Profiles
in Patriotism
A CALL
TO SERVE
Rev. Dr. Sandra L.
Bochonok By
Denny Meyer
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In
early
September 2007 The Metropolitan Community Church
issued a Policy Statement affirming its commitment to
the repeal of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy and its
ongoing support for LGBT service members. For
several years MCC has offered its nationwide food
pantries to the partners and family members of LGBT
troops stationed overseas. For the full text of
the MCC statement, click here.
Among the signers and participants of the MCC
statement was former Navy Chaplain Sandra Bochonok;
whose story is featured below. Sandra
Bochonok served in the United States Air Force as a
nurse from 1980-1983 leaving with the rank of
Captain. Later she served in the United States
Navy as a Chaplain from 1991-1996 leaving with the
rank of Lieutenant Commander. The rather
remarkable story of the Rev. Dr. Bochonok, now
an ordained minister in the Metropolitan Community
Church, is both inspirational and symbolic of the type
of determination and commitment most valued by our
armed forces. The
daughter of a Chicago carpenter, Sandra Bochonok grew
up in a religious blue-collar working class family at
a time when girls were expected to marry soon after
graduating from high school and work in gender defined
rolls as either nurses or teachers. After
graduating from the Cook County Hospital School of
Nursing she began a sixteen-year career as nurse.
At a time of national crisis, she joined the US Air
Force, serving at Keesler Air Force
Base in Biloxi, MS, and in Misawa, Japan. She had
perhaps been inspired, in part, by her maternal uncle,
who had served in the Army during
World War II. She was one of the first in her family to
get an education beyond high school. Her
mother, naturally, was proud that her daughter had
become an Air Force officer, both for her patriotism
and education. Her father,
on the other hand, had a more ambivalent perception of
the armed forces. While
working as a nurse at a Veterans Hospital in Miami,
she grew to more deeply respect the sacrifice and service
of veterans and to miss the military life. And yet, at the same time, during her time
in the Air Force, she had been deeply troubled by the
way it treated those who were suspected of being or
determined to be homosexual. She had
patriotically joined to serve her country, and had
found it shameful that it could not respect all of its
citizen volunteers simply because of who they
were. At that time she did not identify with
them; but in Miami she slowly began to understand who
she was when she fell platonically in love with a
woman. In
1986 she returned to Chicago to care for her mother
who was ill with cancer, and attended a
seminary. In 1987, during a Middle East crisis,
she felt a strong call to again serve her country,
this time as a spiritual counselor to service
members. Remarkably, a Navy Chaplain recruiter
telephoned with her first call to ministry, informing
her that the Navy needed ordained clergywomen. After
earning a Masters Degree in Divinity while a Navy
Reserve Chaplain in training, she volunteered for
active duty during Desert Shield. As Command
Chaplain, she was one of only thirty women assigned
aboard the USS Mauna Kea AE 22, an ammunition vessel.
During this time, Her father
participated in her ship’s Tiger cruise when they
returned from the Middle East, and his attitude
towards military service changed dramatically. He
began to daily pray for her and her ministry. During
her time in the Navy, she experienced an increasingly
tense conflict of personal integrity. She had realized
more fully that she was a lesbian and, as the Don't
Ask Don't Tell policy was enacted into law, was deeply
distressed that this fact resulted in her service both
as a minister and Naval officer was essentially in
violation of her oaths of honor. As a Lieutenant
Commander working in the office of the Chief of
Chaplains in the Bureau of Naval Personnel, she was
well aware of those being discharged under the new
policy and could well imagine herself on that list of
those being disgraced and discharged for who they
were. She loved the Navy, as nearly all sailors do.
But both from her compassion for those dismissed and
her inherent scrupulous honesty, she regretfully
resigned her commission in 1996. Like so many
others, she took her skills, training, and leadership
from the service, without a word, rather than lead a
deceitful double life. She
came out to her father, she notes, after being
honorably discharged, and he accepted and affirmed her
without hesitation; and he now continues to pray for
her current local and global ministry. As
she was about to begin her doctoral studies in
divinity, at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington,
DC, as an openly out lesbian MCC minister, a call for
help from a suicidal gay man led her to realize her
call to gay ministry. Living
with her partner of 13 years in Washington State, the
Rev. Dr. Sandra Bochonok leads an MCC internet
ministry. Providing non homophobic spiritual resources
to participants in 140 countries in multiple languages
she ministers to a worldwide LGBT flock with seekers
as diverse as those from Australia to Zimbabwe.
She is President of the the
ecumenical Bremerton Ministerial Association and is an
associate member of the Little Sisters of St. Clare, a
Franciscan
religious order of women. Rev.
Bochonok's internet ministry may be found at http://www.soulfoodministry.org The
Rev. Dr. Bochonok is the author of Living As The
Beloved: One Day At A Time. She is currently working
on two new manuscripts, What Happens When Queer People
Pray? and Psalms 4 Queers!
©
2007 Gay Military Signal
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