Fasting from Hate

When I was a little girl, growing up Catholic, I hated Lent. My birthday falls in this season of fasting, so as a child my mom would downplay my birthday for that reason (and other reasons, but that is a story in the book.) As a Jewish adult, the more time-limited fasts of my chosen tradition feel more like mindfulness exercises that I can get my mind and spirit around. And I have seen the beauty for my Muslim friends in the daily abstinence of Ramadan culminating in community celebration at iftar each evening.

But I do think that there is a special opportunity this year, as Lent and Ramadan coincide. The question I’ve been sitting with is, with two of the largest spiritual traditions in the world both beginning their fasts at the same time – while another large segment of the world’s traditions is honoring the lunar new year - what can all that collective spiritual energy manifest? What do we, together, need to fast from, repent, and make space for? In the words of writer Christine Valters Painter, what is A Different Kind of Fast we might engage in this year.

I would propose that we fast from hate; that we fast from fear; that we fast from judgment; that we fast from conscious and unconscious biases.

Unfortunately, there are those who are feasting on hate, fear, judgment & blatant bias. Yesterday the Kansas senate overrode their republican governor to put in place the most hateful anti-trans legislation to date – a law enacting bounty for any trans person who uses the bathroom and granting a reward of $1,000 to anyone who thinks they might have shared a bathroom with a trans person.

The cruelty of this decision is antithetical to any g-d of Love and Compassion. And it flies completely in the face of an understanding that each and every person is a reflection of the Divine. As both the Quran and the Bible reflect, each person is known and loved even as they were being formed as the cis or trans person they become.

I still remember with great heartache the numerous times, some uptight and fearful cis gender woman would forcefully question my beloved’s presence in the ladies room when he still presented as female. And my spouse was not alone in that humiliating experience. There are many cis women who have masculine or androgynous traits but that fit the presumed requirement of born presenting as female. In the vast majority of such cases, the person being humiliated is female – but maybe not the kind of female that fits into the Stepford Wives cookie cutter. Cis women are in far more danger, in this misogynistic moment, from heterosexual men outside their bathroom than from any trans woman simply trying to relieve her bladder. Not once since my husband’s transition though, has anyone batted an eye when he began using the bathroom that matches his identity.

This new law will put many cis women in danger of humiliation for not being the “right” kind of woman; and those who will be most endangered will likely be women of color. To be clear, this law is no more about bathrooms than it was about drinking fountains in the 1950s. It is about baseless hate.

Gender variant people have always been part of life, no matter how much the Christian Nationalist demagogues try to frighten people about this “new and scary” demographic. As early as 2,000 years ago the Talmud debated how to recognize the humanity and dignity of as many as six different genders, even in their very binary gendered society. Two spirit indigenous people were honored as spiritual wisdom keepers precisely because they were boundary crossers. Jesus dined with eunuchs, and one of the earliest examples of baptism in the Acts of the Apostles is when the Ethiopian eunuch was baptized by St. Philip.

What is new is the diet of hate-mongering that has escalated in this country. The Christian Nationalists who present themselves as the voice of Gd do not even begin to represent the person they claim as their spiritual leader – he had only one commandment. Love. The Judaism that he lived admonishes us to love our neighbors, not vilify them.

And so in this season of Lent and Ramadan, and as we prepare for the Passover fast in 41 days, let us fast from baseless hate that robs our neighbors of their humanity. Let us fast from fear of those who may be different from ourselves. Let us fast from judging the lived experience of those whose journeys may be unknown to us. Let us fast from allowing our biases to steal the dignity of any other person.