I led Chapel on October 15th. This is the second message in a 2 part series related to National Coming Out Day which was October 11th. I am fortunate to be in a place where I can claim my faith alongside of my sexuality -- a privilege that was denied to me for FAR TOO LONG. 👏👏👏 Check out what I have to say about my own coming out and the ways in which it can inform and challenge the heteronormativity of patient care.
--------
Jeanne-Hoff Goodwin ChapelUnityPoint Health - Des Moines
October 15, 2019
Before we really began today, I want to do an exercise together. Take your right hand and place it on your right hip. Drop your right hip. Take your left hand and turn it upwards so that you resemble a tea kettle, palm side up. Now turn your palm on your left hand palm side down. Hold.
The reason that I’m beginning our time together today with this body exercise is because I’m talking about queerness and queer bodies. For those representing the cisgender or heterosexual identities, there is often an disconnect between “knowing” about different identities and “feeling” the identities. Conforming your body to a given set of instructions is – difficult. One’s body is so integral to how we understand and make sense of ourselves and our world. Now, imagine if you were required to remain in the current position for the rest of the day. Or, even the rest of your life. You’d be incredibly uncomfortable. However, you know that if you break this posture, the rest of this cohort is going to shame you for not sticking it out, not what the norm expects. So, you hang on, you hang on even though your muscles burn, you feel awkward, pain forms in your back and frankly, you become obsessed with wanting to adjust your position. But, you don’t exactly know how.
Okay, you can drop your posture and take a seat.
October 11th was a milestone day for many folks within the queer community. It was National Coming Out Day – a day in which the queer community is invited to come out, celebrate, connect and live authentically. It is also a day when those of us who live closeted lives grieve, lament and guard ourselves from suspicion and persecution from those around us. National Coming Out Day is – complicated. Given our current political climate, coming out is a compromised experience. As a member of the queer community – I wanted to share with you a little bit about my coming out experience, the difficulty of being in my role as a queer person and the ways in which my experience might invite you into a different awareness for the ways in which you engage with and offer care to those within the queer community here.
My initial coming out was the least dramatic part of my journey. I was 14. I had a parent who expressed a never ending faithfulness to show up for me and love me, regardless of my orientation and identity. I was also fortunate to be the third person in my family to come out. As I navigated my teenage years into young adulthood – it wasn’t my immediate or extended family that perpetuated my closet experience – it was the Church.
Feeling called to serve; I knew that I was in a denomination that perpetuates the claim that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian Teaching”. This duality extended my closet experience for nearly 14 years. I went from being the president of my Gay Straight Alliance in high school back to being in the closet throughout college in an attempt to “Straighten Out” for the purpose of service to the church. Near the end of college, I had begun the work to accept myself as queer and believed that living a celibate life was going to be the loophole that I needed in order to maintain my integrity and church life.
And then, 2015 happened. In 2015 – I was in my very first clinical pastoral education experience. I identified myself as queer in an introduction. It was the first time that I had claimed this part of my identity outside of my personal network and in front of other faith leaders. I was terrified. And, no one batted an eye. We ended our session and moved on. This huge, momentous thing for me seemed like everyday conversation. And then two weeks later, marriage equality passed and I found myself in the same setting again – fuming. I named with my peers that I was new to claiming my identity out loud alongside of my faith and I couldn’t help but be angry at marriage equality – not because I thought it was a bad thing – but because I knew that my church would never allow me to marry. I kept thinking “Great. Now everyone can marry, except for me.” Over the next year, I grew into my identity – I named it, claimed it, and celebrated getting to know myself in this new way.
And then, 2016 happened. Over the last four years, I alongside of the queer community have watched our rights being systematically attacked and removed. We’ve witnessed the refusal to acknowledge us on the federal census, we’ve been erased from federal websites, we’ve fought for marriage licenses, cakes, and in 2019 – we’re still witnessing groups of heterosexuals make decisions about how we’re treated. As Chaplain Emily mentioned last week -- the Supreme Court entertained arguments on whether the civil rights laws barring workplace discrimination based on gender also applies to gender identity and sexual orientation. Decisions were made ABOUT US – which we’re not privy to. The issue pertains to whether Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination, also protects LGBTQ people from discrimination at work. Title VII does not explicitly mention LGBTQ people, but federal appeals courts in Chicago and New York recently ruled that gay and lesbian employees are entitled to protection from discrimination.
Members of the LGBTQ (lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, and queer or questioning) community who aren’t out of the closet in the workplace report isolation, depression, and exhaustion. 46% of LGBTQ Americans remain closeted in the workplace, according to a 2018 report by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. Workers surveyed cited variety of reasons for not coming out to colleagues: 38% said they hid their sexuality because of the possibility of being stereotyped, 36% said they didn’t want to make people feel uncomfortable, and 31% said they worried about the possibility of losing connections or relationships with co-workers.
The struggle is unique for different identities, the report noted. From my personal experience – I identify as non-binary, meaning I do not identify as a man or a woman and ask people use the pronouns they/them or she/her when addressing me. I’ve put my pronouns in my email signature as an indirect way of coming out, but very few people have respected the pronouns. Most people default to “she” because of how I appear. And while, that’s okay and I’ve given permission for people to use this particular pronoun, I can understand because of my gender presentation and name why people don’t use the entirety of my pronoun variety. And yet, even that part of my coming out has been a journey.
As a queer employee in this place – I am consistently in a battle about whether to, when to, and where I can “come out”. I recall coming to the hospital for the first time for my interview – touring the Spiritual Care spaces and hearing a now-colleague refer to the upstairs balcony office as a “Closet”. I shrugged the remark off because I wanted to be here – I wanted to work with a supervisor with a similar identity to my own – a queer – gender expansive person. I wanted to see the ways in which they understood their calling in light of their faith and glean whatever vocational confidence that I could from them. So, despite the closet remark, I accepted a residency position. After coming on, I cannot tell you how many times – even in this space – I heard jokes about being locked in the closet. The closet that I have to enter in and out of to prepare this space – that I am forced to orient towards, every time I lead chapel. When I came on as fulltime a year ago – I was assigned my primary office space – to be the upstairs closet referenced earlier. This office space was so infrequently used by me that a current student who entered the space without me literally thought that I had abandoned and forgot about the space. The closet – for me – is directly tied to shame and faith. I do not take for granted that as a queer person – I’ve made it to this platform – behind this podium – ordained and beloved. But, I still fear the closet.
So, what? What is the point of naming all of this with you – the care providers, family members, patients and loved ones? The point for me is that we all have closets that we are forced into or choose to live in. The queer identity is one of many marginalized identities that we engage and identify with - the sick, chronically ill, ethnically or racially variant, the differently abled, the female, the identities that we come to inhabit – often are not choices that we make for ourselves.
As a chaplain in this space – I do what I can to help patients and families feel comfortable in my presence. However, my title is often something that comes with a preconceived notion about what my opinions will be. I have heard time and time again people “blaming the gays for this or that”, listening intently for the spiritual needs underlying their harmful opinions or beliefs. I have heard the preconceived notions come out at the bedside of patients and families within my care – trans patients wondering if I will accept them hard stop, families whose loved ones are HIV+ wondering if I will accept them hard stop, sex workers and trafficking victims wondering if I will accept them hard stop, individuals in modern relational structures wondering if I will accept them hard stop – all because of my title of Chaplain, Reverend, Christian.
One of the ways in which I communicate my love and acceptance is by Coming Out with these families and patients – not for my own need to be seen and known – but for the ones in my care to know that they are seen and known. I wear rainbows. I hang trans visibility posters. I create spaces for patient’s to own their own identities and experiences with me. As staff in this place – I wonder how you can come out as queer, allies or, at the very least, safe and competent? As you think through your normal routines – how would you show up differently for a female patient who asks for a urinal? How would you advocate for patients that are partnered, but not married? How can you resource them to make future hospitalizations more tolerable? How do you challenge your own internal feelings about the validity of queerness and queer life? How do you queer your care, challenge it, turn it upside down?
I realize that I’ve asked you many questions in a row. Beloved, I invite you to show up with your full range of skill, heart ready to receive and eyes open difference. As we close together, I have one more expercise for us to engage in. On the count of three, I invite you to say out loud the word queer. Ready, 1.2.3. Queer. Practice using the queer vocabulary out loud. It can only benefit you and your patients.
Pastor Anitta +
