Blogs
Church Vitality
Greater NW Pride: On Being an LGBTQIA+ Parent
12/15/2020
On Being an LGBTQIA+ Parent In 2007, my book, On Being a Gay Parent was published by Seabury Press/Church Publishing Group. It was a first in many parts of the publishing world. I wrote the book and hosted/wrote a blog with that name, simply because there were very few books in the world that spoke about being a gay man of faith, ordained as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), raising his children with his partner and the children’s mom in the same town, and living life fully as a ...
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 ...
Greater NW Pride: A Rushed Wedding
11/3/2020
A Rushed Wedding The below post started to spring up all over my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts in the last few weeks. I lost count of how many times this message, or something like it, sprung up, with pastors, ministers, rabbis, and priests from all denominations and religions, including some retired bishops of both The United Methodist Church and Episcopal Church, some who never “showed their hand” about where they stood on marriage equality before, offering officiating ...
Greater NW Pride: Two Dads Coffee, LGBTQIA+ People, and the Church
10/27/2020
Two Dads Coffee, LGBTQIA+ People, and the Church Those who know me well will not be surprised when I write that I like to drink coffee in the morning, and sometimes into the afternoon, which I am currently doing as I write this blog. I prefer a dark roast, without half and half or sugar. Along the way I’ve collected mugs as well for drinking my coffee. And wherever I’ve been on pilgrimage around the world, I’ve tasted some great coffees, from Machu Pichu in Peru, to Spanish coffee in ...
Greater NW Pride: Pope Francis and the United Methodist Church
10/22/2020
Pope Francis and The United Methodist Church This is not the blog I was going to post this week. But one thing that I’ve learned in writing newspaper columns and personal essays is to go with the flow of the news when big events happen. The other blog that I was working on will be great next week as well. The big news yesterday, October 21, 2020, happens to be Pope Francis making a pastoral move in the movie, “Francesco,” in which he says, on camera, that “homosexuals have a right to be ...
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....