PC(USA) and the LGBT/Q Community

G-6.0106b must go. It's that simple. Anything other than a direct and concerted assault on G-6.0106b is palliative care for everyone except those who suffer daily because their church treats them like second-class children of God.

I know, you say that's a little harsh. Is it, really? This struggle has been going on for thrity-plus years. During the mid-eighties, dozens of my friends died before they got much older -- for the same reason: fear.

The same fear that kep a president from mentioning the word AIDS even once from the bully pulpit in the midst of the crisis during his eight years in office -- is the same fear that is keeping this church from being the prophetic, inclusive, courageous Christian church it's leader gave his life to provide us.

Hyperbole? Rhetoric? Calm down? No!

See, that's the problem. People think we can take our time, strategize, find other ways to "not upset the mainstream church," while we work things out. Too many folks are living as though this is an "issue" - the "gay issue." Well, we are not "issues," but living breathing human beings who are dying -- yes dying because churches can't get it right -- and when they do, like the Episcopal Church almost has -- they get nailed with intense pressure to back-off, "you're going too fast, slow down."(Sounds a lot what some were saying to Martin that prompted his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail .)

No. We can't slow down, take it easy, -- or at least I can't -- and I won't.

GA2008 is about 15 months away. There's going to be all kinds of spin coming out on why we should leave the consitution intact, work around it, establish test cases for ordination, scruples, essential tenets. That's the language and action of delay, by many well-meaning souls, but none the less -- it is unacceptable.

So join me in this grass roots movement to do everything we can to keep the focus on removing the barbed wire, as others have said, from around the sacred sexual intimacy and life that God has given our LGBT/Q sisters and brothers and others for whom G-6.0106b is an act of violence. In a word, all of us.

More to come...

Peace,


Ray