A Queer Pilgrim

There is a new target in the "culture wars" in the state of Oregon: Public school districts and their elected school board members.  There is, or has been, a noticeable movement in the elections in this country when it comes to "down the ballot" positions, like elected positions on school boards, in which most of the power resides in terms of hiring and firing everyone, from superintendents to teachers and aids alike. Most noticeably in Oregon, there has been a conservative, "Tea Party," "Trumpian" right-wing take-over of public school boards in Albany, OR and Newberg, OR. Most of these people are racists, xenophobic, anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-Black Lives Matters, anti-mask, and anti-vaccine people. They believe that schools should be about "education, not indoctrination," depending on what is being taught. Currently, they are also against, "Critical Race Theory," though few, if any, understand what this law-school term means.  What...

 A few weeks ago, I blogged on the horror of a Black gay man being threatened by the acting of stoning by a white cisgender non-LGBTQIA+ man in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Why? Because he is gay, though I'm sure being Black, and in a leadership role in civic government was probably unconsciously part of the problem for the white, cisgender man. The man, of course, thought he was following the master narrative of the Bible.  Today's story, unreported by most of the mainstream media in Afghanistan is the future of gay men. While much has been made, and rightly so, of the future of girls and women in Afghanistan, with the return of the Taliban and the master narrative of the Muslim religion's Sharia law--which can be read as a conservative kind of constitution by some who are Muslim--this is a death sentence for the out and closeted gay men in this country. In an article posted on Advocate.com, Aug. 23, 2021, the banner headline was "Afghanistan's Gay Men Fear Death as Tal...

The political platform Politico recently reported the banner headline that the GOP have "thrown in the towel" and accepted same sex marriage/marriage equality rights/LGBTQIA+ marriage:  "GOP leaders still exhibit strong opposition to transgender rights, and oppose the top legislative priorities of the LGBTQ community. But on the most prominent battlefield of the past few decades, same-sex marriage, they’ve all but conceded defeat." Marriage equality was, as Politico reported, one of the "seminal culture war debates," and that the so-called "evangelicals" (sic) are still fuming over the GOP giving up on this political football. Read here for more on this story:  https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/16/republicans-gay-marriage-wars-505041. So, the GOP, the Republican party, the so-called Conservatives in this country, who are currently all following the former President, have thrown in the towel and said that marriage equality is the law of the la...

 As reported by Rachel Shatto in the Advocate.com website on Aug. 5, 2021 (that is 2021), Eric Osterberg, who is assistant to the city manager of Klamath Falls and staff-lead for the city's equity task force, was about to deliver a report on equity in the city before the city council when a man stood up with a stone the size of his hand and said to Eric: "Oh, so you think we are all racists? You think you are the second coming of Christ?" The man then accused Eric of spreading HIV and AIDS, saying he was blasphemous for being a Black gay man. The man continued: "You are a sinner and you need to be stoned. That is why I brought this stone."  The man with the stone was simply escorted out of the building by Klamath Falls police chief Robert Dentinger and simply released and sent home rather than being arrested, though Dentinger said he may have to talk with the man with the stone more in the future. You think? "The incident left Osterberg shaken. 'I felt ...

EncyclopediaBritannica.com defines "free will" as the "power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints." Our ability to practice free will as human beings came to mind as I realized, perhaps too late, that what I, as a gay man, and we, as an LGBTQIA+ community, and the Church (Universal) have been struggling with is the powerful twin impulses (gut) and intellectual rationale (theology) to either do one or the other: Either we include and integrate people who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community in our churches, or the Church excludes and keeps out LGBTQIA+, or change them. I have faced this twin impulse in the Church since I realized that I am a gay man. It recently came to be "fleshed out" in two articles or movements recorded in the media. On the one hand, Christian Century  had an article on Ross Murray, who is gay, is an ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) Dea...