Even remotely thinking about it.....
Sep. 27th, 2007 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osodecanelaFLGC - Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, was a group that really met my need as a young Queer Friend for community. I was still living on the east coast, and during the late 70's into the early 80's, even though I was dating the Clerk of another Friend's Meeting, I truly felt that the only way I might get acknowledged as a gay man, might be to have sex on the floor of the Meetinghouse on first day. When a childhood friend/Friend asked the my home Meeting for marriage under that care of the Meeting for her and her then female partner (note, the woman is still female, just no longer her partner) way too many people in the Meeting approached me to see if I was alright with this. In their minds, I should have been the one she wanted to marry. Never mind my sexuality here.
After I moved to the Bay Area, FLGC became much less a need in my life as I found that unlike back east, queer folk weren't coming out of the closet here, we were coming out of the woodwork. We were in the heart of many, if not most Friends Meetings, open, recognized and accepted. By the mid-80's the Yearly was seasoning how to respond to same gender marriage. By the mid-90's, support for it was in our "Faith and Practice", our book of discipline.
A few years back, I heard about the FLGC name change. In an attempt to become all inclusive it became FLGBTQC (Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgendered and Questioning Concerns). Questioning? How about even remotely thinking about it?
I fear that in our attempt to be all inclusive, we wind up looking fractured to the outside community, appearing more divided rather than bound by what unites us. How I wish there was a single work to connote all these sub-groups that in my mind constitute queerfolk. For me, I've taken back the word queer; speaking for myself, it's lost its pejorative meaning. I realize that far from true for everyone. Honestly, how many of us stopped referring to our annual Gay Pride Parades/Week/Celebrations as "Gay" or "Gay and Lesbian" and now simply just call them "Pride"?
After I moved to the Bay Area, FLGC became much less a need in my life as I found that unlike back east, queer folk weren't coming out of the closet here, we were coming out of the woodwork. We were in the heart of many, if not most Friends Meetings, open, recognized and accepted. By the mid-80's the Yearly was seasoning how to respond to same gender marriage. By the mid-90's, support for it was in our "Faith and Practice", our book of discipline.
A few years back, I heard about the FLGC name change. In an attempt to become all inclusive it became FLGBTQC (Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgendered and Questioning Concerns). Questioning? How about even remotely thinking about it?
I fear that in our attempt to be all inclusive, we wind up looking fractured to the outside community, appearing more divided rather than bound by what unites us. How I wish there was a single work to connote all these sub-groups that in my mind constitute queerfolk. For me, I've taken back the word queer; speaking for myself, it's lost its pejorative meaning. I realize that far from true for everyone. Honestly, how many of us stopped referring to our annual Gay Pride Parades/Week/Celebrations as "Gay" or "Gay and Lesbian" and now simply just call them "Pride"?
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Date: 2007-09-27 07:52 pm (UTC)