Response to Stumbling Toward a Genuine Conversation on Homosexuality

 Ray Fisher

Author Ray Fisher and DreamSeeker Magazine editor Michael A. King welcome ongoing discussion of this article. To access one key discussion option, simply go to the Cascadia Facebook Fan Page and click on Discussions. Also welcome are letters to the editor to be published in the Winter 2010 issue of DSM.

I was delighted to discover the moving collection of essays edited by Michael A. King, Stumbling Toward a Genuine Conversation on Homosexuality (Cascadia, 2007). The honesty and openness of the dialogue reaffirmed the pride I feel in my Mennonite heritage.

In this collection, church leaders raised challenges to the lesbian and gay community that remain unanswered. From the gay and lesbian side of that dialogue came a complex mass of emotions—mostly hurt, sometimes anger, often confusion and internal discord, frequently too raw to be channeled productively.

A goal of this response is to move the conversation forward by (1) responding to the challenges raised by church leaders in King’s collection and (2) suggesting a structure for channeling the energy and emotion of  our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. I first lay some groundstones for my thinking and then set out a proposal for a collective moving forward.

About my vantage point in this discussion

I am in some respects an improbable person to insert myself into this discussion. A gay man in a 13-year committed relationship, I was raised and baptized in the Mennonite community, more precisely the “Beachy Amish” church. My break with Mennonite faith occurred in my first year at Messiah College; I came out about a year thereafter, shortly before transferring to finish my studies at Harvard College. For more than 20 years subsequently, in my life as a law student and international finance lawyer based in New York, I variously wore the label “atheist” or “agnostic” and shed all ties to Mennonites.

It took a transfer to Frankfurt, Germany, to reconnect me with the community of faith. My move to Frankfurt, in my early 40s, left me without a network of friends. It also gave me a prime chance to explore my ethnic heritage.

Against this background, I stumbled—out of curiosity—into the Mennonite congregation in Frankfurt. I met such warmth and friendliness that it was impossible not to return. The congregation exhibited wonderful Christ-likeness in their desire to learn to know me as a person, as I am and not as I should be—and to leave the judgments of me and my lifestyle to my creator.

This was true of their approach to faith generally, since they embraced in their small circle a range of beliefs from orthodox evangelicalism to those espousing quite liberal feminist or liberation theologies. This small grouping of Mennonite Christians became my home away from home, my close circle of friends in a foreign land.

When one is faced with such a clear and sincere expression of the love of God, terms such as atheist and agnostic lose their meaning as organizational principles for one’s life. I did not join that congregation as a formal member, for a mix of reasons (the time was not right), but that wonderful congregation remains the “ground zero” for my re-engagement with the community of faith.

My desire to remain engaged continues, but I am somewhat lacking in opportunity—though I work and live in New York City during the week, my weekends are spent in eastern Berks County, Pennsylvania. While I am visiting a nearby Mennonite church on weekends, I remain cautious. Among other things, at this stage of my ongoing journey of faith, my theological leanings, my current understanding of the nature of God and faith, are “liberal” enough that they may be a source of discomfort.

More importantly, I have learned that any congregation that accepts me into its membership may be subject to sanction or perhaps expulsion by reason of my 13-year continuing partnership with Juan Carlos. That is too much for me to ask of any group.

Choosing the right vocabulary

Many gays and lesbians use the term LGBTQ or “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or queer” (or variants thereof) to describe sexual minorities generally. In King’s collection, Harold N. Miller decries the “Anabaptist GLTB community’s support of bisexuality,” suggesting that gays and lesbians are advocating an active, sexually swinging, ambidextrous lifestyle. The assertion is mystifying and probably reflects a serious misunderstanding. Is Miller reacting to the “B” part of “LGBTQ”? If our terminology proves a stumbling block, we should change it.

LGBTQ has special importance in the gay political world as a rejection of bigotry internally among the community. In the early generations of gay activists, there was a certain lack of acceptance of individuals who called themselves “bisexual,” with an implication that they were too insecure in their sexuality to become full-fledged members of the gay community. In that era, lesbians and gays often pursued differing agendas, with less communication across the aisle than would have been ideal. This tendency was only exacerbated in the 1980s, with the advent of AIDS as a gay male, not a lesbian, disease.

Similarly, in the 1980s and early 1990s, as gays started to integrate openly into the professional workplace, there was a tendency for integrated gays to distance themselves from the transgendered community, worrying that integrating people of more aberrant sexuality into their struggle for workplace respectability would be counterproductive. Queer is an umbrella term intended to address all those of non-mainstream sexuality.

Against this background, the recent predominance of “LGBTQ” in a political context is a wholly positive step, a rejection by the sexual-minority community of internecine bigotry and bias, an expression of “we’re all in this together.”

The context of the current discussion in the Mennonite faith community is different. Mennonites  are not, in my mind, having so much a “civil rights” discussion as a pragmatic one of how to reconcile the tension that arises when persons who feel called to Mennonite faith are unable to meet the discipleship guidelines that the church has chosen for itself.

In the context of conjugal covenants, in particular, it is not particularly relevant whether given persons are bisexual in desire or transgendered as a matter of personal history. What is relevant to the discussion is that they are proposing to enter a conjugal covenant as two men or two women.

For this reason, in this context, I use the terms lesbian and gay. I would be delighted if the church could use the term LGBTQ without stumbling—but if the term causes offense, I propose that we move beyond semantics and focus on the underlying substance.

On avoiding hypocrisy and double standards

A rather dire view of gay partnerships is painted by Harold N. Miller in his chapter in King’s book. In essence, he asserts that gay relationships are inherently non-monogamous and thus constitute a failure as expressions of conjugal commitment. This is implicitly contrasted with the more stable and fulfilling nature of conjugal commitment within the structures of the church.

Leave aside the fact that Miller is generalizing without empirical evidence—the gay men in my circle of friends and acquaintances are almost all in stable, long-term relationships. Crucially, Miller fails to note that he is contrasting a community of unbelievers on one hand with a community of faith on the other. Judged by Miller’s own yardstick, heterosexual marriage in society at large is a colossal failure—consider the rates of divorce, infidelity, and parenthood outside of wedlock.

To paraphrase the conservative columnist William Safire of the New York Times, straight people need not worry that gay marriage will undermine traditional marriage; the straight population is succeeding magnificently in bringing about that destruction on its own. The relevant question is not what gay and lesbian conjugal union looks like generally, but what it can mean in a Mennonite and Christian context.

Some discussions in King’s book also reveal a disregard (whether willing or naïve) of the realities of sexuality among straight Mennonites today. In my own family of eight siblings, I have good reason to think that the vast majority were not virgins at moment of marriage. Yet today the vast majority are in long-term monogamous marriages that reflect the church’s teachings.

Based on conversations with Mennonite friends, I strongly doubt that my family is unique. This failure to speak the full truth of Mennonite practice may serve a certain purpose, but in the context of gay Christians it seems hypocritical.

I believe the church benefits from acknowledging that human beings often fall short of the standards they aspire to. But if that acknowledgement is to be extended in the form of understanding (implicitly or explicitly) to our straight young people, the church must also be prepared to extend it (implicitly or explicitly) to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as well.

Conjugal covenant as a community endeavor

“It takes a village,” according to a prominent national politician, to ensure the well-being and successful rearing of children—a support network of family, school, and community. The same principle applies to maintaining the sanctity of conjugal union.

I recall when one of my sisters confronted a situation of marital fidelity shortly after having her first child. For a period of several long weeks, it seemed doubtful that the relationship could or should continue. But a large support network kicked in, consisting in the first instance of family but also of church. The situation was turned around, and post-intervention, with two more wonderful children, the marriage seems stronger than ever.

Those who have spent their entire lives in a community of faith often take for granted the support networks that are essential to the continuation of the community. The church community provides venues for Christian young people to meet each other, to date in safe and secure settings, to learn about the responsibilities and challenges of life together. When one slips off the path, there are generally strong arms of support reaching to pull one back on.

Gays and lesbians do not benefit from these support networks. That makes the longevity of my own relationship and those of many of my gay friends and acquaintances the more miraculous. It also makes these relationships all the more precarious.

What we are facing is a classic “chicken and egg” problem. Show me a pattern of committed, long-term gay relationships, says Harold Miller, and I might change my view. To that my answer is, Give me the same support network you give your straight congregants, and I will show you same-sex relationships that are as Christ-like as the heterosexual marriages you are accustomed to.

Compassion and cruelty in Mennonite discourse and experience

One of the most striking features of the essays that King has collected is the raw anger sometimes expressed, along with the hurt one sees in the pieces by John Linscheid, Weldon Nisly, and others. This intensity of emotion may cause some to “zone out” or to seek to elevate the discussion to an intellectualized level. That is unfortunate, since healing can only come when this pain is acknowledged.

One of the many ways that this collection of essays has been emotional for me is that it reminded me of aspects of Mennonite experience that are fundamentally unkind. In this context only, I use “Mennonite” in its cultural rather than religious sense. A frequent Mennonite response to disagreement has been division, rejection, and shunning, accompanied by personal hurt and anger—as if Christ had said that the first commandment is to be loud, clear, and uncompromising about one’s belief, with love playing a secondary role.

Many of us can tell story after story of schoolyard or churchyard bullying, or of marginalization within groups of friends because we were inadequately masculine. I recall, in my Beachy Amish teenage years, my group of church friends riding up behind an Amish buggy, bumping its wheels from behind repeatedly with the car fender, and shouting out abusive language in Pennsylvania Dutch. How very frightening—and humiliating—that must have been for those inside the buggy!

A childhood friend of mine boasted about burying cats to their necks in dirt and then running over them with a lawn mower—to the general merriment of the group of teens and young adults present.

The point is not that Mennonites are better or worse than the population at large—I would not aspire to being part of the Mennonite fellowship if I didn’t experience there a spirit that is fundamentally nurturing and uplifting. But there is a darker side to our culture, a tolerance of unkindness at odds with our peace mission, that is kept out of the sight and consciousness of mainstream Mennonite discourse. This darker side stands out much more prominently in the awareness of the church’s gay and lesbian sons and daughters.

Of course, not all acts of unkindness are equal—it is unfair to equate an act of church discipline with mowing off the heads of cats—and some are necessary. But our cultural tolerance of occasional unkindness has sometimes manifested itself, in sublimated fashion, in the church’s practices of discipline and governance. To acknowledge that these practices of discipline and governance arise out of a desire to keep the church pure, or out of simple fear and insecurity about confronting a new world, is not to diminish the hurt caused.

What strikes me most about Linsheid’s and Nisly’s accounts is that the anger and hurt seem tied less to the substantive outcome than to the procedural process. As a stranger to those disciplinary processes, I cannot evaluate their fairness. But the accusations raised—of procedural sleight of hand and even manipulation, of failure to reach out adequately to the affected congregations, of breach of the church’s collective covenant to dialogue—are serious enough in the context of a community of faith and love to warrant introspection and further discussion.

“Teaching position plus dialogue ” versus “teaching position plus discipline”

For the past 20-25 years, the church’s formal positions on homosexuality have included a call for dialogue. Is that not fundamentally different from a stance of disciplining dissenters? Is not discipline—removing voting rights, removing other membership attributes, and especially outright expulsion or defrocking—per se the cutting off of dialogue?

It is distressing to see how “dialogue” has become a poisoned word for many of our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters. A historical pattern is for church leaders to maintain a semblance of unity by (1) publicly emphasizing dialogue in ambiguously drafted statements as a way of keeping all sides at the table, but then (2) not interceding when individual leaders take steps of discipline and intimidation that cut off dialogue. How can we return to “dialogue” its plain-English meaning?

On authority, the community, and the Anabaptist way

One of the most beautiful aspects of the Anabaptist tradition is the centrality of the local community to religious experience. Historically, this has been especially true in matters of church discipline—it was carried out by a community as a group on the basis of face-to-face dialogue and a long shared personal experience. Authority was not so much something imposed from above as imposed by consensus—even when the consensus found a voice in the form of the local minister and bishops, who were themselves accountable to the congregations they served.

This lack of a top-down, hierarchical structure led to a certain messiness, as congregations sometimes pushed back against bishops, individuals or congregations would leave one conference fellowship in favor of another, etc. However, it ensured that the experience of church was always local, tied to personal relationships, and that exercise of authority was principally a collective rather than top-down endeavor.

How far from that ideal we have sometimes strayed! Some contributions to King’s book seem to pat the church on the back for its efficient disciplinary structure. But is that the way that is really most Christ-like, as interpreted according to the traditional Anabaptist paradigm?

Is there a chance that—like some of the mainstream Christian denominations we were once proud to be distinguished from—we have come to rely too much on a central “creed” and centralized authority structures? Does too much power lie in central church structures, whether at level of regional conference bodies or denominational Mennonite Church USA entities?

My years in the world of business and finance have given me a robust appreciation of the corrupting influence of power. A danger of centralized structures of authority is that human nature will strain against any efforts to return more power and authority to the local community. This note of pessimism is outweighed by my belief in the redeeming value of our way of peace.

Beyond the fear and anger: a proposal for a way forward

How to lift ourselves out of the current muddle and move forward in a way that is respectful of all—and Christ-like? I offer some concrete steps for consideration and discussion. I have been careful to allocate responsibility for these steps equally among the church’s lesbian and gay daughters and sons, on one hand, and the church leadership, on the other. I am hopeful that all Mennonite believers will see my challenges to the “church leadership” as extending to them individually.

For my lesbian and gay sisters and brothers: discard political-activist paradigms of change

It is natural for those of us in the LGBTQ community (here I use the political term) to take what we know from our political struggle and apply it to the context of the church. I propose that this is a fundamentally flawed (if natural) move.

Admittedly, there are certain parallels between striving for a role in the church and, in the political arena, winning rights of non-discrimination in housing and at work, immigration rights for domestic partners, rights of co-taxation and inheritance, hospital visitation rights, and so forth. But in my view engaging with a community of faith is fundamentally different from maneuvering the secular political process. A focus of our political struggle was awakening and channeling anger to a productive end.

The anger and flashy protest that were central to political progress are likely to be counterproductive to those engaging with the community of faith. King has it exactly right to focus on conversation, on gentle persuasion and the working of the spirit. To acknowledge this is to recognize profound implications for the methods we use to expand the church’s awareness. Maintaining a constructive tone can prove most challenging where good will and honesty on both sides of the discussion do not prevail.

My hope is that the song-filled, cheerful presence of dissent that some witnessed from the Pink Menno movement at the biennual MC USA convention at Columbus, Ohio, in 2009 (where hundreds of straight and gay church members wore pink and sang in groups to show their support for inclusiveness), and the subsequent dialogue with the church, may mark a step in a positive direction.

For church leaders: learn to know lesbian and gay daughters and sons of the church

In King’s book, accusations were raised that church leaders involved in disciplinary actions failed to meet and discuss adequately with the affected congregations. Those discussions would be a vitally important step, but my challenge is slightly more radical still. I am challenging church leaders: Even if not confronted with this situation, seek out and learn to know the sons and daughters of the church who have learned to live with same-sex attraction. Include both those that have remained within the church and those who have left it.

Whatever our differences are, I’m sure we agree that one of your fundamental tasks as servants of God, and as stewards of the community of believers, is to minister to those in need. Your lesbian and gay sons and daughters are in need of compassion and healing. Their healing is not necessarily that of a “cure” (I believe that this is successful in a small minority of cases) but of emotional and spiritual healing in the context of accepting their genetic predisposition.

If you have young people in your watch, and if you are open to these encounters, you will almost certainly be turned to by some troubled young soul to help him or her sort out questions of sexual identity. It is incumbent on you to prepare yourself in advance for this sobering task. It would be—I propose—careless and indeed arrogant to undertake this task without having learned to know, first-hand in flesh and blood, the lives and stories of the many remarkable gays and lesbians who have grown up in your midst.

Equally importantly, if the dialogue of the church with its gay and lesbian sons and daughters is really to continue, honesty and integrity of dialogue demand no less than this personal knowledge.

For my lesbian and gay sisters and brothers: understand that church leaders are in a very challenging situation

For better or for worse, we have church structures—and individual church members—that demand more uniformity of belief and practice than is possible. By merely including a call for dialogue with gays and lesbians, MC USA has been labeled “pro-gay” by more than one congregation that has consequently become independent.

On the other side of the spectrum, the strong calling of some congregations to offer support to its lesbian and gay members has resulted in those congregations being expelled from their conferences. More tragically, many talented and energetic young people, both straight and gay, are simply leaving rather than engaging with a church that they perceive as bigoted and out of touch.

A church leader who is in the center on these issues may find it impossible to take any action that increases the unity of the church and minimizes further splintering or loss of members.

Many of us who are lesbian or gay feel called to seek out a place in the life of the church, and some of us even share optimism that the church will enable us to fulfill that calling. But as discussion ensues, we must keep in mind the difficult position of our church leaders today.

For church leaders: acknowledge hurts caused and double standards propagated

It is easy to imagine that some church leaders view gays and lesbians seeking a home in the church as expressing simple insubordination and unruliness. I challenge you: If you listen quietly to the wounded spirits of those involved in the discussion, you will hear much genuine pain and hurt. You will also come to realize that much of this pain and hurt was avoidable.

If you go back and reread your own past words in a spirit of humility and desire to learn, you may recognize how you are sometimes setting out a double standard for gays and lesbians who desire your fellowship. We are all fallible human beings—but the church is much more willing to work with the fallible natures of some than with those of others.

For healing to occur and a healthy discussion to continue, it will be important for church leaders to acknowledge that some of the pain and anger impeding dialogue today has been caused by the church—and has been caused unnecessarily.

For my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters: propose an approach to ethical living consistent with a pietistic tradition

King’s collection of essays contained a challenge to the lesbian and gay community: Show us what a holistic life of same-sex conjugal commitment looks like. Is there a proposed standard of Christ-like behavior that our gay and lesbian sons and daughters are prepared to adhere to?

To my knowledge, this challenge has largely gone unanswered. Yet it is a fair challenge. It is incumbent on us, the gay and lesbian sons and daughters of the church, to answer that call. In doing so, we cannot ignore the church’s expectations that a life of holiness implies a different standard than that which applies to human society generally. We must recognize that we arise out of a pietistic tradition and are defining a place for ourselves within that tradition.

For church leaders: return discernment to the congregational level

On this troubled and difficult topic of integrating gays and lesbians into the church politic, I would challenge the church leadership to return discernment to where it conceptually belongs in the Anabaptist tradition—to the level of the local congregation. This is especially appropriate with the inclusiveness issue, not least because it involves flesh-and-blood feeling and life experience, which is a phenomenon inadequately dealt with long-distance, in bureaucratic fashion, by church leaders.

There is a danger that, if the central leadership of the Mennonite Church USA and especially its various constituent conferences continue to take a quite inflexible across-the-board approach to the issue, we will see the rise of a counter-church that reflects a more nuanced understanding of human sexuality and holiness.

Will the church really be better served if its use of top-down disciplinary techniques leads to a new progressive conference of urban and other open-minded Mennonites, at odds with and not in communion with the Mennonite Church USA—or a deep divide between inclusive and exclusive conferences? Is it not possible for our church leadership to nudge the church toward greater acceptance of having difficult matters of faith and discipline being resolved at the local level?

The central lesson of my experience with the Frankfurt Mennonite Church is the richness of experience that can result if a congregation—completely devoted to leading lives of devotion and integrity—embraces diversity as an expression of God’s love. I hope other sons and daughters of the church will come to witness what I experienced there.

—Ray Fisher, 47, lives in New York City and Barto, Pennsylvania.