Blogs
New Faith Communities
Greater NW Pride: Moving the Needle
2/25/2021
Moving the Needle When I was first hired to be the LGBTQIA+ Advocacy Coordinator of the OR-ID UMC Conference, Paul, one of my close friends, said that my job was “to move the needle.” What needle? On the “gauge” of LGBTQIA+ justice and equality in life, on one end of the gauge it might read “empty” or “few,” as in separation or segregation and exclusion of LGBTQIA+ people, and on the other side of the dial is “full” as in all The United Methodist Church congregations in the OR-ID UMC ...
Greater NW Pride: Is God Gay?
2/17/2021
Is God Gay? My answer, as the blogger, is yes. This is not the view of any official theological position of any denomination, including The United Methodist Church or Presbyterian Church (USA), which is the denomination in which I am ordained. And my response to this rhetorical question is yes. God is gay. Background. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the increased use of non-gender specific language in society and in the Church (universal) in terms of how we address one another. Many ...
Greater NW Pride: Recognizing NBHAD (National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness DAY)
2/9/2021
Recognizing NBHAD (National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness DAY) February 7th was NBHAD, National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. As Drs. Stephen Tang and Giffin Daughtridge wrote on hivplusmag.com, it “is a day to highlight the disproportionate impact of HIV on Black communities, to celebrate the work of Black HIV advocates, and to support Black people living with HIV in America. We also celebrate the efforts of our local and federal partners, the HIV workforce, and community advocates who have ...
Greater NW Pride: “My Name is Pauli Murray”
2/2/2021
“My Name is Pauli Murray” For over twenty-five years of my adult life, I lived in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. My Ph.D. came from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), in special education with a focus in the humanities. My doctoral studies were split evenly between UNC-CH and Duke University in Durham, NC. I got to know the “Tobacco Mile,” as the road was called between the two campuses, well. I lived in Durham, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Pittsboro, NC. ...
Greater NW Pride: LGBTQIA+ Young People and the Church
1/26/2021
LGBTQIA+ Young People and the Church “When did you know you were gay?” is a question I am often asked in this work as the LGBTQIA+ Advocacy Coordinator. As I’ve said before on this blog and in many conversations in many church groups, I was either in the second or third grade at the time. I simply found myself more interested in young boys my age rather than young girls. Here was a pseudo-test for figuring all this out. Many people are asked when they kissed or wanted to kiss a person ...
Greater NW Pride: Symbols Matter
1/22/2021
Symbols Matter Symbols and signs in our culture matter. They are indicators of what direction a people and a culture are taking. The difference between a symbol and a sign is that “a symbol can convey a deeper and more complex meaning than a sign. A sign is an indicator or marker for something very specific, very concrete and, in general, unambiguous in meaning. ... A symbol conveys a message of deeper meaning and is open to interpretation.” Another way of saying it is that symbols, more ...
Greater NW Pride: Inclusive Language: Update (Again)
1/12/2021
Inclusive Language: Update (Again) When I was born, and during my early, formative years of life, the Bible that I read, and the society in which I lived, used words such as “mankind” and “men” as all-inclusive words. "Father God" was normal language. Even in 1969, the astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered the phrase on the moon: that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” And women were to feel included in such phrases. The idea of anyone being non-binary gender was not on ...
Greater NW Pride: Landmarks
1/5/2021
Landmarks In a recent, year-end, issue of Portland’s alternative newspaper, Willamette Week, there was a review of the changes in Portland in 2020 since the arrival of the COVID 19 pandemic. New leaders sprung up around the city. New habits we have picked up (masks, anyone?). New issues came to the light of day that had long been hidden. And landmarks around Portland had closed. One of those landmarks is well-known in the Portland LGBTQIA+ community: CC Slaughters. Reporter Shannon Gormley ...
Greater NW Pride: Pondering
12/29/2020
Pondering In the Gospel of Luke, the word, “ponder” is used twice in the first two chapters. The first time is when the angel Gabriel visited Mary, saying, “’Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greetings this might be” (Luke 1: 29). The second time was after Mary was visited by the shepherds who came with a message from the angels, in which “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”(Luke 2:19)....
Greater NW Pride: The Ten Year Anniversary of the Repeal of DADT
12/21/2020
The Ten Year Anniversary of the Repeal of DADT On December 22, 2020, we as a nation, especially in the LGBTQIA+ community of US citizens, will have something to celebrate. We will celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the repeal of the dreaded, awful, Rube Goldberg-inspired, compromised and compromising DADT policy in the US armed services. What is DADT? For those not familiar with this abbreviation it stood for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” It is an historic practice that was evil. A bit of ...
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....
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 ...
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 ...