Subject: Synod 95/Integrity @ GeneralSynod From: Chris Ambidge Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 10:25:34 -0400 Integrity at General Synod -- Been There, Done That, Bought the T-shirt IN WHICH the tale is told of The Great Integrity Mission to General Synod / Ottawa 1995; with Bishops, cartoons, fruits- and-nuts, radio interviews, motions made, flags draped, all and sundry schmoozed, and the Holy Spirit seen in action left and right. Part 1 -- INTEGRITY AT GENERAL SYNOD This was the fifth time we'd been represented at General Synod (GS), and the third time we've had a full-blown display with cross-country staff. We're getting better at it as time goes on. All told there were a dozen of us -- Chris, John, Brian, Don, Jim, Bev and Sam from Toronto; Lynette, Curtis, Mayne and Doug from various points on the west coast (Vancouver, Victoria and Prince Rupert); and Uncle Ron Chaplin, a Toronto member who lives in the shadow of the Peace Tower in Ottawa. And on top of that, we were joined by Dr Don (Vancouver) and Sherry (Toronto), the out gay/lesbian members of the General Synod "Task Force on Homosexuality and Homosexual Relations" (hereinafter TF). There were two specifically lesgay-relevant things happening at GS: Monday night's Forum, and four motions coming from the TF, which were debated on Wednesday. I'll post on the specific content of those two events separately, and the content may leak in to this tale; suffice it to say here that they went as well as yr correspondent realistically thinks they could. Things did not go as far as one might have wished, given the proverbial magic wand, but with feet firmly on the floor and recognising human nature and realities, I think we done good. The forum went well, and all four motions passed (with much heart-felt but not at all acrimonious debate). By my rough count (and I don't have my notes with me, but I'm pretty sure) the speakers were over 2:1 in favour of The Fruit. The agenda items are a major part, but by no means all, of what we did at GS. After all, none of us were (one of the 300 or so) voting members of Synod -- our work was among those people, and among the other people who came to the small town that is the Synod. [stay tuned for the next 3 parts] Chris bullfrog to the buttbows )+( -- Chris Ambidge / ambidge@ecf.utoronto.ca / ambidge@ecf.toronto.edu Great Green Giant Bullfrog (in the inclusive sense) of God Integrity at General Synod -- Been There, Done That, Bought the T-shirt IN WHICH the four part tale is told of The Great Integrity Mission to General Synod / Ottawa 1995; with Bishops, cartoons, fruits- and-nuts, radio interviews, motions made, flags draped, all and sundry schmoozed, and the Holy Spirit seen in action left and right. Part 2 -- BEEN THERE I think the biggest item up our sleeves, and the most significant thing that we could do, was being there. In all our gaiety and humanity, rational faithful members of the church, possessed of neither cloven hooves nor two heads on each set of shoulders. We were part of our church, supporting its counsels; talking to people at meals, at parties, at breaks; about First Nations issues, about hymn books, about the movement of the spirit or about the quality of the food in the cafeteria -- as well as about lesbigay concerns. John and I didn't get there directly -- we took a wrong turn in Ottawa and saw the campus on the other side of the river. So we decided to pull into a local mall parking lot to stretch legs and read the map without trying to steer at the same time. As I got out of the car, I saw a familiar figure walking by. "Excuse me, Archbishop Peers?" for lo-and- behold, it was the Primate. He was probably the best bishop to have found, too; having been curate in that parish and knowing exactly the streets to take. So John and I had fifteen minutes of uninterrupted Primate-time, chatting about this and that and us. This was DEFinitely the action of the Holy Spirit. I must allow, the staff at the National Church Office (alias "600 Jarvis", from the address) is very pro-lesbigay; and that alliance helps betimes. John and I, arriving the day before things got started, got drafted into helping set up the display area. That gave us prime choice on prime space, and our two tables sat across a corner, with our pre-arranged telephone line. Ours was easily the most colourful display; two tables with rainbow flags and rainbow frontals and the I/Toronto rainbow stole, and three banners; pamphlets (some tastefully arranged on the matching stripe of the rainbow flag); cartoons (which got a lot of attention, there's only so much the written word can do), a guest book, copies of the >Openness< letter to take and sign, and buttons and pins and refreshments. Somehow Lynette inveigled someone to carry 500 "Our Church has AIDS" buttons from Vancouver, so there was a constant supply of those. Michelle in Toronto had made a hundred rainbow-ribbon pins [out of Fimo(tm) if you know what that is; if you don't, suffice it to say it's a 1 x 2 cm plastic rainbow]. These we sold for $2, and they became the hot item, showing up on more and more supportive people's chests. We were just about sold out by Tuesday morning. Other colour came from the candy we were giving away (not being above bribing people to come and visit us): Smarties(tm) are rainbow-coloured [what else] chocolate buttons (rather like more colourful M&Ms for our US readers, but more colourful, and better -I mean different chocolate), labelled "Rainbow candy from the Rainbow people". Then there were sugar-free treats and mixed almonds and raisins, labelled "Fruits and Nuts". We had several -um- loyal visitors for some of these treats; and indeed late in the Synod we were visited by a chipmunk -- no, not a human chipmunk (though there were plenty of those, hoovering up the goodies) but a gen-U-ine racing-stripe model, who got into the building and made off with most of the remaining almonds. On Sunday, the GS members were dispersed to several parishes in the diocese, so The Fruit decided to go to St John's Ottawa, home parish of Ron. (this was also the place the members from Rupert's Land [Winnipeg area] went). The Pentecost liturgy was aMAZing, and wonderfully inclusive. That evening many of us went back for St Johns' monthly AIDS service -- with none other than Ron preaching. Ron has mentioned here the sign outside the front door (on Elgin St, one of the main streets of town), but it struck me nonetheless (I'm paraphrasing, but this is the thrust): "Whatever your struggle: loneliness, faith ... AIDS ... sexual orientation...: you will find a home here." and I'm sure I would. If I lived in Ottawa, I wouldn't need to go church-shopping: this is definitely the place I'd call home. A lot of Carleton University, the GS site, was built in the sixties. Some poured concrete can be good, as the Unicentre (where the plenary hall was); others can be bad (like one of the residence buildings, of which more anon); and others just plain ugly. The architecture building, where the exhibits were, fell firmly into the latter category: a poured concrete Stalag, where they undoubtedly tell the architecture students "if you can't do better than this in four years, you fail". We were a little off the beaten track for the members, so we didn't get as good a traffic flow as possible, but it was better than in previous years, when we've been up in a mezzanine (St John's 89) and off in a sewing classroom (Toronto 92). For the most of GS, we were in adjacent rooms in the residence: boys had rooms in a suite, with a common living room, and girls in two doubles next door. The living room was immediately dubbed "Fag & Dyke Central", and it was there we repaired after (or even during) the stresses of the day. Unfortunately, the residence was a pretty squalid, airless, smelling-of-sweatsocks, cinder-block monstrosity that did not have windows that opened but did have bathroom ceilings grey with mildew. Nevertheless, F&DC was a great space to have for the Fruit to foregather. [stay tuned for parts 3 and 4] Chris bullfrog to the buttbows )+( -- Chris Ambidge / ambidge@ecf.utoronto.ca / ambidge@ecf.toronto.edu Great Green Giant Bullfrog (in the inclusive sense) of God Integrity at General Synod -- Been There, Done That, Bought the T-shirt IN WHICH the four part tale is told of The Great Integrity Mission to General Synod / Ottawa 1995; with Bishops, cartoons, fruits- and-nuts, radio interviews, motions made, flags draped, all and sundry schmoozed, and the Holy Spirit seen in action left and right. Part 3 -- DONE THAT Besides setting up and staffing the display, the most important thing DONE was schmoozing with the other people at Synod, in all sorts of places -- from the lunch table to the corridors to the pub at night. Living in the same residence REALLY helps with contact. This contact was really good -- both for "the cause", and for us to realise just how much support there is out there. For the chronic introverts in the crowd, this takes a LOT of energy, but I'm getting better at it (I won't presume to speak for the others). It's partially practice, and partially repeated good (or at least, not horrible) experiences. Not one person there said the equivalent of "you are scum of the earth and will burn/rot in hell for your sinful lifestyle" -- not in public and certainly not to my face. This learning makes one more likely to approach people. John, though he claims to be an INFP, is a natural-born schmoozer, and builds many bridges with his talent. The only real "problem" is that he can talk the proverbial hind leg off a donkey, and we were teasing him that he needs to limit himself to ten minutes per schmooz-ee to spread the wealth, so to speak. There was some joking suggestion that we should invent a "Schmooz-O-Matic", which would consist of John with is feet bolted to a dolly, and an attendant, who after ten minutes or so would wheel John on to the next victi -er, contact. Yes, contact, that's the word. While caucus-ing in Fag&Dyke Central on Sunday, we realised that there would be no guaranteed lesgay voices in the forum the next night (and although we know that there are indeed lesgay members of GS, expecting them to out themselves if they are not ready to do so is FAR too much to ask). We therefore decided that we should ask for privileges of the House for John and Lynette, as Presidents of Integrity Toronto and Vancouver. Friends of ours on the floor, from the diocese of New Westminster [Vancouver area] asked, and next day we were told no -- but that all members of the TF who were not otherwise members of GS were given privileges. Well, that included Dr Don (who was already there); and it occurred to yr correspondent that it also included Sherry (the out dyke on the TF, who was at that point in Toronto). Well, the phone at the booth REALLY came into play, and after MUCH scurrying around and phone tag, we got in touch with Sherry by 11 -- and she arrived in Ottawa at 4:30. (I felt so cosmopolitan...) A quick fashion note here (this IS a gay readership, isn't it?): it turned out that Sherry had decided to do the tailored look -- charcoal tailored pants, white blouse, black shoes; and ID badge secured by a pink triangle (courtesy of yr bullfrog). When rummaging around in my stash of bijoux for the triangle, I asked her if she'd like to borrow my string of pearls, and she accepted (gave her creds with the ACW types, she said). It turned out that this was exACTly the same drag that Dr Don was planning. He already had his own pink triangle, but of course I HAD to offer him a loan of my other string of pearls (the choker, in this case). He declined to wear those on the floor of the plenary hall, but we DID take a photo of the two of them in Fag&Dyke Central in matching drag with matching pearls -- I hope it came out properly. The forum went well, with the pro-fruit voices 2:1 outnumbering the con voices. All spoke clearly and with great feeling and not, I'm pleased to report, trashing anyone else's experience of God or their faith. For those of us watching on the video drop in the exhibits place, it was tense but ultimately affirming. By Wednesday morning, Dr Don was back in Vancouver, and things were hopping back there -- we were getting phone calls from CBC Radio in Vancouver, and after several calls and phone interviews (Lynette and Curtis); Lynette ended up as the guest on the Thursday morning radio call-in show of CBC Vancouver. Gee, I'm glad we had the phone. Wednesday afternoon was the debate on the motions from the TF. This was incredibly intense, but again there was really no name-calling -- and again, the pro-fruit voices were in a majority. The motions all passed, with but one grammatical amendment -- and with several amendments to add moral judgement ["while not condoning homosexual activity"] defeated. That evening, Lynette (having been asked at suppertime -- by one of the 600 Jarvis staff) led the evening prayers that closed the day's sessions of Synod. That points out the feeling I got -- we really were members of the Synod community. [comes from paying dues by Being There and part of the faith community over many years, methinks] [stay tuned for part 4] Chris bullfrog to the buttbows )+( -- Chris Ambidge / ambidge@ecf.utoronto.ca / ambidge@ecf.toronto.edu Great Green Giant Bullfrog (in the inclusive sense) of God Integrity at General Synod -- Been There, Done That, Bought the T-shirt THE LAST BIT of the four part tale of The Great Integrity Mission to General Synod / Ottawa 1995 Part 4 -- BOUGHT THE T-SHIRT Life was not, of course, all work. There was time off, and on Tuesday evening while the GS members were off at a dressy event at the Museum of Civilisation, the Integrity gang were at the home of David and Bev (the other Integrity members resident in Ottawa) for a faaaaabulous evening of food'n'fun. 'Twas here that we decided to name the demons, (put on your televangelist voice to read this bit) and proposed "Moberley- Turner Syndrome" (MTS). The symptoms of MTS are an apparently religiously-driven need to call down divine disapproval and proof-texts on the heads of innocent lesbigays. We feel that people sadly afflicted with MTS need to repent of their sins (for it is surely the sinful fallen nature of humanity that leads to this departure from the Way of the Gospel), and be HEEEEELED of their sickness. It will be a long process, with possibly years of counselling; but we have named the demon of MTS, and feel we have a mission to cast it out of the body in the Name of our Saviour. We did indeed buy the T-shirt, with the GS logo splat across the front in red and black; not only as souvenir, but to be part of the GS community, and for our group photo. It'll also be something great to wear at the next DIOCESAN synod -- a subtle way of saying "we're not new-kids-on-the-block, we're in this church family for the long haul". Thursday evening saw the remaining staff packing our tents and loading up; and departing Friday morning as the Synod community dispersed for another three years. Next time it will meet in Montreal, summer 1998. Now it's time to go home, evaluate our gains, see where we need to continue to work, find new avenues that have opened up, and celebrate our life that we all love. To God be the glory -- it went well, we did well, we're affirmed as lesbian / gay Anglicans. [and I've already got my "What I did in the summer holidays" essay written]. Chris bullfrog to the buttbows )+( back again in Toronto -- Chris Ambidge / ambidge@ecf.utoronto.ca / ambidge@ecf.toronto.edu Great Green Giant Bullfrog (in the inclusive sense) of God