LGBT-friendly Memorial for All Saints, All Souls and Day of the Dead

This queer-friendly memorial for All Saints, All Souls and Day of the Dead highlights those who died in the past year. Religion and society have often dishonored and desecrated LGBT lives. This is a place for ALL saints and ALL souls to be restored to wholeness and holiness. More info at the end of the memorial

Compassionate Spirit of God, unite us with the lives and visions of lesbian and gay heroes of our time… Unite us with all the souls living and dead, especially those souls taken by violence and AIDS. Unite us with all who boldly pioneered a way of pride and justice.
--from “Invocation for All Saints Day” by James Lancaster, published in Equal Rites

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In memory of
Frank Kameny
gay rights pioneer
(1925-2011)
Died Oct. 11, 2011

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In memory of
Jamey Rodemeyer
Suicide brought attention to gay bullying
(1997-2011)
Died Sept. 18, 2011

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In memory of

Peter Gomes
Harvard minister, gay African American, LGBT rights advocate
(1942-2011)
Died Feb. 28, 2011

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In memory of

David Kato
Ugandan LGBT rights activist
(1964-2011)
Murdered Jan. 26, 2011

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In memory of
Rev. Elder Jean White
Metropolitan Community Churches elder from London
Died Nov. 8, 2010 

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In memory of
Dr. Ken Blair
Pioneering AIDS doctor in Austin, Texas

(1954-2010) 
Died Nov. 1, 2010

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“The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints,
went up before God from the angel’s hand.”
      -- Revelation 8:4

In memory of: Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase, Asher Brown, Cody J. Barker, Harrison Chase Brown, Caleb Nolt; Billy Lucas, Jeanine Blanchette, Chantal Dube and all other gay and lesbian youths who have committed suicide. Gwen Araujo, Rita Hester, Brandon Teena and all others who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepard, Alan Schindler and all others who were murdered in homophobic violence. Jill Johnston, Mary Daly, and all lesbians whodied in 2010. Rock Hudson, Rev. Ron Russell-Coons, Rev. Jim Sandmire, Rev. Howard Wells and all others who died of AIDS. And for all saints and all souls, named and unnamed.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
--Hebrews 12:1



Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle Autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush.
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there; I did not die.
-- Anonymous

Candles from Wikimedia Commons

Here we emphasize those who died between Nov. 1, 2010 and Oct. 31, 2011. Feel free to suggest more names by adding them as comments. Click here to visit our all-time memorial.

In Catholic and Protestant Christianity, the Feast of All Saints commemorates all saints, known and unknown. The following day, the Feast of All Souls, pays respect to the faithful departed who have not yet reached heaven. Prayers are offered to ask the saints to help the living, and to offer help to the souls of deceased friends and family.

All Souls Day is celebrated in Latin America as the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos). The holiday is especially popular in Mexico, where the happy celebration is one of the biggest events of the year.

All Saints Day used to be called All Hallows Day, and the preceding evening was the Eve of All Hallows, now celebrated as Halloween. These holidays are associated with the Celtic Festival of the Dead (Samhain). They grow out of the pagan belief that the souls of the dead return to visit at this time of year.

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Related links:

LGBT Saints Series

Why we need LGBT saints: A queer theology of sainthood by Kittredge Cherry

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This post is part of the LGBT Holidays series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series celebrates religious and spiritual holidays, holy days, feast days, festivals, anniversaries, liturgical seasons and other occasions of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people of faith and our allies.

Noah’s Ark: Queer views of a rainbow story

“Noah’s Gay Wedding Cruise” by Paul Richmond

www.paulrichmondstudio.com

Queer visions of Noah’s Ark sail into view today for Shabbat Noach, the day when the story of Noah’s Ark is read in synagogues. This year it falls on Oct. 28-29.

LGBT perspectives on Noah’s journey are offered by Paul Richmond, who painted “Noah’s Gay Wedding Cruise,” and by the Objective Queer Bible Scholar, who wonders: When God told Noah to take “two of every kind” on the ark, did that mean two lesbians, two gay males, two bisexuals, two transsexuals, two heterosexuals, and so on?

Rainbows are a symbol of the LGBT community, and they play a big role at the end of the passage about Noah. God promises that floods will never again destroy all life, and sets a rainbow in the sky as a sign of this covenant.

Happy gay and lesbian animal couples mingle under the rainbow with today’s LGBT celebrities in “Noah’s Gay Wedding Cruise,” a painting by Ohio artist Paul Richmond. Same-sex pairings of cuddling elephants, giraffes, penguins, chimps, and flamingos cuddle on board his gay version of Noah’s ark. Human couples include Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, Elton John and David Furnish, and Rosie O’Donnell and Kelli Carpenter.

Elsewhere on Richmond’s queer cruise ship, Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie come out of the closet to watch from a porthole as a “God hates fags” sign sinks beneath the waves, along with opponents of LGBT rights such as Ann Coulter, Ken Starr, Pat Boone, Fred Phelps, and even Larry Craig with his toilet!

“I chose to symbolize our inevitable victory in the fight for marriage equality by painting my own adaptation of the biblical flood,” Richmond says. For more info and detailed images, see our previous post “Noah’s gay wedding cruise pictured.”

Other queer twists on Noah’s story are offered by the Objective Queer Bible Scholar at the BW16 Blog: “This classic Sunday school tale includes a number of LGBT motifs, my favorite being the command from God to Noah to ‘take two of every kind’ on the ark (6:20), presumably this would include couplings of heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and pan-sexuals.” For more of his analysis, see BW16’s post “Two of Every Kind” Intercourse Texture in Noah’s Ark.

Related links:
Noah’s Ark Bible text: Genesis 6:1 - 9:17

Blessing Our Pets: In The Spirit Of St. Francis And Judaism by Jon M. Sweeney (Huffington Post)

Allen Schindler: Gay martyr in the military

The Murder of Allen Schindler by Matthew Wettlaufer

Allen Schindler (1969-1992) brought international attention to anti-gay hate crimes and gays in the military when he died on this date (Oct. 27) in 1992.

Maybe Allen Schindler is resting more peacefully now that the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against gays and lesbians in the military ended on Sept. 20, 2011.

For a new version of this article, click this link to Qspirit.net:
Allen Schindler: LGBTQ role the military highlighted by murder of gay sailor


Today also happens to be Navy Day in the United States. Remembering the service of Allen Schindler is a fitting way to mark the day.

Allen R. Schindler, Jr.

Schindler was a U.S. naval petty officer who was brutally beaten to death because he was gay by two of his shipmates in a public restroom in Sasebo, Japan. Schindler’s murder was cited by President Bill Clinton and others in the debate about gays in the military that culminated in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The crime is portrayed in an epic painting by gay artist Matthew Wettlaufer, who makes connections between anti-gay violence and other human rights struggles in his art.

At first the Navy tried to cover up the circumstances of Schindler’s death. The movie “Any Mother’s Son” tells the true story of how his mother, Dorothy Hadjys-Holman, overcame her own homophobia and Naval cover-up attempts to get justice for her gay son. She also spoke at the 1993 March on Washington for LGBT Rights.

Wettlaufer discusses his painting of Schindler and his other gay-related political art in my previous post “New paintings honor gay martyrs.”

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Related link:

American Veterans for Equal Rights
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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBTQ martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
Qspirit.net presents the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBTQ spirituality.

Wear purple for Spirit Day to support LGBT youth

Wear purple today to show support for LGBT youth on Spirit Day (Oct. 20).

Millions of people are wearing purple today to speak out against bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. Spirit Day was started in 2010 by Brittany McMillan, a 16-year-old Canadian girl, in response to high-profile suicides by young LGBT people such as Tyler Clementi.

On Spirit Day individuals, schools, organizations, corporations, media professionals and celebrities wear purple, which symbolizes spirit on the rainbow flag. They also “go purple” by making their profile pictures purple at Facebook and other social media websites. More than 1.6 million Facebook users from around the world signed up for Spirit Day last year.

Spirit Day is being promoted by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Visit glaad.org for more info, including an interview with McMillan about why she founded Spirit Day.

“The purpose of the event was so that people who were being bullied at their schools could come to school on Spirit Day and look around at all the people wearing purple, all the people who they could trust, all the people who would support them….I honestly had a bit of a pessimistic view of it. I thought that I would only get a few hundred people wearing purple and then my school. I never thought it would get as big as it did,” she said.

McMillan noted that Spirit Day is also a day to mourn the youths already lost. “A lot of events are always doing things for the present or the future, but they don’t really look back on the past. Spirit Day is a day where you can presently support LGBTQ teens, promise to stand up to homophobic bullying and also remember teens from the past,” she said.

Related links
glaad.org/spiritday

Tyler Clementi: Gay martyr driven to suicide by bullies (Jesus in Love Blog)

Rutgers University student Tyler Clement sparked efforts to support LGBT youth after he jumped to his death on Sept. 22, 2010. He was driven to suicide by cyber bullying and harassment. Artist Louisa Bertman shows how anti-LGBT politicians created the hostile environment that drove Tyler Clementi to suicide in her drawing “Tyler Clementi, Jump!”

Fear, faith and gay Jesus: Interview with author Paul Hartman

Paul Hartman

Revelations that Jesus was gay lead to deeper spiritual insights -- and a deadly chase -- in “The Kairos,” a new suspense novel by Paul Hartman.

He discusses how and why he wrote “The Kairos” in the following in-depth interview with Kittredge Cherry, author of “Jesus in Love,” a novel about a bisexual Jesus. Based in Washington state, Hartman is a Presbyterian elder and retired PBS / NPR broadcast executive and on-air personality.

“The Kairos” addresses the timely issue of homosexuality and religion, but its underlying theme is timeless: Human fear and God’s reassuring response: “Fear not.”

Kittredge Cherry: Readers at Jesus in Love are interested in the idea of a gay Jesus. How does “The Kairos” explore that theme?

Paul Hartman: The Kairos (Greek for “a divine breakthrough into human time”) is a novel premised on seven Dead Sea Scrolls fragments having been hidden by two scholars for forty years.  The two had feared the carbon-dated evidence would explode the faith of a billion Christians worldwide.  Although the revelations were eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ teen years and why He was considered divine by contemporaries, they also stated that He and John, the Beloved Disciple, became intimate life-companions there in Qumran.

Wherever I have a chance, I’ll emphasize that this story is not really about a gay Jesus.  It’s about fear, and more importantly, God’s simple, loving words to us about that basic human emotion.  One “horrible fear” for some would be that the premise could have been true, that Jesus might have been not just sexual, but homosexual.  Two other, more-universal fears are of failure and of death.  These three threats drive the protagonist in The Kairos.  I trust that readers will remember by the end of the story that our loving Creator has addressed every kind of fear in the first divine words in almost every biblically-recorded kairos moment.  Those two words—just like the first two spoken by Bethlehem’s herald angels—are the theme of this novel.

KC: In your book the Vatican and the CIA try to stop the hero from revealing that Jesus was gay. Has anyone tried to stop you from writing the book or accused you of blasphemy yet?

PH: Only one person has tried to stop me from writing and publishing this story: my own fearful self.  Just like the protagonist, I have worried and prayed endlessly for decades that this be used to further God’s Kingdom, not to hurt people or (God forbid!) turn believers into atheists.  And just like God’s first kairos words in stories from Genesis to Revelation, the Divine has understood my fears and repeatedly, lovingly allayed them.  Even if (when!) there are accusations of blasphemy, I’ll keep looking back to our glimpse of Perfect Love and try to live like Him.

KC: Why did you decide to tackle this controversial subject? Is “The Kairos” related to your own coming-out process as a gay man?

PH: The story first came to me during a worship service at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Buffalo, NY.  I wrote the first words—which survived all revisions and edits almost intact—on the bulletin.  I was in the closet then as I had been for over 30 years, and I remained in that dark fearful place for almost 20 more. Retirement has helped ease the fears, and then nine months ago I found the love of my life.  Even knowing that I should have found courage solely in my faith, being with Bruce has given it to me.  So both the book and I are coming out this year.  Praise God that recent trends in the world and the Church are making this less “courageous” than it would have been even a few years ago.  I’m so thankful to you, Kitt, for your pioneering, among others’.

KC: You’re a Presbyterian elder and lay preacher. What do you believe about Jesus’ sexuality? Was he attracted to other men? Did he have a male lover? What is the evidence or basis for your own beliefs?

PH: My lay preaching and coaching is in the area of stewardship (annual- and capital-campaigns), and I emphasize to fellow Christians that God is not needy but instead commands us to give because He loves us.  As a perfect Parent, God knows the “miser” in us makes us “miserable.”  (I welcome consulting inquiries from open and affirming congregations!  Ok, ok, end of commercial. :-)  )   It’s that same spirit that informs my understanding of Jesus’ entire earthly life, which confirms for me that everything, including our sexual orientation, is a gift to be celebrated and shared.

Do I believe Jesus was sexually active?  All I can say is He would still be my God if so, but of course I don’t know.  With a man or woman?  Same answer.  Two of my favorite chapters in The Kairos explore those questions, all of which hinge on whether we believe He was fully human.  (If we don’t, of course, we subscribe to the Gnostic heresy…the belief that all matter is evil, meaning Jesus wouldn’t have been human but only an apparition.)  Chapter 20 depicts a fundamentalist character’s reaction when she is asked various questions about His physical life.  In exasperation, she ends it exclaiming, “I don’t want to think about Jesus’ penis!”  Well I don’t know anyone who wants to, but if that’s symbolic of our rejection of our God-given physical bodies, then I can’t believe our Creator is happy about that.  He looked out over all that He had made and said it was very good.  Another favorite Kairos chapter, 33, presents one character’s mock debate with himself over the “clobber passage” issues attendant to these questions.

KC: One of the fascinating parts of your book is the “manuscript within a manuscript” -- the seven chapters that read like long-secret Dead Sea Scroll fragments on the sexuality of Jesus. What research did you do to ensure that these sound authentic?

PH: Just two of the seven broach the topic of sexuality; the other five introduce Him to the Qumran community and tell stories showing why the elders and youth alike were astounded at His gentleness, kindness, playfulness.  And His grace.  You might imagine that I approached writing each of these with some…well, fear!  The responsibility of sharing imagined words and actions of Jesus’ was almost crushing.  I felt an overwhelming need to stay close to the core of His life and message as best I know it.  So I spent a lot of time in the Synoptics during those writing periods.  I hope readers will hear echoes of gospel accounts in the words and actions I created, extensions of known sayings and behaviors more than anything brand new.  That is, except for the intimacy hinted at.  

Regarding my research in situ, I spent about 22 days in the Holy Land region in the year 2000, including about four days in Jerusalem and Qumran.  I was a docent at the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in 2006 at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center.  That gave me numerous opportunities for close-up examination of scroll fragments and other artifacts.  And I’ve read pretty extensively and watched almost every documentary produced.  The Dead Sea Scrolls absolutely fascinate me.  To see the tetragrammaton in two-millennia-old handwriting …it’s breath-taking.

KC: How has your own spiritual journey been affected by the process of writing “The Kairos”?

PH: I’m probably one of the most progressive “born-again” Christians you’ll ever meet, and have been blessed with a deep faith ever since the day of that spiritual birth.  (Mine was the real-life experience written up as the Eskimo pastor’s in Chapter 51.)  Writing it prompted me to finally make the Trip of A Lifetime to the Holy Land (which is detailed on my website www.CarpeKairos.com).  And deciding to finally publish it has been a leap of faith both financially and in coming out.  Here’s a germane anecdote: I had long thought that I would have to use a nom-de-plume if I published it, to avoid direct questions from the media about my own orientation.  But I finally realized, Duh!?  A book whose theme is “fear not”…written by an author who’s afraid to put his name on it?  How self-contradictory can a guy get?

KC: Without spoiling the surprise, can you offer any words of wisdom for those who will be shocked by the conclusion?

PH: You know, if a story’s conclusion has a powerful effect on a reader—whether leaving them in a flight to joy or a descent to sadness—it means s/he has solidly connected with the protagonist and that character’s driving motivation.  One reader finished this novel and immediately wrote, “You know you have reached people when they have an emotional reaction—lump in throat kind—at the end.”  Those of us who believe in a death-conquering Deity understand that His repeated kairos words are not shallow, whistling-in-the-dark encouragements.  When we embrace them—as the protagonist finally does—they can become truly powerful in our own lives.

By the way, I strongly encourage readers to share their personal reactions after finishing The Kairos.  I’ll send each person who emails me (in the “Contact Us” section of “Sharing Ideas” at www.CarpeKairos.com) a few words that early readers have found helpful…but which I know wouldn’t be appropriate to print following its conclusion.