Stand Proud

Identity?

I’m white.

Male.

Cisgendered.

A couple of young women once threatened (offered?) to rape me. I don’t think it’s the same thing. Certainly not the same impact.

Heterosexual.

A natural born citizen of the United States of America.

Well educated, having earned my bachelor's degrees in applied cello & pre-theology, a master’s of divinity, & partial work towards a doctoral degree, mostly just a thesis left.

Born in Watertown, South Dakota into a large, proud, struggling & barely lower middle class family, the fourth of eight children. Traveled with my three youngest brothers for over two years singing gospel music across all forty-eight contiguous states & the southern provinces of Canada, our two younger sisters (both adopted & youngest in the family) joining us during the summers along with our mother.

Professionally I have served small rural churches for thirty years: the first three in Missouri, the middle nine in South Dakota where I was ordained, & the final eighteen in Kansas where I eventually moved my membership as an elder before retiring almost eight years ago due to health concerns. For the past eight years I have assisted my wife with all matters pertaining to technology (she identifies as a Luddite) & ordination (weddings & presiding over sacraments), as she serves two rural churches. She is a Certified Lay Minister, with a bachelor’s in theater & journalism & partial work on her master’s of divinity.

Through it all, we have maintained that status of lower middle class, somewhere between that in which she was raised & that of my upbringing. Still, this places us in the ninety-first percentile economically among the world’s population. As to privilege & power, hers drops for being female. Mine rises astronomically in spite of my autism, OCD & clinical depression. I am among the most privileged of all those who live upon this planet.

Oh, & one more thing as far as identity is concerned:

I have a passion for social justice.

As the prophet Micah asks & declares in chapter six:

6 “With what shall I come before the Lord

and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,

with calves a year old?

7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

with ten thousands of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good,

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice and to love kindness

and to walk humbly with your God?

(NRSVUE, my apologies for the exclusive language)

Where does that leave me?

Randy, son of none, belonging nowhere.

Allow me to explain.

As I relate to my “identity” peers, to question or call to account matters of injustice, not to mention failing to avail for myself all the rights & privileges of the same, is to be shunned, marginalized & sequestered into some quiet corner with others of like & disreputable mind.

To speak too loudly is to become patronizing, disposing the mantle from those whose voices need to be heard. And so among those of varying hue, gender, sexual orientation, etc. I evanesce. Not because they demand it, but because I must. Caring about such matters requires working as support, from the shadows, speaking where my voice is needed but never as one who speaks for them. Lifting voices up. Calling into question any that might even unwittingly slander or oppress—not that I might be heard, but that they might.

The American Psychological Association has referred to people like me as The Men America left behind. Traditionalists lament our falling stature as a travesty. We are credited with carrying Donald Trump to power both in 2016 & 2024, longing for that golden age when we ruled over all.

But our fall should be no cause for lament.

It should rather be experienced as a calling.

A calling, not to be remembered, celebrated or otherwise rewarded, but to do what is necessary, no matter the cost to us.

A calling to do what is right.

Please grant me a moment’s indulgence.

My wife & I had not planned on having children. But after my mother’s funeral, my younger sister approached us with the news that she was pregnant for the second time, was not planning on keeping it, & wondered if we might consider adopting.

We were ecstatic & soon arrangements were being made. When our son was born, the doctor remarked to the others in the room, “I thought the father was African-American. This baby looks Native.” It wasn’t until later we confirmed that my sister’s birth father was never listed on her birth certificate, a common practice at the time to avoid having to go through tribal courts for the child’s disposition.

He was Lakota.

Shudder. (Not because of his heritage, but because of that colonialist need to bypass, denigrate & otherwise ignore his heritage.)

So there we were, two pasty white Americans raising a child who loved referring to himself as “Halfrican-American” who was also a quarter Lakota & a quarter German.

Did I mention he was gay? He didn’t come out to his friends until high school, but most suspected, with many of his male classmates treating him terribly all through his elementary & junior high schooling. Thankfully, the girls adored him & helped him through those years.

Eighteen years we had with him (plus six months & five days), to lift him up, advocate for him, all the while knowing we could never speak for him. Black friends looked askance because white parents of a black child were seen as robbing them of their roots & identity. Lakota I’m sure would have felt the same way. The S2LGBTQIA+ community (yes, I recently learned there were two digits to add to the beginning of that, digits of significance given his fuller identity), my head just spins.

Many have told us that we were the right parents to raise him. I still wonder. The incredible things he did with his short time here on this planet were all because of him.

He’s the one who faced the bullying from which he could not be protected.

He’s the one who, along with a few friends, lobbied for an entire year to become the first male cheerleader on his high school squad. (His senior year he was named captain, though the others had to tell him whether we were on offense or defense & which cheers were appropriate.)

He’s the one who lobbied & won the right to take his boyfriend to senior prom.

He’s the one who worked to repurpose gently used prom dresses with a friend for those who could not afford one. (He was returning from delivering one a couple of towns over when he died in a car accident.)

He was the one who had such an impact on other’s lives that he was posthumously conferred with the Youth Denman Award for Evangelism, even though the bishop presiding at the session opposed it.

He’s the one about whom people continue to share with us, twelve years after his death, just how much he meant to them.

All we did was support, advocate as necessary, & never attempt to speak for him.

The voice was his.

And the world is a better place because it was heard.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone reads the things I write. I know moderators have not typically read things before they get published (within thirty seconds of being submitted, while estimating a 5-10 minute read time). I know a few comment & some leave hearts. Don’t worry if that’s all you’ve done without bothering to read. I don’t need to be read. Particularly not this article, inasmuch as those who should most benefit from it are likely to be pissed off that I wrote it at all. To be heard? It’s not my calling.

I’m white.

Male.

Cisgendered.

Heterosexual.

A natural born citizen of the United States of America.

Well educated.

Christian Pastor.

Beyond privileged.

My calling is not to be heard, but to evanesce, to support & advocate as I can but never make a name for myself. My lot is to fade from memory & be lost to history…,

…so that other voices…,

…voices which so desperately need to be heard…,

…can be.