Episcopal Bishops OK Prayer for Gay Couples

As 365gay.com is reporting, in a further development that will likely cause the homo-haters in the Anglican Communion to go utterly berserk, the Episcopal Church has gone a step further beyond allowing gay bishops: the bishops voted by nearly 3 to 1 margin to authorize the development of theological resources and liturgies for blessing same-gender relationships, which would be considered at the next national meeting in 2012. Here are some story highlights:

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The resolution notes the growing number of states that allow gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships, and gave bishops in those regions discretion to provide a “generous pastoral response” to couples in local parishes.

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Many Episcopal dioceses already allow clergy to bless same-sex couples but there is no official liturgy for the ceremonies in the denomination’s Book of Prayer. The measure still needs the approval of the lay people and priest delegates at the assembly, which ends Friday.
“We certainly feel a deep need to be able to proclaim the love of God in the midst of a changing reality,” said Suffragan Bishop James Curry of the Diocese of Connecticut, one of six states that are legalizing same-gender marriage.

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A day earlier, the convention had declared gays and lesbians eligible for “any ordained ministry,” even though Anglican leaders had sought a clear moratorium on consecrating another gay bishop.

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Most overseas Anglicans believe Scripture bars same-sex relationships and disagree with how liberals interpret the Bible on a wide range of issues. Liberal Anglicans emphasize biblical social justice teachings and believe their fellowship can contain conflicting views.

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A reader from Newsy.com (thanks Rosa!) sent me a link to the video below that looks at the controversy within the Anglican Communion that sums up the opposing views and invites comments.

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Personally, I believe that ultimately in the western world, gay acceptance will likely lead to the potential for church growth. My children's generation increasing accept and/or support gays and gay marriage. Denominations that refuse to accept societal changes and modern medical and mental health knowledge set themselves up to lose the younger generation and those that will come after them. Yes, the anti-gay mindset of the African Anglicans may succeed for a while, but as education increases and ignorance declines, hate and intolerance will become increasingly unmarketable.

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I also believe that this move by the Episcopal Church will add to the pressure on other denominations to change their policies on gay clergy and blessing gay relationships. A case in point is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America which votes on these issues next month. Should the ECLA vote down these changes, I for one might feel the need to make a switch to the Episcopal Church where I know that I am officially welcome and my relationship with the boyfriend is seen as legitimate. As for gay former Catholics, the Episcopal Church will now offer a religious home where one is not labeled as "intrinsically disordered."

Saturday Male Beauty

Lessons From Walter Cronkite

Years ago I had the opportunity to meet and speak with Walter Cronkite at the University of Virginia where he was one of the Student Legal Forum's guest speakers. He was amazing and thus, like many, I am saddened to hear of his passing yesterday He was indeed a news and journalism legend who in many ways set the standard for how news and journalism should be done. Unfortunately, those standards are increasingly rare in network and cable news not to mention most newspapers. In many ways, Cronkite's standards now only exist in the blogosphere. If we had more Cronkites and true investigative reporters today, this country may well have avoided the disaster of the Iraq War and eight years of the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.

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I was not yet ten years old when Cronkite became the CBS evening news anchor and he literally was a daily part of my life growing up as we watched the evening news - often with conflicting opinions between family members erupting on any number of issues, particularly the student unrest in the late 1960's and Vietnam. I recall Cronkite's reporting the day John F. Kennedy died and in respect to so many other momentous events. In some ways, Cronkite helped me to develop into a news junkie and meeting him was a truly awesome experience. One surprise was that he was much shorter than I had pictured him because he seemed so much larger than life on television. It was a different era and I suspect many of today's youth have no concept of the level of authority Cronkite commanded.

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The New York Times as a brief piece with some comments by the president of CBS which conveys Cronkite's uniqueness:

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“There probably will never be anybody who has the presence and the stature and the importance that Walter Cronkite had in this country,” Mr. McManus said in a telephone interview, recalling what he told his children. “I tried to explain to them that most people in America expected to get both good and bad news from one man, and that was Walter Cronkite,” he said. “That will never be duplicated again,” because of the fragmentation of the media.

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Mr. McManus sensed that his children had a hard time comprehending what he meant. “It’s really hard,” he acknowledged, “to remember just how influential and important he was.” He cited Mr. Cronkite’s famous declaration that the Vietnam war would end in a stalemate.

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A little more than a year ago, Mr. Cronkite paid a surprise visit to the news headquarters. Even the interns who weren’t yet born when Mr. Cronkite was anchor were “literally looking up to him,” Mr. McManus said. “When he walked in the newsroom, it was like Thomas Jefferson walking into a history class at a university,” he said.

Weekend Reflections of Life

Several readers have asked what's going on with me on a persoanl level, so I figure I will give a brief update of sorts. First, last weekend I had written about the wedding we attended at the Founders Inn in Virginia Beach next door to sociopath Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. The event was wonderful not withstanding that the boyfriend forgot his tuxedo pants and attended the beautiful outdoor ceremony in formal dress combined with shorts (that's us at left with the shorts cropped out) - another guest rescued him and loaned him pants for the reception festivities. True to the Inn's promise to the bride, there were plenty of gay and lesbian couples dancing together without incident and based on the event, I'd recommend the Founders Inn for someone seeking a beautiful setting for a wedding or other large event.

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In terms of my house fire, I am still dealing with the contractor and insurance adjuster to get a final price on the repairs so that repair work can proceed. I have secured another tenant for the house so that I will be better able to increase payments to my former wife and get her fully out of my life more quickly. I have moved a few of my favorite pieces of furniture plus some of my books - I have tons of books - and family photos to the boyfriend's home, but the bulk of my things remain at the house which is rented out on a furnished basis. In terms of the post divorce wars, my attorney is endeavoring to work out a compromise so that we can avoid further court hearings that needlessly waste money and send me into an emotional/psychological tail spin. I still find that I need xanax to sleep through the night, although I am definitely considerably better than I was back in May when I had gone into a severe and dangerous free fall.

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The boyfriend continues to be an anchor and safe harbor my life and between him and my youngest daughter, I have my family base. My oldest daughter is still not speaking to me and my son is out in Oregon, so my youngest daughter has been a life saver to me. It's odd in some ways because my coming out and the divorce caused her the most direct turmoil in her life, yet she seems to hold no grudge and has stated that she believes that my coming out was a positive for the family. While a straight person can never fully understand the Hell of being in the closet and what it does to one emotionally, she does seem to get it more than one would expect. She is a real sweetheart and I love her so very much. There are definitely times I wish she'd move in with us.

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Next month we will be traveling to southwest Pennsylvania for the boyfriend's family reunion extravaganza -one day is his mother's family reunion and the next day is his father's side of the family's reunion event. One of my paralegals and his boyfriend will stay at our house and baby sit Bandit, our full size Chihuahua, since we will be staying at an inn in Pennsylvania. They are a sweet couple and Bandit loves them and vice versa. While in Pennsylvania we are going to see two of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses: Falling Water - built over a waterfall - and Kentuck Nob. Other than business trips to Pittsburgh, I have never been to that part of Pennsylvania. It should be a fun, brief get away.

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One thing that I am enjoying is writing some pieces for Bilerico-DC and working with some of the other bloggers and editors. Our goal is to try to have both news and opinion pieces that are fact based and hard hitting. Sometimes the posts I do are modified versions of what appears on this blog and other times they are unique to Bilerico.

Friday Male Beauty

Thou Shall Not Sponsor a State Religion

The Christianists and many Republicans - e.g., in Virginia GOP candidates Bob McDonnell and Ken Cuccinelli - consistently try to impose their religious beliefs on all citizens in a direct affront to the Constitution's guarantees of freedom of religion. Their mindset is one of to Hell with everyone else's rights, we want everyone to live by our beliefs, like it or not. Indeed, if they are prevented from inflicting their beliefs on all other citizens,they whine that they are the ones who are victims of discrimination. It is this attitude that underlies all of the anti-gay legislation and discrimination not only in Virginia but across the country. An op-ed piece in the Roanoke Times takes to task this mindset and politicians like Bob McDonnell, Sarah Palin and other religious bigots. Here are some highlights:

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The question of the separation of church and state and whether the United States is a Christian nation has been of much concern lately. After reading Don Assaid's commentary of June 28, "Where is the tolerance for Christians?" I thought I'd offer a secular view. Assaid thinks that the Christian majority is within its rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution to invoke the Christian God in public meetings or at school. After all, this is a Christian nation, with a Christian majority. But let's take a closer look.

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Let's be clear, as Assaid is not, because most of us understand that there is an important distinction between demonstrating your religious beliefs at nongovernmental versus governmental functions. Assaid conveniently confuses his role of private citizen and his role as a member of the board of supervisors. He proudly asserts that he is completely indifferent if he offends anyone by praying to the Christian God. And, indeed, as a private citizen he can pray and offend all he wants. But in his role as a government official he is bound by the Constitution to be completely neutral in the matter of religion.

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It isn't much of a stretch to suggest that the First Amendment means you don't begin your government meeting by an appeal to a belief that may exclude some of your fellow citizens. And while the Founding Fathers may well have begun their governmental business with an appeal in prayer to the Christian God, I would argue that they weren't ready to accept the full implications of the laws they themselves had written into the Constitution. After all, they weren't ready to accept that African Americans should be free, or that women should have the right to vote. But I doubt that the ghost of Mr. Jefferson is upset with how the Constitution has evolved in these matters of equality, justice, suffrage and religion.
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Jesus taught that there is a distinction between church and state, and that it should be respected. . . . I reread the whole Constitution. What struck me is that nowhere in this foundational document do the words Creator, God, Jesus Christ or Redeemer appear. The only word of religious significance I found in the entire document was "Lord," as in "The Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven." Does it seem strange that these Christian men did not see the necessity of invoking the Christian God when laying down the fundamental laws of the land? Perhaps they had Jesus's teaching in mind.

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If you claim that Christians should have some legal advantages, whatever they may be, then do as Assaid suggested, and reread the First Amendment.

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Of course, the Christianists could care less what the Constitution actually says. It is, after all, all about them and to Hell with everyone else. Their hubris and selfishness knows no limits.

Richmond Newspaper Regrets Role in Support of Segregation

Virginia - which gave the early years of the nation many enlightened and dynamic leaders - has for more than 125 years become a bastion of reactionary thought and embraced discrimination against targeted groups of its citizens. Once it was black Americans and today it is LGBT citizens with Virginia being among the most anti-gay states in the nation. Belatedly, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has expressed regret for its role in defending racial segregation in the years following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. During that era, many areas of Virginia engaged in "Massive Resistance" and closed their public schools rather than allow them to be integrated. Since it has taken roughly 50 years for the Times-Dispatch to express remorse for its treatment of blacks, I can only ponder how many decades we will have to wait for apologies to the misdeeds done to LGBT Virginians. Here are highlights from the "apology" published yesterday:

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Sometimes the era seems ancient; sometimes it resembles yesterday. Fifty years ago Virginia had a rendezvous with destiny and came up wanting. It scorned human rights and the promise of the Declaration of Independence and instead took a course known as Massive Resistance. Tomorrow at the Capitol, the University of Virginia's Center for Politics will convene a conference on the chapter and its legacy.

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Throughout the episode, Richmond Newspapers played a central role -- but not a centering one. The hour was ignoble. Editorials in The News Leader relentlessly championed Massive Resistance and the dubious constitutional arguments justifying its unworthy cause. Although not so intimately engaged, The Times-Dispatch was complicit. The record fills us with regret, which we have expressed before.

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Hubris prevailed. Those who railed against oppressions visited upon sovereign states by an allegedly imperial Washington relied on government's coercive might to deny the full humanity of their fellow citizens. Massive Resistance was neither a departure nor an exception but the extension of Jim Crow and the attitudes informing it. Segregation and its associated indignities were in retreat. Massive Resistance formed a last stand.

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Many simply could not see the harm they did to so many others. Jefferson trembled for his country when he reflected that God is just. Yesteryear's words cannot be revoked. They endure on newsprint yellow and brittle, on microfilm, and in the computer files into which they have been translated. They belong to history, and history lives. It is well and good that the words be remembered, as a warning perhaps best. We will not forget.

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But, of course, Virginia has forgotten and has passed anti-gay statutes and even wrote anti-gay discrimination into its Constitution in 2006. The same hubris and hate is ever present in the likes of many Virginians and organizations: Pat Robertson, Victoria Cobb, Bob "Taliban Bob"McDonnell, Regent University, Liberty University, The Family Foundation, Ken Cuccinelli, break away Virginia Anglicans. The list goes on and on. Somethings in Virginia unfortunately do not change. Virginia has once again had a rendezvous with destiny and came up wanting.

Thursday Male Beauty