Recently in Pagan/Religion Category

Ordinarily, I try not to slip into Ice Queen Demon Bitch Goddess from Hell Royale mode (but being gay and having French ancestry), the genetic predisposition is definitely there.

A while ago, I got some right wing press release. I may have gotten it more than once, but I definitely recall unsubscribing from the link at the bottom of the email. I didn’t send back a nasty reply, I just did my best to remove myself from a list that I had NOTHING in common with.

So, today, I got the following bolus in my email from the same outfit:

Press Release

STATEMENT

Contact:  jmattbarber@comcast.net - 202-255-1959

DATE: February 10, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Reportedly “Gay” Prop 8 Judge Should Recuse Himself

Lynchburg, VA – Matt Barber, Director of Cultural Affairs with Liberty Counsel, released the following statement today on news that the San Francisco Chronicle has “outed” 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Vaughn Walker as an active practitioner of the homosexual lifestyle. Judge Walker has presided over California’s Proposition 8 case filed by homosexual extremists who seek to manufacture a constitutional “right” to so-called “same-sex marriage:”

“The revelation that Judge Walker apparently chooses to engage in homosexual conduct, if true, would explain much of his bizarre behavior throughout this trial,” said Barber. “At every turn he’s displayed extreme bias in favor of his similarly situated homosexual activist plaintiffs. These individuals have eschewed the democratic process and seek to employ like-minded judicial activists to radically redefine the millennia-old definition of natural marriage.

“Enter Judge Walker. In unprecedented form, and to plaintiffs’ delight, he has created a circus-like atmosphere throughout. He even violated federal rules by deciding to allow the trial to be broadcast worldwide, but was subsequently shot-down and sharply rebuked by the U.S. Supreme Court for doing so.

“Unfortunately, the damage was already done,” continued Barber. “Prop 8 supporters lost around two-thirds of expert witnesses who, naturally – based on homosexuals’ violent reaction to passage of Prop 8 – feared for their own safety and for that of family members.

“Judge Walker then ordered Prop 8 proponents to disclose private communications, work product, emails and campaign strategies to plaintiffs while – in an example of jaw-dropping inequality – permitted plaintiffs to keep the same materials secret.

“He also allowed plaintiffs a parade of ‘expert’ witnesses who viciously maligned Christians and other observers of natural and historic sexual morality as ‘prejudiced,’ ‘bigoted’ and ‘homophobic.’

“This is no different than having an avid gun collector preside over a Second Amendment case,” continued Barber, “or a frequent user of medical marijuana deciding the legality of medical marijuana. Even his fellow judges on the notoriously liberal 9^th Circuit have been forced to step-in and overturn more than one of his inexplicable rulings relative to this case. Based on his demonstrated misbehavior, there’s no reason to believe anything will change.

“At worst, Judge Walker’s continued involvement with this case presents a textbook conflict of interest. At best, it objectively illustrates the unseemly appearance of a conflict. If Judge Walker somehow divines from thin air that the framers of the U.S. Constitution actually intended that Patrick Henry had a ‘constitutional right’ to marry Henry Patrick, then who among us will be surprised?

“Any decision favoring plaintiffs in this case will be permanently marred and universally viewed as stemming from Judge Walker’s personal biases and alleged lifestyle choices. For these reasons, and in the interest of justice, Judge Walker should do the honorable thing and immediately recuse himself.”

###

Lovely, huh? (And from what I have read, the “expert” witnesses that the “protectors” of marriage had were pretty much not qualified and just spewing back what the attorneys told them to. Feared for their safety, hmm? The same folks who depict gay men as weak sissified wimps are now apparently living in terror of us.

So, not only had I not requested the initial email, but I had dutifully done my best to unsubscribe previous to getting the recent one. If someone intrudes when I have asked them not to, then they have forfeited the right to restraint (I.e. No more Mr. Nice Gay!)

This, I replied back with

Remove me from your email list immediately. Why on Earth are you sending this sort of "Christian" trash to a gay publication anyway? And will you stop putting gay in quotes? It is incredibly rude. As an active practitioner of the penile-vaginal intercourse lifestyle, I am sure that you can understand.

So, you would also agree that in a case about school prayer a Christian judge should recuse him/herself? Gay folks are automatically biased and straight folks are automatically not? (I.e. if the judge was a heterosexual Evangelical Christian, and gays claimed that person was biased, then you would agree with that, right??)

Stop spamming me with your drivel.

The boogerheads better not send something back. It really annoys me when people place words that my community uses to refer to itself in quotes – it is incredibly passive aggressive, as if they are somehow more knowledgeable about us than we are about ourselves.

Last night, I had a very nice time indeed at the open circle for Imbolc that the Covenant of Brighid’s Haven had at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Erie. Because this holiday deals with the light returning, the ritual involved lighting small candles from a central candle that was in a tray filled with sand. They were being sure to be safe. Sometimes, there have been variations of this at Samhain, and folks light a candle for a loved one. It can be very moving, but my internal unofficial term for this is the Kitty Litter Ritual, since the first time I saw it done, the base was filled with kitty litter.

However, part of the way through the ritual, the central candle sort of melted and lost over. Ruth, Jaeme and I sort of giggled and I said something about “Spirits of viagra and cialis, be with us now.” The candle hadn’t started out looking phallic, but towards the end, my first thought was “It’s okay. This sort of thing happens to ritual objects all the time. Maybe you’re just tired.”

And yeah, when the circle was closed, we did end with “Merry meet, merry part and merry meet again!” and the usual suffix of “Oh Mary!” Because it’s a tradition, damn it! It may be silly, but it makes me feel happy.

There was a very nice feast afterward, and I had a great time. The Covenant of Brighid’s Haven also now has a Facebook page. Cool for them.

I usually try to be reciprocal about holiday greetings. If someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, I usually respond by wishing them either Happy Holidays or a Happy Solstice/Yule. I am certainly not offended at all when someone greets me with symbolism or names particular to their religion, as I just try to take it in the spirit that it’s intended.

I ended up skipping doing holiday cards this year, as money is tight and I was rather busy. I have gotten a few cards, and one of them was from a very nice atheist/Freethinker/Bright (who is also hot to death!), who wished me a Happy Solstice.

So, what does one say to be reciprocal? The next time I see him, I guess that I should just say thanks and hope that he had a nice holiday season.

However, I did get notice from another friend that there was a local group forming for Freethinkers/non-believers, so I forwarded it to Mr. Solstice Card to let him know and be supportive. The group is having a Human Light celebration.

I am quite comfortable as a Pagan, but it is very important to me to try and respect the religious orientation of people that I know and care about.

As if we needed confirmation. The coordinator for G2H2 (Gay Guy/Girl Happy Hour) just sent in the listing for the January 8, so I figured I would post it. I was doing my normal routine of line up various calendar web sites and copy and paste like mad.

When I got to the community calendar page for WICU TV 12, the local NBC affiliate, I noticed that a lot of them were ones that I had sent in. I tallied it up: Out of the 15 events in the listing, 10 were ones that I am fairly sure that I had sent in. (What with sending in stuff for both GLBT, Pagan and Erie County Democratic Party, I probably end up giving them a fair amount of material.)

Oh yeah, in terms of Pagan stuff, my patron deity is Hermes. Just as Catholics might focus on a saint that they feel particularly resonates for them, Pagans will sometimes choose a patron deity. I think I chose what is most correct for me.

Oy. I am fairly much recovered, but the past few days have been rather booked. This past Thursday, I went to a World AIDS Day presentation at Community United Church that was put on by Community Health Net. My friends Jo and Mary put on a very good presentation. At one point, they were passing around photos or drawings of famous folks who are living with HIV or who had died of AIDS. I recognized most of them, but I wasn’t aware that Isaac Aasimov had died of AIDS.

Friday night, I went to the G2H2 social, which was okay, I talked with some friends. Afterwards, I went out to the Zone and flirted with a cute guy.

Saturday was a fundraiser event for Kathy Dahlkemper at a beautiful home of friends and then a holiday party later by a gay couple that live in the neighborhood.

On Sunday, Deb and I went to the holiday party by some folks affiliated with the Lake Erie Alliance for Democracy.

So, I am hoping for a quieter week. I have a board meeting for a Pagan group tomorrow, but I plan on taking things easy for a bit. (Of course, how well that works out is anyone’s guess.)

My friend Erin mentioned that she wouldn’t be able to make it to folding tonight, since it was the only night that she could get for a hair appointment. I figured that she wanted to be looking spruced up for the holidays, so very much understandable.

However, it wasn’t about looking smart or stylish, exactly. She showed up at the end of folding with a much shorter cut and it turns out that she had cut off her long hair to donate to charity. My friend Lori’s elementary school age daughter recently did the same thing with her young friend.

Having the wonderful and cheerful volunteers at folding and knowing people who are so thoughtful and selfless makes me feel very lucky indeed. So, this year, I am most grateful for having good people in my life. Whenever things seem scary or difficult, I need to remember that there is lots of good and love in the world, and I am fortunate to be around that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

At our weekly programmer meeting, one of my co-workers (who is very much into Halloween) mentioned that she had been a witch all weekend. I softly said that some of us did it year round. ;)

The Beast make up came off fairly easily on Saturday night. Actually, it was more of a problem keeping it on. However, I felt an itch in my ear this morning and ended up with a blue smeared Q-tip.

Still waiting to get some photos from James, but some folks have already posted photos at Facebook. Check out one here. See the album here. Also, another album is here. After taking some photos, I asked if taking photos that included someone dressed as the Falcon meant that I was getting the bird.

Oddly enough, despite my concerns about people asking me if I was Grover or Cookie Monster (or maybe a Smurf), the person who had confusion was local drag diva Michelle Michaels. The outfit was the White Queen, a villainess from the Hellfire Club. However, people kept asking her if she was Storm. Um, The White Queen (and Michelle Michaels) are Caucasian, and Storm is African.

Eventually, she just sort of sighed and let it go. I shared about going to the boat cruise in Pittsburgh a few years ago. I had thrown on some army camouflage just to sort of have an outfit that wouldn’t be too irksome to drive in. After the 50th person asked me if I was Fidel Castro, I just yielded and said “Sure. Whatever.” (If you are a bearded guy in army camouflage, you are Fidel Castro, regardless of your original intent.)

What a whack job!!! Has anyone done the math about how many of us Pagans there are and how much candy is produced in the US. (And duh, if we are going to curse candy, it would make far more sense to get those chocolate bunnies at Easter which are more likely to be consumed by Christians.)

Standing around a bonfire is occult/demonic?? Really? Wow, how odd that people might stand around a source of warmth when they are outside and the weather is starting to get chilly. I guess the only reason that folks might want to do something like that must be Satanic.

And, how exactly do we do a time-released curse? Is it timed from when the spell is cast? From when the object is handled? Do we have to print an expiration date? (“Yes, the candy is good for 1 calendar year, but the curse wears off after 6 months.”) Apparently, demons are able to travel along with the cursed candy, but they can’t tell the source. Maybe they should use an RFID tracking? If Satan is so powerful, one would think that he had better methods of tracking inventory.

I love how CBN realizes that Kimberly Daniels article is “controversial.” Is that the politically correct way of saying “paranoid delusional nut case?”

Sex with demons? Orgies with humans and animals? The coven that I belong to is celebrating Samhain next week. I am fairly sure that if I make a move towards the host’s cat that she would smack me down pretty hard. (And excuse me, but I think that it is quite well established that I don’t do pussy!)

She can’t even get her facts straight. She refers to the Corn King and the Harvest Lord, Dear, it’s the Oak King and the Holly King, and they are usually observed at Litha (Summer Solstice) and Yule (Winter Solstice), not Samhain.

Someone seriously needs to adjust her meds!

The Danger of Celebrating Halloween

Editor's Note: We realize that the article by Kimberly Daniels is controversial. It reflects her own personal views—based on her many years of ministering to people involved in the occult. We have chosen to post another column by Ken Eastburn which offers a different view of Halloween. We welcome our readers to post comments on that article as well. Click here to read Eastburn's article.

Halloween—October 31—is considered a holiday in the United States. In fact, it rivals Christmas with regard to how widely celebrated it is. Stores that sell only Halloween-related paraphernalia open up a few months before the day and close shortly after it ends. But is Halloween a holiday that Christians should be observing?

The word "holiday" means "holy day." But there is nothing holy about Halloween. The root word of Halloween is "hallow," which means "holy, consecrated and set apart for service." If this holiday is hallowed, whose service is it set apart for? The answer to that question is very easy—Lucifer's!

Lucifer is a part of the demonic godhead. Remember, everything God has, the devil has a counterfeit. Halloween is a counterfeit holy day that is dedicated to celebrating the demonic trinity of : the Luciferian Spirit (the false father); the Antichrist Spirit (the false holy spirit); and the Spirit of Belial (the false son).

The key word in discussing Halloween is "dedicated." It is dedicated to darkness and is an accursed season. During Halloween, time-released curses are always loosed. A time-released curse is a period that has been set aside to release demonic activity and to ensnare souls in great measure.

You may ask, "Doesn't God have more power than the devil?" Yes, but He has given that power to us. If we do not walk in it, we will become the devil's prey. Witchcraft works through dirty hearts and wrong spirits.

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.

Even the colors of Halloween (orange, brown and dark red) are dedicated. These colors are connected to the fall equinox, which is around the 20th or 21st of September each year and is sometimes called "Mabon." During this season witches are celebrating the changing of the seasons from summer to fall. They give praise to the gods for the demonic harvest. They pray to the gods of the elements (air, fire, water and earth).

Mother earth is highly celebrated during the fall demonic harvest. Witches praise mother earth by bringing her fruits, nuts and herbs. Demons are loosed during these acts of worship. When nice church folk lay out their pumpkins on the church lawn, fill their baskets with nuts and herbs, and fire up their bonfires, the demons get busy. They have no respect for the church grounds. They respect only the sacrifice and do not care if it comes from believers or non-believers.

Gathering around bonfires is a common practice in pagan worship. As I remember, the bonfires that I attended during homecoming week when I was in high school were always in the fall. I am amazed at how we ignorantly participate in pagan, occult rituals.

The gods of harvest that the witches worship during their fall festivals are the Corn King and the Harvest Lord. The devil is too stupid to understand that Jesus is the Lord of the Harvest 365 days a year. But we cannot be ignorant of the devices of the enemy. When we pray, we bind the powers of the strong men that people involved in the occult worship.

Halloween is much more than a holiday filled with fun and tricks or treats. It is a time for the gathering of evil that masquerades behind the fictitious characters of Dracula, werewolves, mummies and witches on brooms. The truth is that these demons that have been presented as scary cartoons actually exist. I have prayed for witches who are addicted to drinking blood and howling at the moon.

While the lukewarm and ignorant think of these customs as "just harmless fun," the vortexes of hell are releasing new assignments against souls. Witches take pride in laughing at the ignorance of natural men (those who ignore the spirit realm).

Decorating buildings with Halloween scenes, dressing up for parties, going door-to-door for candy, standing around bonfires and highlighting pumpkin patches are all acts rooted in entertaining familiar spirits. All these activities are demonic and have occult roots.

The word "occult" means "secret." The danger of Halloween is not in the scary things we see but in the secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes. These activities include:

• Sex with demons
• Orgies between animals and humans
• Animal and human sacrifices
• Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
• Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
• Revel nights
• Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
• Release of "time-released" curses against the innocent and the ignorant.

Another abomination that goes on behind the scenes of Halloween is necromancy, or communication with the dead. Séances and contacting spirit guides are very popular on Halloween, so there is a lot of darkness lurking in the air.

However, Ephesians 1:19-21 speaks of the authority of the believer and the exceeding greatness of God's power in us (the same power that raised Christ from the dead). It goes on to say that that Jesus is seated in heavenly places far above all principalities, power, might, dominions and every name that is named. The good news is that because we are seated in heavenly places with Jesus, the same demonic activity that is under His feet is under our feet, too!

People who worship the devil continue to attempt to lift him up. But he has already been cast out and down! Many are blinded to this fact, but the day will come when all will know he has been defeated once and for all.

When we accept Jesus but refuse to renounce Satan and his practices, we are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm—and the Word says that God will spit us out of His mouth. The problem with lukewarm is that it attempts to mix the things of the devil with the things of God. It is God's desire that we serve Him alone.

Second Corinthians 6:15 asks the question, "And what agreement has Christ with Belial?" As believers, we need to answer that question in our hearts. We must avoid the very appearance of evil. I would not want a demon spirit to mistake me for an occult worshiper.

There is no doubt in my heart that God is not calling us to replace fall festivals and Halloween activities; rather, He wants us to utterly destroy the deeds of this season. If you or your family members have opened the door to any curses that are released during the demonic fall festivals, renounce them and repent. I already have. Then declare with me: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!"

About the author: Kimberly Daniels is a sought-after conference speaker and preacher. She is the founder of Kimberly Daniels Ministries International (kimberlydaniels.com), Spoken Word Ministries—the church she pastors in Jacksonville, Florida, with her husband, Ardell—A Child of the King Learning Center and Word Bible College. Kim is a recognized prophetic voice as well as the author of several books, including her most recent, Prayers that Bring Change (Charisma House).

Editor's Note: We realize that the article by Kimberly Daniels is controversial. It reflects her own personal views—based on her many years of ministering to people involved in the occult. We have chosen to post another column by Ken Eastburn which offers a different view of Halloween. We welcome our readers to post comments on that article as well. Click here to read Eastburn's article.

My friend Paula had a link to this story on Facebook. Here is the reply that I came up with.

So, who pays for the witches to pray over/curse the candy? Is it done at the factory? Do you have to wear plastic gloves? Does the goat's blood (or whatever we might have to use for the curse) have to be inspected by the health department How much of a quantity can we work with at a time? Because if I have to curse every last Tootsie Roll or individual Sweet Tart, that is going to get awfully tedious VERY quickly. Is there quality control? ("Johnson, the Demon Meter found insufficient Satanic readings for lot #43498 of the Beelzebubble Gum. Get Hagatha back from her cauldron break now! The trucks for Wal-Mart will be here in 15 minutes, and we are not going to have inventory left sitting on the dock because it wasn't up to code.")

Technorati Tags: Halloween,Samhain,Candy

Oddly enough, this is NOT a computer-related post. One of the women in the coven I belong to just went through back surgery. They first thought it might be 6 hours worth of surgery, but the procedure ran to 10 hours. Afterwarrds, the surgeon was explaining that one of the disks in her spine was sort of flopping around, but he had put in some hardware to firm it up. Her daughter law then observed that he had just upgraded her from a floppy drive to a hard disk. It got a laugh!

The recovery is expected to take 6 months to a year. We just had a lovely chat, and she is glad that things are going better.

Freaking amazing! Bishop Spong has written one of the bravest and most thoroughly decent opinions that I have seen in a long time.

I have long believed that the real message that all religions (including Christianity) have at their base is one of love and inclusiveness. Sure, some of the hierarchy get it wrong, but that is the failings of human beings, not the divine.

So, for those small-minded and undeveloped souls who insist that their interpretations of the God and Jesus compels them to hate other human beings, listen to the words of a REAL follower of Christ!

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.

I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote.

The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

– John Shelby Spong
(Episcopal Bishop)

John Shelby Spong: A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!