Queer-sensitive Pastoral Care

Pastor Theodore Adam

Ladies and gentlemen, dear audience. Thank you very much for your invitation and for your interest in queer-sensitive pastoral care. 

My name is Theodor Adam and I am a pastor at the Center for Pastoral Care and Counseling of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover. After my studies and my vicariate, I was a parish pastor in a village parish near Bremen for three years. After this time, I was allowed to go to university again for three years to work on issues of gender studies and theology. This afternoon, we want to look at different points that play into the subject area. First of all, what is queer-sensitive pastoral care? In addition the questions - what does queerness mean, and what does pastoral care mean? We will approach queerness using the so-called Gender Bread Persons. Afterwards, we want to ask ourselves the question, in what attitude do I actually practice queer-sensitive pastoral care? What kind of attitude do I actually have in queer-sensitive pastoral care?

What concerns do people bring with them, and who actually comes? How do I deal with these concerns? How does our church deal with these concerns? And at the end we want to watch a video together. Finally, there will be time and space for questions and discussion.

What is queer-sensitive pastoral care and what does queerness actually mean? I have brought a list with me on which you will find the most important words. Don't worry, you don't have to learn the list by heart. It only serves as an aid to understanding for the afternoon and perhaps beyond.

With all these words, it is also not about knowing them or learning them in order to label other people with them, but rather about knowing these words so that we understand what other people tell us about themselves. So it is never the label from the outside that counts, never what I read into a person, but what the person tells me about themselves.

You now see the Gender Bread Person on the slide. A person who looks like a gingerbread man -  hence “Gender Bread Person, “a little play on words. Gingerbread men are a tradition in Germany. They are usually eaten at Christmas or during Advent.

The Gender Bread Person is divided into four different parts. You see here the part with the heart on it; it's about sexual orientation, about the question whom do I actually like and whom do I love.

Sexual orientation has nothing to do with gender identity. It is completely detached from it. The other three parts deal with gender identity. We will go further here in a moment. You see here the so-called midwifery gender. You can also say the birth gender. The gender that is assigned to a person at birth, based on the characteristics that are outwardly biologically assigned, based on the characteristics that are outwardly biologically visible.

And you already notice, it's located between the legs. So it can be the vagina and the penis. But it also depends on beard growth, on the question of breasts, for example, and on the question of fat distribution on the body. These are all biological characteristics that indicate our gender. But there are also people who are not clearly male or female. Here we speak of intersexuality.

In Germany, we now have four legally possible gender entries, male, female, diverse and no entry. Divers is usually used for intersexual people. No entry means that the entry can still be left open at birth if the child, usually also an intersexual one, is to decide for itself later how it feels and who it is gender-wise.

From the midwife gender we jump up here to the so-called brain gender. The brain gender theory states that a person's gender identity is also formed in the brain, or that the brain ultimately determines how a person feels about their gender identity. Unfortunately, we cannot go into the biological and epigenetic details today, but these theories are being researched very intensively at the moment and are producing exciting results.

If the midwife gender and the brain gender match, then cisgender identity is present, probably the most common form of gender identity. If one differs from the other, then we usually have a form of non-binary identity, sometimes also transgender identity.

Finally, there is the aspect of gender role. Gender role means how a person lives and presents their gender to the outside world. This can be seen in clothing, hairstyles, make-up, appearance, habits, hobbies, perhaps even if they are particularly gender connotative.

Now the question arises, what does pastoral care mean? Who cares for whose soul? In pastoral care we enter an intermediary space. A space that spans between the person to be pastored, the pastoral caregiver and God.

Two or more people meet in the face of a third party or a third power, a third force, an energy that makes this space and this meeting possible in the first place, that blesses this space and the people in it.

As a counselor, I am a listener in two ways. I listen to what the person brings, and I listen to God. I have tools of the trade, be it depth psychological, systemic, person-centred or clinical, but above all, I am also carried in this intermediary space. And this being carried gives me the serenity and the strength to go along with the other person or the other person, to accompany them in their own searching and questioning and struggling or also in their own joy.

The aim of my pastoral care is for a person to find themselves and their own. It is not for me to proscribe something or even give advice, but it is me who, through skillful questions, leads the person to what they are meant for. Behind this is a great respect for the autonomy of the person and a great respect for God's plan with his creation.

This brings us to the attitude in which I do pastoral care. Basically, it is not up to me to make judgments or even ethical judgments, but it is up to me to lead the person to themselves and their own. Theologically, I believe that God has given us our basic nature and wants us to love and feel the way we do.

So far from condemning queer lifestyles such as homosexuality or tranxsexuality, I do not condemn them. I even condemn condemning because I think that all forms of life are God-given and God-willed.  Only where other people are harmed is there a limit to this freedom, which must be defended just as vehemently as harmless freedom.

Now it may be exciting for you to learn what concerns people actually bring with them. And the concerns are indeed as different and individual as life and people themselves. Above all, queer living and loving people come to my pastoral care.

Sometimes a gay couple wants to get married, or a lesbian couple plans to have children. People who live with more than one person in a relationship, polyamorous networks, also come and ask whether this constellation can also be God-ordained. Young people come during their coming out. And people of all ages come who only discover their queerness later. Often transgender people or intersex people also come and consider what steps to take next. And many people come who live queer lives but have concerns that are not necessarily related to their queerness. It could be about debt, about relationship problems, about illness, about coming to terms with death, about issues that all people know.

Of course, it is also sometimes about discrimination and how to deal with right-wing extremist ideas in our society.

In addition, there are also relatives of queer people. Mothers who ask how they can deal with their children's homosexuality, especially if it causes conflicts in the families. Or couples come where one part is going through a transition and the other person is also searching for themselves through their partner's transition.

I myself deal with it in very different ways, depending on the concern. I have already outlined my own attitude in pastoral care. But sometimes the desire for a celebration, for a christening, arises from the conversations. Then we organize this celebration together. Sometimes there is also the wish for psychological help or the wish to network with others. I also mediate this. Sometimes there is also conflict management. And often my pastoral care is also political or church-political. I try to fight with the church leadership to improve the situation for queer people in our church, and in general I try to educate and sensitize people for queer people in our church.

Finally, I would like to report on how our church deals with these concerns. I have half a pastor's position for this task, and it is bursting at the seams. Many people in our church are asking how they can make their everyday life in the church or in their institutions more queer-friendly. In addition, there are already many initiatives, and more are emerging. Queer-sensitive services are being celebrated and queer christenings are being organized. In addition, many congregations raise their voices when Christopher Street Day is celebrated in their cities.

Young people in particular are making a strong case for queer issues. By creating this position, the church leadership has signaled that it wants to be very open and welcoming towards queer people. Our church also has a history of discrimination against queer people. This should be dealt with and apologized for. The regional bishop has already formulated a public apology. Now it is a matter of doing more and more educational work and turning queerness from a special case into the normal case.

Of course, there are dissenting voices in our church as well. We have discussed a lot about queer theology and have already put some things in writing, but it is now important to bring queer theology into the broad discourse of the national church. For me, queer pastoral care also means remaining in dialogue with opponents. It also means accompanying those who want to understand but cannot yet, who are skeptical, who have fears. It is all the more beautiful when those come forward who say, “I don't really want to be against you, but I can't be for you yet either. Please help me!” And it is always nice when the church leadership gets in touch and asks how they can make things more queer-sensitive. We are on our way there, too.

Finally, and as a last impression, I have brought along a video. A video that was made in 2013 in cooperation with the Evangelical Men's Work and the Evangelical Women's Work. This video deals with the rather elementary question of men and women, two toilets, two doors, but who actually has their place where? Enjoy watching it!

 

 

Queer Wording - a working guide for queer-sensitive pastoral care in the Ev.-Luth. Landeskirche Hannovers,

Center for Pastoral Care and Counseling,

Pastor Theodor Adam

 

This list is not fully comprehensive, but lists the most common terms dealing with romantic and/or sexual orientation and gender identity. It serves as a first orientation, whereby many people fill the terms they use for themselves with their own definitions. When it arises, it is therefore helpful to exchange ideas about the understanding of the respective term:

"May I ask what that means to you?" "I understand the term so and so. May I ask if it also corresponds to your definition?"

For the terms dealing with gender identity, the word endings "-sexuality" and "-identity" were deliberately omitted and "-sexuality" was used instead, as "-sexuality" might suggest that it was about sexual orientation after all and "-identity" is controversial because not all people to whom the term applies consider gender identity to be part of their person identity.

 

Allosexuality

A person basically feels sexual attraction.

 

Asexuality

A person feels little or no sexual attraction to other people.

 

Aromanticism

A person feels little or no romantic attraction to other people.

 

Bisexuality

A person is sexually and/or romantically attracted to more than one gender.

 

Cisgender

A person's sex assigned at birth and perceived sex coincide.

 

Endosexuality / dyadic

A person is not intersex.

 

Genderqueerness

A genderqueer person cannot and / or does not want to permanently assign themselves to the gender identity cis-male or cis-female.

 

Genderfluidity

A genderfluid person combines different genders, which are expressed to different degrees and intensities at different times.

 

Heterosexuality

A heterosexual person is romantically and/or sexually attracted to another gender. In a binary gender system, heterosexuality is used to describe love between men and women and is / was considered the norm.

 

Homosexuality

A homosexual person is romantically and / or sexually attracted to persons of the same sex.

 

Intersex

A person who has physical characteristics of more than one gender is considered intersex.

 

LGBT*I*QA+

The letter sequence describes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and aromantic / asexual people. The "+" means that the letter sequence is expandable.

 

Nonbinarity / "enby"

Nonbinary is an umbrella term for all gender identities that are not unambiguously single-sex - it includes intersex, transgender, genderqueer or genderfluid people if they adopt that term for themselves.

 

Pansexuality

A pansexual person is romantically and/or sexually attracted to people regardless of their gender.

 

Queer

Queer was originally a swear word and translated means "weird", "quirky", "slightly crazy". However, the word became a self-designation and is usually used as a container term to describe anyone who is not cisgender and/or heterosexual in the sense of a binary gender system.

 

Transsexuality and transgender

A person feels that he or she belongs to a gender other than the one assigned to him or her at birth. He or she can undergo a transition, but does not have to. Transgender is the English term, but in German it is often used for transsexual people who go through the transition primarily in social terms - great caution is required here that via the different terms no distinction is made between supposedly "real" transsexual persons and a less intense, also physically less intrusive form of transsexuality.