A Queer Pilgrim

I came out of my big "gay closet" when I was around 40 years-old. I started building the closet when I was around twelve years-old and living in Portland, OR. I had no role models of being a healthy gay young teenager at the time, neither in the church, school, or society-at-large. Going to a conservative college (Whitworth) for two years, followed by life within the InterVarsity and Campus Crusade bubbles at the Univ. of Kansas, surrounded by other closeted individuals at both institutions of higher education, and later Princeton Seminary, being in the closet while pretending to be straight in the rest of my life was was the only option in order to live and succeed in the middle-class, white, cisgender, non-LGBTQIA+ world in which I lived. My metaphorical yet real closet had one door that was firmly locked with every device known possible, chains included. The boards were made of all kinds of woods and metal, and other fabric that would make it impregnable, both impossible t

  Last week, the Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz signed an executive order halting Conversion Therapy in the state, after the state legislature failed to pass a bill ordering a halt to Conversion Therapy for two years. This is the 24th state that has stopped Conversion Therapy. Thank you, Gov. Walz. I regret the MN legislature couldn't get its act together to do it. What is Conversion Therapy? It is the practice of getting LGBTQIA+ people to convert or turn into heterosexual, cisgender, middle class, citizens. It began in the 1960s, in which psychiatrists and clergy persons wrongly believed that being LGBTQIA+ is a choice, and therefore we, who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, could make another choice towards being heterosexual, cisgender people. Conversion therapy was a marriage of poor psychiatric practices and wishful, magical thinking among many in the Church (universal).  Thousands if not millions were either psychologically scarred for life by this practice, or, in some ca

This is an interesting poll: which religion likes LGBTQIA+ people/community the most? And the answer is those who identify with pagans. Kathleen Marchetti, an associate professor of political science at Dickinson College, reported that likely 93% of American pagans agree with policies supporting LGBTQIA+ rights, which is a larger share the 69% of non-pagans who do. Reporter Heather Green of religionnews.com wrote on July 12, 2021: "According to a March 2021 PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) report, the pagan community collectively shows the highest support for LGBTQ individuals of any religious group. The next closest are white mainline Protestant and (religiously unaffiliated) at 82%, followed by Hispanic Catholics at 81%, according to PRRI. Marchetti went so far to say that support for LGBTQIA+ rights was connected to 'Pagan religious identity.'" And the lowest acceptance or agreement with policies supporting LGBTQIA+ rights were white evangelical Protestant

June was Pride Month in the US and other parts of the world. It is held in June because that was the month that the Stonewall riots occurred in New York City in 1969.   You couldn't really miss the fact that this was Pride month, even without all the Pride parades, festivals, cocktail hours at LGBTQIA+ bars, tea dances, and sporting events. President Biden celebrated it, with the White House lit up in rainbow colors again (missed that for the previous four years). The former Pulse Nightclub in Florida, site of a horrible mass shooting, is now a national heritage site. Multi-national corporations are in on it as well, with Walmart and Target and Capitol One and Ikea selling us t-shirts and Pride-themed love seats. And of course, pastors and churches got in the act, too, with pastors posting the words, "This Pastor Loves You!" on a rainbow background, others had an out LGBTQIA+ person preach or show up on Zoom for a video interview, while many church websites were festooned