No More Gay for Pay

Today is my last day at my job with the Homosexual Agenda.

It feels really weird.

The best part is never having to ride the A train to work again. The stress of the commute has been the largest drain on my energy and was perhaps the biggest factor in my decision to leave the City. For someone like myself, who quickly feels overwhelmed in constricted, crowded environments, my daily ride to Wall Street is a one-hour and ten-minute exercise in extreme self-discipline. I am happy to never have to do this again.

I'm also, admittedly, ready to move on from this particular position. It has been great; I've learned tons, both in terms of acquiring and refining professional skills but also in discovering an enormous amount about how our legal system works, civil rights law, and the core arguments why full equality for gay, lesbian and bisexual people matters and how it will be won. I have probably the most congenial co-workers one could ever hope to have, and the work environment is one where I am completely free to be myself. It's a place where my impersonations of Kermit the Frog doing a scene from Raging Bull and Mommie Dearest if it had been cast with Carol Channing are not only tolerated, but requested.

I'm going to miss my view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Still, I am ready for a new challenge in a new setting, even if that phrase does sound lifted out of one of the three-hundred terribly banal cover letters I received with the applications to replace me.

I also want to extend a HUGE THANK YOU to my parents. Without their constant support -- financial and otherwise -- this entire New York adventure never would have been possible. They have been incredibly, unspeakably generous. Two years ago, when this job was first offered to me, I was on the brink of declining it because I didn't see how I could afford even my very modest life on a non-profit administrative assistant's salary. But they knew how much I wanted this job, and they volunteered to continue to help me make ends meet, just as they did all through college and the time I spent getting my singing career off the ground. So, a big round of applause for them.

Rocky Makes a Friend

Rocky with Agnes Day, the Easter lamb.

More Playing: Zoom!

The sun came out today, though it's still unseasonably cold (it was 34 this morning). On my lunch hour I ran around taking some photographs of things I'd like to remember; this is a little square just off Water Street below Wall Street. Interesting assortment of architectural styles downtown. Being the very oldest part of the city, this area has several buildings dating back to the colonial era.


This is Battery Park, where the boats leave for the Statue of Liberty; the office towers in the back are actually in Jersey City, NJ.


On the left is of course the Statue of Liberty -- I have to say, I will miss being able to just stroll down to look at her on my lunch break -- with Ellis Island on the right.


The Queen Mary 2 was in town today, docked at her berth in Brooklyn. This is the view from the accountant's office at work; you can see the QM2 in the far right of the photo. The Wall Street Ferry dock is at the bottom.


And this is how close I was able to zoom in:


Here's a shot of the full vessel.

More playing

The new camera has a "candlelight" setting.


On Saturday, after attending the morning Liturgy of the Word at my church, I met up with a close old friend who lives out on Long Island, whom I rarely have a chance to see. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a while, then went and had lunch and cocktails and caught up on the events of the past couple of years.

He went back to the Isle of Length around 5:00; the Great Easter Vigil at my church began at 7:00. Two hours wasn't enough time to go home, clean up and get back to church, but it was waayyyy too much time to kill wandering around the City in 30 degree gloomy gray weather, plus I was exhausted from the museum. So...I flaked out and went home and held my own Easter vigil with this little makeshift altar. Actually, it was kind of nice.

Sunday Photo Blogging: Playing Around with the New Camera

Manhattan, Good Friday morning, April 6, 2007.

OMG

Discuss.

Calling All Catholics

My father suggested having my Catholic readers ask St. Anthony of Padua, the Patron Saint of Lost Items, to see if he could intercede on behalf of the contents of the box the post office destroyed.

Today Sucked

Ever have one of those days where it just seems, despite all reason, that everyone in the world is trying to tick you off by being inconvenient, uncooperative, selfish and willfully oblivious? Yeah, that was today.

Well, we'll start with the good news. I bought a new digital camera. The one I've been using was 8 years old, and though I loved it, it was just old enough (by one generation) that it wasn't compatible with my new Mac. Since I know you're going to be wanting photographs of the Cats Across America Tour as it progresses, I figured investing in a new camera was a justifiable expense. I got an Olympus FE-230; I'll let you know what I think of it, but you can judge for yourselves by the pictures I post.

I have NO idea how to work the photo editing program that came with it. In my old program you could size the photo by choosing inches; now I have to choose pixels. This means nothing to me. So, the picture above is HUGE, I'm sure. It's also hard for me to judge since the screen on my Mac book is a lot smaller than I'm used to working with. I need to work on that. Anyway, this photo above is the building where I work -- at least until April 13. I'm on the 20th floor, so it's quite a view.

So after an inordinately frustrating day (attention people at work: didn't you get the memo? I quit. I'm leaving, get it? Stop throwing projects at me!) I got off the subway (another fabulous ride -- I surely won't ever miss the A train!) and there was a message on my cell phone from my father. One of the boxes I shipped home had arrived. Empty. Well, there was a note with it, saying that it had been "received" empty. Well, it wasn't sent empty. It is awfully thoughtful of the post office to go ahead and deliver what's left of the box they destroyed. God only knows where the contents are. According to my index, the box contained "scores/books." Sigh. Some of those scores were rare and valuable. And some just had sentimental value. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I guess maybe it's worth the extra money to send things UPS, instead. Oh well. This is why we shouldn't attach ourselves to material things, I guess.

After getting the message, I turned 180 degrees and headed in the direction of the liquor store.

Thoughts on Passover

Each year on the first night of Passover, I faithfully commemorate the deliverance of the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt by watching Cecil B. DeMille’s sprawling, campy epic, The Ten Commandments.

I’ve never been under any delusion that the movie is historically or Biblically accurate; for all DeMille’s claims that in addition to the Holy Scriptures he drew from Philo, Josephus and the Midrash in fleshing out the story of Moses, most of it is invented from whole cloth, and I’m not talking about a torn Levite’s robe. Yet I can’t help thinking that DeMille got a lot closer to God’s truth and sense of justice than the author(s) of Exodus.

As I was re-reading the familiar text yesterday morning, I was struck and disturbed by what God was saying and doing in this story. In Exodus Chapter 4, as Moses is about to depart Midian and return to Egypt, God says to him, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.”

Let’s get this straight: Moses is to go before Pharaoh and make a humanitarian argument on behalf of the Hebrews, and back it up with signs from God, but then God is going to hi-jack the Pharaoh’s sense of justice and compassion and make him less fair and just than he actually is so that God will be justified in punishing not just Pharaoh (for the hardness of heart that wasn’t his fault) but also the many Egyptians – including innocent children – who are neither responsible for the Hebrews’ condition nor in a position to do anything about it. “But you refused to let him go,” God commands Moses to say to Pharaoh, “now I will kill your firstborn son.” This is dishonest and unscrupulous in the extreme.

And it’s not just Chapter 4; three more times the Lord tells Moses “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart” or “I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers.” So God is going to usurp free will and critical thinking in order to be justified and even glorified in inflicting suffering and death on people for not obeying him when they had no choice in the matter.

I can’t accept this. 1 John says, “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” That’s the God I know and believe in.

Then I woke up today to The New York Times proclaiming that the Exodus never happened.

So what do we do with this story, if it is historically improbable and theologically disjunct?

I don’t have a good answer. I still find truth and meaning in the broader outlines: there is a God who knows your suffering and hears your prayers; there is a God who goes to bat for you; suffering helps us put life into perspective, teaches us things, builds character and gives us insight so that we might have compassion for others; God has already given us all the tools we need to change the world; if you maintain your faith, at the appointed time you will be delivered from your adversity, and at that time your period of suffering will begin to make sense to you; and also, just when you think you’re trapped, sometimes a totally unexpected way will open for you, usually at the last minute.

I know these things to be true, even if they have been presented to us in a historically inaccurate package. A truth is not always the same thing as a fact.

But a God who forces you to disobey him so that he can punish you for it? That’s bullshit.

The Me I Wanted to Be

I want to thank very much everyone who contributed to such a lively discussion in the previous post.

I am sorry that I haven't been able to keep up. As I've said, my mind is preoccupied. I thought once I gave notice at work that things would slow down as I started to wrap up, but it's been as busy as ever. When I'm not dealing with that, my brain is bogged down with hopes, dreams and panic attacks about the move. Every morning, as I step into the shower, I involuntarily ask myself, out loud, "Are you sure about this?"

No. No, actually, right now, I'm pretty damn scared. I am hurting already about the friends I leave behind. I know there are new friends in my future, and old friends who've stuck together despite the years and the miles and the transitions waiting for me on the other side.

As always, the spectre of my unrealized career ambitions looms large over all of this. A new acquaintance came by yesterday to look at some of the furniture I'm giving away. He noticed the framed posters I have in my entry way from some of the performances I did in Switzerland. "Wow, how amazing that you sang with these people!" he exclaimed. Indeed. Then there are the black and white production photos in the hall: my debut, an opera in Zurich, and the world premiere of a Philip Glass opera in Chicago, among others. "These are awesome!" he said. Yeah. They are.

Part of what makes this hard is that this really closes the door on those ambitions. No, I haven't made any attempt at resurrecting my singing career since that awful day nearly four years ago when despair, frustration and financial concerns led me to abandon my dreams and a decade of hard work. Over time, my voice has healed. Physically, I think I could do it again. It's still there. But my heart was broken. I don't have the drive anymore.

So I'm not just leaving a city, I'm leaving a life, a dream that almost was. I should be -- no, I am, I am -- grateful for the opportunities I had. I went further than most. But three weeks from today, as I turn right on 179th Street and point the rental car toward New Jersey and beyond to Oregon, it's not just going to be the George Washington Bridge in the rear view mirror, but the me I wanted to be.

Am I Wrecking Your Marriage?

Is same-sex marriage a threat to heterosexual marriage? Do supporters of same-sex marriage actually simply oppose marriage itself?

Those are the conclusions drawn by David Blankenhorn in the April 2 edition of The Weekly Standard. While he is forced to admit that no one “can scientifically prove that allowing gay marriage causes the institution of marriage to get weaker” and to add that “correlation does not imply causation,” he nonetheless launches ahead based on the discredited research of Stanley Kurtz to argue precisely that the correlation between the legalization of gay marriage and certain statistics about attitudes toward heterosexual marriage implies that gay marriage causes bad straight marriages.

Kurtz is famous for reporting that the legalization of same-sex marriage in Scandinavia resulted in lower rates of heterosexual marriage, higher rates of divorce, and an increase in out-of-wedlock childbirth. The reality is that in Denmark, for example, after a decades-long decline in straight marriage rates, that trend began to reverse itself in the 1980s, and continued to climb after the legalization of same-sex marriage in 1989. The marriage rates in Sweden, Norway and Iceland are higher now than they were before legal protections for same-sex couples were established. The divorce rates in the region are unchanged.

Ignoring for a moment that he’s working from a lethally flawed premise, Blankenhorn makes the assertion that even if correlation is not necessarily causation, there are “recurring patterns in the data” from international surveys about attitudes toward marriage that are significant.

He relies on responses from the 2002 International Social Survey Programme and the World Values Survey. First he presumes either a yes or no answer, then he presumes that advocates of “traditional” marriage will answer the questions a certain way, and then, lo and behold, he discovers that the countries with higher rates of responses that disagree with “traditional” views on marriage are the countries with more progressive attitudes toward same-sex relationships.

The statements to which respondents are asked to agree or disagree are pretty damn silly. For example, Statement 1 is, “Married people are generally happier than unmarried people.” A wise man once said, “Love isn’t the answer to all your problems, it’s a whole set of new ones.” Statement 2 is, “People who want children ought to get married.” I think a clear majority of same-sex couples would agree with that; that’s why they’re suing for marriage. Or perhaps Statement 3, “One parent can bring up a child as well as two parents together.” That largely depends on the two parents in question; as the majority opinion in Hernandez v. Robles pointed out, heterosexuals can have children by accident. Two people not responsible enough to avoid an unintended pregnancy are not necessarily going to be ideal parents. And some relationships – even married, heterosexual ones – are dysfunctional, unhealthy, and unhappy. Only someone with an extremely limited, narrow and simplistic life experience could possibly respond to any of these statements with anything other than a “Yes, but…” or a “No, but…”.

Buried under all this is the unsupportable presumption that the absolute worst, most dysfunctional married heterosexual parents are better parents than someone like Mary Cheney, who has been with her partner for 14 years and has made the conscious decision to raise a child.

Blankenhorn tallies up the responses to these surveys and notes that “a rise in unwed childbearing goes hand in hand with a weakening of the belief that people who want to have children should get married.” That statement may be true, but Blankenhorn ends up resorting to “giving up the search for causation” – his words – in order to claim that gay marriage causes heterosexuals to have children outside of marriage. Huh?

Then he makes the extraordinary claim that “people who have devoted much of their professional lives to attacking marriage as an institution almost always favor gay marriage.” He cites Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at NYU, saying she champions same-sex marriage “precisely in the hope of dethroning once and for all the traditional ‘conjugal institution.’”

Note, please, the placement of the quotation marks above. “Dethroning once and for all the traditional” is 100% pure Blankenhorn. What Dr. Stacey actually said, in testimony before Congress, was, “Subjecting the conjugal institution to this sort of heightened democratic scrutiny could help it to assume varied, creative and adaptive contours.” Then she urged them “to value the meaning and quality of intimate bonds over their customary forms.” [Emphasis added.]

Having worked now for nearly two years for the organization singularly most responsible for the advancement of gay rights in the United States, especially same-sex marriage, I have to tell you that my co-workers are not even remotely cynical about marriage. Marriage – both its legal rights, responsibilities and protections as well as its social and symbolic benefits – is extremely important to us. We are not in any way interested in attempting to “undermine” marriage; “for decades, heterosexuals have been doing a fine job on that all by themselves” – again, quoting Blankenhorn.

Yet somehow we are expected to believe that the gay community’s desire for permanent, meaningful and legally protected commitment is at the heart of the heterosexual community’s myriad relationship failures. In order to make that argument, people like Blankenhorn have to claim that to “value the meaning and quality of intimate bonds” is perverse and less important to stability than genitalia.

Battlestar Shocker!

WARNING: This post contains absolutely no spoilers.

So the Cylons are into Bob Dylan, is that it? Sure, makes perfect sense.

No Reason to Ever Come Back to New York

Okay, that's an exaggeration. I'm sure I will be back to visit New York as frequently as my schedule and budget allows.

I have often joked with friends and acquaintances that some morning in Portland undoubtedly I will wake up and say, "I need a bagel!" and hop on jetBlue and fly back to Manhattan. Of course, they have bagels in Portland. Blueberry bagels and strawberry bagels and apple cinnamon bagels and all manner of heretical, unorthodox bagels. (I may be in favor of openly gay bishops, but I am conservative enough that I am opposed to non-traditional bagel flavors. It's just wrong, folks, and if you don't understand why, there's something wrong with you, too.) But it's not just the questionable new flavors, it's the consistency. Maybe it's New York's godawful tap water, or the pollution in the air, or some ontological mystery, but New York bagels are just better. They're definitive. In Portland, any dinner roll with a hole in it can be called a "bagel."

And so imagine my joy when today during confirmation class, one of my table mates passed me an article he'd cut out from The New York Times about Portland. It turns out H&H bagels are available at Mother's Bistro on Stark Street.

Oy, it's a mitzvah!

PB & A

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (essentially the Archbishop of America), attended the 11:00 service at my church today -- not to officiate or preach, just to sit in.

Unfortunately, I didn't know about that until the rector mentioned it during confirmation class afterward. Argh! ++Katharine was just elected this past year, and will serve a 9 year term as head of the American province of the Anglican Communion. Most likely it will be during this time that we will see whether the Communion holds or falls apart, so she has an extraordinarily important role to play. Her very tenure is a threat to certain other members of the church, who have difficulty accepting women as priests, let alone as primates. (That's primates as in heads of Anglican provinces, not the biological order containing monkeys, apes and humans, although there are some Christians out there who dispute that, too.)

I am so bummed -- I would really like to meet her! Maybe someday.

Here's a sample of the PB's wisdom from a recent sermon:

Living in community also requires multifocal lenses, and we've had some small experience here in doing that. We've looked beyond ourselves to the Anglican Communion, and internally toward our varied members. We are trying to see with others' perspectives, and sometimes it can be both painful and annoying. We don't see as clearly or easily when we gaze on unfamiliar depths, when we are invited to hold together both Radner and Grieb, both unchanging truth and continuing revelation.

There are some kinds of fish and other aquatic animals that actually have bipartite eyes - they see at the same time both above and below the surface of the water, and their brains figure out how to interpret those quite different images and make a coherent whole. As a body, we are wrestling with a collection of images - perhaps even more like the eye of a social insect, with multiple facets - but most of us assume that the image we form most easily is the only right and true one. The blesser of the gospel, however, sees more than that one, easy image. The blesser of all invites us into that deeper seeing as well - stretch, strain, imagine, and you, too, can begin to see like the Three do, like the One does.

When we have seen that blessing, however briefly, it begins to rise into more easily visible depths, it comes more clearly into focus and into what we call "normal reality." To see as God sees is to begin to make real, whether it is the work of the [Millennium Development Goals], the work going on now in Louisiana and Mississippi, caring for the homecoming soldier, or liberating those in chains. To see as God sees is to bless what is into the reality of the God's reign.

Let's Hear it for the Bishops

First, apologies that there hasn't been anything of substance on this blog for quite a while, and that I've been really bad about keeping up with other blogs. I even totally fell away from a really interesting discussion going on over at Gary's. I have just been so busy at work with all my regular duties plus wrapping things up and interviewing for my successor and then going home at night and doing research for the trip and planning and packing, that I haven't had much time.

*****

The Episcopal Church is in the news again. You may recall that about a month ago, the leaders of the 38 autonomous provinces that make up the Anglican Communion met in Tanzania to discuss the ongoing tension over the Episcopal Church's attitudes toward homosexuality. The leaders, called primates, issued what they called a "communiqué," in the form of an ultimatum, that essentially called on the Episcopal Church to cease and desist from consecrating gay bishops and blessing same-sex unions by September of this year, or face being kicked out of the Anglican Communion. They also proposed a primatial oversight committee from outside the Episcopal Church to monitor and enforce the demands.

This week, the House of Bishops, comprised of the leaders of each diocese of the Episcopal Church, met to discuss and respond to the primates. They rejected the idea of "pastoral oversight" as hopelessly incongruent with our own church's constitution, as it would be a "delegation of primatial authority," a "compromise of autonomy," a violation of "our founding principles...following our own liberation from colonialism," and "a very serious departure from our English Reformation heritage," because it would sacrifice "the emancipation of the laity for the exclusive leadership of high-ranking Bishops. And, for the first time since our separation from the papacy in the 16th century, it replaces the local governance of the Church by its own people with the decisions of a distant and unaccountable group of prelates."

They did not address the specific issues of same-sex unions and the consecration of gay bishops, largely because the people of the Episcopal Church are not of a single mind on either subject, but also because there is nothing in the structure of the Anglican Communion that allows for foreign bishops to dictate our beliefs or practices. The bishops did unequivocally state, "We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church."

As far as the survival of the Communion goes, the bishops said, "We proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God's truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision."

During the meeting in Tanzania, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, asked Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to come to America to meet with our leaders and discuss these issues. She was told his calendar was full.

I am confident that Abp. Williams' schedule is quite busy, and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But somehow I remain unconvinced that he could not make time to accept an invitation to meet with a province that is being threatened with expulsion.

I've Been Knighted!

On Friday we began placing advertisements to find my replacement at work; I've already received well over 200 applications. I'm grateful to have this particular experience right now, because I'm getting ideas for resumes and cover letters that stand out, and it's also helping me form a mental list of cliches to avoid. When I start sending cover letters out, they are going to rock.

Word to the wise: if you say in your cover letter that you are "detail oriented," you probably don't want to misspell the name of the company you are applying to.

So far, my favorite letter of interest begins, "Dear Sir Andy."

I'm Sorry, Did You Say, Bong Hits 4 Jesus???

The Supreme Court is going to hear an unusual free speech case tomorrow. Five years ago, as the Olympic torch was passing through Juneau, Alaska, on its way to Salt Lake City, a local high school principal allowed her students out of class to watch. One enterprising young man, hoping to get on TV, unfurled a banner just as the torch went by -- a fourteen-foot long banner -- that read, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

After refusing to take down the sign, the student was suspended for 10 days. He sued, claiming violation of his free speech rights...and has won every step of the way to the high court.

The case basically rests on the question of whether school officials have the right to restrict students' speech when it promotes illegal activity. The principal is being represented by Ken Starr -- remember him? The student is represented by the ACLU -- no surprise there.

Now, if you were a Christian conservative wingnut, which side would you be on? Surprise! According to The New York Times, groups like Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defense Fund, taking time out of its usual habits, such as suing an Ohio university that offered domestic partnership benefits to same-sex couples, claiming it violated the state ban on recognition of same-sex relationships, have entered briefs in support of the ACLU's case.

They worry that a ruling in favor of the school board would be a threat to students' religious freedom.

I won't offer an opinion on who's right, here. I'm still laughing too hard. All I can say is, I hope this boy goes on to study marketing. He's got a gift.

When Cows Stress Out

One of the ways I like to pass my time during the hour or so it takes me to travel to and from my job is to check out what people are reading on the A train. There's a lot of pulpy, low-brow stuff -- against which I have absolutely nothing, because the subway is often not conducive to intense concentration. So I see The New York Post, The Daily News, People, In Touch (not the gay porn magazine, the celebrity rag), and stuff like that. Of course there's also The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, TimeOut New York, along with The Nation, The Economist, The Financial Times and other high-brow lefty publications.

The books tend to be sophisticated, too: Dante, Chomsky, Rushdie.

Today, however, I saw a man reading a publication I'd never even heard of, one filled with ads for combines and other kinds of farm equipment -- not something you see in Manhattan very often. As he turned the page, I caught a glimpse of the name of the magazine: Hoard's Dairyman.

The article he was reading was, "Is Your Cow Overbooked?"

Playing around with my new iSight

I guess Starbuck wasn't in the mood.

Surprise! I converted

I had to ponder it for quite a while, but I think I've made the right decision, even if it's kind of scary right now.

No, I'm still Episcopalian.

Still gay.

Still male.

Didn't become a Republican.

I bought a Mac! So, here's to my first post using my new laptop, which will enable me not only continue to hunt for jobs during my 6 day "Cats Across America Tour," but also keep you, gentle readers, updated daily on our travel progress, hopefully including delightful anecdotes and funny photos from America's heartland.