canyonwlkr
09-27-2007, 11:03 AM
One of your members posted one of my articles on these boards. I am grateful and wanted to post the rest. Please feel free to blog them anywhere, I want my message out, thanks, Kathy
Article submitted to RENO OUT magazine for September 2007 issue, accepted as it is
I’ve realized lately that five simple words open the door to conversation with people who might otherwise be content to do the pleasantries and move on. “I am a social activist”, I say. Is it global warming, immigration, the homeless, or the handicapped? What is it that drive my passions? Certainly each of these topics warrant my concerns. My trigger, however, is the gay community. From a time I cannot pinpoint, I have cared that bigotry does exist towards my gay friends. Years ago, a Native American lesbian with whom I have a very close relationship said, “I am considered the lowest of the low in society.” I felt her pain, I feel her pain. In November , I sat in a friend’s dining room watching the election results as FOX News posted the gay marriage results state by state. He spewed out, “that’s what’s wrong with America, the gays are ruining the American family”. Let’s ignore his own adultery that ruined his American family. Rather, let’s leer at Raf and Tim’s 17 year relationship. They knew on their first date that they wanted to spend their lives together. They “got married” one year later and moved in together. Let’s also look at two lesbian friends of mine who have been together for 14 years sharing love, faithfulness and respect behind closed doors, because being gay invalidates their belief system to many fellow Christians. This straight girl longs for much of what I see that these two couples share.
What is wrong with America and the rest of the world? If I got to elect one dream candidate next November, I would elect President Jesus. His platform is mercy, compassion, human dignity, justice and hospitality. But, He is not running; He expects His followers to do the work for Him . In the arena of social justice for the LGBTQ community, an accurate picture of His heart and agenda have not been reflected.
I am sorry that this distortion has hurt people. In January, I went to the Gay Christian Conference, sponsored by gaychristian.net, for four days. I was the first straight Christian to join them in their three years of meeting. Was I going to see for myself “ what is wrong with America?” Surely not in the way in which the rhetorical question was posed to me in November. I did not know my purpose, I just knew I needed to go listen , meet with and learn from my gay brothers and sisters. One night late, during the please-hear-my -pain-and-journey open mike, the Jesus I say I follow took over. I publicly apologized for the rejection of gay children by their parents, for rejection of the gay community by the straight community and rejection of the gay church by the straight church. I did not just say I was sorry, I was blessed with the associated pain God feels over each of these issues; this made the sorrow very real to me.
Healing began that night for hundreds of people; healing that I want to be involved in, as a Jesus person. I see hatred swirling downwardly, hatred between two groups I care about: the Christian community and the gay community. Neither may be honest enough to say the word “hate”, but I am going to adhere to the Jesus definition which basically says, if it ain’t total love, then it is hate. I may be one person now, but I flow and move in many circles in our community and beyond. I choose to be as stalwart as Tank Man, who in June of 1989 stood in Tiananmen Square, in front of 17 People’s Republic army tanks. He is my personal hero, standing there in his work clothes with his grocery bag and in his silence; he said before the watching world “stop this destruction, stop this craziness.”
I have raised two wonderful children and a new book has begun for my life. I do not like bigotry. That is one thing wrong with America, with humanity…I want to stand in my personal Tiananmen Square each day. I may only be a small plot of land now, but I know the passion and truth God has put in me will extend beyond what I can see.
I make effort to speak to the two side of the chasm. To my gay friends, I say “can we re-look at the Jesus I know, not the misrepresented one, the hateful one?” Come talk to me ,or go see my friend Denise Cordova at Light of the Soul Christian Ministries. They meet every Sunday at 7 pm at the First Congregational Church on Sunnyside. She is a married, lesbian, Christian pastor. That may wrinkle a few noses. Good.
Wherever you sit in the discussion, if you meet me and I say ‘I am a social activist”, be ready to engage in a conversation of mercy, compassion, human dignity and hospitality ala my Leader. You may not share my tenets, that’s okay. But, let’s talk, and begin to move towards dispelling the hatred, the fear, the misunderstandings. I want my Christian lesbian friends to have the freedoms I have in the church and in public. I want the two groups that I care about to experience the Jesus I know . I will stand daily in my work clothes with my grocery bags in front of the tanks of bigotry and say “stop this destruction, stop this craziness.”
Kathy Baldock
Reno, Nevada
July 15, 2007
Awake
I woke up in the night crying over a woman I have never met. At 1:45 am when I should have been asleep from a weekend of a ten mile hike, kayaking, late nights visiting with friends and having people over for lunch and yet, another long hike….I was crying over RuthAnn from Wisconsin. My mind was stuck on this 68 year old woman who had PM’ed me at a social networking group I belong to: gaychristian.net. “Will you be my friend, Kathy?” RuthAnn had read some of my postings on this site where I am one of the few straight people who participates. She is a mother of 4, grandmother of 13, teacher, Sunday school leader, quilter, avid reader and, has lived a totally closeted life as a lesbian for 28 years. Each New Year’s Day she tries to rally the courage to tell someone, anyone, that she is gay. She broke the silence to two friends this January.
I try to put myself in her place and imagine holding any secret so large for 28 years. The more you try to cover something in shame, the more it looms and controls your life. What has she missed spinning her energy to guard and protect this secret? What freedoms have I enjoyed for the last 28 years? Every Friday morning for the last 20 years, I have had breakfast with my dearest friends, no thought untold, no secret kept, no places for the shame to ripen. And RuthAnn hides.
I know some of you are totally out and living as colorfully as you choose, but still, you do not have the freedoms that I do as a straight woman. I have many tenets that I believe, many…one is “If you do not hear the cry of the oppressed, perhaps you are part of the oppression.” I hear the cry. And what makes me so wonderful, so acceptable, so able to be free? Is it that when I fall in love, it is with a man? Or is it that I go to church every Sunday or maybe that I am a good and faithful friend? The important questions are always sorted through the God-filter in my head. I want answers with content, with heart, answers that have the moss of wisdom on them, that speak of insight and depth.
The daily confidence I walk in can be reduced to two factors; I know that I am loved and I walk in the grace to be who I am and still be loved. If I could give this “knowing” away to anyone I come in contact with, I would. If you read my column last month, you would know that I’m a Jesus-follower. Simply because I breathe, I know that I’m loved by Him. I didn’t do anything to earn that, I can’t do anything to lose that and that is grace. I am not loved because I am not gay or because I am a “good” person or because I do go to church every Sunday. If you are reading this, you qualify for the same “lavishment” (His words) of His grace.
There are five verses in the Bible that the gay community calls the “clobber” verses. These are the very five chains of bondage, these five steel traps that have been used to attempt to separate the gay community from the God that indeed created them too. I’ve been trying to study these verses in context, in original language, and now in original thinking to try to line them up with the God I know in the other 13,400 verses. How do I balance love and grace with hate and bondage? Do I get the first portion and you get the second, if any is left? I have friend who says being heterosexual isn’t normal, it’s just common. Just because you’re in the 5 to 8 % of the population, doesn’t make you less acceptable than “common” me.
I could, and in all likelihood will, write about those five verses that have been used by society to hold you at bay. I can certainly find five verses in the other 13,400 that I do not adhere to . Ask my 20 year old daughter Sami, she’ll tell you how flawed I am. But does that disqualify me from knowing that I am loved by God? No. Fill in your worst character trait here. ________. Nope, sorry still not bad enough.
So why is RuthAnn in Wisconsin reaching out to Reno, to me, to be her friend? I am far away. I am safe. She knows I will accept her. Society has let her know that she is not whole the way she is. You younger readers can’t grasp this; being out is cool in some venues. Have compassion on those who walked before you. You are stepping on a rainbow path paved with their tears, paved with their bravery. RuthAnn has got some of the pieces of the puzzle solid; she knows she is acceptable before God. She is trying to transition that inside wisdom to outside freedom. She is why I do what I do. Parents, society, churches, employers, political parties, old thinking…they have each added links to chains of bondage. The Jesus I know has bolt-cutters in His tool belt and totes around the “jaws of life”. If I can contribute to His snipping in my words and actions, I will. My sweet friend, Myra, said over coffee one day. “Kathy, I don’t like to see you this way, crying over what you feel. You’re my happy friend, my joyful friend.” And that I certainly am. The life of the party, the colorful one, the one who laughs easily. But, I have been given an ear to hear and a voice to speak for your community and to reach into your community. I do hear the cry of the oppressed. I hear RuthAnn. Until next month….. please think about your worth and His grace. Now I am going back to sleep….
Kathy Baldock
August 1, 2007
Next RENO OUT article for November 2007
This is the third in the series of three so far and I am sending it to this list because in all likelihood, most of you will not get RENO OUT, the gay lesbian transgender ...mag in Reno. I see it as a forum to do the work I am VERY passionate about--being a peacemaker between the straight/ church community and the gay community AND the gay community and God. Commentary is welcome, even the negative stuff....as the editor told me this morning, I keep people thinking and that is good. This is a topic where we each need to open up and learn from the other side. How else will we get to a better spot? Kathy
Struggles
There are some things I am sound on. So solid that self-doubt, opposition, criticism and enticement will not move my firmly planted feet. There are other issues that still cause me to search for the footing I would like. My heart knows what I want my head to believe.
I struggle, and who does not? I have been a resident in this society for 51 years and a professing Christian for 25 of those years. Both these citizenships have colored my views. In the most extreme of cases, I have heard the barb, “all gays go to hell”, and I try to place this in my larger contextual solid shell of “Jesus is merciful and compassionate” and chose to hang out with the outcasts and the marginalized.
So, can you see the dichotomy, the struggle? What’s a Jesus-follower to do and, what’s a person who has been wounded and pushed away by society and church to do? Is there a middle we can meet in in love and discuss this and make sense of it all? It is part of my personality to be curious , so I investigate into, meditate on, listen to, discuss and read in hope to come to that solid place where I am firmly rooted. When I look down, I am sure my feet are firmly planted on some very major issues, on others, I am still in process.
Sexual issues of morality are not unique to the gay and non-Christian community. Yes, even I struggle with what I want and what I know is right. You may find this amusing, but this is how it sometimes works in my head till I get solid. After lingering five years too long in a difficult twenty year marriage, I found a man who greatly pleased me. My gentle pastor of almost twenty years was brave enough to challenge me on the obvious. I said, “I hope God has some kind of a balance sheet where He knows what I’ve missed out on and has credited me for withdrawal now.” Creative, but very lame. Some things are definitive to me; other thinking may and often does stretch the elastic to the point just before it snaps.
Friends call me a creative thinker; God made me that way and then, I believe, placed me in a spot sure to draw controversy and misunderstanding. In keeping with that, last month in my article, I mentioned the five “clobber verses” in the Bible. These five verses are used by many people in and out of churches to label the LGTBQ community as unworthy of God’s love and society’s respect. I could do an article on each of those verses by going through the Hebrew, the culture, the context…..this is not the forum. In each case, however, the phrases that invite the rejection have been translated as “homosexual”. People with vested interests have helped me look at each of these verses in a different way than the interpretations I have heard. I have a dear friend in the East Bay named Ed who I met at a conference in Seattle. He has come to trust me enough to open up his life, his vast and intelligent approach to Biblical study and his church community to me. I spent a weekend with him and his fellow Freedom in Christ church members this summer. He continues to direct me to books, websites and activists to help me to find information so that I could get the other side of the translations I had read so often.
And, so I struggle, struggle to find REAL meaning, intent, context and historical setting of these five verses that have so offended my gay friends, that so empower some people to judge and condemn. I can get in all kinds of trouble with people when I say that I believe some Bible translations did a horrible job in substituting “homosexual” for what I believe is being spoken of in those verses is a male temple cultic prostitute and in other cases males that dress up as women for temple cultic practices. I just cannot mesh all I know about Jesus, about the loving same sex relationships I know together with these badly translated verses and then conclude that my gay friends are immoral just because they are gay. Sexuality is amoral; it is people who are moral and immoral. I am on my third reading of a “Sex God” by Rob Bell. In it, he explores the connection between sexuality and spirituality. The heterosexual community has certainly done its part to distort sex from its original intent. And do I know plenty of sexually immoral heterosexuals—absolutely! So, why all the emphasis on sexual orientation? Jesus never mentioned it in the Bible, but in fairness, He never mentioned lots of things.
I confuse some people in the lesbian community in particular when I show up to Gay Pride and their softball games and go to Bully’s with them afterwards. I am genuinely trying to hear hearts and understand and reflect Jesus. A woman recently told me she has “no history” with someone like me, so I can be rather suspect. Bono from U2 says, “if Jesus were on earth you’d find Him in gay bars in San Francisco. He’d be working with people suffering from AIDS. These people are the new lepers. If you want to find out where Jesus would be hanging out it’ll always be with the lepers.” I am NOT saying my gay friends are lepers; it is just where Jesus would be. My radical role model.
So how about if we each put down our judgments and inch towards the center? I am trying to run at it; I will stumble, I will offend. If you want to do your own inching, a safe place for the LGBTQ is Light of the Soul Christian Ministries. They meet every Sunday at 7 pm at the First Congregational Church on Sunnyside. They played a great set Sunday morning at Gay Pride if you were there. They love Jesus; they would love to help you find a way back to a place of acceptance.
I want to effect change in a world that breeds too much fear and hatred. I want to struggle less and know more. I challenge you to take the tough road of opening up to be a creative thinker too. As I strive to find an honest way to bring understanding in all this confusion and interpretation, I want to find a place where my feet are so solid on this issue that the certain-to-come opposition will not knock me down. I want to adhere to what one of the Old Testament Prophets answered of the question “What does the Lord require of you?” The answer; ‘ To act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.” I want justice, I do love mercy and I try to walk humbly with my God and His creation, and that is each of you. And finally, I want my head to believe what my heart thinks, don’t you?
Kathy Baldock
September 10, 2007
Article submitted to RENO OUT magazine for September 2007 issue, accepted as it is
I’ve realized lately that five simple words open the door to conversation with people who might otherwise be content to do the pleasantries and move on. “I am a social activist”, I say. Is it global warming, immigration, the homeless, or the handicapped? What is it that drive my passions? Certainly each of these topics warrant my concerns. My trigger, however, is the gay community. From a time I cannot pinpoint, I have cared that bigotry does exist towards my gay friends. Years ago, a Native American lesbian with whom I have a very close relationship said, “I am considered the lowest of the low in society.” I felt her pain, I feel her pain. In November , I sat in a friend’s dining room watching the election results as FOX News posted the gay marriage results state by state. He spewed out, “that’s what’s wrong with America, the gays are ruining the American family”. Let’s ignore his own adultery that ruined his American family. Rather, let’s leer at Raf and Tim’s 17 year relationship. They knew on their first date that they wanted to spend their lives together. They “got married” one year later and moved in together. Let’s also look at two lesbian friends of mine who have been together for 14 years sharing love, faithfulness and respect behind closed doors, because being gay invalidates their belief system to many fellow Christians. This straight girl longs for much of what I see that these two couples share.
What is wrong with America and the rest of the world? If I got to elect one dream candidate next November, I would elect President Jesus. His platform is mercy, compassion, human dignity, justice and hospitality. But, He is not running; He expects His followers to do the work for Him . In the arena of social justice for the LGBTQ community, an accurate picture of His heart and agenda have not been reflected.
I am sorry that this distortion has hurt people. In January, I went to the Gay Christian Conference, sponsored by gaychristian.net, for four days. I was the first straight Christian to join them in their three years of meeting. Was I going to see for myself “ what is wrong with America?” Surely not in the way in which the rhetorical question was posed to me in November. I did not know my purpose, I just knew I needed to go listen , meet with and learn from my gay brothers and sisters. One night late, during the please-hear-my -pain-and-journey open mike, the Jesus I say I follow took over. I publicly apologized for the rejection of gay children by their parents, for rejection of the gay community by the straight community and rejection of the gay church by the straight church. I did not just say I was sorry, I was blessed with the associated pain God feels over each of these issues; this made the sorrow very real to me.
Healing began that night for hundreds of people; healing that I want to be involved in, as a Jesus person. I see hatred swirling downwardly, hatred between two groups I care about: the Christian community and the gay community. Neither may be honest enough to say the word “hate”, but I am going to adhere to the Jesus definition which basically says, if it ain’t total love, then it is hate. I may be one person now, but I flow and move in many circles in our community and beyond. I choose to be as stalwart as Tank Man, who in June of 1989 stood in Tiananmen Square, in front of 17 People’s Republic army tanks. He is my personal hero, standing there in his work clothes with his grocery bag and in his silence; he said before the watching world “stop this destruction, stop this craziness.”
I have raised two wonderful children and a new book has begun for my life. I do not like bigotry. That is one thing wrong with America, with humanity…I want to stand in my personal Tiananmen Square each day. I may only be a small plot of land now, but I know the passion and truth God has put in me will extend beyond what I can see.
I make effort to speak to the two side of the chasm. To my gay friends, I say “can we re-look at the Jesus I know, not the misrepresented one, the hateful one?” Come talk to me ,or go see my friend Denise Cordova at Light of the Soul Christian Ministries. They meet every Sunday at 7 pm at the First Congregational Church on Sunnyside. She is a married, lesbian, Christian pastor. That may wrinkle a few noses. Good.
Wherever you sit in the discussion, if you meet me and I say ‘I am a social activist”, be ready to engage in a conversation of mercy, compassion, human dignity and hospitality ala my Leader. You may not share my tenets, that’s okay. But, let’s talk, and begin to move towards dispelling the hatred, the fear, the misunderstandings. I want my Christian lesbian friends to have the freedoms I have in the church and in public. I want the two groups that I care about to experience the Jesus I know . I will stand daily in my work clothes with my grocery bags in front of the tanks of bigotry and say “stop this destruction, stop this craziness.”
Kathy Baldock
Reno, Nevada
July 15, 2007
Awake
I woke up in the night crying over a woman I have never met. At 1:45 am when I should have been asleep from a weekend of a ten mile hike, kayaking, late nights visiting with friends and having people over for lunch and yet, another long hike….I was crying over RuthAnn from Wisconsin. My mind was stuck on this 68 year old woman who had PM’ed me at a social networking group I belong to: gaychristian.net. “Will you be my friend, Kathy?” RuthAnn had read some of my postings on this site where I am one of the few straight people who participates. She is a mother of 4, grandmother of 13, teacher, Sunday school leader, quilter, avid reader and, has lived a totally closeted life as a lesbian for 28 years. Each New Year’s Day she tries to rally the courage to tell someone, anyone, that she is gay. She broke the silence to two friends this January.
I try to put myself in her place and imagine holding any secret so large for 28 years. The more you try to cover something in shame, the more it looms and controls your life. What has she missed spinning her energy to guard and protect this secret? What freedoms have I enjoyed for the last 28 years? Every Friday morning for the last 20 years, I have had breakfast with my dearest friends, no thought untold, no secret kept, no places for the shame to ripen. And RuthAnn hides.
I know some of you are totally out and living as colorfully as you choose, but still, you do not have the freedoms that I do as a straight woman. I have many tenets that I believe, many…one is “If you do not hear the cry of the oppressed, perhaps you are part of the oppression.” I hear the cry. And what makes me so wonderful, so acceptable, so able to be free? Is it that when I fall in love, it is with a man? Or is it that I go to church every Sunday or maybe that I am a good and faithful friend? The important questions are always sorted through the God-filter in my head. I want answers with content, with heart, answers that have the moss of wisdom on them, that speak of insight and depth.
The daily confidence I walk in can be reduced to two factors; I know that I am loved and I walk in the grace to be who I am and still be loved. If I could give this “knowing” away to anyone I come in contact with, I would. If you read my column last month, you would know that I’m a Jesus-follower. Simply because I breathe, I know that I’m loved by Him. I didn’t do anything to earn that, I can’t do anything to lose that and that is grace. I am not loved because I am not gay or because I am a “good” person or because I do go to church every Sunday. If you are reading this, you qualify for the same “lavishment” (His words) of His grace.
There are five verses in the Bible that the gay community calls the “clobber” verses. These are the very five chains of bondage, these five steel traps that have been used to attempt to separate the gay community from the God that indeed created them too. I’ve been trying to study these verses in context, in original language, and now in original thinking to try to line them up with the God I know in the other 13,400 verses. How do I balance love and grace with hate and bondage? Do I get the first portion and you get the second, if any is left? I have friend who says being heterosexual isn’t normal, it’s just common. Just because you’re in the 5 to 8 % of the population, doesn’t make you less acceptable than “common” me.
I could, and in all likelihood will, write about those five verses that have been used by society to hold you at bay. I can certainly find five verses in the other 13,400 that I do not adhere to . Ask my 20 year old daughter Sami, she’ll tell you how flawed I am. But does that disqualify me from knowing that I am loved by God? No. Fill in your worst character trait here. ________. Nope, sorry still not bad enough.
So why is RuthAnn in Wisconsin reaching out to Reno, to me, to be her friend? I am far away. I am safe. She knows I will accept her. Society has let her know that she is not whole the way she is. You younger readers can’t grasp this; being out is cool in some venues. Have compassion on those who walked before you. You are stepping on a rainbow path paved with their tears, paved with their bravery. RuthAnn has got some of the pieces of the puzzle solid; she knows she is acceptable before God. She is trying to transition that inside wisdom to outside freedom. She is why I do what I do. Parents, society, churches, employers, political parties, old thinking…they have each added links to chains of bondage. The Jesus I know has bolt-cutters in His tool belt and totes around the “jaws of life”. If I can contribute to His snipping in my words and actions, I will. My sweet friend, Myra, said over coffee one day. “Kathy, I don’t like to see you this way, crying over what you feel. You’re my happy friend, my joyful friend.” And that I certainly am. The life of the party, the colorful one, the one who laughs easily. But, I have been given an ear to hear and a voice to speak for your community and to reach into your community. I do hear the cry of the oppressed. I hear RuthAnn. Until next month….. please think about your worth and His grace. Now I am going back to sleep….
Kathy Baldock
August 1, 2007
Next RENO OUT article for November 2007
This is the third in the series of three so far and I am sending it to this list because in all likelihood, most of you will not get RENO OUT, the gay lesbian transgender ...mag in Reno. I see it as a forum to do the work I am VERY passionate about--being a peacemaker between the straight/ church community and the gay community AND the gay community and God. Commentary is welcome, even the negative stuff....as the editor told me this morning, I keep people thinking and that is good. This is a topic where we each need to open up and learn from the other side. How else will we get to a better spot? Kathy
Struggles
There are some things I am sound on. So solid that self-doubt, opposition, criticism and enticement will not move my firmly planted feet. There are other issues that still cause me to search for the footing I would like. My heart knows what I want my head to believe.
I struggle, and who does not? I have been a resident in this society for 51 years and a professing Christian for 25 of those years. Both these citizenships have colored my views. In the most extreme of cases, I have heard the barb, “all gays go to hell”, and I try to place this in my larger contextual solid shell of “Jesus is merciful and compassionate” and chose to hang out with the outcasts and the marginalized.
So, can you see the dichotomy, the struggle? What’s a Jesus-follower to do and, what’s a person who has been wounded and pushed away by society and church to do? Is there a middle we can meet in in love and discuss this and make sense of it all? It is part of my personality to be curious , so I investigate into, meditate on, listen to, discuss and read in hope to come to that solid place where I am firmly rooted. When I look down, I am sure my feet are firmly planted on some very major issues, on others, I am still in process.
Sexual issues of morality are not unique to the gay and non-Christian community. Yes, even I struggle with what I want and what I know is right. You may find this amusing, but this is how it sometimes works in my head till I get solid. After lingering five years too long in a difficult twenty year marriage, I found a man who greatly pleased me. My gentle pastor of almost twenty years was brave enough to challenge me on the obvious. I said, “I hope God has some kind of a balance sheet where He knows what I’ve missed out on and has credited me for withdrawal now.” Creative, but very lame. Some things are definitive to me; other thinking may and often does stretch the elastic to the point just before it snaps.
Friends call me a creative thinker; God made me that way and then, I believe, placed me in a spot sure to draw controversy and misunderstanding. In keeping with that, last month in my article, I mentioned the five “clobber verses” in the Bible. These five verses are used by many people in and out of churches to label the LGTBQ community as unworthy of God’s love and society’s respect. I could do an article on each of those verses by going through the Hebrew, the culture, the context…..this is not the forum. In each case, however, the phrases that invite the rejection have been translated as “homosexual”. People with vested interests have helped me look at each of these verses in a different way than the interpretations I have heard. I have a dear friend in the East Bay named Ed who I met at a conference in Seattle. He has come to trust me enough to open up his life, his vast and intelligent approach to Biblical study and his church community to me. I spent a weekend with him and his fellow Freedom in Christ church members this summer. He continues to direct me to books, websites and activists to help me to find information so that I could get the other side of the translations I had read so often.
And, so I struggle, struggle to find REAL meaning, intent, context and historical setting of these five verses that have so offended my gay friends, that so empower some people to judge and condemn. I can get in all kinds of trouble with people when I say that I believe some Bible translations did a horrible job in substituting “homosexual” for what I believe is being spoken of in those verses is a male temple cultic prostitute and in other cases males that dress up as women for temple cultic practices. I just cannot mesh all I know about Jesus, about the loving same sex relationships I know together with these badly translated verses and then conclude that my gay friends are immoral just because they are gay. Sexuality is amoral; it is people who are moral and immoral. I am on my third reading of a “Sex God” by Rob Bell. In it, he explores the connection between sexuality and spirituality. The heterosexual community has certainly done its part to distort sex from its original intent. And do I know plenty of sexually immoral heterosexuals—absolutely! So, why all the emphasis on sexual orientation? Jesus never mentioned it in the Bible, but in fairness, He never mentioned lots of things.
I confuse some people in the lesbian community in particular when I show up to Gay Pride and their softball games and go to Bully’s with them afterwards. I am genuinely trying to hear hearts and understand and reflect Jesus. A woman recently told me she has “no history” with someone like me, so I can be rather suspect. Bono from U2 says, “if Jesus were on earth you’d find Him in gay bars in San Francisco. He’d be working with people suffering from AIDS. These people are the new lepers. If you want to find out where Jesus would be hanging out it’ll always be with the lepers.” I am NOT saying my gay friends are lepers; it is just where Jesus would be. My radical role model.
So how about if we each put down our judgments and inch towards the center? I am trying to run at it; I will stumble, I will offend. If you want to do your own inching, a safe place for the LGBTQ is Light of the Soul Christian Ministries. They meet every Sunday at 7 pm at the First Congregational Church on Sunnyside. They played a great set Sunday morning at Gay Pride if you were there. They love Jesus; they would love to help you find a way back to a place of acceptance.
I want to effect change in a world that breeds too much fear and hatred. I want to struggle less and know more. I challenge you to take the tough road of opening up to be a creative thinker too. As I strive to find an honest way to bring understanding in all this confusion and interpretation, I want to find a place where my feet are so solid on this issue that the certain-to-come opposition will not knock me down. I want to adhere to what one of the Old Testament Prophets answered of the question “What does the Lord require of you?” The answer; ‘ To act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.” I want justice, I do love mercy and I try to walk humbly with my God and His creation, and that is each of you. And finally, I want my head to believe what my heart thinks, don’t you?
Kathy Baldock
September 10, 2007