How Do We Rise Up? How Do We Fight?

by Lisa Neff at 365Gay:

Rise up.

Fight the power.

But where?

The GLBT community lost big on election day in California, Arkansas, Florida and Arizona.

We respond with lawsuits, with protests, with direct non-violent action in the streets, with denunciations.

We have clout now in high places, the highest, in fact, in the United States.

We have many state legislators and governors, both houses of Congress and the president elect of the United States.

We have bi-partisan support.

We have star-power and corporate influence.

We have wealthy — or moderately wealthy — organizations.

We have sympathetic friends and neighbors and relatives.

We have editorial boards and yes, I’ll admit it, we have liberal-leaning reporters.

We have out and proud people to demand equality.

What do we not have?

We do not have the religious institutions, their leaders and their worshippers.

Groups within the religious community and organizations such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force/ National Religious Leadership Roundtable have worked long and hard to effect change, with some success. But still, again and again and again we lose because questionable people of faith perpetuate lies and myths, finance bigoted campaigns and block reform within their institutions and by our governments.

And too many in the pews believe that faith means accepting, without question, what is said from the altar or written in the church bulletin or decreed from Salt Lake City or Rome.

I’m reminded of a passage in the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament. Jesus was in a temple when he turned to his disciples and said, “Beware of these teachers of religious law for they love to parade in flowing robes and to have everyone bow to them as they walk in the marketplaces. And how they love the seats of honor in the synagogues and at banquets. But they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property, and then, to cover up the kind of people they really are, they make long prayers in public. Because of this, their punishment will be the greater.”

I’m reminded too of an old nursery rhyme that goes, “Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple, open the door and see all the people.” In too many houses of worship across the country, when we open the doors, we see the people getting indoctrinated against justice and personal liberty. Give me that old-time religion, for GLBTs, can mean long-held prejudice and all the riches to keep discrimination on the law books.

And that old-time promise of separation of church and state has not diminished the influence of churches that bankroll campaigns to thwart equality and turn back our advances.

Institutions that claim to seek to protect traditional families seem committed to undermining families, demeaning love and devaluing relationships.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for one, invested heavily in the fight years ago in Hawaii to defeat marriage equality and, it should come as no surprise, the LDS church invested heavily in the push to eliminate marriage equality in California this year.

A lot of people, myself included, have quit houses of worship because of such actions. But the take it or leave it approach has left the most powerful religious institutions to the rigid, the conservative, the selfish, the hypocritical.

So how do we rise up, fight the power?

For some years now I’ve admired Soulforce for its commitment to direct action to effect direct change. Following Soulforce, we go to the church, open the door, and convince all the people.

We go to the faith-based groups and convince all the people.

We go to the faith-based schools and convince all the people.

This we do within the institutions, as worshippers, as parents and as donors. Step out from the choir and sing a battle hymn, a protest song.

This we do from outside the institutions, as demonstrators, protesters, reformers — whatever word you like for those who agitate for change.

This we do.

Rise up.

Fight the power.