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By Preston and Rachel Mears
April 22, 2007
Dad:
A few months ago, Rachel and I were having a beer. She was talking
about how angry and afraid she has become over the repeated assaults
on homosexuals by the religious right and the current
administration. We have been glad that our Davies experience is very
different but is it enough to just being accepting in the face of
what is going on in our world? It occurred to me that it would be
interesting if we shared our story with you.
I’ll start. When Rachel was around 13, the only things I could
discuss with her, especially around her friends, were the weather
and the Boston Red Sox. And, those could be touch and go sometimes.
Rachel can explain, of course, with her father, that there was no
telling what he would say about anything and everything. Simply
stated, Laurie and I were awkward about talking about serious life
and death matters with our children. Part of that had to do with the
fact that we really had not dealt with the disconnect between our
understanding of sexuality and the degree to which we carried the
fears of our culture. That didn’t help us or Rachel a few years
later, as she will explain.
Davies is a congregation that has welcomed our family or else we
would not be here with you now. But, look around our world and
understand that more is needed. There are times we need to say the
words and we need to hear the words, “I love you and where you go, I
will go.” We need to say it. Churches all too often fall short of
the words and the actions. Ask a minister’s child.
Rachel:
Church has always been a part of my life, for those of you who know
my parents you know they both have strong connections—my father to
the Episcopal Church and my mother to Unitarianism. Church as
community and support was something that was discussed, but I
honestly cannot recall ay “religious” discussion. Kids presumed I
was very religious and knew a lot about Christianity, but neither
could have been further from the truth. I was very wary of our
particular church and especially wary of discussions about religious
doctrine. I stopped attending church regularly when I was 13. This
is a very rough summation of the role religion had in my life, but
what I feel is relevant to convey today is that religion has always
been a source of discomfort to me.
I came out to my parents when I was 18. I was motivated to do so by
being in love for the first time and most can account that first
love is, if anything, a blinding and dramatic thing. Barney Frank
had come out a year earlier, and based on how supportive of that my
parents had been, I decided they should be fine with me. I also had
a strong and probably much more important than he had ever intended
memory, of me asking my Dad at age 11 what homosexuality was. My
reasons for asking were loaded and I secretly hoped that he knew
that. His answer was direct from the liberal text: “they are people
who love other people of the same sex and your mother and I think
it’s normal and what matters is people finding love.”
So seven years later I told them during dinnertime that I was gay
and I knew it was not going to be an easy matter, I just didn’t
quite know why. Since they had the convictions, why would it matter?
It did matter though and what followed that night was mostly ugly
and sad, but one very clear and positive thing came out of it. When
my parents began to react, my Dad said: “before I give you all the
reasons why we don’t approve of this I want to make it clear that my
reasons are not religious; I think all of that is bullshit.” The
line has brought me a few laughs when I shared it with friends, but
what I’ve never really conveyed is that it brought me a lot of
relief. Bring me your prejudice and whatever Dad, but if it’s not
religious then I can bring you around. This is a strong arrogance,
but it comes from this: people say anti-gay legislation and speeches
or the splitting of churches are not personal but they are only that
and I have always felt from age 11 to 37 that if you knew me, you
would like me and you would realize it was all very silly and
damaging. So my father telling me it wasn’t religion that made him
unable to accept my sexuality was pretty positive, because if I
thought I could win over most folks, I knew I could not win over
people who think that God has said I am sinful. So with that weird
sentence he actually gave me a strong thing to hold onto: thank
whatever, that his issues aren’t religious.
I don’t think all of the fun and drama of my story is important
here, but I offer this first time of coming out as part of a
timeline that brings me to Davies, first, and secondly up here
today. The timeline is this: I came out in July of 1988 and had, I
think, the worst year of my life. After that year I was a very
different mammal and pretty content with who I was. I became active
on campus, met a lot of people, and fell in love with Sandra. By age
21, things had vastly improved with my parents and I felt “settled”
in my sexuality. I was angry about homophobia, but I was also pretty
optimistic that things were going to continue to improve on the
political gay front.
The nineties had depressing things in terms of gay rights and they
seemed almost exclusively connected to religion. But the nineties
also had lots of ups and I still really felt like things were slowly
moving forward. In 1999, Sandra and I decided after 9 years of
happiness that we would start a family.
Since I was a kid I wanted to have a family and while my parents and
I both thought it would never happen (that was a huge part of their
problem the night I came out) I finally convinced myself and Sandra
that we could make it happen. I even had this thought that while our
family would be different there should be as many similarities as
possible. I insisted that we had to wear rings even though we didn’t
have a ceremony and I refused (and still do) to get married until it
was legal. I insisted that said rings came before child so it
wouldn’t seem out of wedlock. Sandra thought I was a goof, but she
happily did it.
We got a lawyer, made every legal protection for each other that we
could, and went down the road of getting pregnant. And then the
election happened. We all know what happened and I won’t relive the
torture, except to say that the morning after the election I called
up a good friend and astonished him by beginning to cry. I was
terrified of what was going to happen with George W. Bush in the
White House and worried that it was very selfish and stupid of us to
bring a kid into this political climate. I knew, we all knew, it was
going to be really really bad. The president has never disappointed
me on that front.
The solid fear I felt that morning has never left. Between knowing
we were on the verge of starting a family and hearing a constant
bombardment of anti-gay, anti-family rhetoric my perspective
changed. Sandra, however at this point, did not want to give up on
having a child and by spring 2001 she was pregnant. I tried to
counter my fears by reaching out to friends and family. I became
convinced that Lily would need to have godparents and these would be
folks who would also be active members of the Mears-Thomas clan (the
irony of wanting godparents has not been lost on me). But I wanted
her to find support, love, and acceptance in several places to help
buffer the pain that would come to her because of her family. It
followed therefore that searching for a church would make sense.
Dad:
I need to back up just a little here. As it turns out in the
Episcopal Church, in which I am ordained, when Rachel was in her
early teens, we began to study and debate the subject of sexuality
and the place of homosexual people in the church. We were in New
Hampshire at that time and the Diocese was making an honest effort
to study the subject. The majority of us in the Episcopal Church and
certainly in the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire were inclined to
be accepting. Today, as many of you know, Bishop Gene Robinson and
the little 42 church diocese of New Hampshire is in the vanguard of
matters pertaining to sexuality in the 77 million member world wide
Anglican Communion. By way of footnote, Gene Robinson, a friend and
colleague, gave us support and encouragement that year when Rachel
was 18, to be the people we needed to be for Rachel.
I had specialized in my studies in early church history and knew the
trends and changes in the 2nd and 3rd centuries of Church and
Western History and Philosophy that laid the foundations for a
repressive view of all matters sexual that has permeated Western
cultures. The expressed view came to be that sex and sexuality are
unfortunate necessities for purposes of propagation. However,
knowledge by itself did not address the built in fears and
prejudices inherited from our culture, not Preston, a liberal
Episcopalian, not Laurie, a cradle Unitarian.
But did you hear what Rachel said? She took refuge in her father’s
belief and assertion that God was fine with her. She just had
parents and society with 1800 years of accumulated baggage to
contend with. Laurie and I did the typical parental egocentric thing
of, “What did we do wrong?” Not a question to make a child feel
good! The next question, “How will you find happiness as we have as
heterosexuals and as parents?” Can you hear the cultural bias in
that question? To a 18 year old, were we not saying, “you are doomed
to be miserable?”
For Rachel, our perceptions regarding our sexual orientation, being
tangled up in our cultural biases and assumptions, didn’t help. It
was only in 1973, that “modern” medicine removed homosexuality as a
psychiatric illness. Twelve years ago I listened to a lecture by a
liberal theologian who promoted a pastoral approach to homosexuality
as a certain kind of “brokenness” in the human moral condition. He
did not know how to answer the question, “What if our sexuality and
our sexual preference is a given--not a choice or something that is
broken?” Actually, I have come to recognize sexuality as a gift, a
gift to be people drawn to and able to commit to caring, nurturing,
and supportive relationships!
What has changed since that year when Rachel was 18? Our love and
commitment meant that we needed to examine ourselves and grow. And
here we all are and that tells you the “rest of the story.” We
affirm Rachel’s and Sandra’s lives as their own witness to human
potential. It is with pride we, Laurie and I, and Sandra’s parents
Bill and Louise, watch Sandra and Rachel parent our grandchildren,
Lily and Asher!
Our sexuality is a part of our humanity and life and life is a gift.
We live and grow in relationships. Are we not most fortunate to have
each other and the loyalty and trust that informs and shapes the
relationships in our family? We also live in a frightening world,
particularly if you are a despised minority, regardless of race,
creed or gender. Liberal is not necessarily enough of a position in
a frightening world. And so we come circling back to church and why
we are both here.
Rachel:
I’m hit with the obvious conflict: where in the hell does an
angry-at-the-church, anti-religious, scared lesbian go to church
with what are now her 2 kids? It would just be me, Lily, and Asher
since Sandra (the daughter of a Methodist minister) had no interest
in attending church.
My parents discovered this church in 1995 because of their
exasperation and hurt with the Episcopal churches in Prince George’s
County. It was not an easy choice for my father to stop regular
attendance, but I know he was very open to trying out my mother’s
idea of going back to her childhood source of comfort and
validation, the Unitarian church. When I told them I was debating
trying out a church they lobbied hard that I try out Davies. I
attended off and on for a few months and one Sunday John gave a
sermon about gay rights in Maryland and how his activism had turned
into rage when he heard “Christian” folks being rude and hateful at
an Annapolis rally. This resonated because I needed to hear that
people could be as hurt and angry as I am. I wanted to be part of a
place that puts actions to their words on several political issues
including homosexuality and you folks sure do that.
In the year since we joined Davies, Lily feels this is her church.
She would be crushed if we stopped coming. She had a Sunday class a
month ago about families and I know she was excited about showing a
picture of our family. She was thrilled to do it. Thrilled.
I think that I left church at 13 because I was gay. I think that one
of the reasons I felt on edge and anxious is that I knew there
wasn’t going to be acceptance for my big sin. And after years of
feeling fine with who I was the last few years have had me thinking
that maybe I am a “sinner” or maybe even worse that I’m the most
selfish person ever for subjecting my children to hate. Being gay
brought me back to church too, and I am relearning what it means to
be part of a spiritual community. I thank you all for giving that
gift to me.
I cannot speak for other gay people and would never presume to, but
I think it very likely that there are many gay people in this county
feeling the pain and alienation I’m referring to. Folks who would be
heartened to know that a church with so much emphasis on warmth and
activism, wants to communicate a loud message of commitment and
inclusiveness. A message that is not getting said very loud or
often. So, to do a rough paraphrase from an oft-quoted line, if you
lay out the welcoming carpet I believe they will come.
Dad:
I have to be patient with people who are struggling honestly with
their hang-ups. I was there. Sympathetic responses that say in
response, “Poor you, you have a homosexual child…” anger me. Here at
Davies, as people came to know that Laurie and I have a daughter who
is a lesbian, we never once got a questioning or condescending
response nor a look that said, “I wonder what they did wrong.” That
is very refreshing. You have heard what Rachel has said about her
experience here.
Active affirmation is right and it is needed. And so is a proactive
declaration to others and the world, “Here we are. This is who we
are. We are a welcoming congregation.” Judicial and legal hostility
and the rise of religious fundamentalism threatens justice and
everyone’s freedoms. Our corporate witness is very much needed.
Unitarians can and should be proud of their leadership. Perhaps,
Massachusetts is where it is in terms of legal recognition because
of the notable presence of Unitarianism in that State. Perhaps,
because of Unitarians and the Episcopalians in New Hampshire, that
State has soon to be enacted legislation to recognize gay and
lesbian civil unions. Many states are moving in other directions.
Whither Maryland? We believe our active declaration of who we are is
very much needed.
Rachel and I thank you for this time with you.
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