by Melissa S. Green

Many people who attended Mya Dale’s funeral last Friday were angered or upset by what they took from the pastor’s eulogy, and some of that anger found its way onto Facebook. Mel Green responds.

I wrote most of this on Facebook the day after Mya Dale’s funeral, when I woke to find that many of our community who had also been there took the message of the pastor who preached Mya’s eulogy as a message of hate or condemnation of LGBT people. I was astounded.

And so I wrote Friday:

When the pastor talked about “struggling with this, struggling with that” vis-a-vis suicide, & including sexual orientation as one of those things like adultery, addiction, or whatnot that people struggle with … funny thing. I took no offense at that, it never occurred to me at all to take offense at that.

Why? Because when I was an 18-and-19-year-old, I did struggle with sexual orientation, and all my self-hatred of those years could have led me in the direction of suicide. Coming out & accepting my sexual orientation as a lesbian was in fact the first big, foundational step of self-care & self-love that made possible the sea change of giving up self-hatred altogether a few years later. So when I heard the pastor say that, what I heard was not a man making judgments of me or any LGBTQ people, but of urging me and anyone else in that church who was struggling with anything that troubled them, that might lead them to suicide — urging us to LIVE.

He may have bumbled in some of the word choices he chose for us, but I think he was doing his best to act, & speak, in love. Let’s not put words in his mouth or feelings in his soul that he did not speak or feel. Instead of saying, “this is what he meant,” maybe what we should do is to ASK —  “what did you mean?” And have a conversation. Whether you’re Christian or not (and I’m not), that’s the loving thing to do — and also, I’d say, to take Mya’s example, the loving thing she would have hoped we’d do, if we truly take her as an example.

And her mom… what she said was glorious. If there were any in that church, whether the pastor or anyone else, who judged her daughter or us for being LGBTQ — she said it outright: “My daughter was gay, and that was no sin.” But there is that other side — she also said: “I invited all of you here to help me say goodbye to my daughter. Many people have talked about her smile: that was Christ’s love in her, and this is where she learned it.”

Now, I have no idea what Mya’s internal deep inside beliefs were about Christ and where love comes from — but it’s clear she had love, & it’s clear that yes, she did learn it from her mother and from those people, in those four walls. So let’s not diss that place or those people. Shannon got up there on Friday and said,

Mya was a boundary crosser.  She didn’t stand within the walls of her church, she spoke to anyone, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, religious belief or lifestyle choices. She reached out and loved anyone, even when they blundered through trying to express themselves (which I did with her, several times). And when she didn’t understand — she asked.

She crossed boundaries and talked with and showed love to people no matter who they were. And had conversations to bridge differences and bring understanding. Isn’t that what so many people who knew her (I regret I didn’t) know about her, and loved about her, and what they want to trumpet about her to the world?

Are we going to follow that example? Or use her funeral as yet another wedge to feed enmity?

I’m all for talking and saying, if we can say nothing else, can we find a way to talk with one another?

Some of us are already beginning to do that.

(P.S. I must add that in all my conversations with people about who Mya was, I’ve come to the conclusion that, whatever it was that Mya was struggling with that led to her suicide, I’m pretty darn sure it wasn’t her sexual orientation.)

See also Sara Gavit’s response | Shannon Sanderson’s response.

Photos: (1) Melissa (Mel) Green, self-portrait. (2) Mya Dale at the Anchorage 4th of July Parade, 2011. Photos by Melissa S. Green.