Marie Dippenaar
24 October 2012
Prelude Final
Essay: Justice
“Perhaps the
sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently
fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing
wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a
formidable outcry in defense of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes
more converts than reason.”
– Thomas Paine, opening
paragraph of Common Sense, 1776
I failed to turn in this paper precisely on time because I was
watching a movie. Instinct persuades me to feel that that statement would be
better suited to Twitter, punctuated by “#collegelife” or “#irresponsible,” but
beginning to reflect as I sat down to write, I realized that the movie was coincidentally
very relevant to the topic at hand. A group of us had decided to get together to
watch the movie Milk (2008) in lieu of SAGA’s (Sexuality And Gender Awareness)
regular Wednesday night meeting, cancelled because of Advising. Besides a
clever and artistic cinematographic approach, I came away with a high view of
the movie. Because it’s about history, it does fill a certain educational role,
but it is also extremely powerful as a narrative and as a story of hope. These
things are all things that Harvey Milk himself, the first openly-gay American politician
and central subject of the movie, seems to have fought for very diligently, so
their effort sat well in the gut, so to speak.
The movie uses a scene from the time closely before Milk’s
assassination, where he’s telling his story to a tape recorder, as a narrative
framework for much of the movie. It flips back and forth between his speech and
the story, as if in deeper exploration of the things he says. In the last few
minutes of the movie, the image alternates between Milk’s recording and the
30,000-person candle-lit memorial parade mourning his death (perhaps it’d be
more appropriate to call it martyrdom). “If a
bullet should enter my brain,” he says, already
anticipating his assassination in the last weeks before his death, “let that
bullet destroy
every closet door.” As the camera
pans over an immense sea gathered not only to celebrate Harvey Milk, but also in
support of the larger gay community and movement, I break my stare to look
around me. “And that's all. I ask for the
movement to
continue. Because it's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power. It's about the ‘us's’
out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the
Asians, the
disabled, the seniors, the us's.” To my left and
my right sit a group of friends, new to me in more ways than one - a gay trans
girl, a pan trans guy, another sort-of bi person, a couple straight allies – and
I’m suddenly struck with a wave of realization that the candlelit mob has
surrounded me, as well. “Without
hope, the ‘us's’ give up. I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you... You gotta give em' hope.”
I
come from a place where, a year ago, the reception to this movie would have
been little more than insubstantial and awkward, and where my company would
have more likely been my cat than a group of peers, anyways. For more than a
year after I came out bi, I felt forced to regard myself as a pioneer: the only
person to ever be out at my little private Christian K-12 school. So I
resonated with Milk in many ways. The impact of my efforts to inspire an
interest in education and awareness seems at intervals either remarkably subtle or electrifying;
the phrase “lightning rod issue” was used to exhaustion by administration in efforts to dampen
any wildfire’s desire to spread. I remember days where I would get sick from fatigue, as my body finally decided it would rather cough and sleep than cope
properly with the stress; when I sat in my room promising myself that the It
Gets Better videos are right, and that one day, someone will agree that I’ve
been on the right side of history. I remember the first time my sometimes
audacious social honesty led someone to open up to me, and when my desire not
to come off so audacious led us to form a little group of five queer kids that
met in secret once a week. The story of Harvey Milk is more to me than just a
moving story. It speaks to me about the nature of justice, and what it means to
pursue justice for the LGBT community, even in places where the phrase “LGBT
justice” is received with oxymoronic overtones. I realize more deeply with
every day, week, and month that this story – the history and present and future
of the LGBT community – is not just my story, but one of millions and millions
of people all over the world.
I
have become very sensitive to the idea that simply labeling conservative
criticism “injustice” might be in and of itself exclusionary, because it’s a
very deep irony embedded within a Christian approach to these matters. I have a
conflicted relationship with the Church, but I will readily recognize that I
have a duty to always strive to understand and appreciate every person I feel
resentment toward, every person that I disagree with, every person that
disagrees with me. Deeply entrenched in my worldview is Jesus’ call to walk two
miles with every person that requires I walk one with them, so I try as hard as
I can to keep myself from becoming a hypocrite in the process. But I do realize
that passivity isn’t a functional response to a commitment to understanding and
compassion. I believe things strongly, and when asked, I will defend my position.
Why
is it that a disagreement about the exegesis of five or six little passages in
the Bible moves millions of Americans do deny, both socially and politically,
the rights and human dignity of millions of others? Why is it that the Church –
an organization we tend to like for its nurturing, communal, and supportive
atmosphere – is so often such a creepy and repulsive opposing force to inclusivity?
When I just pause for a moment and stop focusing on all the arguments I’ve
learned that answer these questions from perspectives contrary to my own, I
realize how nauseating the irony is. How much it reeks injustice, how almost
comically repulsive it is. I become dizzied and frantically look for some
nonmilitant way to eliminate this messed up bullshit from the Church, because
this just shouldn’t be happening.
But
at the core, this conflict – in the Church, in America, at Calvin – is too
complex for a couple band aids and Tylenol. This is the product of a gigantic clash
of worldviews. Gender and sex are things so deeply rooted in an individual’s
psyche that much more than a politician or a blogger or a social activist is
necessary for substantial change. I’ve learned very deeply that trying to
convince people that they’re wrong is not the right way to get them to fully affirm
the humanity of fellow human beings. I simultaneously recognize that doctrinal
change is very closely linked to social acceptance, that change is inevitably coming, and that “time
makes more converts than reason.” I certainly hope for a day when kids will
have access to more conversation than most do. I long for an end to secrecy,
shame, and this seemingly-infinitely resilient memetic virus we catch as LGBT Christians telling us that things we can't help but understand as fundamental parts of our beings are the product of our own willful self-corruption. That, by extension, the way we’ve been made is something less wonderful
than God’s incredible design. But I also live with the knowledge, the assumption, that in
the present day, it is inappropriate for me to expect others to share exactly
the same type of hope. The future has yet to determine how what will convert and
what will come to be regarded as antiquity.
It’s difficult
to babysit justice and respect when your mind seems to have put them at war,
but LGBT rights is hardly the only topic for which this principle applies. Even
after years of research and conversation about this topic, I am not sure what
exactly justice is, and I think the same counts for all the other issues
touching “us’s:” race, gender, politics, nationality, class, clique. In my
experience, it has had a lot to do with the birth of community and the death of
loneliness, but that’s certainly no systematic theological statement. I might
feel moved to work towards one vision of “justice” and against another, but I
firmly believe that justice is not and cannot be black and white. That
philosophy is what birthed injustice in the first place.
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