Methodists Vote to Dehumanize Members

If you're straight, you can vote on the issue and go home to your legally sanctioned family and forget about it. For me, it has profound, life-altering consequences. 

Excuse me if I seem strident or overly emotional about this subject. It's just that ...

It is humiliating and degrading when other people get to vote on your value as a person.  Whether in the form of civil rights,  or in the case of this week's vote in the United Methodist Church to double down on the ban against LGBTQ clergy and marriage, it is insulting to reduce human beings to an issue that can just be dismissed by the majority.

Who is the United Methodist Church to take a vote, a popularity poll, about whether fellow human beings, made in God's image, are worthy of full participation in the community of faith?

I've experienced this many times and I'm sick of it. Even though I'm not Methodist, I have history with that denomination. I learned a lot about social justice and ecumenism working in campus ministry at Nebraska Wesleyan University back in the 80s. Under the sponsorship of the UMC chaplain, I started, along with a lesbian friend,  the very first gay and lesbian group on campus (we weren't yet fully enlightened about bi and trans sisters and brothers at the time). The excitement was dampened when the chaplain was fired, in part, because of it.

In 1991, I left the Presbyterian Church USA because a majority voted for the umpteenth time to deny full membership to LGBTQ people.  No matter how big my theological school scholarship was, no matter how many positions I held, or how much ministry I was involved in, I couldn't be ordained simply because of my sexual orientation. You bet I took it personally.

I took it personally when in 1992, a majority of Coloradoans voted to suspend all civil rights protections for LGBTQ people.

I take it personally when I see protesters outside a public event holding signs that say, "God hates fags."

I take it personally when bakery owners refuse to serve gay customers. It's not some far away legal question when because my personal civil rights interfere with the comfort and self-righteousness of some religious fundamentalist, the matter has to go to the Supreme Court.

I take it personally because it is personal for me. LGBTQ equality in church and society are not some abstract issue. My humanity cannot be reduced to an academic debate over carefully selected scripture passages taken out of the context in which they originated thousands of years ago. I cannot respectfully listen to the opinion of the "other side" because they are wrong and they are trying oppress me.

If you're straight, you can vote on the issue and go home to your legally sanctioned family and forget about it. When the vote is about you, it has profound, life-altering consequences.

So excuse me if I seem defensive. Pardon me if my anger seems a little out of proportion. Forgive me if my existence makes you uncomfortable. It's because once again, I have to stand up and defend my value as a person.

Footnote: I'm happy to say that the Presbyterian Church USA has since reversed its position and now ordains and marries LGBT people. Amendment 2, the antigay law Colorado voted for, was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Slogging Through the Trump Era

"The United Corporations of America exploit ignorant citizens, largely those who are economically disadvantaged because of those same pro-corporate policies, with propaganda that would shock even George Orwell."

Regular readers of Billsweek have commented that postings have been few and far between. I apologize for neglecting this space, allowing mindless drivel to wash up in its wake on Facebook and in other media.

I like to inject a little humor into these posts, or at least something to think about. But it's been hard to work up the gumption to do that. It's been a depressing year.

The beginning, and it's only the beginning, of the Trump era has left many of us worn out. There are so many things wrong with the country that it's hard to know what to focus on. Every day brings another low point - often lower than the one from the day before. It seems the Republican strategy is to bombard us with outrageousness to the extent that while we're still reeling from yesterday's disaster, they throw another one at us today. We are kept running from protest to protest so we'll be too busy to take in the bigger picture of what they are really doing, which is dismantling the institutions of our democracy that protect civil rights, provide a safety net for the poor, and care for the sick. All the while, they cede more and more power to big business, benefiting only the extremely wealthy and weakening the middle class.

The United Corporations of America exploit ignorant citizens, largely those who are economically disadvantaged because of those same pro-corporate policies, with propaganda (via Fox News and other right wing media) that would shock even George Orwell. The media that our president calls fake news is not the fake news that endangers us, but his favorite program, Fox and Friends, the epitome of fake news. It's enough to make your head spin.

I think what would shock Orwell the most is that the citizenry swallows their propaganda hook, line, and sinker not at the point of a gun, but willingly and freely, drunk on credit fueled consumerism and vapid social media and, yes, fake news.

It's depressing.

Personally, I've had a tough year medically as well, and if politics weren't enough, my energy has been drained by health insurance paperwork, navigating doctors' office bureaucracies, and visits to Rose Medical Center - not to mention the medical conditions themselves.

In short: a bout with pneumonia early in the year uncovered an arterial blockage which led to a stent in my right main artery and a permanent diagnosis of heart disease. Several weeks of cardio-therapy ended just in time for a skin cancer scare which resulted in 2 separate surgeries. The cancer was not the life-threatening terminal kind, but was uncomfortable and inconvenient all the same. These were in addition to my other, pre-existing chronic illnesses which only complicated things with potential drug interactions and a spiderweb of communications between doctors, if I could manage to get them to communicate. All of this was expensive too, and I have health insurance.

Luckily, I have a good job and money in the bank. I have a loving husband and a warm home. I get to travel and have experiences that many others can't. I have the opportunity to serve my community through my church and in other ways.

The challenge is to keep the depressing stuff in perspective and to use the good stuff to slog forward so the bad stuff doesn't stop me. Because if I stop, "they" win. And we can't have that.

With Gay Rights, It's Personal

I didn't realize just how invested I was in the Supreme Court's rulings until I learned that they had struck down key components of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and effectively killed California's Proposition 8 which outlawed LGBT marriage. While I have always been in favor of equal marriage rights for everyone, it wasn't something I thought I was personally invested in.

But whenever these gay rights battles rage, I take it personally. Most straight white people in this country probably haven't suffered the indignity of having their basic civil liberties voted on. But the "tyranny of the majority" is no academic matter when your neighbors can take your rights away, be it related to legalized marriage, hate crime legislation, immigration, voter identification, and so on. When nine people in Washington get to decide on whether you are entitled to something that most people take for granted, it's hard not to feel like you are under attack even in this free country of ours.

Today, things went our way. But there are still people out there who hate us enough to wish us second class status or worse. I have just a few things to say to them:

1. My right to freedom and equality outweighs your right to the "freedom of religion" you are claiming. What you really want is the freedom to impose your religious beliefs on me. That's not freedom. That's what the Taliban does.

2. GAY MARRIAGE IS TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE. Or, proponents of same sex marriage are fighting for access to traditional marriage. It's really not very radical to want what everyone else has. Early in the gay rights movement, it was common for LGBTs to claim that they didn't want to emulate marriage, that alternative models of partnership should be considered. Now that was radical. How times have changed.

3. Isn't it illogical that the people who condemn us for being unable to sustain committed relationships are the same ones who go out of their way to prevent us from having access to the institution which enshrines commitment? Marriage contributes to stability to society. There is little doubt that the 1,000 or so rights that automatically come with marriage strengthen a family, regardless of the parents' genders.

4. My gay marriage (if I ever get to have one) is no threat whatsoever to any straight marriage anywhere. Divorce, domestic violence, the economy - all are more of a threat to a straight marriage than whether two dudes or two chicks down the street are joined in matrimony.

We aren't there yet. There are still states, including Colorado, where gay marriage is illegal.

But, as a result of today's rulings, more than ever before, my boyfriend and I, while not making any commitments just yet, can consider the very concrete possibility that we may someday have the federally recognized option of actually getting legally and officially married.

Two Dimensional History Distorts Presidential Reality

I just watched an episode of the 2004 Discovery Channel series, "Decisions that Shook the World," about Lyndon Johnson. It was a great illustration of how people are not all that they appear to be; are not completely good or totally bad.

While remembered for letting the situation in Viet Nam get so terribly out of control, Johnson also did more than any president since Abraham Lincoln to advance the cause of civil rights. These days, when we especially vilify our political opponents by, for example, seriously equating President Obama to Hitler and calling him the worst president in history (move over Andrew Johnson), it is important to see our leaders as complex and not as two-dimensional caricatures. I'm not claiming to be above this tendency. Just ask me what I think of Sarah Palin. I dare you.

President Johnson was a man of the Old South who used the "N" word freely but also pushed through the Civil Rights Act (which Kennedy was unable to do), the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act. Johnson was, to me, not particularly likable. He was crude and rude, vulgar and macho. Yet he used his old-boy, back-slapping style to get things done in congress, and wasn't above threatening old supporters who opposed his legislation.

On the subject of presidents who are usually seen as either all good or all bad, there's a new movie on HBO about Ronald Reagan. The mere thought of Reagan, actually, literally, has upset my stomach for 35 years. No one except for George W. Bush has had that same effect on me. As early as 1976, I feared Reagan as a war-monger and malevolent disassembler of valuable social programs. In fact, my father lost his job as a county psychiatrist thanks to The Gipper, and millions of mentally ill people were turned out of institutions to become part of the nation’s homeless population.

Reagan getting credit for the fall of the USSR is as bogus as anything I've ever heard. It most certainly would have happened anyway, and certainly not because he told Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

Reagan refused to acknowledge AIDS as a problem, and I always found his folksy friendliness as phony as a seven-dollar bill.

It pains me to try to see the good in him, but this HBO movie about Ronnie tries to show him as the complex human being he really was, not the sainted statue, or pariah, that we now make him out to be. Especially when today’s "Tea Partiers" claim him as their patron saint, Director Eugene Jarecki points out that the real President Reagan would not only be too liberal for them, but would probably be embarrassed that they were besmirching his good name.

Clearly, LBJ gets the short shrift in history. I'm willing to give Reagan another look. But don't ask me to reconsider “W” yet. It's too soon.