Just How Twisted?

Just how twisted can right-wing "Christians" get? Check out how Jesus may have named the anti-christ:

March for Equailty

Pope POed about Bible Exhibit

From Joe.My.God.

Pope Palpatine is pissed about an art exhibit in the UK that invited gay folks to "write their way back in" on a bible on display.

The exhibit, Untitled 2009, is part of the Made In God's Image exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow and was thought up by local artist Anthony Schrag. The intention was for gays and transsexuals who felt left out of religion to "write their way back in" to the holy book. But visitors offered pens by gallery staff had other ideas, and have scrawled a series of puerile and obscene remarks. One person wrote: “This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all,” while another wrote: "Mick Jagger and David Bowie belong in here," and another described the book as "the biggest lie in human history". Some remarks were simply offensive, with one person writing "---- the Bible". The message "I am Bi, Female & Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this,” was written on the first page of Genesis. The subsequent complaints have led to the organisers of the exhibit putting the holy book on show in a locked case and inviting visitors to write their comments on blank sheets of paper instead.

The Pope's adviser called the exhibit "disgusting and offensive" and one that the artist "would not think of doing to the Koran."

GO TO WASHINGTON DC on OCT 11

IF YOU COME IT WILL HAPPEN.

Please ignore the nay-sayers, or better yet tell them that if you are not for it, you are agin' it. Find a way to go to Washington DC on October 11. This is about showing that there are lots and lots and lots of people who believe that LGBT people deserve the very same responsibilities and rights that every American citizen enjoys. It is nothing more or less.

It is not circuit party, not a lobbying day, not a star-studded event. It is not centrally organized event. Its success is only contigent upon LGBT people and their supporters taking a day to get get to Washington, DC.

Go to equalityacrossamerica.org and find out ways to help you particiapte.

There are many large orgnaizations that are foot dragging on this. They claim that there is not time to organize, the congress will not be in session... etc. Their points are legimate and well taken... BUT: This event trascends the politics, the positioning and the nuance. It is a down and dirty "Show up and support LGBT equality." Remember how many people showed up across the country to protest the passage of Prop 8. It inspired many people and raised the conscieness of many. It got no-name people (like me) on the TV news.

So if the HRC, NGLTF and other large organizations a create a self-fulfilling prophesy of failure for this, what good have they done?

Folks from many areas ARE going to be there. The cast of the Broadway production of HAIR will be there. They are rescheduling a performance to do this. It is being promoted by Cleve Jones, former assistant to Harvey Milk and the organizer who covered the Washing Mall with an AIDS memorial quilt. It is going to happen.

Please join me, Kyle and thousands of others who will be there.

From Day1 (Formerly "The Protestant Hour")

Thanks to Beth for directing me to a new place:

From a reflection "The Thunk, the Gap, and the Six A's"

by

The Rev. Mark Sargent

The Rev. Mark Sargent is pastor of Embry Hills United Methodist Church, Atlanta, GA.

If striking up conversations with strangers who don't go to church is too much for you, but if you want to learn something about the reputation that we Christians don't enjoy, then you could just watch the comedy routines of people like Kathy Griffin and Bill Maher and the late George Carlin, three of my favorite theologians, by the way. You'll have to forgive them their unvarnished language, but you can certainly learn a lot about what many people in the world think about us by checking them out. If that's too much, then stay home and order movies like "Jesus Camp" and "Religilous" and see why we have such a lousy reputation in many places and among many people.

It is a sad thing, because we know that there is a brand of Christianity that is better than the widely-practiced, widely-publicized brand of Christianity that is ethnocentric, anti-scientific, homophobic, imperialistic, defensive, condemning, rejecting, and afraid. We know that a different Christianity exists. We know that there are followers of Jesus who are open-minded, well-educated, and accepting. We know that there are followers of Jesus who are spiritually mature, intellectually honest and psychologically savvy. We know that there are followers of Jesus who guard against unfair stereotypes and who attempt to check their ungenerous judgments and who work to eliminate prejudice in their own minds and wherever else they see it.

But there are hosts of people outside of Christianity who do not know that, because people who practice Christian spirituality with spirits and brains and souls fully engaged have sadly become the Christian minority. And when many people think of "Christian" or "church," they often do so with pejorative overtones because the Christianity that is most widely-practiced and mostly widely-publicized is the brand of Christianity that smacks of religious fundamentalism and adheres to the impossible agenda of Biblical inerrancy.

Read it all here

Where Faith Needs to Meet LGBT People

Excerpted from a letter I wrote to a group planning an interfaith service for Oct 10 on the eve of the March on Washington.

If the Holy One is calling us to to this thing we need to trust in that and let our egos go. Too many opportunities to bring us together as people of faith, let alone as people with a common cause have been lost to quibbling.

Someone asked for my approval [of idea for a liturgy/order of worship]. I cannot give my approval only my reaction as a person raised in a particular tradition in a particular time. Communion is a concept that, no matter how it is couched will offend someone who is not Christian. Altar Call has a very specific connotation that will send some LGBT screaming, particularly those raised in the pentecostal tradition or those who may have been subjected to reparative therapy...

Does any of this mean that I believe that the concept should be sacrificed because it may offend my sensibilities. NO! I believe in a God that speaks to me through the Episcopal Tradition and to others through their own traditions...

So let's build on those things which we hold in common. There are Hebrew, Christian and Muslim scriptures and Hindu, Buddhist and Daoist writings that can be used to support the basic tenets of human dignity and love for one another. That is what is at the foundation of our faith and our movement. Let us celebrate that.

I have shared before that Bishop Steve Charleston, former bishop of Alaska and Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge preached a message of environmental stewardship with passion and fervor that some would call pentecostal. I would call it spirit driven. He held a group of Episcopalians, often called the "Frozen Chosen" in his hand and poured out his heart. He called "Am I telling you the truth?!" and the response was, "Yes!" Remember, these are Episcopalians who many would say were probably worried about whether they used the correct fork during the fish course at brunch. Every word he said would be as powerful in a mosque or synagogue.

He could as easily have delivered the message of religion's abuse at the hand of bigots. I know because he did at the Integrity Eucharist in Denver in 2000. It changed my life.

We need a preacher/rabbi/imam with passion to deliver the message that many LGBT are hungry to hear. God loves you. You are missed in the faith that raised you or your parents. There is a place of worship that is less because you are not there. There are people who's love will never be whole until you are a part of their circle. You may have to force your way back in to some of these places, but in the days, months and years to come they will rejoice and celebrate your return.

Folks, I am lay person. I am not trained in homiletics. But I do know the message that must be delivered.

NOW... we must work together, without regard for ownership or ego to see that in one place in Washington DC at one time at least one new person hears that message.

Let the people say, "Amen."

LGBT Activist ME!

From the Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel with greetings form our proud senior-citizen neighbors inscribed on the copy in our mailbox:

Local Episcopalian a National LGBT Activist

St. John’s Episcopal Church in Honeoye Falls is the home parish for a nationally involved activist in Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender issues. Neil Houghton, who lives in Mendon, is a Vice President of Integrity USA (integrityusa.org), the national organization that works within the Episcopal Church to advocate for LGBT people.

This summer, Houghton will be a deputy at the church’s national convention in Anaheim, where many of these issues will be addressed.

“This parish has been extremely supportive,” says Houghton. “Many parishioners actively support our cause and participate in local LGBT Pride events. We are a community that 'take the Bible too seriously to take it literally.' When my husband and I were married in Toronto in February 2008, Bishop McKelvey and his wife were our witnesses. They gave us a brick in the Frontier Field 'walk of fame' as a wedding present. Our current bishop, The Rt. Rev. Dr. Prince Signh, spoke on behalf of marriage equality at a lobbying day in Albany in April.”

Regarding being Christian and gay Houghton states, “My sexuality is a morally neutral gift from God. How I use that gift involves moral choices that my faith informs. I face the same choices in my marriage that everyone does. My husband Kyle (Crawford) and I deserve the same rights and should live up to the same responsibilities as all married couples.”

Houghton is also a co-chair of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester Committee for Gay and Lesbian Ministry, New York State United Teachers Committee on Civil and Human Rights and National Education Association Committee on Sexual Orientation and Sexual Identification