Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 18:57:00 -0400 From: Chris Ambidge Subject: *Integrator* files for 1990 INTEGRATOR, the newsletter of Integrity/Toronto volume 90-9, issue date 1990 11 01 copyright 1990 Integrity/Toronto. The hard-copy version of this newsletter carries the ISSN 0843-574X Integrity/Toronto Box 873 Stn F Toronto ON Canada M4Y 2N9 == contents == [90-9-1] INTEGRITY AND THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS [90-9-2] THE INTEGRITY/TORONTO BRIEF TO THE ONTARIO PROVINCIAL HOUSE OF BISHOPS [90-9-3] THE 1978 STATEMENT BY THE NATIONAL HOUSE OF BISHOPS OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF CANADA [90-9-4] LEARNING FROM THE BERDACHE [The Spirit and the Flesh, by Walter L Williams] book review by Ian Ross ======== [90-9-1] INTEGRITY AND THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS Earlier this year, Integrity requested time on the agenda of the House of Bishops for the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario. The House meets twice a year, and the time on their agenda is in short supply. However, Archbishop Bothwell said in a letter to us that he believed continuing dialogue was important, and a space was found for us at the September meeting of the House. Integrity/Toronto wishes to be, and wishes to be *seen* to be, loyal members of the Church. This does not mean that we accept without reservation all the policies and practices of the Anglican Church of Canada. We believe that by working from within the Church we are best able to improve the position, and acceptance, of lesgay people in the Church, and indeed in society. Our Constitution speaks of three main purposes of Integrity. The third, Ministry C, is "to represent gay/lesbian people to the Church". It was this that mandated our presence at General Synod last year, and our requesting time from the House of Bishops. In the spirit of the continuing dialogue spoken of by Archbishop Bothwell, we sent a brief for the bishops to discuss at their September meeting. The text of that brief is reproduced here. ======== [90-9-2] THE INTEGRITY/TORONTO BRIEF TO THE ONTARIO PROVINCIAL HOUSE OF BISHOPS In his visit to Canada last month, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, "Christians have no option but to defend the rights of all the oppressed, including homosexuals. Our faith cannot allow this [oppression] to happen." Integrity has always believed this, and the National House of Bishops was specific in their statement in 1978: "The Gospel of Jesus Christ compels Christians to guard against all forms of human injustice, and to affirm that all persons are brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. We affirm that homosexual persons are entitled to equal protection under the law with all other Canadian citizens." [Editor's note: the full text of the 1978 statement appears below, article 90-9-3] This House has twice, at our request, written letters to legislators, reaffirming that this is the position of the Anglican Church. Since you last wrote, Human Rights legislation has happened in Ontario; it is still pending in Ottawa. We understand that the federal Minister of Justice will be introducing amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act in the autumn session of Parliament. It is true that the previous Minister of Justice stated the intention of ensuring that lesgay persons were treated justly in the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP, and other areas of federal jurisdiction. We believe such promises will only be respected when they have the force of law. We request that you write to the Minister of Justice, and to the Prime Minister, reaffirming the Christian stand taken by the National House. You may not be aware of the amount of gay-bashing that still goes on, right here in Ontario. It takes two forms: physical assaults on persons, simply because they are (or are suspected of being) gay; and deliberate entrapment by police and security guards provoking an offence and then making an arrest. Our blood is quite literally being shed by punks and bigots, and it is difficult to get the police to take these attacks seriously. It is our sense that, recently, the degree of acceptance of lesgay people in the Anglican Church of Canada is improving. We still hear horror stories of individuals caught in self-hatred, which sometimes has been reinforced by a pastor. We regret the part some Anglican clergy have taken in this. However, we are hearing more and more stories of people coming to self-acceptance and the realisation of God's love. Their journey has been helped by the pastoral work of Anglicans. It is possible that a lot of this acceptance is due to real human concern in the face of the AIDS crisis. As you know the AIDS crisis is one of large proportions. It can only get bigger. We are glad that General Synod has made statements attacking the false theology that AIDS is God's judgement, and that a national day of prayer for AIDS has been instituted. Prevention continues to be one of the principal tasks; we feel that it is more important at this time to be very specific about avoidance of unsafe sexual practices than to keep pretending that nobody ever has sex. Pastoral concern in this matter has been blossoming. Several dioceses have AIDS committees, and we are proud that several Integrity members serve on them. The widespread impression that AIDS is only a problem for urban homosexuals gives people outside this group a false sense of security. This must change as AIDS is being found throughout the province and all across the population. There is more to lesgay people than AIDS, however. While we feel more accepted if we are sick, as healthy people our acceptance is less complete. We are part of the human family, and many of us are attempting to make healthy family units too. The stereotypical "nuclear family" is surely not the only family unit. Single-parent families, common-law couples (with or without children), adult children living with elderly parents, divorced couples who are still friendly: these are all realities today, not to mention the parish family, and the other scriptural models of belonging and intimacy. These show that concepts of family life are endless and ever-changing. Into this comes the same-sex couple, with or without children. The 1978 statement from the National House of Bishops recognised the same-sex couple when it said: "We are aware that some homosexuals develop for themselves relationships of mutual support, help, and comfort, about which the Church must show appropriate concern." This was, to us in 1978, a welcome statement, but we have not quite discerned how the Church has shown this appropriate concern in the intervening years. We think that it is right that we have been, for the most part, left to devise our proper lifestyles, but perhaps the time is now right for us to commence dialogue about the specific supports the Church can, and should be giving. Many of us have great difficulty when we hear that sex, marriage, and family life are the exclusive province of heterosexuals, particularly when the message comes from exclusively heterosexual sources. We would be the last to denigrate happy marriages. For the partners they are a real source of the "mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other". We need that for ourselves, too. It may be difficult to realise how cruel it is to say to lesgay couples that they may never have any kind of relationship deeper than friendship. It is a mistake to talk about celibacy as if it were an option. It is, rather, a sacred vocation, and one that is rarely given. This brings us to the difficult question of our own committed relationships. We have pondered the many statements which tell us that marriage is an exclusively one-male-one-female institution, and do not find that exclusivity affirmed in scripture. If *marriage* is the wrong word for our life-long relationships we need to work out a term, acceptable to the Church *and* the lesgay community, which we can use. Integrity/Toronto disagrees with the 1978 prohibition of Anglican clergy blessing homosexual unions. It compels us to leave either our country or our denomination to have a church blessing of our commitments. This dilemma is extremely painful to those of us who have been nurtured by the Anglican Church since childhood. This church has been, and continues to be, our spiritual home, but when it comes to our deepest personal relationships (unlike those of our heterosexual brothers and sisters), the bucket comes up empty from the well. You may know that, in the Episcopal Church in the USA, dioceses are still at liberty to develop their own pastoral responses to this question. To name the closest to home, the Diocese of Rochester has created a ministry to lesgay couples. For the past 17 years, they have been celebrating Covenanted Relationships in a church liturgy which follows a lengthy period of couple-preparation. Two of our members felt forced to travel to New York State when their request for this pastoral ministry was denied in Ontario in obedience to the 1978 prohibition. We are aware of other people whose need for this ministry is imminent. The pain of the refusal to celebrate their own relationships in their own church is considerable. The priest who is commissioned with this ministry by the Bishop of Rochester is the Rev Walt Lee-Szymanski, a parish priest with a long- standing ministry in marriage counselling. Before long, we would like to invite him to confer with you on this matter. We suggest that the bishops review the 1978 statement in the light of present knowledge, the experience of the American church, and the pastoral needs of ten percent of the Anglican population. Church people always have difficulty with the question of who is allowed to have sex and with whom. Although we agree that this is a tricky moral point, we cannot agree with the general rule that lesgay persons are never to be sexually active. We consider sex to be one of the gifts of creation, and not to be devalued or regulated out of existence. To say that it *is* morally acceptable to be homosexual, but *not* morally acceptable to be sexually active is to draw a false dichotomy between being and doing, between body and soul. It denies our incarnation: each soul exists in a human body, and is neither apart from it nor superior to it. We meet priests who feel that they are under extra pressure to be the symbolic good people in the community. For lesgay priests this frequently extends into pressure to be non-sexual. This not only imposes an intolerable strain, but creates another false dichotomy. Should the lesgay clergy's sexual responsibility not be on the same basis as the other clergy and the laity? As someone has pointed out, celibacy never *has* been a requirement for Anglican clergy. We have raised a number of points in this presentation, and we do not expect the House to be able to deal with them all in the time you have on your agenda. We appreciate your giving us this time. It has occurred to us that, in order to maintain appropriate dialogue, it would be useful if you could designate a bishop who would be our ongoing contact. Thank you. ======== [90-9-3] THE 1978 STATEMENT BY THE NATIONAL HOUSE OF BISHOPS OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF CANADA Questions of human sexuality are a matter of great concern to the Church of our day. Prominent amongst these concerns is the attitude of the Church towards homosexual persons. While homosexuality is a very complex and involved issue, nevertheless, in response to specific questions directed to the Anglican Church of Canada, we have decided that a statement is needed at this time. We believe as Christians that homosexual persons, as children of God, have a full and equal claim, with all other persons, upon the love, acceptance, concern, and pastoral care of the Church. The Gospel of Jesus Christ compels Christians to guard against all forms of human injustice, and to affirm that all persons are brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. We affirm that homosexual persons are entitled to equal protection under the law with all other Canadian citizens. It is clear from Holy Scripture that only the sexual union of male and female can find expression within the covenant of Holy Matrimony. In the heart of biblical teaching about creation, we discover insights into the nature and purpose of sexuality. Rooted in God's creative purpose is the fulfilment and completion of male and female in each other, together with the procreative function of sexuality. Thus the Church confines its nuptial blessing to heterosexual marriages, and we cannot authorise our clergy to bless homosexual unions. We are aware that some homosexuals develop for themselves relationships of mutual support, help, and comfort, about which the Church must show appropriate concern. Such relationships, though, must not be confused with Holy Matrimony, and the Church must do nothing which appears to support any such suggestion. ======== [90-9-4] LEARNING FROM THE BERDACHE book review by Ian Ross [*The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual diversity in American Indian Culture* by Walter L Williams, Beacon Press $14.95] I came across a book you might enjoy, called *The Spirit and the Flesh*. Written by a gay anthropologist, Walter L. Williams, it is sub-titled "Sexual diversity in American Indian Culture", and details the phenomenon of the *berdache* [pronounced BURR-dash] within the early native societies, and as it still exists today. To quote a few passages ... "a berdache can be defined as a morphological male who does not fill a society's standard man's role, who has a non-masculine character. This type of person is often stereotyped as effeminate, but a more accurate characterisation is androgyny. Such a person has a clearly recognised and accepted social status, often based on a secure place in the tribal mythology." "The holiness of the berdache has to do with Indian views that everything that exists is a reflection of the spiritual. If a person is different from the average individual, this means that the spirits must have taken particular care in creating this person. If the spirits take such care, by this reasoning, such an individual must be especially close to the spirits." I think our Anglican view that everything is a reflection of God is not dissimilar to the Indian viewpoint mentioned above. I know, personally, that I have always felt extremely spiritual and very close to God, yet for many years I felt my sexuality was in direct conflict with my spirituality. It is only in the past fifteen years or so that I have come to terms with the fact that this is the way God created me. Presumably God did that for good reason. Indeed, as I have come to terms with my own spirituality and sexuality, I find that the two are inextricably linked. This book has certainly helped me to understand the probable reasons for this cross-linking. It's interesting to note that one of the findings of the recent commission in Newfoundland delving into the sexual assault on young boys by Catholic priests and lay brothers, is that about *30% of their priests are gay!* The figure may be even higher as one would assume that most priests would be loath to admit their sexual preference under these particular circumstances. This is a rather a high proportion when the accepted universal average of gays within society is somewhere between five and ten per cent. Does this mean that gays are particularly attracted to the ministry ...?! If so, does this mean that gays have a particularly strong spirituality? "The berdache receives respect partly as a result of being a mediator. Somewhere between the status of women and men, berdaches not only mediate between the sexes, but between the psychic and the physical -- *between the spirit and the flesh*. Since they mix the characteristics of both men and women, they possess the vision of both. They have double vision, with the ability to see more clearly than a single gender perspective can provide. This is why they are often referred to as 'seer,' one whose eyes can see beyond the blinders that restrict the average person. Viewing things from outside the usual perspective, they are able to achieve a creative and objective viewpoint that is seldom available to ordinary people. By the Indian view, someone who is different offers advantages to society precisely because she or he is freed from the restrictions of the unusual. It is a different window from which to view the world." Williams spent a great deal of time researching the book. Because he himself is gay, he was given access to areas that previous straight anthropologists were excluded from. He reports that he was included in many of the spiritual exercises of present-day berdaches, and hints that he made love with a number of them. Frequently (though less so recently) gays have been written about by non-gays who have no actual experiential data on which to base their conclusions. Not so with Williams, who, if you'll pardon the unintended pun, has hands-on experience! The author points out that even though the early European missionaries attempted (of course) to stamp out the berdache, they were unsuccessful. The Indians knew the important role the berdache filled in their villages. They were perceived as a good thing, so they simply went underground. So much so that most of the early anthropologists were not even informed of the berdache for fear they would expose them to the harsh realities of the European culture and religion. Williams laments the fact that many young gay Native North Americans are caught up in the sexually-permissive gay subculture of today with no links to their God-intended spirituality. Do we not also see many of our brothers and sisters also caught up in, perhaps trapped in, the workings of the flesh, with little or no consideration for their own personal spirituality? Undoubtedly these are both manifestations of our sexually-repressive society. It was interesting to read that the berdache were often sexual partners of even the straightest of Indian men. The famous Chief Sitting Bull had a berdache as one of his "wives". The book's only shortcoming, if you can call it that, is that it is almost exclusively male oriented. The author points out that his study was confined to the berdache. He does, however, suggest that more research is needed into what he refers to as 'amazons', the female counterpart to the male berdache. He says "I realise that I as a male cannot address this topic as deeply as I have done with the berdache. Feeling strongly that fieldwork is at the base of such a study, and knowing as I do much knowledge is only revealed by such persons to another of the same sex and orientation, I feel that the story of these amazons deserves its own study." I do hope you get a chance to read this very important book. I am sure as part of God's *intentional* creation you will be able to relate to it strongly. ======== End of volume 90-9 of Integrator, the newsletter of Integrity/Toronto copyright 1990 Integrity/Toronto Editors this issue: Bonnie Bewley & Chris Ambidge comments please to Chris Ambidge, current Editor chris.ambidge@utoronto.ca OR Integrity/Toronto Box 873 Stn F Toronto ON Canada M4Y 2N9