In the 12 months following the 2003 legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, gay and bisexual men had a significant decrease in medical care visits, mental healthcare visits, and mental healthcare costs, compared with the 12 months before the law change. This amounted to a 13% reduction in healthcare visits and a 14% reduction in healthcare costs. These health effects were similar for partnered and single gay men.
Posts under ‘LGBTQ’
An answer to…”Why Do They Want To Marry”
Friends, I suddenly realized that I have been referring to a post that I previously wrote on gay marriage that was not posted in “hear now in the body”. Here is that original post in its entirety from 2008. This helps set the foundation for the work I have been doing in regards to gay [...]
Still Jumping The Broom…
Marriage…I’ve addressed this topic before on this blog. Then it was in response to a question of why do ‘you gays want to get married in the first place’. Living in New York City during the pre and post Marriage Equality Bill I must say, things have certainly changed. Not two weeks before the State [...]
Letter to Darius~”One Who Maintains Possessions”: The One Who Comes After
I see you in the church pew amongst the sea of black, brown and beige bodies at the age of 6 or 7 dangling your feet to the sway of the music. I notice how your eyes linger on your blink as the singer holds a soaring note invoking the Spirit of God to come here now. How your head rolls to the right and your eyes slowly open, as if in a everlasting trance of a single moment, when the singer gasps for the breath to sing on. I see how you jump to your feet to clap a syncopated rhythm in response to the choir’s exuberant gospel refrain. And just last week I felt your heart yearn as your soul responded to the spiritual you are way too young to knowingly sing truthfully, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen.” And yet the furrow of your brow told me that you will know of what you sing.
A Presbyterian, shares sermon with “hear now in the body” at an historic moment in the life of PC USA.
I imagine if people were asked to vote whether or not to allow the women at the tomb to speak……..they would have voted no. Despite this the angel tells them to go spread the good news; they were called to bring the truth. The unlikeliest of messengers were sent out. And so here I stand, like a slingshot, I have been pulled back, and I’m tired of being in the slingshot. I am ready to go. Its going to take five more votes to release the whole Presbyterian Church from our slingshot. Into what I don’t yet know. But we are full of excitement and a little nervous about spreading the word. And I am the unlikeliest of messengers.
Does Rev. Dr. King have a message for Us?
We serve a church that tries to care for the poor, the unloved, those devastated by war, the hungry, those who don’t have clothes on their backs. We are a church that seeks to love and serve humanity from Arkansas to Angola. But let us continue to remind this church and shine the the light on their shortsightedness. Let us continue to speak of our injustice here within the church as we minister to the world outside. Friends, let us remind ourselves, the church we serve and the world we are a part of that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Ashe and Amen.
For days forgotten, bodies not remembered, stories untold
I know we have been so crazed as a community but wanted acknowledge that we at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York took time at 11am to remember those who are so easily forgotten. Gathering in Lampman Chapel, Fierce the Queer Caucus for Persons of Color and the Queer Caucus, sang, spoke [...]
Sucker Punched
By the way, let’s clear up a couple of things. Mr. Beck…
When there is no quilt
Derrick, I wish that every non-parent, seminarian and church leader were so thoughtful about how to address, understand and just plain deal with our church’s youth as you articulated. I am shocked and dismayed by how little time we take as church bodies to truly develop a theology around our children. Too often, Sunday morning [...]
Immoral Acquiescence
As the military speaks of how to dismantle the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” Policy in regards to gays in the military, I am hit by the profundity of the policy itself. Basically, people willing to lay their lives on the line have been asked to lie about their true understanding of self. So now there [...]
