Category: LGBT

Remember and Wake Up

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Remember…The United States was founded on the premise of wanting independence from European powers.  It was not a question of dominance, but rather a question of autonomy, self-determination and intentional isolation.  We didn’t enter WWI until the final year of armed conflict and it took the attack on our ships in Hawaii (not Hawaii itself or other Pacific islands) for us to enter WWII.

Remember…The founding fathers of the US chose protecting their financial futures over the basic humanity of specific people; they wrote this into our founding documents.

Remember…The narrative that seeks to portray African Americans as non-human has been alive in media, educational materials, popular song, slogans and our language since Africans and Europeans started co-existing on this land. The continued violence of the word “nigger” is based on this dehumanization.

Remember…Immigration of non-Anglo Europeans (specifically Catholics) was regarded as a mortal threat to the “integrity” of the United States for well over 100 years and still resonates in the cultural segregation of our cities.  We have still only elected one non-Protestant president…and we killed him.

Remember…Native “Americans” were here first and had thriving cultures that included systems of trade, spirituality, justice, agriculture, government, etc.  European settlers could only see them as “savage” because of the color of their skin and sought to eradicate them.

Remember…The 1924 Immigration Act was heavily influenced by the Eugenics Movement to avoid the importation of “inferior stock” to the US.  Largely promoted to limit the procreation of mental and physical disability, forced sterilization and other eugenic techniques were later adopted by the Nazis.

Remember…Women haven’t yet had the vote for 100 years and men are still in overdrive legislating their bodies as if women are chattel.

“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana

Donald Trump is not a failure or an anomaly.  He is the full manifestation of the goals of the systems that we have woefully accepted as “American”.  If we truly want to deal with the challenges he presents to all but the most narrow-minded interpreters of the United States’ history, more of us have to be willing to completely re-write the book.  This means our work is not to “fight” or “resist” him and his supporters.  Our work is to birth a reality in which the virus he represents cannot survive.  The work is not explicitly anti-capitalist, but it seeks to de-colonize the mechanisms and markers of capitalist success.  The work is not anti-white, but it does not default to whiteness as a norm or automatically place white/Euro priorities at the center.  The work is not anti-man, but it demands that manhood and maleness accepts its place in a spectrum of sexuality, gender identity and orientation as an equal and not as a final word.

Donald Trump is the culmination of the American Dream; it is time to wake the f*ck up.

-ALD

Black Panther (opens February 16, 2018) – OFFICIAL TRAILER

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.Reading time 4 minutes.

Tomorrow, 5 years of seminary and many more years of discernment will come to fruition for me as I find out where I will begin my journey as a Unitarian Universalist minister.  For all of us who have been in search this winter, this has been a time fraught with anxiety and punctuated by incredible affirmation of our abilities as well as painful reminders that we cannot be everything to everyone.  I am grateful to everyone who has been with me on this journey and particularly to the incredible congregations who were generous enough to explore the potential for building ministry together.  I am overwhelmed with their love.

And in the midst of this, Unitarian Universalism is in pain (Critics decry ‘white supremacy’/UU World – March 27, 2017).  Once again, we are being asked to look deeply at the self perpetuating patterns of white supremacy that continue to dog our efforts to be “multi-cultural”.  Even as I launch my nascent ministry, I cannot be silent on this issue; particularly as a black gay man.  We have stepped into a new time of consciousness in the United States and I believe the world, where we are being asked to show what we are truly made of.  I am proud to soon count myslef among dynamic and diverse Unitarian Universalist religious leaders and I believe in Unitarian Universalism, but not with an eye that only looks back.  Fixation with the past is the same crime of our government that speaks of “founding fathers” and “original framers” to fix the ongoing terrorism of black and brown bodies and the epidemic of violence against women and the catastrophic marginalization of human sexuality, differing abilities and mental perceptions.  I must see Unitarian Universalism looking forward.  We cannot be sentimentally bound to the tools and structures that have reinforced patriarchy and subtle (and not so subtle) racism.  We must listen, we must learn, we must be humble, we must do better. We can be more.

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“Inherent worth and dignity” is not enough,
when “worth” is code for “white”
and dignity is spelled “m-a-l-e.”
This slippery intention
to name us all the same,
too often strides
into assumptions about perspective,
privilege, agency and pride.

“Inherent worth and dignity”
refuses religiosity, and will not bow in unison
or hold a single vision of the divine.
Yet while it mutters a refrain that tries to contain
the vast complexities of every human being
it seems to sound just like the same Western God.

Because “Inherent worth and dignity”
is the language of the colony
that doesn’t know the pain of slavery in its genes,
that ignores its culpability for Holocaust,
that continues to bastardize native people in ritual and song,
that strains against translation,
and always leaves women one step behind.

“Inherent worth and dignity”
Is carved from the dissonant language of white supremacy.
It resonates with paternal principles grown from privilege,
and rises as an onanistic declaration,
excited most by promises of self-righteous satisfaction.

Inherent for you
But abhorrent to her;
Worthy to me
But valueless to them;
Dignity to him
That erases xyr …
“Inherent worth and dignity” is not enough
In a language where the word nigger still sours every tongue.

We must have more.
We must have freedom
Unchained.
We must be seen
Unfiltered.
We must be heard
Un-silenced in a full-throated and triumphant cry.
We must have more than the language of the oppressor
for this dream of freedom to grow living wings
and finally take to the sky.