August 1975 [HTML]

INTEGRITY

GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM

c Integrity 1975 ISSN: 0095-2184

Vol. 1 No. 9 August 75

INTEGRITY is the official newsletter of Integrity, Inc., a nonprofit religious, charitable, educational, and literary organization, with offices at 701 Orange Street, Fort Valley, GA 31030. Signed articles represent the views of the contributors. (c) 1975 by Integrity, Inc. 10 issues/$7. Copies of earlier numbers are available for $2 each. Add $1 for all subscriptions that require plain envelopes.

Editor..................................... Louie Crew, Ph.D.

Associate Editor................. Ellen Barrett, M.A., M.Div.

Associate Editor.................. Ernest Clay, Cosmetologist

Associate Editor......................... Dan Fee, Seminarian

Associate Editor................ The Rev. Michael G. Koonsman

Associate Editor.................... Br. Thomas Williams, LPN

Consultant......................... The Rev. Robert W. Cromey

Consultant........................... Norman Pittenger, Ph.D.

A GAY GOSPEL - TRINITY

These particular Gay children S/He sent forth, saying ... Go to the lost homophobes of the Episcopal Church and as you go, preach, saying, The Queendom of Heaven is at hand. Heal the homophobes; cleanse your Gay sisters and brothers of their self-hatred and of their other inherited leprosies, raising them from the dead; cast out the devil homophobia; freely have you received, freely give .... And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when you depart out of that house or city, shake the dust off your feet. Truly I say, it will be more tolerable for the inhospitable Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. But beware of men; for they will deliver you up to councils and will scourge you in their parishes .... And you will be hated of all persons most of all for daring to call yourselves Christians; but s/he who endures to the end will be saved. (Matthew 10)

INTEGRITY OFFICERS ELECTED

INTEGRITY officers have been elected without opposition. The ballots published in FORUM No. 8 and due back by 1st July have established the following officers to lead us for the next year: Ellen Barrett and Jim Wickliff as Co-Presidents, Dan Fee and Kate Jones as Co-Vice Presidents, and Bob Diehm as Secretary- Treasurer. The five persons began serving from 1st July. All urge you to remember this work in your prayers and to support us with your letters, your ideas, and with your participation as fully as possible.

FIRST INTEGRITY CONVENTION

It is still not to late to make plans to attend our first national convention of INTEGRITY in Chicago, 8-10 August. Dr. Norman Pittenger is our principal speaker, and numerous important panels are scheduled. Many friends from the nonGay Church community and from Gay groups elsewhere will join us. Shouldn't you be with us? Think of the times you've traveled farther and more expensively for far lesser occasions. Details from INTEGRITY/Chicago, P.O. Box 2516, IL 60690, & FORUM #8.

GAY PUBLISHING REVIEWED

MARGINS: REVIEW OF LITTLE MAGAZINES AND SMALL PRESS BOOKS, Issue No. 20 (May 75) on Gay Male Publishing is available, ed. L. Crew, for $1 from 2912 N. Hackett, Milwaukee; No. 23 (August 75) on Lesbian Publishing is forthcoming, also $1, ed. Dr. Beth Hodges.

GAY CHURCH NOT SEPARATIST - TROY PERRY

Los Angeles. In a Winter issue of THE GAY CHRISTIAN, the Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, the religious group with a special outreach to the Gay community, affirmed his personal interest in continuing to confront the established churches: "The time has come when we must be vocal in our demands for equality in the established Church. We must refuse to be put off by some unconcerned denominational officer whose only concern is not to rock the boat in the area of social justice for fear of losing his or her safe position. We must attack the complacent attitude of those who, if they are not for us, must be considered against us." The MCC founder has been most supportive of INTEGRITY from the beginning and published material in FORUM No. 2. Likewise, INTEGRITY remains constitutionally committed to ecumenical action in the Gay community.

GAY RELATIONSHIPS STUDIED

London. The Committee for Homosexual Equality is a major Gay rights organization in England, and the CHE Research Unit invites all Gays to send materials, particularly personal statements, about Gay Relationships for a study there being compiled: CHE Research Unit, CHE National Office, P.O. Box 427, 28 Kennedy Street, Manchester, M60 2EL, ENGLAND.

DIGNITY CONVENES

BOSTON. DIGNITY, the national organization of Gay Catholics, will hold its next annual convention here 29 August-September 1st. DIGNITY and INTEGRITY have close ties and share many members in common. INTEGRITY hopes that all will support this important occasion. For information, write Beacon Tours/Dignity Convention, 26 Tremont Street, Boston MA 02108.

TAPES

Ft. Valley. Tapes of "Conversation with Students" prepared by Dr. Louie Crew for students at Appalachian State University, are available for rental (cost of postage only) from the national office. Tapes are also being prepared of the INTEGRITY Convention, of Dr. Crew's television ministry, and of several Gay community projects in NYC through editor The Rev. Michael Koonsman. For more information, contact the national office.

PAPERS SOUGHT

Ft. Valley. Efforts continue to bring as many of us as possible into the active work of INTEGRITY. Papers are particularly sought suggesting how to set up parish or diocesan seminars on homosexuality and/or papers on how to reach the average layperson. Please share all of your ideas with your editors, noting how the material is to be signed if used.

SEXUAL PRACTICALITY

Pittsburgh. The SubCommittee on Human Sexuality of the Christian Social Relations Department of the Diocese of Pittsburgh is developing a functionally oriented statement on human sexuality. The stated goal is "not to write a theological thesis, but rather to deal in very practical areas (such as law, education, counseling, etc.)." Please share with them your ideas by writing Randal G. Forrester, Executive Director, Persad Center, 226 Shadyside Center, 5100 Center Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232.

And they used to walk by here Arm in Arm

Laughing having a good time

But that was before they grew up

And someone told them they were not brothers

One was a honky

The other a nigger.

by Willie Jenkins, Mercer University

SUNDAY SERVICES AT SMOKEY MARY'S by Owen Wilson

I went to church to find God

But Got was not there.

I waited and waited

But no God.

I lit a candle,

God did not come.

I whispered, God, I'm waiting.

Nothing.

Finally I stood up and yelled:

I'M IN PAIN YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH

MY LOVER IS GONE.

Some guy in a black dress

asked me to leave.

(c)December 1974, MOUTH OF THE DRAGON PRESS. Used by permission, from Box 107, Cooper Station, NYC 10003, from Vol. 1, No. 3, 142.

DEAR FATHER BILL

[Editor's Note: This is a regular column and you are invited to send your questions to Fr Bill through the national office. All items will receive a response, even those which are not printed. This month we have asked Fr. Bill to share with us some of his general observations about ethics in the Gay community.]

Gay morality as such does not exist and will not exist until such time as we are free.

Morality covers the whole field of human relationships and interplay, NOT just the sexual. A tribal or national morality or Ethic takes years to develop.

Moses did not go to Mt. Sinai and get the Law until AFTER the Jews were delivered from the Egyptians. As long as they were slaves and in bondage to a foreign rule, they could not develop their own law and ethic.

We live in a society whose ethic has been evolved on a heterosexual family-preserving unit. Because of that there are pressures which should not apply to Gay life as the probable results of infraction are not the same. There is the difference, for example, of a quick but inconvenient piece of hetero sex in the back seat of a car which can result in pregnancy with all the responsibilities which should flow from it. On the other hand, an equally uncomfortable mutual fellatio in either seat of the car has no possibility of ensuing responsibilities. The marriage BOND is more for the offspring and the maintaining of the home unit than for anything else.

We must work for the day of consensual sex being legal and then work out our own ethic, based largely on a mutual respect for each other and a desire not to exploit or use or abuse. Most of the hangups Gays have are superimposed from the Hetero-Ethic and are not applicable. As a Christian, I want our Gay Ethic, when developed, to be of a high standard.

PSYCHIATRY & CATHOLICISM by Jas. H. VanderVeldt, O.F.M., Ph.D., and Robert P. Odenwald, M.D., F.A.P.A. NY, 1952.

I believe this work to be a major step in moving Gay from a felony to a "sickness," in some vague sense -- the intermediary stage before our current Gay is equal and good. V & O call homosexuality inversion (with the sex role reversed from the body structure) & note that Gays are generally unhappy from anxiety resulting from the social tabu. Gays are generally above average in intelligence, and seem drawn to literature and the arts, though they are to be found in the military as well as police forces. The authors note that "bisexuality is the normal constitutional condition of the child ... and homosexuality develops under the influence of environmental factors ...." They also note that most Gays do not want to be "cured" -- we know today that there is nothing to be "cured," as Gays are not "sick" -- and those who do go to psychiatrists do so from fear of police or of scandal. Clergy are advised to be both cautious and compassionate to Gays. This book deserves to be recognized as a definite step forward from the old belief that homosexual acts are felonies. Also, since the advice to clergy is to counsel Gays to control themselves, it would seem to me that a form of marriage or sacramental partnership might well be the best way towards control, allowing desire to flow in its proper channel, love.

William Lewis Kinter

BE SURE TO SEE: "Psychological Studies: From Gothard to Gay," CHRISTIANITY TODAY (May 9, 75, 44f), a call for even evangelical Christians to reconsider their oppression of Gays.

"Gay Rights: On 'Reaching' Middle America" by Fr. Malcolm Boyd, THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY, May 7, 75, 474-5.

"Challenging 'Gay Liberation,'" an attack on INTEGRITY by Dorothy A. Faber, ed, THE CHRISTIAN CHALLENGE, June 75.

"Episcopalians May Face the Homosexual Issue," (re INTEGRITY) by Robert Tate Allan, ed, WASHINGTON RELIGIOUS NEWS, No. 349 (June 15, 75), p. 3.

FORUM

Thank you so much for your letter regarding the meeting of INTEGRITY. I appreciate and am grateful for the creative approach you and your fellow members are taking with regard to the fuller acceptance of Homophiles within the life and ministry of the Church. We all know that many of the questions faced are difficult for many people and that homosexuals have suffered a great deal. It is only as we in love and concern continue to develop creative relationships and open communications that some of these pains can be alleviated.

With my continued prayers for your important ministry, Faithfully,

--Wesley Frensdorff

Bishop of Nevada

Before leaving for Italy, where he will be attending an international conference on the energy/food crisis, Bishop Moore asked me to respond to your recent notice about INTEGRITY and its plans. I know that he was interested to read about the organization.

As you might guess, knowing New York and knowing about Bishop Moore, we are in dialogue with Gay Christians here (Episcopalians and others) and we have taken some small steps to open doors of understanding and support on all sides. This has extended into the Gay Rights movement, but has not been confined to activists.

I am not sure how we might be able to assist INTEGRITY, but do keep us informed. Perhaps some opportunity will present itself.

--John V.P. Lassoe, Jr.

Program Officer

Diocese of New York

I certainly want to support the growing identity and empowerment of gay people, but there is no official way to do this through the national Church.....

If you are in New York, please stop by and see me.

--James P. McAlpine, Coordinator

Youth and College Ministries

Executive Council PECUSA

Thank you so much for your note and support included with it....

I hope some time in the future we might meet one another and share our views on the direction of our Church. I realize the heavy burden that you and others are carrying since our community has seen fit not to accept many minorities as full persons in the sight of God and in the sight of their fellow mankind. Please do understand that I support what you are doing. If I can be of help in any way, do not hesitate to let me now. I would appreciate receiving your publication and you needn't worry about the plain white envelope.

--L. Peter Beebe, Rector

Christ Church

Oberlin, OH 44074

Let me wish you well in your efforts. I strongly believe that it is conferences such as yours that will help us get out the true information on our community, instead of the one-sided negative image that the media has given us.

Every conference that is held, helps bring gays outside the movement into an organization. The conferences also help bring about a better understanding of what the movement is all about.

....If there is every anything that I can do to help, please feel free to contact me. Good luck.

--Mark Segal

Director Gay Raiders

Executive Committee GAA

You have given me the support I needed so badly. I am not alone any more. Thank you.

--Judy

The Lesbian issue [No. 7, May 74] was just great. For your work -- and I can only imagine how considerable -- on our behalf, I am grateful.

Thank you for your sensitivity to us women. It is extraordinary support.

... I hope you have seen the current REFLECTIONS from Yale Divinity School [409 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06510 -- May]. Prof. Muehl, usually a very enlightened man, is still regarding sex as exclusively procreative. [The Rev. William] Johnson [who in the UCC became the first openly Gay person of any denomination to be ordained, and who has a conversation with Prof. Muehl in the article] keeps holding up the agape yardstick to Muehl, and yet Muehl still (and, I gather, unconsciously) defends the world's values and institutions as sanctified and ordained by God. You will find the article [and the other Gay items in the same issue] to be of interest, I am sure.

All the best to you in our glorious Pentecost.

--Lee

I am so excited after reading all the back issues of FORUM that I want to encase them in white silk and sprinkle them with Holy Water (if I had white silk and Holy Water)!

I am exaggerating slightly, of course, but I do feel that this organization can do our movement more good, both in the secular arena and in the religious arena, by lending something that I hold most dearly, and that is "respectability and restraint."

The demonstrations and sit-ins and "zaps" were necessary and are still going to be necessary, but at this point in our struggle, we need a force for reason and calmness. Our voting power needs to be nurtured and channeled so that the "system" can be used for our own needs and in such ways that the straight world will be forced to include us in our just demands.

... In one of your issues, someone wrote in to say that he felt that the 1976 Convention is not the time to press our cause within the Church, and I must reluctantly agree with him. And three years is not such a long time after all. By 1979 we will be able to have made so many inroads into bigotry and bias and fear by using reason, logic and love that that Convention will almost be forced to give us some reason, logic and love in return ... and what more can we need?

I am not an emotional nor a demonstrative person, but the Mass for a Gay Union [No. 5, Mar. 75] literally brought tears to my eyes and I have read and re-read it so much that I can recite it almost word-for-word.

Your May issue dedicated to the Gay Woman is exceptional. [Some parts of] the women's movement are repugnant to me, such as their "coming-on-strong" technique.... Your May issue did not contain any of this, just an ordinary graying woman seeking companionship without prejudice from women. Please do not make this one issue unique.

--Joe

A quiet spring morning hereabouts, and a chance to catch up with a chance to rap with you people who are making trouble all over the world (Acts 17:6). I would like to comment on Bp. Dees [No. 5, Mar. 75], who seems to show (even for a bishop) a woeful ignorance of Biblical teaching about God, divine judgment, and miracle. First off, a miracle needs to be unusual, extra-ordinary or it runs a very serious risk of not being recognized as a miracle. Elijah on Mt. Carmel, Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, Easter morning: these are Biblical miracles because they are contrary to all expectation and inexplicable to the beholders except as a sign of God's power. Tornadoes in Georgia simply aren't in that league [Bishop Dees had accused editors Clay and Crew of causing the Fort Valley tornado], being neither unusual nor explicable. A tornado in San Francisco or an earthquake in Ft. Valley -- now that would come lots closer to a miracle, and might justifiably excite episcopal comment. And beyond that, there's the real question of divine judgment and the character of God as shown in Jesus Christ. Our Lord taught us that we could gain insight into the quality of divine justice by considering that the sun shines on just and unjust alike, and there are parables which re-emphasize the same point. Bp. Dees corrupts that to suggest that when God is angry with evil Gays, He sends tornadoes to hurt and kill less evil non-Gays. Obviously Jesus had it all wrong. What he should have said was, "If you being angry know how to do bad things to your good children, how much more evil things will your heavenly Father do to his good children?" And strangest of all, the same God who would have spared Sodom (granting the traditional interpretation) for the sake of ten righteous men, comes down with tornado and whirlwind on lil ol' Ft. Valley (Gay population: 2+) while New York, San Francisco, Washington, etc., etc., go their mad Gay way. Methinks the good bishop would profit much from refresher courses in theology, Biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, and plain logic. It is to be hoped that those with more Christian charity and/or common sense will grant his hate-mongering the hearing it deserves.

.... I think a wellspring of homophobia is to be found in the shocked, scandalized realization of non-Gays that we have presumed, have dared to claim the promises of the Gospel for ourselves. We are baldly saying that Christ died for our sins too, and rose for our justification also, and that we are included in the "all" whom God loves. That is fully as shocking as the notion that God loves Samaritans, Romans, Greeks, slaves, and Women was in the first century; or that he loves Blacks, Indians, and Orientals was in various centuries since then. It's bad enough that all these outsiders have been pushing their way into the club and quoting the Founder's words to justify themselves; but surely this is the last straw; even queers and faggots and Lesbians are claiming to be God's children too! Where will it all end? Pretty soon there won't be anyone left to exclude, no Gentiles, no barbarians, no lesser breeds without the law. At this rate, the Church will be for everyone who's willing to accept Christ as Lord of her/his life, love God wholeheartedly, and a neighbor as another self. It will become some sort of crazy universal catholic loving fellowship. The first fellow that went around talking like that got himself crucified, and others who didn't profit from his example came to bad ends too. Yet this subversion keeps springing up like a weed ... and now the Gays are peddling it. No wonder straights are uptight! Confronting the Gospel can be a pretty shattering experience ... witness St. Paul.

--Fr. Richard

Please don't bother sending these [exchange copies] to us. We find we cannot agree with the views expressed herein. Thanks for your cooperation.

--William Edgar, ed.

GENESIS: Journal of the Society of Christians in the Arts, Inc.

My prayers have been offered at the Altar daily for Louie Crew and Ernest Clay as they have faced their recent ordeal with real Christian courage. I join with the hundreds within the Church who have you-all in our hearts and thoughts.

Your publication improves with each issue, and I look forward to each. I hope you will tell Fr. Bill, regarding his answer in the April issue to the question concerning guilt about sex relations: how I wish that I had read that at the age of 20 when guilt feeling kept me away from the Church or when I was in theological school and waged the battle within myself concerning my Gayness and my priesthood. I wish he would develop his thought into a small pamphlet, which we priests and laypersons could distribute to those who are troubled (as most of us have been).

While I am wishing, many of us would like Norman Pittenger to write an article on Marriage Ceremonies; he seems to feel as many priests (Gay and straight) that the Church should get out of the Marriage business, especially the legal aspect of it. I feel personally that most marriages should not be blessed until at least one year after the legal business of the state occurs; how sad it is to perform marriage after marriage ceremony that begins relationships that will last less than a year.

--Fr. Jay

The March issue of INTEGRITY interested me very much; I respected the various views on "marriage" but I thought that the proposed service for blessing a union was best of all.

--Norman Pittenger

King's College, Cambridge

The June-July was great. I wish I could say the same for the all-female issue. It's OK to refer to God as female if we want to throw out the Gospels. God has divinely revealed the relationship of the first and second persons of the Trinity as Father and Son. And to be Christianly liberated in our sexuality there is no need to fuss over a masculine image of God. Should we male Gays at the same time insist that The Holy Mother of God, our Blessed Lady, be de-feminized? I feel this issue is theological, not merely a case of labeling the Godhead as male, female, or neuter. Never will I sing, "A Mighty Goddess is our fort"!

--Br. Thomas Williams

I much appreciated your women's issue. As I read though it, I found myself increasingly annoyed at the lack of men's news, and also much more in touch with the frustration bordering on rage which Gay women must feel when they read through a Gay publication and all the news, advertisement, jokes, cartoons, features, etc., etc., are male oriented. Thanks for the very practical exercise in consciousness-raising, though I will be much more contented if future issues contain a mixture of men's and women's news.

Fr. Ricardo

It is indeed refreshing to hear of your work within our own part of the Body of Christ toward the final reincorporation of men and women who are children of God and fellow heirs with his Son, our Lord, into the Church; hopefully, some day soon, we shall no longer be looked upon as sexual oddities whose sins are "unforgivable" and "worse than" those of our heterosexual brothers and sisters. As a member of the Gay community and, more importantly, as a baptized communicant of PECUSA, I see not one sin regarding my sexual preference, nor do I see anything in my life that should hinder me from becoming a candidate for Holy Orders if I so desire. If I could tell my heterosexual friends in this parish and in the Diocese of Lexington one thing, it would be that our inheritance of the Kingdom is not based on whether we are straight or gay any more than it is based on the color of our skin, our weight or the number of hairs on our head. It is based in a relationship -- the relationship which we all should have with the Incarnate Word of God. Hopefully we can attempt to show our straight parishes that it is not whom we love that is important but that we do love as Christ loves us. Pax et caritas.

--Philip Mitchum, Box 383,

Univ. Sta., Lexington, KY 40506

Recently at a meeting of a Bishop's commission on which I serve your letter explaining INTEGRITY to all bishops was read. For me personally, it offered the strength to be more open and frank with the members of the commission. You are having an effect.

--David

I am knocking the doors of 40. For so many years and broken hearts I have tried to escape myself. I have lied and been untrue to myself. It has never netted anything but more heartache. I for one feel I have hit rock bottom and I have nothing more to hide. There is no way for me but up from here. It is good to know INTEGRITY cares. It has been my good fortune to come across a couple of your issues, and it warms my heart to see so much understanding coming from the hearts of our ministers. How long we have needed this!

--Barbara Francis Jones ("Bobbi")

EDITORIAL

WHY ORGANIZE? INTEGRITY AS SACRAMENTAL

A Guest Editorial by Fr. Richard

I recall a button which was popular on campus a while back which read, "I am a child of the universe; I have a right to be here." INTEGRITY's motto then might be a slightly altered version: I am a Gay child of God; I have a right to be here, in the Episcopal Church. And if that is indeed a true statement of who we are, then we are faced with two broad objectives: to raise our own consciousness to the point where Gay and Child of God run easily and naturally and effortlessly together, and all the oppressive teaching of the Church's traditional response to Gay people is once and for all discarded; and to maintain our right to be joyful, liberated, celebrating, honest, truth-telling, witnessing members of the Body of Christ.

Both these objectives demand some sort of local, visible organization, and that's just plain old-fashioned incarnational, sacramental theology. There must be an outward, visible sign because in our Anglican understanding of things, that's how human beings function at their best. INTEGRITY as an idea, as a groovy newsletter which arrives in the mail from time to time, as a distant group of editors whom we may or may not ever see on this side of Jordan ... all this is fine and better than last year; but we need a group of friends, associates, comrades, companions (= those who share our bread) who are here visibly to touch, to hear, to see; men and women who will share their wisdom with us and profit from our insight, who will support us when things get rough and we feel weak, who will by their presence, by their just being there help us get Gay and Child of God joyfully joined together, who will be living witnesses of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst and of the fact that St. Paul didn't know everything there was to know about human sexuality, and he certainly didn't know a great deal about the things the Church has always been afraid to ask.

And there also needs to be a local visible organization because we are, willy nilly, going to have to confront and struggle and knock heads with a local visible organization in the form of parish churches and dioceses, with homophobic priests and bishops (often) and with canonical regulations which make it easy and legal to be unloving. It would be a denial of the presence and power of the Spirit in the Church to deny that there are loving and empathetic priests and vestries and bishops on the scene; but it would also be the worse kind of folly to suppose that honest Gay people are about to be welcomed with open arms into the life of the Church. Our claim is that we have a right to be here; most of the Church rejects that claim, out of hand, considering it too ridiculous to think about or argue about. So there will be a long fight ahead to validate our claim; we must, like the simple strong black folk in Faulkner, endure; we must perhaps adopt as our strategy the admonition implied in I Peter 2:12, 15. Let all your behavior be such as even homophobes can recognize as good, and then, whereas they malign you as criminals now, they will come to see for themselves that you live good lives ... for it is the will of God that by your well-doing you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.

Over and beyond that, there may be a need for some interim alternative institutions ... counter-parishes if you will, where the pure word of God is preached and the Sacraments duly administered to Gay people as Gay people. By and large that isn't being done now; Gay people must hide their Gayness to be welcome, and that is tantamount to saying they have no right to be there. Such a counter-parish would be a visible sign that the existing institution is not ready to minister to all God's children; it would be a sign of judgment, as MCC already is vis-a-vis the Protestant churches; and it would stand ready to disappear when the local parish was ready to welcome Gay members fully into the fellowship of the Church. Just to fantasize, suppose that in San Francisco (or New York, or Atlanta, or Washington, DC, or wherever) Gay Anglicans met once a month for Eucharist, to pray for the conversion of all homophobes and for the increase of true charity in the Episcopal Church; suppose that once a month they contributed their regular weekly offering to the work and ministry of the Church among Gay people, and the money thus collected was disbursed openly and publicly by Gays to Gays for Gays; suppose that such a counter-parish baptized babies (Do Gay people have children!!) and adults, prepared people for confirmation, blessed holy union, anointed the sick, forgave the penitent, and buried the dead, and above all worked hard at being a loving community, concerned about their well-being and dignity, and also about the well-being and dignity of others. What kind of impression do you suppose such a community might make on the life of the Church in general?

I would like to propose that INTEGRITY take as its patron saint Simon of Cyrene. And interestingly enough, I discovered when I looked it up that Simon of Cyrene never made the grade to sainthood, at least as far as Lesser Feasts and Fasts are concerned. My first response to that, I must confess, was "Of course not; he was black"; but that was undoubtedly bitchy [Editor's note: Fr. Richard is Black]. Simon got dragooned into carrying a cross for a complete stranger. The experience was unwelcome and involuntary, but apparently it changed his life so radically that he became a follower of the sorry fellow who was being crucified, and brought his family along too; and his sons Alexander and Rufus are so well known in the Christian community at large when St. Luke puts pen to paper that he merely has to mention them by name and everyone knows whom he means. We might well aspire to be like Simon, forced to bear the burdens and hatreds and cruelty of others, but finding in that experience liberation and renewal and salvation, and discovering that the sorry fellow we come unwillingly to help is in reality the Christ. We who are Gay are of all people compelled to carry the cross. Let it not be profitless, but rather the means of our sainthood.

Gad, that ended up sounding like the peroration on a sermon, and I didn't mean that to happen. What I would like to get across is some sense of Christian vocation centered around or focusing on our experience of oppression. We are not the only oppressed people in the world, of course, but our Gayness is the source usually of our oppression. And that means that our Gayness is also the source of our capacity to identify with our Lord: He suffered because of who he was and what he did, and so do we. We share his cross, like Simon, and that gives us hope of sharing his victory also. And then finally we are united with Christ not in spite of our Gayness, but because of it ... and that's good news indeed.

BLESSED ARE THE DEBONAIR, FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH!

(Matt. 5:5, as translated by Sydney Harris, quoted by Joe D. Batten and Gail Batten in The Confidence Chasm [NYC, 1972] 159 ff.)

A JEWISH GAY'S REFLECTION ON AUSCHWITZ

by Janet Cooper

For me, to be a Gay is as dangerous as being a Jew.

I was born in 1942 of parents who were more committed to upward mobility than they were to their Jewish identity. To pass as Gentile, they brought me up as Episcopalian. They so identified with the goyische status quo and were so ashamed of their Jewish heritage that they raised me ignorant of it. I first found out that I was a Jew when I was thirteen! My parents had raised me to hate myself. This discovery radically changed my perception of myself. For the first time I identified myself as a member of a group that other human beings wanted to persecute and to exterminate for no other reason than that we existed, and I understood that other human beings would exterminate me as easily and with as little regret. But my Jewish blood is not the only reason other human beings would persecute me; I am also a lesbian.

I attended the Conference on Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era, sponsored by the Episcopal Church at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in June, 1974, and it was a cathartic experience for me in renewing my sense of being a member of a group that other human beings persecute just because we are what we are: Jewish. Both the audience and the participants had sat through several days of personal anguish listening to testimony of survivors from the camps. I became angry at the Conference sponsors because they had not represented all the other groups that the Nazis had systematically exterminated: The gays, the gypsies, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Jehovah Witnesses, the socialists, the communists. I especially resented the lack of concern at this Conference for the people whom the Nazis had exterminated specifically because they were gay. I introduced myself as a Jewish Gay to some members on the podium and said that I wished to address the audience. By this time, the end of the Conference, so much personal testimony about the conditions and treatment of people in the camps had anaesthetized the panel members, and they were numb. I became angry that the Episcopal and Jewish representatives on the podium would not hear me and refused me a chance to speak.

My experience at the Conference typifies the reactions of too many Jews to homosexuality. Not even now can most heterosexual Jews feel any kinship with gays the Nazis killed in the concentration camps. Even the sophisticated urban Jew perceives our existence as gays as repulsive. Not even now can the straight establishment Jew see that he is supporting a political, economic, social system, and culture which violates the civil liberties of gays and that does physical violence to gay women and men as arbitrarily as the Nazis hauled Jews off to concentration camps. There was a silence at the Auschwitz Conference about gay extermination ... even as there was silence and covert political pressure from elements of this same Jewish community to defeat the civil rights bill for Gay Rights in New York. Indeed, several rabbis especially pressured the New York City Councilmen so that the Gay Civil Rights Bill did not pass. To paraphrase Elie Wiesel, if the concept of Creation, enjoying the gift of life, is to have meaning, then both Jews and Gays must give meaning to Creation by understanding each other and break the silence that has existed too long.

Jews have six million martyrs and cherish their memory by considering them all kedoshim, sainted ones, holy martyrs. (Regardless of one's previous merits, if one person kills another because the other is a Jew, then the Jew automatically achieves this holy position.) There is an integral part of Jewish ritual that prescribes a period of honoring and gaining strength from the memory of such martyrs. Jews remember the kedoshim and honor them on such holy days as Yom Kippur, when the Romans persecuted Jews, and on the ninth of Ab, which commemorates the destruction of the temples. Jewish ritual carefully structures and organizes our feelings of loss and mourning about the kedoshim as a reinforcement of our heritage, identity, and spiritual and psychic strength, lest we Jews forget past persecutions and forget that such persecutions might happen again.

Jews do not see the parallel between their history of oppression and the oppression of gays. As the cultures that Jews have lived in tried to deny them their history, so our culture denies gays their history; so our culture denies us knowledge of gay martyrs; as our culture tries to deny gay identity. But we do have our martyrs. From the auto-de-Fe (the Inquisition's burning of the gays at the stake during the Middle Ages), to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and the psychic and physical violence of today in America. As the bigoted hostile culture of the Iberian peninsula forced Jewish Marranos into hiding, so does our contemporary American culture force our Crypto-gays into concealment. We gays have an identity, but we know little about it.

The Nazis fully intended to apply the final solution to gays as well as to Jews. First, the attack on cultural institutions. For example, the Nazis burned the library of the Homosexual Rights Movement, of many thousands of volumes and nearly a century old on May 6, 1933 -- the first library of any sort the Nazis destroyed. Then, the Nazis herded gays into the various concentration camps and forced them to wear the pink triangle, and finally, systematically annihilated them. Even after people had endured the suffering, deprivation, and pain together with gays in the camps, these same people omit mentioning gays which further adds to our anguish and to further omission. Only now, thirty years afterward, are scholars doing research on the numbers of gays the Nazis killed specifically as gays, and estimates by scholars range from many tens of thousands upwards.

For the past four years I have earned my living as a professor in an anti-Semitic town of 8,000 with fifty-two fundamentalist churches. Town graffiti include: "I have nothing against niggers/everyone should own one." "Flush twice/the niggers are hungry." The latter inscription can be found in the college library. There are swastikas. There is little conflict between town and gown. A number of local residents would just as soon beat, rape, harass a "sissy" as look at one. As the only open gay activist within one hundred miles, almost everyone shunned me. My Jewish colleagues, appreciating the fact that the local college had not hired or given tenure to Jews at this college until a few years ago, were uncomfortable lest their Gentile colleagues see me with them. They feared that, because I am an open lesbian as well as a Jew, I would be responsible for one more surfacing of the heavy undercurrent of anti-Semitism in the community.

Approximately ninety percent of my students at this school do not know the word genocide nor do they have any concept of its meaning. The local inhabitants are tenth-generation mittel-European immigrants. These people have so assimilated American culture that they no longer know their ancestors' language, musical, and literary heritage. The one thing that has remained as part of their cultural inheritance is anti-Semitism.

One of my students presented a report on the anthology of pieces children wrote awaiting their death in a concentration camp, I Never Saw Another Butterfly. After she finished, I asked my class of elementary education majors how many of them would put the book on school library shelves. No one raised her hand. I asked my class why. "It's too real." "It's irrelevant." "It happened thirty years ago. It doesn't concern us." "Ms. Cooper, in our education classes, our professors taught us to present both sides of an issue. You have not presented the Nazi side: the Nazis justified themselves in exterminating all the Jews because they said some Jews were responsible for Germany's signing a dishonorable peace treaty after World War I." When I asked my student where she got that piece of information, she smiled and said, "From my history teacher." That history teacher has tenure. I, as an open gay activist (who is also Jewish) at that college, did not get tenure. In places such as this, the truth about Auschwitz will not set the people free. Places such as this will declare the truth obscene. I have known days of great despair and depression in this town. Yet I also know they seem like Simchat-Torah, Day of Joy, in comparison to what I might have experienced in Europe.

What disturbs me most about my experience facing both anti-Semitism and anti-gay feeling is how mutually exclusive and isolate both Jews and gays feel toward each other. My gay students incorporate all the local prejudices against Jews and the Jews have all the prejudices, characteristic of our culture, against gays. Neither group sees the inhumanity that is common to both prejudices. Cultural xenophobia between Jews and Gays continues into each generation instead of mutual commitment to eliminate all bigoted behavior.

In explaining to my students what it means to live with the need to hide, to live with denial of self, to love with the fear of discovery, I reminded them of the time the Nazis marched into Denmark and demanded that all the Jews wear the Yellow Star of David so that the Nazis could more easily exterminate them -- of how the King of Denmark was the first to wear the Yellow Star and the rest of the country followed. I challenged my students to wear gay buttons for twenty-four hours without denying that they are gay. None of them did.

What about the present? The Talmud says that if you cause someone to blush, it is as if you murdered that person because you caused their blood to run and to rise. How much guilt and remorse does the straight community have for the blush when we have to deny who we are, hiding in jobs, hiding from our families? How much guilt and remorse does this same community feel when it denies us and isolates us from our children, when it subjects us to police violence, when it gives us electric shock therapy, when it subjects us to lobotomies, incarcerates us in prisons and mental hospitals, drives us to drink and drugs, strips us of our humanity. In short, what shame does the straight community feel about the physical and psychic violence for which they are responsible and to which they subject us every day, as if what happened at Auschwitz had not stopped at all but had gone subtly underground.

The spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto inspires us gays to courage and determination so that no one will silence us. The spirit of the Warsaw Ghetto lives on in the spirit of the Stonewall for those of us who have come out of the closets, and for those of us about to come out. And especially for those of us who must silently but with dignity continue to hide and to deny what we are because of the fear of the consequences when our straight family, colleagues, and friends find out that we are gay.

The kind of courage it took to stand up in the Warsaw Ghetto and offer resistance is the kind of courage it takes to be gay in our society. As long as this same society remains silent about the psychic and physical violence which this society does to gays every day, we gays are all martyrs and we are all kedoshim.

"I express my appreciation to Israel Fishman and Julia Stanley for the help they gave me in the original editing of this article." --Janet Cooper

STONE BREAD

Ft. Valley. The Rev. Cecil Cowan, St. Luke's priest to INTEGRITY editor Louie Crew, recently stressed angrily for over an hour that he resented implications in the FORUM and in the local community that he supported Dr. Crew and Mr. Clay in their relationship. Fr. Cowan snidely suggested that no such relationships ever last very long and said that the couple would be better advised to marry women and follow the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. Fr. Cowan further stressed to Dr. Crew that the two of them are greatly disliked throughout the community and roundly denied Dr. Crew's statement of the fact that he and his husband are frequently entertained by friends in both the Black and white sectors of this small middle-Georgia town, even by companion worshippers at St. Luke's.

Fr. Cowan's attack was a surprise. Earlier he had claimed to defend the couple. Dr. Crew's only warnings were Fr. Cowan's silence when the couple has been publicly threatened and refusal to answer Dr. Crew's repeated request to use the parish hall, adjacent to the campus, for privacy for infrequent counseling of Gays. Still angry, Fr. Cowan boasted that he had told the vestry of this decision to ignore Dr. Crew. Fr. Cowan repeatedly advised Dr. Crew that the Bible condemns homosexuality and that he has no ministry for homosexuals as such, although he stressed that Dr. Crew would be as welcome as anyone else in the parish. He expressed repeated concern that many seem to think that by Dr. Crew's regular attendance that the Church condones his sexual behavior, a condoning Fr. Cowan most expressly denies; and he suggested that the couple was trying to gain respectability by public attendance.

In a letter of regret, Dr. Crew responded that he would relieve Mr. Cowan of his awkward situation by making his communion elsewhere. Doing so will be difficult, because the Ft. Valley white Episcopal Church has explicitly said that the integrated couple would not be welcome, as has the most liberal Church in nearby Macon. Household eucharists celebrated by vacationing priests are one way [text incomplete -- runs off bottom of page]

LOCAL CHAPTERS

INTEGRITY/Atlanta. Convenor Steven Matthews (404-996-1853).

INTEGRITY/Boston. Convenor Joe McCauley, (P.O. Box 2582, Boston, MA 02208)

INTEGRITY/Chicago. Convenor David Williams (Box 2516, Chicago, IL 60690). Meets weekly

INTEGRITY/Denver. Convenor The Rev. Thomas Dobbs (1958 Emerson Street, Denver, CO 80218)

INTEGRITY/Minneapolis. Convenor Frank R. Eggers (26 Arthur Avenue, Box 203, Minneapolis, MN 55414)

INTEGRITY/NYC. Convenor The Rev. Michael G. Koonsman (31 Stuyvesant Street, NYC 10003)

INTEGRITY/Philadelphia. Convenor The Rev. John Lenhardt (4711 Baltimore Ave., Phila, PA 19143; 215-726-1089)

INTEGRITY/San Diego. Convenor The Rev. H. C. Lazenby, ACSW (4645 West Talmadge Drive, San Diego, CA 92116).

INTEGRITY/San Francisco and Bay Area. Convenor Jim Frooks (1256 Page Street, No. 1, SF, CA 94117; 415-621-0182)

INTEGRITY/Washington, DC. Convenor Dr. Robert Bissell (11917 PHI Winterthur Lane, Reston, VA 22091)

Additional convenors have contacted INTEGRITY about the possibility of new chapters below. Those interested in joining these efforts, please write in care of the Fort Valley, GA address:

INTEGRITY/England

INTEGRITY/Los Angeles

INTEGRITY/Michigan

INTEGRITY/Montana

INTEGRITY/North Central Rural Pennsylvania

INTEGRITY/Oklahoma City

INTEGRITY/Toledo

INTEGRITY/Topeka

INTEGRITY/Toronto

INTEGRITY/Lexington, KY

This ministry is very important. We need you. Please write today. Isn't it time for you to convene a chapter?