DignityUSA Convention 2003

HOMILY

By Marianne Benkert Sipe
August 9, 2003

My name is Marianne Benkert Sipe. I am a psychiatrist and I have been working for the past 3 years with HIV/AIDS patients at the Owen Clinic located at the University of California in San Diego. I would like to thank Pat McArron and Dignity for inviting me to give the homily today. I am truly honored. It has great meaning for me to be with you in this way, to add my voice to yours, a voice in the desert.

It is with great pleasure that I join you today in the celebration of the Eucharist and share with you some thoughts on the gospel according to John. It is a gospel of love. We have all heard this reading many times, and it never ceases to comfort and challenge us. As I thought about this homily over the last week, in light of the recent document from Rome, ponderously entitled "Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between Homosexual persons," the simple gospel message, according to John takes on an even deeper meaning.

We psychiatrists owe a great debt to our patients, because they teach us so much. My patients at UCSD deserve my special gratitude because they have taught me about a specific illness, and about their sexual orientation. They have shared with me their joys and sorrows and their most private thoughts and anguish. I join with you as one who has great admiration for the heartbreaking struggles inherent in an illness that goes beyond sexual orientation.

I experience great empathy for the particular struggles you have to endure because of sexual orientation as you search to find your unique place within our Church. In the 3 years I have been at the Owen Clinic I have heard several hundred life-stories from my patients. I have heard of good people harassed in the work place and beaten while standing at a street corner. I have spoken with young men who were advised to leave the military which they loved, before they were pitched overboard or set up in some way so it no longer was feasible for them to serve. I spoke with a woman who was greatly concerned about her two sons, whom she felt may be using drugs. She seemed so unsupported and alone. I asked her about their father. She looked at me quizzically, and responded that she had been their father and was now their mother. As a new staff member at the clinic, I think I was the only person there who did not know her history. Mother or father, her love for her children was the same. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or straight our love and caring for our children is the same. Our love for our children is not dependent on sexual orientation.

I have heard stories of family disapproval and rejection, and thankfully stories of struggle, then acceptance and inclusion. I have spoken with persons who married, and had children before they discovered their sexual orientation. Some chose to deal with this openly, some chose the closet, with all the conflicts inherent in that choice. I have been deeply touched by stories of great sacrifice and love, as partners are nursed through multiple illnesses and are lost to death. In total I have seen persons, who struggle to live and love, as we all must, and who, like all of us, have their share of successes and failures, but always keep trying.

First and foremost we are all human beings and as human beings we crave understanding, respect, appreciation, acceptance, and love. Our sexual orientation does not matter, and our church above all should understand this. To its loss, the Church lags far behind in assimilating the findings of modern science and psychology. It also lags several centuries in being able to apologize for its errors. It took until 1992 to acknowledge that Copernicus and Galileo were right, the moving earth did revolve around the sun. We know now, that we are but a speck in our ever-expanding universe. We are exalted by the truth, never diminished by it.

The gospel of John tells us this is THE commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you.

We are called friends. We are valued and appreciated. We are respected, accepted, included. We are loved. We are all called to emulate this, to go forth and bear fruit.

As the Church grew in power, wealth and status, it lost this simple but profound message of Christ. The message labels no one. The message is all-inclusive. We are all united in Christ. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. Christ welcomed everyone to come to Him without exception.

When we get sad, conflicted and discouraged we do share in the sufferings of Christ but let us all remember that Christ wants us to share in his joy. He wants us to love in joy. This is the simple message of Christ. We are all called to love one another. We are neither male nor female, we wear no labels, we are all one in Christ Jesus. My friends, this is the good news.