A Lesbian Has Her Day In Court

For the past two weeks a courtroom here in Charleston has been my place in the universe, a place for giving support to a young woman, Jessica Hudson, the plaintiff in a case involving the charge of discrimination.

Jessica was hired to be the director of a nonprofit afterschool program that serves students in kindergarten through 12^th grade. However, when the board discovered that she is a lesbian, she was fired.

The program is housed in three Baptist churches and pastors argued that she would not be suitable for the job because members of those churches would not approve of her being the “face of the organization.” The threat of losing the church space, as well as financial contributions, hung like a sword over the program’s board. Testimony from clergy board members was tenuous as they tried to draw a distinction between the role that churches play in housing and supporting the activities, and the center’s separate nonprofit status.

West Virginia does not include sexual orientation as a protected class under its antidiscrimination laws, even though the City of Charleston does. Here is where Jessica’s lawyer played an unusual and fascinating card. He accused the board of discriminating against her because of her gender, a class protected by law in West Virginia. The idea behind this was simply that Jessica was unacceptable to the board because a woman is not supposed to have another woman as a partner. Jessica was not acting like a woman.

It is maddening to have to listen to the clergy say that homosexuality is a sin and, therefore, it is not acceptable for someone like Jessica to work with children. Sitting there, wrestling with my own hard feelings about these pastors, I catch a glimpse of what might be a better way to understand these men I so vehemently disagree with.

What comes to mind in this place and time in the courtroom, as I listen to these clergy, is the Lightman article, Our Place In The Universe. My recollection pertains to astronomer Garth Illingworth’s observation about the expanding nature of the cosmos.  “Simply put, the cosmos has gotten larger and larger. At each new level of distance and scale, we have had to contend with a different conception of the world we live in.” A different conception of the world we live in.

I think about that as these pastors spin out what I see as their flawed mythology about God and gays—old familiar lies they have attributed to God and based their lives on, even sworn to as truth under oath in a courtroom. I have the sense that they most likely have expanded their view over the years to address lies that society spread about black people. And now here they are being tested to rethink, in an expanded way, their view of gay people, and they are not up to it. A different concept of the world, in so far as sexual orientation is concerned, escapes them. The Spirit of God that offers an unfolding and ever-expanding truth seems incapable of renewing the rigid boundaries of their faith.

The jury returned a verdict that found all parties not guilty of gender discrimination, but did find three of the board members—two clergy and the president of the board—guilty of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

During the trial, I thought of Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” Hester is forced to carry on the breast of her gown “a rag of scarlet cloth” shaped in the letter “A.” It is the Puritan badge of shame for being an adulterous woman.

It is quite clear to me that these Christians, unable to recognize one’s sexual orientation as a gift from God and not a curse, have failed in their attempt to give Jessica a scarlet “L” to wear as a sign of what they label as sin—being a lesbian who loves another woman. Ironically, she will claim the “L,” not on their terms, not as a sign of sin, but as a God-given justification of the woman she was created to be in this mysterious universe. She is a lesbian and the “L” carries with it the added definition of liberation—freedom from old religious lies.