Blogs
Greater NW Pride: Gay Hallmark Holiday Movies and Me
12/8/2020
Gay Hallmark Holiday Movies and Me While I was aware of the presence of Hallmark movies during the pre-cable days, when television merely had stations—yes, I’m that old—I’m also aware of the Hallmark Channel that can be streamed, with 24/7 viewings of Hallmark movies, along with Lifetime, Amazon Prime, Hulu, TLC, HGTV, and Bravo. The formulaic script for these Hallmark Hall of Fame movies are well known in our middle-class, white, suburban, straight, cisgender society. By and large, the ...
Greater NW Pride: World AIDS Day, December 1, 2020
11/30/2020
World AIDS Day, December 1, 2020 In the rush of good news of three possible COVID 19 vaccines in the last week, the impact of such news is not lost among those who are alive and HIV positive (HIV poz). Indeed, many lessons about how to deal with this pandemic have come from dealing with the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. Testing, contact tracing, and other preventative measures that have been executed during the COVID 19 pandemic’s early days are straight out of the book(s), articles, ...
Greater NW Pride: Calendars, Remembrances, and Thanksgiving
11/24/2020
Calendars, Remembrances, and Thanksgiving I carry two paper program calendars with me from my respective homes in the Presbyterian Church (USA)(PCUSA) and The United Methodist Church (UMC). Each one tells me the holy days in the life of the Church, the secular holidays like Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, as well as the programmatic special days, like “World Communion Sunday,” “Youth in the Church,” and “Disability Sunday,” to name a few. On my iPhone, I also have a calendar that reminds me ...
Greater NW Pride: Role Models
11/19/2020
Role Models In 1980, I went to Princeton Theological Seminary to pursue an M. Div. My call to ministry was somewhat split between pastoral ministry and an interest in how people with intellectual disabilities understood or knew God if they were unable to communicate using written or spoken language. Having been a music therapist, I knew that the young people I worked with, many who were labeled as autistic, knew the world through music, but not necessarily through spoken, let alone ...
Greater NW Pride: Quitting Church
11/10/2020
Quitting Church In an article this week on religionnews.com website, “Study finds that queer Christians quit the church twice as much as others,” Kathryn Post writes of a study by Brandi Woodell (sociology professor at Old Dominion University) and Philip Schwadel (social profession, Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln), published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion that reports that “same-sex attraction, behavior, and queer identity is strongly associated with a decision to step ...
Patient? You Want Me to Be Patient?
11/4/2020
Patient? You Want Me to Be Patient? Now this is patience. Peter Fischer@pixabay I want to know who the ignoramus was that said, “Patience is a virtue.” What? You say it was Saint Paul? And he said it a few times? Maybe not exactly in those exact words, but pretty close? Oops. My bad. Sorry Paul. And here’s proof: Romans 8:25 – But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And then there’s Galatians 5:22-23 (which I almost hesitate ...
