A Sermon by Reverend Lillie Mae Henley on Sunday, October 11, 2009
A couple of weeks ago I read an article in the Washington Post [September 29, Metro section] by Petula Dvorak. She wrote:
One of the best vanity plates ever was in front of me a while back, rolling west on Interstate 66. It was on a minivan, with a dad hunched over the wheel, ducking as toys and food flew back and forth between his battling spawn.
The plate said it all: “Plan B.”
So, what was Plan A?
Plan A was the Pilgrims
When they dropped anchor in November 1620 in Cape Cod Bay and founded the Plymouth colony. They believed they were on a religious pilgrimage, called by God to leave the oppression of England, and sail to the New World to establish a true church.
The first thing they did when they arrived was create the “Mayflower Compact.”
The civil government they created was based on a religious concept, a covenant, and they agreed to obey and submit themselves to their communal, covenantal existence under their Lord and Savior.
Then there were Puritans
when they founded Salem in 1628, and immediately established a covenantal government, binding themselves together “in the presence of God, to walk together in all his ways, according as [God] pleased to reveal himself unto us in his blessed word of truth.”
And still more Puritans
came in 1630 led by their elected Governor John Winthrop. They dropped anchor in Massachusetts Bay. Winthrop preached a sermon on the decks of the Arabella, he said, we are called to a new land; they were the new people of God.
We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken… we shall surely perish out of the good land [which] we pass over the vast sea to possess.
The Puritans and the Pilgrims, over the next fifty years, defined and re-defined their religion Congregationalism, creating Statements of Faith, and establishing public standards by which everyone was expected to live. They understood their commonwealth as a holy commonwealth with the church responsible for spiritual salvation, the government responsible for public order. Neither trespassing on the work of the other, yet hand-in-hand creating a society that fulfilled the mission God had set out for them. Although they hated the power of the King over the Church of England, they established Civil Courts that held authority over the churches. They taxed every citizen, churchgoer or not, to support the churches.
Plan A was:
Uniformity, Conformity, and Control
There could only be one religion and so the civil government had to uphold the foundations that provided for the “one true church.” Furthermore, the civil government “ought to assist the church by law and protect it from corruption.” If the religious leaders found anyone guilty of un-Christian behavior, the church elders AND the civil courts had the power to punish the offender. Everyone was required to comply with these principles and punished if they did not. Anyone who did not “fit in” was an outsider and a threat to these new, chosen people.
Plan A—uniformity, conformity, and control
Uniformity meant a family with a father, a mother, and their children, in a patriarchal, authoritative family system.
Conformity meant following all the rules.
Control meant punishment to anyone who did not follow the rules.
Everyone had a place and everyone had to stay in their place.
James Morone in Hellfire Nation says that anytime there was an “other,” a distinctly-different, identifiable group that did not conform to Puritan “ideal,” Americans have easily made this “other” the enemy.
The witches of Salem, the African slaves in the South, the suffragettes, and immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Japan, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and the Far East. Not only have entire immigrant populations been made the “other.” Women and sex have represented this “other,” because they represent the danger of lost self-control and social disorder.
Morone wrote:
… the truth is, our nation was born in a religious fervor of exclusivity. It was born by uncompromising religious extremists who saw their way of religion as the way, the only way. They saw the United States as a beacon on a hill, ever to be a model for the entire world.
These are our “cultural” genes. We began with a homogeneous society, this is our Puritan legacy.
If the Puritan legacy is Plan A, then same-sex marriage is part of Plan B.
Plan B,
Are the brave women and men of the Civil Rights Movement
Who by example inspired the feminist movement and
The gay rights movement
AND the cultural movement to embrace diversity.
Plan B
Because we are no longer a homogeneous nation, we are multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious culture. There are those who still want uniformity, conformity, and control, but they are not the majority any more.
Last night President Obama was the keynote speaker at the Human Rights Coalition national dinner, and Judy and Dennis Shepard, parents of Matthew Shepard, were the first recipients of the Edward M. Kennedy National Leadership Award. Last night we had a reception here for the first Hispanic president of the UUA. He is in town for the National Equality March and we had UUs from many parts of the country as guests.
Our nation has come a long way; nevertheless, we have a long way to go. We know there are still racists, we know feminism is laughable to some, and in many cities in our nation, being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered can be life-threatening.
Still, there are brave people who work for the right of same sex couples to marry.
There are many reasons to support same-sex marriage. There are, according to those who study the issue, [Why You Should Give a Damn About Gay Marriage, Davina Kotulski] “… 1,049 federal rights that accompany civil marriage, and some additional 300 per individual state.”
Approximately 1,300 legal rights that are denied same-sex couples, because, of our Puritan legacy. Some of these rights have to do with taxes, insurance, property, inheritance, and children. Rights that many of us take for granted, yet are denied our own sister, brother, niece or nephew because she/he loves a person of the same gender.
Plan B, though, is more than the legal benefits of same-sex marriage.
Plan B is about the children and the culture we create for them.
There is a book titled Like Mother, Like Daughter?: The Effects of Growing Up in a Homosexual Home by Jakii Edwards, and it tells the story of a woman who grew up in the fifties as a daughter of a lesbian. I thought the book would be an affirming story when I bought it. As I read, I realized that it was a painful memoir of a woman who was mentally and physically abused by her mother. She blamed all her pain as a child on her mother’s sexual orientation.
That wasn’t the reality of the situation. Reading the book with a family systems framework, I knew that it was functional or as dysfunctional as the next family. I wondered, though, how much they were influenced by the negative cultural views of homosexuality. I wondered if it would have been different if our culture were different.
I then read another book titled Out of the Ordinary: Essays on Growing Up with Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Parents [Edited by Noelle Howey and Ellen Samuels]
The stories were more affirming, but no less painful. The authors of these essays were not abused by their families, but they did live with parents who were closeted or who came out in the seventies. In some stories, they were children of activists who were sometimes vulnerable to the violence which threatened their parents.
What is it like to grow up with GLBT parents? All these children ask, “If they are “different,” am I?” “What will my friends say if they know?”
What is it like to grow up in a culture where what you feel about yourself and what you see all around you are dissonant?
The song “Dancing Queen,” the choir sang today. Thank you choir for letting me sing with you. I was never an ABBA fan, nor had I heard any of the pop culture explanations about the song. I remember it from the seventies, but I didn’t pay much attention to it until I saw Meryl Streep in that recent movie… Oh, yes, Mama Mia!. It’s a provocative song, right, kind of provocative for church, but not really. Now, if you look at the other verse, the one we didn’t sing, well…it would be TOO provocative for church.
“Dancing Queen” is a beautiful song, with a lot of meaning if you look at the lyrics. It is whimsical, moves you, touches something inside you. But when I heard that whimsical, beautiful song about music and dancing, I could visualize a high school student day-dreaming about dancing with someone they wanted to be with.
Is it a girl dreaming of a boy
Or is it a girl dreaming of a girl
Is it a girl who feels she is boy who dreams of a girl, or
A girl who feels she is a boy who dreams of a boy,
Or, is it a boy, who’s dressed like a drag queen dreaming of a boy!
What is it like to grow up in a culture where what you feel about yourself and what you see all around you are dissonant?
We need Plan B
Plan B IS more about the children than we realize.
Plan B is about the children and the culture we create for them. We, you and I, are the culture. WE are the culture for every child we know. WE are the culture for every child who sees us. WE have to live our lives in Plan B. WE have to overcome the Puritan legacy, each of us, everywhere.
I will end this message with a look at our reading from the New Testament, Hebrews 4:12-16.
The words of the Bible, were used as a means to make the community uniform, to conform, and to control, and they can also be used to liberate ourselves from this cultural inheritance, this Puritan legacy.
The author tells us God’s word is living and active… Jesus’ words remain as true for us as they were true for his followers when they were spoken. God knows us, we are bare and exposed, we are vulnerable to the One with whom we seek relationship. We are accountable for our actions, for what we do. We are accountable for non-actions. There is a mark, a standard, which the prophetic Jesus created for us. That spirit of revolution and challenge is alive and well in our world.
To whom are we accountable? We are accountable to each other, for that is one way we know God and one way of being in relationship with God. We are responsible to each other.
If we are to create a culture in which we are all included, one in which all children grow up believing everyone is included, then we must confidently approach each other with the grace of God in our souls. We as believers in that which is greater than ourselves,
believers in the words of Jesus,
believers in the Wisdom of God,
know that God will help us change our culture, change our world,
and mercy and favor, what I call compassion,
will prevail.
The man in the minivan driving his children to dance lessons or soccer practice—what a wonderful, wonderful metaphor for Plan B—all of us must chose and I want all of us to choose to drive the minivan!