Support the Shiministim

Israeli teenagers are boldly standing up to their government and refusing required military service on the grounds of conscientious objection, mostly due to the occupation of Palestine. These young people, many seniors in high school, defy pressure of family, friends, and the state--many who would see them as traitors--to hold fast to their convictions.

You can support these courageous young people--the Shministim--by signing a letter to the Israeli Minister of Defense at December18th.org. Jewish-Israeli peace activists will be hand-delivering these letters so add your voice today!

Humanity Detached From Sanity

An 11-point list of what to do in a terrorist attack,
which starts with "rescue is a myth" and ends with
"kill without hesitation."

Masters programs in Homeland Security
But did the department make us secure?

It is the myth of redemptive violence.

Shopping sprees turned into
Shopping stampedes turned into
Death by shopping
Literally.

It is our consumer culture intensified, as sunlight through a microscope
It is the abuse in our products, laid out for us to see

Prayers to God for blessings and protection on our soldiers
As they kill, maim, and torture
Where are the prayers for their transformation and healing?
When will pray for and support those who want out?
Who will listen to their stories when they return?
How noble of us to "Support the troops" with our slogans and flags,
While we send them to die and to kill
And institutionalize them when they fail to just,
return to normal

Let us beat swords into plowshares and study war no more!

With wars across the world
With an economy in peril
Why are we not stopping to ask, "Why?"
Why is it done this way?

Why do we insist that the way which isn't working
Is the only way?

This is humanity detached from sanity

Nonviolence Begins Within

My friend and Soulforce Q director Haven Herrin included this message in the most recent Soulforce update. As always, her way with words does justice to her insight.

Last week, Soulforce offered a call to action. Now is the time to take it to the streets, we said, and people are indeed peacefully rising up across the country in response to the passing of Proposition 8. Never has the need been greater to reach out to hearts and minds, as we are seeing in Arkansas, Arizona, California and Florida the legislative effects of hearts that have not heard us.

And with that challenge to action, I would like to add the equally important call to be nonviolent within the LGBT community. Blaming any one "demographic" of citizens for the passing of Proposition 8 does not stand up to the scrutiny of statistics, and it drives a wedge into our community. Process matters, and in honoring that dictum, morality and decency ask that we work even harder to make the LGBT community a safe space for all, regardless of ethnicity, faith, ability, or class. It is important to support our fellow activists in our layered, diverse identities. A beautiful aspect of the LGBT community is that we are everywhere; none of us is one-dimensional in our identities, and all of us are part of a web of social justice issues, including but not limited to LGBT equality, that must progress.

I hope that we may all be diverse in our allied communities and in our work. Nonviolence is not just for reaching out to our adversaries. It is also for building relationships that comprise a safe, strong network that supports all activists in coming out, sharing stories, and changing the hearts of our friends, family, co-workers, faith leaders, and neighbors.

Soulforce is working toward embodying all that nonviolence requires of us. Please visit the Soulforce website to learn about our work at the intersections of identity during the American Family Outing this past spring, or engage with our current work in the same vein in the Equality Ride.

Haven Herrin
Director of Soulforce Q

Read the original call to action by Executive Director Jeff Lutes at www.365gay.com/opinion/soulforce-time-to-take-it-to-the-streets

Non-Violence is a kitchen a sink

In our house, we have a situation of sorts.

Rick really wants the common space to be clean and he keeps telling Ben that it's disrespectful to not clean his dishes right away and to just leave them in the sink.
But Ben keeps leaving them in the sink and when Rick asks him to clean them he says
"I will, I want to eat first, I just put them in there, I will get to them soon."
Often they get left for over a day.
And Rick gets really frustrated
Because he keeps telling Ben that Ben should care about the others, and that Ben should do them right away
And that's just "what is right"
Yet there are still almost always dishes in the sink

And Rick can tell Ben that he "should" do this or that he "needs" to think that or such and such is 'just the way things are"

But that's not going to clean the dishes.

Ben doesn't clean the dishes because Ben isn't invested in having a clean sink
And Rick simply telling Ben that he should clean the dishes isn't going to enroll Ben in having a clean sink, is it?

Our experiment in truth is still in progress.

Everywhere, USA

I drove all night long through middle-of-nowhere Montana in a bus with twenty-four people I'd known for less than two months. Only twenty-four hours prior I stood in the freezing rain with winds up to 30 miles-per-hour for hours on end. We were on our way to North Dakota and in twenty-fours, I would be standing with these people in the middle of a small-town war zone: police cars and vans, wire fencing, concrete barriers, mobile command units, an ambulance, evacuation teams on stand-by and two streets closed down. Ellendale, North Dakota has a population of 3,000; this was big.

What could twenty-five young adults do to provoke responses of such intensity? Proclaim an affirming message to queer young people: "God loves and affirms you just as you are!"

This is the Equality Ride.

It's a two month long, cross-country, take it to the streets, non-violent direct action campaign which seeks reconciliation between faith and identity and today the bus sets out for the first school of the third ride. Modeled after the work of Gandhi, King, Jr., and others, the Soulforce Q Equality Ride recognizes misunderstanding and misinformation—not individuals—as the source of homophobia and transphobia. We confront the hurtful teachings which fuel spiritual violence . Liberation comes not only for the gay and transgender people who are finally able to accept and love themselves, often returning to and reclaiming their faith, but also for the former oppressors who are now able to understand their faith more fully.

Some organizations branded us radical gay activists, but I'm not sure if I deserve that title. You see, I'm really rather ordinary. As I was searching for something to do after graduation, I found the opportunity to share my story with America and ask America to learn from me. I had never participated in an advocacy campaign, nor studied queer theology, nor received any training in public speaking, event planning, community organizing, or any of the numerous other fields I would need to master. But that didn't matter. I was enough.

I have an abiding faith that God of this Universe created me with intentionality. And when God created me, God called the creation good. I have not always known what my purpose was, I still don't. I have struggled to make sense of how sexual orientation and gender identity fit into God's creative plan for humanity. I loved the Equality Ride because I was able to move from theory to reality. Anti-gay rhetoric is devastating. It isolates people from their faith, their family and their communities; it destroys integrity when it forces an individual into the closet; it fosters shame and turns people inward; it inhibits the growth of healthy relationships; and it, unfortunately, often manifests itself through violence, against self and inflicted by others onto queer people. As truth creates justice, lives are released. Gay and straight alike are set free to experience faith, love, and healing in powerful ways. The good fruits of affirming theology are evident: reconciliation with family, friends, and community; return to faith; healthy relationships; holistic understanding of self; outward-focused productivity; and the list goes on. The beauty is that these fruits are not for queer people to feast on in isolation, but to share with heterosexuals. When I ask my straight friends to love me, I don't need them to stand up for me; I want them to grow with me.

The Equality Ride showed me that anyone can be an advocate. I did it, you can do it. My journey was across the country but perhaps your journey is down the hall to a co-worker's office, across town to your church, or back home to your parent's house. Or perhaps your journey is getting on the bus. All around the world, people are waiting to be asked to love their gay and transgender friends and family. Let's tell them it's time.

To see this year's riders, visit: www.soulforce.org/2008riders

No Rights for Faggots

For the last event of Seven Straight Nights in New York City, we gathered at McCarren Park for a rally organized by Jay Bakker and the folks at Revolution NYC. As I walked to the park with my straight friends who were going to participate, a van drove passed and a man yelled out "No rights for faggots!"

Anti-gay epithets have been hurled at me more in New York City than the rest of my life combined. This is why we do what we do.

The man, or men, in the van circled McCarren Park yelling that same phrase over and over again. Oppression disturbs not only the oppressed but the oppressors as well. They are victims of misinformation and we are all trapped in systems and cycles of oppression. This man took out over an hour of his day, time he could have spent being productive, spent with his family, spent enjoying himself, and he drove his van around, yelling at straight and gay people who love themselves and each other.

During training for the Equality Ride, we practiced non-violence by role playing verbally and emotionally violent scenarios with a two-fold goal: to practice hearing awful things said about us, but also to understand the awful places a person must go to in order to degrade another person's humanity. And so as this man I don't know yelled at us, viewing us as nothing more than a group of faggots, I felt sorry for him, not for myself. In New York, my gay friends cannot have their marriages legally recognized but they marry anyway. In some places, their love is not recognized but they love anyway. I know people who have been kicked out of family, but they find family. I was surronded by love and compassion in McCarren Park. When that man yelled "No rights for faggots," he wasn't taking anything away from me, he was robbing himself.

More than never forget, never repeat

This year, September 11th felt normal. Last year, my first year in New York, my building hosted all day concerts in our lobby. I remember co-workers sharing stories of where they were on September 11 and we streamed the reading of names on our computers. Perhaps this was because it was our first September 11 together. I suppose in America that can be a bonding ritual of sorts. This year was business as usual.

I walked out of my apartment this evening and saw the memorial lights blaring from the southern tip of Manhattan and I remembered. Seven years ago today was an awful day. Thousands of lives were lost in senseless violence and destruction. My co-worker's husband was with the NYPD in 2001 and the memories still haunt him. He spent the day on his motorcycle riding down to Philly for cheese steaks, clearing his mind as the nation remembers the day our world fell apart. For too many families, today marks the 7th year anniversary of the last time they saw their loved ones. My heart goes out to those families.

As I remember the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, I am moved by the lost American lives to pursue reconciliation. Many of the families of those lost in those attacks came together to form Peaceful Tomorrows, crying out "Our grief is not a warcry." Today they issued this statement,

In Iraq last week, we attended a meeting of an Iraqi organization called LaOnf, which in Arabic translates to "no violence." It is an organization started four years ago that is devoted to the teachings of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, "absolute nonviolence no matter what." They have pledged themselves to this concept and are willing to risk their lives to spread a culture of nonviolence in every province of Iraq. While we experienced one day of terror, for them, every day is 9/11. We will stand in solidarity with LaOnf on this anniversary and spread the word across this land - that non violence and the recognition of our common humanity are the only way forward to the survival of this earth. This year, let us remember them, too.

I can't help but extend my heart to the families of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis that are similarly missing loved ones. I remember sitting in the lunch room on September 11, 2001 and upon learning that the towers had collapsed, one of my friends said, "Someone is going to get bombed." Violence begets violence.

In 2001-2002, an estimated 3,600 civilians were killed in Afghanistan. We made up for September 11th. Over 1,000 civilians are killed in that country by Coalition forces every year. Violence begets violence. As we read the names of American, September 11th victims, will we read the names of the Afghan victims?

My former Marine neighbor tells me that the military's Iraqi civilian death count was at 38,000 when he left a year ago. The actual was probably higher. Today he guesses the 'official count' is somewhere close to 60,000. iCausalities puts causalities at over 43,000 since April 28, 2005. Iraq Body Count estimates as high as 95,000. Violence begets unspeakable violence.

Our earth is groaning, God is weeping. I want to beat some swords into plowshares.

Personal Experiments

As I set out to read Gandhi's autobiography, subtitled “The Story of My Experiments With Truth,” I find myself asking many questions. What does it mean to be a person of faith? What does it mean to be a member of the global community? How does that relate to family relationships and local communities? What does it mean to be a man, a human? What does it mean to be queer? How does one practice non-violence in daily life? Is non-violence the solution? Is it a path? What would Jesus do? What does justice look like? How does one foster truth and create justice.

Gandhi viewed his life as a series of experiments. Experiments with nonviolence, with diet, with celibacy. Experiments in creating personal change and spreading social change. This idea of experimentation resonates with me. Conversations I had over many months led me to understand the impact of diet, demand, and food processing on not only the environment but on the economy and ability to deal with poverty. I was not an overnight convert. As I strive to maintain a vegetarian diet, I find myself not living up to that ideal. “Stumbling”, “slipping”, “falling” are Christianese words I might have used in the past.

Is perfection possible? Perhaps the lens I should look through is not purity. Let's be honest, one person's vegetarian diet is not going to end the abuse of creation nor solve global hunger. When I understand my pursuit to be one of many experiments, the weight is lifted a bit. I have some breathing room.

In April, I made the decision to work toward a vegan diet. Having been a vegetarian for almost a year, it was not hard to begin removing the remaining animal products from my diet. Life happened. A series of stresses, increasing time away from my apartment and ability to cook for myself, lots of travel. I cracked. A pretty gross “chicken” sandwich at Roy Rogers was my undoing. There are so many problems in the world: US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, violence across the global, a food crisis, global hunger, rising gas prices, domestic party, the second-rate treatment of LGBT people. And a chicken sandwich the only option unless I want to skip dinner or subsist on french fries. Great.

A chicken sandwich is not the end of the world. Yes, there are many problems inherent in the meat industry. But at that moment, I was juggling too many other experiments. Experiments in social justice for LGBT people and a reawakening that I—as a privileged member of Western society—have much to account for when it comes to my, perhaps indirect, subjugation of the world to my desires.

The seas have settled. I have centered myself and my advocacy around queer issues in New York City. I am educating myself around poverty, hunger, and homelessness issues. I'm preparing for studies and service. With those experiments in balance, I can return to my experiment with a vegetarian diet. Why adopt such a diet? What are the benefits? And more importantly, what are the costs? Are there unintended consequences? How do I balance a desire to reject violence and excess with the risk of indulging in what CS Lewis describes as a new kind of gluttony... a gluttony of “moderation” made to order through imposition?

I don't know. Perhaps a vegetarian diet isn't the answer. Perhaps non-violence is untenable. Perhaps the critics are correct and religion is not a force for good in the world. Perhaps.

In experimentation I have the freedom to be unsure. To test, to observe, to analyze and to adjust.

In what ways have you experimented?