June 23, 2002
Acts 8:26-39
God colors outside the lines continuously-the choice of Israel-choosing the marginal and the outsider.
Two weekends ago, I co-facilitated a retreat for some fifty folks. Virginia Mollenkott made a wonderful observation: We are all "trans people"...Gay, lesbians and bisexuals break all sorts of gender codes within gender fundamentalism that sharply defines what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman in our society. On the last night of the retreat, we had a party. Virginia, who has come out as a "masculine female," wore a tux.
We color outside of the lines all the time. How many lesbians watch the Super Bowl? Or leather men in their outfits, sporting a type of cultural masculinity, share recipies or decorating ideas. We continuously color outside of the lines. I am useless under the hood of my car while many of my lesbian friends know how to change the oil in the car. Or a heterosexual couple where the woman is the income producer and the husband stays home with the kids.
In today's text, Philip was a member of the liberal wing of Jesus' table fellowship. He experienced Jesus coloring outside of the lines in his table fellowship and his etiquette of breaking traditional rules that set up boundaries between people, insiders vs. outsiders.
Philip preaches the gospel to an Ethiopian eunuch. A person of color and a eunuch. In the 1980's and the 1990's, gay and lesbian scholars claimed the eunuch as gay. But that is partially correct. Eunuchs are more transgendered. Eunuchs often castrated themselves and wore women's clothing. That sounds more transgendered to me.
The Ethiopian eunuch hears the word preached by Philip and asks for baptism. The eunuch is baptized and becomes a follower of Christ. The eunuch is the first non-Jewish convert to the Christian movement in history. God colors outside the lines.
The Stonewall Inn was a dark, smokey, rather seedy bar in Greenwich Village that had a primarily lesbian and gay clientele. They were not, for the most part, the kind of lesbians and gay men who passed for straight. They were bull-dykes, drag queens, and tranvestites. They were marginalized by gays and lesbians and even outcast to those who were closeted.
Being arrested in a bar like Stonewall could have very serious consequences. Your name was printed in the newspaper; you could lose your job and be disowned by your family. Suicide was possible-the case of the Religious Right in publishing the names of gay men in the park led to tragic suicides.
This night was different. Instead of running away, the bull-dykes and drag queens were mad at the harassment and would not take any more, so they fought back. They threw pennies, bottles and cans at the cops. When the paddy wagon arrived, the street crowd was enraged and turned it over. The police barricaded themselves in the Stonewall Inn. The crowd uprooted parking meters to use as battering rams. Some have tried to explain the explosive anger to the death of Judy Garland, a gay icon.
Why was this night different from all others? On June 27, 1969, we fought back. Christopher Street was in queer control for three days.
The world was changed by those few outsiders. Stonewall became the shot that was heard around the world, or rather as I like to interpret it was our "exodus" from the prison of the closet. Our Moses was a collective group of trans folks, who were outside the lines. It is our Passover event. When someone asks why is this day different from all other days, the answer is that we celebrate our freedom, our dignity as children of God.
After 33 years, Stonewall is now celebrated on the six major continents. Chances are you will hear from someone: "Why does the media have to focus on leather men? Or the drag queens? They are an embarrassment; they give us negative images.
If it wasn't for people coloring outside the lines, we would not celebrate this day. We would not have domestic partnerships in over 24,000 corporations and universities. We would not have a civil union ceremony in Vermont. We would not have hate crimes laws. We would not have grassroots and national organizations, fighting for our right for intimacy, to have families, to adopt children or to participate in foster care.
Don't think that it's only the drag queens, leather men, dykes on bikes, or activists that color outside the lines. Perhaps we here are far more radical and fearsome to homophobic society. The Religious Right fears "gay fathers" or "lesbian mothers" or the fact that we are creating families and having children. We are coloring outside of the lines by redefining the family.
We color outside the lines as a church. We are an exodus people, who have fled from unwelcoming churches and spiritually abusive communities. We have created a refuge for healing and a place to practice our faith.
Today, as we celebrate our achievement of limited freedom and the struggle to end discrimination and violence against queer folds, and the struggle to fight for our right to intimacy and have families, let's continue to take pride that we mirror God in coloring outside the lines.
Like Philip, it's our gift to continue to color outside the lines today. Do it with pride, do it with zest, do it with style and do it with God. Amen