I turned on the television news at exactly the wrong moment and saw Kim Davis standing on stage between (Republican presidential hopeful) Mike Huckabee and her lawyer. Kim, the homophobic clerk in Kentucky who was jailed for not issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, defying the supreme court and using her alleged religious beliefs as an excuse. When I saw her on television, she had just been released from jail and was basking in the moment.
In full disclosure, the sight of her almost made steam come out of my ears. I asked myself why I was so furious. I am a lesbian in my mid-fifties. I've been out since my early twenties. I'm no stranger to bigotry. The fact that the LGBT community incited someone like Davis to break the law and go to jail is progress. After all, she was protesting our Supreme Court victory.
I decided that I was furious because I grew up in "Pennsyltucky." In fact, I still live in the state of Pennsylvania, though in my early twenties I "escaped" from a working class suburban neighborhood to a part of Philadelphia that is known to be LGBT friendly (but is not always).
I belong to a Unitarian Universalist Church (joining a church was a surprise even to me). My secular background is something that I wrote about in Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters
This morning in church, a fifty or sixty something African American man stood up and told us that he had an argument with someone about Kim Davis: "To me, the business in Kentucky reminded me of Civil Rights."
Now, I've long recognized that being white and LGBT is vastly different from the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. For one thing, a white LGBT person can choose not to be out (even if that choice is often unhealthy). But the gentleman in my church had a point. And If it's not the same thing as historic bigotry against African Americans, there are some pretty strong parallels. By the time I came home from church, I realized that some positive things actually came out of the Kim Davis debacle.
For one thing, I experienced seeing someone who may be changing his mind about LGBT rights. That is why I'm part of a diverse faith community (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Unitarian's call it a "Beloved Community"). I get to witness people's shifting viewpoints and, in turn, am influenced by others. Then I went online and did a quick search on Kim Davis. I found a postcard of Lea DeLaria on The Huffington Post United Kingdom.
The postcard shows Lea DeLaria (the real life lesbian actress from the prison themed Netflix series Orange Is The New Black) with text superimposed that reads: "Welcome to jail, Kim Davis. I get to be your fifth husband."
That postcard (and the others on the same page) is definitely a positive thing that came out of the situation -- positively hilarious.
The "business in Kentucky" definitely underscored the importance of the book I just read, Crooked Letter i: Coming Out In the South. The book is a collection of essays, with a Foreword by Dorothy Allison, edited by Connie Griffin.
Dorothy Allison (the Southern born lesbian feminist author of the novel, Bastard Out of Carolina) writes:
"...My mother's hopes and dreams for me were as heavy as my stepfather's contempt and lust. I was the one who escaped but who really escapes? .... In this new wondrous age with Supreme Court decisions affirming gay and lesbian marriages, and gender being redefined as nowhere near as rigid as it has previously been defined, I sometimes wonder if anyone knows what our lives were like at the time when I was a young woman, trying to figure out how to live my life honestly in the face of so much hatred and danger. Who are we if we cannot speak truthfully about our lives?"
The stories are filled with religion -- Southern Baptist, Fundamentalist Christian, you name it. It's not surprising or shouldn't be -- but it is. At first I was appalled at the damage done to people in the name of religion.
Logan Knight, who transitioned from female to male, writes as he returns to his home town years after he left:
"This is what I know, only because I have seen it before. There will be no yelling, no crying; no sermons. If my grandmother cannot reconcile who I am against her religion, if the musculature of my shoulders is an affront to her beliefs, she will simply forget me. She will not speak to me; she will not acknowledge my presence in her house ever again. The sun burns into my arms, and I tense with nervousness."
While the stories by LGBT people who had to break ties with their families are poignant and heartbreaking. In the ending of Knight's essay and in the content of other essays in this collection, I began to see another narrative. There is not only acceptance of family and friends but warmth and real love.
People -- including Southerners and religious people -- are a collection in individuals. They have their own beliefs.