All the talk about the Supreme Court’s ruling on the baker who didn’t want to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple has got me thinking back a few decades.
About 30 years ago, at the height of the AIDS terror - that is, when everyone was truly terrified and did not understand what was going on, and an HIV diagnosis was seen as a death sentence - I was in seminary. As part of my studies, I had to do something called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) which was essentially a chaplaincy internship.
We saw all conditions of people in that gigantic hospital, but the unit that struck the most fear in the hearts of doctors, nurses, and everyone else was the AIDS unit. In those days, nobody knew how it was spread, so everyone gowned up, wore a mask, and put on gloves. The chaplains were also told to do so, which sparked long and heated discussion. One student chaplain argued that he wasn’t even sure we should visit them since they had brought their illness upon themselves with either IV drug abuse or same sex relations.
Our supervisor, an older Mennonite pastor whose name I can not recall (to my shame), leaned back in his chair with one arm dangling over the back. With a gentleness and lack of agitation I wish I could emulate, he told us that God had created a wonderful array of people around the world. Not only were there an endless variety of cultures and physical characteristics, but there was an equally endless variety of sexual identities.
He said his understanding of human sexuality was that we all exist somewhere on a giant sliding scale. At one end is super masculinity. You know, the he-man hunk who drips testosterone. On the opposite is super femininity - the girly-girliest of them all. Very few people, he said, fit in those categories. Thankfully. Most of us fit somewhere in between on the scale, each of us containing some amount of masculine and some amount of feminine. Our Mennonite supervisor told us that we might be surprised where we all fit - but that it didn’t matter because God created the scale. As long as we’re on it somewhere, we’re God’s children. And as such we are worthy - all of us - of being treated with respect and love.
What he did not tell us - though I think he would, had he known what was to come - was that the number of places on the scale would start getting names. In our seminary days, there were straights, gays and lesbians. That was pretty much it. Then bisexual identity came into the cultural conversation. Then came queer, which is a broader umbrella term for people who don’t fit the “traditional” straight role. Then there was intersex and transgender, 2 Spirit and, well, who knows what next?
Now, in the hysteria that awoke when gays and lesbians began claiming their right not to be arrested or killed for who they are, more conservative society has feared a “slippery slope.” Gay “evangelists,” they claimed, would try to turn the whole world gay. This is absurd, of course, but they use as evidence the rising numbers of people who identify as something other than straight man or straight woman (now often called “cisgender” which denote someone whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex).
But the rising number of people with different identities has a reason. As more people embrace whatever sexual identity they may have, others feel empowered to embrace their own identities. In many cases, society has been utterly unaware of that identity. That’s okay - I had never heard of 2 Spirit before, and I have no doubt there are countless other variations on the sexuality scale of my old Mennonite supervisor.
It’s okay not to know because we’re learning new things every day. But what’s not okay is to claim that because someone doesn’t fit your vision of what ought to be, they are somehow tainted or more sinful. Truth is, God created the scale, and anybody on it needs to be treated as the royalty that being the child of the King of Kings makes them.
Which brings us to the cake. Quite aside from the legal issues - which are going to get much messier in the coming months, I predict - the religious issues are simple. For Christians - since that’s what I am - we follow what Jesus says. And there’s just nothing out there that suggests Jesus ever wanted us to discriminate against someone for their sexual identity - or even for their sinfulness. When Zachius climbed a tree to see Jesus - even though he was a notorious tax collector and collaborator with the enemy - Jesus said, “I’m coming to eat with you.” Who knows, maybe they made a cake together. Never does Jesus encourage cruelty or shutting someone out because of who they are.
So from a Christian standpoint, the baker just isn’t on target. That baker is acting out of a personal conviction that gays are somehow less worthy - you could call it a hatred because they want them to be marginalized, shut out, treated like a leper. That is, at the very least, not the love of Christ. There’s a meme on Facebook that says, “All I’m Saying is that Jesus Would Bake the Damn Cake.” I believe he would bake the cake and dance at the wedding and maybe make some wine, too.
About 30 years ago, at the height of the AIDS terror - that is, when everyone was truly terrified and did not understand what was going on, and an HIV diagnosis was seen as a death sentence - I was in seminary. As part of my studies, I had to do something called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) which was essentially a chaplaincy internship.
We saw all conditions of people in that gigantic hospital, but the unit that struck the most fear in the hearts of doctors, nurses, and everyone else was the AIDS unit. In those days, nobody knew how it was spread, so everyone gowned up, wore a mask, and put on gloves. The chaplains were also told to do so, which sparked long and heated discussion. One student chaplain argued that he wasn’t even sure we should visit them since they had brought their illness upon themselves with either IV drug abuse or same sex relations.
Our supervisor, an older Mennonite pastor whose name I can not recall (to my shame), leaned back in his chair with one arm dangling over the back. With a gentleness and lack of agitation I wish I could emulate, he told us that God had created a wonderful array of people around the world. Not only were there an endless variety of cultures and physical characteristics, but there was an equally endless variety of sexual identities.
He said his understanding of human sexuality was that we all exist somewhere on a giant sliding scale. At one end is super masculinity. You know, the he-man hunk who drips testosterone. On the opposite is super femininity - the girly-girliest of them all. Very few people, he said, fit in those categories. Thankfully. Most of us fit somewhere in between on the scale, each of us containing some amount of masculine and some amount of feminine. Our Mennonite supervisor told us that we might be surprised where we all fit - but that it didn’t matter because God created the scale. As long as we’re on it somewhere, we’re God’s children. And as such we are worthy - all of us - of being treated with respect and love.
What he did not tell us - though I think he would, had he known what was to come - was that the number of places on the scale would start getting names. In our seminary days, there were straights, gays and lesbians. That was pretty much it. Then bisexual identity came into the cultural conversation. Then came queer, which is a broader umbrella term for people who don’t fit the “traditional” straight role. Then there was intersex and transgender, 2 Spirit and, well, who knows what next?
Now, in the hysteria that awoke when gays and lesbians began claiming their right not to be arrested or killed for who they are, more conservative society has feared a “slippery slope.” Gay “evangelists,” they claimed, would try to turn the whole world gay. This is absurd, of course, but they use as evidence the rising numbers of people who identify as something other than straight man or straight woman (now often called “cisgender” which denote someone whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex).
But the rising number of people with different identities has a reason. As more people embrace whatever sexual identity they may have, others feel empowered to embrace their own identities. In many cases, society has been utterly unaware of that identity. That’s okay - I had never heard of 2 Spirit before, and I have no doubt there are countless other variations on the sexuality scale of my old Mennonite supervisor.
It’s okay not to know because we’re learning new things every day. But what’s not okay is to claim that because someone doesn’t fit your vision of what ought to be, they are somehow tainted or more sinful. Truth is, God created the scale, and anybody on it needs to be treated as the royalty that being the child of the King of Kings makes them.
Which brings us to the cake. Quite aside from the legal issues - which are going to get much messier in the coming months, I predict - the religious issues are simple. For Christians - since that’s what I am - we follow what Jesus says. And there’s just nothing out there that suggests Jesus ever wanted us to discriminate against someone for their sexual identity - or even for their sinfulness. When Zachius climbed a tree to see Jesus - even though he was a notorious tax collector and collaborator with the enemy - Jesus said, “I’m coming to eat with you.” Who knows, maybe they made a cake together. Never does Jesus encourage cruelty or shutting someone out because of who they are.
So from a Christian standpoint, the baker just isn’t on target. That baker is acting out of a personal conviction that gays are somehow less worthy - you could call it a hatred because they want them to be marginalized, shut out, treated like a leper. That is, at the very least, not the love of Christ. There’s a meme on Facebook that says, “All I’m Saying is that Jesus Would Bake the Damn Cake.” I believe he would bake the cake and dance at the wedding and maybe make some wine, too.
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