Not that I have nothing interesting to say. Life has just been so hectic this past week and I wouldn't want to write about some of the things going on until I've had time to reflect on them.
Today is International Day Against Homophobia. So I tried not to be homophobic today. So far its been a success...
On my way to Wednesday night worship now.
Oh... And thank you to those of you out there (you know who you are) who have been praying for me. I feel surrounded by love!
I’m not one to pass the blame
But this is one I cannot claim even if I wanted to
There’s something happening
There’s something going on with me
And I think I like the view from where I’m standingYou are to blame for anything that is good in my heart
You are to blame for this change that has taken me by storm ...
Somebody asked the question this week in an online forum about the appropriateness of allowing a church youth group to stage a drag show in the ‘sanctuary’. Apparently some people felt that the ‘sanctuary’ should be reserved for ‘sacred’ activities, and presumably drag does not quite make the grade.
To hear this concern expressed was interesting for me, to say the least. Those raising the objections to drag were members of a Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). MCC is an inclusive and predominantly GLBT denomination that, among its many celebrations, commemorates Pride and the Stonewall riots (the infamous night in 1969 when New York drag queens and trannies joined with gays and lesbians to fight back against centuries of oppression and silence).
The responses from forum participants were thoughtful and well informed. Some spoke of the universal and inclusive nature of the sacred and how the house of God should be open to all people for all kinds of events.
From a personal perspective it was interesting to see this question come up, given a related experience of my own last Sunday. I was making announcements at the start of our own worship service. Our church is holding a 'Prom' in a couple of weeks. One of our young adult leaders came up to the front to make a special announcement about the event — wearing drag. The idea was to promote ticket sales while getting people to think about how they might ‘dress up’ for the event.
Now this should not have been a shock to any in our congregation...
The American 'Family' Association claims on its website that it does not hate homosexuals:
Absolutely Not! The same Holy Bible that calls us to reject sin, calls us to love our neighbor. It is that love that motivates us to expose the misrepresentation of the radical homosexual agenda and stop its spread though our culture. AFA has sponsored several events reaching out to homosexuals and letting them know there is love and healing at the Cross of Christ.
The AFA, it its literature on the 'homosexual agenda,' preaches compassion and understanding toward the gay community, in one of its publications quoting Mona Riley of the predominantly exgay Church of the Open Door:
Riley sees a “hardness in the heart of the American church” toward people who have been involved in homosexual behavior. “We need to be trained in compassion,” she says. “We have judged this particular sin to be worse than every other, but I don’t see that in the Scriptures.”
How surprised the Rev. Mark Bidwell, pastor of the predominantly GLBT Metropolitan Community of Detroit must have been, then, to receive the following e-mail last month from an AFA supporter:
You fag loving BASTARDS, Pull your head out of your ass and any thing else you have up there and forget about this ass humping doughnut pumping fag and lesbo bull-shit.
Or this phone call from an AFA supporter named Steve:
There's a band named Queen - 4 men, but yet with a female title - why, because they're sodomites, they're effeminate. Freddie Mercury used to prance on stage saying: 'When I'm on stage I am a devil.' What did he die from Mark? He died from AIDS. Why? Because that is God's judgment on sin, exceeding sin. Sodomy... Sometimes the judgment of God comes in this life - doesn't wait until eternity that's why y'all are dying so rapidly from AIDS.
Hundreds of similar calls and e-mails came into the Detroit church as a result of the AFA's latest campaign against marriage equality, targeting Ford Motor Company as a sponsor of Motor City Pride. The campaign directed supporters to a page on the Pride website featuring a gay commitment ceremony and linking to the MCC pastor's e-mail address.
Rev. Bidwell's crime? Being a gay pastor of a Christian church that believes "the Gospel of Jesus Christ was, and is, meant for everyone."
Once again, a self-styled 'Christian' organization shows its true colors in spite of all efforts to disguise its rhetoric as reasonable, God-centered truth. As Jesus said, good trees do not bring forth bitter fruit. Nor does the one who loves God hate his neighbor.
If there is a war on Christianity, it is the one being waged against it by the religious right in this country. Or, as one letter writer to the Washington Post put it last Friday, "it is the war waged by those who call themselves followers of Jesus while proving they are nothing of the kind."
This came in among my Google news alerts. It's from an op-ed piece on one of Alan Keyes' websites by John Haskins, Associate Director of the extremist Massacusetts anti-gay group known as the Parents' Rights Coalition.
Haskins is reminiscing on the presence of GLBT families at this year's White House Easter Egg Roll. To him, this event represents a pivotal surrender by Christians in the eternal war between good and evil:
Another incremental surrender DID occur and history WAS made in this White House Easter Egg Roll, in an almost irreversible way. Homosexuals, bearing their trophy children — helpless prisoners in the War Against Future Generations — were welcomed without so much as blink of an eye at a family event on a high Christian holy day. (emphasis mine)
Alan Keyes, John Haskins and all their sadly homo-sex obsessed ilk live in a bizarre parallel world — where Christianity is under attack from a vast and powerful homosexual conspiracy to enslave the nation's youth and entirely destroy Judeo-Christian civilization. I wish I was making this stuff up, but I'm not. These extremist anti-gay groups make James Dobson's Focus on the Family look like Gay Days at Disney.