INTEGRITY

GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM

c Integrity 1977   ISSN: 0095-2184

Vol. 3  No. 4   February 1977

 

INTEGRITY:  GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM is the official newsletter of Integrity, Inc., a nonprofit religious, charitable, educational, and literary organization of Gay Episcopalians and our friends.  Integrity, Inc. maintains a national office with The Rev. Ron Wesner, President, 5014 Willows Avenue, Phila., PA 19143, tele. 215-748-2118.  Membership and subscription correspondence should be sent to Forum Business Manager, Dave Williams, INTEGRITY, P.O. Box 891, Oak Park, IL 60303, tele 312-386-1470.  Editorial correspondence should be sent to Louie Crew, 701 Orange Street, No. 6, Fort Valley, GA 31030, tele. 912-825-7287. 

 

Signed articles represent the views of the contributors.  The editors reserve the right to revise all sexist language. 

 

Copyright 1977 by Integrity, Inc.  10 issues per year.  Membership subscriptions are $10; subscriptions without membership are $12.  Add $3 for all subscriptions that require plain envelopes; Canadians add $2 if paying in Canadian currency.  Couple rates are $13 for one newsletter. 

 

President................................ The Rev. Ron Wesner

Vice President................................. John Lawrence

Secretary...................................... Donn Mitchell

Treasurer............................. The Rev. John Lenhardt

Editor............................................ Louie Crew

Publisher..................................... David Williams

 

Trustees:     Ernest Clay, Louie Crew, Julie Peterson,

              The Rev. Richard Younge

 

Consultants:The Rev. Malcolm Boyd, The Rev. Robert W. Cromey, The Rev. Norman Pittenger

 

COLLECT FOR PROSTITUTES

 

Understanding Father, you have made our bodies to be temples for your Holy Spirit.  Look with special love and concern upon all those who for whatever reason have traded their bodies in acts of commerce.  Give them a special awareness of your love for them as your children and as our own sisters and brothers.  Give us a special knowledge of our oneness with them in your holy family.  Deliver us from sexual pride and unfeeling.  May none of us doubt the miracles that your love can perform on the creature within each of us.  Amen

 

GAY BLASPHEMY

 

LONDON, ENGLAND -- A British anti-pornography campaigner is charging the Gay News -- the British gay newspaper -- under the Blasphemy Act of 1697.  The woman, Mary Whitehouse, has persuaded a High Court judge to allow criminal proceedings against the Gay News because of a poem that allegedly blasphemes the life of Christ.  The poem -- a fantasy in which the speaker imagines a series of homosexual acts in which Christ is accused -- was written by James Kirkup.  Kirkup has been published by Fag Rag and Gay Sunshine and is presently a poet in residence at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts.

 

It is the first such case in 54 years in England.  The crime carries a possible maximum life sentence.

 

                        From Gay Community News

 

BISHOP MOORE VISITS INTEGRITY/NYC

 

NYC.  On 12th January here the Bishop of New York, The Rt. Rev. Paul Moore, will be the chief cele­brant and preacher for INTEGRITY/NYC's concelebrated Eucharist of the Incarnation.

 

Chaplain to the Bishop will be The Rev. Alan W. Jones, Center for Christian Spirituality.

 

Other participants include the Rev. Canon Clinton Jones of Hartford; The Rev. Robert J. Carter, S.J., of DIGNITY/NY; The Rev. Robert Herrick of the National Gay Task Force; Rabbi Paul Merling of the Congregation Beth Simchat Torah; The Rev. Margaret Gumm of Mother Thunder Mission; The Rev. Ellen Barrett; Robert Seaver, Board Chairperson of INTEGRITY/NYC; The Rev. Maggie Dunlap; The Rev. David Biancardi; Noel Blackman; Mary Chichester; Nancy Krody; and James Saslow.

 

Hosts for the happy hour following are Frank Lucas and Bill Goddard.

 

BUREAU OF PRISONS BANS GAY PUBLICATIONS

 

According to a release from the National Gay Task Force, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons has decided not to permit Gay publications to enter Federal correctional facilities.

 

The decision vas made by Norman Carlson, Direc­tor of U.S. Bureau of Prisons, and presumably will cover Forum as well as all other Gay publications.  Since our beginning we have been allowing free subscriptions to all prisoners requesting same, and we have benefitted greatly by their regular contribu­tions to our "forum" section.

 

Carlson said:  "Publications which call attention or identify inmates who accept homosexuality can, in our opinion, be detrimental to their safety."

 

 

ELLEN BARRETT ORDINATION IN NYC

 

NYC.  The Rev. Ellen Marie Barrett, deacon of the Episcopal Church since December of 1975, is scheduled to be ordained priest here at The Church of the Holy Apostles at Ninth Avenue and 28th Street at 6 PM on Monday 10th of January 1977, The Rt. Rev. Paul Moore, Jr., The Bishop of New York, presiding.  Ms. Barrett served for five months with Jim Wickliff as INTEGRITY's first co-presidents, from July-December 1975, and resigned because of commitments attending her ordina­tion to the diaconate.  She has remained active in INTEGRITY/National and has participated in both of our national conven­tions.

 

At this writing Ms. Barrett expects to be presented at her ordination by The Rev. Carter Hayward, one of the contro­versial Philadelphia Eleven, who were ordained in advance of the canonical approval won for the ordination of women at Minneapolis this past September.

 

Following her ordination Ms. Barrett expects to continue to fill in on weekdays at St. Mark's in Berkeley, California and to continue her pursuit of a doctorate in ethics at GTU there.

 

Dr. Annette Ruark, a classmate of Ms. Barrett at General, will also be ordained priest at the same time.

 

The Rev. Ms. Barrett has spent eight years in open participation in the Gay movement in and outside the Church.  She holds an M.A. in history from NYU and  M.Div., cum laude, from General Theological Seminary.

 

FR. VERMILYE DENIES CHARGES

 

Alto, TN.  The Rev. C.I. ("Bud") Vermilye, charged here in November on 16 counts in connection with his running of Boys' Farm Inc., a home for wayward or homeless young men, has denied all charges in a telephone call with Louie Crew of Forum and Fr. Grant Gallup.  [See Forum for December 1976.]

 

Fr. Vermilye asserts that he is being harassed by state authorities for his having brought suits against them in the past.

 

Fr. Vermilye says that he is not Gay.  He is the divorced father of five children and is engaged to be married.  He is not a member of INTEGRITY.

 

Fr. Vermilye says that his files and correspondence in counseling several Gay people have been seized, and he fears that reprisals will be taken against those being counseled.

 

According to Fr. Vermilye, the primary evidence against him came from an ex-mental patient.

 

Fr. Vermilye assured Forum that he does have access to priestly counsel and to good attorneys.

 

ACCEPTANCE OF GAYS AS HERESY AND APOSTASY

 

Plainfield, NJ.  The Vestry of St. Stephen's Parish here notified Bishop Van Duzer of New Jersey on 30th September that "the pronouncements made regarding human sexuality" at General Convention are among their many reasons for being unable to accept the action of the Convention, according to a story in the December issue of The Christian Challenge.

 

Thus, the parish is withholding payment of all diocesan assessments, not accepting the service of diocesan bishops, suspending active fellowship with the diocese, not attending diocesan convention or the diocesan clergy conference.

 

PEREGRINATIONS OF OUR PRESIDENT

 

During the month of January The Rev. Ron Wesner, President of INTEGRITY/NatIonal, toured much of the east.  In mid-January he was in Atlanta, where he met with the local chapter; with DIGNITY/Atlanta as their speaker; with The Very Rev. David Collins, Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip and Vice-Presi­dent of the Episcopal House of Deputies; with The Rt. Rev. Bennett Sims, Bishop of Atlanta; with Fr. Charles Roper, President of the Diocesan Standing Committee; with Pastor Howard Wells of MCC/Atlanta; with Fr. Herbert Beadle, chairperson of the Diocesan Committee on Human Sexuality; and others.

 

From Atlanta Fr. Wesner went on for a few days in Fort Myers and Jacksonville, Florida, and then for a visit to the seminary at Sewanee in Tennessee.  He also visited briefly with the new chapter in Knoxville, TN.

 

Fr. Wesner is non-stipendiary and these trips are made possible only by the generosity of our members and friends.  These missions are very important and we urge all to participate with prayers and dollars.

 

PRESBYTERIANS STUDY GAYS

 

St. Louis.  Dates and locations for four regional hearings have been announced by the United Presby­terian Church's Task Force to Study Homosexuality.  The hearings, which are aimed at helping the task force learn the opinions and experiences of persons throughout the Church, will be held in Cleveland, 10-12 March; 31 March-2 April, St. Louis; 19-21 May, San Francisco; and 23-24 June, Philadelphia.  The last session will be in conjunction with the denomination's 189th General Assembly.

 

GAY HEALTH COALITION FORMS

 

NYC.  A National Gay Health Coalition was established at a meeting of representatives of several Gay health caucuses on 14th November 1976 here.

 

The primary purposes of the Coalition are to provide the national Gay health caucuses with a mean of sharing and to help the caucuses to work together.

 

The next meeting is set for 21-22 May in Boston.  Anyone interested in the minutes of the first two meetings and notices of the next one should send two stamped self-addressed business size envelopes to Dr. Walter J. Lear, 206 N. 35th St., Phila 19104.

 

EYE DABBLING ANGLICAN STYLE--

SIMULTANEOUS REMOVE OF EYE MOTES AND BEAMS

 

Alexandria, VA.  Speaking at the Virginia Theological Seminary here, Dr. Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse expounded further her well-publicized view of homosexuality as a form of immaturity, as reported in The Virginia Churchman:

 

There are others in and out of the church, she reminded the seminarians, whose lives have been just as flawed with immaturities and mistakes as homosexuals.

 

"Look at me," she said.  "I eloped when I was seventeen and had two marriages and two divorces.  That's my problem, that's the best I could do, but I don't expect the doors of the church to be shut in my face.  Some homosexuals are living with responsible homosexual lifestyles and doing the best they can do."

 

PUBLICATION OF THE ANGLICAN GRADUAL HALTED

 

San Antonio.  Publication plans have been suspended For Anglican Gradual, edited by David White and to have been published by Integrity Publishing, Inc., 300 W. 10th Street, NYC.  The announcement was made by Mr. White at his new address, 67 East Locust Street, San Antonio, TX 78212.

 

The project is not a hoax.  It has been four years in the making and does exist, as an undated version of The Anglican Missal, designed to be used with the Draft Proposed Book of Common Prayer.  Adequate funds did not materialize to see the project to completion.

 

Any subscriber who has not already received a refund should contact Mr. White in San Antonio with copies of the canceled checks.  We all regret this disappointment.

 

PARISH CHURCH HOUSES "HEALING" MINISTRY TO GAYS

 

Fairfax, VA.  The Rev. John Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church here, has provided space in the parish buildings to Liberation, Inc., an organization headed by Guy Charles of Arlington, VA.  Liberation maintains that homosexuality is sin, but that God wants to save homosexuals from that sin and can do so through their ministry.  Mr. Charles himself claims to have been once a very active homosexual sinner.

 

Many attempts by INTEGRITY to communicate with Mr. Charles have been ignored.  His most recent newsletter carried strong attacks against The Rev. Malcolm Boyd for his coming out at our San Francisco convention last summer, and also took aim at Evangelicals Concerned, an informed Gay group that has on occasion publicly debated Mr. Charles.

 

"God Ain't Gay"

Theme of a Priest's Campaign

 

An Episcopal priest from Glenwood, Md., who said he has seen evidence that homosexuality is increasing across the country, was in Minneapolis to convince Episcopal Church conventioneers that "God Ain't Gay."  The Rev. Virgil Van Street distributed copies of his statement bearing that title to delegates.

 

According to Mr. Van Street, "some in the so-called 'gay' movement are aggressively pushing for recognition by the Church."  And he added, "there are some within the Church who seem to be responding with an affirmative interest that could possibly lead to homosexuality being presented to the Church as an acceptable practice."  Mr. Van Street maintained that according to the Bible homosexuality is "sin" and that man and woman "were made to lie with each other" -- not man with man and woman with woman.

 

                         The American Church News

 

PENNSYLVANIA GAY CONFERENCE PLANNED FOR MAY

 

Bangor, PA.  Kirkridge, a religious retreat center on the Appalachian Trail, is planning an event on the theme "Gay and Christian" here for 5-7 May, 1977, as announced by the Director Robert A. Raines.  It is expected that Fr. John McNeil, S.J., and our own Fr. Ron Wesner, will be among the resource persons.  Interested persons should contact Kirkridge, Bangor, PA 18013.  This may well be the kind of event to which parishes should send concerned nonGay persons.

 

UNWELCOME REMAINS THE RULE

 

Ft. Valley, GA.  The vicar and the vestry here, on almost the same day the Plains Baptist Church voted to accept Blacks, informed Bishop Sims and the Diocesan Standing Committee that their parish would have to be dismantled brick by brick before they would consider withdrawing their request that INTEGRITY founder Louie Crew "find some other place of worship that may be more in sympathy to [his] thinking and effort toward Gay people."

 

 

RUSTLES IN ENGLISH CLOSETS

 

Each year a prominent clergyman is chosen in England to write an anonymous preface to the annual Crockford's Clerical Directory.  In 1976 a classic homophobe took this occasion to warn against groups such as ours in the USA which are allegedly tempting English churchpersons to take radically new views towards Gayness, much to the alarm of this divine.  We reprint below the relevant portions of the essay, as shared with us by our English friends in the Gay Christian Movement.  We would welcome responses from our readers.

 

.... But the resignation of a Welsh diocesan bishop [The Bishop of Llandaff, the Rt. Rev. Eryl S. Thomas, who resigned in November 1975] charged by the police with indecency involving another man caused a scandal in 1975, and this demands to be recorded.  We offer only brief reflections.  The Bishop resigned in a spirit which did much to redeem the sordid situation.  He asked for forgiveness and prayers, he was supported by his wife and family, and he received many messages dignified by Christian charity.

 

The tragedy may have a use if it rebukes the recent propaganda on behalf of "gay" (was ever a word so misused?) Christians and priests.  At a time of moral confusion and of growth in moral sensitivity, it is not surprising that those who are by nature homosexual should claim the right to live according to their nature; and at a time when many in the Church recognize the need to be realistic and com­passionate about the world as it actually is, it is not surprising that "gay lib" has been given a hearing. All this constitutes a growing pastoral problem.  But clear thinking is needed all the more urgently.  We write before the publication of a report being prepared for the Church of England on this problem, but we are sure that the acceptance of homosexuals in society should be confined to the small minority which really is "that way inclined" by a deep-rooted and ineradicable nature, and which is always discreet.  How lay men and women in this minority behave in private with adult lovers is, we think, best left to their consciences.  What is unacceptable is that people capable of true marriage should be turned away from its joys and social duties by any corrupting influences; and there is reason to believe that this category of the marriageable includes large numbers with some homosexual inclina­tion and experience.  That is why Christians should never be so charitable to deviants as to cease to oppose the flaunting of homosexual behavior.

 

In this as in other matters a special standard can reasonably be expected of the clergy, who are so often entrusted with the care of the young, and with counselling about marriage, and although church history shows how much can be contributed by priests who are "not the marrying sort," we are also convinced by church history that the only alternatives can, and ought to, be either faithful marriage or faithful chastity.  In practice this must mean that no priest with homosexual leanings should ever feel free to give any physical expression to them; the self-control must be iron.  Priests who uphold this traditional standard of self-discipline and self-sacrifice are wise not to describe themselves -- let alone the Lord Jesus or any of the saints -- as "homosexuals." The word has many meanings, and most of them are still (to the public) corrupt.  Priests who do not accept this tried and tested standard liberate the powers of evil.  The recent formation of a Gay Christian Movement in England, imitating similar groups in the United States, seems to us worse than foolish.

 

NOTICES

 

"Christianity and Human Sexuality," 103 typewritten pages compiled for the 1967 General Convention by the late Mrs. Peggy Morrison.  Since this material was not adopted as Church policy, it is being treated a confidential and not for general distribution.  Special inquiries should be directed to Ms. Avis Harvey at 815 Second Avenue, NYC, if one wants to make an appointment to read the material at the Church Resource Center.

 

Christian Sexuality by Richard R. Mickley.  The Rev. Mr. Mickley is editor of MCC's In Unity.  This second paper­back edition of his readable treatise is available from P.0. Box 5570, Los Angeles, CA 90055

 

Entrapped by Edward Baskett.  Lawrence Hill & Co., 24 Burr Farms Road, Westport, CT 06880.  $6.50 Cloth.  This is a grim account of the author's own entrapment and his insistence on trying to win his case by openness with the facts in court, as opposed to being bought off by lesser guilty pleas.  Civil libertarians should share this one with their nonGay friends.

 

Etiological and Treatment Literature on Homosexuality by Ralph Blair.  Dr. Blair is with the Homosexual Counseling Center in NYC and active in Evangelicals Concerned and the Homosexual Counseling Journal.  This is an important 50-page survey of the etiology literature, a subject which our ignoring will never make disappear.  Order from HCCC, Inc. 30 East 60th St., NYC 10022.

 

Gay American History by Jonathan Katz.  T.Y. Crowell, 666 Fifth Ave., NYC 10019.  $19.95 cloth.  $9.95 paper.  A must for every library.  690 pages of well-documented and thoroughly-indexed material recording our presence with sensitivity and insight.  We can all look forward to the day that hundreds of others have filled in all the gaps obviously remaining, but we will always be grateful for this effort that uncovers the garment.

 

Gay Studies Newsletter.  $2 for students or unemployed.  $5 for sustaining subscription.  Make payable to the Gay Caucus for Modern Languages, Paula Bennett, Beaver Pond Road, Lincoln, MA 01773.  This lengthy newsletter of the Caucus usually appears 2-4 times a year and is invalu­able for those wanting to keep up with research and publications about Gays in various modern literatures.

 

Male Bodies, Men's Selves.  This book is in progress by Sam Julty, who seeks contributions of no more than two pages, containing personal anecdotes and opinions by Gay men which cite the many elements of Gay lifestyle in our present society.  An honorarium of $25 is offered for each essay accepted.  Enclose stamped, self­addressed envelope and send to Sam Julty, 257 Seventh Avenue, NYC 10001 (212) 989-4795.  Aim for nonGay audience.

 

National Council of Teachers of English Panel "Towards a Healthy Gay Presence in Textbooks and Classrooms in Secondary Schools and Colleges," chaired by Louie Crew and including papers by Sr. Diana Culbertson, Ms. Deborah Core, Dr. Julia Stanley, Ms. Janet Cooper, and Mr. Raymond Frontain, is available on Cassette for $5.50 from Audio Archives Inc., One IBM Plaza, Suite 3302, Chicago, IL 60611.

 

Prison Pen Pal Winter Bulletin, 1976.  Prison Pen Pal Program, Box 1216, Cincinnati, OH 45202.  This bulletin is free upon request by those wanting to take time to write to some of the many prisoners who describe themselves therein.

 

Selected Poems, Ballads, and Songs of Jack Micheline, 1954-1975. Introduction by Jack Kerouac.  Edited with a preface by Paul Mariah.  240 pp., perfectbound paper at $4.50; limited Signet hardcover edition at $15.  From Man-Root Books, Box 982, South San Francisco, CA 94080.

 

Sexual Expression and "Moral Chaos" by Sara Coggin.  12p.  Published by the Gay Christian Movement, 15 Bermuda Road, Cambridge, ENGLAND.  This important and sensitive pamphlet (12 pp.) reproduces Ms. Coggin's talk to a GCM Conference at Birmingham, ENGLAND on 18 September 1976, and records a sincere Christian's struggles in coming to terms with her own Gayness.  Very good for diocesan study group and chapter discussions as well.

 

The Sorcerer of Bolinas Reef by Charles Reich.  Random House.  $8.95, A rather disappointing name-dropping decloseting that remains joyless in its clouds of remembered abstinence.  I missed here the warmly sensual affirmation of the Gospel.

 

                                       l.c.

PRINTER'S COLORS/TAPESTRY

By The Rev. Ron Wesner

 

I saw a poster at the Washington Lane station.

It was of an oriental statue, advertising the

Philadelphia Museum of Art.

 

Beautiful tan it was,

deep shadows, touchy curves.

 

When I walked up close it wasn't tan at all,

but small dots of blue and yellow and red.

The shadows were all the dots pushed close together.

The golden tan was spaces with yellow and red.

The dots weren't all the same.  There was a variety of

     colors and spaces.

The blues didn't deny the yellows their right to be

     there.

It was a beautiful poster.  I wanted to touch it.

 

THREE SONNETS

By John Soldo

 

     102

 

Sex and something, sex with some one

Who'll come back after coming,

Sex for some one who's the Good in bed,

Being body to the spirit's needs,

Life's try and grow, taken given,

Some one for whom sex means heaven

As the haven of friends beyond goat greed,

A vaulting home, heels living as heads,

Come one whose sex is a sounding ring

Of trust, echoes as in vibrant pun:

I ask you, Jesus, the Spirit in us,

Some how, your Way, now and always,

To wake within bars and on sea decks

The ones whose love will not sleep after sex.

 

     103

 

In the night, with its quiet and ease under stars,

I will take and tender you as no one

Else ever has or could have, for though I

May see gone with the dawn, when you wake, lifting

Your firm chest from the sheet of our caressed rest,

Though I must go, fear not.  Lip your behest,

Whatever you ask of me, fitting,

Shaping self for your crescent thighs;

Request what you will, and it will be done,

For I, like the stars, return from afar,

For I will be your one and he,

For you and I are like fabrics of sky:

Bright, yes, we are suns, lasting, we keep place

Like ship stars in a light, dancing embrace.

 

     104

 

Tom the Popper came to Harry's

Back East, where he sat butching the queens.

There was Rick, painter of Art Deco,

With turtle neck split down to his chest;

And Jim and his tie, slapping with one eye

The cheek, the rib, basket and thigh

Of every guy who stood at rest,

Eyes right and left in parade of No.

With Rick and Jim, Tom looked for a dream,

One who would maneuver his hairy

Calves and rocks to a blood-thick cock

After it was strokes by his tongue's curled yoke.

Found Jack Delight.  They rifled to his pad ‑‑

Flower, music ‑‑ popped pills and were sad.

 

          c copyright 1976 by John Soldo

 

LETTER TO RICHARD  

By Robert F. Riordan

 

It really doesn't matter,

whether the sunlight crawls

with the ivy hour by hour;

for I know without seeing

that I am old, that my eyes are yellowed

and my hair is gone.

I haven't changed.

 

Sometimes, my eyes

still taste your dark lips

and I can feel your strong hands

travel my spine;

sometimes, at night

I open the blind; let the moon drift in

and come to rest

like a cat on my thigh;

 

and then, in the deep

soundless night of my sheet,

I try to imagine

sunlight on my grave,

strangers in my home,

the moon bending down

and caressing my poem.

 

FORUM

 

I remain very much mindful of your insistence that the work of the Joint Commission on Health and Human Affairs be credible to you and to your colleagues in INTEGRITY.  I am also mindful of the necessity of the Commission's report being credible to the Church as a whole.  I would hope that we could have persons on the Commission of such standing that their report would demand universal respect, if not universal agreement.  The Presiding Bishop and I hope to complete the appointment of Joint Committee and Commissions by the middle of [December 1976].

 

              Charles R. Lawrence, President

              The House of Deputies

 

The policy of the Commission on Ministry and the ­Diocese of Massachusetts has not stated that homosexuality is an impediment to ordination.  For that matter, we have not stated that "maturity" is ­either.

 

This whole matter is currently under discussion shared by the members of the Standing Committee and the Commission on Ministry as well as by the bishops and other advisers in the diocese.

 

              The Rt. Rev. Morrls F. Arnold

              Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts

 

[In regard to the reports of Bps. Creighton's and Walker's refusal to bless the relationship of Gay males Fortunato and Schwandt, as reported in the January Forum]

 

Meanwhile, in Chicago, several parishes have observed St. Francis day by a public blessing of pets.  Cats, dogs, and other housepets, Episcopa­lian or not, have received the formal blessing of the Church, and their friendships with children as well as with consenting adults have been sanctioned.  Perhaps some will avail themselves of the Blessing of Throats, celebrated in some parishes on St. Blasius day, 3rd February, or the oft-used "Blessing of Anything Whatsoever," which is available at all times in the ecclesiastical year.

 

              The Rev. Grant Gallup

              From  The Integer, Newsletter of

              INTEGRITY/Chicago

 

Having read the November issue of Forum I have the uneasy feeling that many Gay people don't know what a General Convention resolution really is.  Bishop Sims is correct to point out that resolu­tions are not part of the Constitution and Canons and hence are not binding on anyone.  Resolutions are pious expressions of opinion or hope of the Church's legislature; they're not injunctions ­which must be obeyed.

 

GC resolutions are, as you say, often nothing more than liberal drivel.  Their usefulness lies in the support and sanction they provide for Church people who want to cooperate with the intent of a resolution.  Now when a priest or bishop is criticized for being soft on queers he can cite these resolutions as a rationale for his ­tolerance.

 

According to Fr. Younge, "The most significant thing that GC did in this area was to restate (and reform) the official teaching of the Episcopal Church regarding Gay people."  It simply isn't so. Why do Gays persist in these reckless exaggerations which can only create disappointment, disillusion­ment, and frustration?  I sometimes think that the only thing that unites Gays and straight a ­common inability to learn from experience.

 

              Thor

 

I would like for all people everywhere to know about a ­beautiful angel indeed -- Sister Evelyn Ancilla, at the Episcopal Convent of Transfiguration, 495 Albion Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45246.  In love and devotion she has adopted scores of children in prison and on death row, in Marion and Leavenworth, Lucasville, Angola, nd other camps.  If not for her help in the past year, we would have been encountering even worse conditions.  She has saved the lives of some inmates by demanding their treatment and by protesting their harassment and assaults on their persons.  She has been into prison ministry for several years.

 

Several defense funds are now being handled by her for our legal and other kinds of help.  We who know of her work owe her much appreciation and love.

 

              Johnny Gibbs, 86076-132

              Gay Prisoners Coalition

 

At present I am involved in researching Non-Verbal Gay Communications and feel very fortunate in that the Gay people that I work with are trusting in me to share very intimate parts of their life style.

 

As an Episcopalian and a caring and sharing human being, I applaud your efforts on behalf of the Gay community.

 

              Carol A. Polo, Ph.D., Co-Director

              Polo & Polo Clinic, Inc.

              Kansas City, KS 66102

 

Congratulations on the fine progress Gays are making within our Church.  We encountered another set-back here recently.  Fr. John Flynn no longer comes to bring us Christian fellowship and Holy Communion.

 

[My partner] John is still hoping and praying for confirmation, and I am still seeking the diaconate.  The superintendent continues his persecution.  However, we have filed a joint civil law suit against him in Federal Court in Jacksonville, Case 76-667-Civ-J-T, in the amount of $100,000.  We are also seeking release via habeas corpus.

 

 

              William J. Dorman, #011252, Cell M-3-N-l

              P.O.Box 747, Starke, FL 32091

 

Your recent poem "The Gay Reformation Hymn" [Oct. 76] was the best I've read.  I'm moved.

 

              Fred Ello, New Orleans

 

When the hate gets too bad, know that I had the same thing at the tender age of 13 [now I'm retired]; was completely ostracized as the town sissy.  It's a little tough at that age for an ignorant kid, brought up by what my grandmother called a "passel of women," adding "I wondered if you'd ever amount to anything, but you have." Much love to you.

 

              Jere

 

for Gay Women:

GAIA'S GUIDE, 1977

 

Annual discreet pocket size international bar/club guide and complete directory.  This fourth edition:  All USA, plus 40 other countries, 3000 listings.  Centers, switchboards, publications, resources, services, retreats, restaurants and much more.  $5.00 only from:  Gaia's Guide, 115 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94105.  (discreet mail order only -- two weeks delivery on all orders).  Also at Gay and Feminist Bookstores everywhere.

 

SPEAKING THE TRUTH

By The Rev. Richard Younge

 

This article originally appeared in SFI, the newsletter of INTEGRITY/San Francisco, where Fr. Younge is the convenor.

 

Recently a friend, knowing of my involvement with INTEGRITY, asked about our goals and programs, and where it had all begun.  I gave the standard rap about our origin, program, and hope for the improved status of Gay persons, especially in the Episcopal Church, and he seemed genuinely interested and supportive.  We talked some more, and then he remarked that there was one thing that put him off about some of the Gay church caucuses:  their names.  Why INTEGRITY and DIGNITY?  That sounded so self-righteous and holier-than-thou.  Why not a name that was less tendentious and chip-on-the-shoulder, something less aggressive and provocative which did not seem to imply that Gays had an exclusive corner on goodness, uprightness, and honor?

 

The simple and direct answer to his question, it seems to me, goes right to the center of the tremendous task of consciousness-raising that still remains to be done in churches and elsewhere. For centuries Judeo-Christian teaching and tradition have proclaimed constantly and loudly that Gay people are uniquely, especially, and essentially sinful, abominable, corrupt, and unspeakably evil, and there is a long history of oppression, injustice, physical cruelty and emotional homicide which has translated that teaching into action.  To point out that on many occasions individual Gays were and are tolerated, much like the village idiot or town whore, because they are amusing, clever, or possess a useful skill, is largely irrelevant.  Officially and unofficially Gays ­have been seen as less than human, unnatural, incomplete and unworthy, at best sick, sad, or pitiable and at worst deserving of excommunication and the stake.

 

The Gay caucuses have set as their first goal the challenging and reforming of this teaching and tradition because we feel that they are at their heart erroneous and unloving, and therefore, by definition, contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We aim to call the churches to judgment on this score.  So names like INTEGRITY and DIGNITY are provocative, and intentionally so.  They are a way of stating at the very beginning of any discussion that Gay people reject the tradi­tional church labels; they are no more incomplete or unworthy or unnatural or less than human than anyone else; and they claim equality with all the other children of God and their own particular share of his love ‑‑ a love which has been poured out for all of humanity in and through Jesus Christ.  In short, they affirm their own dignity (= worth, value, importance) and integrity (= uprightness, health, moral soundness, good character) over against any and all attempts to deny them their personhood.  Such names are indeed self-serving, for if Gay people do not serve themselves, who will?  If they do not fight for themselves, who will fight for them?  If they do not claim for themselves the promises of God, who will drag them passive and unwilling into the freedom of his kingdom?

 

But names like INTEGRITY and DIGNITY also serve others, for they promote honesty and charity and compel the churches to get their acts together and start considering seriously the meaning and implications of the gospel of love which they have been preaching, or else stand openly convicted of the most flagrant hypocrisy.  Beyond that, there is another answer to the question "Why INTEGRITY; why DIGNITY?"; and it points to a wider problem.

 

The hesitation or discomfort which many people like my friend feel when they encounter such names, or slogan like Gay is good or Black is beautiful arises, I think, from a pattern of thinking which has caused much mischief and unnecessary grief in human history, and which may be especially characteristic of Western (and Judeo-Christian) ways of seeing the world.  This is a pattern which may be labeled, just for fun, as the error of contrapositive inference.  To illustrate: "Gay is good" is a statement about Gay and nothing else; "Black is beautiful" is statement about Black and nothing more.  To speak of the integrity of Gay Episcopalians is affirmation about Gay Episcopalians and nothing more.  But customary ways of thinking are not content to stop there.  Almost auto­matically they go on to draw an unnecessary inference:  if Gay is good, then nonGay is not good; if Black is beautiful, then nonBlack is not beautiful; if Gay Episco­palians possess integrity, then nonGay Episcopalian do not.  Naturally enough those who see themselves as nonGay or nonBlack feel challenged or put down or inferior, and they resist and become defensive or uncom­fortable.  But of course the inference is unnecessary and may well be false.  It is quite possible that nonGay is also good, that nonBlack is also beautiful, that nonGay Episcopalians and their friends also have integrity.  Their customary, competitive way of thinking cannot see or accept this: it insist that if there are two or more categories, one must be better, superior, or otherwise preferable; it is then constrained to establish which category is indeed the better one.

 

Yes, those of us who reject traditional labels and judgments and affirm our own dignity or integrity or goodness or beauty are serving our own interests and need make no apology for that.  But we may also serve the interests of others by not failing into the customary mental rut.  We can be living examples of people who feel good about ourselves without having to denigrate the worth of others who may differ from us.  We can assert our claim to be best qualified to speak about ourselves and our lifestyles, and leave it to others to speak about themselves.

 

Christians have always been at their best when they speak and live the gospel, when they bear witness to their own faith and joy and sense of liberation:  they have tended to be at their worst when they have devoted their energies to pointing out, judging, persecuting, and attempting to correct the deficiencies of others; and they have frequently missed hearing the rustle of the Holy Spirit's wings in the latter process.  Our aspiration is to affirm what by God's grace we know about ourselves:  that we have integrity and beauty, that we are good because we are part of God's creation and beautiful because we bear his image.  This we say of ourselves, and accept the responsibility as Christian women and men to manifest outward and visible signs of the grace that is within us.  As to others, we do not presume to speak of their dignity or integrity or goodness or beauty.  That they must do themselves, and by their deeds bear witness to the world who and what sort they are.

 

THE COMPANY GOD KEEPS

By The Rev. Sam Portaro, Jr.

 

Fr. Portaro preached this homily at the Bruton Parish Church in Virginia on 10th October, 1976.  Fr. Portaro is the College Associate for William and Mary and assigned to this parish in Williamsburg.

 

The sermon text is Luke 7:36-60.

 

It is a most interesting picture, and a fascinating assemblage to consider, when we listen to St. Luke's Gospel as just read.  We find three persons least likely to be seated together around one table ‑‑ Jesus at dinner with a Pharisee and a prostitute.  It is a rather difficult picture to assimilate, one which we usually expurgate from much of our consi­deration of Christ and the Gospel, and our Christian imagery.  That must have been quite a dinner party!  And I wonder, as I consider that picture and those three very different, incongruous persons gathered together, if it is not a portent, a foreshadowing of a direction the Church should take and a table which we will probably sit down to.

 

Our Church has never been very popular with the general public.  In fact, our Church has never been very popular with us.  Especially when our Church makes decisions within the area of social concern and to aid those who are in need because of oppression at the hands of their brothers.  We do not like the picture of Christ seated at the table with the prostitute and the Pharisee.  Nor do we like the picture of the Church, the Episcopal Church and her dioceses within the United States, giving large sums of money to the Black Panthers.  Nor do we particularly thrill to the sight of the Episcopal Church which opens its doors to the unloved and the unlovable.  We were not happy in the 60s when in Episcopal Churches all over the South working field hands and domestics with black skin knelt at communion rails beside society matrons in fur coats.  Many have been unhappy with our response to women called to minister within the ordained ranks of the Church.  And there will be many who will be most unhappy with a little-noticed resolution that was adopted by the last General Convention of the Episcopal Church, a resolution which says that a certain segment of our society hitherto considered unclean, is now being considered by the church.  It was a statement which got lost in the shuffle of the Draft Proposed Book of Common Prayer.  It was a statement that was not heard because of the loud cry that went up over the victory of the ordina­tion of women.  But it was a valid resolution and it did pass, nonetheless.

 

It read in part:  "Homosexuals have a full and equal claim upon the love and acceptance and pastoral care of the Church."

 

It seems that we, as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, with few other Christian churches taking our viewpoint, have begun a process of inviting some very strange guests to our table.  And there are many who will be unhappy.  There will be many who will take the view of the Pharisee who had a very legitimate and valid concern.  As the Pharisee sat there at table with a prostitute sitting at the same table, the first thing that ran through his mind as a rationalization was the conjecture:  "Surely Jesus doesn't know what this woman is."

 

That's a very nice way to give Christ the benefit of the doubt.  Yet the Pharisee, with great pride and deep insight and rich knowledge knew exactly what she was.  She was common.  She was a woman of so ill repute in the community that we cannot even use the word to describe her type within polite conversation.  She was most unpleasant.  Yet we in our beautification of the Christian Gospel like to ignore the unpleasant factors.  We like to drain the blood from the crucifixion.  We like to paint over the scourge of the rod, and we dearly love to gloss over the stories about the prostitutes, the dirty, and the common.

 

"What kind of man can this be," asked the Pharisee, "who would invite this kind of woman, or even allow her, for that matter, not only to sit at table, but to touch him?"

 

Immediately the Pharisee had committed the vainest sin of all; for without being aware of it, he had just passed judgment upon another human being.  There it was, that damned and damnable sin of one human being assessing the worth of another and weighing in the balance.  Such sin can come only from those who are blind ‑‑ blind to their own weakness, blind to their own frailty, blind to the inherent goodness which resides in all of God's creation and was pronounced at creation to be good.  Such sin can come only from someone who is blinded by her or his own desire to be elevated for personal gain at cost to others, by those who are blind to their own inadequacies.

 

Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount:  "How blessed are those who know their need of God."  Or translated into the context of this sermon, "How blessed are those who know how far short of the mark they fall, and their need to be lifted up."

 

Beginning with the decision of the General Convention, a very loose and open-ended, easily twisted, often misunderstood, and already badly-reported statement, we have begun a process which will undoubtedly bring forth a new issue of blood from within the ranks of the Episcopal Church within the years to come.  I think that it would be most appropriate for us as Episcopalians -- and those of you who just visit with us and will be leaving here, who will read of our decisions and consider our deliberations of how we are to deal with one another in this world ‑‑ to remember this story of Jesus sitting at a meal with a Pharisee and a prostitute.  Remember particularly that the pronoun used in the context of Christ's knowledge of the woman.  The Pharisee knew what she was; Jesus knew who she was.  Jesus knew her as a sister.  He knew her as a joint heir of a benevolent father.  Oddly enough, he also knew who the Pharisee was, and he was prepared to sit at table with both one who as notorious and one who in passing judgment upon that notoriety had committed a much more egregious act.

 

Christ's benevolence to the Pharisee was totally lost on that blind doctor of the Law.  Christ did not even upbraid him but gave him a very kind and gentle parable to explain the presence of the woman.  Imagine the irony.  Here we are with a detested, low woman of the street, kneeling and weeping at the feet of Christ, engaged in an act of love and praise and self­-giving.  At the same moment one of the most revered and respected doctors of the Church, sitting at the elbow of our Lord, pronounces judgment.  The situation would be laughable were it not pathetic, were it not so real in our own experience and in our own time.

 

We call ourselves Christian and we follow one who loves us for who we are, who loves us as a brother and sister, knowing full well what we are, one who loves us in a bond of kinship, born of a common relationship as children of one Creator God, bound together in a kinship that can never be broken.  God invites us all to sit at table with him.  He invites us within the context of our own Christian Church in every Eucharis­tic feast that we celebrate.  But more importantly, he invites us at the daily tables in our lives, wherever two or three come together in his name -- or just where two or three come together.

 

As you and I sit down at the table with our Lord, where shall we find ourselves?  At his elbow in debate over the worthiness of one another, or at his feet, in gratitude for a love which embraces us all?  AMEN

 

THE SPECIAL TRAUMAS OF THE HOMOSEXUAL

By Tom Peters

 

This paper was first given before the Family Ministers Staff Team of the National Council of Churches.  Tom Peters is secretary of INTEGRITY/Chicago and a writer for Chicago Gay Life.

 

From the inside, looking out, at some of the par­ticular ages and stages in life, each person who begins to believe she or he may be Lesbian or Gay encounters a special trauma.  Beginning with the thought that such a truth would admit to being different from the majority, to the realization that such a fact would be contrary to the teachings and leanings of peers and parents, on through the acknowledgement that one has to suppress this sexual identity or fall to survive in society, the Lesbian or Gay male finds life an obstacle to honesty in the area of sexual identity. At least that was how it was when my generation was at the threshold of puberty.

 

In stark contrast, Barbara Gittings, addressing those gathered in San Francisco last August for the second annual convention of INTEGRITY/National, told this "fairy story":

 

"Every Lesbian growing up finds that the signs of her sexual orientation are welcomed and encouraged by her parents and relatives.  In school she gets ... peer support and plenty of opportunities to develop a homosexual social life.  Her sex education courses teach her that being Gay is positive, desirable and valuable.  Her Church approve of her orientation and encourages her to express it, and in her Church she feels both socially comfortable and spiritually attuned.

 

"In college everyone and everything is geared to reinforcing her Gayness and to making her feel proud of it.  She knows that she will never be called into the Dean's office for a stern lecture ...   She knows that she can confidently go to the student counseling service and get constructive help for any love or sex problem she may have ... [and get] copies of all those good gay books in the main library."  (It has to be noted here that Ms. Gittings is the Coordinator of the American Library Association's Task Force on Gay Liberation.)

 

She continued:  "She teaches school without fear of a witch-hunt ... and she chooses a career in the civil service or the armed services ... knowing that the vast power of the federal government supports her right to be known as Gay in just the same way that most people are ... known to be heterosexual.  There is a great variety of ways for her to meet other Lesbians in happy, civilized atmospheres, and she [does] her socializing ... confident that ... there will not be ... harassment ... by the police or ... by bigoted straights.

 

"Throughout her life she can draw on a rich literature about her kind of life and her kind of love ... she has her pick of her kind of love story, and when she turns on the tv the Gay people she sees in the soap operas and in the sit-coms and in the dramas make her feel good about herself.

 

"The Church blesses her love relationship with another woman, the world smiles and approves, and the state rewards the couple with special legal and economic benefits -- and they all live happily ever after."

 

Well, we all know that that is nowhere near the reality found in the world by either a Lesbian or Gay male.

 

When the Gay male or Lesbian finds first his or her sexual orientation to be indeed Gay or Lesbian, he or she suffer another trauma:  to dare, or not to dare, to attempt to find educational or light literature or a place or places to mingle with others similarly oriented.  The straight individual, up to this point, has both enjoyed the sense of social approval of his or her sexual orientation, together with a host of books and places that reinforce the "rightness" of that orientation.  Straights enjoy the sense that all is right in their world.  For Gay males and Lesbians, so much in life is just the opposite.

 

Trauma time arrives whenever the Gay male or Lesbian asks one of the following questions (to list only a few):

 

Should I buy that Gay or Lesbian book?  Are there any books available at the library that I can read to learn about my sexual feelings -- to learn how to deal with them?

 

Should I go to that Gay or Lesbian coffeehouse?  Should I join that Gay or Lesbian organization?  Should I march in the Lesbian/Gay male Pride Parade?  Should I go to a Lesbian or Gay bar?

 

Should I buy that outfit?  Or is it too Gay?

 

Should I testify on my own behalf when I am abused or oppressed?

 

Should I be friends with other Gays only in secret?  Should I be cautious with any friendship?

 

Should I join the Lesbian/Gay male liberation movement?  Should I support it with a check?

 

Should I even consider the Christian ministry as a profession?

 

Should I be honest about myself with my family?  With my friends? At church?  At school?  With the new people that I meet?

 

Should I look for a lover?

 

The list, I fear, is endless.  While the straight is studiously helped, and does not feel much hindered, by family and friends in making decisions and choices, the Lesbian or Gay male, conversely, is busy trying to fight off help that is offered by well-meaning, but all too often misinformed, and thus misguided people.  The Gay male or Lesbian finds a special trauma in choosing to disregard such help, while not wanting to hurt those offering it, because she or he is uncomfortable in a totally straight environment -- finding discomfort in both the necessary evasion and the masks that seem to be required if one is to avoid inner pain.

 

Additional traumas include trying to be straight for the sheer sake of conformity and then finding out that the act does not seem convincing or is otherwise unworkable.

 

To have to watch where you look, lest you always appear too interested in others of the same sex, and to have to avoid blushing at the mere mention of homosexuality, even in jest:   these are hard poses either to assume or maintain.

 

Yet the Gay male and the Lesbian, with no place else to go (for the whole of society can't be avoided forever), plays these games, and suffers the trauma of forever living a lie, or suffers the trauma of shocking and hurting and upsetting loved ones, friends, co-workers, the rest of the congregation at church, etc., by opting at long last to drop the mask and come out!

 

Learning by surreptitious means that she or he is part of an oppressed minority, then trying to remain hidden while occasionally seeking Lesbian or Gay male companionship, trying quietly to make a new friend:  all of these are special traumas.

 

Meanwhile, the straights by simple majority, move through life freer, more open, less fearful, less guilt-­ridden, more acceptable.  If the straight person doesn't get the job, it is almost a surety that he or she simply was not qualified.  If the Gay male or Lesbian fails to land the very same job, there is always the doubt in the mind about the real reason; yet one dare not eliminate the doubt by asking, for to do so would be to blow one's cover.

 

All of which leads to a host of questions about what the Churches can do to ease the pain and wipe away the extreme trauma now still the lot in life for the Lesbian and the Gay male.

 

TWO NON-SEXIST GAY GROOMS BEHIND THE COTTON CURTAIN

by Louie Crew

 

Prolegomenon

 

Our marriage, like our courtship, has been contentional.  It was love at first sight when we met at the elevator just outside the sixth-floor tearoom of the Atlanta YMCA.  Ernest was a fashion coordinator for a local department store, I a state college professor from 100 miles away, deep in the peach and the pecan orchards.  One of us Black, the other white; both native Southerners.  We commuted every weekend for five months.  Our friends were not surprised when we decided to marry.

 

We would have wasted our time to send an announcement to the local papers.  Besides, the bank employees spread the word just as effectively when we took out a joint account.  Our wedding itself was private, just the two of us and the Holy Spirit.  Parents, although loving, would not have welcomed the occasion; our priest would not have officiated even had he been granted the Episcopal authority which was expressly denied.  Two apartment neighbors, historians, sent a bottle of champagne; a psychologist friend dropped in earlier to propose a toast; others sent welcoming tokens.

 

We unloaded the heavier gear from the car before beginning the ceremony.  Then we carried each other across the threshold into the dining room, where the table was set with two wineglasses from Woolworth's, one lone and lighted red candle instead of our customary two green ones, a vase with one early narcissus, and an Open Book of Common Prayer.  We read the service nervously, its fearsome bidding and pledges.  The words women and wife translated readily as spouse, man, husband, Person.  All took only about ten minutes.

 

One could be too quick to sentimentalize a few details, such as our bed, a two-hundred-year-old four-poster built by the slave ancestor of one of us for the free ancestor of the other.  Perhaps we were fulfilling their dream?  Or Dr. King's dream...?  We find day-to-day living too difficult for us to negotiate other people's dreams:  we work at living our own dream, a dream no different from the dream of many other couples, a dream of a home with much love to bridge our separateness. 

 

After the Honeymoon

 

Our careers have always been very important to both of us.  We came together from the beginning anticipating many of the inevitable tensions between our rival commitments to careers and to each other.  We both had enjoyed professional success in a variety of occupations:  our main challenge was clearly going to be whether or not we could succeed together.  One of my biggest hesitancies during our months of courtship was my fear that I might thereby seem to commit myself to conjugal activity as much of the time when we lived all of our time together.  Little did I realize that Ernest too enjoys working alone many days on end for 14-16 hours a day.

 

Ironically, earlier lessons from our oppression as relatively less conspicuous Gays served as resources for our thriving as an openly Gay couple employed behind the Cotton Curtain.  Gays learn very early that most jobs are not secure for those even suspected of being Gay.  Very early on Ernest had been fired from a civil service job when he refused to go to bed with a male supervisor, who then had had Ernest "investigated" and "proved" Gay.  All of my teaching assignments have been filled with horrifying anecdotes about various predecessors who were fired when discovered as "queer."  The effect of this clear pattern of discrimination was the same on both of us:  prepare for as many jobs as you possibly can; never go into real debt; own mainly portable property; be able always to land on your feet.

 

Before we met, Ernest had supported himself with a variety of jobs -- janitorial service, modeling, fashion coordinating, nursing.  I had worked as a lumberjack, mechanic, professor, professional actor, waiter, writer.  We both know that when push comes to shove we can always be caterers, seamsters, peach pickers. ...  What is more, we know that we would be better than most at any of these tasks.  We have simply had to be sure of this kind of mobility.  Tenure is always meaningless when one is Gay.  I have never expected an institution to grant me tenure, and I have always been an excellent teacher precisely because I am willing to take the kinds of risks that are necessary to germinate ideas, the very kinds of risks that disqualify one with tenure committees.

 

This is not to deny the anxiety that accompanies threats to any job security, and certainly not to support those threats, but merely to put those threats into a perspective where we have been able to negotiate them reasonably successfully with, more important than any one job, our integrity preserved.  Humor has been a saving factor repeatedly.  When Ernest went to apply for beauty school, for example, the white ladies who ran the place were terrified at the idea of having a Black male there, assuming that his only motive would be sexual assault.  When he sensed their fear, he explained to them that he is married to another man and they took him with open arms.

 

Similarly comical was the relief that came after a bishop of the Anglican Orthodox Church had written to the local papers saying that the two of us by organizing a national group of Gay Episcopalians had been responsible for the devastating tornado that had recently struck Fort Valley, a tornado that left the two of us and our property unharmed while it knocked the steeple off every homophobic church in the white community.  "Would one expect God to keep silent when homosexuals are tolerated?" the bishop asked.  That evening in a spate of hate calls one familiar voice rang:  "Louie, you and Ernest get yourselves on over here and kiss in my backyard so my greens will grow!"  An administrator at the college jokingly called to suggest that I apply for head of agriculture; power to control the wind and the rain is queer power indeed.

 

Professional paranoia is an occupational necessity for open Gays.  Right now I have in litigation a complaint against a major American university where I was denied employment by a homophobic dean after my winning the unanimous support not only of a search committee of faculty and students but also of the entire thirty-six members of the college's Faculty Rank and Tenure Committee.  Damaging evidence is still being sent to me by the members of that Committee, who are irate that the dean violated due process and hired a candidate who had received absolutely no support.  More typically, job applications for advertised positions never receive answers at all.

 

We have been no freer from domestic harassment.  In August 1975, after a year of investigation, HUD found our complaint true that a local realtor had discriminated against us in housing because he considered us to be criminals.  Still HUD had no enforcement powers; the realtor refused to conciliate; and no lawyer would take the case for contingency fees, knowing, as one lawyer said, "the predictable responses of juries in this part of the country."  Meanwhile, in the white lower middle-class neighborhood where we live, nightly as I jog I am spat upon and verbally reviled by 8-, 10-, and 12-year-old children on bicycles, as their parents sit on their porches relishing their vain hopes that thereby their children will not grow up to be queer.  Night after night, as Ernest has returned from cosmetology classes he has feasted on their verbal ingenuity, purposely taking up to ten minutes just to get his kit out of the car.  There would be no help in protest.  The police would only arrest us for "child molestation" or "contributing to the delinquency of a minor."  The local Baptist preacher has already sent us a copy of a letter which he sent to the sheriff urging investigation.

 

Our friends here for a long time wondered why we do not at least keep a lower profile by not mentioning our relationship.  It is important to Ernest and me that our relationship is public.  We are not merely in a sexual union, but in a complex coupling that integrates all our life together.  Whether we are entertaining or being entertained, even when we are just shopping at the local Piggly Wiggly, it is important for us to know that we know that they know.  We can even sometimes get into enjoying their games with knowing, as when the employees all dash behind the butchers' one-way mirror to watch us wink at them when we pass.  As Ernest puts it, "Honey, you may gloat, but we're the stars!"

 

White men have been having sex with Black men in the South since 1619, yet such homosexuality has always been related negatively to straight institutions and defined as adultery, fornication, or sodomy.  Our open marriage obviates these definitions.  The effect is sometimes to move friends and neighbors into a new state of consciousness.  Rarely if ever before on my almost all-Black campus has a dude proudly and publicly sported his white male spouse; rarely if ever before has a white man in Georgia proudly notified his family, prep school, even his chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, of his happy marriage to a Black man.  If the profile is memorable, far more important is the consciousness we ourselves have experienced in this bonding.

 

Some of our friends elsewhere have accused us of masochism, saying that we ought to leave as soon as we get employment that is as challenging and fulfilling as that we now have, but no place is clearly enough a haven for Gay persons to justify our leaving at a cut in pay or our taking jobs that we would not find fulfilling.  It may very well be an indictment of the so-called liberal white American universities that they leave to a small, struggling, rural Black college the admittedly difficult task of adjusting to an outspoken Gay scholar.  Interestingly, the same persons who accuse us of masochism frequently control or at least influence jobs to which we might flee.  At times it is difficult to stifle the bitter awareness of the eloquence with which they would write of our being lynched.

 

Our economic resources have been diverse, including Ernest's earnings from nursing and then from various student employments while studying cosmetology, including his unemployment checks for which he qualifies only because the state refuses to recognize our marriage, and including my salary as an associate professor, which remains conspicuously below that of unpublished but non-Gay colleagues of the same rank, as revealed in the George state auditor's annual report.  Speculations are legion as to why I have not been fired.  I prefer to think that it is because I am lucky enough to have a chairperson who knows that I am a good teacher.  She feels that none of my life, public or private, is of any concern to her unless it relates directly and immediately to my function on my job.  Bosses higher up are more mixed.  One official called me in almost immediately after my serving notice to students and officials that I am Gay:  he said that he respected my courage.  So did the chairpersons of at least two other departments.  One very prissy boss, however, is threatened and brings visitors periodically to tut over a sign just outside my office:  "Gay Community Raps:  For Information Contact Louie Crew."  Prompted by this administrator, the college president wrote asking me to remove the offensive sign.  When I refused, the sign strangely started being taken down by vandals, but only on occasions when parents or other community persons were expected to be in the buildings.  When Ernest similarly refused to do the work of an orderly while having the rank of an LPN, the hospital employer called him "uppity."  When he tried to organize the Black aides to demand rights being denied them, the aides balked in fear and the hospital fired him.

 

One of the lowest points in our marriage was an occasion when I asked Ernest, "If you get that job with the cosmetics firm in NYC, can I live off your earnings so I won't have to stay here in Georgia the rest of this year?"  He did not answer.  I waited out the long silence almost half a day, and then he said, "Did I ask you could I 'live off your earnings' when I moved here from Atlanta without a job at first?"  I had momentarily lapsed from the more pervasive economic structure that our marriage effects.  Were we autonomous, at each trysting we would come at each other more unequally.  I would be the wealthier, Ernest the younger; I the more experienced, Ernest the more spontaneous....  In marriage everything is given once and for all.  For us marriage ended trading and introduced sharing.  The money is OURS.  The spontaneity is OURS.  And whatever is exhausted or whatever is incremented is OURS.  For me most earlier relationships had ended at the close of the mock honeymoons.  We are free to discover new dimensions every day.

 

We find that marriage changes in kind the range of our personal and material security.  Expressed negatively, Ernest gave up his fashion training in Atlanta to become a low-paid LPN in a rural hospital; I gave up a Fulbright to Turkey, where he would have no chances of employment.  Ernest gave up his LPN so that we could be together for my summer as an NEH fellow at Berkeley.  I took on our full support for several months while he was in school....  But this negative way of viewing our material existence ignores what we gained.  By such choices (we do not call them "sacrifices") we have effected the very possibility of working together.  Both careers give and take from a union that is richer than either career or than any of our possible independencies.  At least, we perceive ourselves richer, and as Geraldine says, "What you see is what you get!"

 

Although we are not likely to be altogether free of them ourselves, we find that many heterosexist ways of merely asking questions about relationships create problems for the relationships.  "Who makes the money?"  "Who spends the money?"  "Who owns the car?"  "Who owns the fur coat?"  "Who owns the motorcycle?"  "Who pays the rent?"  "Who does the dirty work?"  WE DO! is our answer to all of these questions.

 

My own neurotic compulsions with these middle-class perceptions have frequently inhibited my full enjoyment of our marriage.  While I enjoy cooking, sewing and, more limitedly, keeping house, more and more my writing and my organizing activities have preempted the major portions of my energy.  Ernest is a better cook, a much more efficient housekeeper, and an expert shopper.  Once I came home late on a rainy night to find all of the washed wet clothes in the refrigerator.  "What on earth!" I exclaimed.  "Lord, child, you sure be white tonight," he laughed, "I can tell your mama never took in washing!  It's the way to avert the mildew."

 

My learning to enjoy my man's househusbandliness as much as I enjoy my own is in many ways parallel to our enjoying all parts of each other's anatomy.  The first question most Gay friends ask us is, "Which of you is the husband?  Which the wife?"  We honestly have no way to answer respecting this dichotomy.  We are not thus differentiated.  We both like gentle perfumes and we both like pungent funkiness; we both enjoy our gracefulness as well as our toughness....

 

We are not mirror images, however.  Our careers are different, and we are not competing.  We make no specific demands about productivity, but we are both aware that a marriage is dead when either fails to want to contribute.  Ernest respects the summers I spend not making a dime but writing away as if I'll not have another such season.  I respect his taking off a year to go to school or his taking off time to do hair of women in the state mental hospital.

 

We also easily resist unhealthy veneration of each other.  He is wisely suspicious of much of the pomposity of the academic community and I of much of the vanity of the cosmetic industry.  Each of us is mature enough in his own career interests not to need much reinforcement, at times even to require welcome deflation.  I doubt that the two of us could thrive very long together if we did not know that we definitely can "make it" apart.  We are committed to a relationship precisely because it is "unnecessary."  Of course, in the temporal sphere that we choose to cohabit we do need each other and we are able to be vulnerable; but we are careful never to require a longer rope than can pull each back to his own boat and anchorage.  We are not drowning men clawing at a lifeguard; as seems to be the model fashionable in much non-Gay media these days.

 

At the risk of being still more invidious, I suspect that of the many non-Gay couples who break up, many break up because society's alleged supports of heterosexual relations are falsely advertised and hypocritical.  After the honeymoon is over, once the careers pull at each other, once Jane and John realize that their parents might even expect them to divorce, that their priest is used to it, that their friends and neighbors are too busy with their own relationships to care (except possible for the value of self-congratulation that attends efforts to seem to care), it is easy for non-Gays to walk away from each other in bewilderment, or to remain together only by law.  Gay relationships may be paradoxically blessed by not having the chance even to assume support from family, community, or law.

 

Ernest and I understood our divorce contract at the outset:  each will take half.  We made out wills to structure property guarantees.  We both own together all that each makes.  We have had to make our own structure, knowing that major efforts would be exerted to deny even those plans.  We have instructions about funerals, burial plots, etc.

 

We have had some few but very significant resources in our community, namely, in our friends.  We are both gregarious and affable, and we are invited to many parties.  Often he is the only Black or I the only white present, so segregated are the others in our community.  We are mad dancers, and always do courtesies of dancing with our hosts' spouses.  Maybe some index of our integration is the fact that only one couple has ever said that we should feel comfortable to dance together at their parties, and even there the other guests do not have an ambience about them that would make us feel comfortable doing so.  Also, our Gay friends would be much too vulnerable for us to invite to our Gay parties any of our non-Gay friends.

 

In many ways we did not even anticipate, our coupling is itself our career, so much does it alter our professional expectations, our job security, our work climate, etc.  Everyone knows that Gay folks are reasonably harmless if we remain at the baths, the bars, the adult movie houses, the tearooms, and other such restricted areas.  Ernest could have met a new Louie and I a new Ernest every night at the Atlanta YMCA for decades, and no one much would have bothered.  Possibly a Tennessee Williams might have celebrated our waste, or maybe even a Proust.  Certainly my priest would not have shouted, as he did recently, that we are "making a mockery of Christian marriage and the home."  Then my bishop would never have written, as he did this week, "I am weary of almost constant pressure applied on this office by a movement which I do not fully understand, but which I wish to grow in understanding" -- this while virtually telling me, probably his only regular Gay correspondent, that I persecute him merely by calling attention to my needs and the needs of my people!  Were Ernest and I still just tricking furtively at the YMCA, my students would see me as they used to, as the linguist, the rhetorician, the literary critic, the poet, the jogger -- and not, as so often now, merely as "that smart sissy."  It is only when we couple openly that the heterosexist culture marshals its forces against us.

 

The bonding we share has made us secure to take greater risks in thought and action.  As open Gays actively fighting a very hostile environment precisely because of our sexual orientation, we have at home the quiet strong security of our love always attesting to the rightness of our public claims and countering the wrong attitudes about us that even we might otherwise find hard to resist.  It has been impossible for us to doubt the beauty and the holiness of Gay love in general when morning, noon, and night we have known the beauty of our Gay love in particular.  In the past I somewhat tentatively fought from the closet for Gay rights for others to be happier than I had ever been or expected every to be:  today I would fight openly to the end just for the two of us to be as happy as we are.  Paradoxically, with "community" thus strongly narrowed to just the two of us, I simultaneously feel much more fully a part of the struggle of all Gay sisters and brothers everywhere and for all times.

___________________________

N.B.  The first four paragraphs appeared in Integrity:  Gay Episcopal Form (March 1975), p. 11.  Harper's has accepted them for "Wraparound" but has delayed publication indefinitely.

 

Reprinted from Careers and Couples:  An Academic Question, ed. by Lenore Hoffman and Gloria DeSole for the MLA Commission on the Status of Women.  NYC:  MLA, 1976.  Used by permission.

 

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