Cowboys (Or: Learning To Be A Man, part 1)

"Institutionalised in sports, the military, acculturated sexuality, the history and mythology of heroism, violence is taught to boys until they become its advocates."
- Charles Dickens

I wish someone told me I didn’t have to be a cowboy.

At church some months ago, during a discussion about gender, a middle-aged man gruffly said, “I wish someone told me I didn’t have to be a cowboy.” I don’t want to read too much into what he meant by this statement, but I haven’t been able to get the sentiment out of my mind. It represents a thought that can and should be echoed by so many boys and men; by those who were supposed to be cowboys, but turned out not to be, or by those who became cowboys only to discover they no longer wanted to be, by those who have discovered the emptiness of the masculine baggage we’ve been handed. I wish someone told me I didn’t have to be a cowboy. I want to write those words in ash and tears on the altars of our churches, on the hearths of our homes, and on the gates of our schoolyards.

I grew up in the South, in the land of football and cheerleaders, of debutantes and good old boys, of macho men and dainty women. Women have a place (the dirty secret: so do men). I remember Texas in the 1980s, a time of blue eye shadow and platinum hair for my mother, a thick mustache and a police uniform for my father. I was dressed in cowboy boots from time immemorial (though I always managed to pull them off so I could run around barefoot in the warm Texas dirt).

Dad, you see, was (and is) a lover of John Wayne and all things War and Western. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. They Died with their Boots On. Gunga Din. Ft. Apache. McClintock. Bridge on the River Kwai. He refused to watch Rock Hudson movies, though I could never understand why. (I finally understood when I learned that Rock Hudson had died of AIDS; or was the problem not so much the AIDS as the penetration that preceded infection?). Though he also enjoyed the occasional Cary Grant romantic comedy, or even one of Jimmy Stewart’s weepy performances, Dad typically stuck with guns and horses, tanks and valor, cowboys and Indians and women waiting for their soldiers to come home.

I started playing football when I was six, baseball when I was five (I would eventually play football until I was sixteen and baseball until 17. Not a short run.). I wasn’t bad at either sport, and I could have been considered an above average first baseman. My father, like many fathers, seemed noticeably more proud when I scored the winning run than he was when I received perfect scores on my report card. And I think he was proudest when I shot and killed my first deer at the age of 7. Violence and victory and tackles and touchdowns were ways to prove my worth as a boy, it seemed.

Being a boy in my family, and in most other families I encountered, meant certain things. Don’t cry. Play rough. Win. Fight dirty if necessary, but never run away. Don’t hug too much, especially not another man. Above all: don’t cry. Oh, yes, and: don’t cry. I learned these lessons over and over. Sometimes I was taught subtly: I was rewarded for good grades with a fishing pole or a new bat; I received more than one gun as a gift. Other times, the training was more, shall we say, overt.

I have focused on my father, but he was only one of my trainers. I remember a day my mother took me to the dentist. One of the perks of visiting Dr. Connor was that, after the cleaning, I could pick out any toothbrush I wanted (not a small deal to a young child). At the end of this particular visit, I picked out a pink toothbrush, which prompted the following discussion with my mother:

“Boys don’t use pink.”
“Why?”
“They just don’t. Pink is for girls. Do you want blue?”
“No, I don’t like blue.” (I did, in fact, like blue, but I couldn’t pick the same color as my little brother.)
“Take green then. Your father will be upset if you bring home a pink toothbrush.”

So, pink was out. And so (I would later learn) were flowers, dolls, all things that sparkle, long hair, boy bands, doing the dishes, and cooking. And let’s not forget crying.

Gender, it seemed, made a lot of difference. Though he loved us all, I had a different kind of value to my father than did my sister and younger brother, or so he told me. I couldn’t understand what difference it made that I was his firstborn son; I was, after all, the middle child – he had a daughter before me and another son (whose age was so close to my own that we were practically raised as twins during our younger years).

I was also learning that gender made a lot of difference in church. Only men preach. Only men make decisions. Only men pray (They told us that women pray too, they just do it silently. I couldn't be sure at first.). I, as a male, would one day be expected to protect, to teach, to pray, to preach, to lead. My sister, for her part, would learn to follow, to submit. We would both learn that the husband was the head of the wife. We each had our burden. I would learn to pray and be strong; she would learn to cook and to mother.

Typical of my Texas fundamentalist upbringing, the Bible played an important role as I learned “what it means to be a man.” The first chapters of Genesis taught me that Adam was formed first, and then Eve formed from him. Paul reminded me that this order of creation meant that the husband was the head of the wife, just as Christ was the head of the Church. Women were to be silent. You know the rest, especially if you were raised in a Church of Christ.

********

Much of what I have described above is often seen (perhaps rightly) through the lens of the ‘subjugation of women’ in the culture of the American South and in Churches of Christ. But that is not what I want to focus on. Though the treatment of our daughters is shameful, I want, instead, to focus on the way our boys are trained to be men. I was taught that I had more value than my sister, both at home and at Church (I after all, could pray in front of the congregation and at the dinner table; she could not). This elevated place in the church and the home, though, relied in large part on my ability to swing a stick in a baseball game, tackle a foe in a football game, injure someone in a fistfight, to hide my emotions, to be hard and unyielding. I had value only as long as I eliminated everything Soft about me. If I didn’t fit the mold (if I wasn’t a Man) then, since I wasn’t a woman, I had no place in either the home or the church. My place in the world and in the church depended on my decision to buy into the violent and kyriarchal training of my youth.

Maybe my focus is off; maybe I should focus on the way my sister was treated. But I will leave that to the feminists among us, and I will wish them luck. I want now only to make this point: someone should have told me, just once, that I didn’t have to be a cowboy. Someone should have told me that I didn’t have to be ashamed that I didn’t fit the mold. Someone should have told me that it was acceptable to just be, well, me. No one ever did, especially not at church.

We need to train our boys what it really means to be a man. We need to teach them that violence is bad, not good, and that domination is to be avoided, not lauded. We need to teach them that there is neither male nor female in Christ. We need to teach them to learn from the women in their lives. We need to tell them it is not shameful to cry, that it is not shameful to express love and affection for those around them, that intimacy (whether sexual or not) is a gift from Above. We are failing our sons by trying to make them something they don’t have to be. We do it everyday at home and at school. And, saddest of all, we do it every Sunday at Church.

Family Values.

An excerpt from Know My Name: A Gay Liberation Theology, by Richard Cleaver

-----------------------------

It is worth asking ourselves what kind of movement Jesus tried to build. Where did he begin? Matthew 4:18-22 tells one version:

As [Jesus] walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea--for they were fishermen. And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

Notice that they drop everything. We know (because Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law) that Peter is married. There is no mention here of Peter arranging to take care of his family. We are told explicitly that James and John just walk out on their father, to whom presumably they have both business and family obligations. Elsewhere we hear similar advice for other followers of Jesus. In Matt. 8:18-22, we read:

Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Another of his disciples said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."

This is not a movement for family values. It is not built on a husband, a wife, and 2.3 children in the suburbs; ... Jesus' movement cut through even the most important relations in society, such as the duty to bury one's father. In Matt. 12:46-50, Jesus himself sets the example:

While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, "Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you." But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?"

Remember, Matthew is the evangelist who devotes his whole first chapter to "begats," all the way back to Adam, so that we can know precisely who Jesus' mother and brothers were. But here he tells us that Jesus, "pointing to his disciples,...said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.'"

The Jesus movement is not a workplace from which we go home to our families for emotional support. It constructs a new family not defined by blood or by marriage. It is the family of hearers and doers of the Word.

For lesbians and gay men, this is good news indeed. Many of us have been thrown out of our families. All of hear those with power in the church and in the state preach that such bourgeois families are the basic unit of society and the church. This is why they say we must be cast out: we are a threat to the family. But their kind of family, if we believe Matthew, does not seem to be the basic unit of the community that Jesus built. Indeed, it could not be, because such forms of family did not exist in the society where Jesus worked. If we put the bourgeois family at the heart of Jesus' message instead fo the assembly of hearers and doers, we worship an idol.

Some will object that we must be prepared to accept the reality of social change in history. They are right. But we must also be able to accept the social changes that have forged new forms of family amoung lesbians and gay men. Underlying the debate over family values is an assumption that "families" and "lesbians and gay men" are two separate groups, without overlap. In fact, we are all part of the families we grew up in. We may not always get along well with them, but a lot of straight people do not either. Many of us get along fine. Often we are heads of families ourselves--lesbians especially, if they have been allowed to keep their children. The bourgeois family is not necessarily any more foreign to lesbians and gay men than to others. We, too, may be guilty of worshiping that idol.

Framing the debate on the family in terms of an all-or-nothing choice between some well-defined unity unchanged throughout history, on the one hand, and the liberation of lesbians and gay men, on the other, is a kind of shell game. It diverts our attention from the uncertain place of families in a changing society, for good and for ill, and from how a changing society in turn molds families, also for good or for ill. These are issues for theologians along with everyone else, and lesbians and gay men, being, so to speak, both inside and outside the institution, have valuable insights. In this, as in so many aspects of U.S. culture that are so familiar as to be opaque to their beneficiaries, Ethan Mordden, the chronicler of New York gay life in the 1970s and 1980s, aptly observes: "We have to know more than the straights know: have to understand what we are as well as what they are--have to find our unique place in their culture."

Idols are false gods that we worship because they are easier to manage than the real thing. We have made the bourgeois family into an idol because it, unlike the living God, gives us permission to confine our concern only to our own kin and kind. It tells us it is OK to worry above all about keeping our families safe from the resto fo society.

That is precisely the kind of family Jesus tells us to reject.

Re-examining our core homophobia.

The family must be nurtured and defended. In my childhood, I never imagined how much change I would live to see in American home life. Today, even the definition of the word family is up for grabs. No-fault divorce, cloning and gay marriage - things unimaginable 50 years ago - have joined the host of forces intent on tearing down the foundation of society, the home. Properly understood, the home provides care for the elderly, protection and training for children, respect for both men and women, sanctity for sex, and love for all. It is such a remarkable institution that when the Apostle Paul wanted to describe the marvelous relationship between Christ and the church, he turned to the home (Ephesians 5:22-33). If you look in our current catalogue on Page 5, you will find that our mission statement includes "stressing a lifelong commitment to marriage and the Christian family."

- David B. Burks in the most recent Harding Magazine

Several other bloggers have commented on Dr. Burks's recent Harding Magazine article, "Re-examining our core beliefs." My participation in the discussion on other blogs has been limited to short sarcastic statements. I want to discuss the article (or at least one part of it) further here.

For obvious reasons, I choose to focus only on the above excerpted paragraph. The paragraph begins with an assertion with which, facially, most people can agree: "The family must be nurtured and defended." Sure. I want to protect my parents and siblings. I want to nurture my grandparents and care for them as they age. I want to guard my mother and sister from harm whenever possible.

But that's not what Dr. Burks means. Dr. Burks assures us that Harding is here to defend the family from Change and especially from no-fault divorce, cloning, and gay marriage. Eschewing history and the Bible, he nostalgically and naively looks back in time and sees an (imagined?) Epoch characterized by familial strength and purity, an epoch that will quickly be brought to a close if we don't act. The good old days are being challenged. And not by progress. Not by accident. Not in the interest of those trampled on and marginalized by Dr. Burks's 1950's-style Ward and June Cleaver white middle class suburban America (itself largely a fiction of Dr. Burks's imagination). No. Instead, a 'host of forces' has joined together, 'intent on tearing down the foundation of society.' And, though Dr. Burks does not say it, we all know how you respond to a host of forces hell-bent on destruction: you go to war.

Dr. Burks has painted a near-apocalyptic picture for us in the first three sentences of the paragraph. His portrait is of a lovely home full of happy, smiling Christians who are intentionally torn apart by the invidious forces of chaos, by those who would purposely shake the ground on which society stands. By faggots who want to marry. A dark picture, indeed. Something must be done. The foe must be defeated.

Thank God Dr. Burks has such high respect for the institution of marriage. Or does he?

Dr. Burks goes on to describe what a home should provide. Among the things provided by a home: "love for all." This is interesting because of the phrase's close position in the paragraph to the call for war against those who would dispute Dr. Burks's normative view of family. Maybe instead of 'love for all,' Dr. Burks means 'love for those on our side'? Love for those like us? Love for those in our families? Love for those who deserve it?

I may sound a bit harsh here, but I think it's important to point out what Dr. Burks is missing. He is forgetting that I (one of those intent on 'tearing down the foundation of society') am already a part of someone's family, that I am worthy of love and respect. He assumes that I, and others like me, have no respect for the family because I want to marry a man instead of a woman. He ignores the fact that, far from wanting to destroy the institution, I want to join it (albeit in a slightly different way).

He also seems to forget something else: since when is the family the basic unit of society? Since when is the 'one man, one woman, 2.5 kids in the suburbs' model the norm? Since when is marriage primarily and institution that teaches respect for both men and women? Since Adam, whose son Cain killed Abel? Since Abraham, who took a wife and then conceived a child by another woman? Since Jacob, who had children by 4 different women? Since the days of levirate marriage? Since Jesus, who (so far as we know) never married and who, at one point, seemed to turn his back on his own family? Since Paul, who declared that celibacy was preferable to marriage? Since the days when women were passed like chattel, sold to the husband who could best bring title and fortune to the girl's father? Since the days women were refused medicine during childbirth because it was God's curse that they feel pain during birthing? Since the days, not so long ago, when women were trained to be obedient and subservient to their husbands, not matter what? Since the days when, taking the words of Jesus literally, divorced was refused to any who could not prove marital unfaithfulness, even to the woman who had been beaten to a pulp? Which 'good old days' should we look back to, Dr. Burks?

Instead, I would argue that, for the Christian, the family is not the foundation of society. God is the foundation. For the Christian, care of the elderly, the training of children, the love of others is the job of the whole community and the individual disciple. For the Christian, there is no reason to fear gays and lesbians who would attempt to be covered by the civil law of marriage; there is only reason to love.

I don't want this post to be too long, so I'll close with this. I stumbled across another paragraph about marriage today while reading for a class:

Marriage [] bestows enormous private and social advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. 'It is an association that promotes a way of life, not cause; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects'...Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.

This was taken from the majority opinion in Goodridge v. Dept of Pub. Health, 440 Mass. 309 (2003), the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court requiring equal recognition of gay and lesbian marriages. Sounds like they know what marriage is, doesn't it? Are you listening, Dr. Burks?

Another Letter

To follow up the last letter, I thought I would write another. This may seem a bit lame, but I have written a letter to myself. It is a note I wish I would have received when I was an 18 year-old freshman at Harding

------------------------------------

Dear Self,

You are 18 and lost. You don’t know why everything seems to be falling apart. You thought everything would start to make sense once you got out of the house and went away to college, but it hasn’t. Things won’t even begin to make sense for a very long time. You feel confused, alone, frightened. You are trying to find your place in this world and in the church and inside yourself, but you are beginning to feel as though it is hopeless. You think you will never be whole, and you think you will always hurt.

I remember. Trust me, I will never forget, though I am the older You. I remember what it was like that first year at Harding, when you thought you could finally make everything right if you just found the right crowd, studied the right books, and prayed the right prayers. You even asked to be re-baptized, thinking that the first one must not have counted if you were feeling these emotions and thinking these thoughts. You aren’t totally unhappy, having made some friends in the first few months away from home. But you don’t think you can tell those friends what is going on inside. You don’t think you can tell Mom and Dad. You are afraid of what will happen if the Secret gets out.

I am writing to tell you this: you will survive, you have strength, you are loved.

It is okay that you are scared. It’s only natural. You are growing up into someone you don’t yet know. You are afraid of who he will be, what he will believe, and how he will live. You are afraid you don’t have the strength to do what you think you have to do. You are afraid that you will end up alone.

But you have the strength. You will have the strength to turn your eyes inward and face the demons. You will have the strength to sort through the fears of Hell and of rejection. You will read what others have written and realize that others have done what you think you have to do. And they have survived, too.

You will read still more (since you will wrongly think you can’t talk to anyone) and discover that there are many out there who challenge the traditional interpretations of the texts by which you feel so terrorized. You will learn that there are many others out there who are working to teach others that, perhaps, the Old Readings of the Bible may not be the True Readings (if such readings exist). You will learn that there is more to Faith and to Worship than you have been taught. You will learn that, sometimes, it is okay to be unsure of the answer.

This will not be an easy journey. I, even as I write this to you, still struggle. I struggle with faith (though my faith has deepened immeasurably), I struggle with family (though I am able to love them so much more, now that I can love myself), I struggle with the Church (though I and others like me are part of the Church we struggle with).

The journey will be made bearable though, because of the people you encounter along the way. At Harding and beyond, you will meet people who will love you when you don’t think you deserve it, who will bear your burden when you no longer can, and who will stand beside when you need it (or in front of you to shield a blow). You will not make it without these people; let them into your life. These people will be your friends at Harding, friends you make after Harding, and even a couple of Church of Christ ministers (though you can hardly imagine that now). They will love you and will show that love in countless ways.

So stand firm. Cry when you need to, and shout your rage to Heaven when you need to. Just be patient. God loves you. I love you. Your friends and yes, even your family, love you.

Do not be ashamed, and do not be afraid. Be strong. The secrets you so fear will not destroy you, and it is only when you face what lurks in the dark corners of your heart that you will begin to heal and begin to grow. Just remember that you are “convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [you] from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

With love and even with certainty,

Yourself, age 25

Quote o' the Day

Many thanks to Irie at Gal328.org for bringing this quote to my attention:

"On the whole, however, the ideal of unity and equality has never been recognized in reality until the inferior group, whether women or slaves or a racial group, has asserted that equality and compelled the church to translate its principles into practice."

H.Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism