Long before this project was introduced to me, I was unintentionally recommended to watch the film Prayers for Bobby by a friend. The movie portrayed a deeply Christian family, with an extremely devout mother, who had a son who came out as gay to his family. His mother tried to get him to “pray himself straight” which only led him to spiral into depression. Sadly, he couldn’t cope with the tensions of his personal intuitions and the pressures of his family and society and he took his own life. His mother, devastated, turns to a local Metropolitan Community Church and finds peace and reconciliation through bonding with fellow parents of gay children.  Coincidentally, I ran into the Metropolitan Community Church once again for this project and decided to do an in-depth analysis of it with the lens of solidarity as my point of view.

Solidarity, a common theme to Jesuit society, introduced to me by a speech by the Jesuit Spanish priest, Ignacio Ellacuria, has to do with the unity of a community. I’ve noticed that communities on the margins of societies often band together and have a very strong sense of solidarity. I believe it has to do with the tendency for people in a similar situation to group together because of what they have in common. The people Metropolitan Community Church come together as one because of what they have in common as well: their acceptance of the LGBT community and their religious faith.

The Metropolitan Community Church was founded by Reverend Troy Perry in 1968 in his own living room. Rev. Perry, himself a publicly gay man, used grass-roots methods to build a church that specifically accepted the LGBT community out of almost nothing. So, when I first visited the MCC in San Jose, which also happened to be the second-to-last service performed in that particular branch, I expected a San Francisco gay pride-like service, filled with references to the minority community and young, teenagers looking for a balance between their sexuality and faith. What I found was quite different, but also, more comforting: it was a relatively small and obviously close-knit community of 20 or so adults of all ethnicities and ages. The references to LGBT were not outlandish in any way, but respectful and humble. I saw that the MCC (at least the branch in San Jose) was not a place to show off one’s sexuality, but a place to worship in peace and to feel accepted in a religious community.

Another key aspect to the solidarity of this community lay in two main aspects: the size of their community and their willingness to accept newcomers. During the session for prayers, the speaker often would call on the church members by name. When people asked to pray for their daughters, brothers, or partners, the Reverends often nodded in familiarity. I, as an obvious stranger, did not go unnoticed, either. When it came time to “share the peace,” I managed to shake hands with everyone in the service and was asked for my name on multiple occasions. The members of this community genuinely wanted to get to know each other and anyone else who wanted to be a part of it. The true sincerity of both the members of the church and the leaders really seems to be the glue that unified the group.

It also surprised me how so many simple things that were mentioned in other areas of religious learning, not necessarily related to LGBT issues, but veritably applicable. Reverend Rebecca Anderson, in her sermon on transfiguration, referenced Martin Luther King’s own sermon “Beyond Vietnam,” where he stated, “if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must have a radical revolution of values.” MLK’s original sermon was based on the issues of Vietnam, that America was too focused on new technologies to notice that human lives were being lost in an unnecessary war. MLK urged America to shift our values to faith and justice and these same themes were repeated in Rev. Anderson’s sermon as well as the Jesuit superior general Peter-Hans Kolvenbach in his own speech on solidarity.

My research with scholarly articles (mainly the court case and the study on identity) opened up several other views of the Metropolitan Community Church. The study on identity showed how difficult it is for young people to establish their identities when their sexual preferences contrast with their religious upbringing. In the study (which mimicked what I learned from the film, Prayers for Bobby, and what I learned from MCC member John Haseldon), the interviewed students who threw themselves into prayer to try to “fix” themselves fell into depression and only found any kind of reconciliation by either giving up their religious identity completely or moving to a church that accepted their sexual identity. It all boiled down to the same thing: anything but acceptance and openness tended to hurt more than help those who were dealing with these issues of their identity.

The court case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and the San Jose Mercury News article I cited serve to remind us that the Metropolitan Community Church, along with the entire LGBT community, is still a marginal group. The summary of those for Prop 8 (defining that marriage is only legal and recognized if it is between a man and a woman) was basically from religious groups such as the Mormon Church, the California Catholic conference, and multiple evangelical churches. Similarly, the news article about a Catholic church disinviting members of a gay clergy to speak at a service shows mainstream religion (and even mainstream society) still show unwillingness to accept the LGBT community into their own environment.

However, despite these issues, I believe it is important to realize that, compared to 30 years ago, the levels of acceptance and strides the general society have taken are noticeable and important. Metropolitan Community Churches are present around the entire world, not just in stereotypically liberal areas such as the Bay Area. In the United States, states such as New York in 2011, have signed marriage equality laws to law. Just as Rev. Anderson assured the attendees of her service, I can assure you that even though the Metropolitan Community Church in San Jose has closed its doors, in no way does it mean the progress of acceptance of the LGBT community from the religious sector is slowing down.