Posts Tagged ‘Family’
Being Gay In A Bible Belt Congregation
I’ve been in church since I can remember. I was baptized as a baby in the first Pentecostal church that was ever built in America—Keelville Pentecostal Church—in a tiny community in southeastern Kansas. When I was a kid in the early to mid-eighties, our congregation ran somewhere between 60 and 80 people, two-thirds of which…
Read MoreJordan Davis Verdict: United Methodist Coalition Speaks Out
Florida has witnessed yet another innocent, unarmed, young black man killed, and once again no one was held accountable. The very need to use descriptors like innocent and unarmed for a black man, when that is implicit if we were to say a young white man, outlines the racism that infects our communities. Jordan Russell Davis was the victim of…
Read MoreA Journey Towards Wholeness And Reconciliation
From January 18th through February 16th, people are reflecting, contemplating, writing and harnessing passion to bring about peace, justice, and reconciliation by mobilizing the tremendous power of love as part of Standing on the Side of Love’s 30 Days of Love campaign. As I reflect on this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday—a day when…
Read MoreLearning From Others: A New Year’s Challenge
As we move into this New Year, I would like to share and reflect on three stories from my life that have helped shaped my message for today’s blog: A few weeks ago I was working in Ohio. My organization, Integrity USA, is working there to help gay, lesbian, bi, and trans* people get housing, employment,…
Read MoreChristmas In The Closet
My brother has been with his girlfriend for 6 months, and she’s spending Christmas with my family this year. My first thought was, Whoa. What the hell?! It’s not that I don’t like her. I do! But as someone who lived in the closet of a secret relationship for years, I cannot relate to the…
Read MoreA Duck Dynasty Christmas
It’s only days until Christmas, and I, like many LGBT people, spent much of the day alternately dodging and engaging yet another “gays vs. Christians” media firestorm. Even if you’ve never heard of him before, by now you’ve probably heard about Phil Robertson. Robertson is the patriarch of A&E’s hit show Duck Dynasty, and he…
Read MoreHoly Days In Barren Places
Each Thanksgiving and Christmas during college, I returned to the home of my childhood, the stable-turned-summer-cottage where my parents had begun their family together. My first chore on arriving would be to empty the Tupperware of refrigerated fuzz and discard the rolled oats webbed with meal moth larvae. Edible food was scarce in that house,…
Read MoreLove Makes A Family: Queering The Nativity
In 2009, I created my own gay and lesbian nativity scenes for the Christmas season. One had two Marys at the manger with the baby Jesus, and the other featured two Josephs with the Christ child. I put Mary with Mary and Joseph with Joseph—just like putting two brides or two grooms on top of…
Read MorePFLAG: A Spiritual Experience
Rejection, shame, and loneliness are common feelings many of us in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community have experienced, especially after coming out. These are feelings we have encountered from people’s reactions in our churches, families, and circles of friends. What would be the opposite? The tangible answer is Parents, Families, & Friends of…
Read MoreFamily Conversations: My Mom’s Journey To Advocacy
A few years ago when I was new to working as an advocate for inclusion and equality for all in faith communities, Ross Murray from GLAAD taught me that people generally move from active opposition to silence to tolerance to acceptance and then to advocacy. I’ve seen this happen over and over now in my…
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