REPORT FROM FLAG: XXXVI

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/15/10)

Gays, lesbians, cross-dressers, and trans-genders are much in the news noadays, especially with the issue of gay and lesbian marriages. Swirling around us, these concerns have caused most of us to think about the complexity of these issues. My evolution began with a traditional rearing by conservative parents for which I am enduringly grateful. Although back in the 1930's, they were for civil rights and human dignity, especially as far as race was concerned, the issue of sexual identity never arose as far as I can remember except for occasional smirks and rolled eyes about old maids living together and references to "odd couples."

I vividly remember my father chastising me for treating the black elevator at his office building as an inferior. "Aye, laddie, they'll be as much the Lord's children as are you and I. Now, I'll be wanting you to go back and express your regrets, like a man, and offer him your hand." The elevator operator smiled broadly, shook my hand, and said, "You're Dr. Smith's son, aren't you?"

I heard about "queers" and "fairies" in school and on the streets. It remained largely in the back of my mind except for one event when I was approached in a men's room when I was about 13 in 1939. Distressed and frightened, I talked to my mother about the event. My father was dead at the time. My mother told me not to worry, went to the store where the man worked, and excoriated him. He always lowered his head after that.

The whole issue remained dormant, except for those times during puberty when sexual identification is a paramount issue as a boy has fleeting fears that he may be a "queer." That disappeared when I discovered girls.

During my military service I was generally unaware of the issue. As I look back on those years, I think in our close knit unit there was a homosexual, but nothing ever surfaced. A good bit of the time, I was fearful, being in recurring perilous situations. When people are afraid for their lives, sexual identification is not an issue. Of the five men in the unit, all are dead save for me. I understand one died of AIDS. One was killed in Selma while we were there during the civil rights marches. The other two died of alcoholism and a heart attack.

Of course, throughout the years I was approached three or four times by homosexuals, events I found unpleasant largely because I did not how to reject the approaches gracefully. I hate being awkward.

During the years I taught clinical hypnoanalysis to psychotherapists, many gays and lesbians came to the classes, and I felt at ease with them. Also, during those years I had many gay and lesbian clients which compelled me to think of them as human beings, not as peculiarities. Of course, the two years I spent as an intern at UCLA's Neuro-psychiatric Institute led me to rethink a lot of my conventional attitudes. The big change was that I began to think of them as human beings, not as defective specimens.

Indeed, for many years my office mate was a politically ardent lesbian who asked me to officiate at her wedding to another lesbian. I liked and admired her, and after a few hours thought, I agreed to do it, much to the displeasure of many people. This was about 1975. I took the marriage ceremony of the Book of Common Order of the Church of Scotland and changed the pronouns.

I continued to have many gay and lesbian clients, and sometimes I felt a little nonplussed and awkward when specific details of sexual encounters were discussed. For the most part clients tend to withhold specific information that would be useful to know, but now and then clients gave me more information than I wanted to know. However, the psychotherapist's tendency to set aside personal judgments helped.

The biggest challenge occurred when a man called me several times on the telephone, never giving me his name, asking me about my attitude toward gays and changing gender. I agreed to meet him, and that meeting led me to do a lot of soul-searching. The man I met was tormented and terrified. He felt he could not remain a male but was frightened of going through the operations needed to change his gender. I knew I had to respond. I remembered my father's admonition that mercy, not rectitude, was a cardinal virtue.

The question in my mind: was the whole issue an offence to my religious convictions or a simple matter of correcting a mistake, as in repairing a harelip or a clubfoot. I concluded that deformities of the spirit were just as likely to happen as deformities of the flesh. I remembered the many times I heard gays and lesbians tell me that they felt the way they did from early childhood. After working through the issue with him and preparing him for the change, he disappeared. So I do not know the outcome.

During the civil rights crises of the 1960's and 70's I was heavily involved, marching, demonstrating, preaching, and meetings all of which were accompanied with cross-burnings on my front lawn, telephonic threats late at night, and brief periods in jail. One time I expressed to a college student my personal distaste for some things about modern black culture. She expressed surprise and asked me how I could be for civil rights for blacks and not like some of their music. My reply was simple. A person has rights whether or not I like them or their culture. As a matter of fact, I don't like most of modern popular culture, but that has nothing to do with human rights.

Ultimately, it comes down to an issue about oddity. How much oddity can a society tolerate? One thing for sure is that a society cannot tolerate anti-social and sociopathic oddity, as in theft and murder. While many of us may find gay and lesbian marriages, cross-dressing, and sex change operations odd, they are clearly not anti-social. It's time for a lot of people to grow up and stop dealing with their own personal fears and distastes by condemning other people. For me, it has finally come down to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He died and rose for everyone which means that every human being is worth the sacrifice of Christ. We all bear God's image and the mark of Christ. As Saint Paul said, "It is God who justifies, who is to condemn?"