The Voices That Need To Be Heard

"Kate Middleton wears Red Dress at Order of the Garter Service" is currently trending higher than "Vigils for Orlando Shooting".

This may give you a bit of an insight in to how much LGBTQ+ people think our lives matter to the world at large.

 

Soho Vigil "We Stand With Orlando" - Source heavy.com/news

So too when Owen Jones, a gay man, is shouted down on Sky News by the presenters for making the point that the shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida was a terrorist attack specifically on the LGBTQ+ community, not an attack on “all people”.

So too when the Daily Mail didn't think it was important enough to mention the attack on the Pulse Nightclub on its front page and when the New York Times doesn't think it is relevant to mention that the largest mass shooting in the US since Wounded Knee directly targeted a Latinx Night at a gay venue run by Trans* and Drag hosts. 

Apparently there is no injury so heinous that insult cannot be also added to it. Erasure of the very fact that this is a hate crime directed at LGBTQ+ people is an erasure of their deaths, suffering and loss. Moreover it is an erasure of the lives they led at whichever level of "outness", open-ness and dignity they could navigate safely.

Amidst the outpourings of horror and sympathy and compassion, all of which are needed, think about the voices that are being heard. On most of the mainstream news outlets there have been countless debates where all the participants exist so far outside these communities as to be barely aware of the realities of their existences. Where are the Latinx voices, the Trans* voices, the voices of those who were wounded? Start there. Continue with the voices of the queer and trans* muslims. There are so many voices that need to be heard.

Amplify the voices of those who are most marginalised:

The voices we long to hear can no longer speak. They are the voices of those murdered by a man who was a product of an increasingly hostile culture where LGBTQ+ citizens have so little value that they are not legally protected from people firing them, evicting them, denying them healthcare and refusing to sell them anything they damn well choose including a fucking cake. Where Trans*, GenderQueer and gender non-conforming people are seen as too dangerous to share a public restroom with, instead of being the people more at risk of being victims of violence. Where a Presidential Candidate thinks there needs to be a wall to keep the Latinx people out.  Where a man with a history of domestic violence and on an FBI watchlist can still legally purchase a military assault rifle.

At times like this a traumatised and terrorised community needs allies. I am aware that I am an ally in many respects: I do not live in Orlando, I am British, cis-male, gay, white, druid and I am aware of those privileges I have. My intersectionality with the victims of this act of terrorism means I wept for the attack, I felt terror, it felt personal and close. But my voice should not drown out or create noise above which theirs cannot be heard.

I am not un-entitled to my grief, my fears, my opinions. I am privileged enough that I can set this tragedy aside and rest from it when I need to, not so privileged that I never have to worry about where I hold hands:

With that privilege comes the responsibility to listen, witness and share those voices.

“If healing is what we want, then we must give the marginalized voices targeted by this tragedy the space to articulate their suffering. This is what will emancipate them of their pain. This is what will empower others in communities who are suffering... Chances are, queer voices, Latinx voices, and Muslim voices are already saying what you wish to express, and you will likely find that they are expressing it in a more articulate way than you are able to. Make the choice to share those voices instead of centering yours.” – Mariella Mosthof

Vigil

Pride & Prejudice

Tonight, I am proud to be a Londoner
Pride as the antithesis of hate;
Community as the antidote to fear;
Visibility as the bright beacon to dispel isolation;
Love as a challenge to lift our broken hearts.

I am proud to stand with thousands,
Each body different,
Every face unique,
A hundred hundred stories and songs,
Those threads weaving a mighty global tapestry;
That weft shredded, strands severed, bloodsoaked half a world away.
Our silence is solidarity and comfort, our noise a rage that will not be denied.

Tonight, I am proud to shed my tears.
I am proud to love

"We Stand With Orlando" Soho Vigil, London UK
Picture Soucre: The Duke of Wellington, Soho

Leaping The Fire

In an unbidden instant, a bright ember ignited a cascade of thought and action within me. In my imagination a mercurial figure with mighty and proud leporine ears turned to me and said “you cannot be my Consort, there are no games we can play together” with such drollness that I was immediately won over. Within a few short hours a story I’d struggled to write for several months seemed to flow as effortlessly as if I were copying it by rote. 

artist and source unknown

This was the point from which my Beltane Faerie Story seemed to blossom forth. I’d been struggling to write about experiencing queerness and Beltane for some time, from conversations that had started the previous Spring:   Deep and heartfelt sharing of the quiet hurt and exclusion felt when the menfolk and the womenfolk are separated to talk about their part in the “mysteries” that lead to the birth of a Divine Son then the digging of a symbolic feminine hole in which to plant an equally symbolic masculine Maypole.  Spirited debate on social media about some of the perceived heteronormativity present even in the writings of druids we admired, that lazy lack of thought beyond the pervasive norm of opposite binary-gender pairings which, while not actively discriminatory, did nothing to acknowledge the non-heterosexual, non-childbearing, non-fertile, non-binary gendered members of our community.  Out and out slanging matches based on the clear premise that these neo-traditions were entirely non-excluding so long as you just played along with them to maintain the status quo, on which more later, and that if one didn’t like them then one should bugger off to some other tradition and stop trying to mess up druidry by making it all politically correctness gone mad.

Amidst it all, a correspondence between myself, Penny Billington the editor of Touchstone and a young academic whose intellect and sense of social justice I greatly admire. I fondly imagine it as being akin to The White Council, although Penny assures me I’m no Cate Blanchett and that she certainly looks nothing like Christopher Lee. Their commentary was so insightful and had such depth I felt like I was running to keep up, but it did wonders to clarify my thoughts.

The White Council (c) New Line Cinema

The story was published in Touchstone and then featured on Druidcast Episode 84. I had that mix of feeling happy that work I had done was out in the world and fearful of having put myself out there quite so visibly. Brené Brown talks about keeping yourself small and under the radar to avoid feeling vulnerable, yet in vulnerability finding the birthplace of creativity and innovation, and I had stuck my head well and truly above the parapet.

There were reactions. People had opinions in my direction. Most were positive. Not all were kind. Some were downright personal. There emerged an idea that I was somehow trying to steer druidry into a new, non-traditional form. What was my end-game?  Why did I become a druid if I didn’t love The Goddess and The God? Why was I trying to change the nature of the Gods in order to fit my lifestyle?  If I felt so unwelcome, why didn’t I just leave? What would this gay-druidry look like and why didn’t I go off somewhere and do this gay-druidry with the other gay druids and leave everyone else in peace to do it the way it’s always been done? And so on…

It’s worth noting at this point that I usually choose ‘queer’ to describe myself. Gay is fine too, but I am wary of the androcentrism it conveys.  I worry that most people just read ‘gay’ as ‘gay man’, limiting advocacy of lesbians, bisexuals, genderqueer, *trans people, non-binary, androgenous, asexual and intersex people gathering under the rainbow banner of what Dan Savage wryly refers to as “our beloved acronym” of LGBTQIAA+

It took me a while to notice that due to the limitations of my talent, nearly everybody had missed a significant amount of what I was trying to convey: “Beltane Faerie Story” is a satire. It’s supposed to be faintly ridiculous, from the glorious Beltane Hare-spirit crowning a Champion with a pair of furr’d ears to the final Ceremony with added extra verses for the queers.  "Which version are we doing this year?" I imagine the Archdruids muttering. "The gay ritual or the normal one?"

If I did have an “end-game”, then my ulterior motive would be that it should seem ludicrous that a spiritual tradition should have to go to preposterous lengths to be accommodating. It should already be inclusive or it simply isn’t fit for purpose. That means we don’t need “gay druidry” any more than we need “gay tea” or “gay cars”, just tea that tastes good to anyone who wants to drink it and cars that anybody can learn to drive.

Many, many months later I was to hear Penny in conversation with Philip Carr-Gomm as recorded at the OBOD 50^th Anniversary Celebrations. I heard it on Druidcast as somehow I missed the actual interview. She interrupts Philip near the end of the conversation and changes the subject onto the contribution being made by gay OBOD members and in what she says I hear threads from our conversation and feel deeply moved.

Her summation is characteristically erudite, a passionate ally she dismisses heteronormativity stating simply that, “what we do want is a druid robe that everyone is able to shake their shoulders in and feel comfortable with”.

So I'm still here, still in a comfortable robe, but more often in jeans and a hoodie. Still working on actually feeling comfortable in my own skin, but still celebrating Beltane.  I celebrate passion, I celebrate the greening of the land, the physical sensuality to be found out there in the world. I leap the Bel Fire, the fortunate fires that bless our endeavours as we emerge from the dark half of the year. I pass through two pillars of flame, the Gateway of Summer, hoping to burn away the old parasites that cling to me.