Task Force of the Month: Rainbow Rights

Shades on the Spectrum - By Jason Michálek

Rainbow Rights is collecting a diversity of experiences of becoming individually confident in an identity and being collectively accepted into community. By interviewing congregants we’re hoping to capture different cultural and relational factors of gender and sexuality that inflect the past and present to show how our congregation/community is welcoming--and to suggest what work we still have to do to make/keep that vision a reality.

As a teaser into a few stories this will feature, what follows are a few profiles from what collectively can be described as “Women who Love Women.” Our overall hope is to frame the collection of accounts to inform the congregation about what queerness looks like and how everyone can participate in reducing harm and truly supporting diversity in Beloved Community--which also makes space for confusions, tensions, and growth. So, here are a few accounts from women who feel welcomed in loving women within our community, in their own words.

Olaya Fernández Gayol related a journey of knowing and being accepted, saying, “I was never uncomfortable. What I was (for 31 years) was unaware. The ‘inciting incident’ for my coming out story was a woman I became really close friends with through sharing some workplace trauma and lots of emotional vulnerability. She made me realize that those bad or unfulfilling experiences with men, one of whom was actually a very sweet person, had a quite simple explanation and it was in my hands to do something about it (living in NYC at the time made things way easier).

So I went on OKCupid, talked to a few people and went on my first date with Corrin. The only thing that remained to be done was to tell my family and friends. I wanted to tell my mum in person so I waited until the Christmas trip back home, and then waited until I was about to go through the security checkpoint, because if you’ve met my mother you know she can be a bit intense and I didn’t want to live with the version of her that knew (and could ask questions I didn’t necessarily want to answer, or knew the answer to myself).

She took it well during the 10 minutes I spent with her afterwards, asked an inappropriate question, and said she had suspected it at some point. Now, despite a couple of dramatic episodes over the years, she has now become Corrin’s biggest fan and supports and cherishes our relationship. All my friends have also been really supportive and enthusiastic about it, even if some of them were shocked at the beginning (the gay man of all people). I have been very lucky in my short coming out story and would like to think that it just all happened at the right place and time.

My relationship with a woman now feels ‘right’, when before there was always something missing, or the feeling that I was being selfish.

I also think I’m now more aware of other identities and how language can be really harmful. Growing up (in Spain, in the 90s and 00s) I essentially had no close and positive LGBTQ references. There were gay men on TV but Spain still had a culture of homophobia (some still remains, and a lot of slurs are casually used) and the only lesbians were butch women who were not spoken about very kindly either. The casual homophobic comments are the hardest to endure now. The other interesting thing about language is that I don’t really have the words to talk about ‘gay culture’ in Spanish, and also lack some of the American historic references. I do sometimes feel like an infiltrator who hasn’t ‘earned her place.’

For Carol McCord, church was always a place of acceptance that was just passively welcoming:
“I was becoming comfortable with my orientation, I had identified as lesbian since college and coming out of college then, that…that was difficult for me: to come out. But then I moved to Bloomington right after college, and so I brought that sense of myself having just kind of accomplished that or gotten to that when I moved here. It was pretty new for me, and it wasn't a time in the world when it was that common–or at least in the places I found myself. I did find a women's community, and I found gay people, but I didn't feel like the general society was that open.

I had been much more careful or circumspect about who I chose to come out to–and particularly in terms of work, too. So I was working in a couple different places. Planned Parenthood, for instance. I did not want to come out intentionally. I didn't come out. I felt like that would not help my mission of being able to get good information about sexuality to people because Planned Parenthood has enough trouble getting to places, being welcomed into places to speak and provide information. And then as a lesbian in that role, I just thought it was going to be too much. But at church, I never made a big announcement or anything. I just kind of was who I was, and came and went. I did other things, and over time, I think everybody just kind of knew. I became looser and more comfortable sharing that information, and I was around longer and more people talk to each other. I felt myself becoming comfortable with my orientation at church. And it just sort of happened kind of over a period of years.

Then during the time, the congregation was working on becoming a Welcoming Congregation, I wasn't actually participating very much. I was away doing other stuff. When I came back, it was a Welcoming Congregation. And I hadn't even realized that it had been something I hadn't spoken with people about very much before. I realized, ‘Oh, that's really nice. That makes me feel welcome and I like it.' They've done that, and I appreciate that being the case. I guess I hadn't even really thought about the fact that I hadn't felt comfortable or welcomed in particular. But I also felt comfortable and welcomed in other ways. I mean, I like the congregation, the values of the Church. Why, the congregation stood for their very many nice people. It was much better, and I hadn't even realized that it hadn't been okay. I was just happy to realize that an explicit statement was missing, but I'm very glad to have it now. It was more or less an affirmation of what the congregation already did, just achieving the official designation.”

For Melinda Swenson, the process played out over a longer period:
"Orientation is a word that I don't relate to so much. My husband Daniel and I were members of UUCB for almost 30 years as a couple before he died, and everybody knew that we were together. We didn't have to explain our hetero orientation. We had a child, and all 3 of us were welcomed into UUCB world.

I taught human sexuality to IU undergrad nursing students in Bloomington and graduate students, mostly on the Indianapolis campus. Lesbian couples are common in many women-focused occupations like nursing. I had friends from IUPUI campus School of Nursing who were lesbian, I also had friendships with lesbian faculty members in Bloomington. After Daniel’s death, I went to the summertime Women's Music Festival in Bloomington. Carol was there with other gay and straight friends. I went with a lesbian couple from Indianapolis. Daniel liked women's music, and I liked women's music, and we never said this was lesbian music. We just said it was women's music. It was not about orientation. It was just about being with friends and enjoying the music.

A few months after Daniel died in 2005, Carol invited me to go to a student presentation at one of the IU dorms. It was The Vagina Monologues being put on by the students. It was sort of a date. After the show, Carol walked me into my car because I wasn't exactly sure where it was, and we just started talking. She was the first person I told the whole story of his death. She listened to me talk about my grief for two hours, sitting in my car.

About a year later I found myself thinking about Carol when I was off with my family on a Disney cruise. And when I came back, we started talking more. And even went on a movie date or two! And months later, she visited my house more often because she had a cat who was very sick, and I had 2 cats who were very sick, and we decided to put them all together in my bathroom and have a cat infirmary. Carol came after work every day to give her cat IV medication.

I said, 'You are here very often, and you have a long drive home. Why don’t you just move in here?' It was a gentle evolution to becoming lovers after years of friendship. We don't have an dating anniversary, but we do have a wedding anniversary (when we got married in June 2014– One of the two days it was legal in Indiana. Mary Ann Macklin married us in our own church, with two witnesses. That was the whole wedding. It was perfect, and the Self-Hugging Tree was our “best man.” Yes, that sculpture is Daniel Willard's sanctuary tree. We just pulled him over, and his spirit stood up with us.
I don't necessarily identify as ‘lesbian’: I identify as ‘Carol-oriented.’
My orientation is focused on my loving relationship with Carol. I like women. I like men. I don't feel bisexual. I don't have a label that fits me. When I was married, I was married, and it was just fine. Now I'm married again, and I'm still married, and it's even better than just fine. It wasn't an existential shift for me. What I loved was that nobody at church even raised an eyebrow. I have felt welcomed and at home in the UUCB since 1977."

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This is what one strand of the spectrum looks like. How do you belong and extend the welcome? If you'd like to participate in the video project and share your story, contact us at RainbowRights@uubloomington.org