Major Coming Out Day Events!

Image by PDX Pixels via Flickr

March-on-washington

Many activists from across the country will be attending the "National Equality March" in Washington, D.C., to march with one simple demand: full equality for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 States.

"On October 10-11, 2009, we will gather in Washington, D.C. from all across America to let our elected leaders know that now is the time for full equal rights for LGBT people. We’ve had a moment thrust upon us by the election of President Barack Obama and the spirit of hope and change, and also by the sense of entitlement in the new generation of grassroots organizing...We will gather. We will strategize. We will march. And we will leave energized and empowered to do the work that needs to be done in every community across the nation."


Raise-the-walls Empowering Spirits Foundation and MyOutSpirit.com are organizing a nationwide LGBT Day of Service celebrating this year's "Come Out Spiritually" theme for Coming Out Day on the weekend of October 11th.

It is our hope that in working side-by-side with our non-LGBT neighbors they may come to see similarities rather than differences in each of us, and that we can engage in dialogue through non-confrontational means to promote equality. This kind of "Voluntary Redemptive Service" is explained in detail in my book, Shirt of Flame (download free here).

Please share this event with your friends and family, and come out for an exciting day to promote equality!

A donation to help cover our costs is greatly appreciated. Donations are fully tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law. Please visit our webpage at www.empoweringspirits.org to make a donation. Any amount is appreciated.

"Like we saw the Prop 8 battle in CA, anti-LGBT attacks are usually led by conservative religious leaders, and many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people believe they are sinful or unlovable," explains Clayton Gibson of MyOutSpirit.com. "'Coming Out Day 2009: Come Out Spiritually' will counter anti-LGBT bias and spiritual abuse. We will lift up the voices of spiritual LGBT and Ally people of all beliefs and traditions to deliver a global message that LGBT people and families are sacred, whole, beloved and equal."

Are you marching on Washington? Do you plan to volunteer on the LGBT Day of Service?

If you have planned a special event celebrating COMING OUT DAY’s “Come Out Spiritually” theme, please email information about the event to HRC's Coming Out Project and to MyOutSpirit.com.

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Honoring the gay saint of 9/11

From OutSpirit

McNichols, Holy_Passion_Bearer_Mychal_Judge A gay priest is considered a saint by many since his heroic death in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

Father Mychal Judge, chaplain to New York City firefighters, responded quickly when Muslim extremists flew hijacked planes into the twin towers. He rushed with firefighters into the north tower right after the first plane hit.

Refusing to be evacuated, he prayed and administered sacraments as debris crashed outside. He saw dozens of bodies hit the plaza outside as people jumped to their deaths. His final prayer, repeated over and over, was “Jesus, please end this right now! God, please end this!”

While he was praying, Father Mychal was struck and killed in a storm of flying steel and concrete that exploded when the south tower collapsed. He was the first officially recorded fatality of the 9/11 attack. Father Mychal was designated as Victim 0001 because his was the first body recovered at the scene. More than 2,500 people from many nationalities and walks of life were killed. Thousands more escaped the buildings safely.

After Father Mychal’s death, some of his friends revealed that he considered himself a gay man. He had a homosexual orientation, but by all accounts he remained faithful to his vow of celibacy as a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan order.

The charismatic, elderly priest was a long-term member of Dignity, the oldest and largest national lay movement of LGBT Catholics and their allies. Father Mychal voiced disagreement with the Vatican’s condemnation of homosexuality, and found ways to welcome Dignity’s AIDS ministry despite a ban by church leaders. He defied a church boycott of the first gay-inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade in Queens, showing up in his habit and granting news media interviews.

Many people, both inside and outside the GLBT community, call Father Mychal a saint. He has not been canonized by his own Roman Catholic Church, but some feel that he has already become a saint by popular acclamation, and the Orthodox Church in America did declare officially declare him a saint.

The above icon is “Holy Passion Bearer Mychal Judge and St. Francis of Assisi” by Father William Hart McNichols. It shows Father Mychal with St. Francis of Assisi as the World Trade Center burns behind them. They hold out a veil to gather and help people who cry out in times of violence and terror. In the text accompanying the icon, Father McNichols describes Father Mychal as a Passion Bearer who “takes on the on-coming violence rather than returning it… choosing solidarity with the unprotected.”

Father McNichols is a renowned iconographer and Roman Catholic priest based in New Mexico. After earning a Master of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in New York, he studied icon painting with the Russian-American master Robert Lentz. Like Lentz, he paints icons with contemporary subjects, as well as many with classical themes. Some of his icons express compassion for people with AIDS, based on his experiences working at an AIDS hospice in New York City in the 1980s. Father McNichols is one of 11 artists featured in “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ and More” by Kittredge Cherry.

For more info on Father Mychal Judge, visit his Wikipedia entry or the Saint Mychal Judge blog.
Image credit: “Holy Passion Bearer Mychal Judge and St. Francis of Assisi” By Father William Hart McNichols

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This is cross-posted at the Jesus in Love Blog, where it launches a new “GLBT Saints” series. Lesbian Christian author Kittredge Cherry will write about saints and holy people of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people and our allies on appropriate dates throughout the year.

On Gay Murders in Tel Aviv

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

posted by Joanna Blotner

MAY THAT BULLET DESTROY EVERY CLOSET DOOR

This post submitted by HRC Religion & Faith Program Coordinator Joanna Blotner is cross-posted from the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism.


Two weekends ago, a gunman attacked the Agudah LGBT community center in Tel Aviv, murdering two young, gay Israelis. When I first heard this news, I was shocked, horrified, angry, embarrassed, sad and instantaneously compelled to act. I was reacting not only to yet another hate crime perpetrated against the LGBT community but, more personally, I was reacting to a hate crime perpetrated in “my” Jewish community, as well. I was ashamed that Jewish teachings, culture and society played a role, likely a significant one (I say “likely” because the shooter has not yet been apprehended) in providing a motive for this atrocity.

In DC, a handful of young professional Jewish and LGBT community activists rallied to organize a vigil in remembrance of the victims and in solidarity with Israel to combat homophobia wherever it exists. Similar vigils also took place in the major cities across the country. Unfortunately, meaningful and well-meaning vigils alone do not affect the sustainable transformation in attitudes, beliefs, and actions that are needed in the Jewish community. The cadre of organizers I worked with to plan the DC vigil uniformly agreed that follow-up work was essential in combating homophobia, transphobia, ignorance, apathy and broad-ranging heteronormativity as they manifest themselves in our temples, community centers, camps, youth groups, political organizations, and other Jewish spaces.

But what exactly does that change look like?

One particularly important place to focus our energies is in Sunday schools. Children perceive acceptance of their LGBT identity or family based on the clues given by the congregational role models with whom they interact. For this reason, creating actively affirming educational environments for our youth must be a top priority for the Jewish community – there should be no reason LGBT and questioning youth should fear rejection or isolation from their faith community, an emotional toll that is too often physically and spiritually damaging.

Imagine: As a second grader studying the stories of Adam and Eve, you’re asked to draw your family tree. What if, instead of the teacher’s example of male and female parental figures, you draw a family with two moms or a divorced family that includes four parents? How do you feel when a classmate teases you or your teacher doesn’t consider your drawing appropriate to share with the class?

Imagine: Your fifth grade classmate groans and calls today’s lesson “so gay;” your teacher says nothing in response. As a child who identifies with the term “gay” (even if you don’t know what it means yet), how exposed do you feel? As a teacher, how guilty do you feel for lacking the knowledge to respond to this offensive remark in a constructive, age-appropriate manner?

These situations are real – and more common than you might guess. Though I work in the LGBT community and have long been involved with Jewish education, I only recently realized how marginalizing it must be for kids to participate in heteronormative Jewish educational systems that cultivate prejudices or, at best, fail to address them. Though secular schools are rarely any more committed to inclusivity, we owe it to our youth to embody a community of justice where all are valued as equals, created with the stamp of the divine.

My eye-opening experience occurred while attending a Keshet Training Institute for Jewish educators this summer. Keshet, a national Jewish organization committed to achieving full inclusion for LGBT Jews, hosts workshops for Jewish professionals to provide the tools necessary to create an educational environment that honors all families and identities – a learning community that promotes the healthy emotional, physical, and spiritual development of all young people. The workshops help educators relate to the feelings of marginalization experienced by LGBT youth (in even the most welcoming Jewish communities), then supplies educators with resources necessary to unhinge the classroom’s closet doors of both subtle and overt homophobia and transphobia. From wrestling with the Levitical passages to learning Jewish responses to “that’s so gay,” from developing LGBT-aware lesson plans to practicing conversations about inclusion with temple leaders, the Keshet workshop and accompanying educational resources offer a blueprint for building Jewish communities that consciously foster inclusion of all.

With the Sunday school year fast approaching and the world Jewish community painfully awakening to bigotry in our midst, nothing would seem a more appropriate tribute to the Agudah victims than to create a reality where no LGBT young person ever questions their unequivocal acceptance in the Jewish community.

If you saw Milk last holiday season – the award-winning movie documenting the life of San Francisco’s first openly gay elected official (who also happened to be Jewish) – you’ll recognize this famous quote: “If [in my work] a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”

May the bullets fired at youth meeting in the Agudah center be the catalyst our Jewish community needs to destroy every closet door of prejudice and apathy we harbor toward our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters.

For an excellent guide to creating safe and affirming spaces for LGBT Jews in all aspects of community life, invest in the URJ’s “Kulanu” congregational resource.

For a safe spaces curriculum to introduce into a secular school system, consider our “Welcoming Schools” model, which empowers teachers with the cultural competence to create classrooms respectful of all aspects of family and student diversity.

Has MANHUNT Destroyed Gay Culture?

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Only Connect: Conversations to Change Queer Culture

Only Connect: Conversations to Change Queer Culture

Margaret_Wheatley Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future

By Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science

I first discovered Margaret Wheatley in the pages of Shambhala Sun magazine, when I read her amazing reflection on e.e. cummings’ "Four Quartets" with which I was working for SHIRT OF FLAME. I went on to follow her work with Peter Senge, Berkana Institute and the Shambhala Summer Institute for Authentic Leadership (which I still hope to attend someday).

Meg is an inspiring advocate for what Paulo Freire calls “our vocation to be fully human.” Her work is all about connection, relationship, self-discovery and communication, and how those things affect change – that is, how focusing on human relationships help us be and create the change we wish to see in the world.

Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future was recently reissued in an expanded second edition, and Berrett-Koehler was kind enough to send me a review copy.

Like the conversations it hopes to inspire, Turning to One Another is heartfelt and simply written. The book is not a manual for some new technique for cross-cultural, inter-generational dialogue, although Meg admits such studies have their place. She finds that over-study of dialogue impedes real, personal, natural conversation, and it is those conversations that in her experience hold the greatest value for personal and communal development.

Meg wrote Turning to One Another to address the global crisis of uncertainty and irrationality, cynicism and despair. She asks, “How can we become people we respect, people who are generous, loving, curious, open, energetic? How can we ensure that at the end of our lives, we’ll feel that we have done meaningful work, created something that endured, helped other people, raised healthy children? What can we do now to restore hope to the future?”

The answer? “Only connect.”

Fullcircle I’m just beginning my community-building tour for MyOutSpirit.com, so I couldn’t have started Turning to One Another at a better time. In each city I visit, starting in Austin, TX, I’ll be convening conversations to address the central question that inspired me to create MyOutSpirit in the first place – continuing the conversation that started at the Gay Spirit Culture Summit in 2004:

What can we do to shift LGBT culture toward deeper, more positive, caring, authentic, safe, respectful community that supports each individual in being herself or himself and valuing his or her uniqueness, strengths and inner wisdom?

As we said then, “There is a need for healing and for being together in a safe haven where we can see, hear and touch each other’s hearts and souls. We need alternatives to bar culture, unsafe sex, body obsession, alcohol, drug & sex addiction and other destructive behaviors. We need to transform negative messages we have heard about being LGBT into self-love, strength, compassion and wisdom.”

That deep cultural work seems more important than ever, and as great as MyOutSpirit.com is at helping spiritual lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and questioning people find affirming resources (and each other), it’s only virtual. Not that connecting with another human being online can’t bring us joy – of course it can. But what MyOutSpirit.com can’t do as JUST a website is do the real work of shifting culture.

Berkana1 The website can consolidate resources. It can help people find friends and partners. It can even start conversations.

But what the LGBT community really needs is a MOVEMENT where actual cultural shifting takes place; a movement of immediate and personal conversation, action, eye-contact.

It’s easy to say things on your MyOutSpirit profile, but how do you LIVE? Actions speak louder than words, so if we all SAY we want queer culture to be deeper, more positive, caring, authentic, safe, and respectful, but queer culture isn’t CHANGING – what aren’t we doing?

On some level, we are incongruous. Our actions are not mirroring our deep desires.

Margaret Wheatley suggests that the way to begin is at the beginning. “If you start a conversation, others will surprise you with their talent and generosity, with how their courage grows.

“I think the greatest source of courage is to realize that if we don’t act, nothing will change for the better. Reality doesn’t change itself. It needs us to act.”

She reminds us with example after example, from Solidarity to ending apartheid to mothers demanding safe streets, that the story of a great change usually begins with, “Some friends and I were talking…”

Pick up Turning to One Another. Start talking.

~ Clayton Gibson, on MyOutSpirit tour in Shreveport, Louisana

"Congregation embraces transgender minister

On Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009, Rev. David Weekley (pictured with his wife, Deborah) – who leads the congregation at the Epworth United Methodist Church in the Sunnyside neighborhood in inner Southeast Portland – became the second openly transgender Methodist clergyman in the U.S.

Weekley, a married father of five in Southeast Portland and a Methodist clergyman of 25 years, revealed in his Sunday sermon that he was born female, but had sex reassignment surgery 35 years ago.

“One of the greatest ironies and pains is that the church is the place I’ve had to go back in the closet,” he says. “I’ve stood with colleagues who have said horrific things to me, and they don’t even know it.”

Following his story, the congregation, who had remained silent throughout his talk, broke into thunderous applause. Church members then proclaimed their support for their pastor.

Weekley says that he has, for the past 27 years, thought about switching to a church that is more accepting of his choices, but ultimately decided to stay loyal.

“There have been many times I’ve thought about walking away and considering a different denomination,” he says, “but my heart has always caused me to remain in the hope of effecting change...

“This really puts it all on the line,” Weekley says of his decision to share his news with his congregation and the world.

“I’m not leaving, I’m just coming out. I’m not walking away, but I’m not staying quiet and hidden anymore.”

Read the whole article in the Portland Tribune or another article on Oregon Live.

Send a note of blessing and support to:
Rev. David Weekley
1333 S.E. 28th Ave.
Portland, OR 97214
503.232.5253