Loving Those We See

NOTE: I originally wrote this in 2014. Sadly, in 2024, in national politics and many churches not much has changed.

 

One of our Manna House guests is in the hospital. She was brutally beaten, stabbed, and left for dead just a block from Manna House. This guest is an African American transvestite. We lifted her up in prayer this morning when we opened at Manna House. I invite you to do the same. 

 

Our guests from the streets who are LBGTQ are especially vulnerable. When Manna House first opened nearly 20 years ago, I quickly learned that they were harassed and harmed by other persons on the street, by their families, by random attackers, and by police officers. They are also sometimes even excluded due to their sexuality from places that are supposed to serve people on the streets. 

 

At Manna House, we’ve been clear: all are welcome here. Further, we do not allow any denigrating language about someone’s sexuality or attire. Everyone is to be treated with respect, with the dignity that they have simply as human beings made in the image of God.

 

I know that within the broader society and in religious communities, there has been and continues to be quite a struggle over the acceptance of LGBTQ people. As a Christian ethics professor for some thirty years, I’m quite familiar with all of the arguments about homosexuality. The more I have studied the more I have become convinced that based on the Bible, Christian experience, and psychology, the traditional condemnations are wrong. 

 

But it was not until I became involved with Manna House, that I began to have regular experience with persons LGBTQ people. Many of the arguments I would cover in class were mostly in my head. In offering hospitality to people on the streets, I have also gotten an education in my heart. 

 

The most painful part of that education is my experience with the suffering of LGBTQ people due to ignorance, and hatred. One story stands out. Several years ago, on the front porch of Manna House, I had a long conversation with an African American LBGTQ guest. In tears, she told me of her being kicked out of her family home by her preacher father before she was even 18. 

 

She ended up on the streets, turned to prostitution to survive, and to drugs to numb the pain. She showed me the marks on her wrists from multiple suicide attempts. She said to me that she wanted out from the pain of addiction, prostitution, and rejection, of being on the streets. She just wanted to be accepted for who she is. Then she took my hands and said through her tears, “I need you to pray for me.” 

 

I was taken aback. I had never heard such a desperate plea for prayer. And at this point in my own life, I was not all that comfortable with someone who was transvestite nor with that kind of spontaneous prayer. But I prayed; how could I not?

 

I prayed that she would experience the truth that she was a child of God, that she would find a home, a place where she would be accepted and loved, and that she could be freed from addiction, and find good work that was not harmful to her. By the time I was done, I felt tears on my face to match hers.

 

I never saw this person again. I don’t know what has happened to her. I do know that her prayer request deepened my conviction that as Dorothy Day said, “the only solution is love.” I’m tired of arguing about homosexuality with hateful bigots, whether in churches or out. I know how destructive churches and the broader society have been in the lives of those who are LGBTQ, even with the semi-polite arguments about “hating the sin and loving the sinner.” Those arguments still legitimate hatred and I can’t abide them. 

 

Our Manna House guest lies in a hospital bed now, stabbed, beaten, and struggling to live because of such hatred. And she is, tragically, just another one among many. 

 

“Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).