Written for Long Island’s LGB T magazine Outlook.
The Hebrew and Christian scriptures spend a lot of time on leprosy. In that long ago age, before scientific medicine, the term could be applied to many unrelated but similar appearing conditions, each more or less severe, more or less contagious, from syphilis to severe acne. Folks didn’t really understand how disease was transmitted, and certainly didn’t know anything about Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium responsible for the actual disease, so they developed rules for isolating individuals that appeared ill. Seeing disease and mental illness as spiritual matters, they created complex rituals to certify a patient was cured and clean.
We’ve certainly all heard the old trope about LGBT folks being treated like lepers. In some ways, that feels right. There are folks who think we should be isolated, that we are contagious, that we are spiritually-afflicted, that religion can cure what ails us. And of course, during the intense early years of the AIDS crisis, many gay men were treated like lepers, and suffered from Kaposi’s sarcoma, a skin cancer that left them visibly scarred. Compassionate Christians understood AIDS through the lens of leprosy, and responded with Christ-like care.
We don’t exactly live in a post-AIDS world. There are still many affected by the disease, and the mortality rate is higher for both minority communities and the poor. But for most of us, at least here on Long Island, the stigma of being gay has lessened, and many live long and healthy lives with HIV. There continue to be advances in treating AIDS. I’d like to suggest, however, that leprosy remains an apt metaphor for our existence as a community, though in a very different way.
When you reduce the huge category of disease lumped under this historic category, you find a single condition, today called Hansen’s Disease. It is highly treatable once diagnosed, and most of us are naturally immune. One of the myths about leprosy is that it causes body parts to fall off. But it’s not a medical “Walking Dead,†lepers don’t leave parts behind as they go. What actually happens is that secondary opportunistic infections attack the limbs and extremities, often leaving them numb. These parts, fingers, toes, etc., can become injured without the patient ever noticing. Its these hidden injuries, and subsequent infections, that lead to the loss of limbs.
In my spiritual work with LGBT Christians, I often find serious spiritual wounds, untreated, debilitating, wounds around which there is no self-awareness. And most of us have reason to be spiritually wounded. Aliens in our own families, practicing deception and self-denial as survival skills, then entering a sub-culture, at least for gay men of a certain age, that celebrated camp and drag, all the while filling the personals with calls for “straight-acting†tricks. I can only imagine that women and transgender individuals faced equal and unique challenges.
Many suppress those old hurts. Others cling to their rage. But I suspect most of us have forgotten that we are still wounded. And untreated, those wounds are dangerous. May we uncover our wounds, let loved ones help us see and identify them, and seek healing. Now is the time. Amen.