In The News: Houston's Out Smart Magazine

Replayed from this online edition: http://outsmartmagazine.com/2012/04/shepherd-to-homeless-sheep/

 Trans minister headlines Unity Banquet
by Neil Ellis Orts

The Reverend Megan Rohrer is the first openly trans pastor to serve in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Rohrer has been serving in San Francisco for a decade, first as a social worker and then as a pastor and executive director for The Welcome Ministry, a service to the homeless. Along the way Rohrer has developed programs, especially for homeless LGBTQ youth, and has also been the recipient of many honors, including an honorary doctorate from Palo Alto University.

Rohrer is one of the speakers at this year’s Transgender Unity Banquet (Saturday, April 28, at the Brookhollow Sheraton, 3000 North Loop West) and will also work with Montrose Grace Place, a local ministry to homeless youth.

Neil Ellis Orts: You’ve been invited to speak at the 20th annual Transgender Unity Banquet. What can those attending expect from you?
Megan Rohrer: There’s not a theme. However, the kind folk at Grace Lutheran Church and Montrose Grace Place are helping to get me there because I’m working on an LGBTQ homeless youth leadership project, which is interviewing queer youth who are in the shelter system around the country. I’ve traveled to lots of different cities to record stories of those youth, and while I’m in Houston I’ll be able to do that with the folk at Grace Lutheran. So I imagine I’ll be doing some speaking about the stories I’ve heard from the homeless youth.

Dress whites: Rev. Rohrer taps memories of a challenging childhood to effectively minister to San Francisco’s Tenderloin District.


Tell us a little about that project—how it got started and what it hopes to accomplish.
I’ve been doing work with the chronically homeless in San Francisco for the last 10 years. The Polk Street area in San Francisco, where I work, had historically been the gay district before the Castro became popularized by Harvey Milk. When the gay community in San Francisco moved to the Castro, the lower-income queers remained in the Polk Street area and many of them were sex workers. They kind of had an economy of sex work in that neighborhood. Then the AIDS crisis came along and kind of decimated that economy. So a lot of the older homeless folk in San Francisco that I work with are the remnants of this earlier gay community that used be a little more highly functioning.

As I worked with these older, chronically homeless, mostly gay men, I started working with the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society in San Francisco and a gentleman named Joey Plaster. He was starting to uncover some of this history in a Polk Street project that he did. We worked together to research a group of pastors from the early ’60s who had been sent to San Francisco after the National Council of Churches did a survey of then-adolescent Baby Boomers and what they were up to, so churches could respond to their needs. They did their survey by picking up hitchhikers across the country, and the youth they picked up all said they wanted to go to San Francisco. So the Council sent pastors from each of the denominations to San Francisco—perhaps one of the only times that churches have been ahead of the culture. They arrived in 1963, which was before the summer of love, so the hippie kids hadn’t arrived yet.

What they found in the Tenderloin neighborhood, where they stationed themselves, were these queer homeless youth, many of them trans, and most of them hustlers of some sort. So out of this movement, the pastors mobilized and were able to get federal funds by arguing for the first time that a [low-income group] could get federal poverty dollars for reasons other than skin color.

So Joey Plaster and I used the materials that were in the Historical Society and the writings that the queer hustlers from the ’60s had written about what their lives were like, and we shared them with the LGBT homeless youth who live in the Tenderloin today. They wrote responses, and we were able to get some grant funds to share the work from the ’60s and the work that we’re doing today in a few select cities around the country. Through our work using the history of those queer youth from the ’60s with queer youth today, we’ve found ways to encourage youth across the country to become more involved politically and share their stories. My hope is that collecting the stories around the country will make it possible to have a conference in DC in 2013 where some youth from places where I’ve traveled can come together, create their own agenda of what they’d like the LGBT community to advocate on their behalf, and to actually go and talk to their congress people. That’s the progression of how the project has unfolded.

That history with the National Council of Churches is new to me.
Most people haven’t heard it because there’s this movement in contemporary churches to pretend that there’s never been a history of pastors being supportive of the gay and lesbian community. I don’t know if that’s just people who are trying to whitewash religious history, or if it’s also a sense of people wanting to feel excited that they’re doing something new.

To switch gears a bit, I saw that you grew up in South Dakota. What’s the narrative thread that connects that South Dakota childhood to your street ministry in San Francisco?
I think there are a couple of threads that come out of that. One is that almost all the homeless people I work with in San Francisco are from the Midwest or from the South. They’re individuals who are either kicked out of their families or believed their communities wouldn’t support them, so they didn’t even bother coming out because they thought it would go horribly. So even though my family had better resources for supporting and loving me, a part of my work with the homeless is out of gratitude that I had a more receptive family than other people have.

Another part is that when I was five, my parents divorced because my father’s alcoholism became so violent and difficult to manage. There was a period of time when we lived with my aunt. We could have been considered homeless if we would have chosen to identify that way. I have memories of standing in the food line and getting our WIC block of cheese. And as part of a latchkey generation, when my mom was working, I loved hanging out in the library. But it wasn’t until years later that I learned that other people who are hanging out in the library are often homeless people who have no other place to go. So while my narrative isn’t the most extreme version of how people end up homeless, it touches upon some of the same pieces. I think that when you grow up as a small kid waiting in the food lines, it’s easier to see yourself serving in the food line. It doesn’t feel like such a foreign thing. A lot of things that could have been negative baggage become healthy baggage when I work with the homeless as a pastor. All the things I had to learn as a kid having an alcoholic father make me really good working with people with a lot of addiction issues. Thank goodness I’ve been able to do a lot of self-care work and a lot of healing from some of that childhood stuff. I think there’s a kind of intuition that children of alcoholic parents have to know about when things are safe, or ways to finesse a situation so it doesn’t become violent.

Where does your resolve come from to do this work?
My college in South Dakota was really homophobic. I had to move off campus for three months because I was getting death threats and football players were threatening to rape me and religious folk were trying to throw holy water on me to exorcize gay demons. I didn’t see myself as an optimist, but I’ve always been the kind of person who, in the midst of those dark moments, had something like a mystical sense of God being with me. No matter how many people told me that what I was doing was wrong, or that I needed to choose a different path, I always had this deep sense that nothing I could do could separate me from God’s love. And I think that’s the same kind of resolve I have in working with the homeless. I have this deep belief that in the midst of what might be someone’s worst moment, God is with them and for them. When people have said there will always be queer homeless youth because there will always be a family somewhere that’s not safe, I’ve never felt that could possibly be true. I have this sense that if people just knew the stories—in the same way coming out helped advance rights for queer adults—it could make life better, and that we could be part of change.

In the News: Bay Area Reporter

'Encampment' brings attention to homeless LGBT youth

NEWS

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Published 05/19/2011

by Matt Baume

	Homeless youth and their allies staged a "street sweep" in the Castro last Saturday to bring attention to budget cuts for social service programs. Photo: Matt Baume

The May 14 encampment was part of a nationwide demonstration to raise awareness of homelessness among a demographic known as transition-age youth. Homeless and foster youth between 16 and 24 years old can face unique housing challenges, particularly as they age out of the foster care system and learn to navigate services for adults.

"We're here to engage the community on homelessness, and specifically queer homeless youth issues," said organizer Beck, who uses only one name. "We're in kind of a state of emergency, saying, 'hey community, wake up.'"

Saturday's action started at Civic Center with games, an unveiling of protest banners, and hot meals served by Food Not Bombs. A march proceeded to Harvey Milk Plaza, where speakers read poetry and called for improved access to services to get off the street.

Their requests included housing with kitchens, rather than single room occupancy hotels with no facilities for food preparation; employment opportunities for youth who are unable to complete school; and an end to the sit-lie ordinance.

According to local organizers Trans Youth Rise Above, there are 5,700 homeless youth in San Francisco, of which at least 1,000 are queer.

Operation Shine America, which coordinated similar rallies in other cities, estimates that there are 2 million homeless youth in the country. Queers for Economic Equality Now also organized the San Francisco event.

Beck explained that organizations like the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center and Larkin Street Youth Services' Castro Youth Housing Initiative have faced repeated budget cuts, reducing services that can prevent youth from living on the street.

Jodi Schwartz, executive director of LYRIC, agreed that times are tight. "There has been a sizable decrease in investments in LGBTQ youth services," she told the Bay Area Reporter. "Just for LYRIC, if we were to lose the last piece of dollars for transition-age youth workforce, our decrease in funding would be 72 percent over the last four years."

Larkin Street Executive Director Sherilyn Adams told the B.A.R. that the extent of cuts won't be known until Mayor Ed Lee releases a budget later this month.

"There's no proposed cuts to the Castro Youth program," she said, but added, "it does not begin to meet the need."

To address the potential consequences of such cuts, Lee recently convened a stakeholder group consisting of representatives from organizations that advocate for homeless youth. Based on feedback from that group, the mayor asked that the Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families prioritize funding for LGBT and undocumented youth.

While organizations hope to turn around the recent budget cuts, local organizers are seeking ways to demonstrate how the city's rate of youth homelessness could worsen.

After Saturday's protest concluded, about three dozen homeless youth spent parts of the night camped out around the Muni station, according to organizer the Reverend Megan Rohrer, director of the Welcome Ministry, a coalition of 12 churches that seek to provide a faithful response to poverty.

Rohrer is currently working with the GLBT Historical Society to raise visibility by drawing inspiration from past struggles. She incorporated a "street sweep" into Saturday's protest, in which participants swept Castro Street sidewalks with brooms to evoke a similar 1960s-era protest.

In that action, LGBTs protested the city's negligent sanitation and police roundups by pushing brooms through the Tenderloin.

Be Afraid: The Great San Francisco Sleep-In

Dear people who think it's a liability risk to have a sleep-in event:

Thank you! The fact that you think it is unsafe for people to sleep on the streets, even when it is supervised, well organized, rehearsed with the police and led by leaders who have gone on street retreats for years - means you have the ability to understand how much more vulnerable it feels for 100's of thousands of people (and particularly the young adults) to sleep on the streets every night of the year.

Part of the reason that I'll be sleeping on the streets on May 14th as a part of the Great San Francisco Sleep-In and part of the reason I'm encouraging others to join me is not so we can feel comfortable - but so that you and others can worry about us and be moved enough to respond to homelessness. I imagine you will be inclined to do more than if we slept in our beds that night.

How would our country change if we truly understood the part we are playing in the homelessness of our brothers and sisters? How would our country change if we thought every person who slept on the streets was a liability risk and we decided to no longer stand for it?

Whenever I sleep on the streets people care and worry about me, in a way that they do not worry about the others who sleep on the streets each night. If enough of us sleep on the streets on May 14th, we can get the whole country worried about those sleeping on the streets. Join me in person, or virtually (I'll be blogging about this night on the streets). Even if you're busy, don't forget to worry about it - for the purpose of inspiring you to give money, speak out and make change!

You can also read my blogged experiences of some of my past street retreats.

Thanks again for being uncomfortable. Please never get used to me sleeping on the streets. Let's get un-numb to the poverty and homelessness in our country.

Blessings to you all whether you'll sleep in a bed or on cardboard tonight.

Pastor Megan.

Evangelism and Scabby Crosses

Last night, I taught an intersexed youth how to properly bandage her arm. She had cross shaped scabs on her arms that were not nearly as deep as the pain they were trying to make visible.

Across the country, congregations, groups and even our presiding Bishop have made videos as a part of the "It Get's Better" campaign. The message is important: life is precious, all should be loved and GLBT individuals sometimes grow up to be healthy productive members of society - sometimes even to become famous.

But, when we fail in our evangelism, this is not always the case. When the Lutheran church was slow to respond to the AIDS crisis, arguing about the sexuality of the individuals rather than sharing the deep gutted gospel message that proclaims baptismal love, thousands of gay men died before it got better.

Later when the Lutheran church was slow to evangelize to GLBT individuals and got caught up in arguing about the sexuality of pastors, dozens (possibly hundreds) of pastors and would be pastors killed themselves. Countless youth and young adults fled the homes and the churches they grew up with, in search of families that could love them without hesitation.

You may be like many Lutherans who wonder why they have to extend a special welcome or evangelize to GLBT individuals. Shouldn't they know that the phrase all are welcome includes them?

Perhaps if there wasn't a 31 year delay from when Lutheran college students began demanding the church evangelize to GLBT individuals and our ability to fully do so, a need to evangelize in a special way would not be needed.

Having worked with the chronically homeless in San Francisco for that last nine years, I am convinced that we will never be able to deal with homelessness in San Francisco until congregations like yours begin evangelizing loudly to GLBT individuals.

Nearly all of the homeless folk I work with left their homes and families (predominantly from the midwest) because they experienced or thought they would experience homophobia from their communities. Even if their church never said anything about GLBT individuals, the voices of media and television personalities became so loud that they were confused with the voice of all Christians.

Or maybe you did try, but it didn't seem big enough to counteract the feelings of the rest of the community or the GLBT folk missed that Sunday.

If only to save the life of one youth, our evangelism voices must raise to the same volume and frequency as those who have negative things to say.

Evangelize like the prophet Isaiah. Speak from the longing for and demand God's justice now. Assume that more is possible and be people ready to act boldly.

Someday your evangelism will pay off and your welcome to all will be heard by all. Until then, your congregation is much better prepared to hear "It gets better" than a youth considering suicide.

If your congregation is worried about bullies who may get angry or upset if you evangelize to GLBT individuals, imagine how hard it must be for youth who lives with this experience daily and who feels they must face it alone.

Thankfully, I was able to be a pastor to the intersexed youth who needed someone to remind them that we celebrate lent as a community so that we can voice the pain and suffering of the world. And thankfully, our beloved Lutheran church is big enough so that there are pastors and congregations across the country willing to evangelize to GLBT individuals.

But, let us all work together during this Lenten season to let the whole world know that we have old rituals to embody the same feelings that may be new to the young adult who carved into her arm. We're not afraid of pain or suffering and we march towards the cross because we know Easter is waiting just around the corner.

As it is said in the echoing refrain of taize: darkness is never darkness in your sight, the deepest night is clear as the daylight.

We know the light and we must share it though loud rainbow proclaiming evangelism. It will be.

the runaway youth that flee congregations

You may have heard about the work that I'm doing in San Francisco with runaway and throwaway youth who have fled congregations, families and communities that they thought they would or actually were rejected because of their sexuality and gender identities. If not, you can read about it at the Vanguard Revisited blog.

Today, I'm thinking about the youth that flee congregations without leaving town or their families. When I talk to congregations about the fact that youth are long known for fleeing congregations after their confirmations, they chuckle nervously and wiggle in their seats with the kind of nervousness that comes from not knowing what to do or of having tried for years without any sign that their work has helped.

In 1963, the World Council of Churches faced a similar dilemma when the heads of the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Methodist denominations gathered to come up with ideas about what to do about the fact that the baby boomers were all becoming teenagers. The denominations believed that if they lost the youth that their churches would die.

Sound familiar, contemporary churches?

So, the denominations trained pastors and lay leaders to create youth lead programs and ministry opportunities. College ministries created leadership programs and youth around the country were empowered to become a major part of the church. Theology and bible study became interested in the way that Bible spoke to people's every day lives.

This is something that people often tell me they are longing for when I visit congregations around the country, so why did this stop? The problem was that no one knew how to have boundaries and individualism at the same time. People worried that if they had any boundaries at all that the youth would flee the church and never come back. So, the individualism went way to far and church stopped looking like church.

In response to all the individualism, members of congregations began to crave structure and rules about what to believe and how to behave and churches across the country responded by reigning in on individualism and by preaching mainstream communal faith that could appeal to the majority.

Now, in the midst of unpopular wars and congregations that are falling behind the conventions of society it is time to revisit the theologies and youth led ministries that the 60's popularized. However, as people who are able to learn from our past, we need to find a balance between communal activities and extreme individualism.

So what is stopping us? Perhaps it's the fact that the youth whose individualism went too far are now the bishop's and members of church council who are afraid to trust the youth and ministers of today who want to be a part of youth led worship and groups.

So, consider this an open letter to those leaders, funders and pastors who lived benefited from youth led programing but worry that it will again go to far:

Please, forgive yourselves and the generation you were a part of. Be leaders to this new generation who deserve the chance to make the same mistakes you did. I believe that this important time in your life is what led to your ability to be strong leaders. You got to experiment, have patience with those who need to do so in order learn. Be mentors to me and other pastors who want to empower youth to lead their own activities and worship experiences. And remember that we can't do it for free. The 60's were only possible because they happened during a good economy. We need your money, without strings, to create the next generation of bishops, church council members and pastors. Please help!

Are you a mushy Christian?

This recent poll about young adults and their faith was really strange to me. This silly little paragraph that stood out the most:
"Among the 65% [of young adults] who call themselves Christian, 'many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only,' Rainer says. 'Most are just indifferent. The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith.'"

I don't know what a mushy Christian is. I imagine from the context of the article that it's people who use avoid words like "Jesus is my Lord and Savior" or who do yoga. The author of the article concludes that because old school notions of Christianity don't work for young folk that they are in fact not very solid in their belief(s).

As a 30 year old pastor, I must confess that I am often the youngest person at most church services I preach at or lead. I often feel like I'm not actually an adult at these meetings and gatherings because of the marked age difference. Yet, I often hear that the church wants to engage young folk (read those 30 and below) and become more welcoming and diverse.

Yet, when we young folk with our full diversity of sexuality, gender expression, body art, piercings, ADHD, physical abilities and yearning to mash up some of the spiritual practices and experiences from other faith traditions that help us understand our Christian stories and rituals better show up in their pews, very few churches are willing to let us be fully who we are. Or if they do, they stare, make comments or smoother you.

In the early 60's the National Council of Churches faced a very similar reality. Young folk were not interested in church and worship that did not speak to their experiences. As a result, churches adapted, experimented and were transformed by the contributions of young folk. The sixties also brought a lot of experimentation and over-indulgence that the church still seems to be recovering from. Perhaps the boundaries got pushed too far in the 60's, but I hope that the baby boomers who got this freedom when they were young will be gracious enough to trust a new generation with the future of the church.

Like it or not, we are the future (and present) of the church.

I invite anyone interested in exploring ways we can claim the moving and meaningful parts of the ancient Christian tradition while making it fresh and relevant to our daily lives, to join me and the fabulous Tommy Dillon as a part of the Community of Travelers (starting September 12th at 5pm).

You can participate in person at St. Aidan's Episcopal or join us online via live stream. Mushy or not, all are welcome to worship with us!