A Queer's Passover Reflections

The first night of Passover will be celebrated around millions of tables tonight. Gatherings on this night and throughout this week commemorate the “passing over” of the homes of Jews by the angel of death, whose mission was the killing of all first-born sons of families whose homes were not marked by the blood of a sacrificed animal.

The holiday celebrants, sharing a meal at a Seder dinner, collectively tell the story of the enslavement of Jews in Egypt and the travails and tribulations of their exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. The Egyptian slaveowners had been cursed by a series of ten plagues, the final and worst of which was the murder of their first-born sons by the angel of death, avoided by Jews who had gotten the heads-up from Moses to smear their lintels and doorposts with the blood of sacrificial spring lambs. The Jews fleeing their bondage in Egypt ate a flatbread called matzo, unleavened because their great haste allowed no time for the bread to rise. According to some accounts, matzo is also known as “poor man’s bread” and is eaten on Passover to bring humility to the occasion and to remind Jews of what it is like to be a poor slave.

The Passover celebration and its Haggadah, a text that is read at the Seder table, brims with lessons, messages, and stories of perseverance, hope, and the triumph of determination over despair. Moses, after all, started his life as an adopted son of the Pharoah's daughter who had rescued him from the Nile River where he was adrift in a basket. His own birth mother had saved Moses' life by setting his basket on the water because the Pharoah had ordered the execution of all Jewish first-born males, in order to nip rebellions before they could bud. Moses was raised as the grandson of the Pharoah, but was nursed and tended to by his own mother, who was the only woman from whom Moses would take milk. Moses grew to strapping manhood and, on orders from God, led his people out of Egypt and into freedom in the land Canaan, an excellently surprising trajectory for a child from a tragically disrupted early life.

The story of Moses and his liberated people serves as inspiration to the downtrodden and despairing folk of many different countries, many different oppression experiences, and many different historical time frames. We homosexuals, bisexuals and gender transgressors can take encouragement from the Exodus story, too.

First, we cannot ever dismiss or invalidate the personal histories of our brothers and sisters, nor should we condemn those among us who have spent time in the literal laps of our oppressors. The example set by Moses shows us that the privileges and the entitlements of the ruling class can be foresworn when a person comes out into his own life, as did the leader of the ancient and enslaved Jews. A living, breathing and contemporary gay example of a Moses-style turnaround is the Rev. Mel White, a former speechwriter for Rev. Jerry Falwell, who came out as a gay man and leads an organization called Soulforce, dedicated to relentless and nonviolent resistance to the religious oppressions of LGBT people.

Second, we must never accept the assertion that God stands on the side of the oppressors. It's a ridiculous claim, especially for preachers who also claim that their God is a God of love. But even more to the point, the God of the Jews, who were pitilessly exploited by the Egyptians, afflicted their tormentors with ten plagues, until the Egyptians became persuaded that holding Jewish slaves just wasn't worth the cost. Reflect for a moment on the story of the Cracker Barrel restaurant company, which notched at least 11 cases of blatant anti-LGBT discrimination against its workers in the 1990s. Cracker Barrel reversed itself after a decade-long campaign by LGBT activists and company shareholders, including a New York City pension fund, forced vote after vote on a resolution to add non-discrmination language to company policy. Hey, those were just shareholders, not even a deity, but Cracker Barrel, too, decided that discrimination wasn't worth the cost.

Third, we must remain humble and resist arrogance. Yes, we're right about the goodness of LGBT people. Yes, we are right to be proud of who we are, where we come from, and the many accomplishments of our young movement. But it is enriching to eat unleavened bread and to listen carefully to the stories of others: LGBT people who don't look like us; LGBT people who live in other cultures and confront the oppression of homosexuality in very different forms; non-LGBT people whose lives are also shaped by the failure of our government to keep good the promises of equality and justice for all. When we eat the unleavened bread and when we hear others' stories, we do well to make those stories part of our story and, especially, when our Exodus from persecution steps off, we must look back and make sure that no one has been left behind.

Happy Pesach!

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