Amen!

New Law Would Ban Marriages Btw People Who Don't Love Each Other

New Law Would Ban Marriages Between People Who Don't Love Each Other

Community Screening of OUT IN THE SILENCE in Westfield, NY on Feb. 19

The public is invited to a screening of OUT IN THE SILENCE, a documentary film about the quest for fairness & equality for GLBT people in rural and small town America, on:

Friday, Feb. 19 at 7:00 PM at:

Patterson Public Library
40 S Portage St
Westfield, NY 14787

The screening will be followed by a community dialogue with local civic and faith leaders as well as some of the film's characters.

The film has been chosen for this presentation because of its respect for the viewpoints on all sides of the issues and its emphasis on helping communities find common ground.

Following the story of the small northwestern Pennsylvania town of Oil City confronting a firestorm of controversy ignited by a same-sex wedding announcement in the local newspaper, OUT IN THE SILENCE illustrates the challenges of being an outsider in a conservative rural community and the change that is possible when courageous people speak out and search for what they have in common rather than what sets them apart.

For more info about this event, contact Rev. Steve Aschmann at (814) 440-0902 or email revaschmann@uuerie.org.

Learn more about the film HERE.

GLBT Legislation and Legislative Advocacy Meeting - Feb. 18 in Erie

You are invited to a meeting to discuss legislation and legislative advocacy related to the GLBT community:

Thursday, February 18 at 7 PM at


Craze Night Club
1607 Raspberry St
Erie PA 16502
Phone: (814) 456-3027

At the meeting will be Jesse Salazar, who heads Senator Casey’s statewide GLBT and Latino Affairs.

Also present will be Gary van Horn, president of the Delta Foundation in Pittsburgh.

For more info contact: Michael Mahler of Erie Gay News:
Phone: (814) 456-9833.
Email: info@eriegaynews.com.

RSVP/Register/Tickets at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=293354399743

You can also sign up for the GLBT Voter/Activism list (as well as other lists) at http://lists.eriegaynews.com.

A Family's Story: The Case for LGBT Immigration Reform

by Steve Ralls for The Huffington Post:

On January 28, 2009, there was a knock on Shirley Tan's door.

The mother of two, originally from The Philippines, was starting her morning as usual. She was getting her 12-year-old twin sons ready for school, and preparing to see her partner of 23 years, Jay Mercado, off to work. The scene in their home in Pacifica, California, could have been any day in virtually any family's home in America.

That is, until the 7am knock on the door.

When Shirley answered, she was told that agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency were "looking for a young Mexican girl."

In fact, they were looking for her.

The ICE agents produced an order of deportation, which Shirley had never seen before, then handcuffed her and threw her into a waiting van.

Shirley, who had been violently assaulted by a relative in her native Philippines, was detained and told she would be sent back there because her application for asylum, filed years earlier, had been denied. Her attorney, who had moved since the original asylum request was filed, did not receive notice of the denial. Instantly, Shirley's entire family - and the life she had built over two decades with them - was in jeopardy.

Despite the fact that Jay is an American citizen, and that both of her sons are also citizens, Shirley was faced with leaving all of them behind. Because Jay is also a woman, she could not sponsor Shirley for residency, as straight Americans with spouses can do. The twins would be unable to sponsor their mother for residency for another 9 years.

"[W]e can't even protect Shirley," Mercado says in a new film, directed by filmmaker Stewart Thorndike, released today by Immigration Equality, an organization working to end discrimination against lesbian and gay binational families. "They wanted us to be torn apart, and that's something you don't do to a family."

Yet, for more than 36,000 lesbian and gay families like Shirley and Jay's, separation is a very real possibility. Nearly half of those families, like the Tan-Mercados, are also raising young children.

"The lack of recognition for lesbian and gay couples under immigration law is, literally, ripping loving families apart," said Rachel B. Tiven, Immigration Equality's executive director. "For every day that passes without action from Congress, another family faces separation and another child is put in jeopardy of losing a parent."

"People of conscience cannot sit idly by and let this happen," she says. "A generation of children are at risk of losing the only families they know."

Beginning today, house parties across the country will screen the group's new documentary, which is premiering exclusively here at HuffingtonPost Impact (see below). Its debut coincides with the launch of the Immigration Equality Action Fund, which will lobby Congress to pass an immigration reform bill that includes lesbian and gay families.

"This is our moment," Tiven said, referring to pledges by the White House and Congress to tackle immigration reform this year.

Tan remains in the country because of a rare "private bill" introduced on her behalf by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who sponsored the measure after hearing from many people in their community, including her parish priest, who weighed in on behalf of Tan, a Eucharistic minister in the local Catholic church.

Now, Tan and Mercado have joined Immigration Equality in working for passage of the Uniting American Families Act - a bill to end discrimination against lesbian and gay immigrant families - either on its own or as part of a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

"What will make me feel safe," Tan says in the film, "is [when] the Uniting American Families Act will pass . . . so I can stay here . . . without any fear that I can be picked up at any time; that I can be deported at any time."

It is a campaign that has taken on personal importance for her sons, Joriene and Jashley, too.

"Why is this happening to our family?," one asks in the film.

"My mom's a good person," his brother adds.

You can make an impact in the lives of Shirley, Jay and their sons - and tens of thousands of other families like theirs - by watching the video, passing it along and visiting www.immigrationequalityactionfund.org to learn more.

"We're premiering this film on Valentine's Day," Tiven said, "in solidarity with every family who just wants to be with the people they love."

Sunday Blessings

On Wednesday, February 10th, LGBT activist Kitty Lambert attempts to receive a marriage license from the Buffalo City Clerk's office. Denied, she then turns to the crowd where a willing, previously unknown, male steps forward. Family values!

2010 Pride Picnic Planning Meeting - March 7 in Erie

The 18th Annual Erie Gay News Family Pride Picnic will be Saturday, June 12, 2010 at the Rotary Pavilion.

Your ideas are needed at the upcoming planning meeting to make this picnic the best one yet!

Date: Sunday, March 7, 2010
Time: 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: Presque Isle Gallery Coffeehouse, 35 Peninsula Drv, Erie PA 16505

For more info, contact Michael Mahler at (814) 456-9833 or email info@eriegaynews.com.

Mighty Real

Despite what many Tea Partiers think, real Americans can be gay or straight

By Sean Bugg for Metro weekly:

Being a product of the ''Real America'' — that halcyon collection of rural farmlands and evangelical hotbeds that see themselves as the authentic bedrock of the nation — I still have trouble wrapping my head around the idea that I'm no longer real.


Real Americans are once more in the news, although when you look closely enough they never really left. But from Sarah Palin's evocation of the real Virginia in the last presidential campaign — as opposed the fantasy Virginia of the Washington suburbs, with its heady mix of culture, class, race and orientation — to the current saber rattling of Tea Partiers who can't see America's coastal cities as anything but socialist dens of iniquity, it's obvious that the Real Americans see themselves as a beleaguered minority with no other choice but to fight back.

I know that much of rural and small-town America has an inferiority complex when it comes to the country's teeming cities and urban-oriented entertainment industry. I grew up around both families and churches who took it as a matter of faith that country life was better life. But that just masked a more basic, usually unspoken, fear: the idea that someone, somewhere was making fun of them.

I have some sympathy on this point. As desperate as I was to leave my rural upbringing behind, when I arrived at college with my hick accent — sharper than the more gently rolling accent of the upper-class South — I quickly learned how it felt to be disdained for my background. Later I would joke that when I introduced myself as a Kentuckian to my well-heeled classmates they would look down to see if I was wearing shoes.

That experience makes it one of the greater ironies of life that the disdain directed at me these days comes from the same people I grew up with, the self-proclaimed Real Americans.

Unlike me, my sister is real. She still lives in rural Kentucky, complete with barns and fields where she and her husband raise horses. You can only see a handful of other houses from her porch, and most of those look tiny in the distance across the hilly fields.

You don't always see a lot of people out in Real America.

I, on the other hand, moved away from rural life as quickly as I could, and now live with my husband...well, really, I don't have to say anything more beyond ''my husband'' to establish my unreality.

But perhaps my sister isn't so real, after all. She and her husband were part of my own wedding ceremony, and they happily host us for holiday visits and family affairs. They treat both of us as equals — as real.


That any particular group or person is more authentically American than another is one of the most pernicious and anti-American ideas to continually resurface in our politics. It aims to keep LGBT people, among others, firmly ensconced as less than — less than people, less than Americans.

While the political atmosphere at the moment seems poisoned beyond repair, we have to remember that with greater acceptance by a majority of people comes greater resistance from a minority of them. What's important is for us to continually remind everyone — rural and urban, heartland and coastal — that we are as authentic and American as our neighbors, families and friends.

We are the real deal.

How Christian Were the Founders?

By Russell Shorto for the NY Times Magazine:

LAST MONTH, A WEEK before the Senate seat of the liberal icon Edward M. Kennedy fell into Republican hands, his legacy suffered another blow that was perhaps just as damaging, if less noticed. It happened during what has become an annual spectacle in the culture wars.


Over two days, more than a hundred people — Christians, Jews, housewives, naval officers, professors; people outfitted in everything from business suits to military fatigues to turbans to baseball caps — streamed through the halls of the William B. Travis Building in Austin, Tex., waiting for a chance to stand before the semicircle of 15 high-backed chairs whose occupants made up the Texas State Board of Education. Each petitioner had three minutes to say his or her piece.

“Please keep César Chávez” was the message of an elderly Hispanic man with a floppy gray mustache.

“Sikhism is the fifth-largest religion in the world and should be included in the curriculum,” a woman declared.

Following the appeals from the public, the members of what is the most influential state board of education in the country, and one of the most politically conservative, submitted their own proposed changes to the new social-studies curriculum guidelines, whose adoption was the subject of all the attention — guidelines that will affect students around the country, from kindergarten to 12th grade, for the next 10 years. Gail Lowe — who publishes a twice-a-week newspaper when she is not grappling with divisive education issues — is the official chairwoman, but the meeting was dominated by another member. Don McLeroy, a small, vigorous man with a shiny pate and bristling mustache, proposed amendment after amendment on social issues to the document that teams of professional educators had drawn up over 12 months, in what would have to be described as a single-handed display of archconservative political strong-arming.

McLeroy moved that Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, be included because she “and her followers promoted eugenics,” that language be inserted about Ronald Reagan’s “leadership in restoring national confidence” following Jimmy Carter’s presidency and that students be instructed to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!” Nevertheless, most of McLeroy’s proposed amendments passed by a show of hands.

Finally, the board considered an amendment to require students to evaluate the contributions of significant Americans. The names proposed included Thurgood Marshall, Billy Graham, Newt Gingrich, William F. Buckley Jr., Hillary Rodham Clinton and Edward Kennedy. All passed muster except Kennedy, who was voted down.

This is how history is made — or rather, how the hue and cry of the present and near past gets lodged into the long-term cultural memory or else is allowed to quietly fade into an inaudible whisper. Public education has always been a battleground between cultural forces; one reason that Texas’ school-board members find themselves at the very center of the battlefield is, not surprisingly, money. The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually — which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State. California is the largest textbook market, but besides being bankrupt, it tends to be so specific about what kinds of information its students should learn that few other states follow its lead. Texas, on the other hand, was one of the first states to adopt statewide curriculum guidelines, back in 1998, and the guidelines it came up with (which are referred to as TEKS — pronounced “teaks” — for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) were clear, broad and inclusive enough that many other states used them as a model in devising their own. And while technology is changing things, textbooks — printed or online —are still the backbone of education.

The cultural roots of the Texas showdown may be said to date to the late 1980s, when, in the wake of his failed presidential effort, the Rev. Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition partly on the logic that conservative Christians should focus their energies at the grass-roots level. One strategy was to put candidates forward for state and local school-board elections — Robertson’s protégé, Ralph Reed, once said, “I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members” — and Texas was a beachhead. Since the election of two Christian conservatives in 2006, there are now seven on the Texas state board who are quite open about the fact that they vote in concert to advance a Christian agenda. “They do vote as a bloc,” Pat Hardy, a board member who considers herself a conservative Republican but who stands apart from the Christian faction, told me. “They work consciously to pull one more vote in with them on an issue so they’ll have a majority.”

This year’s social-studies review has drawn the most attention for the battles over what names should be included in the roll call of history. But while ignoring Kennedy and upgrading Gingrich are significant moves, something more fundamental is on the agenda. The one thing that underlies the entire program of the nation’s Christian conservative activists is, naturally, religion. But it isn’t merely the case that their Christian orientation shapes their opinions on gay marriage, abortion and government spending. More elementally, they hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country’s roots and the intent of the founders.

The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society. As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”

Continue reading article HERE.

Update on the URGENT ALERT About Religious Extremism In NW PA Public Schools

Thanks to the vigilance of a few concerned Venango County residents, the Ground Zero Master's Commission event known as "Explicit Truth" that was scheduled to take place during a Feb. 8 Rocky Grove Jr-Sr High School assembly (discussed in an Urgent Alert post here on Jan. 28) was canceled by Principal Matt Laverde upon the advice of the Valley Grove School District solicitor.


It was reported that the solicitor based his decision on the fact that the assembly was sponsored/paid for by religious groups and that local churches had described the assemblies as having religious content/motivation.

General information from legal advocates about these sorts of assemblies advise that:

- Schools should be extremely cautious about allowing such assemblies because they (the schools) will be held responsible if the assembly includes any religious content. The groups that offer these programs are often designed as vehicles for proselytization, so even if the group performing at the assembly claims that the content of its program is not religious, it may introduce or encourage religious views in subtle, but still unconstitutional ways. There is an additional concern that some of these groups promote their religious views, which may be homophobic or otherwise not inclusive.

- There are two common tactics that these groups use to convert a presentation into a religious message:

First, the presenters, in introducing themselves and perhaps explaining how they come to be doing this work, may talk about their religious backgrounds. That sets the stage for the entire presentation to be couched as a religious message.

Second, these groups will often use the school assembly as an opportunity to invite the students to "continue the conversation" at a pizza party or other local event off campus, which turns out to be religious in nature. It is unconstitutional for schools to provide an outside group with this type of opportunity to invite students to a religious event.

- Because the school will ultimately be held responsible for anything that an outside group says when the school invites the group to give a presentation to students, it is important for school officials to know exactly what will be included in the presentation before allowing a church-sponsored group to give an assembly to students.


This incident demonstrates the importance of being aware of what is taking place in local public schools and the effectiveness of asking questions when something doesn't seem right.

Congratulations and Thanks to those who understand the Constitution and who seek to uphold the principle of the separation of church and state for the benefit of all.

THE GZM "EXPLICIT TRUTH" PROGRAM IS STILL SCHEDULED TO TAKE PLACE DURING CRANBERRY HIGH SCHOOL ASSEMBLIES TODAY, Feb. 12: https://www.edline.net/pages/Cranberry_Junior-Senior_HS/Calendar

Please Call To Express Concern About Religious Proselytization In Public Schools:

Cranberry High School - Cranberry Area School District
Superintendent - Nicholas Bodnar
Phone: 814-676-5628 x509

Complaints Can Also Be Made To The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission via

Ann M. Van Dyke
Education/Community Services Division
Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission
P.O. Box 3145, Harrisburg, PA 17105
P: 717/783-8438
E: avandyke@state.pa.us
W: www.phrc.state.pa.us

Voices of Evil

For a truly frightening glimpse into the world of those who are working to eliminate GLBT people from society, this radio program, aired on Venango County's local "Christian" radio station, WAWN, is a must-listen.


It's not often that we get to be a fly-on-the-wall in the room where an entire group of peoples' death and extinction are being plotted, but this conversation between Venango County's own Diane Gramley of the American "Family" Association of Pennsylvania and Peter LaBarbera of Americans for "Truth" About Homosexuality provides such an opportunity in horrific fashion.

Listen Here: American Family Focus on PA Issues

Please, join with others in your community to prevent such evil from doing more harm.

To Struggle for Gay Rights is to Struggle for All Rights

by Scott Long of Human Rights Watch:

The email came to Human Rights Watch anonymously, late one night.

"I am a gay, working in Saudi Arabia ... last night me and my friends were in the shopping mall and suddenly the Saudi police attack us and arrested my friend Mu'ayyad and I managed to run away ... He is in jail and they are treating him like an animal, they abuse him and hit him every minute, please we don't have any hope ..."


From our office in New York, we spent days trying to find a Saudi lawyer for this man. When he was eventually freed, we worked with refugee organizations to help him escape the country. A few months later, I visited him in Jordan, where he'd found temporary shelter. He spoke haltingly of his ordeal: picked up by the Saudi religious police because they thought his T-shirt suspiciously tight, his walk too "feminine." They tortured him and tried to rape him in his prison cell.

Mu'ayyad was an Iraqi, not a Saudi citizen. He'd been forced to flee Baghdad for the relative safety of Riyadh a year earlier. When his relatives in Iraq had learned he was gay, his entire extended family vowed to kill him.

As a refugee, Mu'ayyad was finally able to resettle in the United States. We only learned his story by accident: because his lonely, terrified friend sent out an email in the dark.

Many such stories happen. Most remain in darkness. Around the world, few places are safe for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Some 80 countries criminalize consensual homosexual sex. Over half of them, from Malaysia to Jamaica, are clinging to repressive laws on "sodomy" that were left behind by British colonialism. The United States itself only scrapped its own such laws seven years ago.


New legal repression threatens. Uganda, not content with the law the British left, is debating a draconian "anti-homosexuality bill" that would inflict the death penalty on repeat offenders. "Promoting homosexuality" - any positive mention of it, any advocacy for gay people's rights - would incur a five-year sentence. And anyone who failed to report a homosexual to police within 24 hours would face three years in prison. The bill would build a nation of informers, turning citizen against citizen, sibling against sibling.

Mu'ayyad's story points to deeper dangers, though. For most LGBT people, the law is less threatening than prejudice and panic, hate and fear: an environment where families can be moved to kill their children in the name of "morality" or "honor." The Uganda bill, too, draws strength from how politicians and religious leaders seeking popularity and power have demonized LGBT people for years. One homophobic minister in Kampala this year promised to lead a "million man march" to support the death penalty for gays.

Around the world, sexuality has become a battleground.

"Fundamentalism" is a word both over-used and ill-defined. If it means anything, though, it describes movements that try to capture the state, to enforce social norms that society, community and family used to impose. Fundamentalisms feed on fear, on the sense of social breakdown, on the intuition that old values need new policing to prop them up.

Governments thus use their nightsticks and their surveillance systems to control people's bodies, to intrude in areas of private life that in many cases used to be irrelevant to them or off-limits. Ambitious politicians exploit fears of women's and men's sexual freedom for their own ends. Preachers and reporters alike stoke the atmosphere of prejudice, invoking desperate measures needed to combat what they call decadence.

One example: in Iraq in 2009, media and mosques spread fears that Iraqi manhood was somehow threatened with being "feminized" after years of occupation. Headlines and sermons warned that Western habits and an insidious "softness" were eating away at masculinity. Militias seized the chance to pose as protectors of morality, and started hunting victims - not just gay men, but any men who seemed "unmanly." Tight jeans or gelled hair could spell death.

Hundreds may have been murdered, kidnapped from homes or killed on the streets. In some cases the killers shot glue up their victims' anuses: a brutal reminder that their bodies were the abject property of others' beliefs, a reminder of what happens if you break unwritten laws of gender.

As human rights activists, we try to change practices, not sentiments. Yet LGBT rights defenders always know that the real terrain of our struggles lies in hearts and minds, in consciences scarred by hatred or open to acceptance.

There have been signs of hope this year. In June 2009, an Indian court overturned that country's 149-year-old sodomy law - the first such law that Britain ever imposed on its colonial possessions. It freed countless citizens of the world's largest democracy from the threat of blackmail or police harassment.


Yet the court saw its decision as extending beyond a single bad law. It affirmed this was not just about privacy or the citizen's right to safety behind closed doors, but about Indian democracy itself. It explicitly rejected a vision of the state as protective parent or as divisive judge. It cited Nehru, the nation's founder, declaring that "Where society can display inclusiveness and understanding," everyone can lead a life of dignity.

That is the real truth which voices too long shrouded in silence have been saying to us all. The struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's human rights is not just a campaign for a minority or a battle for gradual law reform. It is about what kind of societies we want to live in - and what kinds of people we want to be. It is about rejecting hatred and irrational fear; it is about the freedom to live an autonomous life. Ultimately, the struggle is about all of us, for all of us.

Have Faith In Love

By Erix Lax, Beverly Hills, CA:

The election, two months ago, of the Rev. Mary Glasspool, a priest who has been in a committed relationship with another woman for more than 20 years, as a suffragan (assistant) bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, has brought added turmoil to the Episcopal Church in the United States and to the worldwide Anglican Communion. There has been sporadic schism since the regular ordination of women as priests in 1977 and especially since the election of the Rev. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. He is the first openly gay bishop in the history of those Christian bishops — Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Greek and Russian Orthodox among them — who trace their succession back to the apostles.


In protest, several dozen parishes have aligned themselves with conservative Anglican bishops in Africa, and the Roman Catholic Church has offered to take in disaffected Episcopalians. In 2008, the leadership of the Anglican Communion, to which the American church belongs, tried to keep things together by urging the Americans not to elect other openly gay people as bishops until the Communion could establish more common ground. The Los Angeles electors’ choice of a gay woman as bishop has pushed the denominational envelope to the point of tearing.

The Glasspool election and its ensuing uproar make me realize how much has changed since 1976, when my father, who came to the Los Angeles diocese as a priest in 1947, died. About the biggest controversy within the church during most of his ministry was over proposed revisions to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

At that time, marriage was strictly Adam and Eve. Gays were closeted, whether they were in the congregation or the male-only priesthood. Until 1971, when women were first ordained as deacons, the highest post a woman could attain was member of the vestry, the elected group that manages parish business. But even that was uncommon; usually the highest ranking woman in the parish was the leader of the altar guild, which arranges the flowers in the church, sets up the Eucharistic vessels and washes and irons the linens used in the service. Women could not be priests because — according to the reasoning that had held for two millenniums — none of the apostles was a woman. This made as much sense as saying that, as none of the apostles was a scholar, scholars could not be priests, or that because all the apostles were Jews, only Jews could be ordained.

In 1977, I interviewed one of the controversial new priests, the Rev. Carol Anderson, for an Esquire article, and thought she was simply marvelous. Twelve years later, as either coincidence or a wave of the hand of God, she arrived as the new rector of my now nominal parish, All Saints’ in Beverly Hills, and we have become great friends. Oh, and now the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is a woman, Katharine Jefferts Schori.

These changes did not come until I was in my 30s. I had always been deeply devout, an altar boy from age 6, a regular at church camp and then on its summer staff, and the vice president and then the president of our diocese’s Episcopal Young Churchmen. I attended Hobart College, in Geneva, N.Y., which is affiliated with the Episcopal Church, my tuition paid in part by a clergy scholarship. Until well into my 20s, I gave regular consideration to becoming a priest myself.

I had a good model in my father, a man of immense humor who understood the frailties of humanity and who annually challenged his faith by reading agnostics from Thomas Huxley to George Bernard Shaw. He was a solid defender of Anglican orthodoxy and the guidance of the New Testament, but he also believed that every bit of Christian teaching could be summed up in three words: God is love. “The miracles,” he once told me, “are window dressing.”


Love. Treat others as you would have them treat you. If you feel you are a child of God, then honor your common and equal status with others as children of God. Except (and there are always exceptions with sibling rivalry) if they are women and therefore not qualified to perform the holiest sacraments of the church. Except if two members of the same sex engage in long, committed and faithful love; God may be love, but this love is ungodly.

Just look, some vigilant Christians say, at the “clear teaching” in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (“Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers — none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”); in 1 Timothy 1:9-11 (“The law is laid down ... for the unholy and profane ... for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God.”); and especially in Romans 1:26b-27 (“Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”)

I know that this will offend some Christians, but the notion that Scripture is perfectly clear is wishful thinking, as a recent white paper prepared by the All Saints’ clergy demonstrates. The writers of the four Gospels don’t agree on even so simple a thing as which people were present at Christ’s empty tomb. Considering that, over the centuries, the Bible has been translated into and out of multiple languages, it only makes sense to consider the context of what’s written rather than believe that every word is literal divine revelation. In rebuttal to the notion of a clear teaching of Scripture, the evangelical author and speaker Tony Campolo has said that “sodomites” is a word of dubious translation. “Nobody knows what the word means,” he said. “Interestingly enough, up until the 14th century it was translated as masturbation.”

Timothy’s reference to sodomites, for its part, is in the context of boys who were castrated to maintain their feminine and childlike characteristics and then exploited for sex — a far cry from two consenting adults of the same sex consummating their committed love.

Today, there is much reference to the supposed Christian teaching that marriage is a sacrament between one man and one woman, but it was not until the 12th century that marriage became a sacrament in the Western church.

Sex, though, has always been a particularly Christian problem. Orthodox Jews are commanded to marry, but the early Christians found celibacy a high calling. St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7 that he wished all Christians could stay single and celibate, as he had. He knew, however, that not everyone could and so he adds, “But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”

Less quoted than Paul’s advice that it is better to marry than to be engulfed by desire is what he says earlier in the passage: “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind.” One having one kind of gift and another a different kind is a pretty good definition of humanity in all our variety, and to me this passage expands the heart of what it means when two people, gay or straight, commit themselves to each other in the sight of a God who understands human differences.

A central tenet of Christianity is that all of us are born into sin. Then, as we grow older, we decide that some of our equals sin more than others, and in far worse ways than we do ourselves. We divine the word of God to mean that the acts we don’t like of others — what they eat, how they pray, whom they fall in love with — are an abomination in his sight, as if we can presume to decide in our own way what pleases God, and therefore what acts should be excluded and whom we can judge and damn in his name.

Exclusion always seems to become part of some people’s faith, though often over time what was excluded becomes accepted, only to be replaced by another ban: People of one denomination can’t marry those in another; people of one color cannot marry those of another.


Among my father’s parishioners in the 1950s were two men in their late 40s who came every Sunday to the 7:30 a.m. communion service and who shared a house. My parents referred to them as “confirmed bachelors,” code words for the love that dare not speak its name. They were kind and gentle men, who to even a 10-year-old obviously had some sort of special and personal bond. I am certain that they were in a loving and committed relationship that the church would then not recognize or bless, but as long as the fiction of their just being two people who happened to live together was maintained, they would continue to be accepted and valued members of the congregation. Which, of course, was well meaning but also hypocritical. Now, a multitude of parishes across the country would openly welcome the couple.

My own faith has eroded over the years, though my father’s belief in the supremacy of love still guides me. And so I can’t help but wonder, how can Christians not recognize and honor love that binds two people, any two people, together unto themselves? And if a priest has fulfilled her sacred duties with the distinction that persuades those to whom she would minister to elect her their bishop, and has led an open life of committed love that honors the essence of their God, why should her choice of a partner matter?

Eric Lax is the author of the forthcoming “Faith, Interrupted: A Spiritual Journey.”

Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet

By Frank Rich for the New York Times:

A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.

John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington’s attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.


Many of his Republican colleagues said little or nothing. The right’s noise machine was on mute. The Fox News report on Mullen’s testimony was fair and balanced — and brief. The network dropped the subject entirely in the Hannity-O’Reilly hothouse of prime time that night. Only ratings-desperate CNN gave a fleeting platform to the old homophobic clichés. Michael O’Hanlon, an “expert” from the Brookings Institution, speculated that “18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden” soldiers who are “tough guys” might object to those practicing “alternative forms of lifestyle,” which he apparently views as weak and testosterone-deficient. His only prominent ally was the Family Research Council, which issued an inevitable “action alert” demanding a stop to “the sexualization of our military.”

The occasional outliers notwithstanding, why did such a hush greet Mullen on Capitol Hill? The answer begins with the simple fact that a large majority of voters — between 61 percent and 75 percent depending on the poll — now share his point of view. Most Americans recognize that being gay is not a “lifestyle” but an immutable identity, and that outlawing discrimination against gay people who want to serve their country is, as the admiral said, “the right thing to do.”

Mullen’s heartfelt, plain-spoken testimony gave perfect expression to the nation’s own slow but inexorable progress on the issue. He said he had “served with homosexuals since 1968” and that his views had evolved “cumulatively” and “personally” ever since. So it has gone for many other Americans in all walks of life. As more gay people have come out — a process that accelerated once the modern gay rights movement emerged from the Stonewall riots of 1969 — so more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love.


But that’s not the whole explanation for the scant pushback in Washington to Mullen and his partner in change, Defense Secretary Robert Gates. There is also a potent political subtext. To a degree unimaginable as recently as 2004 — when Karl Rove and George W. Bush ran a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people — there is now little political advantage to spewing homophobia. Indeed, anti-gay animus is far more likely to repel voters than attract them. This equation was visibly eating at Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, as he vamped nervously with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC last week, trying to duck any discernible stand on Mullen’s testimony. On only one point was he crystal clear: “I just plain do not believe in prejudice of any kind.”

Now that explicit anti-gay animus is an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage. Hatch, for instance, limply suggested to Mitchell that a repeal of “don’t ask” would lead to gay demands for “special rights.” Such arguments, both preposterous and disingenuous, are mere fig leaves to disguise the phobia that can no longer dare speak its name. If gay Americans are to be granted full equality, the flimsy rhetorical camouflage must be stripped away to expose the prejudice that lies beneath.

The arguments for preserving “don’t ask” have long been blatantly groundless. McCain — who said in 2006 that he would favor repealing the law if military leaders ever did — didn’t even bother to offer a logical explanation for his mortifying flip-flop last week. He instead huffed that the 1993 “don’t ask” law should remain unchanged as long as any war is going on (which would be in perpetuity, given Afghanistan). Colin Powell strafed him just hours later, when he announced that changed “attitudes and circumstances” over the past 17 years have led him to agree with Mullen. McCain is even out of step with his own family’s values. Both his wife, Cindy, and his daughter Meghan have posed for the current California ad campaign explicitly labeling opposition to same-sex marriage as hate.


McCain aside, the most common last-ditch argument for preserving “don’t ask” heard last week, largely from Southern senators, is to protect “troop morale and cohesion.” Every known study says this argument is a canard, as do the real-life examples of the many armies with openly gay troops, including those of Canada, Britain and Israel. But the argument does carry a telling historical pedigree. When Harry Truman ordered the racial integration of the American military in 1948, Congressional opponents (then mainly Southern Democrats) embraced an antediluvian Army prediction from 1940 stating that such a change would threaten national defense by producing “situations destructive to morale.” History will sweep this bogus argument away now as it did then.

Those opposing same-sex marriage are just as eager to mask their bigotry. The big arena on that issue is now in California, where the legal showdown over Proposition 8 is becoming a Scopes trial of sorts, with the unlikely bipartisan legal team of David Boies and Ted Olson in the Clarence Darrow role. The opposing lawyer, Charles Cooper, insisted to the court that he bore neither “ill will nor animosity for gays and lesbians.” Given the history of the anti-same-sex marriage camp, it’s hard to make that case with a straight face (so to speak). In trying to do so, Cooper moved that graphic evidence of his side’s ill will and animosity be disallowed — including that notorious, fear-mongering television ad, “The Gathering Storm.”

The judge admitted such exhibits anyway. Boies also triumphed in dismantling an expert witness called to provide the supposedly empirical, non-homophobic evidence of how same-sex marriage threatens “procreative marriage.” In cross-examination, Boies forced the witness, David Blankenhorn of the so-called Institute for American Values, to concede he had no academic expertise in any field related to marriage or family. The only peer-reviewed paper he’s written, for a degree in Comparative Labor History, was “a study of two cabinetmakers’ unions in 19th-century Britain.”

In another, milder cross-examination — on “Meet the Press” last weekend — John Boehner, the House G.O.P. leader, fended off a question about “don’t ask” with a rhetorical question of his own: “In the middle of two wars and in the middle of this giant security threat, why would we want to get into this debate?” Besides Mullen’s answer — that it is the right thing to do — there’s another, less idealistic reason why President Obama might want to get into it. The debate could blow up in the Republicans’ faces. A protracted battle or filibuster in which they oppose civil rights will end up exposing the deep prejudice at the root of their arguments. That’s not where a party trying to expand beyond its white Dixie base and woo independents wants to be in 2010.

Polls consistently show that independents, however fiscally conservative, are closer to Democrats than Republicans on social issues. (In May’s Gallup survey, 67 percent of independents favored repealing “don’t ask.”) This is why Scott Brown, enjoying what may be a short-lived honeymoon in his own party, calls himself a “Scott Brown Republican.” A Scott Brown Republican isn’t a Boehner or Hatch Republican. In his interview with Barbara Walters last weekend, he distanced himself from Sarah Palin, said he was undecided on “don’t ask” and declared same-sex marriage a “settled” issue in his state, Massachusetts, where it is legal.


It’s in this political context that we can see that there may have been some method to Obama’s troublesome tardiness on gay issues after all. But as we learned about this White House and the Democratic Congress in the health care debacle, they are perfectly capable of dropping the ball at any moment. Let’s hope they don’t this time. Should they actually press forward on “don’t ask” in an election year with Mullen and Gates on board — and with even McCain’s buddy, Joe Lieberman, calling for action “as soon as possible” — they could further the goal and raise the political price for those who stand in the way. Recalcitrant Congressional Republicans will have to explain why their perennial knee-jerk deference to “whatever the commanders want” extends to Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal on troop surges but not to Mullen, who outranks them, on civil rights.

The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans. It won’t happen overnight, any more than full civil rights for African-Americans immediately followed Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces. But there can be no doubt that Mike Mullen’s powerful act of conscience last week, just as we marked the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter sit-in, pushed history forward. The revealing silence that followed from so many of the usual suspects was pretty golden too.

Spirituality and Sexuality Discussion Group

from Erie Gay News:

Every third Tuesday of the month, beginning February 16, 2010, the Rev. Dr. Rich McCarty will faciliate a discussion group on spirituality and sexuality at Community United Church (1011 West 38th Street) in Erie, PA.


Community United Church is an open and affirming Christian congregation. The discussion group will ground conversation in relevant issues such as what Christian scripture and ethics have to say about human sexuality, but will also provide individuals opportunities to share questions, stories, and experiences with respect to what it means to identify as a person who is both spiritual and sexual.

This group will also explore comparative religious views on sexuality and think about how different religious perspectives can help or hurt a person to cultivate a strong and sure sexual identity.

Meetings will be confidential. Come join the discussion! For more info, contact Rich at richmccarty@msn.com or at (319) 270-5140.

Equality In The Military

NY Times Editorial:

History was made on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. More than 16 years after their predecessors helped impose the odious “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the nation’s two top defense officials called on Congress to repeal the law that bans gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military. The principled courage of the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a major step forward for civil rights.

Their action leaves no further excuse for Republican lawmakers to go on supporting this discrimination. President Obama must not let the opponents of repeal, who are already mobilizing, keep this terribly unjust law on the books.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” was passed by Congress in 1993, with the support of Les Aspin, who then was the secretary of defense, and Gen. Colin Powell, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It compelled gay men and lesbians to hide who they are and to live in fear of being reported. Many thousands of men and women have been drummed out of the armed forces under this law.


Critics argue that the presence of gay service members makes the military less unified and effective. There is strong evidence that this is not so, including the experiences of nations, such as Canada and Britain, where gays serve openly. A policy of driving out good and talented people — including ones with much-needed skills in Arabic, Farsi, and other languages — makes the military less effective.

At Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a clear commitment to end “don’t ask, don’t tell” — following up on the promise President Obama made in his State of the Union address. The question, Mr. Gates said, “is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it.” He said, however, that more time will be needed to work out how to change the policy.

While the policy is being reviewed by the Pentagon’s top lawyer and the commander of the United States Army in Europe, Mr. Gates said the existing law will be carried out in a “more humane and fair manner.” One welcome change would be a decision by the military to no longer aggressively pursue discharge cases against people whose sexuality is revealed by third parties, including jilted romantic partners.

Since “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a federal law, the Obama administration will have to work to get Congress to repeal it. There will be considerable opposition. Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, declared his opposition on Tuesday. Representative John Boehner, the leader of the House Republicans, indicated earlier that with two wars under way it was not the right time to change the policy.

In fact, it is an ideal time. The armed forces need every qualified person who wants to serve. Polls show that Americans broadly support repealing the law. President Obama has spoken out forcefully for jettisoning the policy, and his party controls both houses of Congress. The armed forces have evolved. Gen. John Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently called for a repeal, declaring that “as a nation built on the principle of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger, more cohesive military.”

The United States has traveled far since 1993 on gay rights. It is ready for a military built on a commitment to equal rights for all.

Praying for Death

from the NY Times:

For more than 50 years, the National Prayer Breakfast has served as a prime networking event in Washington, bringing together the president, members of Congress, foreign diplomats and thousands of religious, business and military leaders for scrambled eggs and supplication.


Usually, the annual event passes with little notice. But this year, an ethics group in Washington has asked President Obama and Congressional leaders to stay away from the breakfast, on Thursday. Religious and gay rights groups have organized competing prayer events in 17 cities, and protesters are picketing in Washington and Boston.

The objections are focused on the sponsor of the breakfast, a secretive evangelical Christian network called The Fellowship, also known as The Family, and accusations that it has ties to legislation in Uganda that calls for the imprisonment and execution of homosexuals.

The Family has always stayed intentionally in the background, according to those who have written about it. In the last year, however, it was identified as the sponsor of a residence on Capitol Hill that has served as a dormitory and meeting place for a cluster of politicians who ran into ethics problems, including Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, and Gov. Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina, both of whom have admitted to adultery.

More recently, it became public that the Family also has close ties to the Ugandan politician who has sponsored the proposed anti-gay legislation.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group, sent a letter this week to the president and Congressional leaders urging them to skip the prayer breakfast. They have also called on C-Span not to televise it this year.


Melanie Sloan, executive director of the ethics group, said: “It is a combination of the intolerance of the organization’s views, and the secrecy surrounding the organization. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed to hold their breakfast; of course they should. The question is, Should American officials be lending legitimacy to it, giving their imprimatur by showing up.”

The Family has no identifiable Internet site, no office number and no official spokesman. J. Robert Hunter, a member who has spoken publicly about the group, said that it was unfair to blame the Family for the anti-gay legislation introduced by David Bahati. Mr. Hunter said that about 30 Family members, all Americans, active in Africa recently conveyed their dismay about the legislation to Ugandan politicians, including Mr. Bahati.

Mr. Hunter said the recent controversies had prompted a debate within the group about its lack of transparency. “I and quite a few others are saying we should be much more open,” he said.

Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” (Harper Perennial, 2009) said in a telephone interview, “Here’s an organization that, in the past, has not acknowledged its own existence.”

“It’s not a sinister plot. This is their theological stance,” said Mr. Sharlet, who infiltrated the group to do research for his book. “Their leader, Doug Coe, says that the more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence it will have.”

A White House official said that Mr. Obama, like each president since Dwight D. Eisenhower, planned to attend the breakfast. Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and other cabinet members will also attend. The president will deliver remarks about “the importance of an openness to compromise,” the official said.

The official also said that the president and the State Department had spoken out strongly against the legislation in Uganda.

The breakfast, which usually features a prominent keynote speaker (past ones have included Bono, Mother Teresa and former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain), is only the most visible in several days of gatherings where the Family’s networking takes place in smaller groups. There are separate meetings for African politicians, military leaders, business people and media professionals, to name a few.

Many states also have prayer breakfasts this week, which may appear to be government-sponsored but are also mostly affiliated with the Family.


Liberal members of the clergy and gay rights leaders organized the alternative events in haste this year, calling theirs the American Prayer Hour. The will convene at places like Calvary Baptist Church in Washington; Glendale City Seventh-day Adventist Church in California; the bishop’s chapel of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York, in Rochester; and Covenant Community Church in Center Point, Ala.

Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a gay rights group, said he initiated the prayer-hour idea because many religious Americans who attend the breakfasts have no idea about the connection to the Family and the anti-gay legislation.

“They have symbolically taken the mantle of religion,” Mr. Besen said, “and I think it’s time to take it back. And the American Prayer Hour is a step in that direction.”

A Litany for Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive

- Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn

"Christian" Leader Wants "Criminal Sanctions Against Gay Behavior"

Like many Christian fundamentalists, Peter Spriggs of the "Family" Research Council, one of the constellation of right-wing organizations with deep ties to the American "Family" Association, can't seem to think about anything but SEX, especially GAY SEX!

Unfortunately, obsessions like his result in bigotry, harassment, violence and discrimination against those who don't fit into such a narrow world view.

In this interview, he lays it all bare (focus, don't go off on a sex tangent here), and exposes the fundamentalists' true agenda.

Help Break Notre Dame's Silence on Gay Rights

Days after a cartoon ran in their student newspaper that advocated beating gay people into vegetables, a renewed effort is underway to get the University of Notre Dame to recognize sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policy. Gay Rights blogger Michael Jones writes that Notre Dame is the only top-twenty university in the country without sexual orientation in their official policy. To make matters worse, the university also refuses to recognize LGBT student groups on campus. The combination creates a fertile ground for homophobia to thrive, and the time for speaking out is now.

by Michael Jones for Change.org:


Hundreds of supporters of LGBT rights launched a silent protest yesterday to call attention to the University of Notre Dame's glaring silence on LGBT issues. The demonstration was intended to capitalize on debate surrounding LGBT rights at the university in the wake of a cartoon that was published in a student newspaper that advocated gay-bashing.

But to hear the demonstrators, many of whom were students, tell it, this demonstration goes far beyond just a cartoon that appeared in the newspaper.

"When the University refuses to acknowledge club status for [gay/straight alliances] and refuses to add sexual orientation to the non-discrimination clause, we are reminded of our other-ness," said Laurel Javors, one of the activists who organized the demonstration.

These facts put Notre Dame in a sticky, and untenable situation. Of the top-20 universities in the country, the University of Notre Dame is the only institution that doesn't include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policy, according to demonstration organizers.


Want to let Notre Dame know that a culture of homophobia shouldn't be tolerated in higher education? Send their President, Vice-President, and their student newspaper a message that the whole world is watching Notre Dame, and expecting them to create a campus environment that is safe for all students, regardless of their sexual orientation.

The University of Notre Dame's mission statement calls the campus to focus on injustice. "The University seeks to cultivate in its students not only an appreciation for the great achievements of human beings, but also a disciplined sensibility to the poverty, injustice, and oppression that burden the lives of so many."

Why shouldn't that include the oppression and injustice faced by students, faculty and alums based on sexual orientation? Take action now.

Four Men, a Counter and Soon, Revolution

By Edward Rothstein for the New York Times:

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The sign still says “F. W. Woolworth Co.” in bright gold letters running across the building on South Elm Street, just as it did 50 years ago. And within that two-story structure, the same stainless steel dumbwaiters and commercial appliances line the mirrored walls. The lunch counter, which includes a bowling-alley-long tabletop that must dwarf any currently in use, is largely intact; the original chrome and vinyl chairs are still mounted in the floor. This site is an authentic, half-century-old relic, a remnant of the mundane, the insignificant, the quaint.


But one of the achievements of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which is opening Monday in that former Woolworth building, is that you begin to understand how such a place became a pivot in the greatest political movement of the 20th century.

In the museum’s 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, the mundane luncheonette reminds us that a cataclysmic social transformation took place over the right to be ordinary. For that was what was at stake — not subtle and arcane matters of law or obscure practices that challenged eccentric codes of behavior, but the basic acts of daily life: eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing. It was here, at this luncheonette counter, that four 17-year-old freshmen at the all-black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina — Joseph A. McNeil, Franklin E. McCain, David L. Richmond and Ezell A. Blair Jr. — arrived on Feb. 1, 1960, sat down and ordered some food.

And when they were refused — refused because they were black, because much of Greensboro was racially segregated, and because Woolworth headquarters had decreed that the company policy was “to abide by local custom” — the four students continued to sit in mute protest.

They returned the next day and the next. Within a week 1,000 protesters and counterprotesters packed the store. By the end of March “sit-ins” had spread to 55 cities in 13 states. By mid-April the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had been established to expand student involvement. And by the end of July, when the Greensboro Woolworth’s counter was finally desegregated, this form of nonviolent protest had become one of the central strategies of the American civil rights movement.


So not long after this Woolworth announced its closing in 1993, the building was acquired with the hope of making it a museum. It took $23 million in public and private funds to fulfill that vision; the museum’s architects are the Freelon Group of Durham, N.C., and its exhibitions were designed by Eisterhold Associates of Kansas City, Mo.

Its founders, Melvin Alston, a Guilford County commissioner, and Representative Earl Jones of the North Carolina legislature, are expected to attend Monday morning’s opening ceremony on the 50th anniversary of the sit-in, along with state and national officials. One of the original protesters, Mr. McCain, a retired chemist who made his career in Charlotte, is scheduled to speak. Two others, Mr. McNeil and Jibreel Khazan (the name Mr. Blair now uses) will also be onstage; the fourth, Mr. Richmond, died in 1990.

Of course, since this museum was conceived, civil rights institutions and memorials have been proliferating, but the task of capturing the full scope of the movement seems ever more imposing. As it recedes in time, its history grows not smaller and simpler but grander and more complex. And this museum, in a region where ordinary life was a matter of bitter conflict, looks at the movement not as an uplifting triumph — which it surely was, however imperfect and however incomplete — but as a heroic battle fought through a dark maze of grim restrictions and dangerous confrontations. No doubt it was that as well.

As the museum’s executive director, Amelia Parker, explained in an interview, one purpose of the museum is to remind the visitor just what was at stake in the seemingly innocuous act of approaching the lunch counter. It celebrates that protest while also resurrecting for the visitor the full scope of the Jim Crow laws against which the movement rebelled. It does this so vividly that it inspires an emotional reaction: dismay at the moral blindness and anger at the injuries caused. One weakness of the museum’s opening exhibitions is that they try to amplify events or sentiments when they are powerful enough to speak on their own.

So far has consciousness changed in 50 years that just the sight of signs of Jim Crow segregation in an opening gallery is chilling, with declarations of “White Only” or “For Colored” joined by one earlier sign announcing a slave auction. “Plenty of good Negroes,” it proclaims, “non-quality sold by the dozen.” With such an example, the sarcasm of the display — the signs are seen behind a scrim of the American flag and the words “All men are created equal” — seems bluntly superfluous.

The passions behind those signs can be more directly felt in a Hall of Shame, through which, Ms. Parker said, visitors under 12 will be allowed to pass only when accompanied by an adult. On fractured frames and accompanied by sound effects of water hoses or tree limbs creaking with the weight of lynched bodies are horrific photographs of racist violence: the 1930 lynching of two men in Marion, Ind.; the 1919 burning of the body of a black man, Will Brown, in Omaha; police dogs attacking protesters in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963; the swollen, battered face of Emmett Till at his open-coffin funeral in Chicago in 1955. The images enforce a visceral sense of the brutish racial hatred at work.


It is almost a relief to enter a small theater showing a filmed dramatization of a dorm-room bull session in which four freshmen discuss their plans to sit at the Woolworth lunch counter. You then pass through a Hall of Courage, which imagines the walk the four protesters took, approaching Woolworth (in a historical photo) in the distance. You pass by images of stores and homes and trees — touching reminders of the mundane — and as you get closer, you pass by looming images of the inspirational heroes in whose path these young men are said to be walking, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi.

Unfortunately these figures seem less to suggest influence than to exaggerate the stature of the four young men, who can be admired for their achievement without such sanctification. Far more effective would have been to stick with the mundane tone of the luncheonette exhibit itself. Visitors sit at the long counter (part of which is a reproduction; an eight-foot portion of the original is on display at Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington) and gaze into mirrors that become video screens seeming to reflect the sit-in.

Then, leaving the luncheonette, you pass back into the Jim Crow world of the second half of the museum. The impact and sweep of these galleries are actually more intense than the bursts of violence seen earlier, because here you see the full scope of segregation and its system of laws and customs.

You pass through a reproduction of an arch leading into the Greensboro train depot, labeled “Colored Entrance.” (One side of the depot was built as a lesser duplicate of the other.) A little farther on is a double-sided Coca-Cola machine from this era (the date is not specified): one side of the machine was meant to serve whites, and the others blacks. One side advertises soda for 5 cents, the other 10, though it is not clear who was meant to get the better bargain.

There are images of segregated buses, want ads specifying the race of the desired employee, a sign from a Birmingham theater (“Colored must sit in balcony”), the door from a bathroom of a Greensboro store labeled “Colored Women.” A 1941 “Negro Motorist Green-Book,” published for black tourists, is on display, resembling an AAA guide, listing establishments in every state and major city that would welcome them: hotels, restaurants, garages, beauty parlors, haberdashers.

The effect is overwhelming and unrelenting, mixing image and spare text, recounting the importance of black churches and the scope of the attacks on them, the segregation of hospitals and medical care, the baleful effects of separate and unequal education. There are interactive displays of racially loaded literacy tests, a survey of legal challenges and courtroom strategies, and, all too briefly, a history of the movement’s evolution and a Wall of Remembrance naming its martyrs.

The point, of course, is not to show a collection but to share an experience. In this the museum is fully successful. The taste of justified bitterness runs through it.

But there is an important qualification to be made. Photographs and objects weren’t labeled when I saw them last week, and it was unclear how much detail would be available about times and places. The images of racial violence that were a prelude to the Woolworth exhibit include events that took place as early as 1919 and as late as 1963, well after the sit-in. And the movement itself is more complicated than suggested. There were effective sit-ins before Greensboro. There also were debates over the strategy (the national NAACP initially opposed sit-ins). And later splits among both black and white activists are elided. This museum is not a history of the movement.

There is an ahistorical tendency here, in which particular detail is put aside for broad impact. To a certain extent this must be done in any commemoration, particularly one as fraught with passion and urgency as this. But more attention to the nuances of the movement wouldn’t have hurt the museum’s cause; it would have strengthened it.

And finally, when generalizing outward, the museum is less intent on the movement’s successes (which should be made more evident) than on the existence of continuing and unresolved problems. It ends with a gallery that cites President Obama’s speech on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which stressed how many walls exist that must still come down. There is even a piece of the Berlin Wall here, along with a tribute to the worldwide impact of nonviolent protest movements.

But those movements had little to do with the fall of the wall. It is also difficult to shift perspectives so dramatically and globally celebrate a tactic when the museum’s concerns have been so different. Surely it is enough that one has been immersed in a story of a struggle that was so necessary, so compelling and, on balance, so triumphant.

The International Civil Rights Center and Museum is at 132 South Elm Street, Greensboro, N.C.; (336) 274-9199, sitinmovement.org.