My idea for a book arose from my experience as national spokesperson for the Christians4Equality campaign conducted by Australian Marriage Equality. I was disappointed with the level of support that we received from priests and ministers. There was too little time to make the contacts that needed to be made and too little time to build the relationships that needed to be built. Marriage equality, and even the issue of same sex attraction, is still a conflicted subject in almost all churches. The churches are failing to speak out on more obvious and serious issues of injustice such as the treatment of refugees. It is hardly likely that priests and ministers will be brave enough to speak out on what may appear to be a lesser issue.
After thinking about the problem, I concluded that there is a deeper issue.
My intuition was that those who are generally supportive do not have a narrative, and the LGBTI community does not have a narrative that is stronger than weak civil libertarian arguments. Viewing 'The Laramie Project' recently, I was not really surprised that the citizens of Laramie consider themselves to be tolerant. However, underneath the patina of 'live and let live' tolerance, what we, in Australia, would term a 'fair go', was a level of intolerance and violence. 'They' should be able to do as they like as long as 'they' keep out of my way. Tolerance is not acceptance. Acceptance is not respect or esteem. Matthew Shepherd could have suffered the same fate in Australia.
The strict Catholic view of the world sees only two responses to sexuality - marry a person of the opposite sex and have children or be celibate, preferably as a priest or in a religious order. However, for most westerners, the first option is the only option they would consider. (As a priest recently said to me, the religious life is a 'queer' option in the western world in the twenty first century.) The Buddhist view of sexuality in many Asian countries such as Thailand is not essentially different from the Catholic view of the world. We are not, therefore, talking about a peculiarly Catholic or Christian view.
The general western view is now more narrow than the Catholic or Buddhist view as it precludes the celibate life of the monastery. The people of China share this general western view that a person should marry a person of the opposite sex and produce children. The value placed on having children under this very heteronormative view of the world tends to the undervaluation of same-sex attracted people and other members of the LGBTI community. Some may argue that in the west we are a more open-minded. However, we still largely cling to that idealised heteronormative view of the world.
As LGBTI people, we may not be seen as freaks except in the more redneck parts of the world, but we are seen as limited, as 'second best in a broken world', as 'differently abled'. It is my intuition that we have a distrinctive contribution to make to the world. We are as creative, generative and fruitful in our own way. We are the creators of culture, not exclusively, but disproportionately to our numbers. It could be said that that is the result of being outsiders, but I suspect that we possess neurological differences which convey an evolutionary advantage to our species. We are 'two spirit people', people who are not quite men and not quite women, but somewhere in between, some more like men and some more like women, but never completely one or the other. That is not to say that it all comes down to biology, to 'nature', but that there is an interaction between nature and nurture, between biology and culture, that produces diversity and the outcome is fruitful and generative for the world.
It is interesting that the LGBTI world does not value this diversity and yet parts of the corporate world do. The Cambell Soup Company, and its local subsidiary, Arnotts Biscuits, have a strong diversity policy because they see diversity in ideas and ways of thinking and working as commercially valuable, as providing a competitive advantage. Like the churches, very few LGBTI organisations share that vision.
With the achievement of marriage equality, some LGBTI people will be content to conform with the prevailing culture. Indeed there are many gays and lesbians doing just that, living as committed couples with their offspring however generated. That is their right. They do have as much right to that as any straight person in our world. There are many in the LGBTI community, as in the Christian, Buddhist or Muslim communities, who would look down on them for doing so. Marriage equality as a civil right is vitally important. It is about our relationships being equally valid and valuable, as they are.
LGBTI people deserve something different from equality. Legally, we may be equal but we are not the same. We have distinctive gifts to offer the world.
There is a bigger story to be told here. There is a story of people who contribute hugely to the world - people who do not produce children but are in loving relationships. They may be sexually intimate with no one person or with several. There is a story where diversity is valued and where love is valued.
I am not sure yet of what that whole story is. I am quite sure that neither the Christian churches (or Judaism or Buddhism), post-modernists, followers of Foucault, or the LGBTI community have worked it out. That is why I want to offer my contribution to working it out. It goes beyond biology, psychology, sociology and philosophy. It is about meaning.
© Malcolm McPherson 2011
