Understanding Intersectionality for the Freedom of All

First delivered as a sermon on Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday weekend 2018 at the Community Unitarian Universalist Community at White Plains, NY 

Rev. Dr. LoraKim Joyner

I was born into a racist culture and family – specifically in Atlanta, Georgia. We moved to Northern Virginia in 1968, only a few months before Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. My parents enrolled me in Louise Archer Elementary School an all African American school, founded in a black neighborhood mostly fenced off from white suburbs. I started only a few months after the school had been desegregated and I was in the first batch of white children to attend.

I found myself making friends quickly Thea, who I invited home so that we could practice a school play. She lived nearby, but on that the other side of that fence, which we climbed to get to my house. My mother came home from work and saw us playing in the living room and told me to get Thea to leave. As soon as she left my mother slapped my face and said, "Don’t you ever bring another _______ into this house again."

My family has a lot of work to do and so do I to combat that training of seeing more worth in some than others, undoing the fear that I would be loved less if I thought any differently. Though my example is more extreme than many, none of us escape this enculturation.

 

My family is not just my biologic nuclear family, but it is my cultural family anchored here in the USA. I didn't know how that family had trained me into a dominating colonizing culture until I started to work in Latin America. I consulted with the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery project. Once a million of these lived on the island precolonization, but by 1973, only 14 remained

The indigenous people were long gone due to European colonization, and the parrot nearly went extinct due to the large deforestation of the island after the USA invasion and colonization in 1898. The USA collapsed the Puerto Rican economy and put sugar cane all over the island. Due to extreme efforts the parrot numbers somewhat rebounded. But the recent hurricanes this late summer, Irma and Maria, devastated the people and the parrots there, vulnerable due to past and ongoing extraction economies, and instutionalized racist and speciesist business, taxation, and aid practices.

My human, USA family has a lot of work to do, and so do I because I benefited and continue to do so at the cost of the many. None of us escapes the work to stop this extraction and domination economy that marginalizes and colonizes.

I responded to the work my human family and I had to do by taking up the call to Unitarian Universalist (UU) Ministry. My sense of family grew to incorporate Unitarian Universalism. While preparing for the ministry I learned the long, hard, and painful history of how Unitarian Universalists had made many mistakes in how people of color were treated in our movement, as evidenced by the book, "Black Pioneers in a White Denomination," multiple painful episodes since, and ongoing ones as evidences in this book.

My UU family has a lot of work to do. I know this because I am at the forefront of a UU movement to understand how what harms animals, also harms humans. We ask how extending our sense of the inherent worth and dignity to individuals of all species helps humans too. This work brings up the pain and loss of how deficient UUs have been with people, as well as other species. This is uncomfortable, painful, and stressful, and it seems that none of us can say or do the right thing. Sound like fun? It is hard, but there is a tang of freedom in the air. Even if you aren't UU, join us as various possible denominational change, votes, and study groups are coming in the future. My family is doing the work, and we need to do more, for we have not won freedom yet

Our work for freedom means addressing intersectionality. Intersectionality means that oppression is experienced differently based on our various identities. Women experience oppression differently than men, and blacks different from whites, and hence black women experience oppression from being both black and female. The corollary is also true - we benefit from a system that oppressed others based on our identities and locations of privilege. I am white human North American from the lower middle class -this gives me privileges that others have, and oppressions that others don’t have.

Intersectionality also means that there are core oppressions that intersect all identities. Some call this core oppression patriarchy, which isn't really about men, so relax guys. It is a culture based on seeing different others as less than, which is tied to dominance, power over, white supremacy, and inequality, all of which catch each of us in a sticky web of harm and benefit.

What does the work of intersectionality look like?

First off, it is not shame or blame or pointing fingers at who oppresses more or is oppressed more. We all are enculturated to be oppressors and oppressed. We are not to blame, but we are responsible. All of us.

The world has lived with 500 years of modernity and colonization to hide the reality that we are inextricably tied to one another and all life in beauty, tragedy, and death. "Wishing for life at any price continuously calls forth death - the death of other people, other beings, the extinguishing of languages, ideas cultures, and worst of all, possibilities and degrees of freedom" (Andrea Weber). We all are trapped. Our work for freedom is undoing the core oppression for our co-liberation. For this liberation we must learn to "live without fear and to die courageously."

This is a death of individualism so that all are centered. In the circle of life, the suffering of another is also ours. In the countries I work in Latin America there is constant evidence of the devastation of colonialism and USA foreign policy. The people I work with, descendants of disappeared indigenous cultures and slaves, and the dearth of wildlife, do not let me forget it. But I am so alive there for it takes everything I’ve got to show up and be vulnerable. What began as a wound ends in a caressing touch. I’m undone and then made whole.

The work for freedom means we center the marginalized voices. Our individualism dies every time we allow another to speak. And we are born again.

We must center what we marginalize within ourselves. Miki Kashton, a leader in Nonviolent Communication, told me a few weeks ago to not believe a thing you grew up thinking or doing, for it was all based on core oppressions. We need to lay aside the armor that doesn't protect us, but fetters us. Let us lay that burden down.

We must center ourselves in history, ecology, and biology. We must look at past societal practices and how we have been harmed and benefited. Thanks goodness for our neuroplastic brains which are ready to believe that power over is the only way to meet our needs, but can also learn that cooperation and co-liberation brings flourishing to many lives. We must accept that we will die and no level of control will stop that. We must embrace  reality - to accept all that is now and also, paradoxically, do everything in our power to change it. We are so powerful in freedoms return embrace.

 (photo by Dagmar Ollman)

We need resilience because we tread a fragile path of feeling shame, separation, and oppression, but there is joy lurking in that journey. We can take a beginning step by sharing our social location when we meet with others, without shame or blame, being honest of our privilege and oppression. We confess. Here is an example.

My name is LoraKim Joyner. I identify as a white human heterosexual female of European descent raised in the southern USA in the lower middle class, 2 generations from Alabama sharecroppers, currently living outside of NY City. My childhood was full of experiences and hard lessons taught from family, friends, the surrounding society, and a dominant oppressive culture that acculturated within me the trappings of privilege, white domination, human domination, as well as victimhood. I am also a mother and grandmother of people who identify as of European/indigenous descent from Honduras. My work in the world is as conservationist throughout Latin America, wildlife veterinarian, Unitarian Universalist minister, and a Compassionate Communication trainer and practitioner.

All of this history and categories of oppression and oppressor cannot be unwoven from my relationships. They form me but they do not bind me. We can help each other loose these chains of bondage by sharing how this message  intersects with your identities, experiences, and locations of oppression and privilege.

I am held rapt by the power and hope of freedom won together, for none are free until all are free. My father in his older years nearly died of heart failure, but miraculously a heart match was found for him quickly. He was a small man so the heart of an African descent girl who had died in a car accident became his. My parents were grateful, and softened.

Let us not let death, or the fear of death, keep us from giving our hearts to one another.

They who bind to themselves a joy

Do the winged life destroy

But they who kiss the joy as it flies

Live in eternity's sunrise

(adapted from William Blake)

What You Can Do

1.  Join our new Freedom Project. This is an international campaign aimed at stopping the wildlife trade - most notably in parrots but also in other wildlife. We will use multimedia to show the vision of all beings being free, such as the picture below of a rescued yellow-naped parrot chick that almost ended up as a pet but was released to fly free. Materials and resources will be available that highlight our slogans, "No Cage is Big Enough," "None are Free until All Are Free." and "Tu Casa No Es Mi Casa." 

 (photo by Christianna Martynowski)

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2. If you are Unitarian Universalist, join the First Principle Project and engage in the work of intersectionality.

ON NOT EATING THAT TURKEY: RELIGIOUS SOCIALISM AND RELIGIOUS VEGANISM

Today's  Guest Author Rev. M. Lara Hoke

Minister, Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Andover, Massachusetts

Unitarian Universalist Animal Ministry Board Member

“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” ― Paul Farmer

This Thanksgiving, I don’t know what will bother my friends around the table more—that I’m a democratic socialist or that I’m a vegan.

Some of my democratic socialist friends tell me that the problem with vegans is that we don’t care enough about people and the oppressions they face. I’ve had progressive friends who support the Black Lives Matter movement say that standing up for animal rights is alienating because it suggests that we care more about animals than about people of color. To me, this makes no more sense than my right-wing friends telling me that if I support Black Lives Matter it means that I am anti-police. I support the Black Lives Matter movement and I am grateful that the police – the good ones, who outnumber the bad – would risk their lives to keep me safe if it ever came to that.

Some of my vegan friends tell me that the problem with democratic socialists is that we don’t care enough about non-human animals. They point out that although democratic socialists and other political “lefties” think of ourselves as cutting edge and historically marginalized by the establishment, it is animal-rights activists and radical environmental activists who are targeted by the establishment. Just read Green Is the New Red by Will Potter, they say.

Both groups talk about intersectionality of justice issues, yet sometimes fail to see the connections between democratic socialism and veganism.

Article II of the DSA Constitution and Bylaws states, “We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on… non-oppressive relationships” (see: http://www.dsausa.org/constitution). The vast majority of meat and other animal products comes from factory farms, which create enormous suffering for animals and those who work there. Animals live in filth, packed together too tightly to move, with no access to the outdoors. When it comes time to kill them – which could be considered a mercy killing, given their living conditions – they are not killed mercifully. Although bludgeoned or crushed, some are still alive as they are skinned.

And factory farming involves human suffering, as well.  According to the Food Empowerment Project (seehttp://www.foodispower.org/factory-farm-workers/), “Factory farm workers are consistently exposed to a variety of harmful gases and particulate matter and also suffer from repetitive stress injuries. [They suffer from] chronic aches and pains, respiratory disorders, cardiovascular complications and premature death.” Many of the workers are undocumented and thus afraid to protest unsafe and unhealthy conditions. I would like to help my vegan friends make these connections between animal and human suffering and consider that unfettered capitalism is the common culprit.

Full disclosure: I have been a vegan for about one-and-a-half years. For 15 years before that, I was a vegetarian (with occasional lapses into pescatarianism). I did not become a vegetarian because of animals at all. I became a vegetarian because I read that four pounds of grain led to just one pound of meat. Thus, more humans would have food to eat if we grew more grain for human consumption. I became a vegetarian because I learned that factory farms create an enormous amount of pollution. As Jonathan Safran Foer points out in Eating Animals, factory farming is “the number one cause of global warming, it’s responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than everything else put together and the UN has said it's one of the top two or three causes of every single environmental problem on the planet.” My vegetarianism grew out of humanitarian concerns and a desire to care for the planet. I would like to help my democratic socialist comrades make the connections between not eating animals or animal products and ecology and humanitarian concerns.

Some omnivores will claim that a vegan diet is more expensive, adding another layer of elitism. For those of us who are middle class or wealthy and living in western industrial countries, being a vegan is not necessarily more expensive than eating animal products. For low-income people in the United States, the situation is both constrained and complex. We need to fight for low-income Americans to have increasing access to healthful food options; it should be a high priority for vegans. The situation is very different in other parts of the world, where some humans need to hunt and fish and use animal products to have enough to eat. Even in places with largely vegetarian diets, there is a need for access to more and better food.

A. Breeze Harper points out that “dietary habits and food production connect to … the dismantling or maintenance of environmental racism, speciesism, ecological devastation, health disparities, institutional racism, overconsumption, and other social injustices” (read more in Harper’s book, Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society). This, in a nutshell, is why I believe veganism and democratic socialism go hand in hand. As a person of faith, I feel called to be both a religious democratic socialist and a religious vegan.

Back to the first question: Which is more bothersome to my tablemates this holiday, my democratic socialism or my veganism?  I’m not sure, but I do know that it will be easier to get through Thanksgiving without mentioning that I’m a democratic socialist. (However, I wouldn’t bet against my mentioning both.)

Rev. M. Lara Hoke is the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Andover, Massachusetts. She believes, as Mahatma Gandhi said, "Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is." Lara discovered DSA when she was a student at Harvard Divinity School, taking a course with Cornel West. This Thanksgiving, she is grateful that her family,including her in-laws, have been so gracious about her veganism. Lara wants all the turkeys out there to know that although she became a vegetarian for humans and the environment, she became a vegan primarily because of her love for animals.

Expanding the Circle

Guest Author:  Rev. Meredith Garmon

Senior Minister

Community Unitarian Church at White Plains, NY

Delivered October 12, 2014

Except from Sermon:

To say that every being has inherent worth and dignity wouldn’t require us to care as much about Tommy as we do about the humans in our prisons and warehouse nursing homes, nor would it say all beings warranted the same level of concern and respect, nor would it require us to become vegans. It would function to open our spirits to a kinder regard – at whatever level each of us deems appropriate.

Our principles are not like laws. All our principles do is point the direction in which they encourage us to explore how far we individually are ready to go.

Expand the circle of concern and respect. There are human groups who need that circle more securely expanded: prisoners, elderly, African Americans, Hispanics, indigenous peoples, women, LGBT folk, persons with disabilities.

Expand the circle of concern and respect. And there are nonhuman animals to include within the compass of our hearts. Caring about your neighbor never curtails your love for your own family. Caring about the other, the outcast, doesn’t hinder your belongingness in or support of your own community.

Expanding the circle in a new way actually helps strengthen other circles that we have incompletely expanded because all beings really does mean all of us. Inclusion strengthens, rather than weakens. Love is a model for more love.

The sacred hoop of our people is one of many hoops that make one circle. Let us stretch it wide – wide as daylight and starlight.

Whole Sermon with Reading: (you can get a copy of the recording here)

Expanding the Circle[1]

Reflection on the “Appeal to Nature” Fallacy

“Appeal to nature” is a fallacy, for even if there were consensus on how to draw the line between “natural” and “unnatural,” (and there isn’t) that would tell us nothing about acceptable or unacceptable behavior.

We used to hear that same-sex romantic relationships were unnatural. Since the Supreme Court, on Mon Oct 6, declined to review lower-court decisions in favor of same-sex marriage, we very quickly saw 10 new states begin to issue same-sex marriage licenses. It's clearer than ever that the idea that same-sex romantic relationships are "unnatural" will not stand.

We still hear appeals to nature when it comes to eating meat. We have the equipment for eating meat. We have incisors for biting into meat and a digestive tract that can process and use nutrients from the flesh of other animals. It’s natural.

Yes, we did evolve to eat meat. But we didn't evolve for there to be seven billion of us. More precisely, evolution equipped us fairly well for survival in the world of a million years ago, and less well for living sustainably in a world headed toward nine billion humans by 2055 consuming resources at the rate we do. If we're all going to be sustainably fed, we'll have to forgo the resource waste, greenhouse-gas emissions, and pollution of meat production.

So let us look more carefully at what nature really teaches. Appropriating a structure that served one purpose and putting it to a very different purpose is a common maneuver in evolution's playbook. Mammalian forelimbs get turned into bat wings – or dolphin fins. Antennae get turned into mandibles. A jaw bone in dinosaurs, fish, and reptiles got appropriated and made into an auditory bone in mammals. An ancestor of wasps and bees had an ovipositor that got appropriated and made into a stinger. Certain fish developed a swim bladder, which they could fill with air, allowing the fish to stay at a given depth.The swim bladder evolved into the lung of the earliest lungfish – and from there into the lungs of land animals. A device for staying at a given depth in water turned into the essential step for moving onto land! Structures that served one purpose get put to very different purposes. Happens all the time.

“Nature” gave us a lot of “equipment.” It’s up to us how, and whether, to use it.

Our reproductive organs evolved to serve the purpose of reproduction, yet we use them, with less and less guilt and shame these days, for intimacy and connection in ways that do not lead to reproduction. We can intentionally choose to do what nature itself also does: appropriate what is given and put it to completely different purposes. Our reproductive system can reproduce -- but it's just fine if it doesn't. Our digestive system can handle meat -- but it's just fine if it doesn't.

With the “appeal to nature” fallacy out of the way, we are free to use our moral capacity to reflect on the level of suffering, and the level of environmental damage, our dietary choices may inflict.

Inclusion Strengthens, Rather than Weakens

“For I was seeing in the sacred manner the shape of all things of the spirit, and the shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle, wide as daylight and starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.” (Black Elk)”

Many hoops that make one circle. Our moral progress as a people can be measured by how far we have expanded the circle of our concern and respect. All the many hoops of our care -- hoops of family, tribe, locality, state, nation, and favorite sports team – make one big circle. Is our circle as wide as daylight and starlight?

We have expanded the circle in many ways since the voyages 522 years ago that we are remembering this Columbus Day weekend. Columbus’ expedition expanded the circle of the European mind to include awareness of a new world. Neither Columbus nor any of the powers of Europe were prepared then to expand their circle of concern and respect to the people they encountered in this new world. That has been the work of later generations: ending slavery, extending suffrage to women.

This past week (2014 Oct 6 – 12) was a good week for expanding the circle of concern and respect. The Seattle City Council and the Portland, Oregon school board each voted to recognize Indigenous people’s Day on the same day as Columbus Day. Minneapolis made the same move last April, and the state of South Dakota, since 1990, has recognized the second Monday of October as Native American Day. On the day for remembering Columbus, let us also – or maybe, instead – remember the worth and dignity of those whose worth and dignity Columbus could not see.

Let our circle grow larger than it has been. It was a remarkable week for expanding the circle of our concern and respect to same-sex couples asking for the respect of recognizing their marriages. The 4^th, 7^th, and 10^th circuit courts of appeal had earlier ruled in favor of expanding the circle of constitutional protection to same-sex marriage, but had stayed their decisions, pending appeal. When, last Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review those decisions, that was the end of the appeals process, meaning those circuit court decisions became law.

The next day, Tuesday, the 9^th circuit court also expanded the circle. Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for a unanimous court, said:

“The lessons of our constitutional history are clear: Inclusion strengthens, rather than weakens, our most important institutions. When same-sex couples are married, just as when opposite-sex couples are married, they serve as models of loving commitment to all.”

Inclusion strengthens, rather than weakens. Love is a model for more love.

Of course, the history of inclusion, of expanding the circle, has not been smooth. We ended slavery – except that we didn’t. World-wide estimates of the number of slaves today range from 12 million to 29 million. Some migrant farmworkers in the U.S., for all practical purposes, work as slaves: they’re watched, it’s hard to escape, they’re forced to work.

Women got the vote, but we balked at an ERA, and gender inequality, sexual assault and harassment, and domestic abuse continue to oppress women.

Résumés with white sounding names have a 50 percent greater chance of being called in for an interview than identical resumes with an African-American sounding name. Black renters are told about 11 percent fewer rental units and black homebuyers are shown a fifth fewer homes than their white counterparts. Blacks and whites use illegal drugs at similar rates, but blacks are arrested for it at three times the rate of whites. Black offenders of any crime receive, on average, 10% longer sentences than white offenders of the same crime. So the circle of inclusion – of justice and equality – has not been fully expanded to our siblings of color.

While recent progress on marriage equality has been stunning, LGBT folk continue to face difficulties. Transgender and gender non-conforming people face rampant discrimination in every area of life: education, employment, family life, public accommodations, housing, health, police and jails, and ID documents. Forty-seven states have anti-hate crime laws -- only 24 states include sexual orientation in their legislation. More than half of the states do not ban discrimination by employers or public accommodations based on sexual orientation. Seventy-five percent of US students have no state laws to protect them from harassment and discrimination in school based on their sexual orientation. In public high schools, 97 percent of students report regularly hearing homophobic remarks from their peers. Gay men and lesbians get worse health care. The circle of inclusion has not been fully expanded to our LGBT siblings.

But here’s the thing. We don’t have to fully secure those hoops before pushing on to expand the circle in completely new ways. If we had waited until equality of rights and opportunities for former slaves and their descendants had been fully secured before turning our attention to women’s voting rights, we would still be waiting. Indeed wherever there is injustice or cruelty, it makes injustice and cruelty anywhere else a little easier. Anytime we expand the circle anywhere, it makes more glaring our failure to do have secured inclusion in other areas – and brings increased attention to correct the deficiency. Love models more love.

The Moral Frontier

So what’s next? Where else shall we consider expanding the circle? What moral progress might we be on the verge of making?

Princeton philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah has advanced three criteria for identifying a practice that is on the verge of being widely condemned as immoral – practices that we now engage in that our great-grandchildren will look back at us with something like the moral disdain with which we look back at, say, witch prosecutors or slaveholders.

First criteria, the arguments against the practice have been around for a while. People have heard them, and the arguments are simmering in the back of our collective consciousness. For instance, the case against slavery didn't suddenly pop up in an instantaneous transformative insight -- a blinding moment of moral clarity. The moral argument against slavery had been around for centuries. It just took a while for it to really sink in. Arguments for women’s suffrage were around a long time even before the 1848 Seneca Falls convention more-or-less officially kicked off the US suffrage movement – and it took 72 years after that before women’s suffrage was won.

Second criteria for a practice beginning to become ripe for moral condemnation: Even those who defend it don’t offer a moral defense. They don’t say, “this is right.” Rather, they argue from tradition, or human nature, or necessity. Defenders of slavery said, “We have to have slaves to get the cotton crop in.” Or “this is how we’ve always done it.” Or “it’s human nature for some people to give the orders and others to obey them.”

The third criterion is that we see a lot of pushing the issue out of our minds. At some level we do know it’s wrong, but we just put it out of mind. We don’t want to think about it. But we can ignore something only so long before the inevitable return of the repressed. Those who ate the sugar or wore the cotton that the slaves grew simply didn't think about what made those goods possible. It was the abolitionists’ job to make clear and vivid the slave conditions so that it couldn’t be ignored.

Appiah then applies these criteria and discerns four areas most likely to be on the verge of change – change that will leave our descendants judging us immoral for allowing certain practices to continue as long as they did.

Our prison system. There is no good reason for having over 2 million people behind bars, nor for subjecting them to the horrors and abuse typical of our prisons.

Our warehoused elderly. Another 2 million of our citizens, the elderly, are warehoused in nursing homes, out of sight, out of mind, cut off from families, often treated abysmally.

Arguments against these atrocities have been around a long time, no one defends them on moral grounds, and their persistence is enabled only because we push it out of mind. How did we as a people let that happen?

These are two areas where we’ve seen the circle of concern and respect contract. We didn’t used to be so awful about imprisoning so much of our population or warehousing so many elderly, and for those who did go to prison or a nursing home, we didn’t use to treat them so badly. We’ve written them off – out of the circle of concern and respect. The expanding circle will need to take them back in again.

A third issue is environmental destruction. Expand the circle to take in our planet itself.

The fourth issue that Appiah mentions is the cruelty of meat production. It meets the criteria for an issue where our moral perspective is getting ready to shift.

First: have the arguments been around a long time and had a chance to sink in? Yes. It has been 230 years since Jeremy Bentham wrote:

“The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ Nor, ‘Can they talk?’ But, ‘Can they suffer?’…The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.”

Second: do even the defenders not offer a moral defense? In fact, they do not. People who eat factory-farmed bacon, or hamburgers, or chicken rarely offer a moral justification for what they're doing. Those who do it, do it from habit. We choose foods for comfort, I believe, and habits are comforting. We put out of our minds the stomach-turning stories about what the animals went through to give their flesh to our comfort habits at the lowest possible price.

And that’s the third criterion: is the issue generally just pushed out of mind? Yes, it is.

“Ten billion animals are slaughtered for human consumption each year. And, unlike the farms of yesteryear where animals roamed freely, today most animals are factory farmed -- crammed into cages where they can barely move and fed a diet tainted with pesticides and antibiotics. These animals spend their entire lives in crates or stalls so small that they can’t even turn around. Farmed animals are not protected from cruelty under the law -- in fact, the majority of state anticruelty laws specifically exempt farm animals from basic humane protection.” (Appiah)

It’s not the killing of them that I think will earn our great-grandchildren’s greatest condemnation. We all have to die. It’s the unconscionable suffering we make them endure while they live.

“At least 10 million [cattle] at any time are packed into feedlots, saved from the inevitable diseases of overcrowding only by regular doses of antibiotics, surrounded by piles of their own feces, their nostrils filled with the smell of their own urine. Picture it -- and then imagine your grandchildren seeing that picture.”

We will be at an embarrassing loss, for there is no good explanation for why we do that to our fellow creatures. So miserable do we make their lives that killing them is the kindest thing we do.

We rationalize that their suffering doesn’t count. And why doesn’t it? Yes, it’s real pain, yes, they are beings capable of rich emotional lives. Their brain’s mechanisms of wanting – wanting to be to be free, and free of pain – work pretty much the way your brain or mine would want those things.

The First Principle Project

We also know that the meat production industry produces 18% of all greenhouse gases – more than the entire transportation sector. If climate change is a concern (and it surely is), the one single most effective step would be to end meat production. A vegetarian driving a hummer is doing less harm to the planet than a meat-eater driving a Prius.

Expanding the circle of care and concern – taking the next step in moral progress, the next step in growing our capacity for compassion, is expanding the circle to include all sentient beings – all beings that feel.

It’s been a good week for expanding the circle of inclusion: cities recognizing indigenous peoples day, states granting same-sex marriage rights. In the news this week was also this item:

A state appellate court in Albany this week heard arguments on whether Tommy, held in captivity in Gloversville, NY, was entitled to a writ of habeas corpus. Tommy is a 26-year-old chimpanzee. The court was considering whether he could be considered a legal person who could – with the same assistance of a lawyer that we would all have to depend on – sue for his freedom.

Tommy’s lawyer argued: “He’s detained against his will.” No chimpanzee would want to live

“in the conditions in which he’s living. He can understand the past, he can anticipate the future, and he suffers as much in solitary confinement as a human being.”

The lawyer expressed hope that Tommy, if deemed a person, might soon be able to retire, as many New Yorkers do, to Florida. There’s an island preserve there with hundreds of other chimps.

We don’t know how the court will rule, but the very idea of chimpanzees with legal rights represents a sea change. Our attitudes about animals are shifting – the circle of inclusion is expanding, and inclusion strengthens rather than weakens the protections for all of us.

I believe in expanding the circle of inclusion. I want to say all beings matter. Humans matter more – but all beings matter.

A number of Unitarian Universalists have begun to suggest that we can do better than affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We can, in fact, affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every being. It’s called the “First Principle Project” – a project to revise our first principle to replace “every person” with “every being.”

As it happens, this congregation, Communty Unitarian Church at White Plains, had a ministerial intern some years ago -- some of you might recall him, Nate Walker -- who, way back in 2005, preached from this pulpit about the inherent worth and dignity of every being. I'm happy to tell you that consideration of that idea is, in fact, slowly growing among more and more UUs -- as well it should -- thanks in part to the leadership of my now-colleague, Rev. Nate Walker. My colleague and spouse, Rev. LoraKim Joyner has been at the forefront of the First Principle project.

At our next General Assembly, if 15 congregations ask for it, there will be a motion on the agenda to establish a two-year study commission to investigate pros and cons of changing our first principle from every person to every being. A year or two after that, the study commission makes its recommendation. If it’s a recommendation for change, it will then have to be passed by a two-thirds vote of the delegates at two consecutive annual General Assemblies.

Right now we say that every person has inherent worth and dignity. This is aspirational, and it doesn’t mean we can’t punish criminals, nor that we have to love strangers as much as our family, nor that we should support enforcing absolute equality of income for everyone. But it does function to open our spirits to a kinder regard – at whatever level each of us deems appropriate.

To say that every being has inherent worth and dignity wouldn’t require us to care as much about Tommy as we do about the humans in our prisons and warehouse nursing homes, nor would it say all beings warranted the same level of concern and respect, nor would it require us to become vegans. It would function to open our spirits to a kinder regard – at whatever level each of us deems appropriate.

Our principles are not like laws. All our principles do is point the direction in which they encourage us to explore how far we individually are ready to go.

Expand the circle of concern and respect. There are human groups who need that circle more securely expanded: prisoners, elderly, African Americans, Hispanics, indigenous peoples, women, LGBT folk, persons with disabilities.

Expand the circle of concern and respect. And there are nonhuman animals to include within the compass of our hearts. Caring about your neighbor never curtails your love for your own family. Caring about the other, the outcast, doesn’t hinder your belongingness in or support of your own community.

Expanding the circle in a new way actually helps strengthen other circles that we have incompletely expanded because all beings really does mean all of us. Inclusion strengthens, rather than weakens. Love is a model for more love.

The sacred hoop of our people is one of many hoops that make one circle. Let us stretch it wide – wide as daylight and starlight.

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[1] Delivered 2014 Oct 12.

Why I Choose the Conversation but Not the Goal (Yet)

Guest Author:   Rev. Karen Brammer

Minsiter, Fourth Unitarian Fellowship, in Mohegan Lake, New York

Green Sanctuary Manager, Unitarian Universalist Association

The mission of the First Principle Project is a beautiful thing. One of the objectives is to encourage conversations that might lead to a change in the language of the first of our seven principles. “We covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person” would expand to include non-humans as well. “We covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every being." I honor and welcome the conversation about this possible change, and I do not believe adopting the change is the right course unless and until some other things happen.

First, there may be many more UUs who embrace, at least in part, the First Principle mission, if not the objective. I think it is really possible that in every congregation there is at least one UU who has the sensibility and passion to organize others in support of a particular species of beings from butterflies to cranes, and wolves to whales. Compared to other kinds of things UUs work on, this can be a relatively ‘easy’ campaign to mount in a congregation. We love our bird and bat houses, especially as hands-on grounding for religious education of all ages. Supporting the individual beings within a species connects beautifully to many UU hearts and souls, including mine.  We/I are often very willing to contemplate and put time, sustained action and money into caring for individual creatures and species as part of our Beloved Community.

But far more difficult it seems is contemplating and putting time, sustained action and money into developing Beloved Community that intentionally brings us into right relationship across human cultures. In two decades as a UU, I think we and I have made progress. But I notice a strong thread running through our congregations as I consult with dozens of leaders through the UUA Green Sanctuary Program.

The Green Sanctuary Program requires congregations to do environmental justice projects that grow through and in relationship to people in marginalized communities. Some do it very well, but for most this is tremendously difficult for us because, too often we lack those direct, partnered connections. We seem not to overcome cultural boundaries to include marginalized communities as part of ‘our’ Beloved Community. We care, for sure. But overall, it seems we tend to contribute money as our social justice work, or do projects that do not bring us into direct relationship with those we hope will benefit from our work.

To advocate a change in the First Principle, I would need many more of us to build intentional bridges over human boundaries. Over these bridges, we can more often listen in order to be changed by the stories from the “other side”, and become real neighbors and allies (maybe through environmental work). I have difficulty increasing the reach of the first principle to non-human individuals when we have so much more intentional human bridge-building to do.

I am inspired by the dedication and commitment of our UU leaders to the environment whose collective creativity is profoundly hopeful. I adore hearing the stories when we incorporate class and race in our environmental analysis, and practice the humility and skills to be good allies. The stories that get shared enrich us all. Building leadership across boundaries is often slow and not easy, but the effort has a powerful impact on congregational life. When congregations do the work in this way, their inspiration and excitement runs somehow deeper and broader. It builds the capacity of our sight and our souls.

Building capacity of hearts and souls may be another outcome of the conversations around the First Principle Project.  Those who face environmental degradation and climate change head-on (I speak more here of working to change it rather than surviving it) have to grow our larger selves or spirits in order to face the truth and continue to respond from a place of possibility and gratitude. If we don’t, we more often operate from despair, alienate others and miss the opportunity to include them in the movement for change.

As people look at changing the First Principle, this kind of pain may rightfully surface even more. Specifically, in the environmental movement we often spearhead campaigns to ‘eliminate’ invasive species. We destroy plants by the thousands, and remove and kill species of fish, mollusks, birds and mammals in order to support ecological diversity. If we are called to honor the dignity and worth of every member of an ‘invasive’ species we decide to destroy, then the First Principle change may be problematic. Choosing to go forward to destroy “invasives” in order to protect the larger ecological systems our hearts have to grow big enough to register, rather than ignore, the implications for the individuals within the invasive species.  

Being awake in this way is overwhelming for me sometimes, and I know for others as well. I believe as a person of faith, I am called to remain open as I try to make changes in the world. To me, work for Beloved Community includes relationship to non-human beings and environment.  Building connection to people our culture separates me from is core to my understanding of Beloved Community. Each springs from the same impulse to live my beliefs and work for a better world. One without the other will ultimately fail.

So bring on the conversation to change the First Principle, knowing that we need all the conversations and actions, from as many different perspectives and angles as we can muster. It will be important though, to remember that work towards Beloved Community will likely require us to work with competing values and needs even as we seek to “affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every being”.