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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (April 21, 2000)
43 J U S . u l ’ aprii 21.2000 Second Annual GenderQueer: Northwest Transgender & Intersex i/ Unnatural causes Meditation on the dearth of Christlike compassion that leads Roman Catholic officials to cover up the deaths of priests with AIDS picture of a lifetime spent exploring the world ne morning several weeks ago, 1 received and all it’s joys and challenges together. two things in the mail. One was a clip I can’t help but compare this picture to the ping from The Kansas City Star, an article images in my head of priests dying, alone and about the frighteningly high death rate frightened, among strangers because their supe from AIDS among Roman Catholic priests and riors sent them away to hide their shame. I how the church leadership has for years been want to believe that someone was there to hold covering up any links between HiV infection their hands, to tell them that they were loved. and their clergy. The other was a letter from 1 want to believe they died knowing that their my friend Dr. June Steffensen Hagen. lives meant something. But I don’t think they June was one of my English professors in did. 1 think that, in the end, they were college. At a school rampant I I betrayed in the crudest way. with muddle-headed fundamen One of the things June taught me was that talist Christian teaching, she was I I God— in whatever form you embrace him— a breath of fresh air, a fiercely ______ I y . loves joy. It saddens me that the Catholic intelligent, liberal Episcopalian priests who came to worship God with joy were determined to get her students to met instead with betrayal and fear in the hour think for themselves instead of when they most needed love. I am also angered believing everything they were enough to want to comfort myself with disbe told. lief in a God who would let this happen, just as Knowing June changed my I did back in college. life. Not only did she introduce But once again June won’t let me do that. me to writers and ideas I’d never I’ve put the picture of her and Jim on the wall encountered, she was the first person to let me know that being gay is OK. She was also the first person I ever met who I think genuinely loved God. Having grown up with a lot of people who feared God, or used him as a weapon, it was some thing of a shock to BY find someone who MICHAEL thought of God as her THOMAS friend. Determined as I was because of my FORD past experiences to believe the whole God thing was a lot of nonsense, June made me rethink that position. June’s husband, Jim, is a retired Episcopal priest. Her letter is filled with news about their lives: their recent trips to Ecuador and Mexico, the literature class June is teaching, her and Jim’s involvement in the New York Choral Society, the activ ities of their two children. These are the pieces of a full and happy life. They’re the things that I think of when I think of June. And then I think of those priests dying from AIDS. According to the Star article, many of them were sent to hospices outside their parishes to die, alone and far from their friends and fami above my desk, right beside the picture of the lies so that no one would know what was stone circle and phallic rock monument my killing them. In almost all cases, the cause of Radical Faerie brother, Ron, painstakingly built death was listed as “natural causes,” and the on his Maine, sheep farm. When I look at these occupation written on the death certificate was pictures, I am reminded that even the fear of anything but priest. In the end, these servants an institution as large and imposing as the of the church were reduced to lies, their years Catholic Church is nothing compared to the of duty to God wiped out with the stroke of a power of one or two people who truly under pen to protect the image of the institution to stand what it is to live with joy and make a dif which they had devoted their lives. ference in the world. And I am reminded, too, Tucked into June’s letter is a photograph of that God comes in many forms, and that the her and Jim, taken on one of their trips. June’s God those priests were looking for really does hair is grayer and Jim’s is more absent, but the exist somewhere, waiting for them. smiles on their faces still reflect all the love I hope they’ve found him. and joy 1 remember. The most wonderful thing about it, though, is how much they look like a ■ M ichael T homas F ord is the Lambda Liter couple. Jim has his arm around June, and she’s ary Award-wmnmg author of Alec Baldwin leaning into him in a way that radiates famil Doesn’t Love Me and That’s Mr. Faggot to You. iarity and friendship. Looking at them, 1 see a He welcomes e-mail at Shopiltee@aol.com. O May 18-21,2000 The Evergreen ergreen State College Olympia, WA \ C //A . For more info: GenderQueer: NWTIFF Planning Committee d o Evergreen Queer Alliance The Evergreen State College - CAB 314 Olympia , WA 98505 Ph. (360) 866-6000 ext 6544 genderqueerfilmfest@hotmail. com http-J/EvergreenQueers.tripod.com/FilmFest2000.html Sung in English with text projected above the stage May 13 , 15, 17, 19, 20 Portland Civic Auditorium • 7:30 pm sharp! FOR TICKETS CALL (503)241-1802 or (503) 790-ARTS Tickets from $25 outlets: G.I. Joe's, Meier & Frank, Lamb’s Thriftway, PCPA, Portland Opera, and other independent locations www.ticketmaster.com/oregon • www.portlandopera.org G roups o f 10 or M ore SAVE up to 20% • Call 241-1407 US. 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