REFLECTION
ON CHANGES IN ME
Rev.
Kit Ketcham
PUUF,
June 11, 2017
Pride
Service
Talking
about sexual orientation and gender identity was a huge NoNo when I was a
school counselor in Colorado back in the 80’s and 90’s. I was so naïve that it took a long time for
me to realize that there was something really wrong about that.
The
change in me began when my college friend Fern came out to me after her suicide
attempt. It began to grow when I
attended an in-service put on by PFLAG, an in-service designed for counselors
in our district, where I saw that the president of the local chapter was the
mother of two of my students.
It
took another leap forward when a gutsy 9th grade girl sat defiantly
in my office, perhaps thinking I was going to scold her, and said “Yes, I am a
lesbian and I’m in a relationship with another girl. So?”
Leap
after leap kept me changing my understandings and my attitudes toward a group
of people that had been unfamiliar to me, except in terms of stereotypes.
There
were Brooke and Robert and Nikki, talking about their suicide thoughts. There was Marilyn, our school psychologist,
who trusted me enough to come out to me, at a time when she could be fired for
being Out. There was Harold who became Carol
and who asked female friends to help her become more feminine. There was 9th grader Don, whose
birth name was Donna, and who kept his birth gender a secret from his
girlfriend.
In
seminary, there were numerous fellow divinity students who were gay or lesbian
or trans and had to stay in the closet
because of church laws which forbade their ordination or even membership in the
church body.
Luckily,
my own church, my denomination, Unitarian Universalism, has been open to
so-called “sexual minorities” for several decades, and I found I had strong
church support when I voiced my concerns about gays, lesbians, and trans folk
who were being rejected by their own religious
traditions.
So I collaborated with my minister at
that time, the Rev. Robert Latham, to bring a group of singers from the Denver mixed
chorus “Harmony” to present songs from David Maddox’s “Boys and Girls With
Stories”.
This was the
summer of 1994, when HIV/AIDS was decimating men in the gay community and fear
and sorrow ran rampant in both gays and straights.
We put the word out in the local
newspaper and when I looked out at the congregation the morning of the service
with Harmony, I realized that my life had truly changed dramatically.
“Gayness” was no
longer an abstract concept. In the
congregation that morning were friends
who had dared to attend, despite the danger of outing themselves
publicly by doing so, friends I had not known were gay. I realized I could not ever ignore that pain
again.
Initially,
it was students who needed to talk, colleagues who needed me to keep
confidentiality, and then, when I thought hard about the fact that my dear
friends Jan and Chris, who had been together for over 40 years did not have the
human right to be married, another
change began to burn in my heart.
I
am thrilled to have been part of the sea change that occurred in June of
2015---two years ago---when the Supreme Court ruled that the marriages of
same-sex couples must be recognized by the state.
And I choked up when
I heard the pastor of their Lutheran church utter these words to my friends
Dave and Ervin: “And now by the power
invested in me by the State, I pronounce you husband and husband, partners for
life”.
Now, when I marry
two women or two men, I also say those thrilling words: “and now by the power invested in me by the
state of Oregon….” What a long time it has been, in coming.
My life has been
changed radically by my growing understanding of the challenges of being gay or
bi or trans or lesbian or questioning or intersex or non-binary or queer. Because I stepped into that stream of
awareness---awareness of the pain and the joy and the need for justice---my
life has been transformed and I am happier and ever more grateful for those
experiences.
HYMN #1053 “How Could Anyone Ever Tell You”
BENEDICTION:
Our
worship service, our time of shaping worth together, is ended, but our service
to the world begins again as we leave this place. Let us go in peace, remembering that the
changes that give us the freedom to be our most authentic selves are good
changes. May we embrace those changes as
welcome, allowing ourselves to grow, being gentle with those who do not yet
understand, and helping those who are struggling to be free. Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.
