Apostle: Advocating The Golden Rule. Not The Silver Rule. Nor The Brass Rule. Nor any other similar Rule that's not quite as golden as The Golden Rule.

LOVE WINS in New York!

What a contrast to be both jumping up and down and applauding, and simultaneously wiping away tears (of joy) as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the New York Marriage Equality Act into law at 11:55pm on June 24, 2011.  In 2008, I waited up all night after it was announced that Obama had won the presidency to see if Prop 8 would be passed in California ending the rights of gay and lesbians to marry. After that decision, I cried in sorrow for two weeks. Then I decided I had to stop crying and do something. This was the impetus for creating We Vow, a Victorian photographic story that tells the story of an interrupted secret wedding in the woods.

Ara Lucia photo by Michael Ashburne

To celebrate the decision in New York, at this pivotal moment, I am presenting a Limited Special Edition Love Wins! This two-print series features two images, "The Kiss" from We Vow (2009) and "We Meet Again" from Tala & Louison: The Woods Opened and Through (Little Red Riding Hood Redux) (2008). These limited edition prints give an exuberant shout-out to the excitement and momentum that New York’s recent step forward has created.

This is such an exciting moment, and it is being thought of as an opportunity to use the New York momentum to gain marriage equality in additional states.  According to Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times, “After a string of defeats in recent years from California to Maine, the movement to legalize same-sex marriage is hoping its unexpected victory in New York will revive efforts to legalize gay weddings around the nation.”

To paraphrase the rallying cry: "If you can do it there, we can do it anywhere!"

New York is expecting to see a rush of marriages.  New York state is the 6th jurisdiction in the United States to have same-sex marriage following Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Iowa, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.  Moments after the vote, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC
explained that with New York being the third-largest state in the Union, the passing of the law there will effectively double the number of people for whom same-sex marriage is available to in this country. Additionally, she clarified that although New York was a state that already acknowledged
same-sex couples from other states, the New York bill has no residency requirement, so same-sex couples from anywhere in the country can come to New York to be married.

With my LOVE WINS! Special Limited Edition series you can join in the celebration or share the joy with your favorite couple. Each of the Limited Edition prints are being offered at dramatically reduced prices starting at $45 for the Open Edition and Limited Edition prints priced at $80 and $150 with FREE SHIPPING from FedEx. However, note that this is a Limited Edition, so you need to act quickly.

Check out the images and find out more about my work at aralucia.org and follow me on Twitter at @ara_lucia.

Compassion: The Commitment

How can I advocate for a position and still maintain compassion?

There is a new movement afoot,inspired by the wish of well-known religion writer Karen Armstrong at the 2008 TED Conference.

Since that wish, a Charter for Compassion has been created by the TED community and the general public; the interactive website is charterforcompassion.org. Also Armstrong has written a companion book entitled The 12 Steps of Compassion, and you can buy an app for the iPhone or iPad by the same name.

Now I have to confess that I had quite a long pause before I signed the Charter. It seemed very intimidating; achieving the commitment would actually be a rather daunting endeavor. The Charter says, in part:

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. This just seemed like such a tall order. Maybe I don’t have trouble with acting violently, but to not speak violently, well how would I be able to consistently achieve that? And quite honestly, “acting violently” describes a whole range of experience. It doesn’t just mean coming to blows, but also includes making choices about how I commit my resources, so I would need to do everything I could to support companies that support their workers and the planet. It seemed overwhelming; I could spend all of my time just evaluating the choices. I know that it is impossible to evaluate and control all of our choices, so how could I do this living a normal life? I decided I would sign The Charter and take on what I could, as I could.  I anticipate plenty of challenges, especially in my advocacy work.

In 2009 I directed a year long art project, We Vow, in response and opposition to Prop 8 in California, the legislation that took away the right of gays and lesbians to marry. This last December, I made a personal commitment to LGBT advocacy in my own community -- I decided I could do more from within the progressive Christian church than through art and politics. But I needed a framework.

I could see that if I were to choose to join a particular denomination then I would not be able to speak to people in other denominations that weren’t already interested in working from an interfaith perspective. Associating myself with one would automatically align me with certain other denominations and would make me not trustworthy to others. But the principle of compassion is at the heart of all religious traditions. So the Charter for Compassion, which transcends religious difference and activates The Golden Rule, could be my frame. This is my affiliation.

The Charter says: We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. I need to be able to determine what this means for my advocacy efforts to support the LGBT community. The question will be: how can I continue to try to bring about change that supports justice for this community while still being mindful of the Golden Rule?

And how will this impact my personal life and interests if I choose to filter everything through this lens? I think about listening to my favorite comedians. I love comedians that say the things that so many of us think, but are afraid to articulate. I know, if I’m honest, that much of the comedy is hurtful. So, where will I stand with my lens of compassion? Will I still be able to listen to the same artists or not?

I’m going to let you know not just when I succeed, but also when I fail. There are many inspiring stories of compassion posted on the Charter’s website, but I am equally interested in the times that someone had the opportunity to act with compassion, but didn’t take it. Or what about the circumstance where the compassionate option wasn’t even noticed until the choice was already made? I believe I’m in a position to make and share these observations of myself as I struggle to apply the Charter to my personal and professional life.

My hope is that this will provide a learning experience for all of us. I’m not an enlightened do-gooder, I’m not educated as a theologian, I’m just a person. I have an undergraduate education and an incomplete graduate education. I’m a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a friend and advocate for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. I’m going to give this a go from right here where I am and see what happens. I will share the journey.

The complexity of my experiences and reflections will determine the venue of my sharing. I will use this blog, facebook and twitter. It is my hope that you will share your thoughts with me in all of these venues. Hopefully the dialogue can transform us all.

facebook group: Apostle: The Golden Rule

Twitter: ara_lucia

The Christian thing to do!

The concept of “gay rights as human rights” remains at the forefront of current events in many countries.  A few examples:

• a newspaper in Uganda published lists of allegedly-gay men, inciting hate crimes;

• people have been prosecuted in Senegal solely because of their sexual orientation;

• considerable attention has been given to teen suicides provoked by bullying, a particular problem in the United States;

• the recent repeal of the US military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law; and

• ongoing state-by-state battles over same-sex marriage rights.

Regardless of the technical or legal separation of church and state in this country, religion and politics have been, and will always be, inextricably linked.  We heard Biblical arguments during the civil rights movements in the 60's with respect to basic rights for African Americans and about interracial marriage.   Many arguments, now, forty years later, sound absurd.  This country was founded by the Puritans, and we still feel their influence today in moral legislation of music, video games, and television programming.  I'm not making a statement here about whether or not I support this influence, I'm just stating that it exists.  

 

There are some very vocal fundamentalists who condemn gays for their mere existence.  Yet, according to a 2010 Pew Research poll, “the shift in opinion on same-sex marriage has been broad-based, occurring across many demographic, political and religious groups.”  For the first time, “pluralities of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics now favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally.”  Opposition has also declined in recent years.  Only 39% of young adults (born after 1980) oppose gay marriage, while 53% are in favor of it.  Numbers of same-sex marriage supporters are increasing even among those aged 65 and older, with a 6% increase over a 2003 poll.  Despite the overall drop in public resistance to gay marriage, the volume of the fundamentalists’ condemnations seems far louder, and, arguably, more prevalent.  

It is my belief that one of the missing links on the issue is Christian leadership.  I believe gay rights are human rights, and human rights are a Christian cause.  Over the past few years, I have criticized progressive Christians for not taking more of a leadership role concerning gay civil rights.  Two years ago I responded to the battle against California’s Prop 8 legislation with a large-scale photographic work accompanied by a series of documentary videos (wevow.net).  I’ve signed petitions, written and called representatives and senators, and yet I am continually left with the sinking feeling that I am not doing enough.  It is my intention to explore the gap between the volume of the fundamentalists’ arguments and the majority viewpoint, in an effort to bridge it.

I grew up in an extremely conservative county in Michigan.  When I was in high school, my 1983 graduating class had 285 people.  There was a single Jewish family, a single Mexican family and a single African-American family and one Greek family.  Seriously.  There was one lesbian known to me and she was not out.  In 2008, when I returned home, I went to the football game against the rival high school and I could hardly believe the diversity in the stands which included quite a number of Indian and Hispanic kids.  It wasn't until this year the first high school in the county, the rival high school, has started a gay alliance at the high school.  This is only one of fourteen public high schools in Berrien County that have done so.

Communication challenges meet us on every level: internationally, nationally, in our communities, in our families.  I had learned from arguing with my father during my formative years that there was no hope of changing his opinion, nor he mine.  For years, I just avoided conversations with people whose opinions were drastically different from my own.  I decided it was safer to stay among friends, preaching to the choir, so to speak, and have my own beliefs reinforced and continue to validate my own experience.  But, in the end, this accomplishes little.  We become entrenched in our positions, and communicating with an opposing viewpoint often becomes combative, or at least difficult.

Recently, a friend shared with me an example of one of these difficult situations.  While waiting in line at an airport, trying to get on a flight to Boston during a snowstorm, she found herself talking with a young woman from Wyoming.  The young woman was attending community college and was considering transferring to Harvard to study marine biology.  Their conversation was interrupted by a man who said, “You better take your religion with you to Harvard."  He went on to say that the pastor of Harvard Memorial Church was gay and the assistant pastor was a lesbian.  

My friend knew that the pastor of Harvard Memorial Church was an internationally known Biblical scholar and yet she responded with all she could come up with in the moment, “I heard him speak and he seemed like a really nice man.”
The interlocutor responded,  “Yes, but,” followed with some Bible verses, and he closed with a general disparaging comment about gays.  

My friend was frozen.  She wished she had known something nonjudgmental to say, because she feared that saying nothing implied that she condoned what he said, but nothing came to mind.  He had the final word.

I wouldn’t have done any better.  These are the situations that I want to prepare myself to handle, maybe not perfectly or elegantly, but at least begin to make some attempt at moving forward.

We have a responsibility to make this world a safe place with the same rights and privileges for gay, lesbian, bi, transgender people that straight people currently have.  As Christians, we can look to the parable about the good Samaritan for guidance:  Jesus expects us to stand up for those who are beaten down or discriminated against.  In the next few weeks, I’m taking a workshop on compassionate communication facilitated by Kathleen Macferran.  She is certified by the Center for Nonviolent Communication, and the workshop is sponsored by the First Unitarian Universalist Church, Houston to help me learn how to more effectively communicate with people whose views are a fair piece from my own.  I am also attending an all-day seminar for faith-based leaders entitled “Practice Spirit, Do Justice,” a part of The National Conference of LGBT Equality called Creating Change, which is sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce.  Back home, I am beginning to meet with local policy makers and persons in various faith communities in order to build relationships and begin dialogues.  

We can no longer afford to make sweeping judgements about the other side and walk away from the table.   The consequences are too great.  I realize I have much to learn as I embark upon this evolving path to become an activist in support of gay civil rights from within the Christian church.  It is scary.  I know I'm going to make some mistakes.  But I am willing to take the risk, and I hope to take you with me.  This is the journey I will share here with you.  

We have to keep talking.  It is the Christian thing to do.