Blogs
Greater NW Pride: Happy National Coming Out Day!
10/12/2020
Happy National Coming Out Day! Yesterday, October 11, 2020, was National Coming Out Day! My Facebook and Instagram accounts, along with Twitter feed, have been full of stories of coming out starting on Saturday night, Oct. 10, and are still popping up this morning on Oct. 12th. National Coming Out Day started in 1988 to mark the anniversary of the first LGBTQIA+ March on Washington, DC, and is a day of affirmation, acceptance, and sharing the truth of one’s life with family and friends....
Greater NW Pride: What the Church Can Learn about Welcoming LGBTQIA+ People from “Schitt’s Creek”
10/6/2020
What the Church Can Learn about Welcoming LGBTQIA+ People from “Schitt’s Creek” When I am in a period of doing some concentrated work and need a diversion and blow off steam, I often turn to TV comedies to get me through a certain span of concentrated times. During seminary, it was the televised version of “M*A*S*H”. In coming out of the closet and working in an insanely intense homophobic environment, it was “Will and Grace.” Transition from North Carolina to Oregon? "Modern Family." ...
Greater NW Pride: A Program Update
9/30/2020
A Program Update: Trailer to “Called to Love One Another,” an LGBTQIA2S+ Folx OR-ID Conference Wide Event, And Looking Forward to 2021 In mid-March 2020, six months ago, the world around me, and the way of life that I had taken for granted, came to a stop. We closed the Conference Center building, “until further notice” because of COVID 19. Working from home on our computers became the new norm. The major projects I was working on with “Q Camp: High School,” an all LGBTQIA2S+ camp for high ...
The Church Talks about Death! Part 1
9/30/2020
The Church Talks about Death! Part 1 - Advance Directives
Greater NW Pride: Happy Bisexuality Visibility Day!
9/23/2020
Happy Bisexuality Visibility Day! Yep, you read this correctly: Happy Bisexuality Visibility Day! While not readily advertised or celebrated in many churches, there are many people who would self-identify as bisexual, or perhaps pansexual, on this day, were our churches a safer place to be “out” and part of a community of faith. What or who is a bisexual? After all, it is the “B” in the LGBTQI+ alphabet. A person who self-identifies as a bisexual finds one’s self romantically ...
Greater NW Pride: Lifetime and Hallmark Channel Holiday Films and the Normalization of the LGBTQI+ Movement
9/16/2020
Lifetime and Hallmark Channels, Holiday Films, and the Normalization of the LGBTQI+ Movement I’m going to take a break from the documentary filmmaker David France mini-marathon, begun with a review of the 2020 HBO film, Welcome to Chechnya last week, and go to some unexpected news. Lifetime films is making one of their classic Christmas movies with a gay couple-falling-in-love film! While I am not necessarily drawn into holiday, Christmas films on Hallmark or Lifetime channels because of...
Greater NW Pride: Welcome to Chechnya: A Film Review
9/9/2020
“Welcome to Chechnya”: A Film Review Like many who read this blog, I’ve become quite the film and tv critic during the COVID 19 pandemic, especially of LGBTQI+ films, series, tv shows. I’ve watched the last episodes of the re-boot of Will and Grace on Hulu/NBC; I watched episodes of Euphoria on HBO and was stunned by the power of this series, featuring the new young transgender actor Hunter McShafer. I got caught up on Schitt’s Creek on Netflix, and laughed and cried at the wedding ...
Greater NW Pride: There's a Difference
9/4/2020
There’s a Difference When I was a music therapist, one of the songs I sang, in a circle, with a mixture of students who were living with a disability and those who were not disabled was “Alike and Different.” The ditty went like this, with clapping hands of course, and was a chant: “Alike and different, alike and different, we are alike and different!” At the end of the chant we would turn to the person on our right and say how we were alike, and on our left, how we were different. And then ...
Greater NW Pride: God’s Abundant Love for LGBTQI2S+ People
8/24/2020
God’s Abundant Love for LGBTQI2S+ People I was delighted to read of the actions of a Carmelite nun, Sr. Monica Astorga, in Argentina who did the Godly thing of opening up a housing complex specifically for transgender women. I wasn’t the only one who was delighted of this news. Last week, Pope Francis responded to an email from Sr. Monica, informing him of her latest project—the establishment of this housing for transgender women in Argentina, and the Pope, in a handwritten message, told ...
Greater NW Pride: Cancel Culture, Transgender Lives, and the Church
8/20/2020
Cancel Culture, Transgender Lives, and the Church One of the popular phrases today in modern culture is “cancel culture.” What is cancel culture? It refers to, “the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Cancel culture is generally discussed as being performed on social media in the form of group shaming” (dictionary.com). In the current politics of this land, there...
Greater NW Pride: Performative Allyship and LGBTQI+ People in the Church
8/10/2020
Performative Allyship and LGBTQI+ People in the Church This is kind of one of the “terms” or “new words” for 2020: performative allyship. Definition and description of performative allyship: First, allies are helpful. An ally is someone from a non-marginalized group who uses one’s privilege to advocate for a marginalized group. Being an ally is a good thing. In the LGBTQ+ community we welcome and appreciate our non-LGBTQ+ allies. Second, performative allyship is problematic. It is ...
Inspiring Generosity
8/5/2020
Even During a Pandemic: Financial Generosity and Volunteering are Intertwined
Greater NW Pride: Being a Person of Faith, Queer, and Civic Minded
8/4/2020
Being a Person of Faith, Queer, and Civic Minded I am part of the Portland Interfaith Clergy Resistance (PICR) group. There are around 100 + of us. Feel free to join us. The group started to come together in Portland during the Black Lives Matter protests that started soon after the death of George Floyd in May 25, 2020. There are several friends in the movement who are clergy and queer who were noticing how some in the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) were especially brutal to people ...
Greater NW Pride: They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love
7/30/2020
They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love One of my favorite storytellers is the Seattle-based sex-columnist Dan Savage, with his Savage Lovecolumn that appears in various free weekly publications, like the Portland Mercury. In an interview on the website salon.com, Amanda Marcotte talked with Dan Savage about the power of stories in an article, "Dan Savage Knows a Great Sex Story When He Hears It." Savage told her that “people like to hear other people’s stories. Particularly other ...