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LGBTIQ Update and Dharma Talk - next meeting on February 28

Posted By Sangha-e Staff, Thursday, February 05, 2009
Updated: Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Diversity Tee ShirtThe LGBTIQ day on January 31 was a great success. The group discussed a name and decided on Queer Dharma. The next meeting will be on Saturday, February 28, from 1:30 - 5 pm at City Center.

Due to a technical problem, the dharma talk on January 31 by Tova Green was not recorded. It is printed here in lieu of the podcast dharma talk that is usually posted on our web site.

Dharma Talk - January 31, 2009: Diversity Is Unity

Tags:  diversity  event  LGBTIQ 

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LGBTIQ Welcoming Day - January 31, 2009

Posted By Sangha News Editor, Sunday, January 11, 2009
Updated: Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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Tova Green at Gay Pride Parade
SFZC invites you to the January 31 launching of our monthly Saturday LGBTIQ dharma gatherings. Our intention is to create a welcoming space to explore Zen practice together.

A few days after the November election eight Zen practitioners met at City Center to review the responses to a survey of LGBTIQ Zen students. Survey respondents had expressed an interest in monthly meetings to sit, study, discuss the dharma, and socialize. I suggested we begin the series of monthly meetings with a day-long event and, to my surprise, I volunteered to help plan the event. I was later invited to give the dharma talk that day. I accepted, with some trepidation about being so visible as a lesbian.

Being a lesbian at San Francisco Zen Center has not been an issue for me. I feel respected and supported by teachers and sangha members. Why, then, did I step forward to be more visible as a lesbian and give the dharma talk during Zen Center’s LGBTIQ Welcoming Day? ...

 

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Buddha at Gay Pride Parade 2008

This year has had ups and downs for the LGBTIQ community at Zen Center and in California. In June, a large contingent of Zen Center residents and friends marched in the Gay Pride parade. Led by the Buddha (wearing a paper mache head designed for the Buddha’s birthday pageant at Green Gulch Farm) and a colorful banner, we danced down Market Street around a flatbed truck transformed into a “floating Zendo.”

The California State Supreme Court had just legally sanctioned lesbian and gay marriages. Later in the summer, I performed my first wedding, marrying two young women in a joyous ceremony. Many of my friends and colleagues married their long-term partners last summer. Then, in the fall, Proposition 8 appeared to threaten our newly-won rights. On the morning of Election Day I stood at the corner of Market Street and Van Ness passing out fliers urging people to Vote No on 8. It was empowering to join thousands of others who were doing the same thing all around California. However, Proposition 8 passed, and many demonstrations followed, expressing the anger, hurt, and disappointment felt in the LGBTIQ community and among its supporters.

A few weeks ago, I saw “Milk,” the 2008 film about the first openly gay elected official in San Francisco, Harvey Milk. When, in 1977, he was organizing opposition to the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned LGBT teachers from schools in California, Milk urged gay and lesbian people to come out, to enable people to get to know us in order to dispel some of their stereotypes about lesbians and gay men. As I watched the film I realized that visibility is as important now, in 2009, as it was three decades ago.

 

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Abbot Myogen Steve Stucky at Gay Pride Parade 2008
I appreciate our many heterosexual allies in leadership roles at San Francisco Zen Center who recognize that it is important for Zen Center to explicitly welcome the LGBTIQ community to practice here. Please join us on Saturday, January 31, to celebrate this new Zen Center program.

Click here for more information about the Welcoming Day event.

 

Tags:  diversity  event  LGBTIQ 

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