Stepping Up To The Plate

Two recent news items sparked this reflection.  His show “The Rick Mercer Report” on Tuesday October 25th, included one of the most popular parts of the show, Mercer’s “rant.”  Mercer is a well-known Canadian comedian and television personality.  He brings the rich comedic tradition of his native Newfoundland to his craft.  He cited the recent suicide of a 15-year-old, a promising high school student, who had been bullied and tormented because he was gay.  His is one of 300 suicides among youth in Canada each year.  Mercer said: “It’s no longer good enough for us to tell kids who are different that it’s going to get better.  We have to make it better now, that’s every single one of us.  Every teacher, every student, every adult has to step up to the plate.”  (View the rant here.)

I was already feeling an undercurrent of “gay bashing” from a recent event in which a deceased relative was mocked because of his life-long “strangeness;” he too was gay.

The second news item was an interview on CBC radio’s “The Current”, today, Friday October 28^th.  The father and stepmother of one of serial killer Robert Picton’s victims were being interviewed.  I was astounded to hear that this stepmother knew Picton’s name and the location of his now notorious farm fully three years before police arrested him.  I was struck by her description of the treatment she and friends of the missing women received at the hands of the authorities.  The disappearances were not a high priority; it was as if the missing women had no value because of how they were forced to make a living: Picton’s victims were sex-trade workers.

These two stories come together for me in this way:  Our society treats those who do not fit the norm sexually not only differently, but lesser than.  There is a systemic discrimination, not the first by any means, and it is embedded in the culture.  As Mercer said, it is time for this to stop.  Easier said than done, as the vestiges of fear of and judgment toward those who may be seen as ‘outside the mainstream’ are not easily put aside.

The roots of this prejudice are clearly evident in the Abrahamic religious traditions, which viewed a woman as a lesser creature than a man, and where sexuality (especially homosexuality) was linked to shame, which is only a short slippery slide away from sin.

My “Christian” upbringing supported the notion that both homosexuality and prostitution were inherently “sinful.”  There is an excellent body of biblical scholarship that clearly demonstrates, and can help us to understand, that Scripture does not as easily support these notions, as some would have us to believe.[1]  That scholarship and education changed my head understanding, but it is the understanding of the heart that also needs transformation.  That transformation for me, happened this way:

In the mid 1980’s I served as chaplain in the downtown Toronto Hospital that was in the heart of the gay community and thus was receiving AIDS patients before we even knew what we were dealing with.  I had the privilege of walking alongside many gay couples and their families.  Not only did it break my heart to see gifted, bright, mostly young men ravaged by the disease, but also to see how fear and prejudice had torn families apart.  Since then I have worked with gay colleagues, officiated at gay weddings, and I have close friends who are gay.

Our government and religious institutions have realized that as a community we can no longer deny institutional discrimination, once common, based on race.  We are attempting to atone for the damage done to native persons.  We need to do the same, that is, ask forgiveness of those who have been discriminated against, for whatever reason, because of our flawed theology and its hurtful practices.  For those attempting to follow Jesus, we need to remember that his primary actions of acceptance and compassion occurred among those most disenfranchised by their culture.

One more thing: the concept and functioning of projection.  Projection is a psychological defense mechanism.  It leaps into action to assist one to deny one’s own attributes, thoughts, or feelings, and ascribes them to another.   Is the cultural tendency toward vilifying the ‘different’ really about our discomfort and anxiety about our own bodies and sexuality?  Are we still so adolescent in our cultural understandings and expression of sexuality that our discomfort gets projected onto those who fall outside the (our personal) acceptable norm?  All I know is this: it is time to grow up, and to stop fearing those who are not just like me, to stop blaming and victimizing those who are not just ‘like us’ because mainstream culture and some immature religious understandings are uncomfortable with who they are!  This is me stepping up to the plate.