On the Shore of Safety

Just a few hours before the beginning of Passover, one day into Holy Week after Palm Sunday, this is my twofold prayer: that queer men find resources and sustenance in the religious traditions that shaped us in our early years—Jewish and Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist—and also that we claim the power to demand erotic justice from those who speak for those traditions.

My prayer is that we hold those two realties of our spiritual histories together: that we call churches and bishops, synagogues and rabbis, mosques and imams, temples, monks and priests to account; and that we refuse to relinquish to our oppressors the treasures that rightfully belong to us.

The New York Times yesterday carried an extraordinary example of the courage and integrity we’re required to show in order to do both those things at once. Page 7 of the front section was entirely taken up by an open letter to Pope Francis from Carl Siciliano, the Executive Director of the Ali Forney Center in Manhattan, which serves homeless lgbtq youth. Siciliano writes as a Roman Catholic, a former monk, and a member of the Catholic Worker movement. His letter offers example after damning example, drawn from his experience as director of the Forney Center, of the suffering queer kids go through when religious bigotry trumps parental love and institutional benevolence. 

What gave the letter such power was Siciliano’s willingness to go on standing with one foot inside the tradition that shaped his own spiritual life, even as he bore witness to the damage that tradition has done. It was uncompromising in its indictment of the effects of religious bigotry. It was heartfelt in its appeal to values of compassion and love over dogma that Francis’s public statements have endorsed over the still-short period since his election as Pope.

And it was savvy. Its publication coincided with the commencement of the holiest week of the Christian liturgical year. Its appeal made sense in the context of what is and isn’t possible, at least for the moment, in the evolution of Roman Catholicism. It let go of Francis’s dubious record, as Archibshop of Buenos Aires, of vociferous opposition to same-sex marriage in Argentina. It made reference to the reform of doctrine around human sexuality, but it focused on the lived human effects of intolerance, much as Francis’s own pronouncements have done since his elevation. It was sponsored (and we’re talking the cost of a full-page ad in the Sunday Times) by the high-end funiture retailer Mitchell Gold+Bob Williams, in a happy reminder that the use of private wealth actually can be genuinely benign.

We stand at a time of amazing possibility. Less than fifty years after most of us would have lost jobs, homes, and friends with the revelation of our sexual difference, at least some of us have the safe space to claim the integrity of our erotic and spiritual lives, and to advocate for those who still suffer the effects of homophobic injustice. We’re the ones who’ve made it to the far shore of the Red Sea. We’re called to look back, put out our hands, and  pull those behind us up the slope to safety.