The man born Moses Cannon died as a
woman named LaTeisha, “Teish” to her friends and family members, after
being shot while sitting in a parked car outside a party on Seymour
Street on Friday, Nov. 14. She was 22. Police say her killer was
angered by Cannon's status as a transsexual.
And so Syracuse mirrors in painful
fashion the national schizophrenia of a people determined to push the
boundaries of possibilities while insisting on denying others the
freedom to be who they are. On the night that America celebrated the
election of Barack Obama, millions watched in disbelief as the people
of California voted to ban gay Americans from enjoying the delights and
anguish associated with the institution of marriage.
This is the great contradiction that
presents itself in the current chapter of American history. What is it
about this country, and about our community, that still causes some to
cling to the idea that we can decide for other people how to live out
their sexual lives? What is it about the idea of someone loving someone
of the same sex, or realizing that their mind and their body are at
odds on the question of gender, that some in this freedom-loving
country find so offensive?
Many will say this is just a problem of
the individual who pulled the trigger. You can think that if you choose
to, but it only makes the problem persist, and makes you part of it.
That man pulling the trigger learned somewhere along the line that
there is a right way and a wrong way to love somebody, and that his
anger against those who are different is somehow justified. He learned
that people like him get to decide the fate of another person. He
learned that those people should learn to be like him. A gun, a few
drinks, a dare later, and Teish Cannon lay bleeding in her brother's
arms.
For too many of us, that notion of
entitlement came from a church. Sad to say that many of the churches
that have contributed so many foot soldiers to this nation's struggles
against slavery, discrimination and disenfranchisement have also
contributed legions of bigots to the battle to deny gay and
transgendered folks the right to be who they are.
Christian leaders who tell their
congregations that on one hand they must love all people, but on the
other hand label homosexual acts as "abominations," are missing the
point. Unwittingly or not, they are contributing to the violence. In
such houses of worship, we frequently hear pastors disguise their
homophobia by protesting how much they love their gay brothers and
sisters.
In fact, say my friends who take this
position, we love them so much that we pray for them to change their
ways in order that they might be saved from eternal damnation. We know
better than they do, say the preachers, what course their lives should
take.
Leaders who take this position are
descended from a long line of prophets who "knew" that the native
people encountered by the Spaniards when they conquered this hemisphere
had no souls. They are heirs to those prelates who "knew" that inferior
African people were intended by God to be enslaved, and preachers who
know and teach that fathers are uniquely qualified to serve as the
undisputed heads of their households. And like the Mormon leaders who
one day in the 1980s woke up and announced that God had changed his
mind and that it was OK for black men to be priests—they will someday
see the light. But we can't wait for them to wake up: We have to sound
the alarm. We must interrupt the preaching of intolerance. Lives are at
stake.
Christians are not alone in this
insanity. Gay Muslims dare not be who they are in Iran, in Afghanistan
and in much of the Muslim world. The death penalty for homosexuality
still exists in Iran, where a foolish President Ahmadinejad insists
there are no gays (apparently most of them have fled to New York). In
Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, whose favor we court, issued a fatwa in
2006 calling for the execution of gays, sparking a spate of such
killings by Iraqi security forces. We think of such people as madmen,
but the death penalty administered to Teish Cannon and Matt Shepherd
and hundreds in this country grew out of similar religious-based
homophobia.
We must face what our religious
institutions have bred right here at home. Not long ago a Catholic aid
organization prohibited one of its finest servants, the Rev. Fred Daly
of Syracuse, from serving people with AIDS in Africa because he had the
courage to do what few gay priests will do: He let his congregation
know that he is gay. (To their credit, our local bishops stood up for
Daly.)
We have a shrinking Episcopal Church
flirting with bankruptcy and teetering on the edge of civil war while
congregations and bishops argue not about their founding carpenter but
about a New Hampshire bishop who lives in intimate and monogamous
communion with another man. A band of self-identified Christians turns
out each year to harass the Gay Pride parade using the vilest epithets
imaginable. A number of African-American congregations, both locally
and nationally, cling to the outdated and very lethal notion that gay
and transgendered people, people like Teish Cannon, are embracing a
lifestyle rather than living out the life that God (or natural
selection, take your pick) intended for them.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness were the cornerstones of our Declaration of Independence.
When we deny freedom to the man or woman who is seeking a mate or a
companion, we deny them liberty and happiness. Some would even deny
them life.
Why is it that some people and some
religions obsess so energetically over how others choose to love?
Doesn’t it make greater sense to obsess with equal intensity on those
who choose to hate?
Watching the Obama victory gave hope to
many of us that the march of freedom will not be detained. It gave
greater hope that the rights of people to love whom they wish in the
manner they wish will one day be recognized. Sadly, Teish Cannon will
not be here to enjoy that day.
