Margaret Robinson - writer. researcher. activist - Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Bisexual Women and Lesbians

What will keep us in our churches?

Robinson, Margaret. "Bisexual Women and Lesbians: What will keep us in our churches?" Making Waves: An ecumenical feminist journal vol. 3, no. 2 (Spring 2003) p. 30-32.

I am a bisexual activist whose theological work aims to create a bisexual theology. Not surprisingly, I find myself in tension with the teachings of my Roman Catholic church. I find it difficult to participate in Catholic liturgies when I feel that the Vatican's statements on same-sex relationships, women's ordination, and many other issues, are not only misguided, but are also deeply sinful. Although I have never been refused communion, I know that other queer Catholics have. The awareness is always with me that my full participation in the mass is contingent upon the good will of the priest, or upon his ignorance of my sexual orientation. Yet if I sever my connection with the church I would be refusing to witness to my beliefs-both in the value I see in many aspects of the tradition, and to the injustice I see practised at its highest levels.

One alternative I have explored is liturgies organized by and for non-heterosexual Catholics. Since these meetings cannot be held on church property, they often take place at people's homes. I remember walking along a residential street at night looking, as the email had told me, "for the house with the rainbow wind chime" to attend a Dignity liturgy. I was reminded of the early Christians attempting to meet while under Roman occupation, looking for the sign of the fish. A spiritual reflection group for Catholic lesbians I attended was organized by a nun I only ever knew on a first name basis. She risked losing the support of her religious community in order to guide lesbian women in spiritual meditation. Yet despite their best intentions, I found that the majority of Catholic gay and lesbian groups were unsure of how to support a bisexual person. I was almost always a minority of one. Where I had intended to find a group of similar Catholics, I often encountered a group who were uncomfortable with, or dismissive of my bisexuality. In addition, I felt that attending separate services didn't have the effect of witnessing to the church that attending regular services as a queer would, even if I were refused full participation.

Just as the church often has no place for supporting our sexuality, queer communities lack resources for nurturing our spirituality. Given the ongoing history of our oppression by religion, particularly by Christianity, this lack isn't surprising. Coming out and accepting our sexuality may simultaneously coincide with leaving or being expelled from the tradition in which we were raised.

Not all of those who have left their tradition of origin have rejected religion as irrelevant. Some have joined more welcoming Christian denominations, such as the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. Some have joined justice-based congregations such as Universalist Unitarian. Others have chosen to pursue spiritual paths such as Wicca. Cheryl Dobinson, a bisexual Wiccan, summarized the positive aspects of her tradition for me:
Some of the things that appeal to me are Wicca's focus on the goddess and the feminine, its queer and sex-positiveness, the lack of a hierarchy and "one-right-way" of doing things, the creative and playful aspects, respect and care for the natural world, and the kind of loving, supportive and inclusive community I've found witches to be. For me, being feminist and queer-positive were two key things that I just didn't see in other religions or spiritual paths, and also that kind of room for questioning and independent thought are important to me. I need to be a free-thinker in whatever I do!

So why are young lesbian and bisexual women not finding the spiritual and religious resources they need in their home churches? I want to suggest three elements that push them away: sexism, heterosexism and prejudice.

Sexism

Before we are even aware of our sexuality, most of us have experienced some type of discrimination based on our sex. As a young Catholic girl I learned that there is little, if any, role for us in the liturgy. Female volunteers find themselves making coffee while male volunteers make decisions. Barb, a bisexual friend from Toronto speaks to the experience of many queer women:

As a woman, I had trouble finding myself in the texts of churches that still saw god as a male figure (something I still struggle with internally as someone who was brought up in the Anglican church). I used to sit in these glorious churches and cathedrals and dream about what it would be like to have such a beautiful building dedicated to the worship of a goddess.

Opponents of feminine imagery for the divine argue that using terms such as mother, rather than father, implies a kind of cosmic birth scenario that denies transcendence. Yet it is sexist views of women as more physical, and men as more spiritual, that make images of a male role in creation seem more mentally creative and less physically reproductive.

What can churches do to reduce the experience of sexism? For some churches, this would mean a re-working of their entire hierarchy and religious tradition. For those able to take steps on a local level, making a difference in what young women see and hear is a big start.

Empower women to take visible leadership roles.
Incorporate gender neutral language. This option has the advantage of not reinforcing the idea that the divine is gendered in fact (rather than metaphorically). An alternative is to give equal representation to masculine and feminine terminology.

Heterosexism

Heteosexism is the assumption that heterosexuality is a superior way of loving, and that heterosexuals should receive special privileges, such as relationship recognition or leadership roles. Gay and lesbian people living in Canada are blessed in that the majority of their fellow Canadians support social equality. In a 1991 survey 75.6% of Canadians said that gays and lesbians should have the same rights as heterosexuals, and 65.4% supported same-sex marriage. Another study found that between 1996 and 2001 the percentage of Canadians who approve of homosexuality had doubled. Both Canadian and American research suggests that the younger generation is more accepting of gays and lesbians than their parents had been. A poll of students graduating from U.S. high schools in 2001 revealed that 85% believe that gays and lesbians should be "accepted by society." The vast majority supported gays in the military, hate crime legislation, and gay adoption. In Canadian polls 61% of people between eighteen and thirty-four favour expanding the legal definition of marriage to same-sex couples. Compare this with only 40% of people between fifty-five and sixty-four and 28% of people over sixty-five.

What do these statistics mean in terms of church heterosexism? They might seem to suggest that churches of the future will be places of equality, but this isn't necessarily so. More liberal youth tend to leave their churches. In general, the average age of parishes is rising as regular parishioners get older and youth fail to join or become secularized. Another problem is that although Canadians in general support equality for gays and lesbians (and perhaps bisexuals too), their approach is to accept us based on standards we have had no part in defining. Some churches find it easy to integrate same-sex couples into their parish if they are monogamous, gender conforming, preferably with children-in short, if they don't challenge the predetermined standards of sexuality. To be truly "inclusive" churches must be willing to include us as equal partners in reassessing sexual values. If our ability to experience love, and to recognize and value goodness when we find it were recognized, the sexual values of our churches might look very different.

So what can churches do in the short term to keep their liberal youth and reduce their heterosexism?

Include youth in decision-making processes.

Liberal youth get angry when their church communities profess one position and enact another. By involving them in the process of creating or enacting policy, youth will see that putting belief into action is not a simple process. What appears to be hypocrisy may be simply the limitations of real people, each with their own fears, problems and sins.

Provide opportunities for parishioners to study current church positions and discuss how they might change them in the future. Engage their religious imagination by focussing not on change for its own sake, nor shifting with public opinion, but on identifying their religious experience and deriving meaning from it.
Note how heterosexual standards have determined the grounds on which difference is accepted or rejected. What is the basis of your congregations unity-is it a shared belief system, a shared moral system, or a shared behaviour?

Prejudice

Prejudice (both homophobia and biphobia) is a special problem for congregations because people often ground their prejudice in religious belief. Many lesbian and bisexual women have found their tradition to be a place of both liberation and oppression. On the one hand, their religious commitment and their experience of community is empowering and liberating. On the other hand, the experience of rejection or silence, as well as bureaucracy and hypocrisy counteract the positive experience. The experience Barb describes is not unusual for bisexuals, lesbians or gays:

I met queer people who had almost killed themselves because their religion and their families had told them they were vile, disgusting human beings. I read about people who did take their lives because they couldn't live with the dissonance between their feelings and what their families and religious leaders told them.

Religiously-motivated homophobia is a constant for many of us. For those without a positive religious community, the voice of anti-gay crusaders, such as the Rev. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church (www.godhatesfags.com), represents all Christians. The churches have not been sufficiently vocal in opposing anti-gay messages, so it is not surprising that many view this silence as consent.

As a bisexual, I encounter prejudice in both straight and gay environments. In June of 2001 I went to a retreat for "Christian People of the Rainbow." It was a warm gathering of gays and lesbians. Yet as a bisexual, I was a minority. The programme was directed toward gay and lesbian experience, not toward mine. Many gays and lesbians asked me questions which revealed they didn't understand bisexuality. I felt that my acceptance was contingent upon meeting gay and lesbian standards. I found it difficult to just be myself. Gays and lesbians who argue they were "born that way" feel that bisexuality implies they could "turn straight." They may dismiss bisexuality as a type of half way position between gay and straight, attributing it to an attempt to be more acceptable to straights, or seeing it as a phase before coming out as gay or lesbian.

Straight environments are remarkably similar. For heterosexuals, bisexuality brings up all of their anxieties around being able to tell who is gay and who is straight, and may elicit fears of "turning" gay or lesbian. Churches who accept gays and lesbians may assume that bisexuals will be twice as sexual as other people, have multiple partners, or be generally promiscuous.

What can churches do to make their congregations less homophobic and less biphobic?

Don't assume that lesbians or bisexuals will be easily identifiable. Bisexuals may be in opposite-sex relationships. Lesbians and bisexuals may be single. We may have partners of other faiths or traditions who do not attend services with us. We may have children.
Do assume that your sermons, homilies, songs and prayers are heard and itnerpreted in light of our reality, which includes legal inequality, homophobic violence and religion-based persecution.
Don't be afraid to say "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual or transgendered." Don't assume that bisexuals feel included by references to "gays and lesbians" or to "homosexuality." We don't.
Don't base acceptance of same-sex attraction on its inability to change. Value people whether their sexual orientation remains constant, or changes over time.
Don't assume bisexuals are more likely to be have multiple partners than other parishioners. Multiple relationships (or polyamory) is not the same as bisexuality.
Finally, do not assume that those who have left the church have given up on their faith. Your church is not the only source of the divine.

Andrew K T Yip, of Nottingham Trent University, notes that leaving churches may be a "yes," rather than a "no" to faith:

While the majority of non-heterosexual Christians choose to remain in the church to effect changes from within, some of them leave as a result of their disappointment with the church. However, this need not be a negative experience. Some do not leave as a result of stigmatisation. They leave as a positive attempt to reject an institution that does not affirm their sexuality. Once they have left the church they explore other means to deepen their spirituality. Church leaving, ironically, could contribute to personal spiritual growth in this case.

Margaret Robinson is a bisexual activist living in Toronto. She is a doctoral student at Regis College, Toronto School of Theology.

The statistics I cite come from B.A. Robinson, "ReligiousTolerance.org: U.S. Public Opinion Polls on Homosexuality," Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (July 30, 2001). Online at http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_poll3.htm, and from Robert Fife, "Liberals Find Split on Gay Unions," National Post (July 25, 2002). Online at http://www.pollara.ca/new/LIBRARY/SURVEYS/same-sex_Marriage.htm.