My dad plays the violin still. For forty years, fifty years, I don’t know, give or take, with the Cedar Rapids Symphony, which later became the itinerant Orchestra Iowa after the Cedar River flooded in 2008 and half the downtown was under nineteen feet above-flood-stage water, and the Paramount Theater and its famous Wurlitzer organ was ruined, and for four years the symphony traveled to available, dry venues around the state, mostly Davenport, I think, or Dubuque. Now my dad plays the violin for Simpson College in Indianola, two hours west and a shorter commute, and the chamber ensemble plays the orchestra accompaniment for silent film reels, like Lillian Gish’s The Mothering Heart. It’s not a particularly feminist film.

Before the chamber ensemble or Simpson College or Orchestra Iowa after the flood, my dad backed out the driveway at night and blinked his headlights three times to me (I love you, maybe, I’m thinking about you, kid) and drove to the Paramount Theater, downtown and two blocks from the railroad tracks that may or may not lead to Nebraska.

And I went, too, dozens of times, or a dozen times, or six. Or three. I don’t remember. And I didn’t love it and I still don’t. I like it very much when I’m reading or working or driving to have classical music on as one of several things that I’m doing, especially Debussy, or Mozart, or a Bach cello suite, especially no. 1 in G Major, but I’m not very good at sitting still to listen to music, not now and I never was. I went to a Lena Horne concert once in St. Louis as a ninth-grader. How old is a person in ninth grade? Fourteen? Old enough to behave. I didn’t. It’s one of the three or four regrets of my life. If ever possible, and affordable, I’ll travel in time not to buy the Kensington apartment that tripled in value before we left Brooklyn, but to sit still at a Lena Horne concert in St. Louis when I was fourteen and should have known better, even if I didn’t yet know her from the Cotton Club, or Ziegfeld, or blacklisted for affiliations with communist-led groups.

There were two crossdressers, or drag queens, or trans women at that Lena Horne concert. We saw them walking down the street toward the theater when we were still on the bus. They were tall, thin, black, exquisite; they wore a long feather in their hair. Everyone on the bus was at the windows on that side, looking at those CDs/queens/trans women and laughing. Probably jeering, but I don’t remember. Probably jeering loudly out the window. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember if I also laughed or jeered. I remember being mesmerized by the feather, though, by the tall, thin, black, exquisite. I remember knowing that they were my people, though I would be silent and closeted for years yet. Wear dresses yet for years. I saw them later at the concert, inside, when I was restless and unruly and ruining the show for the man behind me who likely knew exactly about the Cotton Club and Ziegfeld. I saw their tall feathers in the crowd.

I don’t know how many times I went to the symphony. It could have been a lot or almost never. I think I sometimes “got” to go, and I use the word ironically, when my mom’s friends weren’t going to use their tickets, and my mom would bring us to sit next to her in her friends’ empty seats. Sometimes I sat in the balcony with my older brother, the one today I’m not sure I care whether he lives or dies, and Dad would signal to Mom between symphonies, or concertos, whatever. Hands folded under his head, one finger: one kid asleep. Probably me, bored literally senseless by doing only one thing while listening to music. Hands folded under his head, two fingers: my older brother had fallen asleep, too. One time, perhaps the first time, I wore a green velvet dress and black patent leather Mary Janes. I brought coloring books to have another thing to do while I listened to music. I snuck in books to read in the dim light. I drew with a pencil in the program. I read the program notes in the dark. Eventually, inevitably, I fell asleep. Hands folded under his head, one finger.

I don’t think there was ever a time that we didn’t eat afterward at The Dragon, a Chinese Restaurant for fifty years four blocks from the Paramount Theater, two blocks on the other side of the railroad tracks I never ran away on with Ryan Smith. My mom split lo mein with my brother, I think every time. I always ate a hamburger, dozens of times, or a dozen times, or six. Or three. If my little brother was there, he ate a hamburger, too. He must have been sometimes, I remember two of us with burgers. We ate rice for dessert with milk and sugar. It was years before I learned to eat rice properly. It was years before I learned that rice is a savory dish. It was years before I stopped being silent and closeted. Stopped wearing dresses. I was always cold afterward, and my mom always said, The blood has gone to your stomach to digest the food. Or she said it only once. But whenever I’m cold after a meal I remember The Dragon Restaurant and my mother, and a late night after the symphony, and being full and sleepy. I hated the symphony and sitting still. I loved belonging and coming along. I loved white rice with milk and sugar.

That restaurant became a gay bar later, after the river flooded downtown. But I had long gone.

A tutorial is a small class companion for a larger lecture course. It is designed so we can speak. I was in Old Testament tutorial that morning, I think. They called it Old Testament. I called it Hebrew Bible. That’s a thing, you know. It matters what you call something, you know; it frames what it becomes, whose it is and whose it can be. I think I was in Hebrew Bible tutorial that started at 9 am. Maybe it went until 9:50. It was one of our first classes, it might have been our first day of classes. I don’t remember the grad student who taught it or who was in it, except Dennis I think and maybe Liz. I remember later on discussing the rape of Dinah I think with Dennis Patterson. The sons of Jacob had a sister and a woman in tutorial, or two women, maybe, pointed out the absence of Dinah’s voice in the story. Bible women are lucky to have a name, let alone a voice. Her brothers went to war because she was raped, maybe, but maybe not, and her voice is not present to tell her story, to clarify her wishes. I think it maybe was Dennis Patterson who said, Women didn’t have a role in the public life of the family, and, It’s appropriate that her voice is not present, or, Her wishes are not relevant, and, She has no role in the war. I don’t know if the tutor I can’t remember said anything. I spoke then, later on. I think I said, quietly I think, I think to Dennis Patterson, But she does have a role, or, She is the catalyst! and, She just is not allowed to speak. But that was later. I don’t remember if I said anything that morning between 9 and 9:50.

Everyone talks about how blue the sky was. How clear the sky was that morning. My next class was a large survey lecture course on Systematic Theology. There was ten minutes to walk down the hall to the room, our biggest lecture room. The room was electric. I didn’t understand. I sat in the back. I don’t know how I got there. Everyone was talking. I don’t remember who was talking. I don’t know what words or who or how. I don’t know how much I knew by the time the class started. I knew a plane or two planes had crashed into the towers. I knew I was sitting between two women who had loved ones on flights that morning. Beverly Dempsey. I would find out later that she had two pairs of glasses to match different outfits, which I thought decadent. I knew I didn’t want to hear a lecture, or I couldn’t hear a lecture.

Dr. James Cone was a prominent liberation theologian. His books on Black Liberation are theology and Black power and Malcom and Marx and blues and Martin and spirituals and Sinai and W.E.B. Groundbreaking. Necessary. He did something to quiet us, maybe he just walked in and we quieted to listen. We were still electric, but like the sound of lights overhead. Theology is making meaning of crisis, which is needed this morning, he said. If nobody objects, I will hold class this morning. Good. The study of Systematic Theology is… something banal. Something, I suspected, from his notes that may have been the same notes read last year when a plane or two planes hadn’t hit the towers. I suspected possibly the same notes read every year before since he started reading notes in Systematic Theology at Union in 1970, or Adrian before that, or Philander Smith before that. A few sentences later he told a joke: Some people say that you haven’t studied Systematic Theology until you’ve studied it with Dr. James Cone. A plane or two planes had hit the World Trade Center. A woman on either side of me had a loved one on a flight that morning. Beverly Dempsey. I would find out later that her husband was safe. I didn’t want to hear a lecture. I couldn’t hear a lecture. It’s not designed for us to speak. I didn’t. I didn’t know how to make it stop.

Some guy came in late. David Nuss. I didn’t know his name yet. We didn’t speak ever, not once, in three years of graduate school together. I never had him in another class that I know of. This is the only reason I knew his name and why I know it now to google him to find out he was in a blues band in 2003. That in 2012 he was in a metal band that played Process Church Theology. Satan and Christ and reconciliation and synthesis. Groundbreaking. Necessary. He looked around the room. He sat down in a chair near the door. He didn’t sit down in a chair near the door. He started to sit, and stood. He started to sit, and sat. He didn’t sit still. I didn’t look away. All of my thought and energy and electricity was fixed on David Nuss. I may have thought only, Do it. Do it. Please do it. David Nuss stood and spoke. “Do you know what’s happened?” Dr. James Cone turned and shot, “Don’t interrupt me!” But it was over. We were loud electric again. Everyone was talking. I don’t remember who was talking. I don’t know what words or who or how. We all stood up. Class was over.

We spilled into the halls, into the hub, into the quad. If you’ve ever seen an episode of Law & Order, you’ve seen our quad in the outdoor student scene. Someone moved televisions into the hub to play the news coverage. Someone announced that professors would be at class all day, but there would be no more lectures. Students could get support from them or from the chaplain. That was the only year we had a chaplain. That may have been the year we didn’t have a chaplain. I didn’t know anybody. I knew one woman from orientation. Liz Theoharis. She has been organizing against poverty for twenty years. She is organizing now with Rev. William Barber. If you’ve seen Rev. William Barber speak in the last three years, you’ve seen Liz Theoharis. Women are lucky to have a name.

I stayed in south Harlem that night. My girlfriend watched the Trade Center smoke from the roof of the Park Slope coop. She didn’t watch, but her co-workers did. I dialed a thousand times and got a thousand busy signals until we could speak. Stay where you are. Call your mom. I love you. Lambda Legal is on Wall Street at Water and I’d stopped working there in August. We celebrated the summer interns at Windows on the World at the top of Building One in August. My friends at Lambda walked home at the margins of the city, over the Williamsburg Bridge, covered in the ash of buildings and bodies. Stevie from church called in sick to Windows and didn’t die that morning. I don’t know how to google him. Renee Barrett from church went to work at Cantor Fitzgerald and died. She was waiting for the elevator when the plane hit Tower One. The fire traveled down the shaft and exploded out of the elevator doors. Her friends carried her burned and unconscious down the stairs. I don’t know how to google them. She never woke. Lambda Legal worked with queer partners to receive survivor benefits, but Renee Barrett’s partner wasn’t out. Renee Barrett wasn’t out. They weren’t married and we couldn’t. Renee Barrett’s partner decided not to fight Renee Barrett’s family.

It was weeks before I didn’t startle at the sound of a plane overhead. For a week or two a lot of New York was gentle, nicer in the crowded trains and crowded streets and crowded businesses. And then we weren’t. In Brooklyn, the police stationed guards at the Avenue C mosque. For their safety. My walk home from the F train was a forest of U.S. flags in yards, on windows and doors. It matters what flag you fly, you know; it frames what we become, whose we are and whose we can be. The house with a vegetable garden and a row of sunflowers in the front stoop was an oasis (again) and flew a blue marble flag. Earth from space.

It is a hard thing to name yourself.

My mom picked a name for me when she was young, before she was even married, she says. But for 21 years, the name she picked for me was in the Top Five for the gender she picked for me. It was the Number One name for fifteen of those years. I don’t mean to be an asshole, but that is some kind of unoriginal. You couldn’t swing a dead cat for a quarter century without hitting someone with my dead name.

I disliked the name my mom gave me, even when I was more or less fine with the gender she assigned. I like the nickname I gave myself, but she didn’t use it. My older brother poisoned the nickname I liked by repeating it again and again from a book we read as kids. The line from the book called that name a donkey, and I finally changed the spelling of the nickname of my dead name to make him stop. There’s a copy of Richard Adams’ book Watership Down that I’ve had for so long and read so many times that the front cover is taped onto the book. The original spelling of the nickname I liked of the dead name I hated is written on it in my old writing.

The best version of my dead name was when I eventually shortened the nickname I liked that my mom wouldn’t use of the name she gave me. After I came out (again) I would have kept the best version of that name if folks would have let me. But folks wouldn’t let that name alone. Folks want to formalize and lengthen names. Or folks will ask if the part of the name I liked of the name I hated was short for the name I hated. I remember one of the last times I had a conversation like this. I was in seminary.

Is your name Dead Name?

No, my name is Name.

But your real name is Dead Name?

No. It’s Name.

Yes, but were you called Dead Name?

No… … … Yes, my mother gave me the name Dead Name.

I don’t know why I didn’t yet know then that I could name myself and call it real. That I could deny the name I hated without it being a lie. I don’t know why he kept asking when I said no. It seems like a harmless question, I think, to a lot of people who ask it. But it killed my soul a little each time they asked. So I began to think about what I would call myself. It’s a hard thing to name yourself. I tried a different longer version of the name my mom gave me. I liked it in theory. I worked at a place with people who started to use the new name immediately. Thank God. I hated it. How cool is it that these people right away used the name I asked them to use so that I could discover that I hated it? (Thanks, Lambda.)

I started looking at baby names and I started making a list of all the names I liked. I think I may still have this list. Maybe it’s downstairs in an unorganized box of papers I want to keep, with Broadway playbills and concert tickets and friends’ family Christmas photos. I made a list on post-it notes, which means I probably was doing this at work. (Thanks, Lambda.) I had a bunch of names stuck together in a long list, like Santa’s, and I gave it to my girlfriend. She crossed off all the names she hated. I let her cross off names she hated because I appreciate her opinion. Also I hoped (I hope) that she would use the name, too, for a long time. I really liked one or two of the names she crossed off. We have a running gag to this day about Enoch. A lot of the names that survived were old English trade names. They were names that were usually last names. Cooper, Potter, Porter, Thatcher, Sawyer, Miller.

I loved these names. It was easier to let go of the names my girlfriend crossed off the list, I don’t even remember which they are, because these old trade names are so strong, so evocative. I still love them all. I wish I could be named them all. I wish I could switch back and forth between them. I ruled out one or two for various reasons of association. I picked one.

The people I worked with started using it right away, and I liked it right away. (Thanks, Lambda.) I’ve been using it ever since. I changed my name legally five years later, eleven years ago, and I told the judge truthfully that the reason for the change was, “I have been using this name personally and professionally for some time.” But that wasn’t the whole truth. The lawyers suggested that I think carefully about whether to out myself (again) to the judge. Two other people who changed their names the same year with the same judge told the whole truth. They outed themselves. They were denied their name change petitions. One of them gave up, and I don’t know what became of him. The other fought the decision and eventually won. She told me last year that she is going to change her name back. She told me she is going to change her gender back. I believe that people get to name and rename ourselves and (re)decide who we are, whoever we are; it still made me sad.

It’s a hard thing to name yourself.

I grew up on a river, and my girlfriend grew up on a river that feeds into my river, and the name I chose is an old trade name that needs rivers. The name I chose sounds like my grandfather’s first name, and my grandfather was a faith leader, too, and a teacher, too. The name I chose sounds like my baby brother’s middle name. I might have chosen my brother’s name for myself if it wasn’t already his. (I don’t know, though, if I love his name because of the name or if I love his name because of him.) My mom loves the name I chose, and though it wouldn’t have mattered, it matters. In the end, I kept the best version of the nickname I liked but Mom didn’t use of the dead name I hated. It is my middle name. I would have kept that name if people would have just let me keep it.

Stephens writes about the Blasey Ford-Kavanaugh allegations in a seemingly impartial and dispassionate way, and I appreciate several of his points. The nature of sexual assault, however, is one that doesn’t conform well to his arguments or, frankly, to our system of justice. Sexual assault is overwhelmingly committed by people we know, in places we are supposed to feel safe, in ways that don’t leave behind definitive evidence of a crime. The only difference — the only one — between sex and assault is consent, and the people who claim that they did have consent are supported by our cultural assumptions of who does and doesn’t get to say no, and when, and how often. For these reasons, a tiny fraction of what is already a vastly underreported crime results in arrest, let alone prosecution, let alone conviction. Stephens believes that Blasey Ford should be able to provide “specific,” “definitive evidence” that can be “corroborated independently,” and that, if she doesn’t, “she will have smeared Kavanaugh.” And so even in his attempt to write evenly and impartially, he exposes the difficulties faced by victims of sexual assault and, perhaps unintentionally, perpetuates them.

“Frenzy”
Rev. Miller Hoffman
MCCNY

September 9, 2018

Here is a parable.

From there he arose and went away to the region of East Harlem at Harlem River Park. And he wore Ray Bans and pulled his ball cap down and tried to hide out in the back of the Savoy Bakery, but a woman whose girl had been picked up for solicitation heard and came and threw herself at him. Now the woman was trans, Puerto Rican by birth, and she begged him to post bail for her girl. And he said to her, “Let the white trans teenagers first pee safely at school, for the t-girl hookers ask too much.” She answered, “Yes. And my girl wasn’t hooking, just walking home, and we’re tired.” He said, “That was a messed up thing I just said.” And when she went home, he had rallied the neighborhood and the charges were dropped.

Jesus told parables, story fable koans. Probably. He recited poetry. He probably asked questions. Which of these three was a neighbor to the man? Whose face is on the coin? What do you do with a lighted lamp? Did not the one who made the outside make the inside? If salt isn’t, what will make it so? To what shall we compare God’s Presidency?

Telling stories and asking questions maybe is to unlearn, unknow, reinterpret.

Last week, Jesus had already begun to talk in radical and subversive ways about what and who is clean or not clean. It’s important to realize that in this parable about Jesus meeting a Syro-Phoenician woman, we move directly from ritual hand washing to physical geography. We are pressed into Gentile territory from the opening words: “And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.” In case that isn’t plain enough, the first character is described in the literary equivalent of a cartoon mouse holding a giant mallet: “Now the woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth.” (Hello! Hello! Do you get it now? We are in “Other”land, two doors past Outsider House on Gentile Street.)

There was probably an argument about religious and cultural group differences going around within the Jesus Movement communities when Mark’s gospel was written. Paul gave his answer when he wrote in his letters about circumcision being optional, when he wrote about food sacrificed to pagan gods being okay to eat, and when he said “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Mark’s answer is to tell a parable about uncleanness coming from inside, not out, and then to tell a parable about Jesus in Gentile territory, and name the character by both her religion and her nationality as Idolator McHeretic and have her receive a blessing. Kind of.

That’s why what happens next is critical.

Part of me wishes it didn’t happen. Part of me wishes that Jesus says decisively here, “Come one and all! Whether or not you wash your hands, come in! Of course I will heal your child like so many others I have already, there are no restrictions, because the gifts of God are for all the people!” I hate it that Jesus says what he does. Why doesn’t Jesus just heal that woman’s daughter? Or if somebody had to say this awful thing, why couldn’t it have been Peter, or Judas, or any one of the disciples, frankly, who seem constantly to be getting things wrong? Why not one of those idiot disciples fighting over who would be at Jesus’ right and left hand in heaven? Why not one of those dimwits arguing over who was greatest? Why does Jesus call her that derogatory slur? There’s no exact modern equivalent, but it’s like he called her a gutter rat, or a pigeon. Something we think of as dirty that lives in the street and eats garbage and rotten dead things.

It’s awful. I like Jesus a lot. He’s a great person. He’s a hero. He says the right things, he does the right things. He teaches by word and deed. He seems to never get a moment to himself without somebody running after him, pressing against him, touching him with their sick, oozing bodies or carrying people up to him or lowering them down on him through the roof, and they never think to pack a lunch and most of them don’t say thank you, and still he takes the time. Still he honors and touches and heals and feeds and is with them.

Except now. “Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

I hate this story. I hate this parable about Jesus. I love this parable about Jesus. It may be one of the most important stories in the gospels, partly because of what we learn from the ways people respond to it. Here are some of the ways people respond to it.

Some people soften the name he called her. Like, no, no, no, it’s okay, because he didn’t call her the n-word-dash -ER, he called her the n-word-dash-A, like he’s Larry Wilmore and she’s Obama. Like he’s YG and Jeezy. Or some people say he never said it, he didn’t actually say this hateful thing to this woman, coming to him asking for help for her tormented daughter. Because it’s just a parable, so nobody really got hurt. As though representation doesn’t matter. As though the rhetorical dehumanization of a woman in order to make a point about her determination or to make a point about God’s expansive and unbounded love for us all doesn’t hurt real women, doesn’t harm real people who look like her.

Here’s a parable.

From there he arose and went away to the region of Gold’s Gym at the Life Fitness strength machines. Someone was using the triceps press minding their own business, listening to Code Switch with Gene Demby and Shereen Marisole Meraji on an iPod. Now he thought the person was a woman, assigned female gender at birth. And he said to her, “You should smile more.” She answered, “Do you need this machine?” He said, “No, I just see you here a lot and I think you should smile more.” And she put the earbud back in her ear and went back to her tricep sets, and as he walked away he said, “uppity dyke snatch.”

Some people try to justify it, explain why it would have made sense to the original readers. Because this Syro-Phoenician woman was cheeky. Because she barges in. Because she has no business there; she was not invited. Because she threw herself at Jesus’ feet, not in a decorous way like Jairus back in chapter 5, not in a controlled and civilized way like him. The language doesn’t register in the English translation, heavy sigh, which is one more reason we really need to probe our bibles and dig into translations and research contexts. I did it for us today, don’t worry. Jairus’s verb is pipto, to lower oneself before, to humble or prostrate oneself before. This woman’s verb is prospipto and it means a rushing forward, beating against, like a winds-beating-upon-a-house kind of falling before. It’s a frenzied verb, it’s hysterical, not in a good way. Some commentators say that, not only is it not surprising that Jesus responded like he did, it would have been expected.

This is important, because we know how this works. Women are hysterical when they are angry. Women are emotional and menstrual and angry when they speak their mind. Lesbians are angry. Feminists hate men. Women who don’t smile are angry and ugly. Black women are angry. Black people who talk about their experiences of indignity and oppression are “playing the race card” and “carrying a chip on their shoulder.” When trans people talk about our experiences of indignity and oppression, we are crazy and “a hot mess.” Language is used to emotionally distance, to abandon, to discredit and disparage the Other. Jairus piptos. This woman prospiptos. He is dignified. She is frenzied.

Some people say politically correct, I say language has consequences.

Let’s pretend she was hysterical. Let’s say for the sake of argument she came running in that house, scratched at the eyes of men in the door, tore off her clothes, and gnawed on Jesus’ ankles. Jesus still has no business talking to her like that. Since when does Jesus talk to desperate people like that?! Go back and read the description of that guy in the Geresenes catacombs who was naked and snapped chains and smashed shackles and shrieked at Jesus; Jesus asks for his name. Go back and read about the boy convulsing and foaming at the mouth; Jesus asks how long has he been tortured. Why does this woman’s emotion and desperation disqualify her from help? Why doesn’t her desperation justify her, instead of Jesus? Why doesn’t his callousness invalidate him?

This woman was not hysterical. That prospipto business is a linguistic trick, a lie of the devil, trying to distance us from her. She isn’t frenzied. She isn’t hysterical or shrill. This is clear, because Jesus says this awful thing – “Let our own children first be glutted, for it is not right to take from people we like and waste it on people who disgust us” – and this is her response: “Yes, Sir.” Calm, respectful, deliberate.

“Yes, Sir, and yet even the mangy strays eat the crumbs.”

Here is a parable.

From there he arose and went away to the region of Staten Island at Bay Street in Tompkinsville. A man selling loose cigarettes was there, selling loose cigarettes. Now the man was Black, a former horticulturalist for the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, husband and father of six, generous and congenial by birth, and he was selling loose cigarettes. And he put him in an illegal chokehold from behind without provocation. He answered, “I can’t breathe.” He said, “All lives matter. I can breathe thanks to the NYPD.” He died. And when he went home, people who kneeled during the national anthem were Unamerican.

I hate this story. I love this story. It may be one of the most important stories in the gospel. And not because it teaches us to reach out to and include the people we think of as disease-carrying street animals. Think about that. The parable I started with feels offensive to me. It’s a brilliant inversion to say love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. It is a first-rate subversion to say you can only be the captain of all the people if you will scrub all the floors. It is radical and transformative to say that no one is free until we are all free. And it is becoming more and more distasteful to me to tell these stories about human beings on the margins, folks that people disregard and ignore and actively harm, as if they/we are some special case, as if they are unfortunate, as if they are the ones who need to be fixed, as if Jesus is saying love even them, include even them, which I’ve done before, maybe every other time I’ve preached on this passage. And it’s offensive, it’s obnoxious to me that I have tried to redeem these stories in this way.

I don’t want to think about these anymore as feel-good stories of including social castaways. I want to reframe them as chastening stories of arrogance. I want to understand this parable of Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman as a story that exposes Jesus’ self-importance and bigotry as much or more than one about her value and perseverance. I want to condemn conceit and contempt, and nevermind who says I am angry. Nevermind who calls me hysterical. I want this parable to compel us to consider complexity and contradiction and nuance and paradox.

Jesus isn’t always good. I hate this story. I love this story. This story may be one of the most important stories in the gospels, because Jesus is bad in it and Jesus is usually not anywhere else ever bad. Sometimes things are important because they happen a million times, like Jesus and meals. He’s like a hobbit with meals. And sometimes things are important when they almost never happen. Jesus is absolutely not almost ever bad, and yet the gospels tell this story. They tell it twice. This story may be one of the most important parables in the gospels, because Jesus is bad in it. And because Jesus is bad in it, and lots of people try to make him good. And because people try to make him good and try to make her bad. And it exposes our tendency to a particular kind of Christianity. That kind of liberal-whatever, well-meaning (maybe), wet-bread neither hot nor cold, insubstantial words without action, as long as it doesn’t cost anything Christianity. There is something important, I think, that we are supposed to learn from a story like this.

If Jesus is bad sometimes when it is hard to comprehend Jesus being bad, when so much depends on Jesus not, in fact, being bad, then what else that we always thought was right is actually left? What else is not up but down? If the gospels do not tell a monolithic, uniform story of Jesus (the messiah) as always good, but tell a rare story about Jesus (the Christ) as bad, then maybe a small crack might appear in the massive blue monument. Perhaps we could imagine that sometimes police are corrupt. We might conceive that what makes it harder for good police isn’t Black Lives Matter, or investigating and indicting and convicting bad police, but that bad police are what make it harder for good police. That good police acting like there’s no such thing as bad police are what make it harder for good police, and harder for a lot of us.

If a woman abused by Jesus is discredited and dismissed in order to save his reputation and salvage his potential, maybe a small crack might appear in the monumental phalanx of rape culture. There is no piece of art, no film, no sport worth more than the life and well-being of even a single, anonymous victim, hysterical or not. Drunk or not. Dressed however. But most sexual assaults are committed by people we know, people we are supposed to trust, who use that trust to abuse. Victims are targeted who are available and vulnerable. And people are vulnerable when we discredit them. When we dismiss them. When we don’t like them. Everybody really, really liked Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino and Annabella Sciorra until we didn’t anymore. Remember how much we all really liked Annabella Sciorra? Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence were our best friends. Then they weren’t. We bestow favor and discard favor, and we act like it means something. We act like it is evidence. Who do we like better, Jesus or this crazy, unnamed woman? And that’s how we decide who is right, that equals who is good. Who do we like better, Polansky or some 13-year-old who never made a movie? Kobe Bryant or some woman we don’t know who can’t play basketball? We take sides, and so often that is how we decide who we will side with.

But sometimes Jesus is bad. Sometimes the ultimate good guy is bad. We need to make sense of that. And it’s not a one-off. This is not the only time this happens ever in the bible. God told Abraham to kill his son, for pity’s sake, and we turn it into a story about great faith. There are a dozen stories about killing the enemies’ children, swinging their heads against rocks. So we skip that part. Pharaoh and Herod are evil for killing children, but God kills every firstborn kid for holy reasons? I guess they had that coming. The bible says both that money is corrupt and also that it is God’s reward for righteousness. The bible says welcome the immigrant and also kill them. The bible literally says beat your swords into plowshares and also beat your plowshares into swords. The bible is a mercenary. The bible is a minion. It will back us up, no matter what we say. It has all our backs. It will support whatever you decide you already believe, and I’m only exaggerating a tiny bit. I’m almost not exaggerating. And what is Christianity? What does that mean, to you? Hitler was a Christian. Jim Jones was a Christian. Fred Phelps is a Christian. Pat Robertson is a Christian. And Pat Bumgardner and Boon Lin Ngeo and Yvette Flunder and William Barber and Gene Robinson and Troy Perry.

I really like the bible. I hope we all keep reading it deeply. It holds so many truths that are dear to me. But we have to figure it out, maybe without just the bible, maybe with other stuff, too. Because sometimes God hates fags, but we don’t want to. Sometimes Jesus is racist, but we don’t have to. We may have to just decide first who we are and what we want – and that means we have to pay attention to our impulses to simplify, our impulses to automatically side with the one we put a white hat on, the one who siding with will most benefit us, the one we like better. We have to pay attention to our impulses to blame the one we’re not siding with, to call them hysterical, frenzied, ugly, untrustworthy, we have to notice our impulses to believe that our desire, that our friendship is evidence, is fact. It’s not.

We have to recognize that we can still love the person who is wrong, we can love the person who is bad, if you will. That feels weird; it feels dissonant. And we have to pay attention to our impulse, whether as punishment or defense, to act like holding ourselves to account amounts to shame and self-loathing. We can be screw-ups, and own it, and hold ourselves to accountability, and still love ourselves, and even like ourselves. We can love our abusers and love abusers of others, and still hold them accountable; we can still support and defend the person they hurt. That will feel weird; it will feel dissonant. It is really hard. We can love them and stick with them and hold them accountable: Breaking bread with them doesn’t have to mean collusion. And alternatively we can love them and depart from them: Breaking ties doesn’t have to mean contempt. But these are hard. It’s much easier to pick sides.

Complexity. Incongruity. Paradox. Is any of this good news? Is it good news that Jesus was bad? Is it good news when there is no clear absolute, no simple, obvious right and wrong? I think it is immensely good news. Definite and certain and finished is what frightens me. Decided scares me. Closed scares me. Uncertainty is wonderful. Open is holy. And it’s hard. It’s really hard and uncomfortable. It’s discordant; it rankles. But Rilke famously wrote,

…be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and learn to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions…

There surely is right and wrong, though they are not simple and easily defined. The bible gives us hints. Some of my favorite hints from Jesus are to look down when we have been taught to look up. To look to the east when we have been assured that good will come from the west. Our hearts give us hints. We surely will find our way when our compass is love, though we should expect there to be as many variations on love and what that means and to live those questions as much as any of the others.

Jesus probably told parables and recited poetry. He probably asked questions. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Who is my mother and who are my brothers? Which is greater, the gift or the altar which makes the gift sacred? Can Satan drive out Satan? What is the White House of God like? To what shall I compare it?

Telling stories and asking questions maybe is to unlearn, unknow, reinterpret.

Jesus was almost always good. He did so much good and transformed so many lives. But not every time; now we know. It’s hard to find good in Jesus in the lesson today. To find anything redemptive or healing in his actions feels to me like a betrayal of the Syro-Phoenician woman he abused. And. It’s possible that Jesus getting this so utterly wrong and so completely (I hope) screwing up our essential notions of Goodness may actually open up for us new avenues, open for us hard, uncomfortable ways, open to us possibilities to discover unanticipated goodness for one another and in ourselves.

Peace.

Most people have a story about being rejected unfairly, being shot down arbitrarily for a reason that wasn’t properly tied to merit or qualifications, some story about being rejected not for what they did or didn’t do, but for who they were. There are as many varieties of these stories as there are eye colors. More. What is much more rare are the folks who will tell you a story about how they got ahead for no good reason, how they were given a leg up for God Knows Why. Those stories are uncommon, because when we get a leg up it’s because we earned it.

Right?

Recently I was invited to sit on a panel in response to the documentary film, The Rape of Recy Taylor. The invitation came from a Black woman who was organizing the event. The other two panelists were a Black woman and a genderqueer Latinx person. The moderator was white, and I am white and genderqueer. It matters what race and ethnicity we are; that this doesn’t go without saying is a testament to a number of things, probably particularly liberal white denial of difference. When we don’t acknowledge racial difference, idealistic white folks will say things like “The rape of Recy Taylor is a universal story.” Someone at the film panel may have said that. But there are no universal stories; anyone who says differently is probably not a person of color.

We were to be given a couple of minutes after being introduced to give a general response to the film. I crafted my response as much as possible to try to hold and promote the integrity of the story of Recy Taylor specifically as a Black woman. Specifically as not a universal story; specifically as a story about someone caught in the crosshairs of being both a woman and also Black. I tried to connect what happened to her then to the experiences today of other women of color – trans women assaulted and killed in public spaces, Black women not protected by Stand Your Ground protections – and of other Black people – those reported to the police in recent months for sitting and eating and hailing a car in public space.

After the film, but before the moderator or I or anyone else on on the panel spoke, the genderqueer Latinx person spoke for a minute and made a statement that the full panel should have been comprised only of Black women. This was generally well-received by people in the room, and throughout the remaining hour of panel discussion folks repeated that statement, both audience members and the Latinx panelist repeated it. They lamented the absence of an all-female, all-Black panel event.

I felt awkward and uncertain about my place and about what to do. Should I leave the stage? Would that come across as dramatic and attention-seeking? Should I read the statement I had crafted and honor the Black woman who invited me and the Black panelist who introduced my remarks? Should I not speak at all and honor the Black audience members who wished for an all Black, female panel? When the white moderator, for one thing, introduced me first and then, for another, disregarded the Black panelist who created an opening for me to speak, I didn’t know to which woman to defer.

It felt bad. It continues to feel bad. I wanted to be good. To this day, weeks later, I still want people to think of me as One of the Good Ones. I keep feeling a need to be assured that I did okay, that I made good choices, or to be assured that all of my choices were fucked before they were made, regardless of how they were made.

Every one of these feelings and needs is attached to my whiteness and to white supremacy, because being assessed or judged for what one does as an individual is an opportunity uniquely accorded to whiteness. And every one of these feelings and needs is attached to my whiteness and to white supremacy, because I am white and because racism and white supremacy are elemental to what I say and do, to every decision and circumstance that led me to that film screening at the Governor’s Art Gallery in Harrisburg on a Thursday night in August. I can’t extricate myself from it, and saying I have is as good as pretending that I don’t see race, as good as pretending that Recy Taylor’s rape is a universal story.

1. It feels true to me that the decisions I made that night were with an understanding of and with the intention of interrupting racism and white supremacy and my role in it. 2. Without question that doesn’t mean those decisions did actually understand anything or interrupt anything.

3. It’s possible that, for some folks in the room, there was nothing I could have done or not done right; I may simply have been wrong for being there and being white. 4. Unquestionably, in nearly every other circumstance of my life, being wherever I am and white benefits me.

It felt terrible to think that, whatever decision I made, I would be contradicting one or another woman, and in most cases one or another Black woman. It felt and it still does feel awful to have been so unwanted by Black folks in the room when I had taken such care to say challenging things to white folks in the room. It feels lousy that some people saw me as That White Person Who Took Up Space Where He Was Asked (Not) To, in a relatively small community of anti-racism colleagues in a relatively small city.

At one time I thought the takeaway from this experience was those four things named above, but I’ve realized that I had more to learn: This may keep happening any time I try to do white anti-racism. I may not ever do it right. There may not be a right way to be white in the middle of white supremacy. Somebody may always (justifiably or unfairly) resent me. Someone may always (justifiably or unfairly) leave with a lower opinion of me than I hoped for. Any expectation or thought that Black folks will or should agree about my role in the work or in the world is fundamentally part of racism. And if I’m doing any of this for thanks or praise or to be considered one of the good ones, I’ll probably always be disappointed and feel awful. And if I’m doing any of this to be thanked or praised or considered one of the good ones, in that very extra way I am, in fact, part of the problem.

I told a lot of people after that night that I didn’t want anyone to reassure me or expend any energy in defending me. When I talked afterward to Black women about what happened, I kept prefacing our conversation by saying I didn’t expect or want them to put any energy into reassuring me. And I meant it.

And yet by saying it, then, by saying it here, even meaning it, I’m still trying to convey that I’m good. That I’m a Good One. I am still vying for that recognition.

That may be a deep thing that needs to come to the surface for me and other white folks. It’s not that I’m being disingenuous. It’s not that I need to be filled with shame and self-loathing for wanting to be known as good. But my goodness doesn’t matter, because, at a basic level, trust in a system of merit or qualifications is an assumption of white supremacy. My desire to be liked and to have good deeds be recognized and appreciated is a human need and makes me human. But, fundamentally, wanting credit for not being racist is thoroughly disordered. And I think racist.

I would like to raise some issues specifically about coming to this story as white folks, myself as a white person. Coming from a position of whiteness and racial privilege, I’m thinking about the tendency we have as white folks to want people like Recy to be like us, to assume that her story and experience will be what we expect it to be, and to understand her experiences and truths in terms of our own experiences of and truths about violence and sexual violence.

It’s important I think to try to hold the integrity of her story as, among other things, a black woman. To recognize that violence and sexual violence is a tool of white supremacy as well as a tool of male supremacy and that all of that is in play for her in a way that white folks can’t assume is the same for us. To hold the integrity of her story as both patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity and also racism and this country’s history of slavery and Jim Crow (and now mass incarceration) intersect on her body — not abstractly or in an academic way, the way some folks talk about intersectionality — but how Kimberle Crenshaw meant it in terms of how these assorted, multiple systems of power and systems of violence actually, bodily and physically and viscerally, cut into and land on and crush Recy Taylor. [Added: The way black women have higher mortality rates for breast and cervical cancer. The way disproportionate numbers of black women are dying while giving birth.]

Similarly, or along that same trajectory, I want to encourage white folks who watch this story to think about active and meaningful engagement with it and with creating change specifically around the rape of black women. Whiteness and those of us who (even passively, even accidentally, even unknowingly or unintentionally) benefit from white supremacy sometimes think that our absence of overt racial harm or our attempts to be non-racist or to claim an ally identity for ourselves is sufficient. I want to encourage white folks to, first, recognize and name the privileges of whiteness that we are ashamed of and want to disavow, and also I want to encourage white people to think in much more active ways about racial justice. We need to think in anti-racist terms that interrupt racism and white supremacy. It’s not enough to watch a documentary about the rape of Recy Taylor and attend a panel discussion, it’s not enough to wear a safety pin, it’s not enough to march in a knitted hat (regardless of the color yarn, but maybe especially pink), it’s not enough to not be overtly racist. These things are fine, and they are not enough. We, white folks, need to be willing to lose stuff we are accustomed to having — to lose cache and lose friends and lose jobs sometimes and lose football maybe, if we think of that as a loss, and lose comfort.

We need to realize that the rape of Recy Taylor was a historical moment but that The Rape of Recy Taylor is ongoing. For example to recognize the ways that she was assumed to be and called a prostitute (as though sex workers are somehow not entitled to give or withhold consent, or entitled to physical safety and bodily integrity), that she was called a prostitute and assaulted because she existed in public space. That she was deprived of her humanity and ownership of her body in ways that we can find happening in similar ways today to transgender women of color [Added: Janell Crosby and Tyra Woods] who are assaulted and stripped on the Atlanta transit, with people videotaping the assault and laughing, nobody helping, trans women of color who are assaulted and arrested and assumed to be and called prostitutes, who are deprived of their humanity and bodily integrity, like Recy Taylor, because they are existing in and occupying public space.

I hope we will take that to the next level of connection and the next, to Jacqueline Dixon and Marissa Alexander in Florida and Alabama, both of which are Stand Your Ground states, black women who used force to protect themselves from abusive partners, black women who are not being protected under that law when that law has been used repeatedly to protect non-black men who are shooting and killing black men. And at the next level to connect all of these black women and black men and black children who are being stopped daily and surveilled and interrogated by white neighbors and white dorm mates and the police simply for existing in and occupying public space, and sometimes private space, and sometimes their own private property. I hope we connect the rape of Recy Taylor to our own assumptions and our sense of entitlement about owning and controlling public space.

This is not only a story about rape, it is importantly a story about rape against a black woman. I realize that I’m speaking primarily to white folks, and I want to be clear that this is not in order to center whiteness but hopefully quite the contrary, to call on us to de-center whiteness and the assumption that white experience is a better framework or the only framework from which to understand violence and sexual violence. Again, I urge anti-racist-minded and well-intentioned white folks in the room to actively and meaningfully engage in dismantling and de-centering whiteness and create change specifically for black survivors of assault and sexual assault in our country.

In April, David used gasoline to set himself on fire in a public act of protest to symbolize our destruction of the planet with fossil fuels.

I worked with David Buckel at Lambda Legal during some of the years he was arguing the significant cases named in the reports of his death. Lambda’s work is in impact litigation which addresses and changes lives strategically and often at the level of critical mass. David’s work at Lambda Legal created access to the hundreds of rights and privileges associated with marriage to LGB folks. It held local authorities responsible for the safety of their students and crime victims in ways that affected entire states and judicial circuits. Each case was designed so that the benefit of its plaintiff would translate to the benefit of a class of people.

David Buckel was so soft spoken, so patient explaining the case, the project. He’s the one who talked about the importance of names, whether “mom,” “dad,” or “marriage.” He was a beautiful, truly a gentle man. Often smiled, seldom laughed, always always kind.

David was a story teller. He litigated the marriage case in Iowa when few expected the heartland to care about queer and genderqueer families. David made the heartland care. He litigated a case called Nabozny, about a gay teen who was relentlessly and mercilessly beaten at school, where the school administrators sort of threw up their hands and said, “Well, what do you expect?” And he made the school care and made the government care about gay kids having a safe place to learn. He litigated the Brandon case, the young trans man who was raped and murdered by his friends for not being who they expected him to be. David made the state of Nebraska care and made the Sheriff’s Department care about Brandon and about his mom‘s experience of his loss.

David was a deeply thoughtful man and he was essentially efficient and meticulous. When Lambda changed its email system, I remember David telling me that it took him twice as long afterward to file his mail. He used to be able to file it with two clicks, say, and now it took four. The inefficiency mattered to him; it was time he could be spending on substantive work. His reading glasses were often noticeably smudged and bleary, and I assume that he had done a similar cost analysis on the time to clean them and determined that it was not the best use of those minutes. He never stopped reading and typing even to wipe his glasses clean.

I always knew David to care about the environment and recycling. And he came to it with the same thoroughness and urgency as his litigation. It was from David that I learned to recycle even the small paper tab from my tea bag. I still do it. Anyone who has taken time to watch David’s Red Hook Community Garden instructional video of walk turning a windrow will have experienced a visual poem. It is a master class, not just on composting but also on efficiency, organizing, and volunteer appreciation. This is how David approached his work. He was sensible and well-reasoned, soft-spoken and forceful. He wanted to change the minds of the decision-makers, but he also wanted to encourage the people doing the work.

David chose his death with purpose. His end game was always to be persuasive: his thoughtfulness, his story telling, his meticulousness served the bigger goal of being compelling and convincing. In that light, his self-immolation as a last act does with his body in death what he had done in life with litigation and education. But self-immolation is designed to evoke horror, not sympathy. Not encouragement. By design, this act is meant to capture and hold attention. I believe the decision to destroy his body was intended to horrify us and to demand our notice.

He’s gotten my attention. I hadn’t spoken to David in fifteen years, and I am now preoccupied by, haunted by his absence. I am determined to reenergize my practices and up my conservation game and that of my colleagues and workplaces. To support the organizations dedicated to protecting and restoring the environment. To tell people what David did and try to persuade them, too. I am determined to do what I can to give David’s death the impact he hoped for.

Companion photos can be found here.

I get loud from time to time, but it tends to be more in the context of in-the-car at people-who-don’t-pull-into-the-intersection-to-turn-left. I did both marches in New York City this weekend, and Sunday’s event was hell. Possibly literally. And the Dyke March, though not heaven even if there was such a thing which there isn’t, was pretty great. But don’t everyone go. You’ll ruin it.

Not really. Go.

The Dyke March has never applied for a permit. Never asked permission. I imagine the city knows it’s coming by now, but the beauty of it is that they know the same way as anyone else. People have shown up at the same time, at the same place, every year for twenty-six years. It starts on the sidewalk, then we step off. And there’s something in that of the rebellion and maybe the rage of Stonewall.

There are no companies. I don’t love how corporate Pride has become, but the problem isn’t Sunday’s commodification of queer and genderqueer energy per se. The part of me that votes with my dollars and supports local business and companies that pay a living wage and use ecologically sound practices, that part of me is fine with MLB and HSBC sucking up to the homos. The part of me that wants a shorter, more impactful Pride procession wishes they would sponsor a Port O Potty, though, instead of fielding twenty-three blocks of corporate floats with AED bass beats so loud they are resetting my heart rhythm. I wish I could hear the live performances of MCCNY singing “Believer” and “You’re Beautiful, Dammit.” I wish I could hear the chants from the Sylvia Rivera Project and the Resistance Contingent.

At the Dyke March, you could hear every syllable of “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re fabulous, don’t fuck with us.” Every word of “When the dykes go marching in.” Each line of the Church Ladies for Choice again singing, “God is a lesbian, she is a lesbian. God is a dyke, send her victoria.” Every beat of the drum corps, calling, leading, announcing, drawing and driving us forward. Except for that corner where the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps was, but I’m not complaining.

The banners:

Burn in the hellfires of my dyke rage.

Deport Jeff Sessions to hell.

Lesbians are miracles.

Love thy neighbor, no exceptions.

Dykes against borders: Welcome to my cuntry.

Support queer sex workers.

Queer as in abolish prisons.

LGBTs against border walls and family separations.

Trans dykes against ICE.

The patriarchy isn’t going to smash itself.

Justice and liberation, not capitalist assimilation.

How dare you assume I’m straight.

Lesbians against white supremacy.

President Gaslight, there’s a baby jail ready for you!

The first Pride was a riot.

No cops at Pride.

They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.

It’s not possible to get behind every sign. Banning police from Pride forgets that cops are queer, too, on the street with “us” in and out of uniform. As exciting as it is to imagine a queer, female New York State governor, I’m more excited by the idea of people discussing ideas and policies and what is the most best for the most marginalized people than polarizing into candidate constituencies. Mocking Trump’s body plays into the same framework of beauty and value that is used against masculine women and trans women and leather bears, that promotes passing, that promotes rape. Even if Trump’s only value of women is their sexual utility, measuring him by his own yardstick still serves on some level to validate that warped, violent yardstick.

I don’t agree with every sign or every dyke in the march, but that’s part of the beauty of it. There were a lot of us in all the ways we do and look and dress. I was representing, for example, the earnest, square portion of genderbent soft-masculine tranny dykes. That happens at Sunday’s thing, too, maybe more so. I love that salacious, sordid, half-naked, tatted and studded and body-painted part of us. (It’s okay if kids find out we have bodies. Jesus, it’s okay if kids find out that bodies feel good. They already know. Take the opportunity to talk about consent instead of covering their eyes. Or don’t. Don’t listen to me; I don’t have kids.)

I watched small group of homophobes travel south with us for 34 blocks carrying signs with surprisingly bland verses about God and the bible. I watched a dyke doggedly follow them block after block to stand next to them with her sign, “Closeted Homosexuals” and an arrow. And somewhere around 14th Street, I saw her talking to the God-bible sign guy, listening to him make his argument about our salvation. It’s not that Sunday’s event doesn’t have room for that, probably, in the sense of heart and generosity. It just doesn’t have room for that. It’s a press of people jammed together, more this year maybe than ever with that bogus horseshoe route that quarantined us to Chelsea and the West Village. I have so many swears about that.

And you couldn’t count all the signs protesting ICE and immigration policy, white supremacy and patriarchy. The collection from this year’s march was to benefit RAICES, that provides legal services to immigrants and refugees in Texas.

Bottom line, it probably comes down to ratios. Sunday is a celebration with some dabs of protest. It’s a party, a parade. And that’s fine. A bunch of people like to crowd together for a party in Times Square every year, too, and dance and watch the ball drop.

The Dyke March I think, still, is a protest. It’s still a march. And that is the celebration.