The first openly gay elected official, he was aware of the tremendous discrimination and prejudice that confronted gays and lesbians. Under his urging, the city council passed a Gay Rights Ordinance in 1978 that protected gays from being fired from their jobs.
We’ve been torturing each other over religious doctrines and gods, skin colors and political opinions. Just think about it, we’ve even been killing each other over love!
Imagine the pastor of your church telling you that heterosexuality is an abomination, and a sin against God, that it’s in defiance of the Bible, but that the church will still love you even though you are a sinner, and that if you just pray hard enough, and perhaps seek psychiatric attention, you may just be able to be cured of your perversion.
According to the Center for Disease Control, just having a gay straight alliance group in a school dramatically decreases depression, marijuana and alcohol abuse, suicidal thoughts and unexcused absences, imagine the positive outcome if an inclusive history were taught.
The publicity surrounding him was enormous, and he received thousands of letters from all over the nation and even Europe, praising his courage and bravery for coming out.
When asked how long the GMC has held a tenuous relationship with the larger Mennonite conference and ruling bodies, Pastor Amy laughed, “For over 325 years!” The GMC was removed as a conference member in 1997 and again in 2002 for full inclusion of sexual minorities, once for baptizing a gay man and then for ordaining a gay man.
Jesus knew from suffering. It’s a thing about Jesus not often enough appreciated or noted, how clearly and deeply sad he was. Not for nothing is he remembered to us as the man of sorrows.
If you’ve committed an offense against your wife so egregious that she’s more likely than not to leave you, do these things. (I wrote this for a friend whose wife had just left him. But of course these principles aren’t relationally gender-specific.) 1. Let her be. Respect her need to process…
Colossal explosions and transformation of matter are often entertainment, military, or terrorist ventures in our contemporary world. They mostly represent things of destruction. Creation is something else: basically the concept that matter comes from nothing or is explained by Creation narratives in holy books. For older fundamentalist generations, such…
We follow James as he encounters the usual passionate yens of youth; sneaking off with a cute boy, getting caught out in a club by other gay youth, to his adult life as an out gay man dabbling in cabaret and drag.