What would Jesus do? What would a feminist do?

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Let me tell you two stories.

The first one happened when I was working on my Associate’s degree oh so many years ago.  It was during the height of the WWJD bracelet craze.  Everyone was wearing at least one.  I was sitting in class one day when I heard two people talking.  The first person was telling the second person how much she liked the WWJD bracelet she was wearing.  First person said that she knew that you were supposed to give the bracelet away when someone asked about it, along with telling them all about Jesus, but she had gotten the bracelet from a cute guy, and so she wanted to keep it.  She figured that people who didn’t know what it meant didn’t know that she was supposed to give it to them, so it would be okay.  Her friend – person number two – was agreeing and yeah-ing and hmmm-ing at all the right parts of the story.  And I sat there, rather amused that someone who professed to love Jesus and believe in sharing didn’t have quite the same level of faith as soon as a cute boy became involved.

The second story happened years later.  I was working on my Master’s of Liberal Arts.  I was doing a paper with someone else – a “group” assignment – about Betty Friedan.  While I think NOW is a great organization, and she definitely helped to start it up, she was also pretty whacked out.  She didn’t want to include lesbians in the organization.  She feared that they would try to convert her to lesbianism.  (I don’t know that she needed to worry about that…)  Regardless, it was another case of someone who didn’t quite get the purpose.  Just like the people who refused to give out her special bracelet, Friedan didn’t want to give up her special organization to people she didn’t think she needed to care about.

Why did I bother making you read about those experiences?

Because there was a recent intersection.

A church in Lakewood, Colorado, stopped a woman’s funeral because it was displaying a picture of her with her wife.  The wife she had two children with.  Because, you know, it was a sign she was gay.  And the church couldn’t possibly accept that.

Apparently, the church didn’t get it either.  They, just like the girls in the college classroom, decided that God was okay with them picking and choosing what they did.  They only had to listen to God when it agreed with their own likes.  And, just like Friedan, the church decided that they needed to fear something ‘different.’

As feminists, we need to embrace all other women. We need to share our bracelets with anyone who asks about them.  We need to understand that no one is going to try to ‘convert’ us.  Feminism is about supporting everyone, wanting everyone to be equal.  We need to mourn with her family, and we need to share the story.