In the public sphere, it’s never been just about equal rights for my GLBT friends: same sex marriage benefits guaranteed in the law, elected gay officials, domestic partner medical coverage, etc. In the ecclesiological sphere, it’s never just been about the full inclusion and incorporation of gays into the Church: gay clergy, same-sex marriage, recognition that one’s sexual orientation is not a sin, etc. Rather my interests are much broader. I’m interested in how the world might be a better place because of the GLBT community, not just better for gays but better for all people. How might the gay experience transform our politics, our neighborhoods, our use of public spaces? With respect to the Church, how might GLBT people, both Christian and non-Christian, reform the modern church which has become impotent and unable to impregnate even a fertile Myrtle? A people who have been ridiculed, bullied, demonized, and killed surely have much to tell the church about what it should be doing. But more than telling us things which are imperative for us to do, such a people can teach others about how to do ministry on the margins, ministry to those who are hesitant to enter church doors. I know gay people are tired. Some just want to be treated equally and left alone. But the finish line is not gay equality.
In her book Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism From a Feminist Perspective Judith Plaskow encourages feminists to think broader and bigger.
For me, then, feminism is not about attaining equal rights for women in religious or social structures that remain unchanged, but about the thoroughgoing transformation of religion and society. Feminism is a process of coming to affirm ourselves as somen/persons – and see that affirmation mirrored in religious and social institutions . . .We begin-or should begin- to make connections between our oppression as women and other forms of oppression from which women and men suffer. Feminish, I believe, aims at the liberation of all women and all pepe, ais thius not a movement for individual equality, but for the creation of a society that no longer construes difference in terms of superiority and subordination. (Judith Plaskow, Standing Again At Sinai: Judaism From A Feminist Perspective, p. xvii.)
The world is never going to be the same, and not just for gays.
