A Queer Pilgrim

David McKenzie and Eve Brennan posted a story on advocate.com about the latest bill that was signed into law in Uganda regarding the treatment of LGBTQIA2S+ people. President Yoweri Museveni signed a bill that included the death penalty for “'aggravated homosexuality,' which includes sex with a minor, having sex while HIV positive, and incest. The bill also criminalizes sex education for the gay community and makes it illegal not to expose what it calls perpetrators of aggravated homosexuality to the police. It calls for ‘rehabilitation’--widely discredited conversion therapy--for gay offenders.” The seeds of this anti-LGBTQIA2S+ bill that were sown and grew into this bill were largely sown by Scott Lively, a well-known US anti-LGBTQIA2S+ pastor and evangelist, who spent years in Uganda and other countries on the African continent, sowing hate. Civil society groups are looking for ways to challenge the law. And President Biden and other world leaders have written about the horr

Shua Wilmot and Raegan Zelaya, two students and dorm directors at Houghton University (just southeast of Buffalo, NY and another Christian related institution of higher education of 800 students), just lost their jobs because they put their personal pronoun choice in the signature line on their emails. The reason they put “he/him” for Shua, and “she/her” for Zelaya was because of the peculiarity of their names. But there was a policy at Houghton University that forbids this naming of your personal pronoun choice. The University wanted them to drop the moniker, and the two people refused, which is why they were fired. The University defends itself, saying that no one who is employed by the University can have any "extraneous quotes,” including Bible verses, by their email signatures.  Seven hundred alumni/ae have signed a petition in support of Shua and Zelaya, with probably more to come.  Houghton University was founded in the 19th century, and is connected to the more conservativ

  Growing up in a home with a mom who was a Registered Nurse, RN, and hanging out with many medical doctors in training in various undergraduate and graduate schools in my college career, I was aware of the Hippocratic Oath. The father of medicine, Hippocrates, upheld high standards for treating patients and laid down these rules for all to-be physicians to follow. In short, it was, or is, “First, do no harm.” The longer version of it is here:  https://doctors.practo.com/the-hippocratic-oath-the-original-and-revised-version/ One line I like a lot in the modern version of this Oath (in which people are not having to line up and praise a bunch of Greek gods) is this: Above all, I must not play at God. As a Christian theologian, I think this matters. I have been under care by some doctors and nurses who, I sense, have a Messiah or God complex, forgetting that I was, a) human, and b) had feelings and thoughts which were to be honored and recognized, and that, c) they were a god or goddess.

For years I have followed the latest with giving blood at blood drives. I used to give blood whenever possible because I have a universal blood type. And churches, including my current church, will be hosting a blood drive this coming Sunday, May 14, 2023. I haven’t given for years because gay men who were sexually active simply could not give blood, even though transgender people, pansexuals, lesbians, etc., can give blood. And all donated blood is tested for HIV, hepatitis C, syphilis, and other infectious diseases, regardless of one’s sexual orientation. Today, it was announced that there is a new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy coming in the very near future in regards to gay men and giving blood at blood mobiles. Here’s the good part. If you, a gay man or bisexual man and are in a monogamous relationship with another gay man, then you don’t have to abstain from sex for three months before you give blood at a blood drive.  However, there are caveats: First, if you are on

Full disclosure: I went to Whitworth College in Spokane, WA as a student from 1973 to 1975, leaving to attend the University of Kansas to pursue a bachelor degree in music education/music therapy, and piano performance minor. I knew I was gay, but in the closet. I began to explore who I was, kissing my share of other young men but shut down because being gay was not welcome at Whitworth. I applied to be a Resident Hall Assistant, but when I told them that a man could love a man the same way a man could love a woman, my future as an RA came to an abrupt halt. I wonder why? (Not) I developed a crush on another young man for almost two years, which ended right before I moved to Kansas. To say the least, Whitworth was not a supportive environment for a gay relationship, though there were many of us who were in same-sex relationships. We just never could show it on campus. Fact: Whitworth was not a safe place for me to “come out” as a gay young man. I can only imagine the kind of conversion