensitivity and paves the way for acts of psychological, political and physical violence: ostracism, discrimination in employment and housing, gay-bashing‰đ³the grim tragedy of Matthew Shepard and others like him, attacked for being "sexually unacceptable."

It is shocking that people are dying in this country because they are gay--and because some others find that intolerable. The love of God--and the love for one another to which we are committed and Unitarian Universalists--calls us to speak out for tolerance, acceptance and affirmation of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. The love of God calls for us to break the conspiracy of silence.

"Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also." It is in response to this commandment that we are called as a community of faith to break this pernicious conspiracy of silence. It is my fervent hope that the love that casts out fear may fill all our hearts as we struggle to know and affirm one another in our particularity and uniqueness, today and through all the days and months ahead.

So may it always be. Shalom. Blessed be. Inshah allaah. Aho! Namaste. Amen.