Pastors' Conversation video available

New Direction's livestream "Pastors' Conversation" video is now available here. Thanks, Wendy Gritter!

New York beats California to it

This is something I wish our California state legislature had done instead of allowing us all to get dragged through that nasty 2008 battle over Prop. 8, in which the side that spooked the most voters with shameless, bald-faced lies prevailed. I don't know why I've remained a registered Republican all this time--I suppose it's because I could never feel politically at home with the Democrats. But today I can be a proud RINO in view of this Republican-led effort to legalize same-sex marriage in New York. Interestingly, CBS News reports that a critical factor was that two fence-sitting Republican senators, one of whom opposed an almost identical marriage equality bill in 2009, turned in yes votes in the end.

Ultimately, gay couples will be able to marry because of two previously undecided Republicans from upstate regions far more conservative than the New York City base of the gay rights movement.

Sen. Stephen Saland, 67, voted against a similar bill in 2009, helping kill the measure and dealing a blow to the national gay rights movement. On Friday night, gay marriage supporters wept in the Senate gallery as Saland explained how his strong, traditionally family upbringing led him to embrace legalizing gay marriage.

"While I understand that my vote will disappoint many, I also know my vote is a vote of conscience," Saland, of Poughkeepsie, said in a statement to The Associated Press before the vote. "I am doing the right thing in voting to support marriage equality.

Also voting for the bill was freshman Sen. Mark Grisanti, a Buffalo Republican who also had been undecided. Grisanti said he could not deny anyone what he called basic rights.

"I apologize to those I offend," said Grisanti, a Roman Catholic. "But I believe you can be wiser today than yesterday. I believe this state needs to provide equal rights and protections for all its residents," he said.

Some of these senators have put their careers on the line to cast this vote, and I don't expect it will turn out well for them. No doubt many longtime, liberal supporters of gay marriage will look at these Republicans and say, "Well, duh! It's about time!" Yet as a conservative supporter of civil same-sex marriage, I know what it's like to experience that dawning upon your conscience, when everything you once thought to be true and right is being challenged within your own mind, and you realize that this new idea which you once opposed is actually more true to your sense of morality and decency than your former position. It is an unsettling and frightening realization, particularly when you picture yourself trying to explain how you came to this "new moral conviction" that also happens to take sides with the half-naked guys parading down Castro Street with nothing on but their nipple rings and leather jock straps. Can't wait to get up in front of everyone and make a speech about this one.

Speaking of which, you are now faced with a choice. It would be so easy to hide what's going on inside your own mind and heart. If you did, you can keep your religious conservative friends, all the people who love and respect and support you; and if you're a senator these are the people to whom you owe your political career. Or you can dare to be "wiser today than yesterday," as Sen. Grisanti said, and risk losing everything. Hats off to those senators who dared. Whatever happens to them in the future, I trust that today they are at peace with themselves.

Calling all gay Christians

If you're a gay Christian, here's a project you may want to consider participating in. Straight Christian writer/blogger John Shore is planning to publish a collection of personal stories by gay Christians that communicate what they wish straight evangelicals knew about them. It is similar to the idea behind Shore's earlier book, What Non-Christians Want Christians to Hear*, except it will be what gay Christians want straight Christians to hear. Shore explains all the details in his post. Here's an excerpt:

If you’re an LGBT Christian who would like evangelical Christians to hear your story, here’s your chance. Write your story in the first person. Try to keep it under 1500 words. (Eight hundred words is about ideal. But basically just use however many words you need; we can later adjust the length if necessary.) Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or any of that sort of thing; I can edit it for you. (And I’ll certainly get your okay on all edits before publishing your testimony.) I don’t care how well “written” your story is; I just want your raw, true, and heartfelt. 

The stories in the collection will presented anonymously. Identity-wise, all I need from you is two initials, and whatever city you (want to say you)  live in — same as in the bylines for What Non-Christians Want Christians to Hear.  

Submit your story to me either via my “Contact Me” page, or by email to: john [AT] johnshore [DOT] com. Sending me your story implies granting me obligation-free permission to include it in the (as-yet-unnamed) collection. You won’t be compensated for your story; just knowing evangelicals will read it has to be motivation enough for you to write it. (I could no sooner track and deal with ongoing payments to fifty different people than I could win a Flamenco dancing contest.) I don’t yet know if I’ll publish this book as an e-book, or with a traditional book publisher. 

If you believe in this project and would like to see it happen, please spread this post to wherever you know gay Christains gather online. The more stories I get in for it the better.

*6/23/11: Correction: the name of John Shore's earlier book is, I'm OK--You're Not: The Message We're Sending Non-Believers and Why We Should Stop. (I love that title.)

So many topics, so little time

Just got done watching the livestream "Pastors' Conversation" hosted by Wendy Gritter. I wish my 5 year-old didn't get so suddenly needy during the broadcast or I might have been able to follow the conversation more closely. But I was very impressed with Wendy's moderation job and her incredibly well-articulated insights that she was able to throw out there as if she were discussing the weather. As someone commented in the chat room, I feel like I could listen to her talk forever.

Wendy promises to have video of the livestream conversation available soon for those who missed it. You can check the Facebook Page or the website for further news about that. There was so much to discuss I felt like the hour and a half flew by much too quickly. So many conversations got started with so little time to explore them.

Check out this live stream event

I'm sure this will interest many of you. Wendy Gritter of New Direction Ministries is organizing a live stream event called "Pastors' Conversations: Navigating LGBT Issues and Questions" that will take place Tuesday, June 21 at 2:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time). The event is free and interested participants only need to RSVP via Facebook or Eventbrite by clicking on one of the links on this page.

I'll be checking it out too. I understand there will be a chat room for online participants, as well as a time of Q& R (I'm guessing that means "question and response") with the Pastors' Panel. (I love that . . . Q&R instead of Q&A . . . acknowledging there may not be answers to some of these questions!) Personally, I find chat rooms intimidating so I don't expect to be making comments left and right. But I am looking forward to listening in on what people have to say and tuning in to their concerns.

Giving your best anyway

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."

— Mother Teresa


I wish more people would talk about death openly so that I wouldn't feel like the only freak who has no problem bringing up the apparently morbid subject. I think about my death a lot because 1) it's one of the few things in life that I can be absolutely certain I will have to face; 2) it helps me to clarify what my priorities should be and whether, today, I am living according to those priorities.

This past March marked my 25th year of knowing Jesus Christ and this coming August I will turn 43. Even if I live to an optimistic 86 years old, I am already halfway done with my life. And as I look forward to the next half of my life, possibly another 43 years, or possibly less, I figure I'd better spend it focusing on the right things and learning from some of the wrong things I've pursued in the past. After a lot of misguided idealism, running down blind alleys, crashing and burning, and meditating on the scars left from hard knocks, I've come to the brilliant conclusion that life--in particular my life as a Christian--is about loving God and loving people.

Any five-year-old Sunday School child could have told me that. What's both profound and mysterious is why on earth it eludes me so easily, and eludes most Christians I know. It sounds deceptively simple. Just love. Love will keep us together. All you need is love. At church even our praise songs about love fill you with such a wonderful, sentimental feeling you start thinking that love must be like floating blissfully along on a soft cloud, eating chocolates. You forget that the last time you tried to truly deny yourself in order to love someone who didn't return the favor, the effort took so much out of you you wanted to take the rest of the year off from humanity. If you haven't experienced what's it's like to be hurt, disillusioned, embittered, humiliated or ill-used, you probably haven't stepped out far enough in faith to obey Jesus' command to love. And unless you are able to rise from your wounds and know that Christ sacrificed so much more because of his love for you, you won't make it very far as his disciple.

Despite of all our glib talk about love, deep down we are aware of these hard truths, so we try to make following Jesus about everything but putting his love into practice. I've been down the road of trying to make the Christian life into a cause, a self-improvement program, a path to the American dream, an area of academic study, and an occupation. Anything but about loving people and loving the God who asks me to love people, because every day I wake up and encounter new reasons not to love people.

I don't know a great deal about Mother Teresa, but from her insightful words above I can tell that she understood the secret of loving others. You have to believe that giving the best of yourself to other people isn't the equivalent of flushing your life down the toilet. Because ultimately you are offering your life to God, believing that none of it is in vain, and that he is the rewarder of those who seek him.

Spiritual fretting

I thought I was going to go the entire month of April without posting, but here I am. I've been a bit over-stressed spiritually. I still find I'm able to give to others, that hasn't changed. Christ is the living fountain in my life and amazingly he always supplies me with plenty of strength when it comes to serving others. But it's another thing to feel at peace in the in-between moments. Walking with Christ means keeping my eyes on him each day and not looking around too much, and maybe that's where the discouragement has leaked in.

Right now there may be too many distractions for me to gain fully that sense of security I want in him. While reading in the Psalms before the Easter service yesterday I was arrested by the first line of Psalm 37: "Do not fret because of evildoers." Ah yes, the temptation to fret and lose focus. That must be my problem. The more I go on in life, the more I see that we live in a world where selfishness and dishonesty seem to gain the upper hand while those who try to practice patience, submission and love are shoved aside. Psalm 37 gives assurance that this state of affairs won't last forever, but in the meantime it does grieve the soul.

I know that the big thing right now is to believe in a God who is too loving to judge us or require atonement for our sins, but frankly I have trouble believing in a God who isn't offended by evil. A God who isn't provoked by the selfishness, the greed, the arrogance, the exploitation, the deceit, and the cold-heartedness that pervades our society, our relationships and our churches? Really? This stuff grieves me more than it grieves him? Somehow I highly doubt that.

Talking with today's young gay teens

Since my daughter will be attending high school this coming Fall, I took her to a welcoming event on the campus for prospective ninth grade students. Outdoor booths were set up featuring the swim and dive team, the ASB Club, cross country and track, varsity baseball--basically clubs and sports teams trying to recruit the incoming freshmen. As we were walking around I spotted the booth for the Gay-Straight Alliance Club and told my daughter to go on ahead. I wanted to stop and talk with these guys.

I figured the best way to scope out the bullying situation at a high school is to talk to the gay kids. They would be the most obvious target of bullying, and what they had to say would be a good litmus test whether a school is serious about the "no tolerance" policy they are supposed to enforce. We are in the Los Angeles Unified School District, famous for its inefficiency, bureaucracy and misuse of funds. But this was a charter high school and came highly recommended to us. I was curious to know what the Gay-Straight Alliance Club had to say about their school.

I had never talked face-to-face with gay kids so young, just teenagers. There were five girls manning the booth, which didn't surprise me. I've come to expect that such a club would either be male-dominated or female-dominated. I've noticed that even gay groups that intend to be co-ed get quickly lopsided either in the male or female direction.

The first girl who responded to my question about bullying had short cropped hair with green highlights. She said that the kids on campus were friendly and generally cool, and if there were any negative incidents they involved isolated individuals. She said one time in class a fellow student asked her point blank if she was gay. Everyone stopped and turned in their direction, and when she answered "yes" the onlookers said, "ooooooh." A giddy sort of response but that was about it.

An African-American girl wearing a rainbow headband then spoke up and told me just that day she had been harassed by another student for having two dads, to the point where she was reduced to tears. The hostile student was quickly dealt with by the school administration. Everyone in the booth agreed that having the administration's support was key to their sense of well being on campus. They felt that the administration had their backs and took seriously any bullying incidents that involved targeting kids because of sexual orientation issues. When they participated last year in the Day of Silence, they told me, even some of the teachers voluntarily talked to their classes about what the day meant and explained about the problem of bullying LGBT students. These teachers were able to give a voice to the participants who, because of their vow of silence, could not do any explaining.

I ventured to inquire specifically about their encounters with the religious clubs on campus. Did they feel any hostility from them? One girl spoke up, whose more confident demeanor made me think she was a senior. She said she was a part of the Jewish Club on campus and never experienced any problems from them. "But what about the Christian Club?" I pressed. "See, we're Christians and my daughter is interested in joining the Christian Club. But I won't let her if they're giving you a hard time." "Oh, the Christian Club is really laid back," the senior girl said. "I actually know some of them and they're really nice. They've never given us a hard time." I expressed my surprise. Really? "Yeah," she said. "But even if they wanted to give us a hard time, they wouldn't be able to. We're protected from harassment by law, and the school administration is good about enforcing it."

I came away from that conversation with the feeling that perhaps times are a-changing. Gay kids saying that the Christian Club kids are "nice" and "laid back." (If there was a Christian Club booth around--and there wasn't--I might've gone over and high-fived them on the spot.) A school administration in a conservative Hispanic/white/Asian suburb of L.A. taking a hard-line stance against sexual orientation discrimination. Young lesbian teens and children of gay parents who were out to their teachers and classmates, who still had to deal with the occasional obnoxious kid but understood their legal rights ("It's called AB 537 in the California Education Code," they informed me. "You can find it on the GSA Network website.") I was impressed. Yeah, I'll let my daughter go to this school. I felt sure of it, even though I didn't stop by any more booths that day. I'd already found out all that I needed to know.

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Thoughts on Obama and DOMA

Most of the reaction to the Obama administration's refusal to defend DOMA has been tepid. It's certainly not an announcement that will lead to the immediate legalization of gay marriage in all fifty states. And sure, someone else can always step in and do the job of defending DOMA in court. Yet to me Wednesday's announcement by President Obama and the Attorney General is significant not so much legally, but symbolically. In my bones I feel the impact of it, and I'm struggling to put into words what I sense is a shift in the moral tide of this country.

Last summer I spent countless hours going over Judge Walker's Prop. 8 ruling so I could blog out a summary of it here. That study impressed upon me how difficult it is to defend the position that homosexual couples should be treated differently than heterosexual couples without sounding like some kind of bigoted, backwater, religious nutcase. Think about it. In order to defend such a position, someone has to take the witness stand and explain from the perspective of hard facts and scientific research that gay couples are less stable, less worthy, and less valuable to society than straight couples. You'd have to show that gay couples make worse parents, threaten the fabric of society, endanger religious freedom, or corrupt the nation's youth. This is not a political rant on a street corner, or a Sunday sermon that quotes a few ripped-out-of-context Bible verses. This is court testimony by an expert witness who must deliver a convincing objective account of the facts of the case, who must stand up to the cross-examination that follows.

Governor Schwarzenegger and the California Attorney General refused defend such a position, and you can understand why. So instead the people who ran the pro-Prop. 8 campaign volunteered to defend it, and look what happened. Four of their expert witnesses were no-shows. Of the remaining two witnesses, one did not have the credentials to be an expert witness and his testimony was deemed unreliable, while the other qualified as an expert witness but gave testimony that was largely irrelevant to the case. Reading between the lines, my guess is that the proponents had so much trouble getting their case together because no self-respecting sociologist, psychologist, historian or university professor who cares about their career and reputation wants to publicly defend the position that gays and lesbians are inferior human beings.

The California Attorney General would later admit reluctantly, when pressed, that he thought Prop. 8 was unconstitutional. I got the impression that he and Governor Schwarzenegger were trying to slip out of having to publicly make that admission, or they were at least trying to be as low-key about it as possible. But this past Wednesday President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder come out with a formal announcement that they will not defend DOMA. They were not being shy about it. What's more they put their finger directly on the heart of the issue, which is that "classifications based on sexual orientation warrant heightened scrutiny." In other words they don't think it's right to argue for discrimination based on sexual orientation. Just as Schwarzenegger couldn't stomach it, neither can Obama, except Obama calls a press conference to say it. And he's the President.

I can't help but think that President Obama's announcement is somehow, either directly or indirectly, a consequence of what happened with the Prop. 8 ruling. Even if someone else wants to step up and defend DOMA, how do you avoid a repeat of the pro-Prop. 8 case? Where will you get your witnesses? How will you argue the case? What will this do to people's professional or political credibility? I think the Obama administration must have realized all this and now they don't want anything to with the case. And if that realization has hit the highest level of our government, then that is significant indeed. It should only be a matter of time before the repercussions pervade throughout the moral fabric of this country in the coming decade.

No defense for the Defense of Marriage Act

The big news today is that President Obama announced that his administration will no longer oppose legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages or extending to them the same benefits that heterosexual married couples receive.

Here is the letter to Congress from Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. The legalese may be difficult, but if you were following my blogging on the Prop. 8 ruling last year, you should be able to understand the basic flow of thought. For review, read the introductory section of this post to refresh yourself on some of the terms.

Photo-genetic

I can't stop looking at this blog. The "Born This Way" blog features childhood photos submitted by readers that reveal something about their LGBT identity, some at a very young age.

As a parent I have observed the extent to which all three of my kids came "prepackaged." The 13 year-old who doesn't like to express her feelings was once an eighteen-month-old who used to hold in silent tears whenever she fell and scraped her knee. The ten-year-old who folds her own clothes without being told and has all her stuffed animals organized at the foot of her bed was the one who already knew how to dress herself in color-coordinated outfits at age two. (As for my four-year-old who owns a hundred toy cars and trucks, trails dirt into the house, knocks holes in our dry wall, and gives me the big-brown-puppy-eyes-look when he knows he's in trouble--I can only imagine what ten years will bring.)

All this to say: the idea that sexuality comes with the package when a child enters the world has never been a difficult concept for me to grasp. Yet still I find myself surprised and fascinated by these photos and the short essays that accompany them. While I know that not all gay men and women fit the stereotypes, it's apparent that many who do fit them more closely expressed themselves early on.

One reason I blog?

Because I don't want to be embarrassed in front of my grandkids. The Onion issues this warning.

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Thoughts on Ian Charleson

I recently realized that the movie Chariots of Fire, which I watched for about the fifth time last weekend, would have completely failed if it weren't for the brilliant acting of Ian Charleson who played Eric Liddell. That may seem obvious: Eric Liddell's character is the inspiration of the movie. He's the Christian missionary who ran for God's pleasure, who risked throwing away three years of training and a chance for Olympic gold because he felt he could not run an Olympic heat on the Christian Sabbath.

People think it's the story itself that captivates us, but I think it is Charleson's performance that sells it. His job as an actor was not just to play a good man but a saintly man, pious yet likable, reserved but not dull, conflicted yet steadfast, vulnerable enough to draw our sympathy yet strong enough to stand entirely alone. Then he had to make it look so natural the audience would be tempted to think this guy Ian Charleson must just be playing himself; yet I can't think of a more difficult acting role. One misstep and the whole thing is ruined: we're left with a story about a self-righteous prig who's determined to put the hopes of an entire nation on hold because of his personal fanaticism. The difference between that disaster and the Academy Award winning picture we got is Ian Charleson's ability to hit exactly the right note.

I got curious about the man who was able to pull off this subtle, multi-layered, highly spiritual performance. I thought, "I really like this Charleson guy. I'll bet he's either Christian or gay." I googled, then wikipedia-ed. Charleson was gay. And reading between the lines he was probably also Christian, judging from how eager he was to play the part of Eric Liddell, saying the role would "fit like a kid glove." He studied the Bible intensively to prepare for the role and wrote the post-race speech Eric Liddell delivered to the working class crowd himself. Charleson died of AIDS in 1990. He was 40.

It was all news to me. Maybe ten years ago such a discovery would have shocked and disgusted me, but now I find it makes sense, and I even guessed beforehand that maybe a gay man pulled off this remarkable performance. But why did I have that hunch? So many times when I encounter a song, a performance, or a piece of art that strikes me as so true and subtle and poignant and uplifting I feel almost a spiritual connection with it, I later learn the artist behind it is gay. It's happened so often I now take it for granted. Maybe there's something about being gay that enables an artist to see more clearly what it means to be human, to identify certain truths about us all. Maybe it is the ones who are forced to the margins who truly understand what it is we all have in common.

Now that I know Ian Charleson was gay it occurs to me that the dimension he grasped about Eric Liddell, which made that character seem so authentic, was his loneliness. To run for the pleasure of God had to be a lonely calling, one that neither your coach nor your missionary sister could easily understand. It's too religious for the athletic world and too secular for the Christian world. The Eric Liddell that Charleson portrayed was a man caught in between, and while both worlds sought to foist their own agendas upon him, he insisted on marching to a tune that he alone could hear, indulging in a private joy which, though mixed with pain, enabled him to carry himself with dignity throughout the chaos. Who else but a gay actor could understand so intuitively how these complex elements fit seamlessly together: to stand seemingly on center stage and still feel like an outsider looking in, to navigate through so many apparent contradictions and other people's attempts to define you, to drop an anchor deep within yourself and stay centered upon it with a conviction that reaches near spiritual heights?

Words of wisdom from Derek Webb

I don't follow the contemporary Christian music scene at all. However, I am extremely impressed with this Huffington Post interview with Christian musician Derek Webb. It's not the first time I've heard about Webb or his stance against homophobia and other ills in the evangelical church, but this interview captures the seriousness of thought he has given to his life and calling as a Christian.

Some quotes I resonated with:

At a time when everybody in our culture is talking about tolerance, it seems that tolerance has the highest premium of any response -- "If we just tolerate one another..." But my feeling is: Who wants to be tolerated? People don't want to be tolerated; they want to be loved.

I personally don't think that any Christian who doesn't have a friend -- not just a token friend, but someone they love and care about -- who is gay should speak out about the gay issue. I think that should almost be a requirement to publicly voice your opinion, because I can't tell you how it changes your posture and your language when you're not just talking about a "behavior" or a "faithless" group of people, but a family member or loved one -- someone who, when you're done saying what you're going to say, you'll have to deal with.

"Showering with homosexuals"

Even before President Obama signed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell today, I've been hearing objections from conservatives that "now our straight servicemembers will have to shower with homosexuals." Like, the repeal of DADT means we're now going to usher in the new homosexual brigade and dump them naked on our straight men and women in the showers and make everyone too scared to undress in the lockers ever again.

Well, I've got news for you, people. The repeal of DADT means our servicemembers will have to shower with the exact same people they have already been showering with for the past year, or two years, or five years, or however long they've been in the service. In other words, they have already been showering with homosexuals. The only difference is that because DADT has been repealed, the threat of being kicked out of the military for having one's sexual orientation revealed relieves the gay serviceperson from the pressure of having to keep quiet about his or her identity. As a result, this may increase the likelihood that he or she would make their gay identity known to others. On the other hand, the gay individual might just choose to keep quiet about it, while enjoying greater peace of mind knowing that being outed won't bring dire consequences. Other than that, everything goes on as usual.

Servicemembers who fought in the Gulf War showered with homosexuals. Same with those who served in Vietnam, in the Korean War, in World War II, and as far back as the history of locker room showers goes. High school football players shower with homosexuals. College kids living in the dorms shower with homosexuals. NBA superstars shower with homosexuals. Considering how much peaceful showering with homosexuals goes on every day all over the country, it would appear that gay men and women have been handling themselves appropriately in America's locker rooms. Why should it be any different in the military, just because the homosexuals that people are already showering with are no longer being forced into the closet under the threat of expulsion?

Senate repeals DADT

Brings tears to my eyes. President Obama promises to sign it into law next week.

Cartoon HT: Andrew Sullivan

Jon Stewart on DADT

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Sorry for the light blogging lately. When the holidays are upon me, I feel like I've been hit by a tornado. I have no idea what's going to happen with the current attempt to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, but it's reminded me of one of my favorite Jon Stewart clips from last year (keep watching, he'll get to it at 3:14).

The caveman factor

John Shore thinks hatred of gays has to do with power, not sex. I'll leave it to a straight man to explain this one.