A Gay Dad’s Open Letter to the Man Who is Refusing to Eat Due to Utah Same Sex Marriages

Posted on January 5, 2014 by robw77

ImageThese past few years may end up being known as the years of “Conservatives Acting Badly”.   At the end of last year the Republicans in Congress conducted a massive foot stomping, pout-out and shut down the government because they did not get their way on the previous healthcare bill.  In the state of Utah, conservatives were shocked when the justice system intervened on the subject of marriage equality.  Now, we have a couple of adult size tantrums in the works.

One is scary thug tactics.  A group called The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has called for an “uprising” against same sex marriage.  The other is by a man named Trestin Meacham who is refusing to eat until he gets his way and marriage equality is again banned in Utah.  He stated, “You can start a blog and you can complain on social networks until you’re blue in the face and nothing will happen, but actions speak louder than words and I’m taking action.” 

As a gay dad, I am familiar with both these “actions”.  The first one, by the “Sheriffs” has a clear name, pure and simple: “bullying”.  They plan to intimidate their prey into submission through a combination of threat, insults, and mob action.  Just as we turn to school administrations for bullying strategies, we need to call on Utah authorities.  They need to react immediately to the promise of subversive action or run the risk law and order being severely undermined.  LGBT citizens have the right to not be subjected to harassment and need protection.

The second “action” is one that has been deployed by each of my two sons in their infancies.  They each tried belligerent refusals to eat, accompanied by tears and screams, over something they wanted but were not getting.  It is a challenge that I think most parents face when our lovely darlings turn into single minded, willful forces of nature with which we cannot reckon.  However, reckon with them we must.

The method that has worked for me has been one of positive discipline.  First rule of this approach is that the object of the child’s tantrum may not, under any circumstances, be granted.  If it is granted, you have set up a permanent pattern of behavior and you are the one who has been “trained” by the situation.  Second rule is a firm objective delivery of the situation to the child, but without allowing your own feelings of frustration, anger or sense of futility to be integrated.  Scream back, and you lose.  The final rule is to not abandon the child even though he is as close to channeling Linda Blair in the Exorcist as you have ever seen.  So, through the tears, firm stance and not reacting, you also communicate your love and affection.  I know that doesn’t sound easy.  It’s not.

In this gay dad’s opinion, Mr. Meacham’s actions fall squarely into the second category.  I bounced the situation off my son Jesse (age 11) for a quick reaction.

Me:  Hey Pal.  Here is a guy who is refusing to eat until the government does what he wants them to do.

Jesse:  Really?

Me:   Yeah.  Really.  I’m writing him a letter.  What should I tell him?

Jesse:  Tell him it never works.  I know.  I tried it.  You never get what you want and you lose your video games.

Here is my open letter to Trestin Meacham from a gay dad perspective:

Dear Mr. Meacham,

I am probably an example of the last person on earth you would like to be hearing from right now.  I am a gay dad with a same sex partner, who is raising two sons, adopted as young infants from foster care.  I fight for the dignity of families like mine, and protection of the children in them, for their legal and ethical rights.  I realize that your mission is to “nullify” families like mine out of existence, or at the very least, to disappear from view, stripped of protections or recognition.

The purpose of this letter is not to tell you that we do exist, and we will not go away, but rather, to give you feedback on your current state of self-starvation.  In your blog you state, “This has nothing to do with hatred of a group of people. I have friends and relatives who practice a homosexual lifestyle and I treat them with the same respect and kindness that I would anyone. ” 

The Massachusetts Supreme Court stated that whom one marries signifies one of the greatest acts of self-definition an individual can make in life.  I would love to believe your sentiments as you state them, but your actions say differently.  Starving yourself to prevent your fellow citizens from marrying is not respectful.  Leaving our children without social or legal standing is not kind.  Your reference to specific relatives as “practicing a homosexual lifestyle” is dismissive, superficial and, quite frankly, rude.

With your intent to starve, you are doing exactly what both of my sons have attempted at times.  They each have tossed away their dinners when they were not going to get their way over something.  It is not OK for them to do that, and it is not OK for you either.

The fact is, you are not going to get what you want.  Equality is an important value, and it is the key ideal for which our country stands.  Your religious freedom is another important value, but in order for you to have it, your LGBT neighbors must be equally free to practice their own religious convictions, otherwise it is not freedom at all, it would be the imposition of tyranny. 

What you are doing, in a rather bizarre way, in your adult tantrum, is to have taken a human being hostage and threatened harm.  The fact that you are both the hostage taker and hostage in this situation is almost beside the point.  You cannot be allowed to succeed due to your behavior, not because your ideas are wrong (as obviously, I think they are), but because your action of harm is wrong in itself, and we as a society, cannot reward it with fruition.

As another thinking, breathing, loving human on the planet, I care about you.  I do not want you harmed and would like to see you healthy to argue your, albeit misguided, ideas yet another day.  I sincerely think you need to be in protective custody.  If you take this much further, I can only hope people around you make those kind of arrangements.

I sincerely wish the best for you personally, but without you harming yourself or your LGBT neighbors.  I hope you reconsider your actions and make a healthier choice. 

Ideally, rather than starving yourself, I would rather you go out for a pizza with my family, or a family like mine.  Get to know those whom you seek to “nullify”.  I would like you to see the love, respect and joy that we share.  I would like you to see that real family is bigger than the Constitution, bigger than Utah and not worth fasting over to prevent.

 It may be time to grow up and broaden your horizons.  Better to do that on a full tummy.

 Sincerely,

 A Dad

 

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2013 in review

Posted on December 31, 2013 by robw77

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 400,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 17 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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A Transcontinental Christmas Quilt

Posted on December 24, 2013 by allydavidstevens

I recently made a friend, Michael, through the internet. He lives on the East Coast, in the “other” Portland. He’s a gay man who reached out after he saw my viral video. I keep noticing these interesting parallels in our lives. My brother who I’ve written about is named Michael, my new friend Michael has a brother named David. We both live in Portland, and he mentioned that he and his husband are buying a house right now, just as my wife and I sign papers this week on our new house.

I don’t know if any of these parallels mean anything, but I guess I don’t believe in coincidence. It seems like the world is trying to tell me something. I suspect I know what I’m being reminded of: We are one. It’s simple, and maybe even trite, but it happens to be true. Sometimes I need an in-my-face reminder of this axiom.

I love this time of year. I’ve been noticing lately this warm feeling towards the people around me, particularly co-workers and family. I find myself profoundly grateful for my warm home and the food I eat. While I find shopping tiresome, I love thinking of people far away and finding gifts to express my fondness for them.

Okay, I admit it, I love Christmas.

Having left the Christian church with some vehemence as a young man, for many years I found myself rejecting the holiday. This was probably spurred along by the fact that my birthday falls on December 25th, and my special day has always been slightly overshadowed. As my disaffection for the consumer culture grew, I found myself dreading the season and the attendant capitalist frenzy. But I’m turning 40 this year, and I guess maybe I’m maturing. While these things that turned me off to Christmas are still true, something bigger and more important is shining through.

Lately I am finding my patience for the homophobic individuals I encounter to be waning. Some of the civil discourse I engage in is only a choice word or two away from complete devolution into mud-slinging. I’m having a tough time remembering that I am one with some people. But I’m still trying, because I don’t think that I can help them to see themselves as one with our LGBTQ family by telling them where to stick it. So I’m trying.

Christmas encourages us to celebrate our oneness; to give each other gifts to help make the cold time more bearable; to sew the quilt of our community a little tighter and keep us all a little warmer. I am grateful for my new friend, Michael, who I am stitching into my quilt from across the country as our lives run parallel tracks.

So this is my Christmas wish; for myself and everyone. I wish for us all to remember our oneness, and to strive in our actions to sew our quilt a little tighter.

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A Gay Dad Tells His Eleven-Year Old Sons The Truth About Santa

Posted on December 23, 2013 by robw77

ImageMy sons, who I have had since they were babies, adopted from foster care, are both eleven years old.  They both still believe in Santa Claus.

I take full responsibility for this.  One skill , that those of us who have spent any time in a closet learn, is how to create the illusion of life as those around us want it to be, rather than what it necessarily is.  After a solid decade of hiding and building facade around my sexual orientation, doing the Santa gig was a piece of cake, all the way down to photoshopping “proof” of the the big guy standing in the middle of our actual living room.

Now my kids are older and they have a bombardment of friends who “know”, and are eager to tell them their perspectives. One close friend has already informed them that Santa “does not exist”.  My son Jesse dismissed the notion. “He does not exist for HER because she no longer believes,” he let me know.

My dilemma has been brewing for two years—do I tell them, or do I let the natural information from their peers take over?  There is nothing about option two that I find attractive.  I would rather be upfront about it, and take the hit, the disappointment and even the anger rather than be talked about behind my back, lose the management of the information and look like a fool.

That’s settled.  There will be a talk.  Now… what to say?  As I was trying to formulate my thoughts on this again this year, (I went through this last year too and bailed), the Christmas season hubub arrived despite my best efforts to delay it.

One of our family traditions is for us to cuddle up in our big easy chairs, turn out the lights and watch the movie Polar Express.  In case you are a Christmas-milieu Rip Van Winkle and do not know “Polar Express”, it is a magical production where doubting kids are taken late at night on Christmas eve to the North Pole to witness the departure of Santa Claus and to possibly receive the “first gift”.  One of the sub-plots of the movie is that those who “still believe” can hear the tinkling sounds of Santa’s sleigh bells, and that those who no longer believe, can’t.

As we sat this year in the dark, all of us breathing in captive wonder, I found myself tearing and emotional as the lead character shakes the bell and the tiny tinkle of belief peels out.  I wanted to gush out in sentimental sobs, until the thought crossed my mind….  “Wait a minute, bub, aren’t you the dude planning on how he is going to tell his kids that there is NO Santa.  What’s with the tears?”

After the movie, I went upstairs and looked at a painting displayed there.  It was one that I got in a gift exchange from work two years ago.  That year, I had suggested we all give each other only hand made things that reminded us of the person to whom we were giving the present.  My gift was from my friend Tara. It was a simple blue painting that reads: “I still believe…” .

I was looking at that painting when I put my foot down.  “I DO still believe.”

The next day, my sons wrote their letters to Santa Claus and gave them to me for their “safe” delivery.  I asked them if they wanted to go see Santa at the mall.  “No.” they both responded matter-of-factly.  When I asked why, Jesse looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “We wrote to him.  I think we are covered.  Besides, I want to see if by not going to see him, he gets worried and picks me up this year for the Polar Express.”   Uhhh ohhh.

There will be a talk.  It won’t be the one I planned on giving, but instead, it will be the one that I truly… believe.

Here is my open draft:

Hi guys.  I have been meaning to have this talk with you for some time now.   I can have it now because you are getting to be grown up.  You can take part in things in a way that you could not as little boys.

You know about the mystery and the magic of Christmas.  You’ve experienced it.  Everyone we know is caring, shopping, giving and sharing.  The world is transformed, brilliant and electric.  You go to bed on Christmas eve, and when you wake up on Christmas morning, magically, intriguingly, Santa’s gifts to you are here, and your stockings are full.

You know how magic works.   We’ve been to magic shows where we have witnessed things appear and disappear, things created out of nowhere.  Those shows have taught us one thing—that things may actually happen in a different way than we think we see them happening.  They are the wonder of “illusion”.

The illusion around Christmas is that Santa comes, flies the whole globe and pops down chimneys even where they don’t exist.  Many have imagined exactly how that happens.  We have seen all the movies.  They imagine different kind of sleighs that he arrives in, who the reindeer are, and what elves really look like.  All of these are created in our minds.  We can’t prove or disprove any of them—like the magic trick we see on stage, we can only guess what the truth is about how it is done.

How it’s done doesn’t matter, but we will talk about that in a minute.  Right now, I want to tell you the truth.  I want to tell you exactly who the REAL Santa Claus is.  The facts.

Santa Claus was born almost two thousand years ago, only a few hundred years after Jesus.  He lived in Turkey.  He was an important man there, and he became famous for giving…. secretly.  He gave so that the person receiving the gift did not know who it came from.

Many people want to have Santa look just like them.  A lady newscaster recently told everyone in the world that Santa was white with blue eyes.  She is white with blue eyes.  ImageHere is a picture that scientists have put together on what he really looks like (credit BBC broadcasting).  He is jolly and portly, with a white beard.  His skin is darker than you may have seen and he has brown eyes.  Of all of us in our family, he looks most like Jason.  It really doesn’t matter though, because he is much bigger and more powerful than what he looks like. His name then was Nicholas.

I am sorry to say that he died, but after he did, his spirit went out and that is when the world really felt his impact. They named him Saint Nicholas.  You may have heard that name before.  The name got used so often as his spirit created miracles that it changed:  Saint Nicholas, Saint-A-Nicholas, Saint-Na-Claus to Santa Claus.

Santa Claus, the spirit, is so huge that it made everyone get creative and want to give secret presents and surprises every Christmas.  As we did, we all imagined who Santa is and how it all would get done.  That is how the illusions came to be.

What does that mean for us?  Who brings you, Jesse and Jason, YOUR Christmas presents?  I am sure you guys have ideas and theories to solve that mystery, but I have a better idea.  Don’t solve it.  Let’s let it stay a mystery.

You may think it is Santa in a sleigh, or Saint Nicholas and his magic spirit, or that he has a helper that sneaks in and gets things done.  You might even think I have something to do with it.  I am saying: it doesn’t matter, and you guys can guess whatever you want.  I will neither confirm nor deny any of it.

Here is what IS important.  You are now old enough.  You are now responsible enough.  It is your turn to help out Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas.  You are old enough to start imagining how you can give to others in secret, not to get thanked, or praised, but just to make them happy.  I did it one time like this, for example:  I was in a restaurant where a young couple helped an older couple who were struggling entering the restaurant.  They were all strangers, but had kind hearts.  I caught the waitress and told her that I wanted to pay the helpful young couple’s bill without them knowing.  You guys were there and asked what I was doing and I wouldn’t tell you.  She took care of it for me.  The couple was very happy and wanted to thank whoever responsible, but they couldn’t, because they did not know who I was.  They would have to just push it forward and do a “Saint Nicholas” for someone else.

That is how it works.  You guys are already doing it, and I am very proud of you.  You have thought of things people in our family would like, things that would make them happy.  That is where your imaginations have gone.  You are doing Saint Nicholas, you are being Santa Claus.

The miracle of Christmas is not in what we get, and it is not in what we see.  It is in what we feel, what we imagine and what we give to create love and happiness.  I want you two to never let anyone take that away from you.  Your feelings of Christmas, your inspiration on what to do to make others happy and the love we have for each other… those are all invisible, but they are the most real things in the world.  I believe in them with all my heart, and I hope you do too.

There is only one thing I believe in more, and that is you.

I am sorry if there are other questions around our own Christmases of which you may not feel you are getting answers.  How did you get what present, when and how did whoever got it for you know?  As I said, I cannot confirm or deny who that person is or how they operated as an agent of St. Nick.  St. Nick does not want identities to be known.

What I can tell you is : that person, loves you more than anything.  They feel that every gift you got, you deserved and more.   That is the most important answer you will ever need to know.

Merry Christmas.   Show me the Saint Nicks I know you can be.  I love you.   Daddy.

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New Rights? Special Rights? No. The Same Rights.

Posted on December 21, 2013 by robw77

New Rights? Special Rights? No. The Same Rights.

A quote from the judge who ruled for marriage equality in Utah

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Dear Christian Bakers

Posted on December 11, 2013 by robw77

Dear Christian Bakers

For the record….

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The Grinch-alin Who Tried to Steal Christmas: How We Take It Back

Posted on December 7, 2013 by robw77

ImageThere is a Dr. Seuss story about Christmas.  You all know it.   Frankly, it really is not my kids’ favorite. 

Who really wants to hear about a mean spirited goon who sweeps down upon a population pretending to BE Christmas, all the while stealing everything good about the real Christmas?  Probably not you… but I am going to talk about Sarah Palin anyway. 

I may mention that Grinch guy too, although, I think he has been usurped by Ms. Palin this year.  Their spiritual mind-meld makes me think of them as a single unit, the Grinch-alin.  There.  I put a name to it.

Yes, Sarah Palin is this year’s Grinch.  “I say in a very jolly Christmasy way: ‘Enough is enough!” she declared against stores like Walgreens who do not commercialize Christmas enough.  “I love the commercialization of Christmas!” she stated.  Her observation of Walgreens: “Walgreens’ 24-page nationwide circular used the word 36 times without one mention of Christmas” !

Walgreens seems to have a knack for not mentioning holiday names… any holiday.  Not even ones like Independence Day.  Here is their commercial for Easter, which they actually get through without mentioning the name “Easter”.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM5E0BGs2qA

Walgreens has been completely consistent in their treatment of all holidays, secular as well as of any religion.  Who, is not consistent, is Palin.  Where is the protest on the “War on Easter”?  Why is she pro-Christmas, but apparently Easter apathetic? 

She claims she is not alone in her vendetta.  She has Thomas Jefferson on her side.

“He (Thomas Jefferson) would recognize those who would want to try to ignore that Jesus is the reason for the season, those who would want to try to abort Christ from Christmas,” she said.  The comment was a two-fer… a fictional Jefferson who was not only “anti-war-on-Christmas”, but also imagined to be anti-abortion.  I admit it.  I am fascinated on how she comes up with this stuff.

Most of the Grinch-alin comments are so close to self parody they actually seem pretty benign.  Walgreens does not seem to be losing sales. 

Palin’s book starts with a self-revelation that is truly heinous however.   It makes me want to keep her away from anything good, wholesome and decent.  It shows that the Grinch-alin is truly without a heart.

Last year, eleven days before Christmas a horror unfolded in Newtown Connecticut.  A gun man shot and killed six educators and twenty children.  The country was in shock and horror, and looking for answers. 

Palin gives an account of what was going on in her life as a reaction to these events:   “To combat the anti-gun chatter coming from Washington, I surprised him (Todd) with a nice, needed, powerful gun. I then asked him for a metal gun holder for my four-wheeler. Not only was this small act of civil disobedience fun, it allowed me to finally live out one of my favorite lines from a country song: “He’s got the rifle, I got the rack.”  As twenty six families were devastated and millions mourned, the Grinch-alin was open for business having fun with guns.

It is time to end this travesty.  It is time to stop humoring those who make a big deal out of the word “Christmas” but who gut it of all “peace on earth and goodwill towards humanity” meaning.  It is time to take back Christmas from not only those who commercialize it, but worse, for those who use it to sell crappy agenized political tomes.

I shared this plan last year—and I am sharing it again.  The plan to take back the real heart of Christmas:

1.  Share music.   Send music to people that you know they will love, whatever means possible.  My boyfriend sang out a beautiful rendition of “Silent Night” to his late mother on a video shot in front of our Christmas tree. He shared this love with his friends list, and emotionally moved many.

2.  Bake.   My sons and I, no great magicians in the kitchen, whip up our decorated slice-and-bakes and distribute them through the neighborhood. It is an excuse to embrace our neighbors and physical community, and the goodwill it produces lasts beyond the calories.

3. Create beauty.   Decorate, paint, design… whatever expression works for you.  In my family this year we painted ceramic Christmas village houses.  It was fun, it was imaginative and we ended up with pieces that will make us remember the love between us at that given place and time.

4.  Do something important for loved ones.   I am resolved to worry less about spending money on the ones I love, and doing things that may cost little, but are truly important.  Write a poem, frame that great picture together, buy them the used book you KNOW they will love.  I thought hard about this a few years ago as I pondered what to give my dad whom I adore, and who is getting up in years and won’t be with me much longer.  What can I do for a person like that?  As a dad myself, I used that perspective to think about what I would want from my own sons.  I constantly am trying to do things for them that they like and enjoy, but the thing that is illusive is which events really stick with them?  I decided that my dad may want to know that about me, so I wrote up my “Top 10 Most Memorable Moments” that I had spent with him in my life.  He teared and choked up as he read each one aloud to our family.  It was hands down the most important gift I had ever given to him, or anyone else for that matter.  The list now sits on his nightstand.  He reads it to himself every single night since I gave it to him.

5. Adopt people who you don’t know, but need you.  There are lots of charitable hands out this year, and I am not really talking about swiping a credit card so funds go to different non-profit funds.  Thirty years ago a piece called the “White Envelope” was published in Woman’s Day Magazine.  In that story, a woman does something significant for strangers, then shares about it to her family via a note placed on their tree.  It is their best family gift.

For those of us who are LGBTQ, we need to fill white envelopes on our trees for our children we have never met. 

There are the kids who have come out to their families and been kicked out of their family homes and are now living on the street.  What group of children needs love and Christmas more than they do?  What group of children is more ours?

If you think this group is a small or an insignificant one, think again.   Writer Cathy Kristofferson researched and wrote an important piece in which she paints an accurate and urgent portrait of the LGBT homeless teen.  Of the disproportionate rate she states, “Simple.  Youth who come out to their parents are rejected by those parents at a rate of 50%, with 26% immediately thrown out of the house to become instantly homeless and many following soon after as a result of the physical and verbal abuse that ensues after their declaration.  Empowered by the gains in equality and acceptance with the heightened visibility the adult gay community has welcomed of late, youth are emboldened to come out at ever-younger ages while still reliant on parents who are a flip of the coin away from rejecting them.  Simple factors of 4 tell the story of parental rejection and its effect on queer youth homelessness:

  • 2 out of 4 will be rejected by their parents when they come out
  • 1 out of 4 will be kicked out by their parents when they come out
  • 3 out of 4 homeless queer youth will say parent objections to their orientation led to their homelessness

Youth homelessness is bad enough on its own but being queer further compounds the difficulties.  Devastating statistics like 62% of queer homeless youth attempt suicide only begin to tell the story of the additional hardship endured when compared with their heterosexual counterparts.  Queer youth experiencing homelessness are:

  • 3 times more likely to commit suicide, and 8 times more likely due to parental rejection
  • 3 times more likely to turn to prostitution and survival sex
  • 6 times higher incidents of mental health and substance abuse issues
  • 7 times more likely to experience sexual violence at a much higher risk of victimization by rape, robbery and assault “

There are about 2800 of these kids in Los Angeles, 3000 in San Francisco, there are MORE than that in places like Salt Lake City, and close to 1000 in smaller cities like Detroit.  I admit, finding out what you can do for such kids in your personal community, and they are there, is a challenge.  It would be easy to ignore and walk away.  If the concept of a true LGBTQ Community is real however, these are OUR kids and we need to do what we can to help.  There are 300,000 to 400,000 of them that will be homeless this Christmas morning.  They are hurt, they are in danger, and they need us.

We can start by making them the White Envelopes on our trees, and we can end with making real differences.  Please give it some thought and take some action.  

We cannot change the Grinch-alin.  She will do what she will do on the public stage.  We don’t have to give her Christmas and everything for which it really stands.  No, instead, we can change lives, re-take Christmas, word and all, and make memories.

Happy holidays, merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year.

 

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A Dad Appeals to the Bishop Judging the Methodist Minister Who Married His Gay Son

Posted on December 1, 2013 by robw77

A Dad Appeals to the Bishop Judging the Methodist Minister Who Married His Gay Son.

Posted in Bible, Civil Rights, Family, Gay Christians, Marriage equality, Prejudice, Religion | Leave a comment

A Dad Appeals to the Bishop Judging the Methodist Minister Who Married His Gay Son

Posted on December 1, 2013 by robw77

ImageIn 1990, I fell in love.  I met a beautiful man named Paul who shared my values, my heart and my soul.  We quickly knew that we intended to spend the rest of our lives together.  We were not looking for legal protection or rights, and the public conversation about same sex marriage and marriage equality really had not even begun.  We just sought to solemnize our relationship into a spiritual marriage.

My parents had been on their own journey accepting my sexual orientation, and they had evolved to the point that they felt comfortable approaching the minister of their church that they had supported significantly for years.  They asked him if he would perform a ceremony for us.  He answered that even though he wanted to, that he supported what we were doing, he could not.  More specifically, that he was afraid to perform the ceremony.

The truth is, it was unlikely that our private ceremony would have been noticed, but he was worried that his church superiors might somehow catch wind of it, and that he would get in to trouble.  He was, in truth, not my first choice to conduct the ceremony anyway, but his cowardice lowered him even further in my perception.  I was actually relieved to not be married by a man who was so weak in his own convictions.  He dodged the bullet of being judged for doing something right and I dodged the bullet of not having a blessing said over my life that had no moral courage behind it.

One could not say the same thing of another minister, the reverend Frank Schaefer, a Methodist clergyman who has laid a very public stake in the ground while standing on his own heroic convictions.  He too was asked to officiate at a same gender wedding:  his son’s in 2007.  He did not shrink away.  His response:  “When he asked me in 2007, ‘Dad, would you do my wedding?’ I was just honored”.

It was a private ceremony, not done defiantly in the faces of Schaefer’s Pennsylvania congregation.   It was not meant as a protest of the Methodist Church policies.  It would not have even been an issue had not a lone congregant, Jon Boger, pressed it.  Inexplicably, Mr. Boger somehow felt the baptisms of his children and the funerals of his grandparents had been adversely affected by Schaefer’s proceedings over his own son’s wedding.  Since the events had no relation to each other in any way, I have trouble seeing this as a matter of religious tenet, but rather, as pure unadulterated prejudice, but then, I was not asked my opinion.

The decision on whether to go to trial on this issue,  was under the auspices of Bishop Peggy Johnson.  Bishop Johnson received a petition pleading her not to move forward, but replied that even though she “tried really, really hard”, she moved forward anyway.

Just in case a voice of reason might prevail where a petition of thousands did not, I am sending this open letter to Bishop Johnson, and any others of the Methodist hierarchy who are judging Reverend Schaefer.

Dear Bishop Johnson,

I am writing this to you from one who was raised loving God in the Methodist Church.  I am writing to you as a father of two special needs boys who were adopted through foster care, each having been born to drug addicted birth parents.  I am writing this to you from the vantage point of one who has had the privilege to officiate for and marry dedicated couples.  I am writing this to you as a gay man.

One of the factors that has driven me in my personal spiritual quest is the embrace of Christ who stood for principles beyond the “rules” of man.  While He respected rules, He was the first to confront them when they no longer were serving their intended use.  He broke the “rule” to not work on the Sabbath when to do so meant that He would heal someone in need.  He left us with two main principles that override all rules that do not support them:  To love God above all else, and to love one’s neighbor as one’s self.

Certainly, Bishop Johnson, your own position in your church is the result of enlightened thinking that looked at a biblical “rule” and realized that it did not stand up to the scrutiny of holy principle.  1 Timothy is unequivocal in its “rule” that women be silent, and that they are forbidden to teach or lead men.  This biblical statement is far clearer than any of the statements about gang rape, temple orgies, heterosexual divorce and prostitution that  some choose to interpret as mandates against gay people.

Yet, clear minds and hearts of the Methodist church rejected this “rule” of the Bible and tradition.  John Wesley in founding the Methodist Church stated, “It has long passed for a maxim with many that ‘women are only to be seen but not heard.”  While it took some time from that pronouncement, the Methodist Church finally put the out dated rule to bed in lieu of principle in May 1956.

So now you are up against another “rule”.   A father was looked into the eyes by the son he loves and asked to officiate and bless that son’s marriage.  At face value, it is obvious that the Methodist court that judged the father in question did so completely blinded by “rule” and devoid of principle.  For me, who has been on the life experience of all sides of this, as a father, as a son wanting to marry my life partner, and as one who held the space for those coming together in matrimony, I can tell you that the Method Church is acting as a sham and a travesty against all things loving, good and right.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court stated that “the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition”.  In that single quote, the justices summed up the heart of this issue.

In my experience, when a couple sought me out to be an officiate for their wedding, they were asking me to put words to their own self-definition as a couple.  It was an honor, and a holy task that I have undertaken twice now.  I strived to know them, their hopes, their dreams and describe the commitment of the path they were now taking together.  There are 1500 rights and responsibilities that come with marriage, and those were never the subject of either of the ceremonies I wrote.  I wrote the ceremonies of their love, hope and vision.

Even at their young age, when I have discussed marriage with my sons, I talk about my own vision of marriage with a hope to impart upon them the very best experience life has to offer.  If one of my sons, a few years from now, were to ask me to officiate at his wedding, that would be a harmonic convergence of my vision for him with that of his own.   There are few moments as a parent I can think of that would be as beautifully unifying and underscore the pure soul of a family, than that.

If that request came to me, I would move heaven and earth to make it happen.  Nothing, nothing would keep me from showing up for my son and being part of that self defining moment for him, exactly as he asked me to.

This was what Reverend Frank Schaefer experienced as a parent, and all that you intend to set aside, all for the sake of an archaic “rule”.  You are dead wrong in every way conceivable.

The Bible principles do not support your rule.  Leaving aside you have no prohibition from two people of the same gender making a marriage commitment, you are ignoring its greatest examples of principles behind parental love.  The father of the prodigal son, did not turn his back on either of his sons—the rule follower, or the rule breaker.  The story of King Solomon is probably the most pertinent.  Two mothers came to him claiming a single child as her own.  The false mother had a still born, but the king did not know who was telling the truth.

He laid out a rule of fairness.  The rule would have a baby severed in half to appease both the false and the true mother standing before him.  The true mother rejected the ruling, and was self sacrificing for the sake of the love of her child.  You have placed Reverend Schaefer in that same position, and he has followed the path of the real parent.  He is willing to sacrifice his own career for the love of his son.  He stated, “I couldn’t pass on the other side of the road like a Levite to preserve a rule. All I saw was love for my son.” 

Reverend Schaefer is exhibiting the best of a father’s love. In terms of spiritual principle, his actions can easily be compared to the consecration of the Holy Father’s love, and its reflection, with His creations.  God loves and has vision for us, and when we seek Him to solemnize our own vision aligned with His, we have holiness.

In the Solomon story, the King realized that the “rule” was a test, and it demonstrated who the true parent really was.  It was also a test of the authority behind the rule.  Was that authority one in which a child would be slaughtered, all for the sake of a “rule”, or was it one in which higher principle would prevail?  For the real mother in that story, it was the latter.  For you, as a deserving member of the clergy and qualified to serve, it was also the latter.

Now is your time to prove that those who used principle over “rule” on your behalf were right in doing so.  History is watching.

Sincerely

Rob Watson,

Wedding Officiate, Methodist, Gay Man and a Dad

Update:  Below is the response from the Bishop we received just after we published the letter.  Since that time, Reverend Shaefer was de-frocked, appealed and now has been reinstated.  We hope that he now can become the progressive voice of the church.

 

Bishop Johnson’s reply:

Dear Mr Watson

Thank you for what I consider the best letter yet on this topic. I could not agree with you more on the points you have made. This trial was never my choice but the results of an impasse that could not be resolved and rules in the Book of Discipline that have remained for over 40 years the same. I hope Rev Schaefer decides to stay and continue to work from within. Know that our social issues continue to plague us. Yes, women can be ordained in the UMC but there is not a year that passes that I don’t get a letter from a church saying they won’t take a woman pastor. One of my churches does not allow me to preach there. The struggle for civil and ecclesiastical rights for the LGBTQ community will also go on for some time. We prayerfully continue the work. Keep shining your light.

Peggy Johnson

In conclusion, I want to thank Bishop Johnson for her consideration. My hope is that the progressive voices in the United Methodist Church also rise to the occasion. It is the opportunity for a church not only to stand by a man who deserves it but to stand on the right side of history.

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A Gay Dad Sounds Off on Why the BatKid Is Important

Posted on November 18, 2013 by robw77

ImageThe day did not start off well. My schedule in the morning must work like clockwork. Two boys, ten and eleven years old, but be showered, dressed, breakfasted, lunches packed, and out the door. At the same time, I need to be showered, dressed (breakfasted—yeah, right), lunch packed, house closed down, and out the door. Some days, it works like a well-oiled machine.

Some days . . . not. That day, it did not. That morning, it was my older son, Jason’s, hypersensitivity and hypoglycemia. His blood sugar had dropped, which made him irrationally emotional, and the only resolve was for him to eat—but because he was upset, he did not want to eat. While tears erupted, I had to manage my own emotions and frustrations over trying to get him to eat in order to ease the emotions that prevented him from eating. Finally, he relented and took in the cereal bars, the food hit his system, and his normally sweet demeanor began to reemerge.

It is events like these that make life with my sons not “typical.” If I ever start to harbor any thoughts of ill will about that, I have to reflect on what they have already been through and conquered in their young lives. Both my sons were adopted as babies through foster care. They each faced things at very young ages that I could not imagine. My older kicked the heroin running through his body at birth in a few weeks. My younger, also drug exposed at birth, was terrorized and abused by an aggressive birth parent. Today they are both well-adjusted, happy boys, but special needs and challenges still arise.

A few hours later, I was at work. One of my tasks for the day was to write an internal memo about a project on which my boss and a few others in my company had been working. They had raised $6000 towards a $7500 goal to “adopt a wish” for the Make-a-Wish Foundation. The $7500 would go to a single child’s wish.

As I wrote, I told the stories of several children, all between the ages of four and nine, who had wishes granted. Like my sons, they had gone through things that most adults would find devastating. Their dreams were not cheap, but then that was understandable. None of us dreams to be under a budget, and these kids were certainly going to be oblivious to “what things cost.” It was not the point of the program to make them understand that. The point of the program was to give them the overwhelming experience of a miracle so that they could then expect a similar miracle in fighting the life-threatening challenge that they share with the others in the program.

As I put the finishing touches to the corporate memo, one of my co-workers emailed me a link to something unfolding an hour away in San Francisco. The BatKid had come to town, and the entire city and its surroundings had fallen in love with him.

For good reason. Like my sons, five-year-old Miles Scott had already fought an adult-size battle early in his young life. When he was eighteen months old, he came down with leukemia. Miles did not focus on the battle behind him, however; he dreamed instead to be . . . Batman. “He is my favorite super hero,” Miles explained simply. Nuanced motivations are not required when one is five.

His folks took him to San Francisco, on the pretense of getting him a Batman outfit. Yeah. And a whole lot more. It seems that almost everyone in the city was in on the transformation into a little boy’s dream world that day. He donned the outfit all right, but then he went from adventure to adventure: The chief of police called on him to save a damsel in distress, he witnessed a flash mob in his honor, and he brought down the bank-robbing Riddler. Even the president of the United States chimed in with a “Way to go, Miles!”

News of Miles’s adventures filled Facebook, Twitter, and the media. It was easy casting; the part called for a metropolitan city to sit in complete and total awe as a masked superhero saved its day. We in the area grabbed our role and went for it with gusto.

As is the case in many superhero sagas, however, there is always a drag-along naysayer. The proverbial spoil sport. Eric Mar (even the name seems to be out of central casting—Supervisor Mar, the guy who had to mar the fun) tweeted his form of bah humbug, “Waiting for Miles the BatKid & Wondering how many 1000s of SF kids living off SNAP/FoodStamps could have been fed from the $$.”

I do understand Supervisor Mar’s concern (albeit it poorly timed). There are many kids in need, and $7500 is a lot of money. In BatKid’s case, probably much more was spent, although city revenues certainly increased as well. Opportunity costs are not linear, however. There is no denying that big gifts do carry powerful significance. Miles’s mom, Natalie, stated, “This wish has meant closure for our family and an end to over three years of putting toxic drugs in our son’s body. This wish has become kind of a family reunion and is our celebration of his treatment completion.” 

Those who donated to the funds that brought us BatKid were not likely to be sending the money to food stamp kids instead. In my workplace in our make-a-wish efforts, we vie for Airline, Cher, Eagles, or San Jose Shark tickets in a raffle. Others may forgo an extra lunch or a luxury item in order to give. It is also not to say that big prizes are routinely given in our society to those in need. All one has to do is turn on the TV to see cooks, sports enthusiasts, and no-discernible-talent people vying for big cash prizes. So the conundrum of one $7500 event versus one hundred $75 gifts is not a real one.

It is also not the point. The point of BatKid was so much bigger than one Miles Scott, as adorable and deserving as he is. It was an act of many people coming together to make a dream come true. It was an act of healing and vision, to give a child that which he or she hoped for, and to demonstrate that hope is worth having.

It is to show that we collectively can take a dream that should be all but impossible, and make it possible. Twelve thousand volunteers pulled the event together, and tens of thousands more participated. It is rare, but not unheard of, for a community of people to come together with such a singularity of vision.

The fact that this was done for one single child is irrelevant. Similarly, when I tell the stories of my sons and their gay dad, it is not because I want people to care about only us. The point is we are representative of many like us who need that care. Some look at the adoption of babies born to drug addicts as their own lifetime “make a wishes.” LGBT parents adopting them into safe homes, to lives of care and protection, make their newborn dreams come true. It is saving one child at a time.

The profound effect is also that of making strangers care about one another. When strangers care once, they then know how to care again, and again and again. Caring once allows us now to imagine how we can continue and help more children, and maybe more adults. It is the contagion of ideas and willingness to help, aid, and love.

Usually it takes a mass shooting, a terrorist event, or something horrible to create this mindset. This was not a dire situation. We were not desperate to collectively get over a shock.

On the contrary, it was an effort of hope, love, charity, and the imagination for something wonderful. We collectively looked at an impossible dream and made it a reality.

For Miles, it was a great day. For those of us in its midst it was a necessity. We needed to know it could happen. We needed to know that the possibility of making it and other impossible dreams happen is within our grasp. It was a journey that rescued us from cynicism and took us into a community of hope.

Holy paradoxes, Batman. We thought we were doing something great for this little kid, and he may have been the one who rescued us, after all.

 

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Special thanks to Rachel Hockett for editing help on this article.

 

 

 

 

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