Author Archives: Jendi Reiter

The Theology of Abuse (Part One)


Hugo, via Facebook, pointed me to today’s Washington Post story about a new study on clergy sexual abuse from Baylor University’s School of Social Work:

One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader, a survey released Wednesday says.

The study, by Baylor University researchers, found that the problem is so pervasive that it almost certainly involves a wide range of denominations, religious traditions and leaders.

“It certainly is prevalent, and clearly the problem is more than simply a few charismatic leaders preying on vulnerable followers,” said Diana Garland, dean of Baylor’s School of Social Work, who co-authored the study.

It found that more than two-thirds of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance….

For its study, Baylor used the 2008 General Social Survey, a nationally representative sample of 3,559 respondents, to estimate the prevalence of clergy sexual misconduct. Women older than 18 who attended worship services at least once a month were asked in the survey whether they had received “sexual advances or propositions” from a religious leader.

The study found that close to one in 10 respondents — male and female — reported having known about clergy sexual misconduct occurring in a congregation they had attended.

Researchers say they don’t know whether the incidence of clergy sexual misconduct had changed over the years. Nor do they know whether sexual wrongdoing by clergy is more, or less, frequent than in other well-respected professions.

But, Garland said, “when you put it with a spiritual leader or moral leader, you’ve really added a power that we typically don’t think about in secular society — which is that this person speaks for God and interprets God for people. And that really adds a power.”

All power can be misused, and greater intimacy risks greater pain. In one way or another, the world’s religions aim at making the hard and selfish ego more permeable, creating more opportunities for love but also greater exposure to others’ unsafe emotions.

In the past few years, as I’ve become more deeply involved in Christian fellowship, I’ve also experienced some serious violations of trust. It’s driven me to re-examine my core beliefs through this lens: do some doctrines make the believer more vulnerable to exploitation?

Certainly the reverse has been true for me, earlier in my faith journey. I wouldn’t have valued or trusted myself enough to break free of some abusive family patterns, had I not discovered the loving and forgiving God of the New Testament. (Read Henry Cloud and John Townsend’s Boundaries for details.)

I would hate to be one of those smug secularists who accuse Christians of being immature people with Daddy issues. Nonetheless, lately I’ve dared to wonder whether the traditional emphasis on human insufficiency, dependence, and sinfulness has kept me from outgrowing the need for parental approval, instead merely projecting it onto God. That wouldn’t be so bad if it were just “me and Jesus”, but inevitably, my understanding of God is mediated and influenced by the spiritual leaders in whatever community I join–either clergy or lay people who seem to be more educated and advanced in the faith than I am.

Dr. Edward J. Cumella’s Barnabas Ministry website lists 12 signs of spiritual abuse in their article “The Yeast of the Pharisees”:

Authoritarianism. Rather than modeling and teaching obedience to God, abusive leaders expect believers to obey them. Councils of elders, deacons, etc., are expected to rubber stamp leaders’ intentions rather than provide accountability.

Coercion. Rather than respecting freedom and conscience, as God does, and offering messages that persuade based on scriptural integrity and reason, abusive leaders use strong-arm tactics to coerce believers into overruling better judgment and following their demands.

Intimidation. Rather than building up the Body in the bonds of love, abusive leaders use threats of punishment, excommunication, and condemnation to force people into submission and continued church membership.

Terrorism. Rather than inviting people to follow Christ with the Gospel of love and forgiveness, abusive leaders intensify believers’ fear, shame, and false guilt, teaching that problems in believers’ lives are due to the believers’ personal sins.

Condemnation. Rather than refraining from judgment lest they be judged, an abusive leader liberally condemns those who leave his church, outsiders, and those whom he defines as sinners. The message is that believers will join the ranks of the condemned should they deviate from the leader’s teachings or leave his church/denomination. Individual members become the scapegoat when something goes awry in the congregation.

Classism. Christ was no respecter of persons. Abusive leaders are preoccupied with power, promoting church hierarchy, referring to and treating people according to their titles and roles. Those lower on the hierarchy are taught that their needs don’t matter.

Conformity. Abusive leaders have the greatest hold over inexperienced, naïve, and dependent individuals who are seeking a strong leader. These individuals suppress their objections to the leaders’ teachings for fear of being shamed or ostracized. Hence, abusive churches often appear unified, but beneath the surface there is discontent, anguish, whispers, rumors, secrets, and a desire among many to leave.

Manipulation. Rather than taking scripture in context, interpreting the Bible with the Bible and according to long-held Christian beliefs, abusive leaders twist scripture to convey their personal opinion rather than God’s intent.

Irrationality. Because scripture is manipulated, one interpretation may contradict another. Interpretations may contradict reason and obvious reality. This requires suspension of critical thinking. Some abusive leaders claim to receive direct messages from God about their church or individual members, but these messages typically deviate from Scripture and reality.

Legalism. Rather than treating others with love, grace, and forgiveness, as Christ commanded, abusive leaders offer little grace. They communicate instead that one’s worth and the amount of love one deserves depend on performance and status in their church. Abusive leaders expect believers to make heroic financial, time, and emotional sacrifices for their church and its members.

Isolation. Rather than respecting family ties, community obligations, and friendships, abusive leaders are concerned that such influences will interfere with their control over believers, so they encourage isolation from family, friends, and the outside world, and wage war against the outside world as a sewer of sin devoid of anything redeeming.

Elitism. Rather than modeling and encouraging humility, abusive leaders beam with false pride and teach the same to believers. An attitude arises of, “We’re it! We’re special! Everyone else is condemned!,” partially compensating for the shame and worthlessness that believers feel because of other experiences in the abusive church. The leader instills that believers must protect the church’s image at any cost.

Ensnarement. Rather than promoting maturity among believers, abusive leaders inevitably promote self-dou
bt, guilt, and identity confusion, since believers struggle with the contradiction between what their conscience and reason tell them and what they are being taught. This ambivalence, coupled with fear of condemnation and loss of direction and fellowship, make it difficult and painful for believers to leave abusive churches.

Before you write this off as only applying to cults, consider how the above attitudes are encouraged by the doctrines of many mainstream churches:

Isolation: If you truly believe that God condemns all people to eternal conscious torment, except for the lucky few who have heard the gospel and been convinced by it, you either (1) are a compassionate person and go mad from the horror of all that suffering, or (2) teach yourself not to care about people outside your tribe. It has become impossible for me to trust Christians who can go through life smiling and making friends with unbelievers while inwardly holding, in fact cherishing, belief in a God who would torture these people forever.

Ensnarement: Isn’t this the experience of GLBT people in conservative churches–forced to choose between loss of fellowship and their own psychological self-understanding? Undermining people’s pleasure and pain signals is a classic technique to prime them for abuse. This happens, for instance, when leaders tell gays that their homosexuality is a delusion, or that their relationships aren’t genuine and loving.

Classism: Churches that exclude women from leadership, for example, send a broader message that inequality is acceptable in the body of Christ. We learn to justify our failures of moral imagination and our natural tendency to see others as less than fully human.

Conformity: Biblical inerrantists are among those who argue that any deviation from tradition will undermine our confidence in our entire relationship with God. In this model, the living always lose out to the dead; the flow of learning only goes in one direction. We are taught to venerate those who will not respond to us. Like the child of an abusive parent, we have only two alternatives: submission or loss of love. We have no way to make our suffering heard.

Terrorism: I am leaning toward the opinion that the Calvinist belief in total depravity is an abuse-enabling doctrine. It’s a “hazing” model of identity destruction and re-formation in which the lay person is convinced to radically mistrust and despise herself, making her so desperate for approval that she falls gratefully at the feet of the “God” who spares her the punishment she thinks she deserves (the “honeymoon phase” in this Cycle of Abuse diagram). Similarly, advocates of predestination speak as if God’s absolute and unquestioned sovereignty would be weakened by requiring His judgment to be leavened by compassion or fairness. This idolization of content-free obedience sets up psychological blocks against defending one’s self from an abusive leader.

The website Under Much Grace provides other resources for conceptualizing and healing from abuse-enabling doctrines. In a 2007 post on “Doctrine Over Person”, author Cindy Kunsman writes:

Members’ personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group. The end ideology of the group must be maintained by any means, even at the personal expense or the personal suffering of the group members. Love for the system or ideology supersedes that of the people, places or lesser causes. This promotes hatred and intolerance of all opposing critics or ideologies (sadly, often including those within the group).

This was my painful experience when I found myself in close fellowship with some Christians who were not affirming of gays and lesbians. At that time a novice in reading the Bible, I hoped that perhaps they had simply not heard a convincing case otherwise. After much study and soul-searching, I was able to make such a case, only to discover that they resisted hearing it. I don’t think my friends felt an animus toward gays so much as a general rigidity such as Cindy describes above. They thought personal emotions about fairness were less trustworthy than a System. These feelings were branded a sign of weakness and partiality, of incomplete submission to God. The irony is that their fear of being wrong is also an unacknowledged emotion, one which a relationship with Jesus is supposed to heal.

I’m struggling to hang onto that relationship myself, even as I see how a person’s love for God can be used as the ultimate weapon of emotional blackmail. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38, NIV)

Literary Journal Roundup: Gemini Magazine, DIAGRAM, and More


As my attention span fades along with the light of summer days, I’m appreciating the brevity and variety that a good literary journal can offer. Here are some of the publications I’ve been enjoying this season:

Naugatuck River Review‘s summer 2009 issue is stuffed with good narrative poetry on themes including fathers and sons, aging, class and race, romance, miscarriages, Mexico, horses, D-Day flashbacks, and what happens when you’re in a bar with a woman who sees God. Read the issue from beginning to end because editor Lori Desrosiers has structured it like a narrative, with one theme segueing into the next. If you’re in Western Massachusetts this Tuesday night, come to the NRR authors’ reading at Spoken Word in Greenfield.

Think you know all there is to know about Huck Finn? The Missouri Review‘s summer 2009 issue includes a provocative essay by Andrew Levy, arguing that Twain’s book is not primarily about race but about our culture’s myths and fears concerning adolescent boys.

Issue #9 of Chroma, the UK-based queer literary journal, features a sestina by Judith Barrington, a hilarious and sad essay by trans-man Simon Croft about passing at a family funeral, and cover art by photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin.

The most terrifying story ever written appears in Barrelhouse Issue #7. Critics may disagree about which one this is. Matt Williamson’s “Sacrament”, a war-on-terror dystopia that makes Guantanamo look tame, is vying for supremacy with Matt Bell’s “BeautyForever”, a George Saunders-esque tale of love in the time of pharmaceuticals.

Finally, two online prose offerings for your free instant gratification. Gemini Magazine is a newly launched e-zine that publishes flash fiction, short stories, poetry, and drama. So far, my favorite piece in the September issue is Mary J. Daley’s “Wayward Conception”, a lingering, beautifully textured story about a young mother overwhelmed by the choices she’s made:

Stacy forgot about the baby, concentrating solely on the sunlight thatreflected off the stainless steel pot between her feet. The contrast of itsshine against the dull and worn porch steps had lulled her into a void,where her baby, so new and minuscule within her, slipped from herthoughts entirely and blissfully.

A plastic bag of green beans almost a quarter full sat beside her cup of milkytea. The beginning of a burn crept across her bare shoulders as she tookher time, cutting delicately, pressing green skin between thumb and knifeblade. She found this unhurried quiet elegant and she willed herself tostretch it out, to forget the stuffy heat of the house, the needs of thechildren and for one blessed moment the coming baby.

The rattling motor of Tommy’s black Ford broke apart her short-lived escapeand she raised her head, shielding her eyes from the onslaught of sunshineas he pulled into the gravel driveway. As he slid his big frame from the cab,she lowered her sight to his work boots. They came towards her crunchingloudly on the small white rocks.

“You’re home early?” she asked, squinting her green eyes, trying to avoidthe sun’s spillage around him.

“I have a job at the church and I need my safety harness.”

He jogged up the steps two at a time, disappearing into the porch just toreappear a minute later with the harness in his huge hands. He smelled ofpaint and turpentine.

“Does it pay?” she asked.

He nodded, pausing beside her for a second to consider what else he mightrequire. She waited, looking at his hands that held the belt, his short nails,the yellow stains of nicotine between index and middle finger, the ampleblue veins running beneath the skin.

“Did you finish up at Emily’s?”

“Almost. She’s not happy with the color in the dining room, but she’s willingto live with it for a few days to see if it grows on her.” He gingerly steppedover the teacup, not looking at his wife.

“God Tommy, I need to get groceries. She didn’t pay you, did she?” Stacysighed knowing full well Emily wouldn’t part with a dime until she wascompletely and whole-heartedly satisfied with the job.

“I’ll have it finished by Monday.”

“What are you doing at the church?”

He stopped at the truck, one hand reaching for the handle. She could seethe self-importance subtly emerge. After seven years of marriage she knewthe signs: shoulders pulled back ever so slightly, the first traces of red alongthe indentations of his neck, the minute lowering of voice as he answered.“The lights in the cross need to be replaced but Joe hurt his back. I said Iwould do it. Shouldn’t be too long.”

She gaped at him, wide eyed, mouth opened as he climbed back up into thetruck. Raising her voice over the sound of the ignition trying to turn over,she called. “Tommy, you’re not telling me you’re going to climb to the verytop of that steeple?”

“What? Are you saying I can’t?” He leaned slightly out the side windowwhile he gave the truck a chance to rest before turning the ignition overagain.

She shook her head and said, “No, just that it’s dangerous! Isn’t?”

“Should be easy to figure it all out once I’m up there.” He flashed a smilewhen the motor started. Tommy had a prominent chin and tiny eyes and asthe years went by it was only his confident smile that kept him from crossingthe line into unappealing. He turned his head to check for non-existenttraffic, backed the truck from the yard and was gone.

Fool, she thought as she tossed a bean into the pot. Just like Tommy andhis constant display of bravado to take that job, leaving Emily to mull overher walls and her to worry about what to do for meals. God she hoped hefell.
…

Read the rest here.

For something completely different, check out the experimental poetry and prose journal DIAGRAM, Issue 9.4. Highlights include Rhoads Stevens’ “Who Does What to Whom”, a bizarre Punch-and-Judy show personifying various phrases in a quote from Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures, “a book that’s never been read while a patient waits for a barium enema.”

Hometown Favorite Lorelei Erisis Crowned Miss Trans Northampton


Local activist, journalist and Pride emcee Lorelei Erisis won the Miss Trans Northampton 2009 pageant at the Center for the Arts this past weekend. The eight contestants represented, to my eyes, an interesting variety of ways for someone born biologically male to perform femininity.

Those with a more petite build, like second runner-up Lily Rin, convincingly resembled young glamorous women, with high voices to match. Meanwhile, Lorelei and first runner-up Leslie-Anne Rios were tall and striking figures with deeper, rougher voices and a commanding stage presence. Their self-presentation occupied some third space between the conventions of male and female appearance. Leslie-Anne, for instance, looked sassy in an evening gown and sang a heartfelt song of her own composition about finding peace within–female?–but flexed her biceps with a wink at the end–male? Lorelei’s talent-show entry was a performance piece about her transition, starting out in a man’s suit and ending up in a bra and panties.

Transgender, I’m discovering, is about more than “dressing up”. The transgender rights bill remains stalled in the Massachusetts legislature, perhaps because a man’s “right” to wear a dress to work somehow still appears more frivolous than the right to marry the man he loves. On the other hand, would people feel more comfortable if they really understood what trans was about–not the right to perform existing gender roles so much as the acknowledgment of their inadequacy?

A transwoman who doesn’t convincingly pass for female makes us cis-women cringe, sometimes, because she’s what we’re afraid of seeing in the mirror: someone too tall, or too awkward, or too loud, or too strong to fit the feminine ideal. Beauty standards are a test that some of us fail. Some of us slept right through the damn thing.

I had my own “trans” moment last month when a guy at my gym kept greeting me as “It’s Pat!” He’s a big scruffy street musician, good-natured in a sort of spacey way, and he assured me he meant no harm in comparing me to the unattractive and gender-ambiguous Saturday Night Live character: “Pat is funny!” he said. I guess a weight-lifting girl translates into intersex in his mind. Still, it took all my genderqueer political consciousness not to feel mortified that I did, indeed, slightly resemble Pat, who is too graceless to be female and too soft to be male. (My gym buddy, by the way, has now learned my real name but misremembers it as “Glenda“…shades of Ed Wood!)

But let’s go to the videotape… Here are some highlights of Saturday’s competition. Thank you, Miss Trans Northampton, for challenging us to see that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.

Lorelei Erisis performs “my entire life and transition in under five minutes”:

Leslie-Anne Rios performs her song “Teach Me Peace”:

Tammy Twotone lip-syncs and dances to “Something’s Gotta Give”:

The evening gown competition:



“Swallow” Poetry Chapbook by Jendi Reiter Now Available from Amsterdam Press


My poetry chapbook Swallow won the 2008 Flip Kelly Poetry Prize from Amsterdam Press and is now available for purchase online. Thanks are due to my awesome editor, Cindy Kelly; poet Ellen LaFleche, who helped me organize the collection and suggested the title; and my prison pen pal “Conway” who drew the amazing cover art.



“Jendi Reiter’s poems are arrows that plunge dead center into the hearts of feminism, religion, death, the interior of mental health and psychotherapy. Her humor and satire here are as sharply honed as are her indignation. All are delivered in highly imaginative and metaphoric imagery. This is an intelligent and powerful read that will leave issues bleeding in the minds of readers for a while before they heal.”
—Ellaraine Lockie, award-winning poet, nonfiction author, educator

“There’s plenty of poetry I wouldn’t give a fig for, but I’d give strawberries for the poems in Jendi Reiter’s SWALLOW. When I started in Poetry in 1962, I felt poems were only poems if the top of my head was taken off, to use Emily Dickinson’s words. Jendi Reiter, who is also a bold experimenter, writes that way—solid images, worthwhile themes, and sentences that stick in the mind like raisins in rice pudding. I find much of today’s poetry too arcane, which may be why it’s ignored by so many. That’s not true of Jendi Reiter’s work. It’s challenging, beautiful, and clear. Read it, and again in Dickinson’s words, taste a liquor never brewed.”
—William Childress, Pulitzer-nominated Korean War poet and journalist

Enjoy a sample poem from Swallow:

Wolf Whistles

We’re all trying not to think about sex or cake.
That bitter word hurled from a car.
A moment ago you felt pretty.
Trying not to hammer the nail
into anything but the board.
Hard hat men sucking on coffee,
women with their hands down their throats
like a magician pulling a ten-foot rope out of a bottle.
It seems to go on forever,
monotonous intestine.
We’re trying cold baths and grapefruits,
another route around the tar
someone’s grateful to be laying down.
Saying throw me in the briar patch,
come on, do.
What a great distraction brambles are.
Rubbing and rubbing the saw against the wood.
What wound is he favoring
as his whistle strips you like paint?
We’re smashing pies into our faces,
we’re cutting open our skins. The better to eat.

Stay Tuned for Miss Trans Northampton Pageant, Sept. 5


The first-ever Miss Trans Northampton Pageant is scheduled for next Saturday, Sept. 5, at the Northampton Center for the Arts. This is one of only a few such events nationwide. Eight Massachusetts transwomen will compete in the categories of glamour, poise, evening gown and talent. “Transgender” is a broad term that includes transsexuals, transvestites, and those who choose not to identify as either male or female.

The Springfield Republican newspaper ran a story on the event yesterday. Pageant organizer Christa L. Hilfers’ gender odyssey is interesting in itself:

Hilfers, 33, moved to Massachusetts three years ago from South Dakota. Born a biological male, Hilfers was raised by her mother as a girl. She went into foster care at age 9, but was allowed to continue living as a female.

“I didn’t try to live as a boy until I was 18,” she said.

Hilfers had a child with a woman, but the relationship failed, and she has not seen her daughter, now 15, for years. “After that I realized I could never be a boy,” she said.

Part American Indian, Hilfers spent some of her life on a reservation in South Dakota. Although her fellow Indians were accepting of her, she found South Dakota a difficult place to be transgender. She and her husband, a heterosexual male, moved here so they could get married. His family still doesn’t know Hilfers is transgender, she said. She considers herself a straight female.

Hilfers has competed in pageants for most of her life and won the title “Miss Gay Rochester, Minnesota” in 2003. Once she moved to Hampshire County, she identified Northampton as a good place for a transgender pageant.

“It’s really safe,” she said, “and not just for transgender people.”

That’s the kind of statement that makes me proud of our town. In other news, Northampton will host the second annual New England Transgender March and Rally on Oct. 3. See my coverage of last year’s event here.

Christian Community in Fiction


Nathan Hobby, an Anabaptist Christian and fiction writer in Western Australia, posted some worthwhile reflections earlier this summer concerning what it means to write novels for the kingdom of God. In this essay, Nathan unpacks N.T. Wright’s directive to write “a novel which grips people with the structure of Christian thought, and with Christian motivation set deep into the heart and structure of the narrative, so that people would read that and resonate with it and realize that that story can be my story.”

Nathan observes that a lot of popular fiction with the “Christian” label is unfortunately cheesy and simplistic. Brian McLaren’s books, such as A New Kind of Christian, use a fictional narrative to put across some sophisticated ideas in an emotionally accessible way, but are not well-crafted as novels. The same might be said of The Shack, an unlikely bestseller about the Trinity, which I admit I enjoyed despite its clunky plot.

In the modern naturalistic novel, it’s a challenge to dramatize complicated abstractions without turning one’s characters into speech-makers. The rules of the genre also make it difficult to represent the supernatural in anything but a subjective and fuzzy way. The author who throws in a miracle seems to be cheating, unless he leaves open the option of material causes. The take-away lesson of the book may then become more about the virtue of having faith than about the content of that faith. (Did you clap your hands to save Tinkerbell or not?)

Nathan’s essay discusses his own struggles to solve these problems, leading him to the conclusion that too much conscious purpose on the writer’s part can thwart the emergence of well-rounded characters. He’s inspired by N.T. Wright’s message that salvation is not merely personal access to heaven but a project of improving this world here and now. Thus, the novelist can spread the kingdom by depicting what a community based on gospel values would look like:

The three aspects of this that [Wright] discusses are justice, beauty and evangelism. He talks about
justice in terms of the setting right of the world as a sign and symbol of what’s to come. He talks
about beauty in terms of us creating things that reflect simultaneously the beauty of the original
creation, the scars of a fallen world and the hope of the new creation. Evangelism, then, is the
invitation for others to join in the kingdom life, and it needs to reflect the kingdom focus and
hope for renewal of the Earth.

A community-centered literary vision presents its own challenges, Nathan notes, because the novel is a product of Enlightenment individualism. It tracks particular characters rather than groups. “The focus on the individual and the individual’s
consciousness pushes the novel toward individualism and mere spirituality.”

Since my own novel is about a fashion photographer’s faith journey, I was especially interested in Nathan’s suggestion that a novel can reorient our standards of beauty in a more Christian direction:

…[B]eauty has a new shape for a community living in
the kingdom. So, how might beauty in fiction be transformed by the practices of the Christian
community?

There is an obvious and trite answer – for a start, the upside down values of the kingdom
challenge the world’s idea of beauty attached to slim, young models. We might also strain
ourselves and insist that prose is more ‘beautiful’ when it describes a world of God’s presence,
rather than one of his non-existence.

Perhaps in the diversity of the body – the breaking down of racial barriers in the church as a
proclamation of Christ’s victory over the powers – we might also be encouraged to find beauty
outside our cultural comfort zone.

I would like to think that Nathan’s right that prose is more beautiful when it describes a God-infused world. But I’m not so sure. What is beauty, anyhow? Literary tastes vary as much as theological ones, and maybe for similar reasons. Because I’m already a believer, a gorgeous style wedded to a nihilistic vision will seem false to me, perhaps more of a turn-off than if the bleak content were matched by austere prose. On the other hand, that same book might satisfy someone who’s looking for transcendence in art because he doesn’t find it in religion.

I do love Nathan’s notion that a Christian book could bring our aesthetic and moral judgments more into harmony, so that goodness and reconciliation seem more attractive than conventional beauty standards based on inequality and extravagance. My fabulous protagonist, however, hopes there is a place for both, because Vogue is paying his rent.

Upcoming GLBT Conferences: Send Me Your Reports


Three conferences of interest to GLBT Christians and straight allies are coming up this autumn. My heteronormative family responsibilities are likely to keep me from attending any of them. So I’m counting on you, dear readers, to send me your reports from the field. Write up your impressions and I’ll consider them for publication on this blog, or send me a link to your own blog post about any of these events.

Why Homosexuality? Religion, Globalization, and the Anglican Schism
Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT
October 17, 2009

This interdisciplinary conference is sponsored by the LGBT Studies Department at Yale. “Rather than restaging the arguments for and against the ordination of openly gay clergy, this day-long conference analyzes the threatened schism in the Anglican Communion in order to examine wide-ranging and interrelated issues of religion, secularism, globalization, nationalism, and modernity. How and why, we ask, has homosexuality come to serve as a flash point for so many local and global conflicts?”

The Ivy-League roster of panelists includes Harvard’s Kwame Anthony Appiah and Mark Jordan. Registration is a dirt-cheap $10, which includes lunch and conference materials. I so, so want to be there…please, someone go and videotape this for me!

Translating Identity Conference
University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
October 24, 2009

“The Translating Identity Conference is a free conference focusing on transgender communities and gender identities. Open to the public, this event hopes to reach out to the University of Vermont, the Burlington community, and the nation as a whole to further educate us all about gender. With multiple sessions and workshops to choose from at any time, some will be directed specifically towards trans-identified people, while others will be for families, friends, and lovers of trans persons. Some will be for those already well versed in this subject area and some will be for those who are fairly unfamiliar with the transgender community and the topic of gender identity. This conference is a safe space for everyone to come, learn, and enjoy themselves!”

Registration is free, but donations are gladly accepted. The 2009 speakers’ list is not yet available online. Last year’s participants included Kate Bornstein and Gunner Scott. In this informal 10-minute video, the young transpeople who are organizing the conference introduce themselves and talk about the upcoming events.

Soulforce Anti-Heterosexism Conference
West Palm Beach, FL
November 20-22, 2009

Co-sponsored by Soulforce, Truth Wins Out, the National Black Justice Coalition, Beyond Ex-Gay, Box Turtle Bulletin, and Equality Florida. The purpose of this conference is “Building Community to End the Harm Caused By Heterosexism & Reparative Therapy”.

“The 2009 Anti-Heterosexism Conference is open to everyone who cares about the welfare of LGBTQ people and wants to help stop the harm caused by heterosexism, reparative therapy, ex-gay ministries and other sexual orientation change efforts. Conference attendees come from all walks of life and many professional backgrounds, including LGBTQ people, clergy, educators, mental health professionals, and allies. By attending this conference you will learn to:

* challenge heterosexist attitudes that exist on personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural levels.
* speak out publicly against the dangers of reparative therapy, ex-gay ministries, and other “conversion” efforts.
* build community to advocate for LGBTQ people and support them in leading successful, happy, and productive lives.

“The 2009 Anti-Heterosexism Conference also serves as a counter to the misinformation and harm perpetuated by the national antigay group NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality) which will be holding its annual conference in West Palm Beach on the same weekend.”

Conference registration is $145, going up to $195 after Oct. 5. Visit Soulforce’s website to make a donation to support this event.

Read the American Psychological Association’s recent report opposing “ex-gay” conversion therapy here.

Gender Binary Versus Gender Spectrum: Implications for Gay Rights


The “T” in GLBT causes anxiety for some gays and lesbians, or so I’ve heard. It’s not only that a minority seeking mainstream acceptance may feel tempted to push some of its more flamboyant members out of the spotlight. Trans-people demonstrate the fluidity of gender, which potentially threatens one common argument for gay civil rights.

Conservative Christians tout the dubious successes of “ex-gay therapy” to alter sexual orientation. Since change is possible, they contend, there really is no such category as homosexuals, and therefore they should not be a protected class under the law. Understandably, gay activists point to scientific research and personal testimonies suggesting that same-sex attraction is biologically based, innate and mostly unalterable.

From what I’ve read about the ex-gay movement, it seems that the evidence is not on their side. Most participants merely learn to avoid acting on their undiminished desire for the same sex, and to conform to current stereotypes of masculine and feminine self-presentation–what Eve Tushnet satirizes as “salvation through pantyhose”. As Tanya Erzen observes in her excellent sociological study Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement, these attempts to instill heterosexuality through gender performance (lipstick for lesbians, football for gay men) concede that gender is socially constructed, contrary to the movement’s explicit ideology that male and female roles are God-ordained and distinct.

Meanwhile, the recent investigation into world-champion runner Caster Semenya shows that even scientists are divided on how to determine whether someone is male or female. For a few people, the answer may legitimately be “neither”:

“About 1 percent of people are born with some kind of sexual ambiguity, sometimes referred to as intersexuality,” according to The Associated Press. “These people may have the physical characteristics of both genders, a chromosomal disorder, or simply have ambiguous features.”

Steve Connor, science editor for The Independent, speculates that Semenya may have “androgen insensitivity syndrome,” a condition that affects 1 in 20,000 women. They “look, feel and behave like women,” and have female genitalia, but they have XY chromosomes, making them genetically male. Often, says Connor, these women do not know they are male until they attempt to have children.

A chromosomal test alone does not produce a definitive result, however. “Women who tested positive for ‘male’ genes might still have most of the physical characteristics of women,” says The Times of South Africa. Therefore, physical examinations, hormone tests and other tests are needed to verify the results.

Even after the comprehensive testing is complete, it will not be entirely clear whether Semenya is a woman. Alice Dreger, a professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, told The New York Times, “There isn’t really one simple way to sort out males and females. … At the end of the day, they are going to have to make a social decision on what counts as male and female, and they will wrap it up as if it is simply a scientific decision.”

As GLBT activists, we may find ourselves speaking as essentialists with respect to sexual orientation, but social-constructionists with respect to gender. This isn’t really coherent. If gender can change, as exemplified by trans-people, why can’t sexual attraction? To put it another way, if my own “femaleness” is to some extent a performance overlaid on my essential self, why is the “maleness” of my partner non-negotiable? Perhaps a better argument for the rights of sexual minorities would be to say that it’s abusive to introduce shame, judgment, and stereotypes into the most intimate place in a person’s psyche, the source of their ability to love and be loved.

Trans-people might even say that they’re not so much changing their gender as bringing their external appearance into harmony with an inborn sense of themselves as male or female. Like sexual orientation, this self-concept may feel so fundamental that it cannot be comfortably suppressed. 

Northampton’s most fabulous transwoman, Lorelei Erisis, has a new column in The Rainbow Times, Western Massachusetts’ GLBT newspaper. This month, she addresses a reader’s question about the relationship between gender identity and sexual orientation. (Lorelei’s column begins on pg.6 of the PDF of the August issue.) “Confused Dyke” asks:

…What is happening in our LGBT community
with the confusion over who is trans and how
trans has really become the new “queer.” With
that I mean, how can a trans man or trans
woman turn around and say that they are gay?
To put it frankly, I thought that a trans person
suffered from gender dysphoria and that once
they transitioned they would be engaging themselves
in relationships with members of the
opposite sex. But, what I see is that trans
women are with women, and trans men are
with men. Wouldn’t it have been easier (since
you’re going to end up loving the opposite sex
that you were originally born in) to simply have
stayed biologically male or female and then be
with someone of the opposite sex? Why make it
so complicated and difficult to understand for
all of us and especially the mainstream closeminded
society that surrounds us….

An excerpt from Lorelei’s response:

A transperson changes their gender presentation,
whether full-on surgically or through less
dramatic means, so as to more accurately
match the gender that they feel they are or
should have been.

This has very little to do with who they are
attracted to.

We are attracted to the people we are attracted
to based not on how well, or not, our genitalia
fit together, but for a whole host of other
reasons that I think most Gay, Lesbian and Bi-
Sexual people are fairly familiar with. There
are whole fields of research dedicated to this.
In short it’s usually some combination of inherited
disposition, environmental development,
hormone wackiness or sometimes because you
just happen to find punkguys with big blue
mohawks super hot! Okay, maybe that’s just
me, but I think you get the point.

Allow me to present my own example. I was
born male bodied. I knew from very early on
though that I was not male. Somehow, appearances
to the contrary, I knew I was a woman. As
I grew up, whenever I looked in the mirror, I
saw a stranger with my eyes looking back. I
was disconnected from this admittedly handsome
man looking back at me. Since I have
begun to transition and my body has been
changing, that has changed. More and more
often when I pass a mirror, even naked, I catch
a glimpse of a beautiful woman and when I stop
and look, I see myself standing there! It is me!
My own reflection as I knew I should have
been! As I knew that I was. It is an incredibly
liberating feeling.

For many years however, for a variety of reasons,
I did try to live as a man. I had always
considered myself to be bi-sexual, but in general
practice I was mostly attracted to women. I
fooled around and experimented, but guys just
never did it for me. I think I liked the male-female
dynamic more than anything else.

When I began HRT (Hormone Replacement
Therapy), and began to live full-time as a
woman, some funny things happened. First,
since I have been in a long-term relationship
with a super-sexy woman, my sweet love
Widow Centauri, I discovered that I was now a
lesbian by default. I regularly Out myself, without
even realizing it. I’ll mention my girlfriend
in conversation, without thinking anything of it
because I had previously been perceived as a
mostly heterosexual man. I will watch people’s
faces go from “My God, you’re a gigantic transsexual!!”
to “And you’re a lesbian too?!?!!?”

The other thing that happened, that caught me
off guard, is that I am now also very attracted to
men! Not simply theoretically, but in a suddenly
distracted, “Oh wow, check HIM out” sortof-
a-sense.

Physiologically, with the HRT, I’m going
through puberty a second time, with all the
attendant 14-year-old girl hormonal madness.
Simply put, I’m suddenly Boy Crazy!
Thankfully, I have an open relationship and an
encouraging girlfriend, so I’m free to explore
these bright shiny new feelings!

I’m a girl now and I want to see what it’s like
to be with a boy. Does that make me straight?
I’m fairly certain that cute boy in the Red Sox
cap I saw going into Hooters would disagree.
But is there any good reason?

Plus, my head still whips around when a cute
girl passes me by in the street! So what does
that make me?

Further, why shouldn’t a pre-op transman and
a cisgendered (not trans) gay man have hot gay
sex?!!? Last I checked, there was no end to the,
umm, sexual inventiveness gay people are
capable of in the pursuit of a good, gay time!!

We have as wide a range of sexualities as the
rest of the population. Being trans simply
means that we have re-aligned our gender in a
way that more closely matches our self-image.
That self-image may be a man who is gay or a
woman who is not. Or, like me, that self-image
might alter subtly as we attain our true selves
and learn more about who we are.

It’s just an example of the complexity of the
interactions between our gender and our sexuality.
They are separate things, but it’s not a
closed system. There is overlap and influence.
Unexpected things can happen when you go
playing with gender! That is also why we are so
inextricably intertwined with the LGBT
(QQIK, etc….) community and why we belong
in the movement.

As long as the rest of society looks at anyone
who doesn’t match their idea of the hetero-normative
gender-binary (did I mention my girlfriend
is a sociologist?) and indiscriminately
labels us “fags” or worse, we will be fighting
the same fight on the same LGBT team, whatever
our self-image might be.

Read the whole article here.

William Childress: “How the Earth Was Made”


William Childress is a Pulitzer-nominated author and photojournalist who is regarded as one of the foremost poets of the Korean War. His books include Burning the Years and Lobo. “Chilly” is a Winning Writers subscriber and an endlessly entertaining correspondent. He emailed me one of his latest poems, which I liked so much that I got permission to reprint it here. Though I don’t share the narrator’s atheistic conclusion, I can relate to the feeling that God’s creation is so much grander and more mysterious than some of our stunted human concepts of the divine. Sometimes, religious ideas (like any ideas) can be a distraction from appreciating what’s right in front of us.

How the Earth Was Made

I was a youngster when I walked a trail
Through autumn woods a nonexistent god
took credit for. I never thought it odd
that to a child, the world was magical,

and yellow was the color of enchantment.
It wasn’t simply that a golden hue
should bejewel and complement the blue
eternal arc that made a firmament,

but that the sky itself should overlay
my own poor silly guise. There had to be
so many ways to create such a world,
ways understood by all but those who spoiled

the fairness and the flowers by saying God
made it all in just seven days. How odd
we are, attributing power to nothing but air.
If you can’t see it, then it isn’t there.

Usury: The Invisible Sin


American Christians have a lot of buying power. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if we went off the financial “grid” and refused to bank with companies that had abusive lending policies for their mortgage borrowers and credit-card customers. As I read the Bible, financial oppression is a front-and-center issue. And yet, in this supposedly Christian nation, consumer advocates have been trying in vain for years to pass regulations against overdraft fees that are several thousand times greater than the debt that triggered them. Both political parties bear some blame for deregulating the industry, but I believe it’s time for socially conservative Christians to rethink their automatic support for the GOP, given the party’s complete inattention to economic justice issues.

Apparently, when you have a debit card from most major banks, it doesn’t actually deny you funds when you run out of money in your account. Instead, the bank “lends” you money without your knowledge or consent, and then charges “interest” at an effective rate of up to 4,000%. I was unaware of this multibillion-dollar scam (which is still perfectly legal) until my best friend got hit with $500 in penalties for a $15 overdraft on his debit card. In his own words:  

On the 14th of August I received my first letter from the bank, telling me I was 15 dollars overdrawn on 5 small check card purchases on August 10th. For each of these I was charged a $25 fee for a penalty of $125. Of course, at that point I stopped making ATM purchases, but between August 10th and the 14th, I continued about my business and my ATM card contniued to work ALLOWING me to make purchases even though I was apparently already overdrawn at that point. So, I had an additional I think 8 purchases from the 10th to the 14th, when I received my first letter from the bank. Yesterday I received another letter from the bank itemizing four of these new purchases, of which they charged me $37 for the first, and $39 for the next three (not $25 anymore.) OK fine.

Today I went to the bank. I got the most recent update first. I have so far been charged $240 in penalties (in 4 days) , with two more “purchases” which haven’t gone through, which will add another $78 in penalities when they “clear.” I then spoke with a customer rep. I explained the situation to her. I explained that the reason that I signed up for debit card rather than credit was because I did not want the possibility of getting myself into trouble borrowing money. I did NOT WANT to be offered credit— this was the sole reason I signed up for the debit card. She said that it was my responsibility to keep track of my own balance and purchases, not the bank’s. I admitted that while that was true, the bank had a responsibility to make clear what I was agreeing to when I signed up with them. I said that it was explained to me that a debit card worked like a credit card as long as you had money in your account. It was never made clear to me that I would given credit without my agreeing to it and then charged credit at 1,800% INTEREST! I said that was insane, and exactly opposite to what I was trying to do to help my financial situation. If I had known that was what I was signing up for, I never would have signed up for that. I would have gotten a freakin’ credit card at 30% interest instead!!!! WHICH IS WHAT I DIDN’T WANT!

Right now, I owe the bank about $340, $100 for the purchases I made during the four days my account did not have money though they let me keep charging, plus $240 in penalties. In another day or two I might owe them close to $500. At present, when I go to an ATM and check my balance, it says zero dollars and I cannot make purchases. This is what I expected would have happened from August 10th to August 14th. However, during those four days the bank allowed me to keep charging and then charging me 1,800% interest on those purchases for four days!

My friend has been disputing the charges with the completely unhelpful branch managers at Citizens Bank in Buffalo, and in the meantime, has run up nearly $500 in debt because they are still charging him $37 per day. To keep him perpetually behind the eight-ball, when he now deposits a check in his account, the debit card machine tells him that the money is free to make purchases, but the bank applies the money to his overcharge penalties and then charges him a new penalty for the purchases he was misled into making.

He’s not alone in this Kafkaesque scenario. This July 29 article from MSN Money describes a nationwide problem (boldface emphasis mine):

A new survey of overdraft fees charged by the nation’s largest banks reveals that bankers are hiking fees, adding new fees, and shortening time limits to trigger fees when banks pay overdrafts and extend credit to families struggling to make ends meet.

The Consumer Federation of America blames the Federal Reserve for failing to protect consumers from escalating and multiplying overdraft fees.

Testifying before Congress recently in support of President Obama’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, the CFA said regulatory inaction in just this one area is costing hard-pressed consumers more than $17.5 billion during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression….

The Consumer Federation of America’s survey can be read in PDF form here. As you can see, effective rates on a 7-day overdraft of $100 range from 1,820% to 3,848% at the top 16 banks. More tales of consumer woe can be found here. The New York Times also ran a staff editorial yesterday urging Congress to act:

Not many people would knowingly pay more than $35 for a cup of coffee. But far too many people are getting saddled — with no warning — with outsized bills for minor purchases, under a euphemistically labeled “overdraft protection program” that most major banks have adopted over the last 10 years.

Before that, most banks would simply have rejected debit transactions, without a fee, when the card holder’s account was empty. Now, they approve the purchase and tack on a hefty penalty for each transaction.

Moebs Services, a research company that has conducted studies for the government as well as some banks, reported recently that banks will earn more than $38 billion this year from overdraft and bounced-check fees. Moebs also estimates that 90 percent of that amount will be paid by the poorest 10 percent of the customer base….

Call your representatives and demand an end to debit-card usury!