Rev. P. Joshua Griffin

In the wake of General Convention’s adaptation of liturgy for same-sex blessings, electronland has been abuzz with opinion pieces about the future of mainline Christianity in the United States. The New York Times, in particular, provoked some controversy July 14 with Ross Douthat’s piece “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” in which he ties declining Sunday attendance in the Episcopal Church to the erosion of “traditional” Christianity, as apparently evidenced by our continued recognition of gay and lesbian people as people.

Showing little understanding of historical Anglicanism, Douthat writes that the Episcopal Church “still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.” The problems with Douthat’s analysis, as put forth here by Diana Butler Bass, range from false causal assumptions and factual inaccuracies, to a lack of understanding about just what Anglicanism is—a nondogmatic tradition of common prayer.

In the last year, attempts have been made in the US House of Representatives and the state of Arizona to defund Planned Parenthood. “Personhood bills” have been introduced in the same time frame in Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Colorado seeking to ban both birth control and abortion. Bills were also recently introduced in Georgia and Tennessee to criminalize miscarriage, potentially making it a capital offense. And who can forget Virginia’s effort to force medically unnecessary vaginal ultrasounds on females with the temerity to seek medical care?

The ACA may be the most important piece of civil rights legislation effecting women since we gained the right to vote in 1920.

Sadly, the value of the ACA to women remains America’s best kept secret.

Bishop Gene Robinson speaking at MLP Dinner (Image courtesy of More Light Presbyterians)

You can hear about the vengeful and rather unmerciful God talked about on hundreds of radio stations across America, according to Bishop Gene Robinson who spoke at this year’s More Light Presbyterian Dinner during the Presbyterian Church USA General Assembly last week. That’s the side of God that Rabbi Michael Lerner so vividly describes as “the Right Hand of God.” But if you try to talk about the all-loving, all-merciful, overly-expansive side of God, especially one that accepts GLBTQ people… the “Left Hand of God,” well then you’re going to be in big trouble! The openly-gay Episcopal Bishop Robinson, over whom the Anglican Church has been “in chaos” for the last number of years, quipped that we should not be surprised when preaching the gospel gets you into trouble since Jesus made it very clear in his words, actions, and in his death, that trouble would follow when you truly followed his example. Read more to watch Bishop Robinson’s talk at the MLP dinner plus a little arm-chair Monday morning quarterbacking from me (the Jew in the pew married to a Presbyterian who, together, have caused our own bit of a stir in the PCUSA over the last 20 years or so).

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“Hope in a Prison Of Despair”, a Public Domain Image c/o Wikimedia

I have been watching the crisis between the nuns or “women religious” (as they are known) and the Catholic Church in Rome I am confounded–and I am not easily made to confound. It seems as though the people who have made Catholicism more appealing and friendly in the last couple of decades are the people being denigrated for those appealing characteristics of loving and caring for others. I kept wondering what I wanted to write my first Tikkun Daily post on, as the Huffington Post crowded my overstuffed mailbox day after day with of headlines containing the words “nuns” and “Vatican.” So with a smile and a shrug I said, “Ok, God, I get it. I’ll write this blog post.”

I am a born and raised Catholic (currently practicing Episcopalian) carrying the spiritual heritage of my namesake St Teresa of Avila in my passion for contemplative prayer, and as an orphan in a Colombian orphanage I was given that name by the Grey nuns–an active caregiving order. Additionally, my aspirations for living missionally in the world came out of a childhood experience in the height of Mother Teresa’s influence in the Catholic world and the world at large. I have a great affinity for the communal lineage of caring done by these saints in habits; some recognized as such, and many others just quietly doing the good work of God without any hopes for recognition.

I am saddened by the kind of systemic breakdown that causes the tops of hierarchies to become so detached from the living, breathing essence of their community that they create edicts to shrink the size and shape of love into tiny boxes. This can happen in any system, and any religion, and seems to be happening in a huge way, presently, in Catholicism.

Image Courtesy of CA Gay Marriage

Lately, when women are underpaid, or uneducated in our seemingly progressive society, the world erupts in anger. Most state that women are entitled to same human rights as men. This sense of anger continues to elevate when we discover the statistics of homeless and malnourished children in the world. We automatically assume that these numbers are horrifying, for satisfying our stomachs is simply another human right that should not be forgotten in life.

Just recently, a national issue appeared before our eyes in the state of North Carolina; our human rights were challenged, but somehow defeated in one day. On May 8th, the majority voted in favor of Amendment 1, a policy that altered the state constitution by officially prohibiting gay marriage. This new amendment also impacts straight couples; it expunges all legal support between domestic partnerships, civil unions, and all other forms of love that do not meet the standards of the traditional Bible. On May 8th, North Carolina took one step backwards.

When the living God sends new mercies, when God is ready to do a new thing, it is important that we do not stand as an obstruction because to do so separates us not only from our sisters and brothers, but it separates us from God.

In the current discussion about LGBTQIA rights in general and same-sex marriage in particular, the questions for believers are: what is God doing? What does God require of me? I am a Bible-believing Baptist. I say: God said it. I believe it. That settles it. It is my reading of the Bible that leads me to support equal rights and respect of LGBTQIA people and their loving committed relationships. I have addressed the primary biblical texts that most people quote to support their opposition to Gay rights in an essay published on-line at the African-American Lectionary: Why I Believe Homosexuality is NOT a Sin

However, the reason I support LGBTQIA rights has to do with my understanding that to love, serve and worship God through a commitment to follow Jesus means that I love with an imperative to love with a radical love. Such love requires me to be wary of traps that would have me love the tradition and its laws rather than to love God with all my heart, mind and soul and my neighbor as myself.

President Obama’s personal expression of support for same-sex marriage on ABC is sure to galvanize a new wave of gay rights activism across the country. It’s a heady moment — where might it lead?

The vibrant coalitions that developed this year in North Carolina, where activists fought simultaneously against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and against anti-immigrant and anti-worker legislation, offer a vision for a more expansive and radically engaged form of LGBT organizing than the narrower struggles for marriage equality that have dominated the activist landscape in recent years. It’s a model that I hope organizers in other states will look to in this moment of renewed energy.

Even though the majority of North Carolina voters cast ballots in favor of the anti-gay amendment, which was worded so broadly that it could threaten domestic partnership protections for all couples, the fight against the measure has offered a sense of the sort of multi-issue coalitions that, if replicated on a national scale, could bring about significant social transformations. Before writing off the North Carolina struggle as a total defeat, it’s worth watching this video of North Carolina activists discussing all that was built and won, despite the loss:

After years of watching Obama make strategic compromises rather than use his influential position to rally mass energy around the idea of health care as a human right or the wrongness of torture, it was heartening to watch him take a principled stand on this issue, despite the political dangers and risky timing. Regardless of whether marriage equality is the right goal for LGBT activists to be focusing on right now (rather than, say, an employment nondiscrimination act), Obama’s announcement feels meaningful on a symbolic level. So often the gay marriage debate seems to stand in for a more basic discussion about whether queer and transgender people deserve the same compassion and respect as heterosexuals and people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. In this context, it does feel new and meaningful for a president to refuse to cave to right-wing pressure to paint gay people as somehow monstrous or less than human. Not that we needed his approval, but still…

Many of us are very disheartened that the people of North Carolina chose to amend their state constitution to read “that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.” This amendment was totally unnecessary, since same-sex marriage was already illegal. Now, however, there can be no civil unions or domestic partnerships for lesbians and gays either.

It is my belief that legalizing discrimination goes against what the Democratic Party should stand for. There need to be consequences for what the people of North Carolina just did. Consequently, the Democratic National Convention should be moved to a state that supports equality.

Even if President Obama refuses to stand on principle, the Party should — or at least its progressive members ought to demand that is does.

Plus, North Carolina is also an anti-union, “right to work” state, which makes me wonder why it was selected in the first place.

In any event, if you think the Convention should be moved, you can sign a petition at change.org. Even if we don’t win on this, we can at least make a stink.

The corner of 13th and Franklin in Oakland, California, has become a makeshift memorial site for Brandy Martell. Credit: Photo by A.M. (http://transfeminism.tumblr.com).

It is not easy to mourn the dead, it’s an assignment without hope of closure. Nor is it easy to defend the living, but for other reasons. The living pose questions that we hesitate to answer: Whose bodies are grievable? Are our responses sustainable? How much do we have to give, for whom, and for how long? We do not sign up for shifts of pain, they spirit us away. But we do we have a choice to show up – in myriad ways, to make eye contact, to pack the court, to pick up the phone. We must not remember the dead at the expense of the living but instead balance our dedication to freedom.

Just three nights ago here in downtown Oakland Brandy Martell, a trans woman of color, was murdered. There were a lot of people gathered at an emergency vigil on Sunday night at the site of her passing on 13th and Franklin. Friends, community members, and family spoke and witnessed, shouted and cried. An Occupy Oakland street medic, who happened to be out late that night responding to another shooting (despite a curfew order), described trying to save Brandy’s life with CPR and pressure applied to her bullet wounds while the police came late and stood idly by as she died.

Not having known Brandy or her friends, I showed up because, among other reasons, this happened in my neighborhood. The next day when I woke up, I read that CeCe McDonald‘s trial was just beginning. Having survived a racist and transphobic attack, she is facing not justice but two counts of “second degree murder” for defending herself. Today she has taken a plea and as her supporters there are things that we must do and things we mustn’t do. We must respect her decision. Yet, we must not allow the state to gaslight her determination to live. CeCe still needs our support. She needs our energy and efforts not only as she awaits sentencing, not only if/as she moves through the system, not only in the days when she is free again. As the old saying goes, “the heart is a muscle the size of your fist”; so long as it flexes within you, pray with it for Brandy, fight with it for CeCe, and speak from it with one another.

Are you hurting? We shall be free.

The flash controversy sparked by comments made by Democratic strategist Hillary Rosen saying that presumptive Republican nominees for President Mitt Romney’s reliance on his wife’s reports regarding women and the economy were meaningless because Ann Romney had never worked “a day in her life” has taken us back to an old discussion that in my opinion misses the point.

I must confess that it took me a long time to warm to feminism, especially to the writings of Betty Friedan and the ideas of the “Feminine Mystique” that argued for women leaving the ennui of a suburban housewife’s life to employ her mind and talents in the paid workforce. I was the first generation of women in my family who had a choice about whether or not to work outside of the home. My mother was a school teacher; my grandmother was a cook in white homes in the south; and my great-grandmother was a share cropper. Her foremothers were slaves.

I also did not warm immediately to this idea because my question was then as it is now: what about the rights of the women who will do the housework and raise the children while women are working outside the home?

I have been a married stay at home mom. I have been a married work outside the home mom. I have been a single work outside the home mom. And, in every instance, my family and I needed help. We depended upon community. Hillary Rosen told the truth when she pointed out that Ann Romney may not be the best source of information on the economic difficulties that most women in this society face. I have no doubt that Ann Romney has household help. I do not picture her dusting the inside of the car elevator in the Romney’s house. My questions: Is the household staff paid a decent wage? Do they receive benefits such as social security and health care? How much vacation time do they receive?