Required Watching!

Thanks to Episcopal Cafe for the "heads up" on this Father Matthew YouTube ... which IMHO should be required watching from everyone from the senior staff at 815 to my parish Incorporation & Growth team and ANYONE else interested in growing the gospel and the church.

Here's how the 2:42 piece is described on the YouTube blurb:

A quick piece that was made for the "A Brand New Way" Conference for Young Adults in the Episcopal Church held in Houston, TX in the Summer of 2008. This was made because I couldn't make it to the conference like I really wanted to. Matthew Moretz is an Episcopal priest at Christ's Church in Rye, New York. He likes evangelism, just not the type most people are familiar with.

ENJOY!

Check it Out: Mel & Mike White are going to be a team on "The Amazing Race"

So I was sitting here fiddling away on Facebook on a nice quiet Friday evening and the TV show I wasn't really watching ran a commercial for the new season of "The Amazing Race" -- and darned if there wasn't Mel White and his son Mike as one of the teams!

Check out the CBS website here ... and here's a shout out to Mel & Gary -- the first same-sex couple we married at All Saints during those brief, shining months of marriage equality here in California.

Go, Team White!
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Creating Change in Colorado

From my colleague, Jan Adams, attending the "Creating Change" conference in Denver this week:

The Rev. Deborah Johnson of Inner Light Ministries knows how to preach it. She's convinced we're coming into a new time and we must not try to put new wine into old wineskins. So she brought some admonitions.

"There are no gay issues -- there are simply justice issues."

"If we are gay by nature, it is by God's design and it is good."

"I did not join this movement to get heterosexual privilege!"

On the last point, she urged us to remember that we face discrimination because we don't conform to "the rules" of gender and we should not be hoping to become insiders--we need to understand ourselves as being about destroying gender-based privilege, along with other forms of power over each other. She concluded:

"The world, the planet, is waiting for America to come to grips with its privilege!"

Here's a video clip from the conference-in-progress:

A New Bishop on deck for the EPISCOPAL DIocese of Fort Worth

Breaking News via press release (thanks, Episcopal Cafe!) from the Diocese of Fort Worth:

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori has recommended the Rt. Rev. Edwin F. "Ted" Gulick Jr., bishop of Kentucky, to be the provisional bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. If elected by the special meeting of the convention of the diocese, Bp. Gulick will be installed during the meeting. Bishop Gulick will serve part time as he continues to serve as bishop of Diocese of Kentucky.

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The special convention is scheduled for Saturday, February 7th. Do keep the Episcopalians of Fort Worth in your prayers as they take this BIG next step forward in mission and ministry in their corner of the kingdom!

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Come out, Come out, Wherever you are!

Judge denies request to keep Proposition 8 donors secret
[The Sacramento Bee]

A federal judge today denied an attempt by Proposition 8 supporters to withhold disclosure of late campaign donors to the state's same-sex marriage ban.

California's Political Reform Act, approved by voters in 1974, requires disclosure of the name, occupation and employer of anyone contributing $100 or more to campaigns. The suit challenges the constitutionality of the disclosure requirement, claiming donors to Proposition 8 have been ravaged by e-mails, phone calls and postcards -- even death threats.

Yes on 8 campaign officials said hundreds of people have alleged harassment, intimidation or threats. Attorneys for Proposition 8 assert that First Amendment rights to be free from retaliation outweigh the state's interest in disclosure.

But U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr. disagreed.

"The court finds that the state is not facilitating retaliation by compelling disclosure," he said.

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Among the comments on the online article was this keeper:

Funny how it's the Yes on 8 side that's afraid to be known. Don't hear that from the No on 8 side, do we? Why? Because bigots hide in the dark ...

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Bumped by a U-Haul

So the Breaking News on Jane Velez-Mitchell's Headline News show today turned out NOT to be what a "panel of experts" thought about Ted Haggard's fall from grace -- it was an obviously-high-on-something blond-in-a-tank-top who stole a U-Haul and led police on a high speed chase across most of Southern California this afternoon.

(As I said to the nice CNN man in the suit who walked me out to the car waiting to bring me back my office, "If this is the Big News that must mean we've fixed Iraq and the economy, right?" He said, "I don't think so, Ma'am.")

ANYWAY ... if you bothered to watch you know we each got about four words in. (If you DIDN'T bother you didn't miss anything!)

Just for the record, though, since I had them all ready, here are some of the pithy comments I had HOPED to make in response to Jane Velez-Mitchell's question, "So what do we make of the Ted Haggard mess?"

I had hoped to say that this whole tragic story is yet another illustration of what happens when someone thinks they have to be or become someone they're not in order to be accepted, to be loved, to be whole.

I wanted to say that I agreed with the psychologist who said Haggard's story sounds like a classically bi-sexual man and that rather than beating himself up for being erotically wired to respond to both men and women, he should work on staying faithful to his wife and not beating himself up for being who he is.

I also wanted to say (and at least had a chance to START to say) that the other minister on the panel (whose name eludes me at the moment) who went to such pains to declare that being homosexual was "no worse a sin than being an adulterer" was Exhibit A of the presenting problem in Ted Haggard's life -- and that problem wasn't his sexual orientation but his theological orientation.

It was buying the lie that "the church" has for too long told LGBT people -- the lie that they needed to live a lie in order to be loved by God -- the lie that Ed Bacon debunked on Oprah a couple of weeks ago when he said "Being gay is a gift from God" -- the lie that it is time for us to put behind us and get on with building up a kingdom that includes ALL God's beloved children equally at the table.

(And this was my favorite:)

President Obama says the time has come for post-partisan politics in this country -- and I say the time has come for post-homophobic religion in this country.

Let's end the collateral damage to those like Ted Haggard who grow up thinking they have to choose between who they are and how they love and whether or not they can love & serve God.

Let's give young LGBT folks OUT role models so no matter what their sexual orientation ends up being, there is someone they can look to and say, "I want to grow up like him/her."

Let's model that it is no longer acceptable to preach family values and devalue gay and lesbian families.

(Even WITHOUT the U-Haul I wouldn't have gotten all that in during a Headline News segment ... but I'll be ready for 'em next time!)
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More Coming Attractions:

I'm scheduled to be on the CNN Headline News show "Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell" this evening talking about the church and hypocrisy regarding LGBT issues in general and Ted Haggard in particular.

Tune in if you have a few minutes ... supposed to be 7:40 eastern/4:40 pacific.
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