Dr. Jennifer Stone
[7-29-03]

During the 215^th General Assembly, the "Three Sisters" - More Light Presbyterians, That All May Freely Serve and the Shower of Stoles Project - sponsored an "educational" luncheon as that did in 2002. This year the focus was on the topic "Gay to Straight: Bad Theology, Bad Medicine."

One of the panelists was Dr. Jennifer Stone, who holds an M.Div. Degree and a Ph.D., and is currently serving as a counselor in Memphis, Tennessee. She is also an new at-large member of the Witherspoon Society Executive Committee.

Her presentation focused on "the perceptual processes by which groups marginalized often get increasingly marginalized, even demonized, by dominant cultures." She believes her views are relevant not just to issues of "gay to straight" change 'ministries," but to marginalized groups in general.

Here are a few excerpts from her talk.

...

First, let me acknowledge that for many people, when they talk about gay people, unfortunately they believe they are already talking about sex. Thus, for you who are gay if you express the pain you feel from mistreatment, or attempt to be in a "genuine" community for people to "know you," this is experienced by many as "inflicting your 'sexuality' on them." You may have noticed how it feels to be considered a walking "sex object," by which your sole presence is viewed an infringement of good "living room" manners, let alone "church manners." No wonder so many gay people accept this message and try to disappear - into a closet, into another "orientation," or into death. How many times have we heard even well meaning people at this assembly refer to the committees dealing with the ordination of gay persons as the "sex" committees?

As a gay person at times you are given the message that your presence itself is inappropriate and "out of place," furthermore that for many your very presence is a sleazy, polluting, contagious impurity. So understandably many gay people take the next step to believe they are "bad" or at least that their wish for relational closeness is bad. Gay people are told in all levels of messages they are persons from whom children, churches, holy places, and certainly the pulpits should be protected.

For the fact of course is, that when we talk about gay people we are no more talking about sex than when we talk about straight people. So how could it have possibly come about that gay people are seen so differently? I suspect it has to do with the habit of dominant viewpoints. For me, logs and specks come to mind. But so also does Jung's idea of the "shadow." Various psychological ideas suggest that what dominant groups often see is not just a speck in the eye of another, but the "projection" of the log in one's own eye … into the eye of another. Beauty is not the only thing in the eye of the beholder! Projection is a disowning of unacknowledged aspects of oneself; in a sense it is the opposite of confession: putting one's confession on the other and then attacking it. I suspect you have noticed lot of "straight" people, a lot of people, have issues about sex. And those disowned concerns about sexuality are easy ones to "project."

So when we find our culture starting with the question regarding gay people "well, can you change?" or "why aren't you 'straight'"? - we have probably already gone about five turns too many without examining our assumptions. The questions of "why are people gay?" or "can't you change?" are not appropriate starting places! Since we are specifically discussing gay people's sexuality today, then let's acknowledge some of the steps of consideration we have skipped. If we haven't noticed already the previous assumptions through which we have arrived at this question, then let's commit at some point to notice and examine the turns we, or at least some, have already made to get to this question.

...

First, some major points:

1) In the view of many, our having to deal with today's concerns at all is viewed as the fault of gay people, for "bringing these concerns up."

2) It is not hard to get someone who is actually a bisexual person to be a bisexual person. (More on that in a minute.)

3) Regarding their sexual attraction, humans come in more than two categories.

4) If you tell people that they are bad or sleazy often enough, unfortunately, most people will tend to believe it.

5) Practitioners and ministers should be clear to themselves and clear with the persons with whom they are coming into contact as to whether they understand themselves to be doing "psychotherapy or "faith healing." In either case their practice should conform to any relevant professional and ethical standards.

6) The first professional guideline for all health professions is to first "do no harm."

7) Regarding today's topics, most gay people in many regards are already "experts."

They/you/I have been "treasuring these questions up in their hearts" for a long time. It is not a new idea for most gay people to consider what behavior God wants from them regarding their relationships. Or how they fit into the spectrum of relationships regarding gender. If is often newer for straight people to consider deeply over the decades of their lives, all aspects of their own sexuality, let alone their attitudes toward gay people. When negative stereotypes are sent toward a person, it is adaptive for that person to do a great deal of psychic and spiritual "work" in dealing with those stereotypes in order to, in a healthy way, survive. If you don't believe this just ask African-Americans, Latinas and Latinos, the poor, those wheelchair bound, and the list could go on and on…… to include so many minority and frequently marginalized people

Now to further elaborate my points:

I would suggest to you that not only are some of these dynamics of attitudes we see toward gay people based in society's fear of reflecting on its own sexuality, but that at the core these "value" issues reflect concerns of gender and power. That is, if we have attached our sense of identity or sense of security to power and gender assumptions about the world then any alternate maps will feel threatening to our personal sense of power and our sense of security. And if our "image" of God is intertwined with our power and gender maps, then it will feel to us as if God also has been assaulted. I use the word "image" here very intentionally. I am not referring to the flowing energy of God, impossible to pin down; I am referring to the possibly limited graven mental images of God that humans tend to make and then may worship instead of God. This process in defense of our concretized "images" may explain not only much of the emotional heat many people feel in their first year of seminary, but also may explain some of the reactions you will see at this assembly, either overt or covert.

...

Things aren't as simple as a person being either gay or straight. All the major research studies say that sexual attraction is on a continuum. Human research indicates that some people are attracted to men or women period, but most people have some attraction to both genders, most more attraction to one gender than another. This self-report is not typically shouted from rooftops, but under confidential conditions has been reported consistently.

Thus, it is not hard to have a "bisexual" person appear "changed" to a straight person. The word to note here is "appear." Since Grecian times we have tended to think in dichotomies and this worldview tends to seemingly "clarify" and yet also oversimplifies, even distorts, our perceptions of the world. This "twosome" thinking as well often leads us to think in terms of "gay" or "straight" and to forget that "bisexuals" exist. So, when a bisexual is mislabeled as "gay" - it may appear that that person's attraction was changed - when the range of people to whom he or she is attracted changed not at all. ... Neither are there only three categories of persons, or orientations or only a one-dimensional line of realities regarding sexual attraction, let alone sexual identity. There exist, including in this room, some who are transgender persons. ... But it is important to acknowledge these persons, for all persons have lives, spirits, and need to be "seen" for who they are, rather than seen as marginal because they are "too different to count." This suggests the pain that can be caused when we look for people to fit our pre-existing "images," and then "fix" people, rather than discern each person's distinct, God-given, reality. Each different human perspective has something special to offer us if we really aspire to appreciate God's "gifts differing." … And if we have the patience and the faith to "see."

...

Perhaps the false images placed onto gay people are, in this case, a "demon" with which we have to wrestle before we get our blessing. You will hear many straight people too, who feel they obtained a blessing from wrestling along with us against these "demons" of false, hurtful, labeling. May ours be a blessing that we can share more widely, and be shared even among privileged straight people who now don't want to know about us, and who still want to "change" us. May they too learn to treasure us, and may we all learn to treasure each other.