Tag: PFLAG

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How Being Gay Has Directed My Spiritual Journey, by Carol White

For me, being gay has had everything to do with my spiritual journey. As you already know from prior stories, I was born a Methodist Christian and I was also born gay, and 27 years later those two things would come into great conflict with each other.

Growing up in the church I truly believed in Christianity, mainly because of the music associated with it. I sang in all the church choirs and felt as though I actually experienced the presence of God through the music. The last verse to one of the hymns we sang expresses the extent of my commitment:

“Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were an offering far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my life, my soul, my all.”

So it was off to SMU to major in sacred music and become a minister of music in 1963 at a large Methodist church in Houston. Since SMU and Perkins School of Theology was a liberal college, I became a liberal Christian.

However, in my second year of graduate school I had come out to myself and had my first sexual experience with another woman. I had been in love with a couple of other girls in junior high and high school, but had not acted on it in any way, even though I wanted to more than anything in the world. Still, I waited ten years after my first crush to actually kiss another woman, and all of the fireworks went off. It was finally everything I had imagined and hoped for. I knew that I was a homosexual and I did not want to be one, because it was not accepted at the time and it seemed to be anathema to my chosen profession.

Simultaneously with starting to work at the church, I also started psychotherapy to try to be “cured” of my homosexuality, but the therapist that I had was very informed and instead helped me to accept myself as I am.

The fourth year of my job at Chapelwood in Houston was an extremely chaotic one emotionally. One of the women in my choir who was also single and who was my same age, 27, approached me and we began to have a very brief affair. As it turned out, she was the preacher’s mistress, and she told him about me and me about him. One of us had to go, and of course, it was me, since I was the woman and I was the gay one, and he was the man and straight, even though he was married and having an affair with a woman in his church which had been going on for years.

Leaving that church was the most difficult time of my life, since I was out on the street with two worthless masters degrees, no job, no profession, no friends, no money, and nowhere to turn. Spiritually speaking, I knew that I was okay with God, but I was not okay with the church.

I went to a gay bar, met another woman that I stayed with for eleven years, spent five years trying to settle in another profession, and had thirteen years of no spirituality at all.

In 1980 I became involved with PFLAG Denver, where I met Bishop Wheatley and his wife. Mel Wheatley said, “PFLAG is what church ought to be.” I will never forget that. It was a place where we observed and practiced unconditional love.

About that same time I started going to Mile Hi Church of Religious Science, where I learned the difference between spirituality and religion. They seemed to accept gay people as we were, and I felt once again that I had a community to belong to where I learned meditation and positive thinking and felt that I had re-established a relationship with God.

After about ten years of that, I realized that Science of Mind was just not true for me anymore, and stopped going to that church.

I had read a lot of spiritual books, but then I began reading Ken Wilber, a brilliant philosopher who lived in Denver, and I was truly struck by his philosophy, particularly Spiral Dynamics, and the spirituality that they talked about and espoused, Integral Spirituality, which was more similar to Buddhism but incorporated things from all the religions with meditation and mysticism. Being gay was not an issue at all.

I attended an Integral workshop and joined a Ken Wilber meetup group, where I found a spiritual home for about five years.

Since then, I have drifted away from that group and now — well, now I have no spiritual life or meditation practice or community. Now I am just going along with life and trying to be open to whatever might come next.

We shall see what happens.

© 2015

About the Author

I was born in Louisiana in 1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963, with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay in 1967. After five years of searching, I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter. From 1980 forward I have been involved with PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses: the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and Harmony. I am enjoying my 11-year retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.

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Moving, by Carol White

While thinking about the word “Moving” I find myself drawn to
emotionally moving experiences more than physically moving from city to
city.  One of the most moving experiences
of my life came about in 1986.  Here are
some of the events leading up to it:
In 1980 I was living in Denver, Colorado.  February of that year was the initial meeting
of PFLAG Denver that I attended and the first meeting of several parents who
were soon thereafter to become dear friends. 
I have already written a story for this group about the beginnings of
PFLAG and the events in 1984 that led to the formation of the 140-voice PFLAG
Festival Chorus that sang for the national convention in Denver, which was the
first time that I had conducted in 16 years since being fired from the church.
Today’s story is about the women singing in that chorus who
wanted to continue to sing together, and became the Denver Women’s Chorus.  Immediately following the PFLAG Festival
Chorus, the 70 women decided to continue rehearsing at St. Paul’s UMC in
Capitol Hill.  Naturally, the very first
performance of this new DWC was at a PFLAG meeting in December with Christmas
songs.
Then came the big night — our very first concert as a women’s
chorus, which we held at North High School auditorium.  This was exciting stuff!
We got Jane Vennard to be our MC.  Jane is the sister of Dottie Lamm, who was
married to the Governor of Colorado, Dick Lamm. 
Jane had been married to a gay man at one time, so she was a member of
PFLAG, and we had an “in” at the governor’s mansion, which was very neat.
Leading up to this concert, one of the things that we talked
about in rehearsals was that when you sing, you are not to pronounce the letter
“R” in a song.  For instance, the word
“mother” would be “mothuh” and “father” would be “fathuh”, etc, etc.
Well, Judith and I went to Laguna Beach, California, to visit
Bishop Mel Wheatley and his wife Lucile for a few days.  We stayed at a hotel right on the ocean and
watched the seagulls flying by.  When we
got back to rehearsal, I told the chorus that one of the seagulls flying by was
singing, “I enjoy being a gull.”  Would
you believe that we actually sang that song at that North High concert, and one
of the chorus members dressed up all frilly and danced while we were singing
it.  It was actually tongue in cheek.

Anyway, after the concert we were so high and so excited that
we had a big cast party over at the home of one of the singers whose name was
Susan.  Jane Vennard was dancing on the
piano bench.  We were all dancing so much
that the old North Denver house was actually shaking, and I remember forming a
long line and dancing out into the yard singing “I Heard It Through the
Grapevine.”
Later came the Paramount Theater concert with Barbra Higbie
as the special guest.  One of Judith’s
friends brought a straight male friend with him, and of course, this was the
first gay concert he had ever been to, and he asked John, “Why do they sing?”
We tried to answer that question first by saying that it’s
the title of a Holly Near song, “We are singing for our lives.”  Then Judith reminded me of this saying:  “A bird does not sing because it has an
answer.  It sings because it has a
song.”  And I said that gay and lesbian
people have always had a song, but the tragedy of it is we have never been able
to sing it before, and the beauty of it is that now we can!
At the end of that Paramount concert Judith and I got to ride
to the cast party at the Hilton Hotel downtown in one of those horse-drawn
carriages with Barbara Higbie and her partner. 
That was a blast.
Then came our first GALA Choruses Festival in
Minneapolis!  The Gay and Lesbian
Association of Choruses had formed a few years earlier from its beginnings in
San Francisco to several gay men’s choruses around the country, and they had
had their first choral festival in New York City.  This was their second time to get together to
sing.  We were the only women’s chorus
there, along with 16 gay men’s choruses. 
We boarded the plane in Denver, and as we attained cruising
altitude at about 30,000 feet, Judith and I went up and down the aisle passing
out a quote for each member to keep.  It
read like this:  “Years from now, when
you are old and grey, you will be able to look back and say that ONCE in your
life you gave EVERYTHING you had for justice.”
Soon we were on the stage at Orchestra Hall in downtown
Minneapolis performing to a sold-out crowd, when Suzanne Pierson was singing a
solo on a song that she had written, “No Child of Mine,” and she forgot the
words.  The chorus came in with her and
saved her.  So while our performance as a
chorus may not have been perfect, still, afterwards when we walked into a
restaurant on the downtown mall in Minneapolis, we would get a standing ovation
from the men singers who were sitting at tables in that restaurant, and they
would say, “Oh, the Brahms, Oh, the Brahms.” 
They evidently loved the Brahms numbers that we sang.  And they really appreciated our being there.
But the final night in Minneapolis was the piece de
resistance.  We were on stage with all of
the men’s choruses, about 1,000 singers as I remember, and there was an
orchestra on the floor in front of the stage and they had hired Philip Brunelle
to conduct and we were singing a commissioned work by John David Earnest called
“Jubilation.”  Woah!  Unbelievable highlight!
After the concert, some of the members were so excited that
they actually JUMPED off the risers rather than stepping down.  And then we ALL went out into the plaza
outside the hall and, as one member later said, we “sang to the heavens what
the hall would not contain.”  Close to
1,000 of us standing there singing and singing and singing, every song we could
think of. 
That was moving!  That was the highlight
of my life to that time.  And most of us
returned to work in Denver and could not even tell people where we had been
because we were still not out, for fear of losing our jobs and the support of
our families and friends. 
Times have changed in the last 30 years.  Judith and I are retired and out to everyone
now.  The Denver Women’s Chorus is still
singing.  The Gay and Lesbian Association
of Choruses has produced a Festival every three or four years since then, from
Seattle to Denver to Tampa to San Jose to Montreal and others, and finally back
to Denver in 2012.  In fact, they were so
impressed with the facilities here at the DCPA 
that they are coming back in 2016 so that they can use Boetcher, Temple
Buell, and Ellie Caulkins Opera House all at the same time for simultaneous concerts
all day and all evening for four days in a row over the July 4 holiday in our
great city. 
The number of choruses participating actually doubled at each
festival from 16 to 32 to 67 to 120, and has finally leveled out at over 190
choruses around the world with over 10,000 singers. 
I am registered as a single delegate for the July 2016
festival, and if you like choral music, you can go to their website and
register too.  IT WILL BE A MOVING
EXPERIENCE! 
©
2 Nov 2015 
About the Author 
I was born in Louisiana in
1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963,
with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for
a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay
in 1967.  After five years of searching,
I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter.  From 1980 forward I have been involved with
PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses:  the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s
Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and
Harmony.  I am enjoying my 11-year
retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going
to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.
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Role With the Flow: The Women in My Life, by Betsy

Aspiring to be one’s
own person is noble indeed.  No one would
doubt that.  But in my experience growing
up female in America in the mid twentieth century this ideal was indeed elusive
and impalpable to many girls.
As a youngster my
mother was my major role model.  Other
female role models were my grandmothers, an aunt, and to a lesser extent some
teachers. I consider these role models to be the most important in shaping my
adult persona because it was from these women that I learned who I was meant to
be–or should I say who I was supposed to be. 
Put another way, I learned how I was supposed to behave and, more
importantly, how to perceive myself going into adulthood. The women were also
the mirror for me which reflected who I was and who I was to become.
These role models I
mention were good people.  They strove to
take good care of their families; that is, to be good wives and mothers. They
were honest and loving.  The roles, however,
were clearly defined.  A woman’s role was
to NOT be in charge.  In fact it appeared
that a woman in that day in this culture was not even in charge of her own
life.
As a youngster growing
up the message I got was loud and clear: your happiness and your future welfare
requires, first, that you get a husband and the degree of that happiness and
welfare depends on who the man is that you marry.   A woman’s identity, her sense of who she is,
is intrinsic in what is reflected back to her from the people close to
her–especially her husband. I have recently come to realize that many females
of my generation have struggled with their true identity; they have struggled
to “be their own person.”
At the same time, my
growing up experience followed a period of time known as the Progressive Era,
the early decades of the 20th century, which saw the beginnings of huge changes
in the roles of women.  My grandmothers
and my mother saw some very obvious changes such as shorter skirts and short
hair, and some movement toward political equality. Women were no longer
expected to be frail and demure and confined to their parlors or their
kitchens.  Spurred on by the necessities
brought about by two world wars, women entered the work force and were allowed
to enter professions heretofore open only to men.  By mid-century women, especially of the
middle class and the Western World had completely redefined their roles in
almost every sphere of culture.
These were huge
changes.  Yet they were mostly all
outward superficial changes.  I still
received the message from my female role models that if I did not marry, I
would end up unhappy, unfulfilled, and lonely. In other words, I, by myself,
could not create my own persona. I had to depend on others to do that. Most
females I knew received the same message. But for some of us that image of just
who we were and who we were to become did not fit. Many of us had to try it on
before learning that it did not fit.  I
suppose this is one reason that so many lesbian woman of my generation were
married and had families and were middle aged before recognizing their own
sexual orientation and their true identity. This and the awareness that came
along with the gay rights movement helped us along.
Even today’s women
struggle for power. Many men are threatened by women who have more power than
they. Not all men, but some, feel emasculated by women who have more control
and become more powerful than they at home or in the work place. Is this a
natural happening or is it learned?  The
evidence, to me, shows that it is learned since not all men have this insecurity.  (I sincerely doubt that any man in this room
falls into that insecurity category.) Again in many cases I suppose it depends
on the role models they followed.  I
contend that the woman role models in my life were married to men who did not
have this insecurity.  They were not
controlling and overbearing at least insofar as my memory and my experience
allows me to make the judgement.
The women in my life,
my mother and my grandmothers, were products of their culture and reflected
that.  At the same time they were
progressive and welcomed the changes and disappearance of the restrictions that
kept them from expressing themselves earlier. Perhaps their progressive
attitudes contributed to my ability to come out later in life.
As it turns out neither
of my parents ever learned who I really was. They both died before I came out.
To me this is a sad fact.  However, only
mothers and grandmothers who outlive their daughters ever learn who these
daughters FINALLY become.
We are constantly
changing hopefully growing and progressing. 
If we make it into old age of course our role models are not there to
see how we finally turn out.  But it is
for certain that the spirit of the women in my life has been traveling with me
every step of the way and will continue to the end.
© 24 Nov 2014 
About
the Author 

Betsy has been active in the
GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians
Organizing for Change).  She has been
retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years.  Since her retirement, her major activities
include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor
with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning.  Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of
marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys
spending time with her four grandchildren. 
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing
her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.
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Hallowe’en Dinner by Betsy

I was only trying to be a good mother. Back in the 1960‘and 70’s liver was considered to be the best, most nutritious food available. No other food had all the goodness of beef or calves’ liver. That is, nutritionally it was the best, aesthetically, well, pretty awful, in my opinion.

During that time I was very conscientious about giving my young children the best in nutrition. The only question about liver was how to get them to eat it. I, myself, had a hard time, indeed, getting the slightest morsel down. The texture and the taste, I thought and still think, are rather repulsive. But a good mother feeds her children well. So I determined that once a year, at least, liver would be served at the dinner table and consumed by all–even if it were to be a very small amount. But how to get them to eat it. What was a mother to do.

Hallowe’en offered the perfect situation. The children typically would do their trick or treating as soon as they had finished their dinner. Well, you know the rest. “You may go trick or treating after you have finished your liver,” said I to the three sweet, little, adorable faces with blinking eyes looking at me in anticipation of the excitement of going out with their friends for Hallowe’en fun. Ooow!! That was hard. Was that cruel, or what. Oh well, I wouldn’t make them eat much. Even just a couple of bites! After all, it’s for their own good. That’s why I’m doing this, isn’t it. Isn’t that what any good mother would do?

Interesting that when my daughters, now old enough to be young grandmothers, recently reminded me of these Hallowe’en dinners of many years ago, I replied innocently, “I don’t remember any of that!. Are you sure that really happened? You know, I wouldn’t touch the stuff even if I wanted to. It’s full of cholesterol and toxins!”

The reality is that I do remember, now that my memory has been tweaked. And, yes, this did happen, but I think only once or maybe twice at most, not the many, many hallowe’en dinners that they remember. 
At the time those liver dinners on Hallowe’en were not so funny to any of us. Eating liver was serious business. Now we know better. Now 45 years later, every Hallowe’en, we get lots of laughs remembering the liver dinner–or was it dinners? I get teased a lot about this. I guess my kids grew up and came to understand what it’s like to be a parent wanting to do the right thing for their kids. 
But as I look back on it now, I realize I have mellowed a lot. I don’t think I would make my kids do that now, especially on Hallowe’en. Every once in a while, in spite of the laughs, a vague, nagging feeling from deep inside emerges and suggests that maybe that was kind of mean–making them eat liver. But, then, didn’t someone say that Hallowe’en has its dark side.

© 31 Oct 2011 

About the Author 

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Culture Shock by Betsy

It does not take an extraordinary imagination to paint a picture of a rather battered human race populating the planet earth in the year 2100. Scientists are coming up with computer models almost daily depicting a much warmer, weather-beaten, very watery, world.

Consider what some of the models are telling us. This past summer was the warmest on record. June being the 378 consecutive months in which the temperature exceeded the average of the twentieth century. The odds of this happening are astronomically small, yet it happened.*

The temperature of the planet is expected to rise 8 degrees by the turn of the century according to one recent study. This may not seem like an eventuality that could end life as we know it, however, some speculate the planet will become uninhabitable by humans if this much of a rise in temperature becomes a reality.

Ice sheets are melting. Already sea levels are showing a rise as a result. It is estimated that by 2100 some island nations will have disappeared entirely. Coastal cities all over the globe will be under water or threatened by the encroaching sea and millions of people will be seeking higher ground.

Because of increasing amounts of carbon pollution in the atmosphere we are experiencing record, heat, floods, drought, wildfires, and violent weather. Surely everyone is aware of this. We have only to pay attention to the daily news or observe with our own eyes. Still, many of our political leaders choose to deny what science tells us is true. The fossil fuel industry has such a strangle hold on our policy makers that they have been rendered mute.

The last global conference on climate change for world leaders was not even attended by the U.S. president or a representative. It is true. There are some very pressing issues of major importance which need to be dealt with immediately; such as, the economy, unemployment, federal revenues and the fiscal cliff, regulation of Wall Street, etc, etc.

However, it seems that climate change has to be the only issue that really matters.

Would this not be a culture shock from which humankind will not recover?

If the planet becomes uninhabitable by humans or barely habitable by humans in the next century or two, does anything else really matter?

*Bill
McKibben, Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012
© 26 November 2012

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.