A Few Words in Favor of the Gay Agenda

In talking with people from our congregation I’m deeply impressed how so many have embraced a strong public stance in favor of the BGLTQ community, and in particular the drive for marriage equality in the lovely little state of Rhode Island.

And every once in a while someone does ask if we’re on our way to being a gay church?

My quick response is “I certainly hope so.”

It is a bit glib. Of course. I would like us to also be a black church. It would tickle me endlessly to be a church of immigrants. I would be delighted beyond words if our church was a church for the working classes…

Our mission as I see it is simple enough. We are a church that calls each of us to investigate the matters of heart as deeply as possible. Our tradition particularly calls us to notice how precious the individual is, how beautiful in possibility, and how fragile. And in the next breath to notice how we as individuals find our existence as part of a vast and amazing and awesome web of relationships. We only exist within and because of each other.

And, with the next breath how this means something in our lives. How it is important to see ourselves and the world as related.

We are one family. Now that’s a radical stance. We are related to everything.

But we have closer relatives and more distant.

And the call to be a gay church or a black church or a working class church or a church of immigrants is about being a church committed to compassion and justice and to call to the family to treat everyone with respect.

When we get down to brass tacks about the specific issues of gay rights as manifested in the struggle for marriage equality, I ask you to remember five names.

Asher Brown, 13, in Texas

Billy Lucas, 15, in Indiana

Seth Walsh, 13, in California

Tyler Clementi, 18, in New Jersey

Raymond Chase, 19, in Rhode Island

It was because of Raymond, a student at Johnson and Wales University that a fair number of us from the church gathered for a vigil at Brown University.

These are children and youth who killed themselves in the face of bullying. We don’t know all the details, but each of these children and youth were believed to be gay.

Here’s the short message.

This is the gay agenda. This is why we need to be a gay church.

Because the lives of members of the family are on the line.

Nothing less…

And I’m so proud so many of us were there, and I know will continue to be there.

thanks to Richard Boober for the photographs from the Vigil