From Welcoming to Winning to Welcoming

Recently I participated in a discussion with a group of theologians who participated in an event hosted by an organization that works for full inclusion of all people in all churches. One person made a comment, meant to be encouraging at the time, that with changes in society and stories in the press, we had won. The idea, and language, of “winning church” stuck with me for the rest of the day as it bulldozed its way through my thinking and most of my individual conversations the rest of the day.

Wouldn’t we all be very happy if everyone else’s theology came into perfect alignment with our own? I have never met anyone who did not like the idea of winning, and “winning church” probably ranks as the biggest.

Deep inside, I think we all desire an end to conflict between the faiths so that the most contentious argument in Church is whether to serve regular, whole-wheat, or gluten-free communion wafers. Sadly, within major religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam most of the divisions, denominations, or sects agree on the big concepts of the religion. The minutia and practice around those concepts, though create schisms large enough to dwarf the Grand Canyon. To cement the “rightness” of each point, they become so enshrined in ritual across generations that if the Torah/Bible/Koran did not say it, it should have.

Truthfully, though, I do not want another denomination or, for that matter, another individual to come into sync with my personal theology: it would diminish my personal, individual, relationship with God. I came to where I am in faith through my life experiences and my encounters with God. They are uniquely mine and have shaped nuances of faith no one else can have. The big ideas align to my faith tradition but have been buffed and polished by my experiences with God. The biggest idea in Christianity is having a personal relationship with God.

Similarly, congregational experience grows the same way through corporate worship and shared experiences. Each congregation develops its its history and tradition around those experiences. Some use the history as a guide for future work. Some get stuck in the history.

While it the idea of winning sounds nice, it does not support the value of welcoming all in the church. For someone to win, someone else loses - becoming disenfranchised and feeling unwelcome in the church. The welcoming and affirming movements within the different denominations have to recognize that we have not been successful until every child of God is welcome in every congregation. As more congregations and religious organizations adjust rules and statements of faith the more we will encounter individuals and groups who opposed those changes. They are as worthy or our love and gracious welcome as the previously excluded populations.

Welcoming is not a value extended only toward historically marginalized individuals and groups. Welcoming is a value extended to everyone. Christ left no ambiguity about who could be his follower. He traveled amongst the sinners and unclean while engaging the religious elite. He welcomed everyone.

Society may proclaim winners and losers on various issues, but we who seek justice for all cannot let ourselves adapt this kind of thinking. We have long worked to develop a kingdom view of people that welcomes everyone and affirms their value.

I admit that I am encouraged by the increase in congregations and organizations who are recognizing that Christ welcomed and affirmed all people and are seeking to become more Christlike by following his example. Meanwhile other congregations reinforce their theology that defines who can worship with them. As long as the dichotomy exists there are no winners. The best we can do is to practice grace and demonstrate the love of God.

Unexcused Absence

Back in March, I wrote a post about why I was not posting much, and in it I explained that when I returned, the blog may well have a different direction.

Obviously, that essay was never posted.

Suffice it to say that I have simply been so busy with both my professional and personal life that I have not had the chance to write anything beyond what was required for work and grad school lately. I have been so emotionally occupied, that I have not felt a NEED for the creative release either.

In that time there have been both work and personal tugs-of-war. I am tired, but I know myself much better after them.

In February, I began an new job and in June I accepted a (volunteer) leadership role with a group addressing GLBT persons place in religion and working with churches to help them be both welcoming AND affirming of GLBT persons.

In May I fell in love - and it has been hard!!! I have to make so many personal adjustments to make this work - I’ve been single 42 years (yes, I count infancy and childhood). I knew relationships were work, but DAMN! Still I’m happy and I like his family. It took him five years to get me, so I’m glad he didn’t give up.

Now I am going to be back - on somewhat of a regular basis, but I think with a specific focus. We’ll see how that works out over the next few months.

The Gay Sports Challenge

Saturday Sportscast

The Gay Sports Challenge

I think the gay gene is a bit broader than just Broadway musicals and interior decorating, but very often it just gets blocked when it comes to sports. I am certainly not the most athletic guy around and anyone who has ridden in my car lately knows that with the satellite radio, I’m either listening to showtunes or dance music. But on weekend afternoons, you are as likely to find me in front of the television watching football or basketball. Fortunately, there are only about six weeks in the summer when neither is on (sorry, arena football does not yet count). I enjoy baseball if I can attend the game, but I have not found a sportscaster who can bring baseball as alive on television as the old radio announcers did in the generations when television was in its infancy. Football and basketball I understand enough that I don’t need an announcer telling me what is going on – I did do football play-by-play (and track) for almost ten years. Last week a friend asked me to watch one of the college bowl games with him and made the suggestion that we could watch it at his house or go to a bar. I killed the bar idea because I talk too much during the games. Those ten years of play-by-play are hard to give up. I’m calling the play, where the ball is downed, and all the details ahead of the announcers on television. I don’t have the rosters memorized like I used to do when calling the high school games, but I do know most of the key players by the end of the first quarter in college games. It was a pleasure to spend the game with him because I have such a struggle finding a gay friend with whom I can watch sports. Despite the striving for physical perfection in the gay community, a certain disdain for actual athletic competition comes up when a reference is made to professional sports. It is one thing to spend hours in the gym each week but quite another to enjoy men who spend even more time in the gym challenging each other on the playing field. I have always been challenged to understand that disconnect. The disconnect continues when it comes to participation – there are gay sports leagues in most major cities for softball, volleyball, rugby (yeah rugby men!), and basketball. They Gay Games traditionally follows the Olympic calendar and the Olympic host cities. Even many of those participants do not follow professional sports. Every good friend I have who is active in any of the gay sports leagues (and who have competed in the Gay Games) still reject professional sports. In the past year there have been rumors or professional athletes who are gay and one former professional basketball player actually came out as well as former professional football players. Sadly, no currently active team male athlete has come out as gay. The lack of active gay athletes is costing the leagues the gay support. I think the lack of out gay players has created the gay sports challenge. Despite the quest for physical perfection and the enjoyment of playing sports with other gay men, the absence of gay athletes has turned off the connection to professional sports. When we have a superstar quarterback or power forward or home-run slugger come out as gay, to put it in economic terms, the gay dollars will come flowing into that sport. The gay community has made remarkable progress in almost every aspect of society but sports remains a frontier to be crossed. I am not a fan of outing people. Coming out is too personal to be forced (unless you are a homophobic homosexual politician who is doing harm to the community by your lies). Professional athletes, performers, and each of us has the right to make that decision, but I do implore the gay athletes to take that stand and begin to change the attitudes affecting homosexuals in sports. It has worked in politics, entertainment and in most professional settings. It is time for gay male athletes to step up to the plate, so to speak.

Gaysted - vs - Straisted

Most of us homosexuals have always reasoned that the straight object of our affection was only a six-pack away from being open to our suggestions and advances. The straight community apparently has become aware of the same thing. The hip community in Las Angeles has coined a term to describe those heterosexuals who get engage in homosexual behavior when they are drunk – gaysted. I’m at once flattered, amused, and insulted by the advent of the word.

I find it flattering and amusing that the “phenomenon” is so widespread that a word is needed for it. It also provides hope for all of us with a straight crush. Sadly the word came from such a simple compounding of gay and wasted that it did not take much creativity. Even sadder – I cannot come up with a better word for it.

I find it amusing, too, that there is no word for gay people engaging in heterosexual activity. “Straisted” maybe? There really is not a need for the word either because gay people don’t go “straight” when we get drunk. It is not possible to get me drunk enough to go straight.

So for that I’m a bit offended. They (straight folk) create a word to explain away or justify a behavior that only goes one way. They say it like there is something wrong with homosexual behavior unless you are drunk. Actually, the way the word gets used in context glorifies such behavior – when drunk.

Since gay people don’t go out getting straisted, how straight are the straight people who go out getting gaysted? Using the word simply continues to drive a wedge between parts of society and actually demonstrates a lack of acceptance. Science and Psychology have definitively determined that sexual orientation is not a choice. Using a word to justify a natural and normal behavior furthers the false notion that the action is neither natural nor normal.

While “gaysted” sounds funny and drunks are easy enough to laugh at, the word minimizes an entire population. The “PC” police normally get on my last nerve, but I’m putting on my badge for a bit. Recent celebrity and political outbursts have created an awareness of the weight of words. Words, with their power to empower or diminish, need to be used with great care. Combating hate speech is not difficult; it just requires calling it out whenever it occurs.

I’m calling out “gaysted” now. Let’s work together to stop the spread of the word while it is limited to a few pretty people in Las Angeles who think they are being cute.

Or am I the only gay person who does not get straisted? Take the poll and let me know.

Calling All Lesbians

Now is the time for all good lesbians to come to the aid of their country. The lesbians are the key to ending the war in Iraq in a matter of months.

Recently in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, as representatives were grilling Secretary of State Condi Rice about the reasons the State Department was understaffed on translators. One of the representatives, Gary Ackerman of New York, in questioning Rice, asked why she had not hired the numerous military translators fired under “don’t ask don’t tell.” He pointed out:

For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are of terrorists. They’re very brave with the terrorists, and if the terrorists ever get hold of this information, they get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad.

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

Lesbians, now is the time to join al Qaida.

I propose that we begin with a blitzkrieg of Dykes on Bikes. The military has become accustomed to identifying and defending against snipers and ieds. They are sorely prepared now to handle the thunderous onslaught of short haired women on Harleys.

We can follow the blitzkrieg with a line of lipstick lesbians. Their very presence will confuse all members of the military. They won’t be able to look at a Fatima or Skinnyma in Baghdad without wondering if she is part of the lesbian force.

Next we will send in the Home Depot Aproned Handiwomen. Who in the military can really tell if they have come to demolish or repair?

Finally, we send in the Flannel Force, the most fearsome fighters since Joan of Arc. The intensity of their slash and burn campaign will clearly demonstrate the futility of battling internal strife in a created state.

As our military retreats, under the repulse of the lesbian platoon, the residents will establish their grounds and will be able to district themselves into governable bodies. There will be bloodshed as there is in any birth, and often in death, as the two events are so closely linked. New nations will come forth and the Iraq created under Western influence (thank you France), will die.

The stasis will come, but not at the expense of American lives. As frightened as our military is of homosexuals, the waves of the lesbian platoon will make it through relatively unscathed as long as the Dykes on Bikes avoid the potholes created by the various ieds and car bombs from the last four years.

Too Gay for Me

I’m a football fan and have been one for years, so the Super Bowl, right after the National Championship college football game, is the biggest night of the year for me – even bigger than the Oscars. So it was with much excitement that I readied myself and went to the annual Super Bowl party some of my good friends throw each year.

Of course, pre-game programming begins about a week before the game itself and runs pretty much non-stop until the game kicks off. There is media day, look at the field day, dress rehearsal for half-time, and every imaginable team “formation announced” from the least mentioned “insert given position here” team, to the good Samaritan team. Plays from the season before are analyzed with awards given for best tackle by a punter to most teeth knocked out by a linebacker. This year, they even covered each official – what calls did he throw the most and least, etc.

After the tons of useless information which held no impact on the game at all was delivered, the “on the field” pre-game show began. All of us gathered around to see what spectacular would welcome the world to the Super Bowl telecast and what grand entrance would be created for the players from each team.

We all sat mouths agape wondering and occasionally voicing a “What the hell?” Bizarre and abstract shapes wandered the playing field. After a time it became clear that some of the longer shapes were supposed to be waves as people dressed like mutant tropical fish went under and around them. Shortly after that dance began, people with giant cloth butterflies went running around - but like the fish, around the waves. Not over some simulated English garden. And then there were people…They were semi doing a mambo or salsa dance, but none were very good at it. They were probably too ashamed of the costumes they were wearing – most harlequins would not be caught in these outfits.

In the middle of this, one of the party guests exclaimed, “This is kind of gay for football.” I whirled around to see who had said it; a couple other people looked at the speaker and at me. The crowd at the party was generally sensitive to the fact that I am gay.

Normally, a comment like that raises my ire and I address the inappropriateness of the comment. Social consciousness will continue to allow insensitive statements until people make stands when they hear them. Social language has changed over the years to recognize and challenge racially inappropriate vocabulary. Language relating to sexual orientation and body style remains fair game for public commentary. Until the offended and their allies start making a stand against inconsiderate comments about sexuality or weight, the comments will continue.

“This is kind of gay for football.” After pausing for a moment to decide what to say, I could see the others also waiting for my comment. From the corner of my vision, I could see tank-topped men dancing in garish board shorts and all I could say was, “Yes. This is way too gay for football!”

Hate Crime of Stupidity

Wheel of Fortune has a puzzle from time to time in which the last word of one phrase is the first word of another phrase. The show annoys me too much to watch it on my own, but I see it from time to time when at my parent’s house or while around other people who do not get so easily annoyed with people who are all too often borderline culturally literate.

For two weeks I have battled the knowledge that someone I know well, told a number of other people (I don’t know how many yet) that she worries about me because of my HIV issues. When I found out what she said, I could do nothing but stand there with my jaw agape: I never talked to her about HIV issues – whether I have them or not. Her statement violated the law, employer policy, and professional ethics: by some definitions – a hate crime.

The workplace knows me as openly gay and there has never been an issue as I work for an organization with inclusive policies. Suddenly, I found myself dealing with someone who assumed my HIV status based on my gayness (I’m not even THAT gay at work). To make such a broad assumption is nothing short of a crime of stupidity.

Some people at work actually like me. I’m afraid I’m going to have to make the rounds talking to everyone I know so they are not worrying about my health. I’m remarkably healthy for a forty-year-old man. Well, to be fully honest, after my last blood work, the doctor is concerned about my cholesterol – because I essentially did not have any. I go back to have that blood test redone in a few months: I’ll fry something in butter every day for a few days in advance so my doctor (I may have said this before, but he is so good, I would have his babies if his wife was not already doing that for him) can stop worrying about my low cholesterol.

Now I’m faced with the challenge of approaching co-workers who may or may not have heard something from the person who was so worried about me.

I could do the Troy McClure version: “Hi, I’m Roy Larson, and you know me from my roles as teacher, counselor, and specialist, but I’m here today to tell you about HIV. You may have recently heard a rumor….”

I could write a speech: “Two score and eight days ago, an authority stood before you and declared that I have HIV….” (this would require specific timing and an individual delivery to every person who has accidentally been told [and I would have to learn what a score is]).

I could (oops) send a mass email to a close friend on the employer intranet: “I can’t believe that bitch told you that….”

Or…

…I could just blog about it.

Mexican Civil Unions!

This week, the border state of Coahuila, Mexcio, which is along the central Texas border with Mexico, appoved gay unions.

Somehow this failed to make the big news in Austin where the legislature convened and the border web-cam test results were released.

Now that Mexico and Canada have gay unions, maybe the cameras need to be on their side of the borders since they certainly are setting the standards for human rights while the Bush administration continues to dismantle the U.S. leadership position in that regard.

Queer of the Year Conundrum

As I've mentioned before, I'm addicted to a daily check of Joe Jervis's blog, JoeMyGod . He has a relaxed style and experiences across the city of New York that I can only fantasize about having here in Austin. I've managed to catch him a few times on OutQ in the morning on Sirius and that same personality comes across on the air. The next time I get to visit New York, I'm going to have to frequent his haunts in hope of running into him and meeting him.

Currently Joe is running a Queer of the Year poll on his blog with six distinct candidates selected by his panel of judges (other bloggers). I'm having a difficult time trying to decide which one of five I want to win. There is only one candidate I have no desire to see win. Voters are asked to vote for the one who did the most to improve the standing/quality of life for GLBT America. Nominations came from readers of the site and were narrowed down by the panel of judges.

The first candidate he has listed is Laurel Hester. She became known this past year with her deathbed battle to have retirement/pension benefits expanded to domestic partners, not just "married" couples. Her appeal and the groundswell of public support forced the Republican county leaders to give in and extend the benefits to domestic partners about three weeks before she died.

The second candidate, Lane Hudson, gained much more national attention after he anonymously posted emails from Congressman Foley to pages which forced the media to break the story. Hudson has long been a political activist with Democratic campaigns and worked for the Human Rights Campaign (which fired him after he was revealed as the blogger).

The third candidate, Kim Coco Iwamoto, became the first transgendered person to win a statewide election when she was elected to the Hawaii State Board of Education. Somehow this news was not carried in the mainstream media and I have to admit I had not heard of her until her nomination for QOTY.

Candidate number four is the one who, along with Lane Hudson, did more to put the Republicans on their heels leading into the mid-term elections than the entire Democratic party combined. Mike Jones rose to fame just weeks before the election with his exposure of Ted Haggard, the Colorado mega-church anti-gay minister, as a drug-using, gay-escort hiring fraud. Jones was among the advisers President Bush called when devising his anti-gay rhetoric.

The fifth candidate, Rosie O'Donnell, was admittedly selected by the judges just because so many people nominated her from the blog. Rosie remains one of the most obvious gay faces in the media with her recent ascension to a seat on The View, replacing Merideth Viera. She also strives to be a face of the gay family with her partner and the gay-family-friendly cruises she sponsors.

The sixth candidate, Soulfource, is one of the quietest and most unheralded grassroots organizations changing the attitudes towards gays in America by confronting people directly with the bigotry they promote. They began last year touring college campuses that have admissions restrictions allowing access to the college for openly GLBT students. They have also been involved in sit-ins at recruiting stations to challenge the Don't-Ask-Don't Tell policy. The group is made up primarily of young adults who are taking a stand.

The only candidate I don't really support among the six is Rosie O'Donnell. She has on a couple occasions worn her gay badge a little too loosely and after bashing Michael Richard's racial rant, went on her own a few weeks later. While her visibility and activism are good, I don't see how anything she has done this year did anything to promote the GLBT cause.

Mike Jones and Lane Hudson certainly did their last minute hammering of nails into the coffin of Republican majority in the House and Senate. While Jones's actions served to expose the hypocrisy deep within the nation's leadership and Hudson's revelations succeeded in exposing the corruption that went to the highest levels of House leadership, I'm not certain I want either of them nominated for a stamp just yet. Jones spent years as an "escort" who used and had drug connections for his clientele. Hudson, with his experience in politics and abundant free Internet resources for posting blogs, still managed to violate his employer's policies by posting the blog that brought down Foley and ultimately cost Hastert his leadership position among Republicans. Both men's actions took courage and a degree of personal risk. While they certainly played a role in discrediting the powers-that-be, I'm not certain they actually brought down the Republicans dual-handedly.

That leaves a cancer-stricken police officer, a politician, and a group of young adults. All three made a positive change that establishes a precedent for future actions. Hester's victory in gaining benefits, set the pattern for more municipalities to extend survivor benefits to domestic partners. Iwamoto's victory in a statewide election showed that voters can overcome the issue of sexuality and sexual identity and vote based on issues and candidate qualifications. Soulforce's adoption of the strategies of the Civil Rights movement of the '50's and '60's have forced discriminatory institutions to defend their bigotry publicly like none have been called to do regarding GLBT issues.

All three are incredibly worthy, but after debating almost 24 hours, I finally voted for Soulfource. The national work of these courageous young people at a grass-roots level in areas that are most traditionally hostile to GLBT issues is forcing people to look deep within themselves to defend the antiquated ideas about homosexuality. Though many in these conservative strongholds don't like it when confronted with actual facts, the education Soulfource is doing will ultimately lead to national change.