A Queer Pilgrim

When I was the LGBTQIA2S+ Advocacy Coordinator for the OR-ID United Methodist Church Conference, I spent a glorious night in Twin Falls, ID, at a cafe called “Golden Brick Road Cafe,” with a group of drag queens and a wonderful audience. The theme? Drag Queen Theology. Another minister in the area set this up, and asked me, along with another United Methodist minister to be on a panel, along with a drag queen, in which we would spend time enjoying a drag performance by one queen after another, with question-and-answer period, with questions from the audience written on 3" by 5” cards. What a blast! Kathryn Post of religiounnews.com reported on drag queens and church. Post wrote this in her report:  Clad in heels, lace and a billowy white hairpiece, the guest preacher at Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Idaho  approached the pulpit  last August with markedly more sparkle than the usual cleric.  Bonnie Violet Quintana, a drag artist and queer c...

Though weddings and marriages are not considered sacred rituals or sacraments in most Protestant denominations, there is a sense that, no matter what, it is a sacred moment when two (or three for those in polyamorous relationships), say “yes” or “I do.” Having been married twice--once to a woman and the second time to Christian Halstead--each wedding ceremony was special, remarkable, and memorable, including the build up to the wedding vows and exchange of rings on the day of the wedding. Music; wedding ceremony participants; Order of Worship of wedding itself (I am a minister, after all, and it must have a certain flow); space or place of the wedding ceremony; clothes and rings; and the marriage license, of course. Don’t forget the license! All of this matters, whether it is a heterosexual wedding or same sex wedding. And of course there are the events before the “big day,” as well as the reception afterwards, followed by a honeymoon. And why is it such a big affair? Fir...