Saved by Love (Excerpt)
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The first time I attended a Unitarian Universalist church for worship, I was greeted by an incredible sight: 75 percent of the people in the congregation were wearing pink triangles on their name tags. I didn’t know what to make of it. I thought I’d died and gone to some sort of queer heaven.
I vividly remember looking around me and seeing all of the triangles: I wouldn’t have guessed he was “family,” I thought to myself, or her. That man and woman sitting together holding hands—I guess they could be bisexual. And that older couple with the same last name—maybe they came out to each other later in life and stayed married for reasons beyond sexual attraction. Good for them. Good for all of them.
I didn’t want to assume that people were straight. After all, they had their pink triangle on, proudly proclaiming their queer identity. And who was I to argue with people’s self-identification? So I made myself right at home amidst the pink triangle-bedecked crowd.
I sat there in wonder through the service as the female minister—also wearing a pink triangle—preached about the feminine face of the Divine. I was a third-generation lapsed Catholic who had long ago given up the notion that there would ever be a religious community that accepted my distinctly unorthodox theology, much less my sexuality.
During coffee hour, someone finally explained to me that in a worship service several months before, the congregation had been challenged to wear a pink triangle whatever their sexual orientation. They were informed about the origin of the pink triangle to mark gay men in Nazi Germany, and told the story of the King of Denmark, who, in that era, wore a yellow Star of David even though he wasn’t Jewish.
At first I was disappointed. After all, I’d thought I had landed in a queer parallel universe. But the more I thought about it, the more I was amazed by the group of people who were willing to be perceived as gay, lesbian or bisexual to send a welcoming message to those of us who actually were queer. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had experienced radical hospitality at its finest, and that was something even more awesome than a church full of queer folks.
As I sat in the sanctuary at the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in early 1994, Unitarian Universalism saved me. There, amidst all of the pink triangles, I realized that the possibilities for my life included being a religious person. Since my childhood, I had had room for spirituality in my life, but I had long since given up hope that my spirituality could be expressed in religious community. Being invited to a Unitarian Universalist congregation changed that. Finding one in which the members went out of their way to make sure I knew I was welcome was the first step.
This faith made it possible for me to be whole, love myself, and be loved. In the call to help create communities of radical hospitality, inclusion, wholeness and healing, I heard my call to ministry. In following that call, I pledged to work for the salvation of our world, a salvation that is possible only when all of us know the depth and breadth of love that is available to us without condition.
Excerpted from “Saved by Love,” in Coming Out in Faith: LGBTQ Voices in Unitarian Universalism by Michael Tino, edited by Keith Kron and Susan Gore, published by Skinner House Books, 2011
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