Category: Gay

Posted on

Bad news from the United Methodists

Hubby and I won’t bother with religious organizations that are hostile to our lives as gay men, with respect to the polity of the congregation concerned. That means a gay-agnostic congregational-polity church in a hostile association is better than gay-affirming church in a hostile connectional system. This makes affiliating with a connectional or episcopal church (from the ones available to us locally) almost impossible.

The power plays one sees at these meetings . . . . Heavens!

So, should I be surprised when blogger and ministerial colleague Debra W. Haffner (Sexuality and Religion: What’s the Connection?) reports that the 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed a spate of measures “to affirm their teaching that homosexuality was incompatible with God’s teaching”?

Posted on

What to do for Easter

Hurray! Hubby and I had our first date seven years ago tonight. He’s at work, and I’m thinking deeply and fondly of him.

Last night, he and I were shopping for groceries and, in frozen foods, the conversation turned to our Easter observances. To tell the truth, I was thinking of a lo-cal or vegetarian answer to my question: “What do want to get or do for Easter?”

Without pausing, he retorted: “Go to flower communion at a church that doesn’t mention Christ.” Ouch: that service he attended — long before we met — several years ago certainly made an impression . . .

We have a couple of irreducible needs in a church, even in our current quasi-churchless state.

  1. It has to be Christian (and not just Christian on occasion).
  2. It can’t degrade our relationship as a gay couple.

The second is the stickier to define, and I mention it because of the running comment at Surviving the Workday about not getting your needs met at church. (About which I’m not even close to exhausting.)

While the attitude of a local congregation is important, we’ve chosen to make polity a disqualifying factor. So an episcopal polity church is judged by its hierarchical structure and a presbyterian polity church by its various courts, while a congregational polity church would be judged strictly by local decision making. This means a way-gay Episcopal parish gets dinged by the national church’s current spinelessness. (Other than that Bp. Robinson, how was the show?) It also means a Unitarian Universalist congregation cannot lean on the merits of a General Assembly resolution, and so forth. And frankly, any lingering patience I had for the bigger Lutheran or Presbyterian churches has dried up.

Follow the power. Pay attention to who can make decisions.

I’ll let you know next Monday where we went, if indeed we went out at all.

Posted on

Who will speak up for Mehdi Kazemi?

I am disturbed that

  • the UK Home Office will deport 19-year-old gay Iranian Mehdi Kazemi back to Iran, where his life is most surely in danger. (He was studying in the UK.)
  • there isn’t a strong campaign to pressure the UK government to allow him to stay there.

Kazemi’s partner (or boyfriend, variously reported) was probably hanged and the best the Home Office can offer is that he’ll be safe if he’s discrete. Kinda hard after his name, face and case have been splashed widely in the press.

Right now I’m asking if anyone has seem more than I have, about a concerted effort. I’ll write more about possible actions, especially for Americans, if nothing crops up.

Posted on

Gay postage watch

Yesterday, a Day Job Office Mate and fellow Project Runway watcher suggested a spin-off series: a new, new Odd Couple where Tim Gunn (D.C. native!) and Chris March share an apartment and hilarity ensues.

I suggested, “They could just move the same Eames chair back and forth.”

Well, dang, if the United States Postal Service didn’t provide a prop for the occasion: Charles and Ray Eames-themed stamps. I can hardly wait.

But could there be a gayer stamp release this year? Yes.

Posted on

Brain on fire following Robertson clip

Even though Day Job is around the corner from the CBN News office, I don’t think much about that candidate for America’s #1 lunatic: Pat Robertson.

The readers at Towelroad, using a YouTube-d video grabbed by Right Wing Watch, is having a “I can’t believe it” moment.

Seems the 700 Mob now thinks I-35 is the Lord’s highway and need to have “purity sieges” (who could make this stuff up?) to clean up the sinners. Strip clubs mentioned; gays targeted. (Disclosure: I once went to the bar mentioned in the clip, more than a decade ago, when in seminary. Show tunes night.)

The whole video makes my head hurt. The de-gay-ified youth minister. (There’s a story there.) The personality-plus evangelists. Everything being “on fire.”

The only comfort is how small the congregations seem to be and how fringy their message (delivery by dreams?) must seem to everyone else, not excluding some Fundamentalists.

Posted on

Massachusetts is for plovers

I know plovers doesn’t rhyme with lovers, but this hopeful story (with a cute photo) from today’s New York Times makes me even happier with Massachusetts than Virginia (the “is for lovers” state) that makes life very hard indeed for same-sex couples. No, I’ve not forgotten.

And given my choice of where I can live, work, vacation and spend my money in the national capitol area, Hubby and I will stick to the District of Columbia and Maryland.

Posted on

The anti-viral video

This Telugu-language video, performed by the Nritanjali Academy of the Andhra Pradesh state, India, was all the hit today at Day Job.

  1. I like it for its catchy, informative way of promoting condom use.
  2. It features women’s and gay men’s particular needs without embarrassment.
  3. Clever people can use it for last-minute costume ideas.

Pass the word about “Protective Cover.”

Posted on

Some links for October 20

  • Stentor Danielson picks up on two kinds of churchly homophobia and I suspect the quieter one he mentions is the more toxic. (Debitage).
  • Lifehacker reminds us that the five-year window “Do Not Call” registry so many of us used will be re-opening next year. You can reset the clock — and enjoy solicitation-free evenings — by re-registering here. Took me two minutes. Less, perhaps.
  • Jeanne at Social Class & Quakers describes what working-class behaviors she’s found Friends hold in low esteem. She mentions Unitarians as fellow travelers, but doesn’t examine (here anyway) what behaviors are principled and which are class markers. (It makes a difference to me.)
Posted on

A thin blog day tomorrow!

You see, I write most of my day’s posts the night before (which is why they come out so evenly in the morning and early afternoon) and tonight’s the Gay Superbowl. I know some of you are watching with us.

Update. I didn’t see Grey Gardens but I cheered Mary Louise Wilson for knowing how to give a great acceptance speech.