MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

A Prayer for Activists, A Prayer for Myself

God grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

As I think about what my activism looks like, I come back to the serenity prayer more and more these days. I also come back to the adage "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I used to believe this meant that I should not wait for someone else to step up and change the world, I should change the world.  Instead, today, four years later after I was first introduced to nonviolence, I think that I really get that change begins within me.

I am not called to change the world, I am called to be the change.

It is a sobering moment to pray the serenity prayer and realize that "the things I cannot change" are in fact everything outside of me. That the only thing I can really, truly change is myself. 

I want desperately to change the world. I want to stop bullying, and prevent suicides, and create jobs, and ensure everyone is well fed. I want to make my friend's parents understand and accept his gender and I want to make a different friend's parents see how truly wonderful she is, to pay attention to her.  I want everyone to have fulfilling employment and adequate healthcare. There is so much I want to do for the world.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

I know the day my parents' attitude toward my queerness began to change: it was the day I told them I was ready to loose them forever. I could not change my parents. So I took care of myself. I had friends who loved and supported me. Some of them had parents who gave me mints before dates and asked how I was doing emotionally. Heck, Golden Globe nominee Stephanie Zimbalist even asked if I was planning to go vacation with my boyfriend! Somehow I managed to realize I could not change my parents, that I would need to make my own serenity. I am thankful for that wisdom (and I am thankful that my parents changed and are wonderful, affirming parts of my life today).

God grant me the courage to change the things I can.

When all that I can change is myself, changing the things I can is scary stuff. It is uncomfortable to change myself. To change myself means I might have to admit failure and wrongdoing. I like to believe I'm perfect.

Help me to truly change myself. To be willing to look at the unearned privilege I receive everyday: as a white person; as a man; as someone who is cis gender; as an American citizen; as typically abled; as debt free.

Give me the courage to give up the unearned privilege I receive daily in ways big and small, privilege which allows me to step on or over or past others. Give me the courage to seek out answers to difficult questions, to do my own homework and to educate myself. Give me the courage to step off the platform and allow someone else to step up. Give me the courage to refer interviewers or guest post requests or speaking engagements or book deals to those who know more and who are more affected by the issues.  Give me the courage to listen. Give me the courage to learn. Give me the courage to change myself.

If I want to be the change I wish to see in the world, if I wish to change the things I can, I have a lot of work to do.

Give me the courage to judge myself not on how many debate points I score, rallies I attend, speeches I write, decisions I influence, or hearts & minds I change. Give me the courage to judge myself on how thoroughly I examine myself and my motives, how justly I act in the world, how interconnected I am willing to be with others.

God grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

 

Brian Gerald Murphy is the founder of a web design and media consulting firm, Be Gee M: Design & Media, and manages the branding and marketing of several diverse online ventures. He is also the co-founder of Sanctuary Collective, an organization that inspires, empowers, and supports young LGBTQ adults and allies living and organizing for justice in Christian communities. He was a participant in the Soulforce Equality Ride in 2007, where he and a number of other young adults visited colleges and universities across the Western United States. Brian was raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, and graduated from the University of Southern California with degrees in cinematic arts and religion. Connect with him online via twitter @begeem or at www.briangerald.com.

Image source: Indi Samarajiva

Lessons from Behind the Scenes with MLK

{By  Rev. Megan Rohrer, LivingLutheran.com}

The words and the life of Martin Luther King Jr have inspired millions. I imagine that tales, sounds and video of his life and ministry will be passed from generation to generation for centuries to come.

However, sometimes when we tell the stories of great leaders, prophets and priests, we remember all the qualities that are rare or vitally needed in contemporary society, but we forget all the bits that make that individual truly human.

In the days following the assassination attempt in Tucson, in our 10th year at war in Afghanistan, with racial disparity, racism and violence still an issue, King’s work to bring an end to the Vietnam war, his impassioned cries for racial justice and his example of how to live life to the fullest knowing that death is around the corner, are certainly things worth remembering today.

Yet, it is a little known story of King’s humanity that may have the most to say to our belovedELCA.

When most people think of King, they think of nonviolence. Yet in his early days, armed guards protected him.

He, like all of us, had to learn the principles of nonviolence.

One of his teachers was a man named Bayard Rustin. Rustin organized the logistics of many of King’s most remembered marches and bus boycotts.

While he was planning the logistics for the famed March on Washington, where his “I Have a Dream” speech would capture the heart of the nation, King asked Rustin to step down from his position after he learned that the press was going to “out” Rustin as a gay man.

While King had long known that Rustin was gay, it was believed the papers would use the information in order to discredit King and the civil rights movement.

In this human moment, King, a man known for teaching tolerance to so many others, was unable to follow the strength of his own convictions.

Later, when it was clear that the march could not happen without Rustin, King invited him back.

Someone needed to schedule the buses so they would arrive on time. Someone needed to make sure there would be sandwiches and water for the individuals who were so excited to be there that they no doubt would forget to bring food.

Someone had to clean up the litter after the crowds dispersed. Though he was humiliated by his exile, Rustin came back and the buses came as scheduled, everyone had food and the litter was picked up at the end of the rally.

Rustin, like so many minorities before and after him, was tolerated because of his usefulness.

Rustin’s work did not go unnoticed, for it was Rustin and A.J. Muste (one of the other leaders who taught nonviolence to King) not King, who were featured on the cover of Time magazine after the march.

This Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I pray that we continue to pursue the dream that was inspired by Jesus’ trip to the mountaintop.

In the same way that King had to learn nonviolence, we (a mostly White church) need to unlearn racism, reject privilege that keeps others down, listen to diverse voices, support struggling inner-city Black congregations, address the inequality in wages for minority pastors and follow through with our promises to become a more diverse church.

Also, if only for this holiday, let’s remember the names and faces long forgotten who did the behind the scenes logistics work so that King could inspire the nation.

We remember Rustin and the women in the front of the March on Washington who told King that he should tell the crowd about his dream, after he pulled out a different speech.

And while we’re at it, let’s give thanks for the people who work behind the scenes in our congregations, like the faithful people who make coffee, clean toilets and set up the altar.

I hope you’ll also remember that King was a human, he made mistakes and he learned from them.

His humanity is important to remember, because it means that we, too, despite our failures, missteps and contradictions, can share the gospel, inspire others, cause change beyond our lifetime and find hope in the darkest of times.

---

Megan M. Rohrer is a queer ELCA pastor called by four congregations, who has served as a missionary to the homeless in San Francisco since 2002.

Help Young Gay Leader's Work at the U.N.

He's already sailed the Cape of Good Hope with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, volunteered for a public health agency in Gambia, and is working toward his Masters from The Clinton School of Public Service.  Ryan "Ubuntu" Olson is an emerging LGBTI leader on the global stage.

Now Ryan has been awarded a self-funded internship at the United Nations. 

Once he raises the nearly $7,000 to cover his internship costs (click here to donate), Ryan will be assisting the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office in educating the U.N. community, particularly their religious NGO colleagues, on LGBTI human rights issues and how to incorporate them into their advocacy work.

A coalition of LGBTI organizations, human rights groups, and Member States of the United Nations are laying the groundwork for a future U.N. General Assembly resolution that calls for the global decriminalization of homosexuality and affirms the dignity and worth of every human being regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Ryan will develop educational trainings and materials using his expertise in the Yogyakarta Principles - a universal guide to LGBTI human rights which affirm binding international standards with which all States must comply.  He will create manuals and media pieces, and facilitate dialogues on LGBTI issues.

I have already written in this blog about the growing danger to LGBTI people in the Developing World, particularly from the type of supernatural, fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity exploding in those regions. If you have any doubt about whether the threat is real, watch Vanguard's disturbing documentary, "Missionaries of Hate" about the "Kill the Gays" bill being considered in Uganda.  Ask the queer couple imprisoned, then released and disappeared in Malawi.  Ask Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.

As important as our own struggles for equality are here at home, we have to support the work of brave souls like Ryan Olson who dare to address the life-threatening conditions facing LGBTI people globally. 

Ryan's spiritual, educational work at the U.N. will help ameliorate this crisis, and provide valuable insight for LGBTI human rights work everywhere.  He plans to take the skills and educational tools he develops through the internship with him when he returns to his organizing and human rights work in East Africa.

Please join me and donate to support Ryan "Ubuntu" Olson's internship at the United Nations.  Something like 10,000 people read this blog every month, so if just 7% of you donate $10, Ryan can begin his work in New York City immediately.  The internship needs to begin now, during the 65th Session of the U.N. General Assembly which begins on September 14, 2010.

 

I'm Still Your Fag

{Chris Stedman, NonProphet Status}

"Fags! Repent!"

Oh great – those words. Turning to meet them, I rolled my eyes as those funny, short words echoed and bounced toward me over hot summer-baked pavement. The words were intended to hurt but the insult fell flat. "I've heard much worse, and much more creative, fuckers," I thought with a self-satisfied smile of superiority.

Still, I couldn't ignore them. My friends and I were in someone's crosshairs, singled out as needing salvation. What had started as a normal night migrating from bar to bar in search of new friends and hot beats had quickly become something of consequence. With just two words, a divide was drawn between these strangers and my cohort as cloudy and seemingly impassable as the Guinness I had just gulped.

Did this really have to happen now? I was newly 21, looking to have fun, a few drinks in and feeling a bit defensive. I wasn't sure I was really in the mood to navigate this assault gracefully.

The battle cry had seemed to manifest out of the ether. My friends and I were between bars, enjoying our evening and ready for some spirit-ed dancing. We are not exactly a motley crew – sure, a good number of us are marked by tattoos, lightly adorned with piercings, regularly extinguishing cigarettes, and dressed in clothing that might raise a few Sunday morning eyebrows, but we are an amicable bunch and my feeling is that we do not alienate others in spite of our appearances. Yet as we approached a queer bar one humid August night and prepared to pop, lock and drop it we were confronted by several men with Bibles in hand, accusing us of maintaining an "alternative lifestyle" – a phrase that always makes me smirk, as if there were such a thing as a uniform lifestyle when you cut to the bone of things – and offered our "offensive" appearance as evidence of this.

My friends were clearly caught off guard – after all, we were just there to party – and responded in self-defense, though in all fairness I thought that some of what they had to say was not in the best taste. Slightly embarrassed, I thought to myself: "Well, politeness is not readily facilitated by beer and not easy when one feels ambushed."

Sensing escalation, I suggested my friends move inside, recognizing that the conversation was quickly becoming aggressively didactic, not thoughtfully dialogical. They were happy to oblige – they had come to dance, not debate. A friend whispered in my ear as he passed by, "are you going to be okay?"

Though I'd had a lot of experience speaking with folks who disagreed with me, I suddenly wasn't sure. I felt compelled to pursue a conversation with these individuals; perhaps because of a recent attempt that had gone terribly awry, or maybe just as a part of who I am. Either way, I sensed that they desired dialogue, so I went for it.

Our conversation began with a reading from the Bible, not intended to open dialogue with a graceful spirit but as a blatant attempt to proselytize. I thanked them for sharing their holy book with me, and asked if they would like to explain to me why they had chosen to spend their Friday evening on this particular street corner. They informed me that they had recently given their lives over to Jesus Christ and had been commissioned by their minister to recruit other believers. They had heard that this part of Chicago was "heavily populated by homosexuals" – you know, flooded with queers – and decided to come spread their message of reformation and repentance to a community that they believed was in need of it.

After hearing them out, I asked if I might be allowed to share my story with them. To my surprise, they nodded affirmatively. I told them of my years as a Christian and how immensely powerful they were for me – the love that I experienced, the joy I found in communion with other believers, and the inspiration Jesus Christ provided me. But there was a darker side to those years: my struggles with recognizing my sexual orientation and wrestling to reconcile it with the teachings of the tradition, the shame I felt over who I was, and the weight of what felt like living a double life. This was a very difficult time for me, and I shared with them every embarrassing, difficult detail.

When I was finished, I noticed that a quiet had overtaken the group. Finally, one member spoke up. With a gruff tone and eyes fixed down, he thanked me for sharing my story with him, saying that he had never actually known a "homosexual." He hadn't thought what it might be like to experience intolerance for being queer, comparing it to the xenophobia and racism he had known as a Mexican-American immigrant.

We engaged in open discourse for the next few hours with candor and respect, discussing discrimination and dancing and difference, beer and bigotry and basketball, religion and rap music and respect, fags and forgiveness and frijoles. Though we all remained fixed in our convictions, we came to understand one another as fuller human beings, not caricatures of our sexualities or religious identities.

Not all conversations go as well as this one – as I alluded to earlier, another summer night just one month prior to this incident, a friend and I found ourselves suddenly surrounded in a subway tunnel. We had been talking at length and not paying close attention to our surroundings, something my mother always warned me about, when we lifted our heads to see that we were encircled by a group of men who accused us of sin and sickness. Though I attempted peace-making and dialogue, the incident ended in violence.

I'll never forget the night I was attacked on the Chicago Red Line; though I'd like to believe open dialogue can always overcome problematic conversations, I know that this is not true. As much as I’d like to believe otherwise, I have learned that there are times where personal safety is a higher priority than respectful engagement.

Yet I will also always remember my night outside a gay bar, sharing stories as bass-heavy music floated right on by me, carried away on a cool summer night's breeze, my friends dancing just inside to a song I'd never know – I enraptured by music much sweeter in the form of dialogue despite difference with new friends who were supposed to be enemies.

Hey missionaries of the world – get at me. I've been burned a time or two, but I'm still your fag.

{Chris Stedman, NonProphet Status. This post originally appeared on The New Gay.}

We all wear the triangle: Remembering the Holocaust

On Holocaust Remembrance Day we recall the genocide of 6 million Jews in state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany during World War II.  The Nazis also murdered millions of people in other groups, including thousands of gay men and lesbians.  Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Yom HaShoah, is April 11 this year.

One of those killed was an anonymous 60-year-old gay priest who died at the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen, Germany in 1940.  Heinz Heger gives an eyewitness account in his book, “The Men with the Pink Triangle.”  The priest was brutally beaten and tortured, and yet there was a moment of grace when a narrow beam of sunlight shone on the priest’s face.  For a detailed account, visit: http://queering-the-church.blogspot.com/2010/01/priest-with-pink-triangle.html

The gay priest is honored in the icon above, “Holy Priest Anonymous One of Sachsenhausen” by Father William Hart McNichols, a renowned iconographer and Roman Catholic priest based in New Mexico.

The icon shows the priest wearing the pink triangle, the badge used by the Nazis to identify prisoners sent to concentration camps for homosexuality.  Originally intended as a badge of shame, the pink triangle has become a symbol for the GLBT rights movement. 

The pink triangle appears in a variety of monuments that have been built around the world to commemorate LBGT victims of the Nazi regime.  Since 1984, more than 20 gay Holocaust memorials have been established cities ranging from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia, from Germany to Uruguay.  Some are in the actual concentration camp sites, such as the plaque for gay victims in Dachau.

To see powerful photos of all the memorials and read the stories behind them, visit: http://andrejkoymasky.com/mem/holocaust/ho08.html

Some lesbians claim the black triangle as their symbol.  The Nazis imposed the black triangle on people who were sent to concentration camps for being “anti-social.”

We observe Holocaust Remembrance Day here with the prayer “We All Wear the Triangle” by Steve Carson.  It appears in the book “Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations,” edited by Kittredge Cherry and Zalmon Sherwood.  Carson was ordained by Metropolitan Community Churches and served congregations in New York, Boston and San Francisco.
___
One:  We are in many ways a culture without memory.  The Holocaust, a series of events that occurred just over a generation ago, changed the world forever.  Yet by some the Holocaust is forgotten, or seen as irrelevant, or even viewed as something that never happened.

All: As people of faith, we refuse to forget.  We refuse to participate in the erasing of history.  As a community of faith, we decide to remember, as we hear the historical record from Europe a generation ago and reflect upon events in our own time.  We dare to listen to the voices of the past, even as they echo today.

One: In this moment, we are all Jews wearing the yellow Star of David.

All: We are all homosexuals wearing the pink triangle.

One: We are all political activists wearing the red triangle.

All: We are all criminals wearing the green triangle.

One: We are all antisocials wearing the black triangle.

All: We are all Jehovah’s Witnesses wearing the purple triangle.

One: We are all emigrants wearing the blue triangle.

All: We are all gypsies wearing the brown triangle.

One: We are all undesirable, all extendable by the state.

…Leader:  To God of both memory and hope, we pledge ourselves to be a people of resistance to the powers of death wherever they may appear, to honor the living and the dead, and to make with them our promise: Never again!

___

(Image credit: "Holy Priest Anonymous one of Sachsenhausen" by William Hart McNichols © www.fatherbill.org)

This post was written by lesbian Christian author Kittredge Cherry.  She blogs regularly about LGBT spirituality and the arts at the Jesus in Love Blog.  The logo for the Jesus in Love Blog also shows the face of Jesus in a pink triangle.  He joins queer people in transforming suffering into power.

King’s Vision on Healing Injustice

Many people working for justice today stand on the shoulders of Martin Luther King Jr. But King's vision of justice is often gravely limited and misunderstood. Too many people thought then, and continue to think, that King's statements regarding justice were only about race and the African-American community. However, we fail to see how King's vision of justice was far wider and challenging that we might have once imagined.

For King, justice was more than a racial issue, more than a legal or moral issue. Justice was a human issue. And this was evident in King's passionate concern about a wide range of concerns: "The revolution for human rights is opening up unhealthy areas in American life and permitting a new and wholesome healing to take place," King once told a racially mixed audience. "Eventually the civil rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation than the eradication of racial injustice."

Moral leadership played a profound role in the justice work that King did. He argued that true moral leadership must involve itself in the situations of all who are damned, disinherited, disrespected and dispossessed, and moral leadership must be part of a participatory government that is feverishly working to dismantle the existing discriminatory laws that truncate full participation in the fight to advance democracy. And surely part of our job, in keeping King's dream alive, is to also work to dismantle discriminatory laws and dehumanizing structures.

However, if King were among us today, he would say that it is not enough to look outside ourselves to see the places where society is broken, like our institutions and workplaces that fracture and separate people based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. We must also look at the ways we manifest these bigotries.

Often, we find that these institutions and workplaces are broken, dysfunctional and wounded in the very same ways that we are; thus, being mirrors not of who we want to be, but who we really are.

King would remind us that we cannot heal the world if we have not healed ourselves. So perhaps the greatest task, and the most difficult work we must do in light of King's teachings, is to heal ourselves in relationship to our justice work in the world.

In "The Old Man and the Sea," Ernest Hemingway said that the world breaks us all, but some of us grow strong in those broken places. King's teachings invites us to grow strong in our broken places - not only to mend the sin-sick world in which we live in, but also to mend the sin-sick world that we carry around within us. And we can only do that if we are willing to look both inward and outward, healing ourselves of the bigotry, biases and the demons that chip away at our efforts to work toward justice in this world.

I know that the struggle against racism that King talked about is only legitimate if I am also fighting anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism, classism - not only out in the world but also in myself. Otherwise, I am creating an ongoing cycle of abuse that goes on unexamined and unaccounted for.

We are foolish if we think we can heal the world and not ourselves. And we delude ourselves if we think that King was only talking about the woundedness of institutional racism, and not the personal wounds we all carry as human beings.

In light of King's teachings I believe that when we use our gifts in the service of others as King has taught us we then shift the paradigm of personal brokenness to personal healing. We also shift the paradigm of looking for moral leadership from outside of ourselves to within ourselves; thus, realizing we are not only the agents of change in society, but also the moral leaders we have been looking for.

Our job, therefore, in keeping King's dream alive is to remember that our longing for social justice is also inextricably tied to our longing for personal healing.

~ The Reverend Irene Monroe

Jamaican Gays Worship in the Closet

Read Micah Fink's full article on MinnPost.com

It takes just 15 minutes to set up an underground church.

Two boxes and a white sheet make up the pulpit. The altar is a card table. Folding chairs constitute the pews. Then Rev. Robert Griffin, a solidly built gay American minister in his mid-40s, unpacks a battered cardboard box; inside is a wooden chalice, two candle holders, a communion plate and a dog-eared copy of the King James Bible. Add a pianist warming up on an electric keyboard and suddenly an empty meeting room is transformed into the Kingston branch of the Sunshine Cathedral, Jamaica's only gay church (an affiliate of the Metropolitan Community Churches).

"We call it church in a box," said Griffin, who travels to Jamaica once a month from Florida to hold services for Jamaica's gay community. He helped found this congregation five years ago after reading a Human Rights Watch report about institutionalized anti-gay violence in Jamaica...

Jamaica is a hostile place for gay men and women and homophobia is woven into the everyday fabric of society... In just one packed afternoon, I met one woman who was shot several times by a gunman who shouted out "de lesbian fi dead" (the lesbian must die), as he pulled the trigger. One man told me his best friend was murdered, chopped into pieces with a machete, and had the skin flayed from his face; he then went on to relate how another gay friend was locked up in his parent's house by a group of gunmen who then set the building on fire and burned him alive.

Then there was another congregant whose features appeared in video shot at a gay birthday party that became a black-market best seller after a copy was stolen and then released on the streets. He's had to abandon his home twice, in two different cities, after neighbors saw the video, recognized him and made plans to kill him. And he's one of the lucky ones, the man says, since he's lived to tell the tale — unlike four other gay men he knows who had the misfortune to appeared in the video and were later hunted down and murdered...

"Ministers here are endorsing violent acts, calls for murder, to incite riots," Griffin said. "I hear it being done here, I read it in the papers here, I have even heard it myself. They tell me: 'We don't believe in homosexuality and homosexuals should be killed because that's what the scripture says.'"

Read Micah Fink's full article on MinnPost.com

Photo Credit: "Interlocking" by John K.

When is Incest Not Incest?

[The following commentary continues our ongoing conversation on "Reconsidering Marriage."  Read Clayton's first two editorials "Reconsidering Marriage" and "Rick Warren Comes Out for Gay Rights," and additional commentary by our bloggers Azariah Southworth ("Show Rick Some Love") and Joe Perez ("What, was Jeremiah Wright busy?").]

The LGBT community is mistaken about the fight for marriage equality.  Many of us equate the battle for equal partnership rights with the war for equal respect and recognition of our relationships, and the two goals are not the same.

If Rev. Rick Warren - arguably the most influential Protestant minister in the world - is willing to come out in public and say we should have equal partnership rights, we have won a significant battle.  The fact that he does not afford our relationships with equal respect and recognition in his church is not what we are trying to change here, but that is the real reason why we have attacked him since: "He compared our love to incest and pedophilia! He won't let gays join his church!"

We all have different paradigms through which we interpret the world; that is why Gandhi said, "There are as many religions as there are people."  So what is Warren's paradigm that explains how he can say at the same time that he supports gay equal partnership rights and also declare that to him gay marriage is the same as "having a brother and sister together and call that marriage" or "one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage?" 

If we look at the world through Warren's eyes, here's what I think we see:

Slightly more than 50 percent of households are headed by unmarried people, some single and some partnered, and almost a third of children in the United States are being raised in unmarried homes. About 40 percent of unmarried partner households, queer and heterosexual, have children under 18 years of age living in them. Many aging baby-boomers will spend a significant part of their senior years alone. Many will live with relatives or friends in non-conjugal relationships. Increasingly, both married and unmarried adults are serving as primary caregivers for aging and infirm parents or other relatives. Many people live in extended-family households. Needless to say, LGBT people in each of these categories often face the added burdens of homophobia and transphobia.

Requiring marriage as a way to access legal recognition and the economic support of a caring society is not a viable option for millions of households. Consider, for example, these kinds of families: senior citizens living together or serving as one another's caregivers, partners, or constructed families; close friends or siblings who live together in long-term, committed, non-conjugal relationships, serving as each other's primary support; extended families living under one roof (a practice common in many immigrant communities). [1]

Same-sex couples and these other diverse, non-traditional partnerships would benefit greatly from the rights and responsibilities currently only associated with heterosexual, conjugal marriage, but, while Rick Warren recognizes that these families would benefit from equal partnership rights, he rejects that those partnerships be called "Marriage."

This means that in Warren's paradigm, "having a brother and sister together and calling that marriage" doesn't necessarily mean incest. This is why he declared that he has never equated same-sex couples with incest or pedophilia - it wasn't what he meant.

The LGBT community should see beyond our own narrow issues and build a broad coalition, including Warren, to call for a broader definition of family so that marriage, for all who choose it, is only one option among many, not the only way people can access essential government protections and supports like unmarried partner access to health insurance, second-parent adoption, and survivor benefits for Social Security and pensions.

We should take this rare opportunity to fight for legislation to provide access to a flexible set of household benefits and options that are separated from the requirement of conjugal or marital relationship.

What form does victory take?  On December 30, Ali Shams and Kaelan Housewright, two straight California students, introduced a ballot measure to eliminate marriage from State legislation, guaranteeing everyone equal Domestic Partnership rights and voiding Prop 8.  If we can relinquish the word "marriage" to non-governmental (i.e. sacred) recognition, we have the chance to help millions of households by pursuing civil unions for all.  LGBT people will no longer be seen primarily as a self-interested constituency, but as partners in a larger, multiracial struggle for social and economic justice for all.

I believe we will eventually win the war for equal respect and recognition of our relationships, but let's go ahead and win the fight for equal partnership rights in the meantime.

Love,
Clayton

[1] This article includes quotes and statistics from KAY WHITLOCK's "The Perfect Storm: Why Progressives Must Reframe the Narrow Terms of Marriage Politics," PEACEWORK MAGAZINE, April 2007.

National Black Justice Coalition "Power of Us" Conference April 24-26

The Black LGBT community will take center stage next month in Baltimore as several hundred Black LGBT people, their Straight allies, family and friends will gather along with over 50 national experts spanning 35 workshops, panel discussions, Q&As and receptions at the National Black Justice Coalition’s "Power of Us" Conference in Baltimore, MD, April 24-25-26, 2008.  REGISTER NOW!

The Power of Us National Convention - an annual historic gathering beginning in 2008 - will convene the nation's preeminent thinkers to highlight Black LGBT and same-gender-loving couples, families, high-profile activists, religious and spiritual leaders, organizers, artists, designers and more.  The aim is to break down walls of homophobia and racism by educating the public  of the vibrant, affirming and supportive lives of Black LGBT people and same-gender-loving activists who are committed to developing and honing their skills, celebrate victories, build community, and be inspired by preeminent visionaries of our and other movements for social justice and equality. 

The National Black Justice Coalition is a civil rights organization dedicated to empowering Black same-gender-loving, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. The Coalition works for social justice, equality, and an end to racism and homophobia.

The National Black Justice Coalition envisions a world where all people are fully empowered to participate safely, openly, and honestly in family, faith and community, regardless of race, gender-identity or sexual orientation.

Black Jesus, Gay Jesus and Obama

Black Jesus is causing controversy now for U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama.

“Jesus was a poor black man who lived in a country and lived in a culture that was controlled by rich, white people,” said Obama’s recently retired pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.  He was preaching to a predominantly black congregation.

I appreciate the need for the black Jesus because as a lesbian minister and author I promote the idea of a queer Christ.  These radically new Christ figures embody and empower people who are left out when Jesus is shown as a straight man.  They can free the minds of everyone.

However, some people reacted with outrage when videos of Wright’s preaching were broadcast on national television yesterday.  News reports about the controversy focus not only on the black Jesus, but also on his analysis of U.S. politics, which Obama has condemned as “inflammatory and appalling.”

Wright recently retired as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.  Watch him on video and judge for yourself.
________
Kittredge Cherry Kittredge Cherry is the author of Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More.  She edits the Jesus in Love Newsletter on queer spirituality and the arts.  She offers progressive spiritual resources at JesusInLove.org.