Charting Our Future Course

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! (As we chart our future course)
The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia

Over the centuries the church has followed more than one course as she set about to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Sometimes she succeeded and sometimes she failed. Perhaps her worst moments were when she tortured, maimed and even killed in the name of God... at the expense of others who were doing little more than seeking God on a different course. Her shining moments have been those when the church honored those on the margins, those with whom Jesus surrounded himself, those we often ignore today.

For over four decades, Integrity has charted and followed several courses as she learned her way around how the Episcopal branch of the church “worked.” There were the years when we could not be “out” about who we were and had to depend on supportive allies to tell our stories and advocate for our full inclusion. As members of the church (and society for that matter) became aware that we were not that different from anyone else, we ventured out of our closets. Then we joined the councils of the church as our authentic selves, able to speak on our own behalf and share the truths of our lives. That course took our hard work and effort which helped us insure that full inclusion would be the official policy of The Episcopal Church through our canons and policies. So, what is our next course to follow, what direction, what path?

As I write this, it is appropriately ironic that two of the contestants on season 10 of RuPaul’s Drag Race are sharing the painful experience of trying to “pray the gay away.” We touched that course lightly and briefly in our own church before horror stories of abuse helped us make it clear that prayer didn’t change anyone’s authentic self when it came to sexual orientation any more than gender and subsequently gender identity/expression.

The next course for Integrity USA, our Episcopal Rainbow, will be charted by the next class of leadership for us. One of the realities for that leadership is that some of our most difficult work remains to be done at the parish, diocesan and provincial levels. It is work in our own backyards, tilling the soil at the roots of the grass closest to where we live and move and have our being.

I pray and hope that some reading this will step up to offer themselves as leaders for our next course. I urge you to do your own praying and self-examining about how you might be a leader in our ongoing movement toward real and actual full inclusion in the life of our church. If you, or someone you know, has an interest in assuming a leadership role at the national or provincial level, send contact information (name, email, phone number, etc.) to nominations@integrityusa.org. The current bylaws can be found at http://integrityusa.org/doc_download/23-integrity-s-current-bylaws.

By the time you actually read this, I will be gathered with representatives from the organizations that make up The Consultation. We are the collection of organizations whose ministries center around the social justice issues we see revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray for us as we gather and look for our collective course at the General Convention in July in Austin, TX.

Bruce Garner, President Integrity USA ... The Episcopal Rainbow

Louie and Ernest Clay - Our Guests of Honor for the 40th Anniversary Inaugural Eucharist

As we gather resources to bring LGBT issues and marriages to General Convention in Salt Lake City next year, we also remember our heroes who have gotten us to this point.

In 1973, Ernest Clay was training as a sales associate at Rich's, Atlanta's largest department store, and living at the Lucky Street YMCA.  On Labor Day weekend, he met Louie Crew, at the elevator on the 6th floor. At that time Louie was teaching at Fort Valley State University. They courted for five months, and married in Fort Valley, GA on February 2, 1974. At the time their marriage had no legal standing. They married legally on August 22, 2013 and Crew took on his husband's last name.

Integrity was founded by Dr. Louie Crew in Georgia in 1974 and since that time it has been a leading grassroots voice for the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in The Episcopal Church and for equal access to its rites.

On Thursday, November 6, 2014, Integrity kicked off its 40th anniversary celebration in Raleigh, North Carolina with a Eucharist celebrated by the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, bishop of North Carolina. According to Louie, Bishop Curry is one of the best preachers in the Anglican Communion; I am inclined to agree.

Let’s go back a few steps for those of you too young to realize the impact of those statements above. Louie Crew was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1936, Ernest Clay was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1948. Louie is a white man, Ernest is a black man. They met in Georgia, courted in Georgia, married in Georgia forty years ago. The fact that they both survived the aforementioned events in the south forty years ago is nothing short of a miracle. Who am I kidding, the fact that they survived those events in America forty years ago is a miracle. Then Louie decided he needed to prod The Episcopal Church.

Forty years have passed and -- with Louie's guidance and inspiration -- Integrity has gone from a discreetly-mailed newsletter to a catalyst for change in the church. Louie has received honorary doctorates from the Episcopal Divinity School, General Theological Seminary, and Church Divinity School of The Pacific. These are in addition to the one he earned from the University of Alabama. I’m waiting for the bishop of his diocese to name him a Canon. Louie and Ernest Clay now live in New Jersey but they got on a plane and flew to Raleigh, North Carolina to kick off the first of many 40th anniversary celebrations Integrity members will hold over the next year. Louie participated in the Eucharist and he and Ernest joined the celebration at the reception.

The ultimate celebration of Integrity’s 40th anniversary will be the Integrity Eucharist at General Convention 2015, to be held in June in Salt Lake City. If you are able, you should make your reservations to be there. General Convention and Integrity will be a part of history you don’t want to miss.


Elisabeth Jacobs is the Treasurer and Board Member of Integrity USA

Raise a Glass: Stonewall at 45

On this date in 1969, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York's West Village, a dive bar frequented by drag queens, street youth and other marginalized members of the LGBT community, was probably expected to be routine by the police and even the bar's Mafia-linked owners.

What unfolded instead, however, was that this time the people had had enough and fought back.  A riot ensued, attracting 500-600 people, and quickly spilled into the nearby streets.  The cops were outnumbered and tried barricading themselves inside, but were quickly flushed out of the only place that many of the bar's regulars could call home.

"Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us.... All kinds of people, all different reasons, but mostly it was total outrage, anger, sorrow, everything combined, and everything just kind of ran its course," wrote participant Michael Fader. "We felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We weren't going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it's like standing your ground for the first time."

The melee lasted a few hours, but riots happened again twice more that week, and emboldened the city's (and then the nation's) LGBT community to start organizing itself in earnest, setting into motion the progress that continues today.  The following year, the first pride marches took place, not only in New York, but Los Angeles and Chicago.  The closest Sunday to the anniversary of the riots has become the focus of New York's pride celebrations. This event has become such a turning point in the movement that numerous groups across the country have appropriated the name of the bar as part of their own; making it synonymous with the quest for safety, freedom, and equality.

In the years since, we've stepped much more into the center of the culture, and one of the prices of assimilation is that many neighborhood bars like the Stonewall have passed into memory.   We have earned the right to be fully ourselves in many mainstream places, including many of our churches, and the Internet has made whole other kinds of community possible.

Crowd outside the Stonewall Inn the night the Supreme
Court ruled against DOMA and declined to defend
California's Proposition 8

The Stonewall, however, lives on, after a fashion.  It was largely destroyed in the riots and shut down shortly thereafter.  However, it re-opened in 1990 in half the original space, and both in 2011 when New York's marriage law was enacted, and last year when the Supreme Court issued its landmark rulings on marriage equality, it was there that we gathered.

As a sign of how far we've come, the bar was made a national historic landmark in 2000. President Obama referred to it, along Selma and Seneca Falls, in his second inaugural address as turning points for people under oppression. Last month, the National Park Service used the Stonewall as the venue when announcing a panel to identify and mark more key people and places in the LGBT rights movement, dating back to at least 1924.

I wasn't born yet when the riots happened, but I appreciate what they mean for me and the people on whose shoulders I stand.  I ask you to join me in raising a glass to the men and women who stood their ground on that fateful night, 45 years ago.

Were you part of the Stonewall Riots or similar key moments in LGBT liberation?  Please share your experience in the comments.

Christian Paolino is the Chair of Integrity's Stakeholders' Council and the Diocesan Organizer for Newark.  A graduate of William Paterson University and New School University, he blogs at The Verge of Jordan.