A Queer Pilgrim

In all the brouhaha of the current political chaos of Texas, between suppression of voters, an electricity grid that is still not working, and the successful shutting down of abortion clinics, there is a not-too-quite campaign to stop much of the progress made by those of us in the LGBTQIA+ community in the US, from attacking those in the transgender community, to hollowing out LGBTQIA+ marriage.  To begin, as reported by Craig Huber of Spectrum News in Texas on Sept. 21, 2021, TX Attorney General is suing the Biden Administration because of the recent release (June 15, 2021), of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which states, among other things, " that transgender employees must be permitted to use bathrooms, locker rooms and showers that correspond to their gender identity. In addition, transgender employees cannot be prohibited from dressing in a manner that corresponds to their gender identity...  Misuse of preferred gender pronouns may be deemed haras...

  Ten y ears ago, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, aka, DADT, was no longer, officially, the "law of the land," in terms of those who served in military service.  DADT was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton as a "compromise bill," bringing an end to the outright ban on LGBTQIA+ people serving in the military, in 1993. What it meant was that as long as no one talked or mentioned anything about a person being LGBTQIA+ while serving this country in the military, (aka, don't ask a person if they are LGBTQIA+, and don't tell if they are, kind of thing), the then-closeted LGBTQIA+ person could continue to serve. An estimated 13,000 military service people were discharged between the date that then-President Clinton signed the bill to the date that the repeal bill came into effect on Sept. 20, 2011. Then-President Obama had signed the new repeal bill in December 2010.  This is what President Biden said today:  "Ten years ago today, a great injustice ...

Maybe it's because I'm working now with a Lutheran Church (Portsmouth Trinity Lutheran Church) as a gay Presbyterian pastor that I can't help but feel some kind of solidarity with my theological kith and kin in the ELCA with this news of the new Bishop in the ELCA. It is time for us, who are LGBTQIA+ people of faith, to celebrate the new Bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA): The Rev. Dr. Meghan Rohrer. The Rev. Dr. Rohrer will be bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod of the ELCA, covering 200 congregations in that area, making Dr. Rohrer the first out transgender bishop. Dr. Rohrer was the first out trans pastor in the ELCA when ordained as a pastor in 2006. What was unique was that the ELCA did not open itself up to out LGBTQIA+ clergy until 2010.  Ross Muray, an out gay ELCA deacon and senior director of the GLAAD Media Institute, will be assisting in the ceremony. Murray said, "While Bishop Rohrer's installation is an historic step in LGBTQ(I...

  We all know of the "New Revised Standard Version" of the Bible, aka, NRSV. When I officiated the wedding of Dayna Jones and Luke Harris last week in Larimer County, Colorado, I was impressed by the NRSV version of the Marriage Certificate. The language was all new! Background: I have officiated between 100-200 weddings. For awhile in NC, I was contacted by several wedding venue sites, in which a couple simply needed a "Marrying Sam," from "Lil' Abner" days. It was easy money, and a tool of evangelism, as some of the couples whose weddings I officiated, joined the church where I was pastor after the ceremonies.  When I came out of my "gay closet," I stopped doing weddings. Why? Because I got tired of giving non-LGBTQIA+ couples 1,333 laws for $45 that I, as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, could never get for that price, simply because there were was no such thing as same sex or LGBTQIA+ weddings. I only started officiating weddings again...

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...